TMP Episode 4: Greg Isenberg CEO at 5By
"The NASDAQ in 10 years is going to be like an app store. In the sense that it's just a bunch of mobile apps."
Mack: Hello Greg it is Mack.
Mack: You know enjoying the Vancouver December weather itâs very nice outside of course. Iâm not sure; Â actually I am lying.
Greg: It is cold I would imagine.
Mack: You know every podcast starts with the same talk but itâs not cold as wet. Itâs not that cold itâs just really wet. Not like where you are from, you are from [inaudible 0:00:43.9] I know but tell our listeners where you are from.
Greg: I am from Montreal Canada.
Greg: One of the coldest and snowiest places on earth.
Mack: So letâs very briefly talk about Montreal. I technically lived outside of Montreal for a month but I was young I didnât really know anything about Montreal as a city. Basically everybody who I have ever met who went to Montreal said Montreal was amazing. They used to have some of the problem of being in QuĂ©bec which was kind of lame back in the day but itâs no longer lame. And now I guess you still have the cold thing and like itâs just legitimately sort of thing but most people seem really found of MontrĂ©al, do you agree with that?
Greg: Yeah, I mean some of the best restaurants, the culture is really cool and itâs like pretty much the most European city in North America so itâs pretty cool that like you can take a 45 minute flight from New York City up to Montreal and feel like you are like in the 1600 and in some random place in a ranch.
Mack: So letâs talk about, this is the terms that we are looking for that suits great, letâs talk about why you are in San Francisco, what is the story of how you got from MontrĂ©al to San Francisco, and tell us the thing
Greg: I started a company Called 5by, and what 5by basically did or does is take the best stuff of YouTube and any other online platform and create there are like 100 channels. Start ups to design to funny and you press a button and you get the best stuff. And I started the company and sold it eleven months later to Stumble upon and operating it independently there.
Mack: And then when you sold to Stumble upon you moved to San Francisco?
Greg: I moved to San Francisco about a year ago.
Mack: And started the 5by about two years ago?
Mack: So you and the team at 5by in the other 5by just had the distinct privilege of winning one of the Google app awards, right?
Greg: Yeah, so every year takes about 50 apps, some of the best apps of the year and we were lucky enough to win. That gave us as a Macketer what I like about it is just the promotion I Google parts behind it am just so awesome. Like in terms of user acquisition like at the end of the day we are still reliant on these app stores. And it has been pretty cool to see Google analytics real time when you are being promoted on the home page, just Google plan so many countries.
Mack: So you are getting multiple countries that werenât like just America or just Tibet or something. You got international kind of best.
Greg: Yeah, we are promoted in I think 45 countries.
Mack: Okay and I guess we donât really need to go into specific numbers but that has been meaningful for you guys from a download perspective?
Greg: Yeah, I mean from the features like that you get thousands of downloads a day just constant.
Mack: Yeah, and that is an effort too. Itâs not like the big push is the constant thing.
Greg: Yeah, I mean itâs a constant thing.
Mack: How long do you figure it will last for like at some point you know it tippers off the promo and there is somethingâŠbut there might even be some residuals after that, right like so many blog articles, extensionsâŠso do you think this is like a permanent apps ring or you think the goals will tipper [crosstalk] and we are not going to talk about it later so you donât even have to be wrong whatever it doesnât matter what, nobody is going to know soâŠ
Greg: You know if you have a consumer start up every day you go to sleep and you wake up and you just hope that someone bigger didnât come up with your start up the next day. So you kind of check range. Itâs the same way with AD Star promotion. Like every day I wake up and I am like I hope to God that they didnât remove us from the promotion.Â
So I donât know, I just as long as possible hopeful probably I would imagine probably not in three or four weeks. And then we have to built something, you know the trick to getting featured in the app store is really just to like help Google and apple basically help them to figure out whatâs on their road map and what you can build in terms of like upcoming features. So if itâs like the new ILS like ILS8 extensions stuff like that, android TV I mean you are building towards that then we are like we are the future here.
Mack: Okay, so I have used 5by and I understand why you won the award. The experience for me is like a combination, itâs like Wikipedia cable, itâs like that you go deep you go down you donât know where you are going to come out but as Wikipedia is the Craigâs list this sis top some beautifully modern designed thing.Â
You guys have solved the user experience path as well as the sort of value and content part and suddenly getting lost in the videos or getting lost in the links doesnât fell weird it feels polished. It feels like it goes from being in a weird dingy bar which is kind of like lagging around on the wild web and then in this native app experience you have created, itâs really nice.Â
The chairs are really soft the colors are really good, the lighting is good the music is there, the women are beautiful the men are funny everything is going well. To me that am just like what you sort of did to like I say going down like Wikipedia hall or YouTube hall of video. Do you think that what you have done is something that is going to happen across a lot of different level experiences in the coming years or do you think that what you did is unique to video?
Greg: I think when we started you know the company you know I started with a guy named [inaudible 0:07:50.6] and he, we basically running a UX shop for a few years. And that was sort of our background and I would probably argue that this sort of two ways where you can really make a big business of something that already exists on the web and basically if you just bring it to mobile you simplify it and then you make a beautiful experience out of it.Â
I think we chose video just because we were video nuts and we love video but I think people could just go unbundle a bunch of different web services, make it mobile fast, make it really simple make it really beautiful and slap on some good user acquisition strategies and there is a lot of money being make there.
Mack: So you unbundle it because we are on mobile and mobile by nature of the technology device is kind of a forecast thing and you simplify it for the same reason because mobile is just small and always the making a beautiful path has certainly become a norm now. That is an actually down to mobile its just that technology and design seems to have reached a really nice freshly new platform in sort of strategy at the same time that mobile happens to rise there was no cell phones I think we would still be dealing with excellent designs as a prerequisite for success in sort of consumer design. Was this the case five years ago even?
Greg: I agree and I think also the, like the bar for user, like users regularly mainstream jobs, America Understands what a beautiful product is and understand what a good user experience is today now more than ever. Where itâs like maybe 10 years ago, if they went to a website like Craigâs list they just wouldnât care if it was ugly or not. So I think mobile itâs all about specifically like create something beautiful, create something simple, everyone is using this whole like press a button get something, Uber like world and as long as itâs that quick and beautiful and there is an actual need there is probably business there.
Mack: So you talk about the Uberfication of everything. Do you, like I get weird thinking about the drones that just happened [inaudible 0:10:33.2] go down and like not if we sort of have a couple of drones but if we got to do with it, we have got star wars about drones and like they were just everywhere, I like to follow that one especially. You talked about the Uberfication or like the Uber button for everything.Â
Do you think in the future that this phones will allow us to Uber everything is this on demand with economy with such pressing going to disrupt every single thing ever as the like multitrillion, quadrillion variation of Uber would suggest or you think that we, that the height is a little bit frosty around Uber use as it is right now?
Greg: I think the short answer is I am holding on this whole on demand economy and Uberfication of everything. The longer answer is there frostinessâ maybe but I think that thatâs okay because I think places like San Francisco you can literally get everything on demand from a hair cut to a massage to a car and itâs almost like we are living in the future here but if you look at other places like Vancouver or something or MontrĂ©al like there isnât those services yet.
So I think that there is a huge opportunity to bring some of this on demand services international in other places beyond San Francisco and I also think that itâs still early days like this whole on demand sort of world has only come  up in the last few years. Uber was literally started like four years ago or something like that.
Greg: But it goes to show you like I donât remember the last time it was, I think it was fortyâŠwas it billion?
Greg: Something like that I mean the fact that you can go and create a forty billion dollars value in four years or whatever it is [crosstalk] hypothetical values. And I remember I saw [Travis] at the web in 2010 or something and he said, he basically said you know it change how I about things that the [NASDAQ] in ten years or something is going to be just a bunch of mobile apps. Itâs going to be like an app store. The [NASDAQ] is going to be like an app store in a sense that it is just going to be a bunch of mobile companies and that just blew my mind.
Mack: Every one of these podcasts we have like portable [inaudible 0:13:14.4] but you think you probably I think that was the moment we just shared that. I liked how we say when we had the moment that was the moment right there. Have you tried I think itâs called Laxate; the Uberfication of [inaudible 0:13:25.4]
Greg: So I havenât tried but I did, outside my office today I did see these guys wearing blue polos that said Lax on it and I was like that sounds familiar then I saw them you know those like scooters racers, scootering, someone scootering to someoneâs car and just like these two mid 30s Hispanic guys that jumped into the car and started finding parking so I havenât used it but saw it today in action. Pretty cool having your back pocket. I guess all these on demand stuff is cool to have in your pocket like I am not going to have, how many times do I just need a hair cut to come and do I need a haircut and I want people to come to my help I donât know, maybe once a year but itâs nice to have that incase I need it. And thatâs the same thing [crosstalk]
Mack: And actually a whole point of like the scale of the internet is that you only need to sell something to one of every 10000 people because there is so many people that you have access to. And on demand actually breaks that because on demand involves connecting like physically in real life [crosstalk] you canât make a business really out of once a year thing that I do that only I pay 40 dollars for unless you have so many of me.
Greg: Yeah, I mean if you are creation a consumer, well it depends if you are creating a consumer venture back mobile start up, you are going to want to create something at a daily case. If you can create a daily case like you probably have in your consumer probably the venture is scalable. So I think like that is what the goal is like Uber is a good example like s few years ago I used Uber maybe once year or something a couple of time a year and now I use Uber almost every day.Â
Itâs crazy and I have a car which for me is crazy and I think this whole on demand economy like the whole thing is like itâs convenient and the best part is Millennial they are just lazy. millennial are lazy [crosstalk] and I am a millennial you know and they just wantâŠthatâs why on demand one of the reasons a on demand is taking off right now is because yeah, just like millennial are on Pc they want to press the button and they want to get it and boom.
Mack: I am going to give you my super Nerdy moment here, so there is a scene in one of the new three star wars movies, I am not nerdy sure which one but there is a scene on one of them where the guy who becomes the evil dude then they are in the middle of the war and he is like so the law says that I am supposed to get out of the way now, we are supposed to have an election.Â
I feel like itâs my duty to you, you the people to stay in power for four more years or something to confuse the assembly state and then the entire senate like breaks into virtuous applause and he is like thank you and then it zooms in on the queen there and she says so this is how freedom is lost, not to the sounds of gunshots but to the thunderous applause something like that. And that really I was always like wow she is right. Like thunderous applause is how we are going to lose the freedom that matter and itâs interesting that was convenient because for me convenience and choice are the two things that will make us give up everything.Â
Every time somebody is like there is this new thing on the internet we are going to upload all of your pictures of you and your family and then write their names on them, fuck you there is no shame. I am going to do that. There is this new app that is going to let you meet a girl. You are just going to have to tell it all the time where you are all the time. Not chance, that for losers and yet there is like the constant sort of approach on our liberties that we willfully give away and if I was dating I would use tender and if I use facebook I would tag people in those pictures like.
I am not saying I am not one of these people, we are giving away those interesting things because of convenience and choice and so anything you can do that serves convenience and choice which is Uberfication of everything seems to, yeah, thatâs how you build the slippery slope in success that you are trying to right.
Greg: And I think the truth is most people donât care about giving away stuff like they are just like, they are pressing connect with facebook like ten times a day on ten different services and they are putting their credit cards in ten different places and they are just like, they donât think about it especially young people.
Mack: And I donât really like even to be honest like I do sign in to everything with twitter and my credit card has been smeared across the internet and lots of co-worker you know like we work in a technical state so I talk to a lot of people who think that my behavior online isnât safe enough or isnât respecting my own privacy enough. But for convenience and choice like the number of times trying to log into a website is a pain in the ass.Â
Good thing twitter authorized is not a pain in the ass except these days what they are doing some of the authors of twitter they are like okay we will confirm with your email and name anyways, you can put it as a giveaway and now I am giving them a twitter and the email anyway which is really stupid.
Greg: Yeah, I mean it goes back to like nothing is free like all these consumer app. that are pretty is like you are going to have to give them something and year you are right on one hand itâs kind of scary times that will be there but then I would be scared if like Amazon web services was hacked because I have some crazy stuff up there you know what I mean like, I think we all do we all have our secrets are in the clouds [crosstalk]
Mack: And some day itâs going to rain.
Greg: Itâs going to rain one day you know. Look what happened with the whole sonny hacking thing.
Mack: I havenât even been up on this, I mean I have, I know the thing happen I know probably itâs just back and back and what we said they are doing because the theater is not played not because they are scared of the grim but somehow this all wraps together and we are finding itâs a snapshot was trying to get into the music industry business because of linked sonny emails. What the fuck on this seems to be going [inaudible 0:20:08.8] but I donât actually know what happened except that Sony got hacked and apparently it was the most [inaudible 0:20:12.9] machines.
Greg: The bottom line is sonny got hacked, bunch of emails, compensation stoke equity was taken from the servers and when you have an organization of like, I donât know 50,000 people who work at sonny and they are emailing people and every facet of business and use their sonny email addresses, there is a lot of secrets in there. And I think itâs a remainder that every time you send an email like be careful because someone can read that email somewhere like at some time you trust that person, you are trusting the security people at this places.
Mack: I saw a tweet yesterday that said dance like nobody is watching email like you will be writing the disposition.
Greg: I would have totally RT that.
Mack: Yeah exactly. Okay you know that letâs use that as an end note. I have twenty minutes I would certainly RT that Greg, super pleasure of course thank you so much so you can approve this before we release this up to the world and everybody seriously if you havenât downloaded 5by yet you should. Itâs some itâs really good stuff.
Greg: Cool yes, thanks for having me man yeah its called 5BY number 5ey. I have as an android and tweet on twitter at Gregisenberg. G-R-E-G-I-S-E-N-B-E-R-G
