In the second part of the show, we discuss the merits of Black ownership, opportunities that exist in the tech space, and what the future holds for content creators and online activists.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host,
Ramses job.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
He is Rams's job. I am q Ward. You are
tuned in the Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Indeed you are, and hopefully you are still tuned in,
but if not, let me bring you up to speed.
We are talking to a tech world giant, you know,
names like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk shoot who else, Steve
Jobs and on and on and on. Well, today we
(00:33):
have Isaac Hay's the third who has joined the ranks.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I would certainly say.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Don't forget Toime for MySpace.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oh yeah, Tom too. But Isaaca is the third who
has perhaps the most dynamic and interactive of all the
apps that I've engaged with.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
But he's also a social media.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thought leader and indeed the founder of the social media
app fan Base. Here with us discussing kind of the
importance of social media and you know how to navigate
these modern waters. But before we move on, let's discuss
Baba becoming a better ally Boba. On today's Baba sponsored
by Friends of the Movement, You can sign up for
the freeboter wallet from Fotmglobal dot com to support black
(01:11):
businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact
with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot com.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Today.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
We want you to check out start engine.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Dot com, Start engine dot com slash offering slash fan
Base to be exact where you can invest in Fanbase.
This is not an opportunity many people have. Certainly we've
never had this, especially to invest in something that's black owned,
and so we are encouraging all of those of you
who feel like supporting black businesses to not only support
(01:42):
but also to maybe generate a return. We have not
been paid for any of this. This is an honest
expression of how we feel, nor will we be paid
for it. But I want to share just a bit,
Get a piece of fan Base next gen social media
for people who value content and community. Fan Base is
a free to download, free to use next generation social
network that allows any user to earn money from day one.
(02:03):
Fan Base enables anyone to monetize their content, charging from
two ninety nine to ninety nine to ninety nine per
month per subscriber for exclusive access to photos, videos, audio,
chat rooms and long form content. Fan Base also has
virtual gifts known as love that allows users to tip
other users app a penny per love. Unlike other social apps,
fan Base is the one place you can truly be you,
(02:25):
hashtag be you without limits. Again, we want you to
check out start engine dot com, slash offering, slash fan Base,
or you can download the fan Base app, and I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
That there's the.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Back end connective links or whatever to land you here
if you want to invest. Because they're in the middle
of a round of raising funds again and we're going
to talk a little bit more about that. But again
I want to mention that this is not something that
we're being paid for.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
This is an honest expression of what we.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Believe and we actually invest in and we have invested
because we do leave in it. So Isaac, Isaac Hayes,
the third, let me give you your full name on
the heels of that. Yeah, talk to us a bit
about this opportunity for people to invest and what that
means in terms of black ownership and generating black wealth,
(03:20):
because I know that you have some really profound thoughts
about this.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
Well, it's significant, I mean across the board because the
accredited investor rule is something that has been around and
if people aren't aware to invest in early stage companies
like an IBM or an Apple or Google or Microsoft,
you had to already be rich since nineteen thirty three
all the way to twenty fifteen. And so there was
(03:46):
rule in place that you had to make two hundred
thousand dollars a year for two consecutive years, or have
a networth of a million dollars minus your primary residents
mine as your house. So that's rich people. Bottom line.
I don't care what color you are, it is just
rich people. So twenty twelve, Barack Obama and Joe Biden
passed his legislation called the Jobs Act, which wiped out
the accredited investory rule, which allows people like you and
(04:08):
I to put their dollars into startups the same way
that you know, it was okay for anybody to go
gamble in Vegas or go buy lottery tickets. Now you
can invest in startups and it's not donations, it's actually
equity and ownership in companies. And so for someone that's black,
which the lack of access to capital is enormous in
(04:31):
the black community, by way of venture capital and vent startups.
Less than half of one percent of all venture dollars
in twenty twenty three went to black founders. So you're
talking about hundreds of billions of dollars and only less
than half of a percent went to black people. So
equity crowdfunding serves as a way for us to support
our own businesses as investors. And start Engine is a
(04:53):
platform that I chose to use. Through three rounds of
Red Cup crowdfunding for fan Base, we've raised over ten
million dollars and now we're raising seventeen million dollars doing
it the same way. And what's important about that is that,
you know, I've looked at some of the valuations and
the exit of these tech companies over the last few years,
and these companies reach, you know, valuations and market caps
(05:14):
of trillions of dollars, one point eight trillion, you know,
three have five hundred billion dollars. But they're they're owned
by a small group of already wealthy people. And so
when it comes to social media, the honest answers that
the users are the ones that give the platform the value.
No users, no platform has value. So I wanted to
provide an opportunity for the users to have a piece
(05:37):
of the pie, and especially black people because we know
the effect that youth.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Culture, especially black culture has on social media.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
So who better than to give an opportunity to own
a part of a next generation platform that is geared
and primed to be a successor to Instagram and TikTok
and fan base. But now you have equity in that,
and that's something that's never really been done before by
way of social media platforms. So this is a new department, sure,
by way of how you scale and build a company,
but be more inclusive to the audience of people that
(06:05):
actually provide the success and not the engine of what
you do. So that is why I wanted to do
this and continue to offer the opportunity for people to invest.
And again it isn't a donation. This is money that
you actually, you know, sit on the cap table of
a tech company that will that will have an eventual
outcome of either we will get acquired or we will
go public on the stock market and you'll be able
(06:25):
to cast your shares out there, or when we're acquired,
you'll get bought out as an investor and move on
and see a return on your investment. And that's why
I'm ambitious and and very you know, had had said
on making sure that fan base is continue to be
the success that it is, but also a success for
investors like you guys and those people that have joined
(06:46):
over fifteen five hundred people that have invested.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And one of the things that you did talk about
and in one of our recent conversations was how this
is a one of the more prominent ways of generating wealth,
one of the more successful and consistent ways of generating wealth.
(07:12):
And as you saw it, this could be a way
that you know around here, Q and I we talk
about economic restorative justice quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We talk about things like reparations.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
We talk about things like how wealth shapes outcomes in
terms of you know, criminal activity, in terms of you know,
educational opportunities, in terms of you know, health care outcomes
and so forth and so on. Money, a lot of
the negative things that can happen to a person in
their life tends to be more associated with people with
less money and the positive things than to be associated
(07:44):
with folks with more money. And I love the way
that you connected like all of those things to investment
opportunities such as this in the tech space because not
a lot of them exists. So talk about that a
bit in terms of the opportunity for black people and
allies of black people to be able to not only
(08:05):
invest in a black owned business, but what the outcomes
could be in terms of when as you mentioned sharing
or selling or being acquired or something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I'm not sure what the terminology is, but exits is
what exit there you go, that's it.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
Or liquidity event is what we Liquidity event is basically
what it's called. So I mean either an acquisition, a merger,
or an ipl And so I think that you know,
being able to provide the opportunity for that because I
think that we talk about reparations often. I think that's
something that that's a conversation and a fight that should
(08:43):
always continue. But I don't think that people understand the
amount of wealth that's being generated through investments and tech
companies and that people are able to exit and build
wealth in that way. And so you know, we often
have this converse sation all the time about six figures.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
You know, oh my I want.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Somebody makes six figures and one hundred thousand dollars a
year XYV. And I think that conversation is something that
we have to kind of move to the next phase
of that because Okay, income is what you make. Wealth
is taking that income and turning it into something that
generates more wealth. So are you you make six figures,
but are you spending it on something that will depreciate
(09:23):
or not exist, or something that's you know, won't retain
its value.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Or can you take.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
Small amounts of capital not large amounts because again with
equity crowdfunding, these are not you know, these are not
minimums of fifty thousand, twenty five thousand. The minimum to
invest in fanbase is three hundred ninety nine dollars. So
to say I can spend three hundred ninety nine dollars
on one of these things an item or an event
or an excursion this week, not in perpetuity or forever,
(09:50):
but just this week. And I can take three hundred
ninety nine dollars and buy some stock and a startup
this week, and rather than go, you know, go on
vacation or you know, buy something for myself, but actually
take a little bit of money and try to generate
some wealth off of it. And so I think that's
significant because we talk off and talk about you know, okay,
(10:11):
we were making money. There's one point eight trillion dollars
worth of black spending power every year. A portion of
that goes towards luxury items and non essentials, so things
that will never return value to us, and it might
make us feel good and I have no pot Again,
I'll never tell anybody how to spend their money. But
we also have to understand the value of even small
(10:31):
amounts of capital through equity crowdfunding, the type of returns
that they can provide. I'll say this, I think I
said this before, but one of the seat investors in
Uber invested five thousand dollars into Uber in twenty ten,
and when the company went to public's five thousand with
worth twenty four million dollars. Now, I'm not knowing if
you have five thousand dollars, but imagine if you and
ten of your friends had five hundred dollars and you
(10:54):
put it into and you had the opportunity to invest
in Uber in twenty ten, and nine years later, your
five hundred dollars turn to two point four million dollars. Wow,
Like when you That is the reality of what happened
to one already rich investor who took five thousand dollars
and put it into Uber, And so with all the
other companies that are available on equity crowdfunding, but especially
in tech, with something like fan base, the ability to
(11:16):
put that money towards the platform that could scale to
one hundred billion dollars. Like the first valuation of fan
Base was twenty million dollars. A fan base going from
a twenty million dollar company to one hundred billion dollar
company is a five thousand x multiple. That means the
company's five thousand times more valuable than it was now.
When you take one hundred billion dollars, that sounds like
(11:38):
a lot of money, But again, Facebook has a market
cap at some points that have been almost two trillion
dollars or one point two trillion. By Dance, which is
TikTok's parent company, is valued about three hundred and fifty billion.
Instagram separated from Facebook is like a three hundred billion
dollar company. So even if fan Base gets to the
third of the level of success that Instagram got to,
(11:59):
you're looking at a company that can be held by shareholders,
young people, black people, people that have never invested, that
can return significant amounts of capital them off small amounts
of investment, and I think that is something that is
one of the one of the legacies that I want
to be part of as far as fan Base. To
be standing in a room full of you know, twenty
five thousand people that we've exited or gone public and
(12:20):
these people have taken five hundred dollars and turned it
into five hundred thousand dollars, that will be incredible. And
you know, that's what I strive to do by continuing
to build a tech startup that I think can rival
these giants.
Speaker 6 (12:33):
You know, Rams is mentioned earlier, there's a there's a
special feeling when it comes to fan Base, not because
not just because we know the founder and not just
because you know, black founders are very rare in the
tech space, but there is a feeling of safety that
comes with being a black creator at fan Base. However,
(12:55):
fan Base is not exclusive in the way that everyone
else isn't woke. Tell us a little bit about this
journey of educating the masses on this thing that you've
created that we all think is incredible, where you can
center black people but not exclude everyone else.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
It's it's been a challenge because I think even in
spaces of media where I've had conversations. There hasn't been
an interview where I've done where I've explicitly said that
I'm a black founder. A fan base is built for
every person on the planet. And then the headline comes
out and says, is the case of the third is
building a platform for black creators? And I'm like, Oh,
(13:34):
that's not you know, that's the way to minimize and
kind of make other people feel uncomfortable because unfortunately, in
this country, things built by white people are perceived to
be for all people. So if you're white and you
build an app or a business, it's perceived to be
for the Black community, the white community, Latino community, Asian community,
(13:54):
Jewish community, everybody's included. When black people build something, it's
almost as if it's friends that it's only supposed to
be for black people, which is not true, which really
minimizes and diminishes the impact and the effect of the
idea of what I wanted to build, which is which
is a platform which is available in one hundred and
ninety plus countries and territories on iOS and Android. So
(14:14):
I didn't build fan base to just be exclusively black.
So it's been a challenge, but I understand that that's
a game that's being played intentionally, but I don't let
it affect what we do. And I think people still
value and use fan base in that fashion. Now, whether
whether people will try to highlight and continue to highlight that,
I mean, of course, again contrarian, that's always what people
(14:37):
are going to be. But I know for certain that
I built this to be a global platform because I
want everybody to monetize. I want I want you know,
I want white athletes to monetize, I want black students
to monetize. I want gay activists to be able to monetize.
I want to have a voice, and so I just
want everybody to be able to have the opportunity to
(14:57):
use the app in a way that they see fit
without limitation. And so it's been a challenge, but it's
definitely not what fan base is about it.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
It's a platform for a global audience.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, you know, I think that your point is well made.
One of the things that you know, we talk about
in terms of this show, because we make a show
that is for everybody. We make a show for people
who are fans of hip hop music that we feel
might be fans of hip hop culture and as a result,
might be inclined to support marginalized community, might have a
(15:31):
more accepting worldview in terms of other.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Groups and races and communities and so forth.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
If we make a show for black people, we're kind
of preaching to the choir, right But yet and still
whenever we, you know, have to discuss our show with
programmers or whatever around the country, they think of it
as a black show. And you know, we kind of
leaned into that a bit. We make a black show
for non black people, you know, and you know, these
(15:59):
are conversations just kind of come with being black and
doing anything on a national stage, I suppose. But you know,
for us, we also kind of understand that that preaching
to the choir thing doesn't make a lot of sense.
And if we don't make the programming as inclusive as
we can be, there are people that will look at
(16:21):
the marketing that other people will do our show, not
the marketing we do ourselves, but the marketing the headlines
that people write, and it will look to them the
way that Vietnamese Like, if there was a Vietnamese radio show,
I would immediately think, Okay, that's not for me, that's
for Vietnamese.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
People.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So when people say, oh, it's a black radio show,
there's a group of folks that will look at that
and say, oh, it's for black people, it's not for me.
So again, your point is well made. If people frame
fan base as a black social media app and place
for content creators, then everyone who's not black will feel like, Okay,
that's not for me, you know. And the same would
(16:58):
be true with the Latino app or whatever. I would
not feel like it's a place for me. So again,
your point is well made.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
So rams as you're saying, fan base is not the
new Black Planet dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
No, I think fan bases for for everybody. It just
happens to have a framework in place that doesn't extract
black culture from black people, monetize it, separate from them,
and then play in.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Black people's face with it.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And of course the founder and the owner owners look
a little bit more diverse than your typical.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
App. Do I have that approximately right, Isaac table?
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Look, the cap table of fan base is filled with
all races of people.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
All genders are like like like genders from around the
around the world. You can invest in fan base around
the planet. We have investors from India and Asia.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I've seen the photos.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Yeah, and so their investors and the platform that believe
and from Australia and like, yo, I heard about this,
you know. And so that's the thing that I think
is really important. It's very very inclusive and so yeah,
I don't you know. I mean again, it's unfortunate that
we are trying we are we are marginalized in a
way and trying to be I guess segregated through technology
(18:21):
because of the race of a person. But it's just
I think it's a game that the media tries to
play to try to limit the growth because I've known
other apps that are founded by Asian people that the
race of the founder has never brought us.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Never the fact like this app is built for Asian people,
like no, it's just an app, and so fan base
and app. But when they see a black face, you know,
they want to say, Okay, we're not welcome, just this
is you guys, party will just head out, And I'm like, no,
that's not that's not what it's about.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
And I'm a bumply clear about that.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, So I want to make sure that I mentioned
this that I've I've heard rumblings that Meta is. I
believe they have created a subscription model for businesses, meaning
that for bona fide content creators, not just businesses, but
content creators where this is what they do daily.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Their existing accounts. I feel like this might be true.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Their existing accounts will have their current content suppressed further,
and that will be true unless they start paying for
this subscriptions exposure. Right, So talk to us a bit
about why they're doing that and how problematic that is
(19:39):
or how problematic that can be for you, know, you
just your general everyday content creators.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Well, the short the short answer is money and sharehold.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
So if you invested in let's say you're invested in
Facebook or Meta in twenty ten and in twenty twenty four,
like fourteen years later, you've seen a significant recur turn.
If you invest in in Meta in twenty twenty four,
fourteen years from now, you want to see the same
return that people saw fourteen years ago. So there's this
(20:09):
there's this demand to always increase profits and revenue, and
it's like this, that's the one thing about going public.
Once you go public, you are on this wheel of
you got to keep growing and figure out ways to
make money. And so for Meta, ninety seven point five
percent of their revenue comes from advertising, so that they
have to continue to squeeze that orange of advertising and
(20:31):
just get every drop of every dollar out of the
platform that they possibly can and find ways to make money.
What that does is it ruins the user experience and
makes it like, Okay, wow, why is my cont Now
I have to pay. You're basically paying for visibility. So
you're paying to advertise to an audience that already decided
it wanted to see your content, but now you got
(20:52):
to pay to see the full audience. So if you
had a million followers, we'll give you the first one
hundred and fifty thousand for free, but if you want
to reach the other eight hundred and fifty you got
to cut a check because that's how we make our money,
and we're not going to give you that free visibility.
So that's very problematic and something that I'm not a
fan of. But again, that is another way that we
(21:14):
seek to be different, and we are different, and that
the fact that there are no limitations even right now,
even though following I believe is something of a thing
of the past. An engagement is primarily what social media
is moving into into future. But if you wind up
with a million followers on fan base, if you post
something and those million people are on the platform, they
will see your content. So your content mean by a
(21:36):
million people, that's relatively important. And we want to take
it outside of just your following and even expose your
content to the wider audience of people that can engage
with it, because then the likelihood that people will tip
your content or share your content or subscribe to you
increases the more visibility we give you. So it's more
like the more visibility, the better because the trade off,
the byproduct of that is subscriptions and revenue for every
(21:59):
single person on the platform.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
And so that's the goal. So that's where we separate
ourselves completely.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Okay, okay, all right, well i'd like to thank you
for taking the time to talk with us today here
on Civic Cipher. You know, do me a favorite before
you go shout out your social media and of course
let folks know where they can find fan Base.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
So I am at isaac case three I S A
A C H A Y S and the number three
at all socials, but primarily on fan base. You get
down on fan Base on iOS and Android right now,
and you can invest in fan Base its start engine,
dot com slash fan Base.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
The minimum to invest this three hundred ninety nine dollars.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
We're raising seventeen million dollars, which is unprecedented and it's
really going to change the way that we're able to
scale the business. And so this is a significant raise
for us and we're excited as always.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I appreciate it absolutely and I'm ramses Jah, I am
q Ward.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
This has been Civic Cipher until next week.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Y'all.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Peace,
Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop
weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host,
Ramses job.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
He is Rams's job. I am q Ward. You are
tuned in the Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Indeed you are, and hopefully you are still tuned in,
but if not, let me bring you up to speed.
We are talking to a tech world giant, you know,
names like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk shoot who else, Steve
Jobs and on and on and on. Well, today we
(00:33):
have Isaac Hay's the third who has joined the ranks.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
I would certainly say.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Don't forget Toime for MySpace.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oh yeah, Tom too. But Isaaca is the third who
has perhaps the most dynamic and interactive of all the
apps that I've engaged with.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
But he's also a social media.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Thought leader and indeed the founder of the social media
app fan Base. Here with us discussing kind of the
importance of social media and you know how to navigate
these modern waters. But before we move on, let's discuss
Baba becoming a better ally Boba. On today's Baba sponsored
by Friends of the Movement, You can sign up for
the freeboter wallet from Fotmglobal dot com to support black
(01:11):
businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact
with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot com.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Today.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
We want you to check out start engine.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Dot com, Start engine dot com slash offering slash fan
Base to be exact where you can invest in Fanbase.
This is not an opportunity many people have. Certainly we've
never had this, especially to invest in something that's black owned,
and so we are encouraging all of those of you
who feel like supporting black businesses to not only support
(01:42):
but also to maybe generate a return. We have not
been paid for any of this. This is an honest
expression of how we feel, nor will we be paid
for it. But I want to share just a bit,
Get a piece of fan Base next gen social media
for people who value content and community. Fan Base is
a free to download, free to use next generation social
network that allows any user to earn money from day one.
(02:03):
Fan Base enables anyone to monetize their content, charging from
two ninety nine to ninety nine to ninety nine per
month per subscriber for exclusive access to photos, videos, audio,
chat rooms and long form content. Fan Base also has
virtual gifts known as love that allows users to tip
other users app a penny per love. Unlike other social apps,
fan Base is the one place you can truly be you,
(02:25):
hashtag be you without limits. Again, we want you to
check out start engine dot com, slash offering, slash fan Base,
or you can download the fan Base app, and I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
That there's the.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Back end connective links or whatever to land you here
if you want to invest. Because they're in the middle
of a round of raising funds again and we're going
to talk a little bit more about that. But again
I want to mention that this is not something that
we're being paid for.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
This is an honest expression of what we.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Believe and we actually invest in and we have invested
because we do leave in it. So Isaac, Isaac Hayes,
the third, let me give you your full name on
the heels of that. Yeah, talk to us a bit
about this opportunity for people to invest and what that
means in terms of black ownership and generating black wealth,
(03:20):
because I know that you have some really profound thoughts
about this.
Speaker 5 (03:25):
Well, it's significant, I mean across the board because the
accredited investor rule is something that has been around and
if people aren't aware to invest in early stage companies
like an IBM or an Apple or Google or Microsoft,
you had to already be rich since nineteen thirty three
all the way to twenty fifteen. And so there was
(03:46):
rule in place that you had to make two hundred
thousand dollars a year for two consecutive years, or have
a networth of a million dollars minus your primary residents
mine as your house. So that's rich people. Bottom line.
I don't care what color you are, it is just
rich people. So twenty twelve, Barack Obama and Joe Biden
passed his legislation called the Jobs Act, which wiped out
the accredited investory rule, which allows people like you and
(04:08):
I to put their dollars into startups the same way
that you know, it was okay for anybody to go
gamble in Vegas or go buy lottery tickets. Now you
can invest in startups and it's not donations, it's actually
equity and ownership in companies. And so for someone that's black,
which the lack of access to capital is enormous in
(04:31):
the black community, by way of venture capital and vent startups.
Less than half of one percent of all venture dollars
in twenty twenty three went to black founders. So you're
talking about hundreds of billions of dollars and only less
than half of a percent went to black people. So
equity crowdfunding serves as a way for us to support
our own businesses as investors. And start Engine is a
(04:53):
platform that I chose to use. Through three rounds of
Red Cup crowdfunding for fan Base, we've raised over ten
million dollars and now we're raising seventeen million dollars doing
it the same way. And what's important about that is that,
you know, I've looked at some of the valuations and
the exit of these tech companies over the last few years,
and these companies reach, you know, valuations and market caps
(05:14):
of trillions of dollars, one point eight trillion, you know,
three have five hundred billion dollars. But they're they're owned
by a small group of already wealthy people. And so
when it comes to social media, the honest answers that
the users are the ones that give the platform the value.
No users, no platform has value. So I wanted to
provide an opportunity for the users to have a piece
(05:37):
of the pie, and especially black people because we know
the effect that youth.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Culture, especially black culture has on social media.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
So who better than to give an opportunity to own
a part of a next generation platform that is geared
and primed to be a successor to Instagram and TikTok
and fan base. But now you have equity in that,
and that's something that's never really been done before by
way of social media platforms. So this is a new department, sure,
by way of how you scale and build a company,
but be more inclusive to the audience of people that
(06:05):
actually provide the success and not the engine of what
you do. So that is why I wanted to do
this and continue to offer the opportunity for people to invest.
And again it isn't a donation. This is money that
you actually, you know, sit on the cap table of
a tech company that will that will have an eventual
outcome of either we will get acquired or we will
go public on the stock market and you'll be able
(06:25):
to cast your shares out there, or when we're acquired,
you'll get bought out as an investor and move on
and see a return on your investment. And that's why
I'm ambitious and and very you know, had had said
on making sure that fan base is continue to be
the success that it is, but also a success for
investors like you guys and those people that have joined
(06:46):
over fifteen five hundred people that have invested.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And one of the things that you did talk about
and in one of our recent conversations was how this
is a one of the more prominent ways of generating wealth,
one of the more successful and consistent ways of generating wealth.
(07:12):
And as you saw it, this could be a way
that you know around here, Q and I we talk
about economic restorative justice quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
We talk about things like reparations.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
We talk about things like how wealth shapes outcomes in
terms of you know, criminal activity, in terms of you know,
educational opportunities, in terms of you know, health care outcomes
and so forth and so on. Money, a lot of
the negative things that can happen to a person in
their life tends to be more associated with people with
less money and the positive things than to be associated
(07:44):
with folks with more money. And I love the way
that you connected like all of those things to investment
opportunities such as this in the tech space because not
a lot of them exists. So talk about that a
bit in terms of the opportunity for black people and
allies of black people to be able to not only
(08:05):
invest in a black owned business, but what the outcomes
could be in terms of when as you mentioned sharing
or selling or being acquired or something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I'm not sure what the terminology is, but exits is
what exit there you go, that's it.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
Or liquidity event is what we Liquidity event is basically
what it's called. So I mean either an acquisition, a merger,
or an ipl And so I think that you know,
being able to provide the opportunity for that because I
think that we talk about reparations often. I think that's
something that that's a conversation and a fight that should
(08:43):
always continue. But I don't think that people understand the
amount of wealth that's being generated through investments and tech
companies and that people are able to exit and build
wealth in that way. And so you know, we often
have this converse sation all the time about six figures.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
You know, oh my I want.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Somebody makes six figures and one hundred thousand dollars a
year XYV. And I think that conversation is something that
we have to kind of move to the next phase
of that because Okay, income is what you make. Wealth
is taking that income and turning it into something that
generates more wealth. So are you you make six figures,
but are you spending it on something that will depreciate
(09:23):
or not exist, or something that's you know, won't retain
its value.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Or can you take.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
Small amounts of capital not large amounts because again with
equity crowdfunding, these are not you know, these are not
minimums of fifty thousand, twenty five thousand. The minimum to
invest in fanbase is three hundred ninety nine dollars. So
to say I can spend three hundred ninety nine dollars
on one of these things an item or an event
or an excursion this week, not in perpetuity or forever,
(09:50):
but just this week. And I can take three hundred
ninety nine dollars and buy some stock and a startup
this week, and rather than go, you know, go on
vacation or you know, buy something for myself, but actually
take a little bit of money and try to generate
some wealth off of it. And so I think that's
significant because we talk off and talk about you know, okay,
(10:11):
we were making money. There's one point eight trillion dollars
worth of black spending power every year. A portion of
that goes towards luxury items and non essentials, so things
that will never return value to us, and it might
make us feel good and I have no pot Again,
I'll never tell anybody how to spend their money. But
we also have to understand the value of even small
(10:31):
amounts of capital through equity crowdfunding, the type of returns
that they can provide. I'll say this, I think I
said this before, but one of the seat investors in
Uber invested five thousand dollars into Uber in twenty ten,
and when the company went to public's five thousand with
worth twenty four million dollars. Now, I'm not knowing if
you have five thousand dollars, but imagine if you and
ten of your friends had five hundred dollars and you
(10:54):
put it into and you had the opportunity to invest
in Uber in twenty ten, and nine years later, your
five hundred dollars turn to two point four million dollars. Wow,
Like when you That is the reality of what happened
to one already rich investor who took five thousand dollars
and put it into Uber, And so with all the
other companies that are available on equity crowdfunding, but especially
in tech, with something like fan base, the ability to
(11:16):
put that money towards the platform that could scale to
one hundred billion dollars. Like the first valuation of fan
Base was twenty million dollars. A fan base going from
a twenty million dollar company to one hundred billion dollar
company is a five thousand x multiple. That means the
company's five thousand times more valuable than it was now.
When you take one hundred billion dollars, that sounds like
(11:38):
a lot of money, But again, Facebook has a market
cap at some points that have been almost two trillion
dollars or one point two trillion. By Dance, which is
TikTok's parent company, is valued about three hundred and fifty billion.
Instagram separated from Facebook is like a three hundred billion
dollar company. So even if fan Base gets to the
third of the level of success that Instagram got to,
(11:59):
you're looking at a company that can be held by shareholders,
young people, black people, people that have never invested, that
can return significant amounts of capital them off small amounts
of investment, and I think that is something that is
one of the one of the legacies that I want
to be part of as far as fan Base. To
be standing in a room full of you know, twenty
five thousand people that we've exited or gone public and
(12:20):
these people have taken five hundred dollars and turned it
into five hundred thousand dollars, that will be incredible. And
you know, that's what I strive to do by continuing
to build a tech startup that I think can rival
these giants.
Speaker 6 (12:33):
You know, Rams is mentioned earlier, there's a there's a
special feeling when it comes to fan Base, not because
not just because we know the founder and not just
because you know, black founders are very rare in the
tech space, but there is a feeling of safety that
comes with being a black creator at fan Base. However,
(12:55):
fan Base is not exclusive in the way that everyone
else isn't woke. Tell us a little bit about this
journey of educating the masses on this thing that you've
created that we all think is incredible, where you can
center black people but not exclude everyone else.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
It's it's been a challenge because I think even in
spaces of media where I've had conversations. There hasn't been
an interview where I've done where I've explicitly said that
I'm a black founder. A fan base is built for
every person on the planet. And then the headline comes
out and says, is the case of the third is
building a platform for black creators? And I'm like, Oh,
(13:34):
that's not you know, that's the way to minimize and
kind of make other people feel uncomfortable because unfortunately, in
this country, things built by white people are perceived to
be for all people. So if you're white and you
build an app or a business, it's perceived to be
for the Black community, the white community, Latino community, Asian community,
(13:54):
Jewish community, everybody's included. When black people build something, it's
almost as if it's friends that it's only supposed to
be for black people, which is not true, which really
minimizes and diminishes the impact and the effect of the
idea of what I wanted to build, which is which
is a platform which is available in one hundred and
ninety plus countries and territories on iOS and Android. So
(14:14):
I didn't build fan base to just be exclusively black.
So it's been a challenge, but I understand that that's
a game that's being played intentionally, but I don't let
it affect what we do. And I think people still
value and use fan base in that fashion. Now, whether
whether people will try to highlight and continue to highlight that,
I mean, of course, again contrarian, that's always what people
(14:37):
are going to be. But I know for certain that
I built this to be a global platform because I
want everybody to monetize. I want I want you know,
I want white athletes to monetize, I want black students
to monetize. I want gay activists to be able to monetize.
I want to have a voice, and so I just
want everybody to be able to have the opportunity to
(14:57):
use the app in a way that they see fit
without limitation. And so it's been a challenge, but it's
definitely not what fan base is about it.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
It's a platform for a global audience.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, you know, I think that your point is well made.
One of the things that you know, we talk about
in terms of this show, because we make a show
that is for everybody. We make a show for people
who are fans of hip hop music that we feel
might be fans of hip hop culture and as a result,
might be inclined to support marginalized community, might have a
(15:31):
more accepting worldview in terms of other.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Groups and races and communities and so forth.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
If we make a show for black people, we're kind
of preaching to the choir, right But yet and still
whenever we, you know, have to discuss our show with
programmers or whatever around the country, they think of it
as a black show. And you know, we kind of
leaned into that a bit. We make a black show
for non black people, you know, and you know, these
(15:59):
are conversations just kind of come with being black and
doing anything on a national stage, I suppose. But you know,
for us, we also kind of understand that that preaching
to the choir thing doesn't make a lot of sense.
And if we don't make the programming as inclusive as
we can be, there are people that will look at
(16:21):
the marketing that other people will do our show, not
the marketing we do ourselves, but the marketing the headlines
that people write, and it will look to them the
way that Vietnamese Like, if there was a Vietnamese radio show,
I would immediately think, Okay, that's not for me, that's
for Vietnamese.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
People.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
So when people say, oh, it's a black radio show,
there's a group of folks that will look at that
and say, oh, it's for black people, it's not for me.
So again, your point is well made. If people frame
fan base as a black social media app and place
for content creators, then everyone who's not black will feel like, Okay,
that's not for me, you know. And the same would
(16:58):
be true with the Latino app or whatever. I would
not feel like it's a place for me. So again,
your point is well made.
Speaker 6 (17:05):
So rams as you're saying, fan base is not the
new Black Planet dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
No, I think fan bases for for everybody. It just
happens to have a framework in place that doesn't extract
black culture from black people, monetize it, separate from them,
and then play in.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Black people's face with it.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And of course the founder and the owner owners look
a little bit more diverse than your typical.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
App. Do I have that approximately right, Isaac table?
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Look, the cap table of fan base is filled with
all races of people.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
All genders are like like like genders from around the
around the world. You can invest in fan base around
the planet. We have investors from India and Asia.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I've seen the photos.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Yeah, and so their investors and the platform that believe
and from Australia and like, yo, I heard about this,
you know. And so that's the thing that I think
is really important. It's very very inclusive and so yeah,
I don't you know. I mean again, it's unfortunate that
we are trying we are we are marginalized in a
way and trying to be I guess segregated through technology
(18:21):
because of the race of a person. But it's just
I think it's a game that the media tries to
play to try to limit the growth because I've known
other apps that are founded by Asian people that the
race of the founder has never brought us.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Never the fact like this app is built for Asian people,
like no, it's just an app, and so fan base
and app. But when they see a black face, you know,
they want to say, Okay, we're not welcome, just this
is you guys, party will just head out, And I'm like, no,
that's not that's not what it's about.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
And I'm a bumply clear about that.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, So I want to make sure that I mentioned
this that I've I've heard rumblings that Meta is. I
believe they have created a subscription model for businesses, meaning
that for bona fide content creators, not just businesses, but
content creators where this is what they do daily.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Their existing accounts. I feel like this might be true.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Their existing accounts will have their current content suppressed further,
and that will be true unless they start paying for
this subscriptions exposure. Right, So talk to us a bit
about why they're doing that and how problematic that is
(19:39):
or how problematic that can be for you, know, you
just your general everyday content creators.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Well, the short the short answer is money and sharehold.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
So if you invested in let's say you're invested in
Facebook or Meta in twenty ten and in twenty twenty four,
like fourteen years later, you've seen a significant recur turn.
If you invest in in Meta in twenty twenty four,
fourteen years from now, you want to see the same
return that people saw fourteen years ago. So there's this
(20:09):
there's this demand to always increase profits and revenue, and
it's like this, that's the one thing about going public.
Once you go public, you are on this wheel of
you got to keep growing and figure out ways to
make money. And so for Meta, ninety seven point five
percent of their revenue comes from advertising, so that they
have to continue to squeeze that orange of advertising and
(20:31):
just get every drop of every dollar out of the
platform that they possibly can and find ways to make money.
What that does is it ruins the user experience and
makes it like, Okay, wow, why is my cont Now
I have to pay. You're basically paying for visibility. So
you're paying to advertise to an audience that already decided
it wanted to see your content, but now you got
(20:52):
to pay to see the full audience. So if you
had a million followers, we'll give you the first one
hundred and fifty thousand for free, but if you want
to reach the other eight hundred and fifty you got
to cut a check because that's how we make our money,
and we're not going to give you that free visibility.
So that's very problematic and something that I'm not a
fan of. But again, that is another way that we
(21:14):
seek to be different, and we are different, and that
the fact that there are no limitations even right now,
even though following I believe is something of a thing
of the past. An engagement is primarily what social media
is moving into into future. But if you wind up
with a million followers on fan base, if you post
something and those million people are on the platform, they
will see your content. So your content mean by a
(21:36):
million people, that's relatively important. And we want to take
it outside of just your following and even expose your
content to the wider audience of people that can engage
with it, because then the likelihood that people will tip
your content or share your content or subscribe to you
increases the more visibility we give you. So it's more
like the more visibility, the better because the trade off,
the byproduct of that is subscriptions and revenue for every
(21:59):
single person on the platform.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
And so that's the goal. So that's where we separate
ourselves completely.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Okay, okay, all right, well i'd like to thank you
for taking the time to talk with us today here
on Civic Cipher. You know, do me a favorite before
you go shout out your social media and of course
let folks know where they can find fan Base.
Speaker 5 (22:19):
So I am at isaac case three I S A
A C H A Y S and the number three
at all socials, but primarily on fan base. You get
down on fan Base on iOS and Android right now,
and you can invest in fan Base its start engine,
dot com slash fan Base.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
The minimum to invest this three hundred ninety nine dollars.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
We're raising seventeen million dollars, which is unprecedented and it's
really going to change the way that we're able to
scale the business. And so this is a significant raise
for us and we're excited as always.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I appreciate it absolutely and I'm ramses Jah, I am
q Ward.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
This has been Civic Cipher until next week.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Y'all.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Peace,
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