A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:30:44 · Jack Kuveke
[00:30:44] S0: But basically, so I mean, the reality is just consumer debt has gotten so out of control that it doesn't even make sense, right? Like if you look back at like the 1940s, the only thing you could get a loan for was a house because your friend got blown up in Iwo Jima and the American government felt bad for you. So they're like, okay, here's $3,000. You can buy a home in Michigan. And the house literally was $3,000. If you wanted to buy something that was worth $50, you had to ask yourself, do I have $50? If the answer is you have $49, you just couldn't buy anything. But since then, like in the fifties and the seventies, we started introducing like car loans, credit cards. And then by like the eighties and nineties, it was just fully expected that everyone was in crippling debt. You have to take on crippling debt to go to college. You have to take on crippling debt to buy a car. You have to buy , take on crippling debt now to like travel to France. No one I know can afford to go to Europe, but everyone's been 15 times and then they're complaining like, I don't have any money. It's like, well, yeah, I just saw your photos of you in Fiji. You make $42,000 a year. Fiji's pretty expensive. How did you afford that? And then on top of that, you look at them and they're like wearing a Gucci tracksuit and like, they order from DoorDash every single day. And I'm like, you literally cannot afford to do that. Even people making $150,000 a year should not be ordering DoorDash every day . That just is a , financially a really bad idea. Unless you live in like Iowa where rent's like $400, but if you live in
00:32:21 · Pablo Srugo
[00:32:21] S1: New York by , they're sponsored by DoorDash. So just , uh, what would you say? Oh ,
00:32:24 · Jack Kuveke
[00:32:24] S0: Oh , me , I'm, I'm sponsored by DoorDash too . It's , by the way , I'm getting to that. This is a DoorDash sponsorship <laugh> , I'm fully on board . But like, it's a good idea . What , what literally happened is, you know, I, I think everything really started to blow up during like the bling rap era because like, it started to come out that like everyone was a model. Everyone was wearing a $50,000 watch and $20,000 worth of chains and wearing a Gucci tracksuit. And everyone looked up to these like rappers and models and celebrities as role models. And they're like, I wanna live like them too. Previously you couldn't buy any of that. But then credit card companies and banks started loaning people for consumer debt on things that they literally don't need. Not a house, not a car. watches call like, you know , uh, expensive couches and stuff. And now everyone's sitting around being like, man, why don't I have any money? And it's like, well, you went to Wesleyan, took out $250,000 in loans to go to Wesleyan. You got a degree in whatever, like human resources, <laugh> , you work at some company making $58,000 a year. You have a $40,000 wardrobe, and your apartment in New York City is at minimum $4,000 a month. And on top of that, in the split second that you almost notice that your life is indebted and that you up. Katy Perry comes out with a new song, goes through space, you know, Lizzo starts talking about someone. You forget that you're in debt. And then in that split second , right, right after you decide, man, I feel kind of bad about myself. You know what I should do, DoorDash, Ben, and Jerry's, but your credit card declines and you go, I can't afford Ben and Jerry's on DoorDash. But that's where Klarna comes in. Now you can finance the Ben and Jerry's over 15 payments and you can't afford to get it, and your Xanax will also arrive tomorrow because you're on, you don't know why you're just depressed all the time. Maybe it's your debt. But like, that's where America is. We're just in consumer debt. Hell, it's everyone's fault. Everyone should take personal responsibility, but instead we're gonna blame the banks.
00:34:26 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:34:26] S1: The funny thing is about all that is like, you know, and for, I should note, I , I travel to like Latin America pretty, pretty often. It's pretty, it's actually common when you pay with credit card, they ask you how many installments like you , you pay with credit card. And at the POS it's like, how many installments do you wanna , you wanna do this in? And you know, normally people are doing like 2, 10, 12, right? Like , you even do that with a movie. You go to the movies, you buy a movie ticket today and you're paying it. Here's the crazy part, like when you do it, you're like, oh, that's kind of nice. Like, I'm paying like a dollar a month to go to the movies today. Like in 12 months, you're paying for a movie you saw a year ago. Plus the movie saw , the bun has one after the , after you're paying for Ben and Jerry's, they got 15 months ago, he was still paying off ice cream. It's not, you know, it's not a good place to be in. Do [00:35:12] S0: You know, do you know how old my grandfather was? He's 88. He's a gem or no, 89. He turns 90 in September. Do you know how old he was? Pablo when he went to a restaurant for the first time? He ate out for the first time? No, [00:35:24] S1: How old ? How
00:35:24 · Pablo Srugo, Jack Kuveke
[00:35:24] S1: How old ? How [00:35:25] S0: 23 <laugh> . And I asked him, I was like, grandpa, that sounds crazy. What are you talking about? He's like, well, I couldn't afford to go out to restaurants. I grew up in the Bronx, Jack, I just, I ate at either my house or if I was lucky, a friend would have me over to dinner. And these were not, these were not like, they were, they were, you know, lower middle class , but they weren't like poverty line poor. But he was like, yeah, what are you talking about? I didn't , I didn't go out to eat. I , I couldn't do that. I literally could not afford to, so I just didn't. And he walked to college. He walked to college , Iona College. He was the first one in his family to go. He walked in nine miles to college every day and then would just hitchhike if he was lucky or walk nine miles one way to get to college.
00:36:09 · Pablo Srugo
[00:36:09] S1: I think these days, like you should , you , you're like, anything you want, you should have, you know, and also it's so much in your face that everybody, what everybody else has, like you said, that you just like, are constantly reinforced, like, man, I should be like, you see other people traveling, like I should also be able to travel like I deserve it. And <laugh> , you know, Klarna comes in, let's you travel, so you do it. Meanwhile, I met this founder the other day who's really, really smart dude, like engineer type and first company did work out , starts a second company like four years ago. Um, raises like 200 k. And I was just like, and still like, it's a hardware startup, so it's a bunch of tech work, RD whatever, still not really sharing revenue. I'm just like, dude, how are you like living? And he is like, man, it's not, he's in Toronto, like downtown Toronto by the way. He's like, it's not that hard when you , um, just make it a point <laugh> to like live cheaply. So, you know, I , I can't say that I'm doing that, but my point is, there is extremes out there of what's, of what's possible. I mean, he must be making like 40, 50 KA year, you know, just, you just do the math on it. So somehow he's making it happen.