Episode 194: Harry Gestetner and Simon Pompan - Founders & Co-CEO’s of FanFix
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All right. Today on Habits and Hustle, we have two young guys. One of them is Harry Gostetner and the other one is Simon Pompan, who were basically, not basically, who are kids who after only a few days out of high school decided to start a company called FanFix. And

and have gone on to sell it for tens of millions of dollars. And the kids are barely 21, 22 years old, which I thought is, for me, why I wanted to have them on the podcast was their story and what they did and how they did it is nothing if not hustle and entrepreneurship at its finest at such a young age. See, you could be any age. It doesn't matter.

What I love about this is FanFix is basically a clean OnlyFans. It's a content platform where content creators can

content on this platform and monetize it. And it's kind of like a Patreon as well. And like I said, they have now thousands upon thousands of the top influencers, content creators on their platform. And they're just like killing it. And like I said, they sold the platform to a beauty company for tens of millions of dollars at the

the ripe old age of 21. So let's hear their story. And those of you who thinking that you're too young or too old, age is just a number. Enjoy. This is an extra special podcast today because I have the youngest ever entrepreneurs I've had on the show before. And also near and dear to my heart, one of them is the...

oldest child of my dearest friend. So it's Harry Gestetner and Simon. Simon, what is your last name? Pompan. Pompan. Simon Pompan. Simon Pompan, who I just found out is like his mom is like a huge Hollywood baller. I had no idea, but I just learned something new today. And these guys, I have to say, they started a company called

Two years ago, but really launched it 10 months ago called FanFix and already sold it for tens of millions of dollars in like 10 months. It is unbelievable. It's a great story. I am so thrilled to have you guys on the podcast and I'm so happy for you, Harry. Thank you very much. We're thrilled, thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Steamed backgrounds.

Absolutely. Well, listen, I want to say I am just your mother's thrilled that you're here. I've gotten a bunch of messages from her. This is a big deal. Now, you are, okay, so you're 22, but you just turned 22. Yeah, correct. Yeah, yeah. About a month ago. Yeah, I was 21 when we sold the company. Right, 21 when you sold the company. And how old are you, Simon? I just turned 23. So I'm the one who looks after this one. Yeah, you babysit him? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Did you guys went to high school together, right? We did. Yeah, so we both went to Harbor West Lake together. Harry moved from London and we have been good friends ever since.

And yeah. Well, it's interesting because you've been here, your family's been in the US for what, six years? Seven years now. Seven years now? Crazy. Yep. Yep. What a good move this has been for you, huh? I know. Been very fortunate. Yeah, it's funny. It feels like a lot shorter, but it also feels like forever. Well, you know, it's funny because you've moved in a really weird time for kids, right? Or for teenagers, right? Like that's the hardest time to move from...

what you know, right? - Yeah, I think, I mean, I was very lucky because I was 15, so, and sophomore year of high school. And I mean, that's the perfect age because I was old enough to where I feel properly English. You know, I had a solid- - Properly English? - Properly English. - He gets to retain his accent. - Yeah, got the accent, you know, got solid friends back in the UK, but also, you know, had a good amount of time to make friends. I think if you have less than three years at high school,

It's kind of tough to make friends. So I just the perfect amount to make great friends here and also have good background in the UK. Right. So then you guys met the first, I guess, the first year that you were here, right? Yeah. Simon was cheating off me in my math class. Is that what happened? No, no, no, no. Don't expose me.

Don't expose him. He would never cheat off me. He's too smart to do that. I know. Listen, I don't know. I don't know. Do you have good grades? I don't even know. Really? What kind of marks did you have? Like we call it marks. I'm Canadian, so we call it marks. I mean, personally, I was a very, very average student. Absolutely.

Average to below average. So what was your like average mark? I mean, my first semester in the US, I had a 2.3 GPA. Yeah. Harry struggled with history class. Yeah. The US history class is actually tough. Yeah. But my dean, I did pick it up a lot from 2.3, thankfully. But my dean sat me down with my parents first semester and said,

said it's not, it's not where he's going to college. It's if he's going to college and my parents went crazy and

I had to turn it around. Well, this goes to show you, by the way, I'm a big, I talk about this a lot of like all the time that, you know, being academically smart is just one type of smart. It's way more. I personally think it's way more important to have street smart and emotional intelligence and have being bold is my big message. Right. And going after things, you know, I mean, and asking for what you want.

Schools, like a lot of times I meet people who are just academic geniuses and total dolts in real life and like don't make anything of themselves. Right. And then you meet people drop out at 14 and they're, you know, living like the high life. Right. So it's good to have it's good to have both. I don't want to say I'm saying it's good to have both.

But does it necessarily, does it mean that if you're a bad student, obviously, that it's going to basically tell you your future? Yeah. A lot of the times, you know, a lot of successful entrepreneurs weren't successful students growing up. A lot of times. A lot of times. And the translation really isn't there from, you know, getting good grades in high school to...

you know, being a world-class problem solver and, and being a successful entrepreneur. Absolutely. Yeah. Wait, what kind of, what kind of grades did you have? A plus? I, I was a little bit higher than Harry. I was, he dropped out. It doesn't count. Oh, yeah. So what kind of, what kind of grades did you have? So in high school, I was, um,

like three three five okay and we should say harvard west like where they went to school is very difficult for people who don't live like it's a private school um and they it's known to be like the the curriculum and the work workloads like higher than probably 99 of the schools right and by the way we had an amazing time that made oh i'm sure awesome friends obviously we met um

fanfics wouldn't have happened if we hadn't met well that's 100% we're going to get all to the fanfics but I want to know about so wait so tell me just finish about your school then yeah so I was an athlete in high school I played basketball and lacrosse at Harvard Westlake so I was on a little bit of a different track than Harry you know at Harvard Westlake they treat

I would say a lot of the times, especially with basketball, baseball, um, you know, their, their core sports. Um, so I do have a state championship at Harbor West Lake and very competitive basketball there. Um, but

But struggling, you know, it's always a struggle to balance sports, school, especially at Harbor West Lake and making friends and being social. But I was able to figure it out along the way. Right. So then you did you guys become fast friends, though, when you moved here? Yeah, pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And so, by the way, were you always did you always have like an entrepreneurial spirit? Yeah. My first business, I was 11.

It was a company called Legionary Clothing. What's it called? Legionary Clothing. Okay. Not is called, was called. Definitely not around anymore. Okay. But it was a clothing company. And I remember I had a... I was dealing with this... I can't remember, a whole state or whatever it was over email. And then I got on the phone after...

you know, months of talking over email and they heard my like pre pubescent, uh, 11 year old boy voice. You were literally 11. I was a kid. Wow. That was that. Um,

But yeah, I had like probably 10 businesses now. What did you do for the business? What happened? You finished what you were going to say. That one, I mean, that one failed. At 11, really? Yeah. But what was the premise of the business? I mean, it was just a clothing brand. But then I had a few others. I had like a storage facility company, but the storage facility was my parents' garage.

But that didn't work because I wasn't on my own schedule. So when the company wanted, we had this local scuba shot we talked to and if they wanted their stuff over Christmas and I was on holiday with my parents, I couldn't deliver it. Yeah, that'd be a problem. Yeah. So that also failed. But yeah, I had kind of a ton. So you always had these ideas and then you tried to kind of execute because you

you're, you know, your parents are entrepreneurial. Your dad's like super entrepreneurial. Did he help you with these ideas back then? Yeah, a ton. Definitely. Definitely. They're very supportive. Yeah. Always. Always. So then were you also Simon that way or, uh, I w I was always interested in entrepreneurship. I was very busy with, uh,

athletics growing up right so it kind of took a back that wasn't like your thing right yeah so so i i got really pulled into entrepreneurship i would say in high school so um harvard westlake had multiple classes centered around entrepreneurship brainstorming ideas walking you through um you know setting up a proper business plan uh go to market strategy and we would always have uh

entrepreneurs, a lot of the times alumni from our high school come in and speak to the class. - Who were the biggest ones you guys remember having? - I mean, the biggest that I dealt with was not actually in a great way, I was trying to start a fund.

For the school. My thesis was, if you look at the Harvard Westlake alumni, you know, they significantly outperform kind of any other data set. And these are people like Spencer Raskoff, who founded Hotwire and then went on to find Zillow and now Picasso. And there's a, you know, a multitude of different alumni that we could point to. Yeah. I want to hear who they are. I mean. Founder of Clutter. Yeah.

Brandon Beck, League of Legends, tons of massive. But then, so I tried to start a fund. And then I partnered with actually one of our closest advisors and investors, Ari Engelberg, who was the founder of Stamps.com, who was also a teacher at our school. Amazing guy. And then we're trying to start and then it went to the... Hold on, hold on. You try to start a fund. Yeah.

this was like, wait, when, like high school using the high school and down using the, okay. High school endowment. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, for, you know, to back kind of students or alumni, uh, to go and start businesses. And I mean, it would have, you know, they would have had fan fix, which, which would have been good for them as well as a ton of other businesses, but it got to the board of trustees and, uh, got shut down actually by Charlie Munger, uh, who's Warren Buffett's business partner. Um,

Really? Yeah, yeah. So that was unfortunate. Yeah. That's crazy. That's a good story. Yeah, yeah. So then what happened because that never happened? Nothing? Or did something else come from it? From trying to start it at least? I had another business I started actually...

which was kind of connecting students as in college student businesses with investors. We helped one company pitch at South by Southwest, but apart from that kind of didn't have huge amount of success. But yeah, that was, that was kind of. So you were trying to connect call like companies,

funds with ideas from college from from yeah from so college students There's a massive, you know ton of massive businesses were founded by students. Absolutely. If USC has a program like that. Yeah There are a lot of student funds that have popped up. Yeah, you know where students actually serve as the investors And network at their college campuses and I think there's a big trend around

with these larger VCs to try to attract more college students. Because that's smart though. There's like so many great innovative ideas and disruptors because in a different, like it's a different mindset, right? When you're young, you see things completely different. You have different ideas. Like even with fanfics, you know, it's like,

the technology of what it is, like it's not, it's going to be started, I would think, by someone of your age group, right? Yeah. Like you're not going to have something like me think of that, right? So I find like it would be a smart move for those companies to do that, right? Yeah. So then...

Walk. So basically then like walk us through like how this happened. So here you guys, your friends, you're like doing mostly sports, not really paying attention. You start all these little businesses at 11 and 12 and, you know, storage units and clothing companies. And you try to do this thing where Charles, Charlie, what is he known by? Charlie? Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger. Yeah. Says, you know, no.

So how did this evolve into what you have now, which is, you know, now sold to who do I sell it to, by the way? Super ordinary. By the way, so super ordinary. Well, you tell us like, who are they? And it's an interesting, it's an, it's an interesting exit too, right? Because it's not by someone that you would normally think to buy a technology or would you guys say like a tech company? Yeah. Like it's

Like, it's a beauty company. It's unusual, yeah. The whole thing is very unusual. So start from the beginning. How did this whole thing come to be? So I... You had the idea first. I... We'll even get into...

How we got to starting FanFix. And before that, we started a charity called Fuel Our Heroes. Okay. So as soon as college campuses closed for COVID and all the students were sent home, we were at home looking for things to do. And we saw... Where'd you go to college, by the way? I went to Vanderbilt. You went to Vanderbilt? So I went to Vanderbilt. I ended up dropping out. So I still have one year left. No. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Still got, I think six credits left. So I'm going to try to finish that up at some point. Harry, uh, found a way to, to graduate, um, while I was handling the company. Yeah. So you did, so you went to Tulane. I went to Tulane. Yeah. Yeah. Graduates. Okay. So go on. So you're like now at Vanderbilt. Did you come, so you came home? So we came home, schools got shut down. Uh,

Classes were canceled. We didn't know what to do. And we saw all of these college students who wanted to get involved in the fight against COVID raising money for healthcare heroes. So Harry and I, with two of our friends from high school, started a charity called Fuel Our Heroes.

where we partnered with over 18 hospital networks nationwide and in Canada. And we mobilized local community organizations, whether that's college students raising money on their college campuses or high schoolers raising from their friends and family. And we were able to raise over just around $500,000 from five $10 donations from college students.

So had 140 student volunteers and were really in the nonprofit space throughout COVID and went on to advise the I'm a voter campaign, youth voting rights and really became the experts in engaging Gen Z audiences. U.S. congressman, U.S. congressman. U.S. congressman as well. Whose idea was that?

Um, well, that was all collective. Um, but we, I mean, one person usually is like, kind of like is the catalyst for that, right? Yeah. I mean, yes. Yeah, definitely. But we, we kind of like to, you know, yeah, we were for, for, for that, that, that was, that was a collective effort of all of us kind of sitting around and wanting to do something about it. I mean, we got back, you know, it was March, 2020, sophomore year of college. So your absolute, you know, prime, um,

uh prime prime time and then you know bam covid hits you go from highest high to lowest low and it was i mean pretty pretty miserable for us but we were some of the luckiest people in the world there were you know health care workers who were working 24 7 and then you know having to like come home and sleep in their garages because they didn't want to go inside and infect their families yeah um

And, you know, there were nurses having to kind of make their own PPE out of bed sheets. And it was really horrendous. So we thought we're just sitting here doing nothing. We got to do something. And all these college students, they got time on their hands and, you know, they also so they can volunteer and they also want to want to donate money. And but I think the the the.

One of the coolest things that that showed us is the power of social media. So the, all these, you know, half a million bucks, you know, is, is amazing, but it'd be a lot less cool if it was, you know, 500K donation from one old rich guy. Um, you know, it's a lot cooler that it's five, $10 donations from college students and, and,

That was all, you know, through social media. So we came up with these viral marketing challenges. We had one called the see a memory, send a memory challenge where we thought, okay, so kids are home from college now, you know, we can get them to do maybe one post to fuel our heroes to, you know, to get a donation just from asking them, but they're not going to be too happy doing that. And they're not going to post it again and again and again. So what can we get them to repeatedly post?

So, you know, we figured everyone misses their colleges. Everyone, you know, is terrified at, you know, these weird times where they're in their bedroom alone and wishes they were out with their friends. So we did this challenge called see a memory, send a memory. So you post a tag, five friends donate $5. So you, you know, kind of post a throwback, a memory of your time at college. And you...

you know, tag five friends to challenge them to do the same and they donate $5 to Fuel Our Heroes. And that went completely viral. It did? Yeah.

It was amazing. That's amazing. So then what happened? So then, I mean, you know, the charity grew and pretty, pretty crazy. And then eventually that wound down and we wanted to find, find something to do. And then around the same time, kind of end of 2020, my cousin, uh,

had a TikTok video go completely viral, blew up on TikTok. You know, you got tens of millions of views, woke up with tons of followers and couldn't make a single penny. And we were pretty shocked. What kind of video was it? It was a... Walking on water. Yeah, walking on water. It was like a magic trick. And then he did a couple of kind of magic tricks following that. But... And how many views did it get? I think he got, I think tens of millions. Yeah.

I can't, it's funny because we always used to joke like every, every, every pitch we tell the story and the number goes up like another few million views. So I can't remember what the real number was. Right. Like hundreds of millions. I think it ended up at like 3 billion. Yeah, exactly. 10 billion views. Right. 3 billion impressions. I think it was like, I think he, I want to say 20 million views. Wow. It's a lot. A lot. Didn't make a single penny though. And yeah,

That shocked us. This is before the creator, the TikTok creator fund, but you know, nevertheless, the creator fund pays out two and a half cents per thousand, pays out nothing. Right. Um, so we thought, you know, there must be.

And meanwhile, we've seen some way you guys together thinking like, how are we going to like, yeah. So, so we were actually sitting around the fire at Harry's house, um, one night, uh, about two years ago, right? Not 18, 18 months ago, uh, sitting around a fire and we saw, um, you know, the rise of Patreon, um, and what they were doing with membership communities with creators. And we saw that, um,

There are a lot of Gen Z creators out there that want to build a recurring revenue stream and want some stability in their life, as well as building a membership community where they can engage with all their fans and really monetize their following in a new way without requiring much time out of their day. And there weren't really many options out there for Gen Z creators. On one hand, you have Patreon, which is desktop first, targets...

you know, an older demographic than... Who does it target? More... Our parents. Our parents. Like me? It's very...

I didn't want to say that. Give me the age bracket. It's more, it's, it's, we, we see Patreon as akin to Facebook. Um, you know, it's a platform that our parents would use. It's very difficult as a platform. I don't use Facebook. Um, yeah, no, no, of course it's, it's very difficult as a platform to, to win with every generation and every demographic. So, I mean, there's a reason why, you know, my generation's on TikTok and my parents' generation's on Facebook. Why is that? I mean, uh,

You know, we don't want to be on Facebook because our parents are there. Right. So it's like you see your parents on there. Yeah. You can go somewhere else. Exactly. Yeah. It's like Harry doesn't invite his parents to all the parties he throws. Yeah. No, no. They get the invite. But yeah, so we'd seen, so my cousin blew up. How old's your cousin by the way? He is 20. Okay.

And he blew up and around the same time we saw a statistic that 75% of Gen Z wants to be a creator when they grow up. - Not doctors or lawyers. - Creators, content creators. And we were absolutely shocked. So we thought, hold on a second. So the majority of our generation wants to be a creator

But even if they achieve the pinnacle of being a creator, which is what my cousin had, getting tens of millions of views, they're still not going to make a single penny. You know, something's off there. So that's kind of what led us to, you know, get into space and see a gap in the market for fanfics. I mean, so wait, so I got so much to ask about that. Okay, so I'm still on the fact that, so if people, now old people, by the way, are on TikTok, like me. Yeah, yeah. But people like...

Even much older than me. So but they're still young young people on there. Are they all migrating off there now like slowly but surely? TikTok is really the you know, the ideal discovery platform. Yeah, I feel like it's become a search engine. It is. And if you look at Gen Z where they're actually searching for

online, it's on TikTok. It's not on Google. It's not on Yahoo. You know, when people search for products or product reviews, whatever it is, they're going on TikTok to make those searches. They're going on, you know, Instagram to find those accounts.

um, they're not opening up Google and, and searching for these products. So what's the difference between Google, not Google, sorry, Instagram and Tik TOK. Now, do you find there's a different odd is Tik TOK still a little bit younger skewed or is it much more of a search engine? Yeah. I mean, Tik TOK's much younger skewed. Um,

And, you know, TikTok's also the cool platform now. There were numbers that came out. You know, Instagram's trying to copy that with their reels. Yeah. But there were numbers that... Yeah. Really? Numbers came out. It's failing. When did that come out?

- I think a couple of weeks ago, the majority of reels get no views and no likes and comments. - There's very little engagement on reels. - And I can't, yeah, I can't remember the exact statistic. I want to say over a third of reels are just reposted from TikTok. So that's a, you know, if you're on Instagram, you're seriously concerned about that. - And then you look at what YouTube just announced today with YouTube Shorts, where they're actually splitting ad revenue

with the creators. So they're going to give, I believe it's 45% of ad revenue to the shorts creators, which is a big step for, you know, short form content on YouTube. Totally. That's amazing. I mean, that's interesting. I do feel like people are relying their business on social media, on like an Instagram, and that's like a borrowed platform, right? Any minute you can be banned

It's terrifying. It's very terrifying. Like you can be banned in a second for if you don't agree or say something that's out of line. TikTok too. And TikTok and YouTube, by the way. Yeah, and YouTube. And we've actually even seen, what's very interesting is we have seen a few startups pop up at,

who are offering insurance to creators in case their TikToks get banned and they lose that revenue stream or their Instagram gets banned. So there are solutions out there where you actually will buy insurance for your social platform. That's so interesting. So-

So before we get more into, and this is very curious to me, so like why TikTok then? Because to your point, it's true. Once people like on Facebook, once your parents show up, you leave, right? That's why Instagram happened. That's when people then left TikTok. Why aren't people leaving TikTok to a different platform that's...

Yeah. Happening. That will happen. It hasn't evolved to that. The cycle hasn't made it there yet. But there's also Triller and all those other ones. They're failing, right? Yeah. Triller has some issues right now in terms of lawsuits and creators not getting paid. But what's very interesting with, I think,

Not just Gen Z creators, but you're saying everyone's on TikTok now. Right. Is the power of that algorithm. So, you know, what we see amongst Gen Z creators and all different types of creators like yourself is they're using TikTok as that discovery platform to really grow their audience. Yeah.

and reach new audiences. And then from there, it's how you convert your TikTok following across all your social channels. So how do you convert your TikTok onto Instagram? How do you get your community to follow you onto YouTube converting on long form content or onto Spotify converting on a podcast into Discord communities? So we're seeing- Explain that because I've just been hearing a lot about that. Can you tell us what Discord is? Yeah, so Discord is essentially-

you know, platform that allows people to build group chats and, you know, be able to, I guess, tier those group chats. So it could handle much larger communities. So I guess think of Discord as Slack, if you're familiar with Slack, but instead of for businesses, it's, you know, for gamers or for, you know,

NFTs communities or friend groups. But what we're actually seeing with a lot of these platforms that were created for that inner circle, your close friends and family, which is Discord, even Snapchat, when you could just take a photo and send it to one or two people, they are leaning completely into discovery now. They're kind of following TikTok's path of

Um, what is that? Uh, you know, the algorithm being able to grow your audience, finding people, reaching new audiences. Yeah. So cool. You know, what's incredible about TikTok and what's so cool about TikTok, they have completely democratized celebrities. So you can, you know, in, in, in the nineties, who are the celebrities, the celebrities, uh, you know, the, the very few movie stars who, um,

got picked by the massive studios and then got represented by the massive agents and, you know, went through this whole process of, you know, these old men in suits who kind of organized this person getting a massive deal to, to get the massive reach. And now they're famous. TikTok, you had people like my cousin who download an app in their bedroom in the middle of Iowa, wherever you are, you, you know, post a video on your phone and you wake up and you got more reach than, um,

you know, the Kimmathy Chalamet or whoever the biggest movie star is. It's amazing actually. And the algorithm. Well, but isn't that, wasn't that also the case with Instagram? Isn't it the case? At one point. I feel what's happened though is to grow on Instagram has become incredibly difficult. Very difficult. Almost impossible actually. And you're also only reaching

Every time you post, you're only reaching a small percentage of your audience. So small. You know that my close, close friends who I'm very close with, they tell me that they never see my stories. Yeah. Like it never comes up. My posts never come up. My reels never come up. So like the audience is like so small. And I feel like with TikTok, I started TikTok maybe what, five months ago maybe? Yeah. I had a few of my own videos got to a million, which was shocking. And I...

I grew much faster. And then whenever I post, like I have two, I have two of a habits and hustle one. And I also have my Jennifer one. And I've had like a bunch of videos, like not a, like, you know what I mean? Within reason, like maybe 10 that's hit over a million never would happen.

on Instagram. So that's why everyone's going to TikTok right now, whether you're a brand. I mean, that's how brands are breaking in. Brands are like breaking it. Like if you're big on an Instagram, you're going to like, that's how BLK, you know, they broke on TikTok. A girl that saw their videos broke.

was a buyer for Walmart. And, you know, that's how they got into Walmart. Amazing. But beyond that, they're like a cool, they're known to be like a super cool brand because all these young influencers are like drinking the black water and da, da, da, da. And it's become like a thing. And I feel like you don't have that cachet on Instagram or Facebook at all. And look at like even the music industry. Yeah, absolutely. Where are the record labels spending money right now? They're spending money on TikTok for, you know, their artists to get

For creators to use their artists' music to make TikToks. Music promotions are a massive thing in the management world, agency world, label world, and those all take place on TikTok. What's so crazy about TikTok as well is, you know, I'm 22, so I'm on that kind of upper cusp of Gen Z where I'm, you know, young enough that I'm an insider, but also old enough to where

I'm kind of an outsider as well. - You're hardly an outsider. What's the starting point for it? - It's eight to 24 is the age range. - Oh, eight to 28? - So I'm really right at the cusp. - Simon's a boomer. - You're basically like a dinosaur like me. So join me on Facebook. - He's a boomer. - He doesn't remember the 90s like I do. - No, you don't remember the 90s? - No, I wasn't born. - You're a baby. Yeah, you're not even a 90s person, of course. But like, so then,

So Patreon comes and that's how I want to like, so Patreon then is a paid, paid subscription model where people then were like, where, uh, creators or someone of influence or whatever, they can give private content or like, uh, like, yeah. So the two, the two big, the two big platforms in, you know, in the direct monetization space were Patreon and OnlyFans, OnlyFans being much bigger. Um, and,

and it was pretty clear, you know, Patreon, it's a fan membership platform where you post paywall content, same as fan fix, but it's for a much older demographic. It's, you know, as we said, like a parent, a platform where parents would use, it's akin to Facebook, um, more YouTube first, um,

And then it's also more of a, it's more of a crowdfund for struggling artists, you know, being a patron donating to support that creator. That's how I view it. Yeah. And it was created by Jack Conti who, uh, you know, built the platform essentially around his himself. And how much did they charge? They charge, uh, eight to kind of five to 12.5%. But, uh,

Um, Oh no. Do you mean the creator, the creator, the creators choose to be your own price. So then, because like when I know we say like your parents age, but like, I mean, there are a lot of young people, like how would is the age range for Patreon? We, um, like really, I think kind of it's, you know, seen as kind of thirties to fifties. Um, but then, you know, on the other hand, you are only fans, which only fans of porn site. Um, you know, it's a porn site. You can say whatever you'd like. It is.

It's a poor, soft porn. Maybe do they have any restrict? I mean, I thought for a while there, they restricted. So they did for like a five minute. Yeah. They, they, they, they tried to move out of that, that category, uh, and more into the Patreon and, and our, our world, uh, of brand friendly content. Uh, but they got a lot of backlash from, uh,

women communities from the creators on their platform who were monetizing through, you know, pornographic content. So OnlyFans allows, you know,

porn on their platform as well. Like how? Like full on porn. And then Patreon allows nudity on their platform. They do? Yes, they do. You could create your page to be 18 plus on Patreon and you could post nude content in all different types of nudity, but you can't, you can't go that as far as on OnlyFans. So fanfics is...

strictly family friendly, 13 plus, you know, the most PG, um, exclusive content. So family, so fanfics is family friendly. Yeah. 13 plus you said. Yeah. And what was the other thing? Uh, the most family, uh, the, the most PG, um, exclusive content platform, you know, on the internet. Um, and, um,

Uh, and we're tick tock first mobile first and built by and for Gen Z essentially. So is it kind of also, I, it seems very, we didn't talk about cameo. Isn't it similar to cameo? Uh, not really. So cameo, um, is more, you know, I'm going to buy a birthday video, uh, for my wife and, uh,

You know, I'm going to find that B-list or C-list actor on Cameo to create a birthday video for my wife. And then that's pretty much it. And the payment frequency on Cameo is very, very low. So people buy maybe one Cameo a year. If that. If that. And Cameo has tested other products like fan clubs or they have like an NFT they launched recently.

um, called the cameo pass, but really cameo isn't one of our competitors. Um, no, no, no, but I thought the same type of idea, same type of idea in, you can spend money direct monetization. Yeah, absolutely. Same space. Yeah. At the beginning, I thought they were doing really well. I don't know how they are numbers now, but I think not so hot recently. They, you know, had some big layoffs, but, um,

I think it's a tough business with very low payment frequency. You do, as Simon said, you do one purchase for your friend's birthday for a couple of hundred bucks and then you kind of go back. It's a novelty. Fanfics is our

Our fans are, you know, back there every day supporting their favorite creators, constantly messaging, you know, paying to message their favorite creators, doing obviously monthly subscriptions. But I mean, Cameo is awesome. We like, we support any business that supports creators. A lot of the creators on our platform also use, you know, Cameo. Yeah.

but it hasn't become their main revenue stream. So with FanFix, with the creators we work with, we often become their main source of revenue. - Wow, really? - And this is recurring revenue. So once a subscription is made,

and creators grow their subscriber base, they then renew those subscriptions the following month and continue to grow their subscriber base. So really what we want FanFix to be is a hub for creator monetization. And we always like to think about how can we allow creators to earn as passively as possible because we understand they have

busy lives. They're always creating content, traveling, working, whatever it may be. And we want to create passive income streams for them. So I guess my question would be,

So basically it's very similar to a Patreon, but it caters to a younger audience. And then how about in terms of the money? Like how much do people like, what's, what's your price? Like, what do you, what's your cut that you give to people versus like, I'm just using Patreon because it's another example of another direct monetization. Courageous keep net, net of fanfics fees, fanfics, fanfics fees. And, uh, and, and, um,

payment processing fees, creators keep 80%. And they charge, they set their own subscription price. We don't cap it. They charge whatever they want. And they also consider price for fans to message them. So we see prices as low as five bucks.

a subscription a month or, you know, three bucks a message all the way up to 50 bucks a month for subscription and 500 bucks a message. So, you know, there's really a big variety. And, but we, the one thing that we couldn't anticipate going into this and probably

that a lot of investors and people disagree with us on is how willing people, especially Gen Z, you know, was to support their favorite creators and to support them financially. We were completely shocked. Yeah. And also to pay for content. So that's, that's something we got pushed back on when we first started. We have seen a large shift into now where Gen Z spends a

a ton of money on Twitch live streams, for example, or Fortnite skins, for example. Yeah, that's big. You know, you see...

a lot of these high schoolers or elementary school students taking their parents credit card and spending thousands of dollars on FIFA Ultimate Team or Madden Mobile or Fortnite skins as I mentioned. And what we saw with Twitch was something that really surprised us. So, you know, we haven't talked about Twitch at all. Yes. I thought Snapchat also is another one that's emerging as big again. Snapchat and Twitch have emerged, you know, over the last

Well, they've been big for quite some time, but over the last few months, they've really picked up with Gen Z creators. Why? Partially Snapchat has offered new monetization features for creators to earn consistent revenue with uploading a ton of Snapchat stories and then them embedding ads into those Snapchat stories and doing a rev share with the creators.

who are creating that content. But with Twitch, what's very exciting for us is how much these Twitch streamers are earning off tips alone.

You know, their fans are tipping them when they're playing, you know, video games and streaming that or just streaming in their bedroom. And there's no added benefit to tipping. You see thousands of dollars of tips going to creators through live streams. But if Harry tips,

$1,000 and I tip $0 we have access to the same content. So there's really no added benefit there So that's where you know fanfics to come in Really being a part of that creators community being able to engage with the community with the creator directly And also being able to support that creator. So why did you think initially that? charging

would be a problem if Patreon was doing it and people were already doing it so why did you think that you would have an issue? The answer is we didn't. This was really investors and people who might not have understood Gen Z as well as they thought they did. Right, because probably your investors were

- But it's definitely, it's a valid concern in that TikTok is obviously completely free. Instagram is completely free. YouTube is completely free. - It's endless content. - And it's endless content at your fingertips for these Gen Z fans.

But our theory was with, you know, with, with content becoming just completely endless, you know, exclusive content and kind of behind the scenes stuff is all the more valuable. And so our theory was that they, they would pay for content. But, you know, a lot of investors and people disagree with us and said, you know, why the hell would you pay when you can go and see stuff for free? But, you know, we definitely, definitely seen, we've been, well,

very, very surprised. We knew it was going to happen and people were willing, but we were shocked at just how willing they were. I wonder if it's because it's like people want to be voyeurs, right? They want to know what's happening behind this, even though it's still content that people make, but it's like, it's like the fear of missing out, right? Like, what am I missing? So you'll pay the extra like five, 10, $20 a month.

All right. The time has almost come. My book, Bigger, Better, Bolder, is hitting the shelves, launching, debuting on December the 27th. And I am so excited. I'm thrilled that I get to share this book with you guys. It took me two years to write it.

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My entire philosophy is about living the life you want and not the life you get. And really, it's really about

taking actionable steps that anybody can do and anybody can learn. Unfortunately, a lot of us get stuck in the self-doubt syndrome, right? And the fear of failure, which then holds us back from going after things or asking for things that really is much more aligned with who we are and the life we want to live. So that's why I'm so thrilled that I

have this book now to share with people about helping people, teaching people how they can make these bold moves and become bolder and asking for what they want and finding the courage within them to live the life they want. Like I said, I'm so excited. It's on pre-order right now. You can pre-order it anywhere, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, and really start living true to who you are. And I can't wait to see your response once you get it.

Thanks. Whose idea was it? Be honest. Again, we, we, we come up with things together. Yeah. Harry and I were, uh, we're sitting around a fire as I mentioned. Another fire? Same fire. Same fire actually. Same fire? In Harry's backyard. Um, and that's, that's really our incubator. It's been a great incubator. Having a couple of drinks, um,

And I'm not going to say who said it first. Who brought it up first? You have to. Well, I don't know. I mean, for people watching, we crack the same joke at the same time outside. So we think the same. We do think the same. But who went, I have an idea first. Who said that? I think it's not like a light bulb went off and an idea happened. The conversation was...

I think all these contributing factors. Think about this. Before you start to try to wiggle yourself out of this question. We'd be very good politicians. Yes, think about, yes, right? Or not so great. No, no, think about Facebook, right? Like it wasn't Mark Zuckerberg who had the actual idea. It was those other people. You don't even know their names, those two twins. But it was Mark that actually like executed and made it what it was. So it doesn't really matter.

who the idea, ideas are cheap. The ideas are super cheap. It's like 99% is execution or perspiration. Inspiration is one. So I'm not going to hold you to like, Oh, that means this. I'm just curious. So whose idea was it? Just say one or one of the other. You didn't say the same time. So I'll give, I'll give Simon full credit as a gentleman. Um, but, but I think, but I, I mean, so let's expand on that. So, uh, Harry, we were at Harry's house, uh,

Harry, we were talking about the recent news in the creator economy with Patreon's earnings came out. How would they do it? And they paid out like at the time they were paying out like they paid out like five billion to creators. How much? They paid out five billion to creators. How much did OnlyFans pay out at the time? Also billions. And there was really no Gen Z creators making money on the platform. And at

At that time, I was living in an apartment building.

um right in century city where a lot of the tiktokers were living uh like a tiktok house so it was uh it was the 10 000 apartment building yeah i don't live there anymore but um yeah so there were a ton of tiktokers there and we would see uh you know addison ray walking down the street and and so forth and none of them were on patreon and they would never want to tarnish their brand reputation um

And they actually weren't even of the legal age to join OnlyFans at the time. So how old is she now? Addison Rae, 20, 21. So she could have been on. The D'Amelios also lived in that building. They, um, like Charlie was, you know, under 18. Yeah. So, so, and, and they would never join, uh, an only, uh, platform like OnlyFans because, uh,

When creators do that, they lose out on a lot of high paying brand deals. And especially for the D'Amelio's who have- It ruins your entire- Hollister, yeah. Personal life. Yeah. It's like so cheesy and I feel like it's like when you have no, well, I shouldn't say that. It's not cheesy if you like that sort of thing. Yeah. So this all kind of transpired to being at Harry's house. I did bring up the idea. Thanks for letting me have this one. Yeah.

And no, we really sat there for hours just talking through it, really breaking it down, trying to figure out every aspect of the business, competitors out there. And I think we literally stayed there all night. And we knew this was the one and ended up going into debt, signing on developers that we couldn't afford and just getting started.

Yeah. But it really, really, you know, I think, I think it was an absolute execution play and these, you know, there, there are a ton of people who, it's not, I mean, it's not like we had, you know, it's not like we had something that was, you know, patented and trademarked and, you know, had a, had a massive differentiation. A lot of people have tried to do what we did and, you know, a lot of people still try. It just was all down to execution. And when, when, you know, when we're kind of hearing, you

Other founders try and you know pitch us now for investment etc. Or you know just for advice I almost kind of don't really care what the idea is. It's just you know, it's these things are just execution place Yeah, yes I agree and I think it's a you bet on the people more than anything 100% especially at early stage Yeah, I think so. I mean I

I think, well, it's important that the idea is good, right? Yeah, of course. And there's a market. I think it's super important the idea is good. It can't be some silly, silly idea. But it comes down to who's going to be doing it. He's had his fair share of silly ideas. I'm sure. The storage unit in the garage. No, there's more. We'll have to talk off camera. Oh, my God. I'm sure. But listen, that's how things happen. All you need is one good one. Yeah. One good idea. But so then...

How much money did you initially raise then? So we um, we in total Raised about 1.3 million which you know really is for and really is is not very much You know in the space and not very much compared to any of our competitors. Um and um

And we raised that actually just for like our college dorm rooms. Really? Yeah. So yeah, we couldn't go out there and raise $20 million like some of our competitors. But you raised 1.3 through who? Like who was the people who gave you the money? So angel investors. And then we did have a couple of VCs in there. In the first million? Yeah. Well, the first check, the first kind of thing is a funny story because we... So as we were saying earlier, I've had...

10 businesses, 15 businesses, maybe, I don't know, God knows how many. Just stretching the numbers. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like that video on TikTok. 1 billion views. You're just ruining your success rate. But none of them had been successful. I hadn't made a penny out of any of them.

until this one. And the thing that I thought, you know, really was holding it back was I'd never taken any risk. So for this one, we decided, okay, we're going to go balls to the wall. We're going to take on, so we, you know,

managed to find a development shop, kind of blags that we had the money when we didn't have the money. Um, you know, got them signed like a seven month contract, uh, where we owed them a ton of money that we just didn't have. Um, so we knew we could cover the first, the first two payments ourselves. Um, so we knew we were good for two months and then after two months we were pretty screwed. Uh, so, uh, you know, month one, uh,

I paid month two, Simon paid and then we were out of money. And then how much was it month one a month? 20,000 20 grand a month, somewhere that by month three, we're like, okay, we you know, we're getting down to the wire here. And then we managed to find two kids at USC that we knew, who like, I guess we kind of convinced we were proper business and they gave us the money. They ended up doing extremely well off of their investments. How much did they give you?

Uh, they gave us, uh, it was enough to cover the, the, the, that, that month's payment. It was like, uh, it was, I think it was 15, 20,000. Enough to, enough to where we were fine for that month. Um, who are these kids? They're really good friends of ours now. Um, I didn't, I didn't know them at the time, but Troy Bondi and Winston. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really, really smart guys. Who,

Who are they? How do you know them? How do you know them? Or how do you guys know them? So I was actually interning with Troy at an investment bank the summer before. Really? American Discovery Capital in Westwood. And we had friends who went to college with them, got to know them over the years.

And now we're very close with them. We co-invest alongside them and, you know, a ton of startups and they actually have a cool post probiotic pasta sauce company called saws that they're launching in air one in the next few weeks. Are you going to lend them 15, 20,000? I think we're going to invest, but definitely we, we definitely back those guys. You owe those two, right? Yeah. They did very well at the end, but they, so month three, you know, we got them, we were fine. Um,

month, you know, month four. But we were late on that payment and the development show was not happy. Month four, we just didn't have the money. And then I think half, we spoke to all these, you know, VCs, all these investors. No one was backing to part-time founders raising out of their dorm rooms. Zero background. Did you drop out by this point? No. No,

but so, and then, you know, we were really, really, uh, not, not in a good place. And then we met, um, you know, but when,

Whenever it's a big name VC, you know, we prepare, you know, we do a big pitch, whatever. And then a friend of mine at Tulane had said to me, he's like, oh, I was on an email chain with this guy who I think might, I think you might be an investor. I'm not entirely sure. I haven't actually met him, but I'll just, I'll just email him. And this was, I think this was like 6pm on a Thursday night. He emails the guy, the guy responds within a minute.

this guy, Glenn Anderson, and didn't know any background on him. Kind of didn't, you know, didn't really take the call very seriously. He responds within a minute. - One of our partners was taking the call on ski slopes. - Yeah, so we had no background. We said, I don't really know who this guy is. I think it's just like a networking call probably. But, you know, we, so took the call 9:00 AM. My partner's on the slopes, camera off, like, you know, occasionally taking his mic off,

And then at the end, the guy's like, yeah, you know, I honestly don't fully understand it, but like, I like you guys and, you know, it sounds really cool. So just let me know how much you want. And if you let me know by 1 p.m., I'll wire you the money today. And so we let him know and wired us the money within 24 hours. How much did he give you? So he wanted to give us...

any, literally any amount. Um, initially we were thinking like 500,000. Yeah, but we were, we were raising, uh, we needed to raise, we told him we were raising 200 K. He told us he'd give us whatever we want. Um, but we thought, well, it looks needy if we tell him 200 K. Um, but we'd really like 200 K. So we just told him 150 and then, uh, he gave us 150, which, you know, um,

Um, wait, and this guy, like who is this guy? This guy is Glenn Anderson. He's amazing up in, uh, San Francisco has, um, about 50 active invasion angel investments out currently has had multiple successful ones. He was one of, uh,

he was the head of the Google brain team at Google. So he led a division for about 10 years at Google, um, where he was actually training the, the future leaders of, of artificial intelligence and, and machine learning. Um,

And this was a person at your school, Tulane. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. He was a friend of mine at Tulane. No, no, no. I'm saying the person was like, I think I know this one guy who might be interested. Yeah, a friend of mine at Tulane. He didn't even know the guy. They'd been on an email chain together. But then Glenn, I mean. Why did he think he would be a good person? Why was he on an email chain? He was the only angel investor he knew.

But also this is a time where you're extremely desperate. And when you're an entrepreneur, you have to just hustle. It's a great one. It's amazing. Oh, 100%. But when you're an entrepreneur, you have to just hustle, scratch and claw for everything.

you can possibly get. Right, but you got lucky again. So lucky, yeah. I feel like all the stars lined up. Totally. Like, randomly some person turns out this is a great guy from who, like, started the Google Brain team and then what happens? Well, so, so. Just wires you whatever you want. I think, yeah, but I, but it's. Can you give him my number? I can give him a number. He actually gave us more,

more funding later on as well. He just had so much conviction in what we were doing. But the guy, you know, and, you know, really amazing guy. And he did, you know, he's done obviously very well off his fanfics investment and other investments as well. But I think it really shows that you gotta, you gotta, you know, things...

Things are very, you got to really, it's like pushing a boulder up a hill. And, you know, once, once you get to the top of that hill, the boulder, you know, falls and it looks pretty easy, but I mean, it was really bloody difficult. Hundreds of kind of no's and then we spoke to 200 investors, some of that, um, to get there. And, um,

He was amazing. Then also, we were students again in our dorm rooms, as we said, and we would try and do everything we possibly could to pretend we weren't students. And he completely knew. - He knew right away. - He didn't care. We sent him an email the following week. He's like, "Yeah, I know you guys got finals coming up.

Oh my God, that's so funny. Make sure you, you know, get your work done. You can, uh, send some, you know, don't worry if you go dark for a couple of weeks, I don't mind. We're like, what a, what a guy. This guy sounds incredible. Amazing. He's amazing. He was, he was, yeah. Manna from heaven. That's totally exactly. Yeah. So then what happens?

So then, um, then we, so that was spending the money on all the dollars going in. We didn't pay ourselves a single dollar until we sold to the exit. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, so you sold, it's been 10 months. I mean, it's like, so you sold, it's been 22 in 10 months. I mean, Oh, how terrible for you. So did you live? Okay. Did you have like bread and water for the last 10 months? Our parents had to provide. Yes. I know it must've been so tough. Yeah. So that was, I think that was, you know, kind of, uh,

April, May, April, May of, uh, of 2021. And then we second semester of our junior year of college. And then we launched, we say we launched a platform in August. We actually launched in June, uh, but we were the only customers for two months. Um, so, you know, we launched really did not, we, we kind of made these, you know, made these projections were thought we were just going to go crazy in our first day. Um,

Got zero traction for two months. And then I think it was big, big celebration when we got our first customer that wasn't us.

How did you get it? Like, what did you do for marketing? How did you get the word out? So we actually have spent zero dollars on marketing to this day. Zero. So our whole platform is built on network effects. Right. So, you know, we acquire creators through a variety of different ways. One, just personal relationships, managers, agents, creators. I'll tell you how it started. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, no, we just brought on a few creators in like who we were meeting in the creator economy going to these events while we were building the platform. Right. And we launched with a handful of creators. And as Harry said, no customers coming to the platform. So we relaunched two months later and brought a whole bunch of creators on the platform and they started converting.

you know, their followers and paid subscribers. So that was very exciting. And then from there, we ended up going out and raising again because we were out of money. You know, we spent all of the money we raised to get to launch. And then we had no more to continue. So that's when we went to venture funds and brought on Antler Ventures who believed in us when most VCs wouldn't.

you know, to still in college at this time, still taking classes. Right. Um,

And yeah, we were able to build a really solid team. Harry and I didn't have much experience in the creator economy before. So we brought on Tanner Kessel, who's one of our partners who was working in the creator space for years prior, and then Cameron Dallas. So Cameron is our co-founder as well. He is one of the largest creators in the space and was one of the first creators. So he was a creator 10 years ago when

You know, you couldn't monetize as a creator. He was one of the first creators to sign a brand deal. One of the first creators to really pursue being a content creator as a full-time job. So he has seen the ebbs and flows of the creator economy when creators couldn't make a penny to now where brands are paying top dollar for creators and diverting their marketing budget. So he

So he sees, he saw fanfics as the new way for creators to monetize and something he wished he had when he was creating content every day. So he's, was he the one who really kind of helped spearhead the getting people on the platform? Yeah, totally. So I mean, the approach we took, which was completely different to our competitors was we thought, okay, right, we're going to build this business around and build a team out around access to creators, getting access to creators, right?

And so when all of our competitors were kind of spending their money hiring engineers and CTOs and et cetera, we thought we're just going to bring creators onto our team. And, you know, we kind of had the the the ethos creator is God. We're going to put the creators first. And so brought Cameron on and, you know, against all odds. And I think I think we had like under 100 customers at that point.

convince him to join. And he was really, he has 70 million followers, uh, across platforms and 70, 70, seven zero. Um, he's got 25. I saw a million on Instagram. Yeah. And how many does he have on? I think he's got like, he has like 15 million on Twitter. Uh,

Uh, like 10 million on YouTube, like 18 million on TikTok. What kind of content is he? Uh, so he was huge in, he was at one point the second most followed person on Instagram and started Instagram and then kind of went to Vine and, uh,

was posting jokes, et cetera. And then he went into, then he saw the, he was getting millions of likes and views on these things on Vine, but no one, there was no such thing as a social media influencer. So he, no one was taking it seriously.

And one day he posted a picture outside a building and said, I'm going to be here 4 p.m. tomorrow. Come and see me. Expecting no one to show up. And like 600 teenage girls showed up to come and see him. Even more than that. Are you serious? How old is the guy, by the way? He's 28. Just turned 28. So he's out of Gen Z too. Out of Gen Z. But he was the first social media influencer. You know, he saw, okay, he thought there's...

if all these people are coming to see me when I just posted this yesterday, this stuff has power. So he started, he created MagCon, which, you know, was kind of a touring company where they do these basically concerts slash meetups around the world, which is massively successful.

And then he pioneered the first brand deals, was one of the first creators, I think the first digital creator represented by a large agency. And then eventually, when we met him, it was perfect timing because...

We needed access to creators and some legitimization. It was two schmucks in college trying to sell the stuff. And he really provided. And then at the same time for him, he'd been an influencer for 10 years, was 26 at the time, I think, 27 at the time, and really...

thought he doesn't want to be posting on TikTok when he was 30. Right, he wants to kind of evolve his career. Yeah, totally. And so he wanted to get into the business world full time. And so he joined us as a co-founder and really has been amazing. So how did you find it? Like, how did you get connected to him? Yeah, so we got connected to him through a mutual friend. So

When we first started there are all these content houses in LA and I'm sure you guys have heard of the aloe house or the wish house Hype house, whatever it may be. Yeah, so so, you know, we use that kind of as a go-to-market so we would partner with various content houses and host content days where you know creators could come and create content together collaborate grow each other's following

And one of the content house managers connected us to Cameron because Cameron saw what we were doing and he realized this is actually something that he could get behind because he's approached by brands all the time, by startups all the time to join their teams and really

he can't feel like he could really get behind those projects. Right. But with this, his network of creators, allowing them to monetize in new ways, um, was something that he, he wanted to get involved with. What was the equity that you had to give him to be involved? Well, we can't, can't really say what we gave him. Um, but you know, uh, I think as, as,

was like as an entrepreneur you really have to be able to pull rabbits out of hats yeah i see how you're smiling or rabbits out of that i just love that phrase um you really have to be able to pull rabbits out of hats and you know that there's an element of luck there's an element of you know being in the right place so how much equity did you have to give him so harry i can i really can't say how much how much yeah just let it split we took we took you know we took care of him um

Is it in double digits or is it like nine points below or is it 10 above? Can you do that at least? Can't give, can't give anything. I think that's, I think that's fair. Harry and I are the, uh, you know, the main, no, I know. Yeah. Um, yeah, we, uh,

We own the vast majority of the company, but that's all we can say. You're turning red, Harry. I think that's the light. Is that the light? The sunlight's really... Is that what it is? The sun just hit. I think that's what it is. Is there like a contract? You're not allowed to talk about these things? Yeah, we can't talk about these. But one thing I will say that really, I think, sets us apart from a lot of the competition out there or other platforms is really

We are Gen Z. Oh, I know Cam's 28, but still, a lot of our team is Gen Z. We have multiple creators on our team who are, you know, going out there and onboarding creators, bringing their friends on. How many people do you have on the platform now? We have 8.2 million people

8.2 million? You have that many on that platform? On FanFix? Yeah, we've had 8.2 million people on the platform. Who are like, how many are like... Monthly? Monthly, yeah. 1.6 million last month. That's incredible.

Was it, it can't be all cam, right? Like it had to be like, have you guys done a lot of like, what are some other strategies you use to build out, you know, marketing and to get, I know you didn't spend any money on marketing, but was

You said it was much more all referral, like people were bringing their friends. But to get to that level of people, that was just simple referrals? Or was there any other tactics that you used that were basically for free that you couldn't talk about? Yeah, so I think something that...

as I spoke prior and mentioned prior, is being built on network effects. So creators are the ones actually promoting their FanFix profiles across all their social channels. So they are converting their followers into paid subscribers on FanFix, but they're also driving new creator signups. So if you're a creator and you're seeing four or five of your friends posting about their FanFix profiles every week, you're going to sign up or you're going to ask them about

it. So it really was organic in that creators are driving other creators to the platform and also driving users to the platform. So one thing we like to do is you know

we don't overly promote fanfics and market fanfics the platform because we understand that users aren't coming to fanfics to find new creators to subscribe to. They're being dragged here by their favorite creators. So one thing we do is we actually like to promote the creators on our platform and allow them to grow their followings across all their social channels. So putting marketing spend behind these creators to grow on other channels

in aligning the creator with the FanFix brand to build that brand affinity with their following. So we always like to put creators first. We like to highlight the creators on our platform and help them in growing their following across all their social channels. I'm just curious because Cameron, I know he doesn't want to be an influencer, but does he do FanFix? He's making six figures a year on FanFix. On FanFix alone, right? Yeah. That's crazy.

I mean, it's amazing. And I think, yeah, it's, I mean, it's a really cool, it's really cool. And one of the founders of the company is, you know, making considerable amounts on his own platform.

It's amazing. Name other people that are on your platform that maybe are well known to us. Yeah. I don't know if you, Anna Shumate, Anna Banana on TikTok, one of the largest TikTokers out there, kind of Gen Z icon. What does she do? Anna treats her fanfics almost as like a Finsta. So she'll post...

You know, Q&As with her fans, show posts, unedited content. What's Finsta? Should I be knowing? I think I know. Finsta is, you know, a lot of creators out there. They're old. Fake Instagram. Will create like a fake Instagram where they only let their fans see the content. And it's like best friends. Like closest friends. Yeah, their closest friends. Yeah. So really she gives her fans.

fanfic subscribers access into her daily lives, which they can't find on other platforms. So you look at her TikTok or her Instagram, a lot of it will be highly edited content.

that isn't very authentic. So fan fix is really the platform for that authentic content. You know, non edited content bloopers. So we have podcasters who will put their last 10 minutes of their podcast behind a paywall on fan fix. Who? Like jumpers jump podcast, one of the largest Gen Z podcasts out there. What's it called? Jumpers jump.

Like the Jumpers Jump podcast puts exclusive episodes or extended cuts or bloopers or special segments. - And how much do they charge for subscription? - They charge $6, $6.92 for monthly subscription. But then we have fitness influencers who drop their meal plans or their fitness plans. - Maybe a couple fitness people, I know them, maybe. - A couple fitness, Abby Burner is a new fitness creator who started this week. - Who else?

I don't know. I'm not sure I'm on the spot, but yeah, massive, massive amount. Yeah. Like Matty Monroe is another big creator, big Gen Z icon who's on FanFix. But yeah, it's become their number one kind of form of monetization. So our highest earner I think is earning $6 million a year on FanFix, I think. Who?

I can't say. Oh, my God. I can't disclose their names. So it's all I can say. I can say. I can say. Honestly, honestly. Well, this is, you know, some. It's kind of like private info for them. It's private, exactly. This is one of those things that changes. That one I get. That one I get because it's not your. Yeah.

It's not you. But also this is what happens when, you know, your startup is acquired by a much larger company that, you know, is... There's a lot of like red... A lot of things you can't talk about, which is a great segue into talk about who bought you because it's so unique. It's not someone that...

that you would imagine, right? It's not a tech company. So beauty brand, you said Super Ordinary. Super Ordinary, and they've been absolutely amazing. And I love their brands. By the way, the brands, and I literally am not saying this because you're sitting here. I didn't realize they own not just Ordinary, but Erna Laszlo,

uh, Strivectin I saw on there. They have like Olaplex. They have like huge brands. Yeah. So, so we have a portfolio of brands that, that we own. And then we also have, um, you know, a ton of brand partners, which we handle all their distribution, all their e-commerce, whether that's on Amazon or, uh, uh,

creators or Alibaba or Lazada in Thailand wherever it is in India and Europe why them like what do they I mean what was their reason for

for purchasing you. - So right now they really are the global growth partner for high-end beauty brands and cosmetics brands worldwide. So they take a lot of the big US beauty brands and they launch them into new markets, into China, into Southeast Asia, into other massive beauty markets. So they really are this growth partner and they use these marketplaces as a distribution channel for their products. So creators,

really are the new distribution channels for, you know, beauty products especially. So really allowing creators to be able to sell their products, being able to create brands with creators, as we've seen with, you know, Chamberlain Coffee and Emma Chamberlain or...

prime beverage with KSI and Logan Paul. So being able to create custom lines for creators, being able to white label their portfolio of products with creators, really opening up new distribution outlets for their products and trying to create a seamless experience between creators, brands, and marketplaces worldwide. So it's not like Olaplex, just using that as an example,

They're not allowed, I guess, to use one of your creators and just do a free collaboration. Oh, they totally could. And also another big aspect is... On the actual person, like let's say I was on there. Yeah. And because Olaplex is owned by a super ordinary who owns you, does that mean I'm...

Does that mean I have to do a collaboration with Olaplex and not a free? So a lot of our brands are arm length away. There are some brands that we fully operate and those are like Joanna Vargas is one of our brands that is 100% acquired by Super Ordinary and that's an in-house brand.

Okay, so say whatever. So would I have to do a collab as if I was a creator? So where is the can they can they just like pepper in an inner like an ad on the site somewhere else? No, no. So we haven't done any of that yet. We are going to be doing social commerce currently, the way we're doing it is kind of helping creators white label products. And

and co-create brands with creators. So we get hit up the whole time that creators saying, oh, I want to create a tanning oil. Okay, so we can now help them do that. I want to create a merch brand so we can help them do that. So that's the main way right now. And then the other big aspect of why they bought us is there's massive, massive opportunity for the platform in Asia. And a lot of the US companies

Creative economy companies and platforms neglect the international reach. And, you know, the super ordinary is bread and butter is, is Asia. They're a massive base there. So they're going to take us there and, and, you know, we'll dominate a critical in Asia as well. Yeah. As, as well as being able to facilitate brand deals between you know, our portfolio brands with our creator network.

Um, so right now there are a lot of middlemen between a brand and a creator, uh, at super ordinary, we can remove the whole middleman completely. So, but when they, when they bought you at the 10 month mark, right. Um, and how many users did you have already? And were you making money? Like what were you making? Yeah, we were, we were, we had millions of users at that point and, you know, we're making kind of.

seven figures in, um, in, you know, annualized revenue. So, um, it was, there was a ton of traction with the, um, with the platform, which is, I mean, probably the main reason they bought us. Right. And also it's like a place, it's a great space for them to be, uh,

developing because they have like an audience of what that is. It makes sense to me. And if you were tracking and you're just doing that now, what are you going to do in two years or three years? They bought you early, you know, and what's your deal now? You have to still work with them, right? Like you're still involved in the company. Yeah. Oh yeah. We're still, you know, CEOs of fanfics. And then, so you're still operating. Yeah. We're still, we're still CEO fanfics. We're also SVPs at super ordinary. Yeah.

Uh, so we are, so we are launching, so, so we are launching a suite of new tools for creators in the coming months. Uh,

that will help them with monetizing off of brand deals as well as launching new products and highlighting brands that they want to work with. So stay tuned. We'll have a bunch of new products launching. I want some Olaplex, please, for my hair. We'll get you some. And some Erno Laszlo. I have a whole laundry list of stuff that I'm going to be giving you. Totally. Awesome. I love those brands. I'm serious. By the way, the Ordinary brand...

I'm not just like I said I'm not saying that I heard that like their products are so cost like they're like very very high margin. They're very like they're they're not cheap. I hate the word cheap value value great value great value and very good quality. Yeah. That's why I thought that they have a huge name. People love them.

So, I mean, this is amazing. Did I forget anything in this interview with you, Harry? I don't think so. Not that I can... You definitely didn't forget anything that I can remember. How about you, Simon? Is there anything else you want to talk about? I think you covered it all. I think Harry had a few questions for you, actually. Yeah, exactly. Yeah? Okay, go ahead. I think the final thing, Simon, you know, prepared a dance for the podcast. A TikTok dance that he loved to show. Harry, you know, we always have...

With about three jokes that we recite. Yeah, we have the same jokes that we tell all the time now. He always brings up some TikTok dance I created in the middle of meetings and everyone's always very confused. And did you ever do that? No, never. Never created the TikTok dance. But when I say I didn't create it, they usually don't believe me. And so now they think that you did. They go searching wildly for it. Yeah, they think I'm like embarrassed to show it. Oh my gosh, that's very funny.

You know, really, Harry's the one who created the dances. Yeah. I love this. Okay, so you guys are very young. Now you guys are very rich. Do you guys have girlfriends? Not at the moment. Hey, hit us up. Not at the moment. Yeah. Yeah.

I heard that you're the Gen Z crew, but your age. People don't even have boyfriends and girlfriends anymore. It's much more just dating and hooking up. It's much more casual. It's much more casual. Is that true? Definitely. Yeah, I think Harry has spent a lot of time on...

on the dating apps, whether that's, you know, Hinge, Bumble, even Facebook he uses. He uses Facebook for the old ladies. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's his style. That's his style. That, I think, I think you are right that, you know, long-term relationships, especially amongst like high school students is very different than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Very different. But I'm saying college, I mean, college students, it's like, I feel like it's like

There's very few more. It's not that... It's not an anomaly. Actually, maybe it is an anomaly. I just find it's not very common. Is it just in LA or everywhere? Most of my friends don't have girlfriends. That's just what we like to tell ourselves. Yeah, exactly. I think it all comes back to TikTok, honestly. TikTok ruined everyone's attention span as well as what you...

how some of these creators portray themselves on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, that I think it has really impacted

the dating world. Yep. 100. I mean, also because, uh, nothing is real anymore. Right. And so when you see people in real life versus like online, it's very jarring sometimes. Right. Cause of all the different app filters and stuff like that. But also the, it's like the, uh,

volume of people. So like why, like people have told me many times that they've gone on a date with somebody, whoever, they actually have like a nice time, but nothing like, but they looked like, or nothing like, or yeah. Or that like, but their brains now, the neuroplasticity has changed so much. Like their brains now are just going to like, okay, now I got to go back on my, like, it's not, there's no, like there's, there's no, like you said, there's no attention span to even like take that longer than like an hour.

What I think we are seeing is we are seeing movement back to authenticity, especially amongst Gen Z. And I think Be Real, if you've heard of Be Real or seen that app blowing up. Which one is that app? What's that app? Be Real is an app right now kind of taking the world by storm.

What is it? It essentially is imagine Facebook. I mean, imagine Instagram, but back to its basics, no filters whatsoever. And you really only follow your close friends and family on Be Real. And the thing about Be Real is... And this is an app? Yeah, it's an app. Every day at the same time, it shoots... Random time. At random times, but with all of its users, it shoots out...

it shoots out an alert for you to post on Be Real. And what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to take your phone out and take a photo. And the difference between Be Real and Snapchat or Instagram is Be Real is a dual facing camera. So when you take a photo, if I were to take a Be Real right now, you would see my face and you at the same time. So you can't see your friends Be Reels until you post your own Be Real.

So it's kind of a gamified, authentic platform. - That's a great idea. - That's been blowing up recently. And Instagram and Snapchat copied that feature. So now on Instagram or on Snapchat,

you could take a dual photo where you could see yourself and who you're taking a photo of. Yeah. Yeah. It's a new feature. That's a badge. It's a badge of honor in the social media space. Once Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok try and copy what you're doing. They've done that already with us with subscription. And now be real. So where would it be on Instagram?

- Really? - Yeah, it's launched like the last few weeks. - Are people using it? - Yeah. - Oh, they're crushing it. - They're crushing it. - I think people, you know, people, it's like what we were saying with, you know, with content being endless, it, you know, makes kind of exclusive paywall content all the more valuable. I think it's the same thing with authenticity, with everything so filtered and edited and inorganic, it makes authenticity, people really just crave authenticity.

Listen, you're preaching to the converted. I agree with you. But I do think that like people are now just like even like everyone just automatically goes to a filter because it's like what to do. Yeah. Like it just completely alters everything. And that's why plastic surgery is up and all these problems. People are like so insecure with themselves and they think that they're so like that all their imperfections are so highlighted in real life because you see this like artificial thing.

Yeah. View of you. 100%. And there are all those apps out there like Facetune being a big popular one amongst Gen Z creators. They're so popular. Yeah. And it's, you know, pretty crazy what you can do with these filters nowadays. So then what's your reason? What's your excuses for not having, you know, girlfriends? The filters aren't good enough. The filters aren't good enough. Yeah.

Maybe like 10 years. Exactly. Yeah, 10 years will be some more. But you're just going to say you don't want the filters. You want this be real authenticity, authentistically. Be real. You just said it. Yeah, don't say no to that. So now why don't you find real girls that have no filters and doing all this? Girls with no filters. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what we're looking for. Yeah. You guys can spot who's using a filter. Yeah. Yeah. You can definitely tell. You can definitely tell. I mean, more or less. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. But you're still not going to go and date and have a relationship, are you boys? But either one of you. Yeah.

No, we will. Keep it casual for the near future. No. At some point. Harry's just struggling. If there's anyone out there who, you know, wants to take this guy out. It's the English accent, you know, Simon. That English accent, I'm sure, just is a deterrent for most girls.

Oh, yeah. They hate it. It's awful. It's like beans on toast for every meal. Exactly. Who wants that? Who wants to do that? No, exactly. Gosh. Well, okay. So how do people find you guys? Go on FanFix? Give us some details for people who want to be a creator on FanFix or...

Yes. Or curious. If you are aspiring creator, go to fanfics.io and apply to be a creator. Yeah, apply. Yeah. So that's actually one thing we didn't touch. But on FanFix, we are exclusive with who we allow to be a content creator. So you actually have to apply to be a creator on our platform. Okay. You have to go through our approval process. We verify your identity. We check that you actually have built a community and engage community. Okay.

And then once you are accepted, we handhold you through the process of launching your page, creating content to begin with, and really be able to build your community. So that's something that no other platform does. - I like that. - On Patreon, on OnlyFans, whatever it may be.

You can become a creator today and start creating content. And there's no control over, you know, that content being posted. So on FanFix, coming back to it, FanFix.io, apply to be a creator. Harry will personally review your application. Absolutely. And yeah, and then once you're accepted, you essentially connect your bank account. You set your subscription price, your message price, and you start making money. That simple. I love it.

Thank you. Okay, so this has been, I don't know how long it's been. Harry, how long has it been? Like an hour and a half? I feel like, yeah, hour and a half. I was worried I had nothing to say to you. I guess I was wrong. I thought it was going to be four minutes. I know, right? Four and a half minutes. Harry, do you want to share your Twitter? Yeah. Yeah, sure. I don't have a Twitter. I don't have a Twitter.

Well, thank you, boys. And thank you. I'm very proud of you. And now I'm very proud of you, too. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. This was excellent. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Habits and Hustle, time to get it rolling. Stay up on the grind, don't stop, keep it going. Habits and Hustle, from nothing into something. All out, hosted by Jennifer Cohen. Visionaries, tune in, you can get to know them. Be inspired, this is your moment. Excuses, we ain't having that. The Habits and Hustle podcast, powered by Habit Nest.