The Chainsmokers - Music & Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.430]

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/0b12cf06acb49a3d

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Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money.
If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus Review, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus Review along with all of our podcasts at joincolosis.com.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum.
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Mm.
My guests today are Alex Paul and Drew Tagg. You might know them as the chain smokers.
We explore their fascinating evolution from scrappy DJs to global superstars to serious venture capitalists with their fund Mantis.
Drew and Alex share how the same high touch relationship driven approach that built their music empire now defines their investment philosophy.
Their frameworks for backing founders mirrors their artistic approach.
They invest in obsessive individuals who will pursue their visions regardless of external validation.
Much as they've remained authentic to their sound despite industry pressures.
We discussed parallels between creative iteration in music and venture investing.
Particularly around managing failure, maintaining intentionality in an age of abundance, and the importance of taste as a differentiating factor.
Please enjoy this fascinating discussion with the chain smokers, Alex Paul, and Drew Tagger.
How do you feel about
models training on your content.
I don't care. Yeah, I figured, yeah. Because it's like a cat out of the bag. We don't care about our music either.
I asked because there's so much controversy around music and art.
Trip Adler subscribed pretty successful company and he's starting something new. And he's like, you know, one of those founders where you're like
Normally
You'd be like, this is a really successful second time founder starting something in AI now.
And I talked to him, he was like, Yeah, it's basically like
licensing copyright rights that we find a way to
Protect and then get people paid.
And I was just like
This feels It's like I'm gonna stand in front of a tsunami and I'm gonna hold it off. Yeah, I was like everything here is like hinged on government protecting IP. And by the way, it's already too late. I'd compare like this phase in AI models training off of copyrighted data is the Napster moment where
the record labels couldn't figure out a way to like sell music in the digital age. If they had been forward thinking and accepted that they would have created Spotify, we wouldn't be paying an extra thirty percent to a DSP.
But they didn't and
It had this whole moment where it's like you can't really stop this from happening. So just kind of embrace it and figure out how to like harness it when it comes out the other side. One person will get sued. Yeah. Like these morals are gonna train on this and they're gonna be able to do these things that everyone's feared about.
But then we're gonna be able to make better art or different art.
Is there anything you do fear?
loaded question that I wanna answer correctly, and my first instinct to say no.
Because I feel
Specifically us.
We're DJs.
Fifteen years ago, the DJ producer, and then still to this day.
You've seen the memes about they're just pressing play, or all of their music is software and
I remember the whole first wave of that democratization of like
music software being available and accessible and the barriers entry coming down and all of us being able to make stuff that we weren't able to create before we give unless we had like access to a crazy studio.
I remember everyone saying that that wasn't real music.
I mean, here we are like fifteen years later. Us and all our friends have had massive songs that have been culturally impactful, that play huge shows that tons of people come and have a good time to. And
listen to music that make them feel euphoria or sadness or something amazing. It's like the still
same impact of music has happened because they're a different set of tools.
I'm excited to see what happens next, and I'm excited to use those tools or for my kids to use those tools and to see
How that
Enables people
might not be able to express themselves with this medium.
I would argue this the same now. It will be worse in the future, but just lots of slop.
It's just a
larger volume of stuff that gets made every day.
to your point that fifteen years ago probably when jaws like Ableton and Fruity Loops and all these things came into existence now on Spotify when we like started there was
Ten thousand songs uploaded every Friday. Now there's like a hundred and ninety thousand.
Or something like that.
That's not that long. Yeah, yeah. And I imagine that in a few years it'll be a million. And that will definitely have like an impact about how hard it is to break through.
Or maybe the importance of having a brand or an identity or a standing for something will mean something even more.
I just watched this Brian, you know, interview with
Zayn Low.
And he was just talking about AI and
Is it scary to him than this? And he was like, no, because it's at the end of the day, it's still just a tool.
For now at least.
Is it maybe the opposite that actually these tools make people like you that are willing to go the distance and want it the most?
And are maybe the most talented.
even more advantaged versus everybody else.
Who knows? I can't answer that question yet, and hopefully not, to be honest.
I think
What we're all gonna have to not just
Us who are established, we have our way of making music and then
I think what it does is kinda actually kinda the opposite is like it just allows more people to be able to make music and perform music and create
an experience that other people connect to. I think music is just
My personal favorite form of self expression with these tools, I'd assume that more people are going to be able to experience being able to express themselves that way. And that's awesome.
And perform it. And you can kinda look at the DJ as like a microcosm blip on the radar of a version of more accessibility.
what that gets you, but you look at how big the scene is and how fun the scene is now, it's like how is that a bad thing?
How does it feel the most different?
now creating a marginal new song versus when you started.
What is the most felt creative process difference?
I would say that's a little less
technological, it's more my own brain that I'm still trying to reckon with.
Songwriting is you're always trying to scratch the
It's not the same itch, but there is an itch.
You're trying to satiate.
It's deep inside of you that makes you feel
Something.
that you haven't felt in other places or maybe you feel that way'cause it's you making it that time, but
As a massive music fan, I'm trying to like
make something that respects all of the things that have inspired me my entire life, it still makes me feel like wow, this is my statement now.
And
You'd think that we'd have a formula now on how to like
Write a dance song at least, or write a pop song. Forget about trying to write like the truest song for you at that moment.
It's still
it can come from anywhere and it's so difficult and I think
I would be surprised if any artist told you that they weren't rewriting their process every single time they go to do an album or a new batch of songs.
Say a little bit more about the nature of those feelings that you're trying to get yourself to feel by making something. I think that's quite a cool Well, if I could say it, I wouldn't need to make music.
It's us tinkering around and it's really cool having
someone that you've made music with your entire life because
What Chain Smoker's music is, is what we both agree on is like fun and tasteful, and we want to play out. But it's not just me or just Alex. It's like a reflection of our friendship.
And uh what we've gotten super stoked on
listening to as music fans over the past
Twenty years.
Is there a song that you remember making together where the creative process behind the song stands out the most in your memory as like emblematic of what it's like to make something together?
I mean, every song I feel like kind of is its own. You told me about No Shade of Pity one time and the process behind that. I thought it was so cool. That's out like a day like today. Yeah. I mean probably was like almost like a year to this day.
That was like an interesting
song especially f obviously for me, I'd just gone through like a breakup or something and we were like
Pulling a lot of inspiration from that.
just generally speaking, you know, like you kinda go into the studio and you're like what
Interesting.
concepts or things that are happening our lives talk about or expand on or just talk about and then like a lyric or something happens and
We were like
Thinking about
New York City, which is obviously where we started.
on a day like this where it's like seventy five sunny out.
Winter's over, you know what I mean? And it's time to like
be feral and enjoy the city. Sixty degrees, but everyone's got their shirts off and the park pail is one of the best days of the year. Yeah, and like all those like bars, fun restaurants with the sidewalk space are just overflowing into the streets and it's like hard to find something that isn't fun.
And so was kinda like musing that as a metaphor for like coming out of a relationship.
But then it's like there's so many decisions and
Things you have to talk about.
How long do we want the verses to be? Is it too wordy? Is it too dancy? Is it not dancy? That feeling of it, I wouldn't say that song was like a runaway success for us by any means.
I do feel like people keep coming back to it.
I feel like we have a lot of songs like that where I'll get messages
throughout the entire year.
Once a week someone will be like, Dude, this song's really good.
And you're like
Did you just listen to this? You're my friend. I put this out nine months ago. I think that's what's cool about music is everyone has these moments with songs and I have still with like older songs from like the sixties or seventies or eighties to like new songs that come out last week where you're like
Whoa this dude's preaching. You know what I mean? Or it just resonates
Deeply
in some way that it maybe didn't before, just'cause of whatever mood or thing you're going through. So
the songs like that's funny'cause he's like, we're talking about my
breakup, but then we don't want to just make it about my breakup. We want to make something that's like an experience that everyone can kind of relate to. And then he's figuring out what clever ways to like fit the story into
a visceral scene that relates to both of us, which is like a New York
Spring day.
Then I'm trying to
Keep feeding the song with
It's a funny process. Yeah. And then kind of goes back and forth in this way.
I think Emily wrote that song with us too.
Obviously an amazing songwriter.
It's fun.
And then suddenly you're like
There it is.
I feel like when you make a song like that, you're so excited.
about it to play it and to be like is this it? Is this gonna resonate with everybody? But like at the end of the day
I think whether or not it met the standard success for us аналикаметрик лево.
It like hit the mark.
As far as like a chain smoker song.
on like every level. That's one of my favorite songs of yours, so Yeah, thank you.
And I think that's a big part of what we've been
re-exploring in the last year is dialing it back to the chain smoker fans and chain smoker sound. Cause I think going back to the AI stuff, there's so many tools out there right now. So much software, so many ideas, so many genres.
so much stuff happening every day that you almost have to like constrain
Yourself a little bit.
to like have success. I forgot who was talking about this.
The guitar has been the exact same instrument for like hundreds of years.
And yet people are still finding new ways to play it and create sounds and feelings from it.
I feel like
We go into our studio sometimes and it's like wow, we have
twenty five keyboards now.
It almost hurts the experience versus helps it sometimes.
That there's no barriers to entry.
Or less and less every day.
for music creation, what are we left with? The same way it's like
I could play a guitar
The same way and sing a song.
That
Some other guy can, but it might just hit different when that other guy does it or that girl does it.
based on their background or the way that they're holding it or the way that their voice inflects with that core like there's so much different that comes down to like brand.
I hate to say brand when you're talking about art, but what is this thing that people are tuning into you to believe in? And someone brought up the point the other day.
No artist knows.
what song they should play at their show. I don't know if you've ever heard that. I thought that was a really interesting point into Alex's talking about
The success or lack thereof of a song like No Shaded Pity.
How do you define success in a
Age of abundance of art.
How do you define success?
With Oswald we've have a bunch of songs over a billion streams.
We've had chart topping songs, but then
What is the one thing that we do that no one else can do? Can that even be replicated by AI? Can that be replicated by another person? Because
when that person does it, it will be them doing it and it'll be at a different time and they'll look different and it will feel different. And so
when you think about AI, like you can't be scared of it because it's just gonna hit different
For better or for worse at some point.
We just gotta focus on
being the most chain smokers as possible.
Is art in a really bad place?
Right now, generally across the board, we have very few original movies being made.
Avengers twenty five. Slop everywhere. Everything's like optimized for various algorithms. Exactly.
What does that mean for art in general when anyone can do it and successful? Like are we in a golden age of creation or is it different?
We work with ours all the time and play us a song and it's like oh this is like a interpolation of a song and you're like
I have no problem with that stuff. I think it can be really interesting.
But you're also like
It's already.
So I think when you have an artist like a Fred again or someone come along
I think it has even bigger impact.
than maybe in the past because that originality is so refreshing.
I find him
Unbelievable. My son and I are huge fans. We've watched all his various sets.
As
Fellow musicians in the similar category, what is it?
How would you describe
what he's done effectively to somebody else. Cause it feels like the right example of this originality that we kind of all want more of. Fred's a great example
I mean there's a lot of standout artists of the past
three or four years. I mean, if you look at a Doche or Charlie X
Most notably, probably.
Fred, they've all brought you into their world.
It's bigger than just music. What's so cool about
music right now and those three artists in particular
is they have songs that go
Viral but like it's not
traditional pop hits like when we came up.
Ten years ago.
It's so much cooler now. It's so
nuanced and just
More niche than
It was at a time.
We're seeing this in dance music especially where it's like
The new stars have
Dance right now that are
blowing out Madison Square Gardens or
doing the basically festival sized crowds for their own shows.
If you looked at them on their Spotify monthly listeners like we were talking about you're like, Oh, this is an emerging artist.
This is an opening act.
That's what's so cool and I think w kind of wraps up the whole point about
If everyone can be creative, it's like what else can you give'em? You need to bring people into something more than just
Music
And I think that's something we struggle with a lot, where it's like we're hyper focused on music and like we create this thing where like I crushed it this time.
This is gonna be it, but like
the world building of the whole thing.
is something that doesn't come naturally to every artist, which I think
just be more and more important. And as a fan, I want world building.
I want to participate.
I think album is God.
I wanna sit in your world for forty five to an hour and fifteen minutes.
I wanna
put on the costume when I'm listening to something.
I read this amazing post this morning about
the need to build heavy things, not light things, like light things being ephemeral.
Make it fast, consume it fast, forget it fast.
something like the album approach or something that takes a long time, that takes a lot of
Time, heart, effort, blood, sweat, tears.
Is what we need more of such a good point. I think even like the commonality between like a Fred and a Douche and a tro these are people that have been grinding Docci's video after she won the Grammys went viral because she was fired from her job.
I'm just gonna double down on music.
It was some crazy thing.
Charlie X has been writing songs for hit artists for like fifteen years, you know what I mean? Just in the background, waiting.
almost like fine tuning everything, waiting for this moment. And Fred similarly is literally a musical savant, but has been writing for Ed Sheeran and
huge songwriters in the background. I mean his story's equally as impressive. And then you have that compared to like the TikTok artists that are in Covid that
made a viral fifteen seconds of a song.
label sign them and then they're like, What did we just buy?
I don't know what this is. Oh my god. Totally. And not to say that those artists can't break out and do great things, like Addison Bright, I think, is doing a really great job of building a
Really s amazing career.
Right now.
I don't know Addison and haven't worked with her, but everything I hear about our songwriter friends that are in the studio that she gets the world building piece of this. Yeah, you can tell.
What does world building mean? Just like define what that means.
Defining an aesthetic and a mood and an attitude that you can participate in when you listen to the music. That's how I would see it.
Is some people do the super
Thought out probably have
boards and plans and branding and insane creative direction. I think some people are just are themselves.
They just kinda build it inherently. Travis Scott is
Rage.
But I would say like Zach Bryan
As far as lack of branding goes.
Zach Bryan is Zach Bryan.
When you go see a show, when you hear it
And the amount of songs he puts out, the type of videos that he films, I'm just like, this is just a down to earth guy singing, I guess they call Rust Bell Country.
Brilliant songwriting.
And no frills.
You're just getting good ass music.
And I feel like Fred against might be the DJ version of that.
This guy's just making really cool innovative music and
Doesn't care how it's so happy all the time. How is he this happy?
There's this moment in the boiler room set that he did.
We're a fan.
knocks the cable out and it stops the whole thing.
And his reaction to it.
He like instantly smiles and is happy about it and then somehow uses it, weaves it into the music somehow. It was like one of these moments where I thought, Oh my God. I know the moment you're talking about it's adorable.
It's amazing. Guy's so embarrassed that he does it and his reaction. Yeah, it's really nice.
You use the word
Itch before. Yeah.
So many of my questions for you guys are metaphorical for other people building, creating stuff. We both are passionate about people that build companies. We'll talk about that plenty today, too.
That this getting in touch with the itch.
is actually a non trivial part.
Of making anything great.
And I would love to hear from both of you how you originally found yours.
as a source of inspiration for people that want to find their itch. I think most people don't even ever know what the itch is.
Where did it come from for both of you?
I didn't grow up wanting to be a musician necessarily. I always had a really close relationship with music, but
It was never like a viable
career path in my mind.
For me
I was always like a very visual
creative type person.
I was obsessed with Nike commercials back in like the nineties and two thousand. I would actually like record them on to like a VHS.
tape because I was so inspired by like the feeling you got after you watched them.
And like visually the storytelling and obviously the personas that they had involved was super cool. I was a huge MBA fan as a kid, I think most kids are.
And I started painting a lot when I was younger, and I think it was like trying to like
Find of language.
What is that language that I can speak that conveys these feelings that I get from
watching these Nike commercials as you get older, my dad was an art dealer.
And he was fairly successful with it before he passed away.
And I think that when he passed away like changed a lot of how I like thought about the world and like what my
opportunity was going to be within it. And I kind of like
you on some level was an out hustle, out work mentality of things.
I wouldn't say
Growing up, I looked at the world
Like I wanna be a musician or I wanna be a businessman. I w only knew about the art world because that's my dad was in it. And so it kinda felt like that, probably like growing up on a farm where you're just like, I'm gonna be a farmer. It's what I know. And you go out into the world and experience different things and different opportunities. And I think the
Itch for me is about where your like passions lie. What do you
Actually like spending
your time doing and what do you find yourself being drawn to.
I think New York going to school here was the perfect place for someone like with my ADHD because you're getting pulled.
into so many different directions of events and
Experiences
The art world
But you also have to like survive here.
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere sort of mentality.
And I always found that piece super inspiring, but
I don't know, it's a tough thing because like the itch to me is I'd say like it was something that was far away.
in the distance that I could like see, but didn't actually
have the ability to do anything. And then when we finally started obviously
really building the chain smokers and things started to work, it was like oh my God, this is the feeling
That I've been like seek out this whole time, and I've just been applying maximum pressure, grasping at different opportunities. So I think that's why you meet these young founders not necessarily being like, I've always wanted to build this product.
is great mentality, of course.
Someone that's like worldly, I think offers
just a more interesting perspective to me about like how they go about being successful in whatever it is they're passionate about because
It's not just
a straight line anymore. I think there's so many things that
shape that great founder or shape a great company. I think it's more important to have that
Paranoia.
deep within you that forces you to like
Live in
Fear your whole life.
Or something.
that like allows you to be successful. So it's tough for me because the itch
It was just like our survival.
thing or like proving people wrong.
More than
Oh, I just wanna do things'cause I stopped painting when I was like fifteen or something.
Wasn't like a sad day for me. I'm moving on.
Yeah, I'm out of paint. Like
I just don't really wanna do this anymore. It's more of a mentality thing of how you like search.
Well it was a feeling. You were chasing there was some vector there that you could totally. It was a feeling of that. I felt like I was being chased also by people's expectation of what they thought
how things were gonna end up. Growing up in New York too you like have a lot of people
Grow on to be
super successful much faster. Sometimes you're like, Oh my God.
Half my friends have jobs at great
Banks now and I'm like a nightlife promoter. Sucked.
Also, like in high school, I mean I wasn't like a loser in high school, but I definitely wasn't like the super popular kid. Yeah. No offense to any of my friends listening. But some of y'all peaked in ninth grade. And I'm just glad that wasn't it.
Yeah.
To tweet the question slightly because I want to hear the itch answer for you too.
I'm curious how the notion of happiness versus dissatisfaction versus paranoia figures into your answer. I'm trying to figure that out with my therapist now.
I grew up in Maine.
And I later in life now am very thankful to have grown up in Maine. You know, I grew up in a small pretty liberal society that everyone kinda did everything. Everyone was small town, everyone was in theater, everyone that also played varsity sports.
was super studious and all that stuff. So it was really like great community to grow up in, but
I felt super trapped. There was something inside me from a young age that was like there's so much more going on in the world. My mom is
super curious person I think I inherited a lot that from her
genetically and through her parenting.
My mom is just a great explorer and still to this day like loves
learning and seeing more things and I always wanted that and
There wasn't a lot of opportunity to leave Maine as I was a kid and I think music was the thing that illuminated
everything for me. It was super passionate about playing music from a really young age. And then as soon as I kind of developed my own musical stage, I was very obsessed with
What I hadn't heard before.
And I think that's what eventually brought me to dance music is because
I had this
Transformative experience.
When I was sixteen and I
did a exchange program in Argentina and I heard
The beginning of David Getta and like Daft Punk for the first time, and this artist Trenton Mauler, who I fell in love with, and I heard these sounds that were just I had never seen colors like that. That in a nutshell is like my pursuit of
the itch that I'm always trying to scratch. I'm trying to hear
something new and it's quite torturous to be honest because
Once you've done something, yeah, okay. That's happened. And how do you
Innovate. It's like innovators dilemma. Like how do I continue to create something that
my fans really feel connected to and that I feel connected to and like really respects the
core identity that is me and the music and this thing that I've built.
That's also innovative, that feels like
is still me and it gets me excited to go up and play new songs and my fans feel like it's fresh and I think
It's pretty like
Torturous pursuit.
That drives me crazy a lot of time. We have
I won't name names, but there are some artists
in our genre and other genres that have just seemed to make the same
Song.
Again and again and again
For a while we were kinda like all right, we don't need to hear
this person's new song because heard it already. Yeah, heard it already.
But when we look at what that looks like over
ten to fifteen years and you're like oh my God, they're the only person that does that sound.
And all these fans are just amassing and telling their friends and all this thing like
You look at someone like the Grateful Dead.
And you look like what's that become? Like they're maybe the best people at making fans over time.
incredible musicians, but they've created this experience that's replicable that people can tell that people can rely on and tell their friends about and
has great ethos and
I think that's really interesting to think about as we're like what does the rest of chain smokers look like for us?
How do you think about like a tech idea like product market fit?
Форю
Going forward, like obviously you've had it in the past just measured by streams or popularity or something. But if you think about it prospectively,
And you were to like redefine what success would mean.
How much
Is it
For the audience versus for yourselves. It's such an interesting question.
A lot of
Artists are probably struggled the discussion, us included. I'm trying to figure that out all of the time.
Part of me wants to just get out of my own way and just be like, fuck it. Like I just have to make stuff.
There have been a couple records.
We made this record called Don't Lie.
That
our fans didn't connect to and didn't connect commercially.
Came out just what, six months ago. And when I hear that song
I'm like fuck yeah, I did the goddamn thing on that from like a writing production as like a pop.
kid, I'm like Kim Petrous, awesome artist, sounds amazing on it.
The whole vibe of the record, I just hear it and I'm very proud of it. But there's something about it that just didn't connect. Was it the marketing? Was it just like that song from us? Was it that song in general?
Maybe that didn't have the essence of Alex and I in it enough.
maybe it didn't feel like we meant it enough.
For some reason our fans didn't connect to that song.
That other piece of the puzzle is what we're trying to figure out now. It's like
How do we show people we really care about this music?
without looking like some Gen Z on TikTok.
Doing stupid videos that we've got.
work for some people, but it isn't us.
A lot of it comes down to language.
how you present yourself. And I think the same thing for like companies and product market fit. What is the story you're telling? Why should people care? How are you sharing it with the world?
And if you don't care about it, then why?
Why would anyone else?
Intentionality matters more than ever.
Your fans wanna know that like you love this thing that you created.
In a world of slopped.
How do you show them that?

Is it just the quality of the work? I don't know.
I'm really confused about this part, especially in this day and age, where
I see artists that aren't us that have a different vibe or are from a different generation do it so effortlessly.
I think presenting
Stuff as art is always
Super important.
One of my favorite bands is this band called Turnstyle. They're a hardcore band from Baltimore.
It just reminds me of so much stuff that I grew up on.
But feels fresh and repackaged and like the videos are amazing and the rollout and there's so much
Intentionality behind it.
I'm realising.
a lot of the projects that I'm really gravitating to are
encapsulating all of that stuff.
I don't know that we've ever intentionally gone after that. We've just kind of been like
We're making tunes, we're gonna do all the shows we can, and like that inherently became us.
It's really interesting thing.
About you guys to me
is not just work ethic. Your work ethic, we could talk about that. It's obviously prodigious. It's incredible the amount of stuff that you guys do.
But it's this combination of the work ethic as a means to build relationships with more people.
It seems like everyone I know has some experience of you guys. They've met you somehow, like somehow you've met everyone, you
in a nice interaction with them. Like
There's a high degree of accessibility.
That seems to come with the work ethic.
that allows for these relationships. How do you think about work ethic plus relationships as like a
key part of what defines you guys.
First of all, you have to want
to do that. We loved to throw parties.
And we love to choose the music.
And we love to curate the vibe.
That was why we became DJs pretty
down the middle. That was always really inherently us. I mean, we love making music. We love
starting businesses, we love helping other businesses.
the first thing that we kind of
after was capitalizing on this desire to create a fun ass time for people.
And I think that
is what we've continued to do at all levels, and we're hyper curious.
And it's I think very gratifying for us to be able to pull people into
Our world.
Person, it makes me really happy when you
can include someone that's not typically included in a lot of their either social dynamic or work setting or whatever.
when they come to our show or to hang out with us backstage, if you can make
thirty to ninety seconds and really like listen to someone and looking them in the eye and offer them a drink in your environment or
Anything there. I mean, that's the little like bits of magic that you get to pass around and hopeful they keep passing on to somebody else and
I think that's
Kind of it.
soul of what we do.
Do that for thirteen years. It feels like you've met everybody or
people feel like they've had a great connection with you or with each other at your thing.
That's a nice I like I think we like being those guys.
I was like I said earlier, not most popular kin in high school, but not the worst either. Not the worst. But I think that's like my whole attitude was like I was just friends with everybody.
nice person varsity basketball team I'd hung out with to like the art kids later and it's
ironically was school president. And I never thought that was never like a goal.
Everyone likes you. Yeah, like you should obviously do this. Like everyone would totally vote you're friends with everybody.
And I feel like that was like such an interesting experience.
In life there wasn't like
we don't talk to the that person'cause they're like this,'cause it's like I always felt plenty of times I wasn't
cool or whatever. And it meant so much to me when someone like came out of their way to like make you feel
acknowledged or comfortable in something.
And I felt like if you could continue to
challenge myself to like be that person in all sorts of different scenarios.
And it wasn't like with this long term goal that's like Billy Madison when he's like
calls Steve Buscemi and he apologizes and then Steve Buscemi saves him later No and he's like, Thank God I called that guy. It's not like that sort of thinking where you're like, one day this guy's gonna put money in my fund. It's more like it doesn't matter if you're the CEO or
an S VR like a huge company or whatever. It's like just come
and be a part of world and like if you bring great energy like that's
super interesting and exciting to me. And I think we feed off of that experience that we give people like Drew said. And
We play Vegas hundreds and hundreds of times, and
People are like, How are you still doing this? And it's like,'Cause every weekend
There's like a new group of people coming experiencing this for the first time.
And they're so excited. And you sometimes forget how lucky you are to be in that position.
And also like the kindness that people showed us in the past from like radio stations that supported us early on when they didn't need to or
Life is so long.
And I think if you take a second to listen, I've read this
Interest I think Chuang fan.
I'm hoping pronouncing his name right, posted this interesting blog post from this wedding photographer who's been like shooting weddings for thirty years or something.
There was like twenty one insights that she's noticed about
bride and grooms and different people that attend weddings and the personalities that they have.
Some of them felt a bit over the top, but like a lot of them were like, that's a super interesting observation. And I think if you like study people and study relationships.
That's kind of all it is. We're all just
interacting with each other. That's fundamentally what business is. It's fundamentally what relationships are.
And so if you can like
put yourself in a position where
People
Enjoy being around you and
Feels
scene when you're with them. I think that's amazing. And it's something we definitely struggle with as you get busier too.
I'm taking calls in like August right now.
And it kills my soul.
To be like
I would love to speak to you.
In September.
It's just getting older and shit.
If I think about Chainsmokers Inc., like the enterprise around the
Art.
What does it look like and
How has it evolved?
And this is maybe like a good bridge question into talking about investing and businesses and stuff.
But if you just think about your business first and foremost.
How much are you thinking about it? How much is it
Intentional
looking a certain way versus just more of a like a residual thing that has evolved alongside your music.
It's evolving as we're trying to simplify it as much as possible.
I mean that in the ways of like just really looking at how we spend our time, how we enjoy spending our time.
what we're getting the most out of and stripping away everything else. I think when our career was on the rise for the first time, I mean, we were so curious and we wanted to do for all the reasons we told you about us in our past, whatever.
Wanted to try all these different things, said he has to way too much.
And I think that through doing that we've found the things that resonate.
with our core making the music that we make is still the number one. Our last two things will be venture and music.
And we genuinely are in love with both of those things.
And I think
Sometimes I regret having a situation where we have both, but if I had to pick one, I don't know which one I would pick.
And
I think just trying to build processes through both of them, both of those businesses, that like we can do them in I don't want to say effortless ways, but
The ones that are most synced to who we inherently are.
everything we said about intentionality and creating art that's really you.
How do we open that process up so we can do that the easiest?
What's that we're striving to evolve now?
when we raise money for our funds to get asked that question a lot and
I always say that Chainberg is the sun in our solar system because it's like everything
circles around that and if it's a s really strong sun.
It shines more light and creates more.
abundance and opportunity across
Mantis and whatever with Kill Company and other things.
Whereas like I don't know if a m strong mantis
Saves our music career. You know what I mean? But maybe Yeah. But what separated us, uh differentiated us early on in kind of to Drew's point is what we're trying to
turn back the hands of time now is that like we did run change that works like a business.
As much as we obviously care so deeply about the music and the creative aspect of it, but it was also like
This is a really unique
opportunity that we want to
make sure we're taking full advantage of and whether that was doing too many things, playing too many shows or whatever, really control the business. I mean either is not a credit card statement.
that I have not gone through line by line, still to this day, week by week. There's not a production budget that I haven't
seen for a single show, the way that we
organized our team. It set us up for success in a lot of ways. I mean, COVID for some artists was pretty devastating, whereas for us, we were like, let's raise a fund.
Yeah, yeah, great.
And so
I think the problem with that, though, was that we became the CEOs of chain smokers.
And I think this relates to like probably a lot of successful founders' journeys.
I was talking to the founder of a company who's
crushing it right now.
He was like, all I do is
H R
He's like, I don't build shit anymore. All I do is hire people, and it fucking sucks. And I was like
kind of know what you're going through.
We're on so many calls about
Internal politics.
I think we're actually making really
solid strides to fix that.
To go back to being chain smokers instead of the CEOs of the chain smokers.
There's so many parallels between investing
and working with these companies and our own business. And it's really fun to have our own business.
'Cause it's so easy to be the therapist for somebody else and
have an x-ray into like what they could be doing better, how to get out of their own way. And then when it's you, it's like
This is how I was always on it. I came on this, you have all the shit in the way. And so it's been a great mirror investing in these other businesses and then kind of looking at our own and being like, How are we?
hitting these roadblocks or bottlenecks in our own situation, but that key one being like
Be the founder, the CTO, or whatever you're like best at. Like you don't have to be the CEO of your business.
Hire someone that's great at that, that's gonna deal with that. If you're the best product person, you're the best visionary at the company, don't be the CEO.
Can you tell the Mantis origin story? So what was the first conversation you had about it? What were you trying to do with it? Why did you do it in the first place?
Before Mantis.
Creating a venture tech fund.
We've done a plethora of businesses. We're very avid investors, both privately and publicly.
The tech world in just public markets, in real estate, and I think
at the time of our rise to I guess cultural zeitgeist time, which was probably two thousand sixteen to two thousand fifteen to probably two thousand eighteen.
We met a lot of the class of founders that was Drew Houston from Dropbox, Brian Cheske D Bri Airbnb.
Michael Sibel, who was at Y C at the time.
And
These guys were like really
Amazing and opened our eyes to what private tech investing looks like.
We didn't really know what venture capital was at the time.
And we saw
through their eyes. Like a lot of them are simple as like
You guys could invest in like all of these brands based on like who you are. People want cool people on the calf table. And started with something as simple as that idea.
And then as we got to
Befriend these people.
And get an insight into how they ran their businesses, we realize
We kinda had more in common with them than we did with most
Other musicians.
We wrote hacked our first promotional platform, crowdsourced our first tour. We've always been doing the most to kind of try and get our music out there.
And when we work with a lot of other artists, we found
The majority of them were like pretty disorganized.
And we're just in pursuit in a different way than we were.
And I think there was some kind of sense of familiarity and comfort and
like mindedness that we found with tech founders that pulled us deeper into the space.
So we did a bunch of private investing.
Just yourselves.
ourselves deal by deal, whatever, conceptualized the idea to start the fund and then like Alex said, when
Covid happened.
We were kind of putting it together in two thousand nineteen before Covid happened.
But I don't know what would have happened if COVID didn't happen because we were also
prioritizing writing an album.
at that time and all of a sudden we had time to
Raise a fund on Zoom and write an album in the studio.
naturally entertainer athletes have these platforms that
people are drawn to for different reasons and I think
When it relates to investing, you're seeing a lot of CPG social
creator economy type stuff. And initially for us that was like cool. I remember my
Business manager Josh was like, basically you invest and you just hopefully make a bunch of passive income. Oh how sick is that? You know?
He also prefaces like you probably will lose your money. But like you could Which we did a lot of times.
We were really drawn to that entrepreneurial spirit. We're go getters. We work twenty-four seven. There's something that we could do now, we're gonna do it now. Not
Five days from now.
as we began to connect with these founders and I remember getting your first quarterly updates.
I remember responding to one and I was like, I could help you with that.
And they were like, nobody responds to these. And I was like, what? And then it was like these little ways that we were able to like make a real difference in these companies.
And then to Drew's point, the people like Brian Chesky and Steve Huffman and the Conn brothers were like
Why are you investing in fucking water companies? Well water companies doing quite well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a few good ones.
And we've made some good decisions, but there's a whole world of opportunity investing out there into like really exciting companies. And I remember like doing the Uber series.
F
Thought I was like in early.
I think I've made like
six thousand dollars on this investment.
But at the time, like I was like, this is the coolest company ever. Like it's actually changed my life and my friends' lives. I want to find more stuff like this versus.
Another beverage company or something like that.
We were very lucky with Poppy and Poppy to its credit.
reinvented what the soda category looked like and will probably look like in the future.
That was a really nice blend of
technology and forward thinking.
A messaging.
And then as it relates to marketing and distribution.
Whereas I think a lot of like CPG is just distribution and kind of marketing.
tech investing, you just get a front seat view of the future. It's the most stimulating show you could watch.
I it favors the optimistic, which
We're artists.
Like to dream about
Things that don't exist yet and building a world and I think we didn't know it would be a lot of cybersecurity platforms, but now we gotta secure all those things.
kind of reminds me of being in like a assembly in middle school, high school, where like every now and again they would bring in like a professional.
they would speak about their career to the audience for like an hour and you'd be like
That guy actually did this shit. This is really interesting and exciting to me to learn from versus like the events like a teacher that's just like, here's my perspective on.
something that happened or a career.
In venture, you get to sit down for half an hour, an hour, hopefully many, many times with like a founder that's like, I've studied this space, I've lived and breathed this business, and I'm gonna tell you everything about it right now.
For someone like me, that's the coolest thing to spend.
five or six hours a day learning from an
Experience in a
technologically exciting area.
Obviously the evolution of Mantis has like changed. I don't want to say changed dramatically, just evolved a lot. I mean, I remember like on our first partner call, they were like, So how much are we gonna raise? And someone was like, A hundred million? And I was like, Is that a lot?
Kinda feels like a lot. Turned out to be a lot.
I just want to start and I think a big part of anything is just start.
doing it. That to me is probably one of the things that sets
us apart and makes our partnership so unique is that we push each other into these
Areas that you're like
Maybe on your own you'd be like
I don't know where to begin, so I'm not gonna begin. You know, and that's the cold star problem obviously is the hardest
part of any process, but I think with us we're very comfortable putting ourselves in those uncomfortable situations.
But also because of how we interact with people and the relationships we've had w
We're just listeners, you know, and we spent
The better part of those three years.
Doing
10 hours of calls a day with any investor or founder that would speak to us and just asking questions and like learning.
through their experiences, mistakes they made or the things we should think about, and a lot of it began to contradict each other by the end of it, but there were definitely some patterns and things there. And
I think
Through those conversations we were like, Wait a minute.
This does feel like an extension of
What being a good investor ms.
Is an extension of what made us good in chain smokers.
And it gave me a lot of confidence that we were right to get into this space. But I think
fighting the preconceived conceptions and rightfully so a lot of them about
being a celebrity investors and I've told this before, but it's like
On fund announced day.
It wasn't a positive vibe, but you know, like people weren't like, finally
Chain smokers are it was the opposite. People were not stoked about it at all. To me, we saw that as
As much as it was like a hill we were gonna have to climb, the bar was clearly low. So I was like, maybe we don't have to do that much to be that much better.
But it was also like a market opportunity. It was like, Wait a minute.
People think
We're gonna be fucking useless. And that this is based on a lot of other people that have come before us and their experience with them.
We do this right.
It's a lot of white space for us to be unique and different.
That's the kind of product market fit that we found in our music early on.
And then I think that's a good thing.
gave us the confidence to start Mantis and take it really seriously.
What are the things that most map over from what has worked for building chain smokers into
What you're feeling early on is working as investors.
Being comfortable losing.
Is weird one.
No one wants to lose, but I think
It's a power law game.
You build a career off of a couple of huge songs, hopefully. And then there's lots of hopefully other lots of great music, but
Only very few artists like a Drake.
We'll just constantly deliver.
Smash.
songs for ten, fifteen years.
Or Bruno Mars probably the most notable one from a
Percentage basis.
You have to learn from each song and iterate and grow and be comfortable with that. And it's like
venture is very much the same thing. You're gonna hopefully back a couple of extraordinary companies, but most of your companies
won't go on to be super successful.
And you can't
think you're a terrible investor.
Each of those opportunities.
Pave the way for hopefully more future success comms.
I've been thinking a lot recently about how
The relationship between an artist and a record label is
basically the same as a founder and their
Investor.
And I think about
how we are now in the other seat and we are now on the label side.
Investing in these companies, I think how
I think about we've been really fortunate to work with we've been at Columbia disruptor for nine years.
And they've done an incredible job for us. But you see all the ailments of people like having a bad relationship with their label.
And I think a lot of times we try to think about how to okay, cool. Now we're on the label side. We are an investor. What can we do?
to support these founders and that's become a brand for our fun is like
We wanna be the utility player.
'Cause every company's different, every founder's different, everyone's needs are different.
How can we help you? And I think that's the same for every single artist with their label where
It's a lot of art labels that want to be helpful, but they just don't know how.
And all you can really do when you're in that position is get in the game.
And be like, what can I do? Be straight up. This is my area expertise.
I don't know that person, but I know a guy who does I'm gonna try to make an email intro for you like
We don't hire that type of employee, but I'm gonna hit up these three recruiters just putting in the effort and showing these people that you support them and talk's appointment.
Things that felt like tasks that we saw our founders need from us that felt so far out of our grasp.
were actually much more attainable.
You realize.
There was a level of high touch responsiveness that
Uh
primarily Alex. I mean, we don't have to go into the history of how we build the chainsawers and how instrumental Alex's thoroughness in being in touch with people has been
to our success, but just being the partner that like we see every artist wishing they had.
Add a label.
I have a collaboration question. I told each of my kids this morning on the drive to school that they come up with one question for you guys.
My daughter's question was about the song Jungle.
With Alock, which is her favorite, I guess.
She wanted to know how one of those works, which in this world is so common. Like you see multiple, yeah.
DJs, collaboration, et cetera.
Literally how
two people independently can do the thing.
come together to work on
A shared thing.
I mean, it's always different and we've done tons of collabs. We've worked with tons of writers, tons of producers. We're kinda always collaborating with people and it's always
your job is to get into the room with this person that hopefully you have mutual respect for each other's music.
You see some kind of vision that
Your sounds could work together.
Or you have some great idea around what the song could be together, whatever.
There's some basis for you guys doing a session together, hopefully.
Your job as like a great songwriter, producer, or just artist is like
How do we get on the same page as quickly as possible?
Which is kind of a fascinating thing about songwriting.
That
Is like a you know g get in the room someone and sometimes I try to preempt this, like I try to figure out
where this person is at before we get together. I think Alex and I just being the type of people we are like
We don't have a lot of time and we want to make the most out of every session.
having three
beat starts of an idea, which could just be like a small piece of music.
chords that feel a certain type of way.
Or a vocal, that's really great of the drop or the dance part's like not great. And maybe that would be great if that person came and did the draw.
And this goes both ways. Typically we're pretty specific about the lyrics.
We like to write them and
Jungle actually is one of the
only songs recently that we did not write.
I don't think I wrote anything on that top line of that song.
That's maybe like
Five percent of chain smoker songs.
But Alak brought that song to us and we like
Let's make this like a big sounding donk one forty BPM.
record which also doesn't sound is an R core sound.
It's like an opportunity for us to go and make something that
Doesn't fit in.
The typical chain smokers bucket, so
Feel like we got that top line was fairly stripped back.
From him and we were like
This is cool, because you don't write.
You listen to it and you're like
I like it.
But the fact that we didn't write it kind of adds this level of friction.
But you gotta put it.

'Cause like music is very subjective in terms of how you're feeling in that moment. That day are you frustrated, are you in a rush?
And I think we like played it a couple of times for like different friends of ours, and everyone was like, This is set.
And you're like, I know.
And you're kinda like.
And we love him, and obviously he's massive artist, especially in Brazil, which is like a really important
Mark to us. And like you look at these things being like, well, this is a guy we get along great with, has a tremendous fan base. This will be fun. Yeah. Like what is there to lose here, really? Like we do like this top line if we can produce it in a way that feels
interesting and it connects back to us. I think that's where in the past than the few times we've done it.
People are like, I love this song and you're like
What does it mean to you? And you're like
You know how sometimes sucks when you're like
It doesn't mean any You know what I mean? Like we didn't write this.
And that's why I think we're really not
drawn to that type of thing because we really want to be able to tell people why this song's important has meaning and purpose. And it does have meaning and purpose to someone.
But yeah, it was like a fun one to make and then getting to
finally get to play it. I think we played it at Il Sunnique for the first time.
And he has like a whole vibe.
I'm sure if you've seen him online, like he's
Looks like he's living in two thousand eighty stylistically, and he's done some incredibly big shows. I think he's like one of those other than Anita, like the most
Yeah, he's huge. All right, you know Brazil and I just went to carnival with him.
Blasting by yeah.
It's crazy. You play for two million people on a bus that drives through the street.
For five hours.
That's what like is exciting about collaboration, I think, in general, is a taste of other parts of the world. How other people approach their art.
Even the team from a promotional standpoint, like how are you selling this record, or what tricks do you have up your sleeves, or who are the directors that you like to work with for music videos?
It's exciting, like Zurb, the song addicted.
That was
His second big song.
And
You felt like you were a small chapter and will probably be a really long successful career for him, but it was like we're
A big feature of that the same way that Coldplay is for us or Halsey is for us and we are for them.
And I think that's a really interesting way to build a career and
Also give you fresh perspective about how you're approaching
Your process and your music.
Similarly.
You sit down and you're like, Man, everything must be great for you. And it's like you sit down with an artist like, dude, I'm stressed the fuck out. Like I'm upset about this, and you're like,
Well it looks amazing. Yeah. Oh, so we're all kind of happy really or stressed about stuff. And it's nice to see that.
I think that's probably why founders I feel like in venture there's that trope or I motif that's just like founders love founders and most venture capitalists or they love venture capitalists that were founders of some sort'cause you understand
the process and struggle a bit more.
than someone who hasn't gone through that journey.
On that specific point, you mentioned what it takes to win early on and growth hacking your way on the promo thing or
The early
things that drove some of the initial success. What were those things? And I'm sure this is something you're looking for.
In people and in companies the ability to scrap their way from
Nothing to something and then build on that.
What were those things that you're referring to a couple of times?
I think we're just really scrappy.
I quit my day job, he moved down from Maine and
lived on his ex girlfriend's couch.
Which is probably really uncomfortable.
We're just like, This is it.
We have to put all of our eggs in this basket and that will
hopefully push us to work that extra few hours every day and stuff like that. Yeah, there's definitely something to that. Like I was like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt.
You had a
Yeah, we can do our job. Yeah.
My boss was like You're what? He was like You can come back.
Yeah, when this doesn't work out, you know it's probably appreciated.
but didn't want to go back. But I think that was a big part of it. I think for us we spent a lot of time trying different things. I think that iterative process, but also being like really honest about it.
I remember making some
song that sounded very much like an Avichi
Tonally song and and uh and we were like, This is fire. But then we're like
Is it though?'Cause it's just
But not
A VC.
The beginning of our
career, we were like trying to emulate people like that. Zed and Avici and Scrillex and Calvin Harris and David Getta and
Swedish house magic, there's so much exciting things happening in dance music.
I was a novice producer.
You were just getting into it. We DJ gigs around the city.
And we grew up on indie music. And so we would go on this website called Pype Machine. I don't know if you ever were aware of it. It's like the first viral chart of the internet.
And it was all music that wasn't being officially released. There was tons of dance remixes.
Remixes in general were like a new concept.
So we go on high machine and we would
Look at the top fifty tracks.
And they were all tracks that we love. They w didn't have a presence in dance music. A lot of the DJs we just
mentioned we're remixing
Rihanna, Lady Gaga, whatever was on the pop radio at that time.
And we're like, Well we love
indie music and we grew up on Indy music and hardcore music and all the stuff that doesn't really have a presence in the dance world.
These songs are already trending.
Alex would go into basically find contact information for every artist that was on this chart.
And send them a hilarious personalized email. We would get a response. And in the beginning, we were just taking what we could get. No one really to respond to us.
Give me the stems, I would do this remix.
And then he would go into the back end of Hype Machine. He would find every writer that wrote for every blog that Hype Machine scraped music from.
And he would send them a hilarious personalized email. And what we realized is
All of these kids
We
Just college kids that wanted to be closer to music and hear
They're getting these blanket press releases that are just generic. No one reads them, whatever, coming from a label, not even like attached to a personal email.
Versus Alex being the guy who made the song.
sending you the song. It's a song that you're already posting about, so it's relevant.
It's a dance remix, which is the most trendy new sound of the time.
So he gave people a lot of reason to and then he wrote this really fucking funny email that everyone related to and within
three emails they felt like they had a personal connection with us, which they did.
And I think within the first year of our career we went from zero to
thirty number ones on hype machine.
That took us out of
DJing at Pink Elephant and all great times, Two thousand twelve club scene in New York, but we're doing colleges here and there, and that kinda was our first step. And
Eventually that process of building up distribution channel with all of these blogs.
transfer it into then we started putting out original music and we had to do it with radio.
You do a show and
San Francisco. Okay, we got a drive to San Jose that morning and
any DJ that wants to talk to you from every station, you'd go and like form a relationship with them and then
You go to Oakland and you do that there and then you go to San Francisco and do San Francisco at night and then you go do your shows and the next day you fly to
Chicago and you do the same
type of thing.
And you get a couple extra spins for those things and you got everyone kinda like rooting for you.
I think that's the kind of grit that we wanna see.
with our founders is like do you have the tenacity to on it?
How bad do you want this?
Sometimes like this stuff.
People think you just put a s hit song out and it becomes a hit, but you know, I think all the things we talked to you about today.
Are all those little pieces that
you don't see people doing or once it's successful and you try to like trace back to how it started, you're like
Oh, well they just put it out and uh the whole thing worked. And it's like no, you can't look at this shit retroactively.
There's a grind story behind everybody.
People grind to product market fit. Like sometimes they just stumble on it and they make it and it goes and it works forever, but usually like
I'm sure if you talk to any like long lasting successful CEO or founder.
There's been moments they're like, fuck.
my strategy is not working anymore and I have to go back to like eating shit.
Making phone calls.
begging people with finessing relationships to like get myself through the next turtle.
It seems to me like so much of the ability to do that grind.
requires that you love some core element of the thing you're doing. I mean you've talked about it with music all day today.
If a song doesn't work, it's fine. You still love making music, you're gonna make another one.
How much does that matter to you when you're talking to a founder, like
maybe the broader way of asking the question is what are the things in the first conversation with the founder that are non negotiables for you that you like have to see to be interesting. I mean I feel like I mean Alex Border Breadpoint said this to me in like a really simple way, which is just
Invest in people that are going to do this idea no matter what.
Even if it fails.
They're gonna start it again from a different angle.
I think then the question becomes, is this a step function better or is this
Something that can
potentially reshape the way that an economy or business or software or platform or service is used.
Union Square Ventures does a really good job of how they think about investing at the edge.
of ideas and then those ideas hopefully become more central.
And then the TAM question answers,'cause if you figure that out, it's gonna be
Humongous.
that obsession is really important to us. And even like going back to the anecdotes just now, like
We weren't just like dance music's big. We were like obsessed with dance music. I mean, I was downloading
off blogs before we even were into produce with Drew.
hundreds of songs a day that I would just like put in a folder because I just loved
discovering new music and I also threw parties.
everywhere here in New York City for like six, seven, eight years.
So I also understood
how to fill a room. I understood as a club owner, you don't give a shit about
What the DJ's playing, you just want your club to be filled making money.
So we understood the business side of how to be successful as the chain smokers within a venue.
And what was important to them.
And so we like really had all of these pieces understanding the same way that sometimes advantageous to invest in a founder.
a ha is a specialist from that field.
Hey, I was working at Salesforce.
This is a problem that I always had, and now I'm starting that company.
And I think it's a problem that a lot of other people have. And I've experienced it firsthand and I know the solution that I need to build.
I think that really resonates with me versus the opportunistic eyes hot right now.
I'm just gonna build an AI company or something like that. And I think you might have short term success, but
As anyone who's been successful tells you, it's a very long road of getting kicked in the nuts.
a lot and you kind of have to just love it so much that
you almost enjoy the misery of those moments and know that it's just part of the process ultimately.
going through this with a company of ours right now that's doing a really terrific job. They just signed their first big enterprise customer. They've spent
The last four months.
building out integration and I really like admire how this is a guy that would one hundred percent
he's going to bring BYOs bring your own cloud to like the forefront.
This is his life's mission.
I think he's built like a really compelling platform. He's a really compelling enterprise customer, but he's spent every his team up been like, what do you need? What is not working? How do we make this perfect?
We really want to learn.
through this experience with you as our first enterprise user.
How to make this
successful versus being like
Who else wants this?
And he's really being intentional, the same with us, where it wasn't let's just keep doing a million remixes. We would listen to these songs and be like,
This meet the requirements of what we
Love and think is a great indie song that
Should get remixed.
'Cause it wasn't like always this is the number one. Sometimes it was the fifteenth song, but we were like
This song is sick.
and we need him remix this song and I think
that intentionality is super important.
You really want to find someone that like has that experience is knows exactly what they need to solve for, but you really have to be careful to make sure that like that person, like what did they do before they worked at this company?
Where do they come from? Do they have a self started mentality? What have they done? Do they just go and work here for a long time? A while? What did you do before this that makes me believe that you're gonna be able to like
Fuck shit up when it gets hard.
Keep rethinking things, keep having the tenacity that gets you through the hurdles that we see.
What is most different between
how you're investing today versus when you started Mantis. What's evolved the most and
Your style, your preferences, the process, the team.
on the practice of investing, like from ownership and stage.
the discipline that goes into like making the the sense.
Make dollars.
I think that's a really important
Peace that comes with experience the same way that you've had been lucky to have conversations with Peter Fenton and Bill Gurley and Alfred Lynn and prolific investors and
There were certain commonalities that were just like, you're going to think this.
It's not the truth, but you're gonna do it anyways, and then you'll be where I am right now. Yeah. So true, yeah. And they're totally right.
Yeah, if we're lucky.
The funny thing is
If anything, I feel like I've reverted back to
where I think we're the strongest investor.
Our goal at Mantis is to be the sixth man on every championship team.
I want to work with
the best investors who are investing in the best founders, and I want to absorb
the things that both those parties are doing to like understand how to make better decisions and build a better firm.
And that doesn't mean we're
Not contrarian thinkers, and we're certainly not followers.
But information is so readily available everywhere right now.
You do
C, the best company is generally gravitating towards
a specific group of investors that have been winning for a long time now. Or identifying the new ones. Yeah, or specific individuals within those funds, more so than the brands of the fund itself.
And for us, you kinda just know when there's really interesting, exciting founder.
There's like an hysteria.
around them in a lot of ways.
I think there's that.
part of investing which
I find myself reverting back to I think some people might call like a signal investor, but at the same time, I think it's just this pattern.
Or it's like the space.
The founder, the team, the investors.
But
perspective of where they came from before and the problem they're solving now. And you're just like, I don't know if they're gonna be successful, but this has
all of the ingredients of a company we should be investing into.
And then there's the founders where you're like
I'm going out in the woods on my own a little bit here.
I don't think this idea is so radically
weird that no one else is gonna be interested in this, but
There's gonna be a lot.
more alchemy.
than science initially.
And those ones are kind of like the company I just brought up new on before.
Where I think is really exciting as an investor, we're testing a hypothesis right now about where we think the future is going. And
This guy has the right pedigree. We have some
solid people around the t top table with us.
But
The momentum to get this ball moving is gonna be a lot harder than the other company, which is just, hey, if Sokoi invested.
Someone is gonna do that A.
Even if it's just for no reason.
I think that's what
You have to learn through experiences how do you see through all the noise and bullshit.
Of hype.
versus reality versus
Short periods and
We've really seen a lot in the last six years, and it really changed my perspective on.
when you want to throw yourself into something
And when something's not real, in venture, because I think there's so many stages of, oh my God, we got our company marked up to series A. We must be really good.
There's so much further for this company before you see any liquidity or success.
it's interesting how you don't want to get caught up in that.
Part of the puzzle where you're like, Well, I'm creating my IRR looks pretty solid right now. And it's like, what's your DPI? That's really the question you need to be asking yourselves. And
We're all chasing that game of who is our customer? Is it the founders or is it our LPs?
The answer's both, obviously, but
You walk this tight rope where you're
Trying to decide where you think you should be
Putting the most time in.
For us.
When we started we were writing twenty five, fifty K checks into companies. That was all we could get.
And it was about
proving ourselves and building a reputation.
lot of those companies are doing really well. It was like squeezing into a really
Important hot round.
with great investors and great founders. And now that we're looking for bigger allocation, we're still having success, but it's a different conversation now where you can't just be like,
Yeah, we're gonna put it Nice to have ya. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's been really interesting.
And also like we have a team of people now.
that are extraordinary and everyone has their own identity and perspective on how they want to invest and evaluate things. And
I feel like my job has always been to try to wheel them in, like how we're trying to treat the transmokers now.
Dumbing it down.
more simple than confusing because it's
So hard to get.
wrapped up in the menutia of everything and I've talked myself out of really good deals for that reason.
It reminds me of my son's question.
himself an aspiring music maker.
Great. I thought it was a really interesting question in the car this morning, which was how do they know
what is the next skill that they need to improve.
Oh, that's a really good question. This is definitely your kid. Yeah, exactly. Right. The dead proud. I thought that was so interesting because there's so many I'm sure there's fifteen things you could go get better at at any given point in time.
That's where he is too. He's trying to figure out
He's eleven.
He's trying to figure out what he's good at and what he needs to get better at. And so that's what he wants.
Well, you can tell them I'm gonna be thinking about that for the rest of the week.
Right now I'm trying to think about
Back to the question of dumbing things down. It's like
We always feel like we're learning new stuff and
There's new practices. I mean like making music is a never ending ladder.
My drum teacher told me that when I was like t nine years old, and it's the most true thing I've learned about my musical journey.
And I think now at this point, you know, we don't always learn new things, but we're like with the abundance of things that we have learned.
How do they not get in the way of our success? Because there is something beautiful.
About
a young artist that
has their whole life to make their first album. There's a level of like
There's a little bit naive.
Because of that, they're not overthinking shit.
You know, I'm part of the singing. Like when I make records that sound like this, it feels like me and it makes me feel some type of way.
When I hear it, that should be the visual. This artist is really cool. Maybe they'll do my cover art.
We're just making music at the end. It's like hard soul over mind, or exactly, exactly. And I'm trying to like I think we're both trying to like reconnect with that as much as possible. I mean, that's the innovator's dilemma too, once you've reached this point and you're like
Which way do I go? Do I keep trying to like ride the wave of this thing that's kind of moved past me, but I can hang on to it, or do you just be steadfast in the thing that
is inherently you.
And there's not really a right answer. You've there's a bunch of success
stories for either side, but
Me personally, I'm trying to like not let the lessons that I've learned.
Get in the way. Yeah. Yeah.
It skills are weird. I mean I feel like I was thinking while Drew was talking about that and
Inventure I was Googling
Words like tan.
on my first month of call. I was like, I don't know. I think we can say that now. Acronyms I mean. A big damn's good, right? And I'm just like
Give me any wrong and I feel like I'm constantly asking stupid questions. And honestly, I really
I'm grateful to a lot of the people we've had a chance to get to
work with and interact with because
We've approached
this space with a lot of respect and everyone's I think probably acknowledges that now. There is no dumb questions.
I'm always like explain this to me like a golden retriever.
It's kind of something I say a lot.
as we've gone deeper into space and obviously like engineering is a
huge part of any tech platform and I was like I kinda wanna like
Try to learn how to code a little bit because I want to have at least a semblance of not just respect, but understanding of when I'm discussing these things.
the different processes and stuff. And then now vibe coding and cursor and things like that exist and you're like
Okay, so I don't need to learn coding anymore.
And now it's back to taste, which I feel like I'm pretty good at.
But it's an interesting process. Even in music, I play guitar going up.
didn't carry on very long. And I remember like
few years into our career and I was like, What if I have a kid one day and my kids like, play closer for me
And I'm like
Oh I can't.
That's so lame. So I was like, I'm gonna learn piano. So I took
two hour lessons of piano five days a week, and I still do to this day now.
The purpose was to be like I can't
claim to be musician if I'm not.
I can play our music.
Ridiculous.
So I figure that but in the process of practicing learning it opened up a whole
understanding of how to communicate
My ideas to Drew.
Or whatever as we're discussing music.
And it really like enabled me to be a much more critical, thoughtful.
musician in general
But I totally agree with Drew because the end of the day where there is like an ignorance is bliss.
thing to a lot of this where it's like you can
Talk yourself out of any situation.
part of the investor's role is to be like
How many miracles am I comfortable with?
For me to back this is five miracles too much, or is it
two or one for things to go right. And you have to like look at it through that lens and think imagine that world. And I feel like
I'm probably a little bit more like this in terms of my angel portfolio stuff, where I'm just like
Fuck it, let's do it. We invested in this company Radiant.
And nuclear.
When we were talking to
Them over there on the first call and it was like
But fuck it. Yeah. And we're like, but if they do this and we didn't do it, they'll be really pissed off. And a lot of it's like that sort of stuff.
Even though it sounds really stupid, I mean outside the fun. As Doug has got as good as pedigree and Bob as anyone to like tackle this problem. It was just like the timelines were like, and then in seven years we'll be able to test the first one. And you're like, seven years.
We'll test it.
All right.
Let's do it. You know what I mean? And now they're absolutely crushing it.
obviously like Monday morning quarterbacking it, but it was like funny when you look at those things and you're just like, We could have called
Blake and chat and had deep conversations with our friends that have experience in this space and they all would have probably been like don't fucking do this.
Why what I was saying the other day, like I don't know if
We would have invested in Poppy again.
'Cause we just don't we do stay away from C B G that was like a
Thirty X.
But again, completely like you'll
There is again some level of naivety that we're just you're just like
You gotta have f
Venture favors optimism and
I hope we would have identified that Poppy had two incredible founders, but like maybe not.
Maybe they're just like
Another soda.
I was talking to Alex once about some company in the portfolio.
It wasn't like over Zoom or something, it was live and he started rattling off
the KPIs of the company.
And I was like, wait, you know the companies KPIs? And then he was able to do that for like a bizarre amount of the companies. And I asked him about it. And he said, Yeah, no, I know like all the numbers for all the companies.
Which is surprising. Back to your point about like when you announced the venture fund, everyone's like oh
Jaguars have a venture fund now. Yeah, we're we gotta know all the numbers. Exactly.
But it's an amazing way that you bridge
the two worlds and obviously it's early days. Like you said you probably do both these things forever.
Such an amazing history for me to hear. I've loved doing it.
When I do these I ask the same
traditional closing question of everyone. I get to do it twice today.
What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for each of you?
It's so funny. I first of all obviously know that this is your final question and I
thought about this on my red eye flight here for like
so long I was like nobody's done any kind shit for me. I was like I was like I don't know wanna like single out anyone that significantly
I love how you're gonna you're gonna say this with caveat like I did think about this for ten hours today. True.
People aren't that kind to me. At least in the ways that I've heard other people like think through these things. I mean, obviously I've been extraordinary friends and people in my life, but I guess if I had to like
I was trying to think of like a clever way to answer this because
Funny enough, I think it was an unkind thing.
I this Tomroom.
advisor in sixth grade named Mrs. Park.
I think she liked me, but I think she
also s understood that I was at this really interesting crossroads in my life. My dad had just passed away.
twelve years old, super young, and fashionable age is a young boy.
I had a lot of friends, but I was also not like a banging student by any stretch. And she was just like
very c clearly when she was like this is like
The most important
Moment in your life, and you will like probably not even recognize it till it's too late, either in a positive or good way. But she's like, You are fully at a crossroads right now.
One path will lead you down.
A road of success, well you use this.
experience and pain and everything that comes with it to like motivate you through life in a really positive way.
Or you'll just become a total fuck up.
And everything
will be derailed and you'll go on to accomplish nothing.
And obviously as a six year old, you're like
What?
You're like lady, it's like eight fifteen in the morning. You know, like I'm going through some shit. But it actually did really stick with me in a lot of ways.
From that moment forward as I thought about
The different decisions
I made in my life, whether consequential or consequential, we've had this.

Which path is this
leading me towards and really like motivated me to like
get my shit together and become like a good human and a really good student and
push myself. So ironically, I think it's funny when someone can offer
New advice like that. And I think
maybe too often in today's day and age people are offering advice like this all the time.
People just don't listen.
Anymore?
You kind of like acknowledge it, but you don't really think about fundamentally what it means.
She was probably like in her sixties and this woman's obviously
Advised and
Top whatever home run to
Hundreds and hundreds of kids.
I'm not even probably the first kid she's had this experience with. I'm so grateful that she said that.
Did you feel like when your dad passed away at a young age, like it snapped you awake in some way?
I love my mom. She's still around. She's an amazing woman. And I had a really tough upbring. They fought.
Relentlessly.
insane fights are probably why I painted so much, because I just didn't want to leave my room and interact and get in the mix of all that.
And my dad passed away in the middle of the divorce, so it was like a really dark.
Period. And
to the point of what I just said, and it was like I had a lot of friends that came to my side and supported me then and
More than anything, I think as you get older, you kind of distort memories, and now when I look back on things, I had this completely different perspective.
Now than I did when I was a thirteen year old.
about like who my dad was and how he treated my mom and how she treated him and how my relationship was with him or
Him with my sister after that.
moment it was just kinda like
I have my family, but I'm really on my own to be my own man, and it's a weird experience.
not having grown up at all with anyone to be like, Dad, look at this, or like, Am I doing this right? Or the dad that's like, hey, let me help you out.
with this or do that. And so it's been probably one of the
strangely better thing that's
that has never happened to me, but also I've never seen a functional relationship in my life.
Which is probably why
Still single. What's your answer for the kindest thing?
The one that's coming up for me is
My mom
buying me a drum kit when I was five years old.
You know what it's like to buy a drum kit for a five year old kid?
In a hundred and thirty year old house, farmhouse in Maine.
You're listening to
me trying to learn, listening to just smash drums, which I played all the way until I went to college and my mom would sit in
the kitchen doing grading papers and doing stuff that she had to do for work or
Making dinner, just listening to it and loved it.
watched my whole musical journey and always supported it.
But yeah, crazy move for a parent.
Just tortured herself.
She really loved it.
I've always been fascinated with business and with music.
when I wanted to go to college for business, she
Really
discourage me from
choosing a path that didn't include music in some way. And
It ended up that way, so.
Thanks, Matt.
Well, your guys' story is one of my favorites at this intersection of two of my favorite things, music and business. I'm so excited by the next chapter of what it might become and what it might look like and can't wait to watch. Thanks for doing this with me.
Hell yeah, this is our honor. Thanks for having us, yeah.
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