Relentless
01:07:28 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[01:07:28] S0: Yeah. [01:07:28] S1: One of the things that I saw, like, a month ago was a earnings call where I I saw, like, Subway Surfer underneath, and I was kinda blown away when I saw that. Yeah. It's very interesting. Over time, like, what have you learned on the communication side and, like, how to communicate what you're working on and why you're working on it?
01:07:45 · Brian Armstrong
[01:07:45] S0: Yeah. Well, I think one thing I've learned is that the world is so noisy with all these ideas. People really you're lucky if can install one idea in their head about what you're up to. Right? And, so you have to make it a lot simpler than you think. Sometimes people get up there and they say, well, we're kind of trying to do this. We're also trying to do that, and it's part of this broader thing here. And so a lot of this is kinda comms one zero one, but you can kind of boil it down and say, you know, what are our priorities this year? It's one, two, and three. Like, try to only have three. Don't have five. You know? And don't... Like, every time you say it, try to say it in the exact same way, the exact same words, in the same order, and make it shorter. You know? Like, if... There's a difference between saying something that's, six words versus two. Like, the two is easier to stick in people's minds. And if stick you want in people's minds, it helps if they hear it multiple times, but it helps if they hear it from multiple different people. It helps if they hear it in multiple formats. So they might hear me say it on a podcast or at a company town hall, but they might also see it posted in Slack, in writing or an email. And they might hear... Not just hear it from me, but they might hear it from their manager or, like... You know? So it's really about, like, how do you install those ideas in people's heads? And it's the same thing for, like, from a customer or external comms point of view, not just internally. How do you make it digestible and simple and memorable? And then people can... If you poll, like, a random person on the street, like, what do know about this company? I was like, oh, don't they do x? And you'd be surprised sometimes because you're trying to put all this complicated stuff, and the only thing they can remember is, oh, that's like the place you buy Bitcoin. You know? It's like... So you have to really... You have much fewer opportunities to store these ideas in people's heads than people think.
01:09:26 · Ty Morse, Brian Armstrong
[01:09:26] S1: Yeah. I remember this... I think it was a story about Steve Jobs, and I forgot who the other guy was. But it was... Steve was trying to explain, like, a computer or something, and there was a whole bunch of different ideas. And this guy, you know, turned to Steve, and he wads up all these pieces of paper, and he takes, like, five pieces and he throws them at him. And Steve doesn't catch any of them. And then he wads up one and he just throws it at him, and he catches it immediately, and it's easy. Yeah. And that, I think, is kind of the same idea around ideas. It's like it's very easy for people to digest one thing. [01:09:53] S0: A physical demonstration can stick in people's minds in a brilliant way too. That... That's a great point. [01:09:57] S1: Have you ever done any physical demonstrations other than a massive marble Bitcoin? [01:10:04] S0: Well, I I remember, for instance, like, we had one product showcase where we were announcing all this stuff, and I thought, like, oh, this is gonna be the big headline. This is gonna be the... And it turned out, like, everybody just really liked the Coinbase credit card that launched. And it partly was because I think, like, on video, we're just like, yeah. Like, look at this. And then they they could hold it, and then they saw... They're like, oh, it looks really cool. And it's like a physical artifact, like, stuck in people's minds.
01:10:04 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
[01:10:04] S0: Well, I I remember, for instance, like, we had one product showcase where we were announcing all this stuff, and I thought, like, oh, this is gonna be the big headline. This is gonna be the... And it turned out, like, everybody just really liked the Coinbase credit card that launched. And it partly was because I think, like, on video, we're just like, yeah. Like, look at this. And then they they could hold it, and then they saw... They're like, oh, it looks really cool. And it's like a physical artifact, like, stuck in people's minds. [01:10:25] S1: You've got this idea where if you're trying to come up to speed on any industry, whether it be, like, longevity or something else, you'll basically get a group of the best experts that you can find in a room, like, at dinner together and talk with them. How do you kind of think about coming up to speed on just Coinbase? Like, when you're thinking about entering some new industry or doing some new thing, how do you rapidly get that mental model in your head of what good looks like and what you should be going after?
01:10:49 · Brian Armstrong
[01:10:49] S0: Yeah. So I think that being able to convene some people for dinner is underrated. I mean, it it sounds simple, but a lot people don't do this. They're they're sitting around thinking like, man, I wish that I could create a company in this space or do a great podcast or make a great film or whatever they're trying to do. And you can read a bunch of stuff on the Internet. You can read books. Like, that's great as a starting point. But there's something magical about reaching out to whoever you can get to show up, even if you're early in your career or later or whatever, and just say, hey. I wanna talk about this. You... You're interested in it. Like, will you come to this dinner? Because think about that. Like, it's actually much... It's much harder to call somebody randomly and be like, do you wanna cofound this thing with me? Right? Or like, do you wanna make a film with me? And they're like, no. I'm already making films. Like, don't... I do my own... You know? But people will say yes to a dinner more easily than they will say yes to, like, I will I will leave what I'm doing in the world and come... You know? And it's also more interesting than sometimes just reading books because books are written typically about stuff that's already happened, and you might have to read, like, for eight hours, read a book to get like, oh, there's one nugget in there that's relevant to me. But in a dinner, in a captive setting, you can actually direct it to where you want to go. And so you get... It's a lower threshold for people to say, Okay. I'll come to this dinner. There's other interesting people there. And you can really just go around the room and ask everybody, you know, what do you think is the most exciting thing happening in this field right now or whatever you want to talk about. And most of stuff you hear people talk about, you'll be like, I know that one, or that's not interesting to me, or this person's bad at communicating or whatever. And you're kind of... Honestly, you're kind of evaluating each of them a little bit, like, who who raised your energy the most? You know? Who might I... Could I see myself working with? And then you'll see, like, a little piece of the puzzle here, a little piece there. And sometimes you leave the dinner, you're like, was waste of time. Nothing interesting happened.
01:12:36 · Brian Armstrong, Ty Morse
Other times, after a week or two, you're like, somebody calls you back and, like, you know, that dinner made me think of this, and you said this, but I actually think the other piece is this. And so something starts to happen in the world when you convene a group like that. Yeah. And I I... There's... I've seen examples of that now where, you know, you can actually really make progress towards starting a company just by hosting a dinner. It's like a very lightweight step for people to start to make progress. [01:13:00] S1: I also kinda love that because it's it's a little bit... The whole action produces information. There's also this other idea of, like, action produces action. And so if you just kind of are the activation energy for some new idea to be spread and some new gathering to happen Yeah. That can just be like the first domino in a sequence of other dominoes.