Feb 15, 2022 · 1h 12m · startup-ideas
Will Meta Bounce Back? (with Nikita Bier) | Where It Happens | Bonus Episode
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this mailbag episode of Where It Happens, Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg host serial founder Nikita Bier to dissect Meta's historic market crash and startup innovation, followed by deep dives into decentralized CC0 intellectual property, Web3 creator economics, and niche digital assets.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 29.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 4.9 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 1.7 Greg pushing back 1.7
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 22:38 Contrarian view on tech founder motives
Nikita rejects the standard corporate framing and publicly challenges conventional wisdom, arguing tech founders are motivated by ego and a desire to be liked rather than corporate greed.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 25:39 Pressing for a definitive stock verdictGreg refuses Nikita's hedged response regarding Meta's valuation and directly forces the question of whether he is fundamentally bullish or bearish.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:30 Dissecting the bureaucratic delay inside Big TechNikita educates the hosts on the exact internal multi-year timeline of data collection, slide decks, and legal approvals required before Meta can counter a startup.
Greg holds their own ▶ 29:58 Explaining the economic structure of Nouns DAOGreg demonstrates authoritative domain expertise by laying out the exact mechanics of CC0 licensing, treasury distribution, and governance in decentralized IP projects.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catching Up with Nikita Bier and Twitter Banter | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | Greg and Sahil introduce Nikita Bier with lighthearted banter about Twitter personas, drinking habits, and thread-writing. The tone is completely friendly and casual, with minor playful poking about thread quality. | |
| Sponsor Break: Beam CBD and OpenPhone Services | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Sponsor advertisement break for Beam CBD and OpenPhone. No interview interactions or power dynamics present. | |
| Nikita Bier's Journey and the TBH Overnight Success Myth | 3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Greg clarifies that TBH was not an instant overnight success, prompting Nikita to explain their five-year grind and 14 failed apps before TBH took off. Nikita educates both hosts on the reality behind the media headlines. | |
| Analyzing Meta's Record Market Wipeout and Innovation Dilemma | 4 | 7 | 3 | 2 | Sahil frames Facebook's massive market wipeout, and Nikita provides insider analysis on Facebook's strength in growth optimization versus its severe inability to build zero-to-one products or acquire new competitors. | |
| Big Tech Bureaucracy, Startup Advantages, and Regulatory Irony | 5 | 7 | 3 | 2 | Nikita details the internal bureaucracy of big tech, explaining why it takes over two years for Meta to respond to competitive threats like Clubhouse. Sahil and Greg connect this to startup moats and criticize regulatory pressure on Meta over foreign rivals like TikTok. | |
| Apple ATT Fallout and the Villainization of Mark Zuckerberg | 5 | 6 | 4 | 3 | The conversation shifts to Apple's ATT privacy policy hitting Meta's core ad business. Nikita and Greg debate whether public animosity toward Mark Zuckerberg is driving stock overreaction rather than fundamental valuation logic. | |
| Nikita Bier's Meta Stock Verdict and Humorous Exit | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Greg presses Nikita directly for a clear bullish or bearish call on Meta's stock at current multiples. Nikita hesitates, pointing to both cheap valuation multiples and deep strategic headwinds before making a comedic cliffhanger exit. | |
| Sahil and Greg's Post-Interview Analysis on Meta and WhatsApp | 6 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Sahil and Greg conduct a post-interview breakdown assessing Meta's 16x PE ratio and WhatsApp as an untapped global asset. Greg demonstrates expertise evaluating WhatsApp's monetization potential. | |
| Introduction to Nouns DAO, CC0 Licensing, and Super Bowl Commercials | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Greg leads the explanation of Nouns DAO, breaking down how the daily auction mechanism and CC0 public domain licensing operate, including its upcoming Super Bowl commercial integration. | |
| Decentralized IP and Memetic Virality vs. Disney's Walled Garden | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Sahil contrasts Nouns' open-source IP philosophy with Disney's century-long legal battles to protect Mickey Mouse copyright. Greg clarifies how derivative NFT collections leverage CC0 public domain rights without licensing fees. | |
| The CC0 Wordle Thesis, Disney's Luxury Margins, and Building in Public | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Greg details his Wordle thesis to illustrate how ubiquitous IP touchpoints drive brand value in open-source systems. Sahil and Greg connect this to the broader build-in-public movement and Disney's luxury theme park economics. | |
| Anthony Levandowski, Pollen Mobile, and Tokenized Physical Infrastructure | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Sahil presents the background on Anthony Levandowski and Pollen Mobile's token-incentivized wireless network. Greg offers product and branding critiques regarding their website copy, drawing parallels to Tai Lopez and RadioShack. | |
| Spotify's Broken Economic Model and Creator Streaming Realities | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sahil breaks down Spotify's creator payout math, highlighting that only 0.1% of artists earn over $100k annually. He asks Greg if this streaming economic structure is sustainable against emergent Web3 models. | |
| Web3 Music Rails, Fan Immersion, and Coexistence with Web2 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Greg and Sahil discuss how Web3 music infrastructure will coexist with Web2 streaming platforms rather than fully replacing them, comparing the evolution to direct-to-consumer retail operating alongside Amazon. | |
| Drunk Twitter Threads, 'Two Whiskeys Deep' Branding, and Domain Speculation | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Sahil and Greg wrap up discussing engagement metrics from Sahil's drunk Twitter threads and brainstorm buying domains like TwoWhiskiesDeep before closing the episode. |
Statements from this episode (29)
Nikita Bier: TBH Was the 15th App Built Over Five Years
“We built we did it for five years. We built 15 apps. We were about to shut down. We were very close to it. And the 15th app went straight to number one in the app store, right as we were, like, basically turning off the lights in the office.”
Nikita Bier: TBH Received Acquisition Term Sheet Within Six Weeks
“We got the term sheet within six weeks of launching the app and we sold, it was kind of like a dream come true situation.”
Nikita Bier: TBH Would Have Failed If Launched on First Try
“If we just struck it on the first try, I think it would have crashed and burned really quickly.”
Nikita Bier: TBH Reached Nine Million Users in 90 Days
“I mean, nine million users in I think it was like, 90 days.”
Bloom: Meta suffered the largest single-day market value wipeout in history
“Facebook announces earnings lat last week and basically plunges like 26% or something like that on the back of it. It erased two hundred fifty billion dollars of market value in a single day. It was the largest single day wipeout of market value in history eve…”
Bier: Big tech companies rarely build breakout zero-to-one products
“Many, most of big tech has not ever built in house zero to one products that have had that have broken out. I like the iPhone. It was truly like a historical example that that happened. But I think if you look across all of big tech, you rarely see that happen…”
Bier: FTC will block Meta from acquiring competitors to fix growth
“The regulators the FTC they won't re they won't sign off on any sort of large acquisition of a user base. So They're losing users from an engagement from these two other competitors. And at the same time, they can't really buy their way out of it like they did…”
Bier: Big tech takes over two years to clone startups
“After being on the inside, it takes about a year of collecting data for them to even think about building something like this or building something they see happening in the market. And then it takes three months of like a framing process where you do research…”
Bloom: TikTok is de facto controlled by Chinese government
“TikTok, which is Chinese owned, and de facto controlled by the Chinese government, by the way, and owns the data of literally every single teenager in the United States.”
Bier: Meta has the world's best misinformation systems
“They have some of the best integrity systems, the best Spam the best misinformation detection systems out of any, probably any company in the world.”
Bloom: Meta estimated Apple's ATT would cause a $10B hit in 2022
“Basically, this was, it was ten billion dollars that was gonna be the impact to Facebook in 20, 22 was what they said on the earnings call, which, as he pointed out, is a, it's a pricing change because it's the level of price you can charge to the advertisers,…”
Bier: Apple is the true monopoly, hurting small businesses via ad changes
“Yeah, it goes to show that the monopoly might not be Facebook. It might very well be Apple. The fact that they could just, you know, hobble a bunch of small businesses overnight with by hurting the performance of ads. And I think, you know, a lot of people say…”
Bier: Big tech companies exist for founder egos, not profit
“Companies exist for like big tech companies exist for the egos of the founders. And at the end of the day, he just wants to be liked. He just wants to build something that helps people.”
Bier: The metaverse and face computers are many years away
“I think the metaverse is many years away. At least I don't see us wearing face computers anytime in the short term.”
Bier: Meta stock is a strong value buy at 16x PE
“I think they have a shit ton of, bottom line is they have a shit ton of talent for that PE ratio. I think it's a very good value buy right now”
Bloom: My strategy is to never sell and borrow against holdings
“Like I, my active strategy in markets is I literally buy with never intending to sell. And I intend to, Take loans against holdings and never sell so that I can not have to pay taxes in the future pro tip.”
Isenberg: WhatsApp is the crown jewel of Meta
“What the world runs on WhatsApp, like literally runs on it. So. You know, that is really the crown jewel of Facebook, in my opinion.”
Isenberg: Meta stock will outperform over the next one to three years
“And I feel like, I don't know, a year, two, three years from now, like, I feel like they're gonna ship some stuff, and some of it's gonna work. So I'm a, I think I think the stock will outperform. That's what I think.”
Isenberg: Nouns DAO founders take no auction revenue, only 10% of NFTs
“And the founding team of which Dom, who's the co-founder of Vine is on the founding team. And this, you know, this guy, Gremplin, who's a well-known NFT artists on the founding team, these like well-known people, Don't take a cut of the actual sales cause they…”
Sahil Bloom: Disney changed US IP law 7 to 8 times for Mickey Mouse
“I've written about Disney's IP coming into public domain and how Disney will fight to the death to maintain their, they've actually changed IP law in the U S on like seven or eight occasions to avoid Mickey mouse coming into the public domain.”
Isenberg: Brands will heavily adopt CC0 public domain licensing by 2023
“I think while it sounds like CCO is just like so simple and small, it's actually such a game changer. And I think brands in 20, 22 or in 20, 23, you know, are going to leverage CCO and it's going to be huge.”
Isenberg: Bud Light partnered with Nouns DAO for Super Bowl commercial
“Nouns just published or sorry, Bud Light just partnered with Nouns and they released a Superbowl commercial. It's going to be on the Superbowl. The Superbowl is this Sunday February, whatever Sunday is. And they just did the release of it. And in the Bud Light…”
Isenberg: External NFT projects can use Nouns glasses because of CC0 licensing
“There's another project, for example, called the littles, and it's completely unrelated from cryptodes or nouns or any projects to do with that team. And a lot of those NFTs have nouns glasses and they're able to do it because it's CC zero. It's completely in …”
Bloom: Open IP models will generate more memes and win long-term
“My gut tells me that more open leads to more memes, which will continue to drive growth of the ecosystem, and, I think that that will win in the long run.”
Isenberg: Tai Lopez turned RadioShack into a decentralized crypto exchange
“Tai Lopez, you know, famous YouTuber has been buying up old brands and love him or hate him. He's done a good job at buying a lot of these brands and he's turned Radio Shack into a Uniswap competitor, which is Uniswap for those who don't know is basically in a…”
Bloom: Recorded music revenues fell from $22.7B in 1999 to $7.3B in 2014
“Recorded music revenues hit a high of 22.7 billion dollars in 1999. From then until 2014, they dropped all the way to 7.3 billion dollars, basically fell off a cliff.”
Bloom: Only 2% of Spotify artists earn over $1,000 annually
“Only two percent of Spotify artists are earning more than 1000 dollars a year, and one 10th of one percent.1%, are earning over a hundred K per year.”