The Exchanges

Q Now, I'd love to kick off today with what led you to Giphy. Now, Spencer actually gave me a couple of hints that there were some amazing pre-Giphy hustle stories. So what are the hustle stories?

A Oh man. All right. So the hustle stories are interesting and fun and ridiculous, but I don't get to tell them often. So I'm kind of excited that Spencer sort of leaked it a bit. I got to Giphy because I got there through like six or so, seven years of startups and doing stuff and making things and breaking things and failing at things and starting again and trying again and failing and getting a team together and then pissing people off and then making people happy. But the first thing I ever did was I wanted to start a startup And I didn't know how to do it. Tech was really new, sort of in New York. And I had always been a fan of the web and internet and technology and sort of what people have been doing to hack technologies together. And that was something I specialized in at an ad agent. And I was working there for quite some time and I would come up with digital products for our clients. And I kept using them as ways to experiment with building. So I built a video game. I built a VR kind of thing. I built A check-in type object, like kind of Foursquare based, and I built a couple of other different sort of apps and platforms. I happened upon an idea I really wanted to execute. I was very passionate about it. Uh, it was called Voyeur, a really bad name, by the way. That's one of the mistakes I learned quickly. It was a cool pun, but a terrible name, and it was a combo of Voy…

AI assessment note: “the first thing I ever did was I wanted to start a startup”

Q And I want to move now to the present and with Giphy. So let's, let's start with the meta view. Uh, why gifts? Um, why now? I mean, I'm not cool. Obviously I'm, I'm a 20 year old who loves venture capital. So you're going to have to walk me through this. Why gifts and why now?

A Harry, you're 20. You're plenty cool. You're cooler than me, man. I got, I got gray hair on my beard. So you win. Um, so Why gives why now? We'll start with the why now part first. So a lot of reasons for why now are technology and economic space. The market dynamics for moving imagery for the last 50 years have been really, really shitty. It's been very, very expensive to move an image from point A to point B. Um, and even if you go a hundred years back or 200 years back, it was still very expensive. Market dynamics prohibited imagery from being widely circulated because of how pricey it was. And that's what the printing press afforded people just without the images. The printing press happened. It was a system. It was repeatable. It was consistent. It was replicable. So you can make a book happen. You could put it in a binded object and you could ship that thing around the world. It was really, really easy to do, uh, relatively speaking. But if you wanted to put an image in there, then you had to like carve it out. You had to use color, which is more expensive. You had to like lay out more paper, which is more expensive. Suddenly it became prohibitive to move imagery. That's why illuminated texts We're so rare, are so sought after, are so desirable, so expensive. Then you move forward a little bit, and you get into like the modern age of printing. Still, it's black and white …

AI assessment note: “So Why gives why now? We'll start with the why now part first.”

Q And it's evidence for God's creation, isn't it? Okay, so let's do your favorite gif from white. I want to hear this one.

A Oh man, my favorite gif is, well, I have to send you a link to it. I can show you what it is. But I think if you Google my name and favorite gif, it comes up somewhere. But, uh, it is these two women at a concert. They're at like a rave slash EDM concert, and they're just in the audience. And they're just having the wildest, best time of their lives, and you can just see them losing their minds, and they're just doing all these funny dance moves and sort of facial expressions, and they're just really into the music, and for whatever reason, for me personally, like, every time I watch that GIF, I find something new, and I just think it's hilarious and amazing.

AI assessment note: “my favorite gif is, well... it is these two women at a concert”

Q Um, how do you know when to stop?

A Uh, I think the writing's on the wall. I think if you're telling yourself to keep going too much, you're, you're, you're like, you're maybe in denial. I think that's what I was doing a little bit, which was like, oh no, the veto, we could just get around this corner. If we could just do this one more thing, if I could just get this one more deck done. You know, this VC is totally gonna give us money. Uh, oh, we'll totally be able to raise a round. This thing's gonna start. You know, when you start dealing in too many what ifs, you probably know it's, it's done. I think that's a good signal. And it's, it's not to say that your idea isn't great. It's not to say that you didn't put in a lot of hard work. It just might not be the right time, the right place, the right fit. There's always a way to come back around. This startup in particular dealt with personal data. I wanted to turn people's personal data into currency and let them spend a lot of money. I was not the first to try this. I've not been the last. I think it'll come around again and again and again. So there's always more opportunity.

AI assessment note: “when you start dealing in too many what ifs, you probably know it's done.”

Q Um, how do you know when to stop?

A Uh, I think the writing's on the wall. I think if you're telling yourself to keep going too much, you're, you're, you're like, you're maybe in denial. I think that's what I was doing a little bit, which was like, oh no, the veto, we could just get around this corner. If we could just do this one more thing, if I could just get this one more deck done. You know, this VC is totally gonna give us money. Uh, oh, we'll totally be able to raise a round. This thing's gonna start. You know, when you start dealing in too many what ifs, you probably know it's, it's done. I think that's a good signal. And it's, it's not to say that your idea isn't great. It's not to say that you didn't put in a lot of hard work. It just might not be the right time, the right place, the right fit. There's always a way to come back around. This startup in particular dealt with personal data. I wanted to turn people's personal data into currency and let them spend a lot of money. I was not the first to try this. I've not been the last. I think it'll come around again and again and again. So there's always more opportunity.

AI assessment note: “when you start dealing in too many what ifs, you probably know it's, it's done”

Q And I want to move now to the present and with Giphy. So let's, let's start with the meta view. Uh, why gifts? Um, why now? I mean, I'm not cool. Obviously I'm, I'm a 20 year old who loves venture capital. So you're going to have to walk me through this. Why gifts and why now?

A Harry, you're 20. You're plenty cool. You're cooler than me, man. I got, I got gray hair on my beard. So you win. Um, so Why gives why now? We'll start with the why now part first. So a lot of reasons for why now are technology and economic space. The market dynamics for moving imagery for the last 50 years have been really, really shitty. It's been very, very expensive to move an image from point A to point B. Um, and even if you go a hundred years back or 200 years back, it was still very expensive. Market dynamics prohibited imagery from being widely circulated because of how pricey it was. And that's what the printing press afforded people just without the images. The printing press happened. It was a system. It was repeatable. It was consistent. It was replicable. So you can make a book happen. You could put it in a binded object and you could ship that thing around the world. It was really, really easy to do, uh, relatively speaking. But if you wanted to put an image in there, then you had to like carve it out. You had to use color, which is more expensive. You had to like lay out more paper, which is more expensive. Suddenly it became prohibitive to move imagery. That's why illuminated texts We're so rare, are so sought after, are so desirable, so expensive. Then you move forward a little bit, and you get into like the modern age of printing. Still, it's black and white …

AI assessment note: “We'll start with the why now part first. So a lot of reasons”

Q for this, so please don't, uh, gifs are kind of an, an addition to text. You know, I will do, uh, I'm thrilled, I'm really happy you're coming on the show, and then I'll do a little guy dancing, as I think I did in one of our emails. So, do you want it to be an addition to text, or do you want it to be instead of text?

A Uh, I don't think we intend to, we don't want to eliminate any modes of communication. I think we enhance and we're additive, but I really think where the either or happens is in context. And maybe this is another part of why gifts we talked about our natural predisposition. We talked about what the market dynamics are like in the penetration of technology. But the other thing is, if you think about the modes of consumption, if you look at all the feeds and all the channels and all the social networks and all the new apps and And all the new broadcast methods and all the new sort of over the top messaging and VOD, we are consuming a giant amount of content at a pretty rapacious pace. And so there's not a lot of time for stuff. And in addition, we're always mobile because our phones are in our hands. And so I think gifts are not necessarily the elimination of text. It's really the efficiency of expression. And that's what's happening when you send a gift, like you sent the little guy dancing, you might've been in front of a keyboard. It might've been easier to write, but as we are increasingly mobile and as we have More and more channel fragmentation. People are going to be looking for the most efficient way to express themselves maximally, and GIFs are really that amazing sweet spot of making a point, but having to do very little to get it across.

AI assessment note: “I think we enhance and we're additive”

Q Now, I'd love to kick off today with what led you to Giphy. Now, Spencer actually gave me a couple of hints that there were some amazing pre-Giphy hustle stories. So what are the hustle stories?

A Oh man. All right. So the hustle stories are interesting and fun and ridiculous, but I don't get to tell them often. So I'm kind of excited that Spencer sort of leaked it a bit. I got to Giphy because I got there through like six or so, seven years of startups and doing stuff and making things and breaking things and failing at things and starting again and trying again and failing and getting a team together and then pissing people off and then making people happy. But the first thing I ever did was I wanted to start a startup And I didn't know how to do it. Tech was really new, sort of in New York. And I had always been a fan of the web and internet and technology and sort of what people have been doing to hack technologies together. And that was something I specialized in at an ad agent. And I was working there for quite some time and I would come up with digital products for our clients. And I kept using them as ways to experiment with building. So I built a video game. I built a VR kind of thing. I built A check-in type object, like kind of Foursquare based, and I built a couple of other different sort of apps and platforms. I happened upon an idea I really wanted to execute. I was very passionate about it. Uh, it was called Voyeur, a really bad name, by the way. That's one of the mistakes I learned quickly. It was a cool pun, but a terrible name, and it was a combo of Voy…

AI assessment note: “the first thing I ever did was I wanted to start a startup”

Q Would you advise that? It's always an interesting balance.

A Yeah, I think it's doable as long as everybody's professional. It's something we've been able to do pretty well. And, you know, everyone was an adult. And so, you know, we've all had jobs before and we know what it's like to work hard and we know what it's like to work for something. And in many cases, we've actually all worked together at one point or another. And so this wasn't, um, this wasn't like a complete, uh, blind faith leap. Like we'd, we'd done this. I'd worked with Alex before, Dan, Randy, a few other folks here, and they worked with other folks they brought on. So we all knew this was something we were open for and, uh, would work really well. And so first, you know, we got a lot of our friends in and that made it really easy. We knew each other already. We had previous working relationships. We sort of knew everybody's strengths. We knew how to work together and that was awesome. And then, you know, from that, we all have very interesting, funny interests. You know, a lot of us have philosophy backgrounds. A lot of us have art and media and tech backgrounds. Some of us are designers and previous lives and things like that. So there's a lot of creativity in Giphy, a lot, a lot of creativity. And then everyone's sort of like a oddball goof, which is a lot of fun. I think we're like the best group of weirdos you could ever put together. Um, and we've really, really b…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think it's doable as long as everybody's professional.”

Q What were your biggest takeaways then from that, um, not failing, but experience?

A Uh, it's something that I tell everybody, honestly, is that you better love the thing you're going to build, because if you don't, you're going to find out really quickly, or you're going to find out way too late, and it's going to be upsetting, it's going to be sad, but it's also going to be a big frustration and a waste of time, because you've had risked all this stuff, you'd have risked this time, this cash, this energy, to just be met with adversity and then give up, versus, you know, You know, if you love it, you're willing to go through hell to figure it out. And you can be objective still, which is like, if you go through hell, Winston Churchill likes to say, keep going. But honestly, you know, when to give up and you know, like you're cool with adversity, you're cool to do the things that are difficult and it doesn't bother you, but you know that you like, I can't be homeless forever. That's not, that's not sustainable. It's not the right move, but you just know in your heart, like when it's time to be done. But if you start with like a false sense of surety, it's going to catch up with you pretty quick. So one is, you know, love what you do. Uh, and be passionate about it and make sure that you'll drive hard to get it done. The second is obviously know when to stop. I would actually say with four year old, I stopped, I stopped a little too late. I could have done that …

AI assessment note: “one is, you know, love what you do... The second is obviously know when to stop.”

Q So you're screwed. No one intact, no connections to VCs?

A Nothing, and I think I have this amazing idea of a thing that I should build. I realized, well, I'm a big believer of sort of put your money where your mouth is, and Part of my motivation for doing this, for doing this hustle that I'm about to tell you about is because I saw a lot of people in ad land criticizing technology, criticizing new products, criticizing startups or betas or alphas. And when I dissected all of it, it was very clear to me that those people who were criticizing really hadn't done anything. They hadn't built anything themselves. They hadn't taken a great risk. And it felt weird to have someone criticize these objects and not have done it themselves.

AI assessment note: “Nothing, and I think I have this amazing idea”

Q What were your biggest takeaways then from that, um, not failing, but experience?

A Uh, it's something that I tell everybody, honestly, is that you better love the thing you're going to build, because if you don't, you're going to find out really quickly, or you're going to find out way too late, and it's going to be upsetting, it's going to be sad, but it's also going to be a big frustration and a waste of time, because you've had risked all this stuff, you'd have risked this time, this cash, this energy, to just be met with adversity and then give up, versus, you know, You know, if you love it, you're willing to go through hell to figure it out. And you can be objective still, which is like, if you go through hell, Winston Churchill likes to say, keep going. But honestly, you know, when to give up and you know, like you're cool with adversity, you're cool to do the things that are difficult and it doesn't bother you, but you know that you like, I can't be homeless forever. That's not, that's not sustainable. It's not the right move, but you just know in your heart, like when it's time to be done. But if you start with like a false sense of surety, it's going to catch up with you pretty quick. So one is, you know, love what you do. Uh, and be passionate about it and make sure that you'll drive hard to get it done. The second is obviously know when to stop. I would actually say with four year old, I stopped, I stopped a little too late. I could have done that …

AI assessment note: “So one is, you know, love what you do. The second is obviously know when to stop.”

Q So you're screwed. No one intact, no connections to VCs?

A Nothing, and I think I have this amazing idea of a thing that I should build. I realized, well, I'm a big believer of sort of put your money where your mouth is, and Part of my motivation for doing this, for doing this hustle that I'm about to tell you about is because I saw a lot of people in ad land criticizing technology, criticizing new products, criticizing startups or betas or alphas. And when I dissected all of it, it was very clear to me that those people who were criticizing really hadn't done anything. They hadn't built anything themselves. They hadn't taken a great risk. And it felt weird to have someone criticize these objects and not have done it themselves.

AI assessment note: “Nothing, and I think I have this amazing idea of a thing”