Greg Isenberg - Late Checkout: The Berkshire Hathaway Of Community-Based Products - Zima Red ep 115

Andrew Steinwold (0:11)

What's up, everyone?

I'm Andrew Steinwald, and this is Zima Red. On this show, we speak with the users, founders and creatives that are diving into the world of unique digital assets, also called non-fungible tokens.

SPEAKER_1 (0:24)

Andrew Steinwald is the managing partner of Cifermion, an investment firm focused on the NFT ecosystem. All opinions expressed by Andrew and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Cifermion. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Cifermion or related entities may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast.

Andrew Steinwold (0:48)

My guest today is Greg Isenberg, who is the founder of Late Checkout, which is part product studio, design agency and fund. On this episode, you hear us chat about Greg's background founding and selling multiple companies, why community-based businesses are the best, why people connect with IP brands and characters, how to build a great product, why design is ultra important in Web3, how Late Checkout is the Berkshire Hathaway of community-based products, and so much more. An awesome conversation that spans multiple different categories and topics. Please enjoy my conversation with Greg.

Greg, thank you so much for joining me today. Super excited to chat with you. And from reading your LinkedIn, I actually understood that you have started at least three companies that have been acquired. So most people, even starting one company and having that being acquired, that is a huge kind of accomplishment.

What are you doing that is so incredible? How can you pull this off?

Greg Isenberg (1:38)

Yeah, I mean, for me, it hasn't been about, hey, go build the thing and get it acquired, but it's always been about building communities and building community-based products.

Today, I think it's pretty well known that, especially in the Web3 world, that if you build a community and you build a product around that community, it creates a lot of value. But I've been doing this for the last 15 years, when it was very not mainstream, not en vogue, that sort of thing. So, yeah, what I've been doing has just, I'd love to say I've had a grand plan, but I haven't. The plan has just been to follow my curiosity. So, for example, in 2008, when the financial crisis happened, I built a community called Wall Street Survivor, where people learned about the stock market and actually became the largest stock market game on the internet and built a community around that, and that got acquired. It's not like I was like, hey, let me go build the thing and go sell it to JP Morgan. You know what I mean?

So yeah, that's basically what happened.

Andrew Steinwold (2:59)

So is your background in startups, or what is your background that enables you to do this?

Greg Isenberg (3:06)

I've been building since I've been a teenager, and I've got some light design skills, light engineering skills, heavy community skills, heavy brand skills.

But I would say I'm more of a community person more than anything. But I did study computer science at McGill University in Canada. Although I never finished, I am an engineer by trade. But yeah, I became a community startup person by just doing and just getting my hands dirty.

Andrew Steinwold (3:52)

Okay, so could you explain to me what you mean by community? Because isn't that basically another word for marketing?

Greg Isenberg (4:00)

I mean, community to me is when you bring people... To me, it's actually a party. It's like, you know, it's throwing parties but on the internet. So when you think about a party, you think about the music, you think about the food, you think about the people. How do you get the right people in there?

You think about the experience, you think about, you know, the starting time, the ending time, all the different rooms. Like think of a house party.

Community is like that where, you know, if you think of, let's just say, the Board Ape Yacht Club and their Discord, that's a very different community than, for example, Cool Cats, which is another NFT project. And you can just like by going into some of these communities, you really get that sense. What I think I'm better than most at is designing what these experiences look like.

And that's step one, which is community design. And then step two is stimulation of that community. So it's what people call community management. And step three is product building. It's like, okay, once you have this group of people, what is the experience or product that will create rituals with this group of people?