Bram Kanstein: Effing around on the internet - MicroStartups, Crypto/NFT’s & Course Building
This week’s guest is Bram Kanstein, a professional at, as he says, “fucking around on the internet.” Bram has built dozens of products, three of which he successfully sold (some for ETH), and he previously spent time working for a VC and at Product Hunt.
One of these products is Startup Stash, a curated directory of resources and tools for startups. Bram is currently active with his online course for startups, No-Code MVP.
We talk about Bram’s involvement in crypto way back in 2013, where he had to buy BTC through buying tokens in Second Life (a video game.) Recently, Bram launched an NFT collection based on a color alphabet.
The main idea he wants to share with you is, “fucking around the internet can pay off.”
Links to Platforms:
Favorite Quotes:
“This exercise of turning an idea from my head into a product really showed me the magic of the internet. You can reach so many people just as like a one-man band.” - Bram Kanstein
“If you can learn one or two things from a failed project, then eventually that accumulates to knowing what to do or what not to do.” - Bram Kanstein
“I think what I like about Bitcoin and crypto in general, it's just like a combination of all these different things about economics, computer stuff, network effects, mental models, like it all comes together basically in crypto.” - Bram Kanstein
“[Crypto] It's like a new app store but like two levels down at actually the internet infrastructure layer. And I'm just so- I don't need to know what is going to happen to know that unpredictable, incredibly exciting, innovative things are going to happen in that ecosystem because there's just too much energy for it not to.” - Eric Jorgenson
“Not everything has to work, and yes, some things are scammy, but that is exactly what this whole discovery part is about. It's just fucking around, like trying things out.” - Bram Kanstein
“Once this technology clicked for me and I used a few things, it became clear that like this will eventually grow to consume the entire internet. Like no one will be an internet user or very, very few, the minority, will be an internet user without a wallet.” - Eric Jorgenson
“You don't even have to show your face to create an audience, which is amazing. Then it really is about the content you produce. And that is what eventually, I think the internet was even intended to, like democratizing information from people or parts- just people or groups or whatever, just valuable information from anywhere.” - Bram Kanstein
“It's much closer to meritocracy than it's ever been before. And I think we're going to keep getting closer and closer to that, like global meritocracy where anybody can enter, which is going to make so many lives better.” - Eric Jorgenson
“Fucking around on the internet can pay off. You see this with NFTs specifically.” - Bram Kanstein
Learn more about Bram Kanstein
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)
David Perell: Intellectual Openness & Mental Models for Success
Podcast Transcript
Eric Jorgenson: Hello again, my friends, and welcome to Jorgenson Soundbox, a sandbox of sounds. This is a show for builders, investors, and internet adventurers. And today, I finally talk with a Dutch man I’ve followed on Twitter for more than six years now. Bram Kanstein is a professional at fucking around on the internet and shows us exactly how that has paid off for him and can pay off for you. After working as an investor and at Product Hunt, he has built dozens of products, sold at least three of them, and just generally had a bunch of other stuff work out for him. We talk about building products specifically that are fun for us to work on and how to sell micro products quickly and easily, in his case for Ethereum, which worked out, and we get into Web3 at the end, how he's currently just minted his own new NFT collection and some of the problems and technologies that we're working on as Web3 gets adopted. Please enjoy this conversation arriving at your ears in 3, 2, 1.
Bram, it's good to talk to you, man. I've been following you on Twitter for a very long time and looking forward to talking.
Bram Kanstein: Thanks for having me, man. Right back at you. It’s good to be here.
Eric Jorgenson: It's pretty weird to get into like an actual, like face to face in person conversation with someone who has just been like a Twitter person for so long. But I feel like it is a lot of shared history to dig into, and it should be really fun.
Bram Kanstein: Cool, man.
Eric Jorgenson: I think I started following you around when you were building Startup Stash, which is like a complete whirlwind situation. I think that's probably a good story to start with to kind of set you up.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. I've told this story many times, so I'll give you the quick, like the TLDR. But back in early 2015, I was working at an investor, and as part of my work, I was just gathering tools as bookmarks in my browser, basically like tools and videos and blog posts, etc. And around the same time, I discovered Product Hunt, and I instantly fell in love with it. Like I love being an early adopter of like new products and startups and services. So, I begged Ryan the founder to let me on. Right then, it was just invite only, but eventually, I got on and started posting stuff there, like discoveries, like things I found. And then at one point, I thought, well, hey, I think I know how this like early-stage startup thing works, and I have plenty of ideas and maybe I can prove to myself that I know how to turn an idea from my head into a product and launch it and get a little traction. So that's what I set out to do. And eventually, I turned all of those bookmarks that I had, like all these handy tools and resources for startups, I turned that into what I called a curated directory of resources and tools for startups. And yeah, that really, really blew up from the moment that I launched it. And yeah, actually from launch day, I already achieved my personal goal of translating an idea from my head into a product. Everything after that was bonus. So, it went pretty viral, ended up on big sites. Eventually, I think over a million people used it. Then after two years running it as a business, I also sold it.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Well, so it was number one on Product Hunt certainly when it happened, but like for a long time after, right?
Bram Kanstein: It’s still actually, I looked it up last night. Yeah. Because I saw I think the amount of users on Product Hunt or something like that, or someone mentioned it and then I looked up like, hey, where does Startup Stash still stand? And it's still number one of, I don't know, 200,000 products or something. Super fun.
Eric Jorgenson: That's insane. Five years later after all of the growth that Product Hunt has had. That's wild. Why do you think it went so- got so big so fast?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, I think that's a super fun question because, well, now if people go to StartupStash.com, they'll see that it looks a bit different. But at the beginning it was basically- So, I'm not the developer, but I wanted to do everything myself, so eventually I found a directory theme for WordPress, and I basically just deleted all the codes from the source files that I didn't need and tweaked that theme together with a developer friend who helped me when I when I got stuck. But, the first website was just 40 orange blocks, basically, nothing fancy design wise, etc. But I think what people really appreciated was that I did the work, the curation work basically. So, I had 40 categories starting at like naming, buying a domain, all the way up to let's say like investor relations or something like that. And each category had ten tools, but they were not ranked one to ten. It was just like, hey, if you're searching for a place to buy a domain name or an email marketing tool, then these are my ten suggestions. That was basically my promise. Like no review, whatever. It's just like, hey, there are thousands of email marketing tools, but if you check out these ten, you'll probably find one that suits you. So that was kind of the promise. And yeah, it was really fun to see that curation that I really liked, well, put into practice within a product, that that was what people actually valued, I think. Well, you have the same with Almanack.
Eric Jorgenson: I’m a deep believer in the power of curation, for sure.
Bram Kanstein: Totally. So, I think that is what people saw. And so that was like one lesson I learned. But the other one was that I really believe that your first product, if it delivers value, it doesn't matter what it looks like, because yeah, well, my first version was 40 orange blocks, no images, nothing, and people still valued it. So, I think that is that. And also finding the right audience together with that. So, I was at Product Hunt but also in the startup community. So yeah, I built some leverage in that domain. And then at one point when I launched the product, people were also like, hey, this guy can not only talk about this stuff, but he actually built a thing and it's actually valuable. So a combination of those things.
Eric Jorgenson: You were already pretty well known in like the European startup community by then, by the time you launched it, right? Or do you think that is not necessarily fair?
Bram Kanstein: I don't know. I don't know if I would call it that, but I think-
Eric Jorgenson: Because you worked at Product Hunt-
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, later, after that launch. So, when I discovered Product Hunt, it was invite only, and it was a lot of Silicon Valley type people where Ryan Hoover, the founder, was active. And I think I was one of the first people in Europe, and that's what I also said to Ryan, like can you please let me in, because I'm in Europe, I find fun and interesting new products in Europe. That was already what I was doing with my personal newsletter and like on Twitter, just sharing what I found. So, Product Hunt was basically the tool for my hobby. And then that is when I kind of translated that curation or the discovery of new startups from my Twitter account to a platform at Product Hunt. And that's what got me a bit more known around that.
Eric Jorgenson: It's pretty awesome to repurpose all that work you put in at your day job too, like how awesome to just like-
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, that's super fun, because eventually, I launched with 400 resources and tools, but I think I had like 700 bookmarks or something that I drew from. So, it was just a nice combination of things that I like to do and like to discover and then trying out something new and just putting those things together.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I think there's more opportunity for that then people probably realize. Like now that I don't work at [inaudible 8:31] anymore, I’m like publishing some of the papers and stuff that I wrote for internal use that are now- There's no context for anymore. And I think it's really helpful to kind of bring that stuff out. That's like an applicable thing. Like other people would find that interesting, I can share that.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. I think the concept of doing the work so that other people don't have to around certain types of content that certain types of people want, that is already enough. And then it doesn't matter how you even present that. I mean, there's a bunch of products of people selling access to Airtable databases or what they call swipe files, like notion packages, etc. I mean, that can be already enough to even create like a job or a company for yourself.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, Startup Stash, you said you ran it as a company for a little while in there. What was it as a company? You described it kind of as a product, but how did it- did it make money through affiliate links?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, so that's why I eventually don't really call it a company or like a startup. It was basically just me and some freelancers that I briefed from time to time. But yeah, it made money from promoting products, like featured on the homepage and in the newsletter. So basically that. So, I think on average, it was like 4 or 5K a month, but that's amazing I think as a side business.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, for something that you put together in a few months, that's amazing.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, that's super fun. And eventually, I think that this exercise of turning an idea from my head into a product really showed me like the magic of the internet. Like you can reach so many people just as like a one-man band. And eventually, also in 2017, I was talking to a guy in Tel Aviv, Israel, on the call. And I was introduced by someone else that I only knew from Twitter. I don’t know, it was just like through this person and that person. And we were talking and he asked me like, hey, how is Startup Stash going? And I said, oh yeah, it's going pretty well, but I'm more of an ideas guy. Like I like to turn an idea for my head into a thing, see if it works, and then just move on to like a new thing. And so, he told me, oh, that's cool, so what kind of amount are you looking for if you want to sell it? And then, I just named an amount. And then he was like okay. And I was like what? What just happened? So yeah, that was that. And I think, yeah, also like going full circle with that, it's just a fun experience.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Did you ever think you were going to sell it?
Bram Kanstein: Well, I thought about it up until when I had that call. That was actually the first time that I shared it, and we just had like a fun, enthusiastic conversation about it. So, I just decided to go with it, like it felt good.
Eric Jorgenson: That's awesome. Are you cool with sharing like what sort of price range that earned at?
Bram Kanstein: Well, I can’t share the exact amount, but the fun thing is that I also really like to look at a new platform called MicroAcquire, where you obviously know, but I will share for your audience, for people who don’t know. That’s where people, like independent businesses, like startups, I think without outside equity or outside investment mostly, they put up their companies for sale or their products for sale. And I think even for companies that are doing like 3K a month, they are listing for 250K or something like that. Well, I did more a month and I sold for less. So maybe a bit- maybe that answers your question. So maybe a bit too early, but it was just, yeah, again, like it was a fun exercise. Then I also think like over the years, those prices just went up and up and up because people are just in general more interested in buying like internet businesses. So, I don't know. Does that answer your question?
Eric Jorgenson: A little bit.
Bram Kanstein: I tried to make it more than just a no.
Eric Jorgenson: You succeeded at making it more than just a no. I think the world of the micro acquisitions is really, really interesting, and it's getting- like it didn't exist five or ten years ago really, or if it did, I wasn't following it or aware of it. But it seems like there's a lot of businesses of a huge variety of sizes that get transacted now. And I think like increasingly you see businesses for sale for like 50 or 100 thousand dollars that one person can just save up and buy, and newsletters and SEO things and like affiliate blogs or micro-SaaS apps, like these little qualm companies and stuff. And it's actually really fun to like just browse all the prospectuses and see what's for sale.
Bram Kanstein: I think that's super inspiring just by itself, just to see like, and also for me, when I was younger, I just like to see what people are working on. Like when someone pitches an idea, and maybe you have the same experience, like I always have like questions or comments or sometimes I think like why the hell would you work on this? But then my second thought is, well, this person is actually working on this idea, so there is something that I don't see. And I want to figure that out. Like what is that? What do I not get? And in general, it's just super fun to see what people are working on from like serious ideas to super quirky ideas. In general, I think it's just inspiring to check that out.
Eric Jorgenson: And it's like seeing blueprints for businesses. It's like the building blocks of a bunch of different things, and you see a prospectus for a business that maybe isn't in your area of expertise, but you're like, oh wow, this guy built a hunting blog that's doing a hundred grand a year or in a random month like with these tools and these freelancers, like, oh, I can do the same thing but about, I don't know, swimming or whatever you're interested in.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, man, I totally agree. Like what I said about the one man band thing, that is getting increasingly easier every day as like operations-wise. I think ideas-wise and finding niches, etc., like cutting through the noise gets more difficult every day. But when you have an idea that gets like early traction, you can just run a company and pay yourself and freelancers a good salary or a good fee. And then you can live like super well. And I think that is amazing just to see that.
Eric Jorgenson: Were you still working full-time at the investor when you were running Startup Stash and sold it?
Bram Kanstein: No, actually, the day I launched Startup Stash was my last day at the investor.
Eric Jorgenson: Before you even knew what was going to happen.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, maybe this is fun to add to the story because I knew I was going to quit my job. And then before I quit, Ryan of Product Hunt, he asked me like, hey, do you want to work in Europe for Product Hunt? And so then I thought, yeah, Silicon Valley, a growing Silicon Valley startup with Andreessen Horowitz funding, let's go, that's a no brainer to just have that experience. And I think I launched Startup Stash on like February 25th, and then somewhere in March, like three, four weeks later, I was starting at Product Hunt. So, then I though, okay, in between, I should go to San Francisco because I love reading about this stuff, never been there. I should go to this startup place. So, I went to LAUNCH Conference in San Francisco. I knew no one. I just got one tip, like make the list of people you want to meet. So, I did, and I tried to get intros. And after the launch of Startup Stash went viral, I wrote a medium article about like how I constructed the launch and the product, etc. I think that got read also like 20,000 times or something. But one of the people who liked it was Hunter Walk. He's an investor from San Francisco, Homebrew I think is the fund's name. And he was on top of my list. I thought it was super cool. Like I wanted to meet him so when I saw he liked my medium article, I just cold DMed him and I said, I made Startup Stash, I'm in SF next week. Can we meet? Are you at LAUNCH? Can we meet? Then he was like yes, just text me when you are there. And I was like what? I just got like the number one person from my list. Again, for me, that's like internet magic. I don't know. And then I was walking around the conference and I think like 40, 50 people just approached me from recognizing my Twitter avatar, like, hey, you made Startup Stash last week and why are you here? And I was like why do you know me? And that was like super fun to experience. So yeah, after that, I worked for Product Hunt almost a year. And then after that I went on to something new.
Eric Jorgenson: So, I should say like your- Startup Stash is not the only product that you have built and then sold. And I think two or three times now, you've built something-
Bram Kanstein: Three, yeah.
Eric Jorgenson: Damn. All right. So-
Bram Kanstein: Just simple. These are not unicorn acquisitions, but just fun exercises.
Eric Jorgenson: No, I know, but that's kind of what makes it really cool to me, like I don't assume- I don't know where this came from, but I have it in my head that like stuff doesn't get- it's not sellable unless it's of a certain size. And like seeing these acquisitions that are like one man band acquisitions of products that you built and Startups Stash was like eight months from you launching it to you selling it. Right?
Bram Kanstein: No, I think that was a bit longer. I don't know the exact timeline. I think it's more than a year, but not long. No, but other ones, so once I sold an email publication also geared towards startups, but then more of like background stories, so that was really focused on content. I think that had like 11,000 subscribers, but that was also in 2018. So, I think like both of these products or projects were kind of before more people knew about sellable newsletters or sellable one-man band products. So, I think I also got- yeah, was early in doing that.
Eric Jorgenson: This may be like a question that actually begets many more questions, but how do you sell these little products? Like who are you selling them to? How is it different from maybe my conception of what an acquisition of a larger company is? Like what's the niche like?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, I think that's a nice question. Because when I was on the phone with the guy from Tel Aviv and I said yes, and he's like- he said yes. And I said, okay. Then I was like what the hell? How do I do this? I think like partially it's also based on trust. I think you're really, like dealing with each other, there's like no lawyer or legal stuff going on. And for Startup Stash, it was fairly simple because it was a WordPress website. So, I transferred the hosting, transferred the domain, transferred the Google analytics, two page contracts, I gave you all the rights, all the content, all the brand, all the design stuff. I don't know. That's just it, basically; it was two pages. And then, a call like this, just like a Zoom call, just transferring everything live. And they paid like 30% upfront, 70% afterwards. That's kind of what we did. In the end, pretty simple. When it started, I was like I have no clue. But when I sold the newsletter, I actually dusted off the two-page contract, and I just did, yeah, I did the same. And I mean, like with a lot of public tools that you use, you can invite other people as collaborators, etc. So, you can add another person and then remove yourself, and then they are the owner. So, yeah, pretty easy actually. I think the short answer is just trust. But interesting that you can even do that from a distance. We weren’t sitting at the same table.
Eric Jorgenson: What's the value to the buyers in most of these cases? Are they buying like an SEO shortcut and the fact that you have all these links and goodwill and subscribers? Or like what is the appeal to them with some of these products?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, that's a good question. So, the first thing I sold was, I think that's actually the most fun story, that was a website that I created with no code tools. So, I used cards and Airtable to create a website called roadtoscale.com, which is also with resources or like content resources for startups but then cut up into the different phases that a startup goes through, so identifying a problem, creating the solution, product market fit, and then scale. And I just wanted to show what you can do, again, like the thesis, it doesn't have to be super technical or super fancy. If it delivers value, then it delivers value and people appreciate it. So, I launched that, and in six weeks, I think like 30,000 people used it. And then a VC from Silicon Valley bought it just because they were thinking of doing the same, but I already did the work. So, they were like, well, yeah, then we save time and money eventually. So, they bought it. That was definitely another life-changing amount. But again, just a fun like example of delivering value to the right type of audience, and then yeah, it kind of goes by itself.
Eric Jorgenson: It's almost like- you're almost like a commissioned artist except you're like making it for yourself, and then somebody is deciding to buy the work that you have done.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. So then afterwards- So I think it's always interesting, okay, I made three products that I sold, but I think I burned, I don't know, twenty-five other just ideas that eventually didn't work out, which is fine. But I always think like, hey, if you can learn one or two things from a failed project, then eventually that accumulates to knowing what to do or what not to do. And also, from even as simple a project as the Road to Scale one, exactly what you say, I think it's interesting that it kind of validates, hey, I think I should do it in this way. It's just my point of view. And then like other people validate that I did it in the right way. And then even a company, like a venture capitalist or an organization like a VC recognizes that too. So, it's just like a nice validation of, hey, I'm thinking in a certain way that connects with other people. Just that is already enough, for me at least, to be happy about the outcome, and then it's not even about the money.
Eric Jorgenson: And you're not designing these things in order to build necessarily. You're just like doing them for you as projects.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. Yeah, all of them.
Eric Jorgenson: How do you think about your day-to-day work? Like how do you prioritize all these projects? How do you describe like what you do?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. Oh, that's funny, actually. Now, I'm consulting for a big company, like on innovation practices and validating new ideas. But I obviously still have ideas myself. But what is funny is that I always have like the perfectionist battle basically, or like not even just perfectionist, but also just finishing one thing before I start another thing. I don't know if that's space in your head, or I don't know how to define it. But I have one idea, it's called seedrounds.eu. It's basically a surface where I sell Airtable access to investors to improve their deal flow. So, I want to source seed round deals in Europe, pre-vet them basically, and then share them in a paid database to investors. So, I'm kind of working on that, but then also I have an online course called No-Code MVP that I launched two years ago where I'm teaching now, I think, 700 people how to validate their ideas without code. And yeah, first in mind, I have to like, I don't know, shelf that, put it on the shelf, before I really spend time with like a new idea. And I think that's always an interesting battle. But I try to work on that in my free days and after work when I have time. Then there's also stuff like crypto and all these things that get my attention. Yeah, time allocation is a challenge sometimes.
Eric Jorgenson: I ask almost everybody who I end up having a good long conversation with, especially on this podcast, that question because I'm hunting for the answer myself and just getting comfortable with the ambiguity of like, I don’t know, I think of an idea and if I think it's a good one, I do it. And if it becomes clear that it's a bad one, I stop.
Bram Kanstein: Honestly, it's as simple as that basically. And I think even just that mindset of, and I talk about this in that course, like I always try to put it in a certain frame for myself which I know is the right thing, but just like I told you now, I'm not always doing myself. But I always say like if you have a new idea, you should be aware of the fact that an idea is just the combination of lots of assumptions, other inspirational products that you saw, or a certain idea or feeling with the market, etc. So, you have to validate at least those assumptions in a certain way so that you get a bit more like certainty around that idea. And I always try to just frame that within I always say like time, money, and motivation. So, for example, the next two months, I'm going to spend, I don't know, a thousand dollars max to get an answer to these three most riskiest assumptions that I have around this idea. And after eight weeks or four weeks, whatever, you set that for yourself, I check out if it still satisfies me or not, and then if it gives me like the same amount of motivation that I had from the start. And if I even have the slightest sense of this is not going to be a thing, like you said, it's just, okay, what did I learn from this? And then just move on. And I think that mindset, like if more people would adopt that, there would be way, I think, better or sometimes more interesting products because I see way too many people just lingering and clinging onto an idea and falling in love, etc., while the ideas don’t really matter. It is what you, and the word is you, what you do with it. And if you find it fun, if you get inspiration from working on that idea.
Eric Jorgenson: It is so tough to find a balance between- because I believe two truths that seem to conflict, which is like, one, that things that tend to work, tend to work right away and obviously and quickly, and that like complex ideas that work come from simple ideas that work. So, I think that is true. And I also think it is true that all good things are on the other side of like hard work and grit and persistence, and like fighting through things that are tolerating ambiguity to make it to the other side of that. And like it's so hard to know which of those camps that you're in. And it almost comes down to personality type. I see people like you who just launch a ton of products and a few of them hit. And I think there's other people who are like pick a direction to march and they're like I will make this one SaaS app work if it's the last thing I do. And like it takes them 15 years, but they break through on this one trajectory, and like that also works.
Bram Kanstein: I couldn't agree more, and yeah, it's an interesting thought exercise for yourself. Because I'm definitely not the latter, but I've seen that work, too. And sometimes I even see like famous investors or entrepreneurs say, yeah, you should put on your blinds and just go. And I'm always like no, but these people are still successful. So, there's a weird contradiction between this. But in the end, I think it's about just staying I want to say like objective to yourself. I also think that different people have different- or let's say they need different amounts of validation or certainty to pursue an idea. So, I'm in general pretty risk averse. So, I have to have I want to say like 50% certainty about a certain idea, and then I spend more time, money and effort, but there's also people that just go all in with like 5% certainty and they just do it. There's no right or wrong, but I think that difference is super interesting to see in different types of like entrepreneurial people, too.
Eric Jorgenson: Absolutely. Where in Europe are you?
Bram Kanstein: I'm in the Netherlands. I used to live in Amsterdam, but now I live in the Hague next to the beach almost.
Eric Jorgenson: That’s beautiful. The Hague is, I don't know why, maybe because it's like the only city I can name that starts with The, it has always held like this crazy mystery for me. And it feel so like- it feels just based on like that brand, like an incredibly unique city. But I realize now I actually have no idea what The Hague is like.
Bram Kanstein: It's like, it's the Washington of the Netherlands. So, well, as in there's like all the government stuff is here and the embassies. Well, Amsterdam is, of course, the capitol. But yeah, I think in general, just describing a city to, well, I don't know your audience, but especially to American people, like I don't know, there's 800,000 people in Amsterdam. I think there's 4 or 500,000 here. So that's very small in comparison to anything state side. So, I think to you, but also to me, it just feels more like a town, like a small town. You can bike anywhere, and especially 10 minutes from the beach, that's super fun.
Eric Jorgenson: That's beautiful. Is it like chill vibes? Is it like San Diego in the United States where everyone-
Bram Kanstein: I think so. Yeah, it's like a beach surfing city.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Everybody's like smart, but doesn't like work hundred-hour weeks, like they do in New York, just like the beach is right there.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, that’s sometimes my thoughts when I'm like on a terrace, I want to say on a Wednesday at 3:00 PM. And then I always think like, hey, don't these people have to work? And then I think like oh, but I'm here, too. But it's just, yeah, that chill vibe.
Eric Jorgenson: That's good living. So, you said a few minutes ago that you are now like getting into crypto, which it seems like increasingly a lot of people who are kind of on the early adopter side of the startup world are turning their attention to. So, I'd love to kind of get your personal like rabbit hole story on when it kind of started to grab your attention, when you kind of dove in, and what you’re doing with it now.
Bram Kanstein: This is just a podcast by itself.
Eric Jorgenson: No kidding. We’ve got plenty of time left. Carry on.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, dude, I think I discovered Bitcoin and Litecoin in like 2013 or something. I've no clue about prices back then. But I was a student or just starting to work at that investor. And I actually recently tweeted like the first video explainer I saw on Bitcoin. I don't know, I just, I didn't get it instantly, but I thought like this has this anonymous hacking vibe, like should be fun. I don't know. That’s kind of where the rabbit hole started. But eventually, like I was in Europe and what I still like to do, like I just said before, like what I always like to do is just try out stuff. Like you can read about things, but you have to do; you have to like do it, and then you get it gradually. So, you have to spend some time and, well, in this case, also money to just experience it and then maybe get it or maybe not. But just experiencing it instead of just reading about it, I think is always what I at least do. But yeah, I was in Europe. So how the hell do you buy like over the counter of Bitcoin? Like how does that work? I had a credit card, but I couldn't pay with like my native debit card I think, my native debit card. So eventually, there were these exchanges. I think Mt. Gox was there then or just got hacked. I don't know. I was on BTCE I can remember. And there were a lot of tokens already, but there's one I think fun story that eventually I figured out that I could buy, with my credit card, I could buy Linden dollars. That's the currency in Second Life. And then I could transfer those Linden dollars to an exchange, exchange them for some obscure other token, and then go to BTC. But in order to get the Linden dollars, I actually had to download Second Life, create a character, walk in Second Life to an ATM – I'm not kidding, I did this – then I paid with my credit card, then I got the Linden dollars. So, let's say, I don’t know how much I got, it doesn't really matter, but let's say I paid a hundred dollars. I got a hundred dollars in Linden coins. I sent them to the exchange, exchanged them for some other token, and then to BTC. I think I had like $60 BTC from like the $100 that I started. Like I took away all the fees. And a bit later, I think Coinbase launched, then you could connect with like, I don't know. What's that called where they just deduct it from your bank account?
Eric Jorgenson: It’s ACH in America.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, something like that. So, I think I have emails, very emotional emails when I looked them up where I buy I think Bitcoin for 180 and sell a bunch for 400 and they say congratulations on selling. I was just figuring it out. And I think for about four months with like a few friends when you really day traded. So, from 2013 until like somewhere 2014, I don't know the exact dates of all the crashes, etc. At one point, I was day trading for like three, four months. And when I went to bed at night, I just saw the graphs everywhere. I was just like, oh my God, this is way too much. I have no clue where this is going. I don't know if I believe in it, whatever. So, then I sold I think like eight Bitcoin or something, I don't know, made a few thousand dollars, was super happy, felt super cool. And then I just forgot. I think there was like a big, big crash. And then I was like, ah, this is never going to work. And then in 2017, when the markets again got back, I think I discovered also Ethereum at like $60, something, that idea of Bitcoin being like a monetary network and like an asset class versus Ethereum being like a supercomputer network, I thought it was super, super interesting. At the time, I found Ethereum at $70 couldn't get in because I was spending money on a house, which really sucks, but at one point when I got the opportunity to sell Startup Stash, I thought, I asked the guy, the buyer, like, hey, do you have Ethereum? He's like yeah. And then I asked like, hey, can we do this deal in Ethereum? And then he's like, okay, why not? So, I think we backed the price at like 270, 273, something like that. So that's how I got some Ethereum in that deal. And eventually the newsletter that I sold in 2018 also sold for Ethereum. And put some Ethereum back into Bitcoin. So, I like the fact that there's like other tokens and people are figuring things out. I think especially in 2014, when Dogecoin came out, we all laughed. We're like, oh, this is super funny. It's just like [Palmer Dexin 39:29] or what's his name, just him, no developers. He just like, he tweeted once like I'm just going to let this ride, whatever happens. I think that was just like his thing. And then in 2017, yeah, I got back in, so mainly Bitcoin and Ethereum. And then when I discovered-
Eric Jorgenson: When did you start using it? Because I think you're totally right that it takes feeling- like experiencing it. There's a lot of people, and even I spend a lot of time just reading and learning before doing it. And the more I started to kind of like put my hands in there, the more I understood what was happening.
Bram Kanstein: Totally. Like no one’s going to forget their first few Bitcoin transactions, like sweating, like does this work? I'm putting in all these numbers and letters. What is this? Like first time I saw Etherscan page, I was like what is this?
Eric Jorgenson: You are waiting for like twenty minutes where everything you own has disappeared, but it hasn’t reappeared anywhere else.
Bram Kanstein: And then, you're thinking- it's fun because I think what I like about Bitcoin and crypto in general, it's just like a combination of all these different things about economics, computer stuff, network effects, mental models, like it all comes together basically in crypto, like when I'm thinking of my first few Bitcoin transactions, exactly like you said, I was waiting for 20, 30 minutes like is this going to work? And then I just realized yes, it’s computer code. Like I just read the white paper. I know this is how it works. I'm still sweating. I know this is just ones and zeros. Eventually, it is going to work. And just that experience is just so much fun.
Eric Jorgenson: And then you're like so much work to do on the UI. This could be so much more clear, you can show the progress. You can show the-
Bram Kanstein: Well, using it, I think, yeah, I really see Bitcoin as just like asset class. I grew up with gold and silver is valuable and you could or should have that basically. Bitcoin is almost flipping silver, which I think again is a super interesting thought exercise, especially for people like our generation that still knows silver is valuable. Well, Bitcoin is going to be more valuable than silver, which yeah, I think is pretty mind blowing actually if you put it in a bigger picture. So, yeah, I don't see buying Bitcoin as buying it, I see it as moving my money from a bank where I contractually do not own the money to an asset that I actually own. Also, that I think is a step you have to take in your head at some point, where it's not like- yeah, it's like I have a stack of gold, I don’t know, that's kind of how I see it, that I almost physically own. And I think that's really interesting. And then, Ethereum, yeah, it's just been super interesting to see how it goes from, well, at one point, late 2017 or 2018, we had like the whole ICO stuff, but just discovering what are the applications of this supercomputer thing. Now basically, NFTs is the same as ICOs; the white paper as an ICO is the roadmap of an NFT. It's not really different in tech, it's just different in application.
Eric Jorgenson: It is really, that's a piece where I think those of us who have seen sort of the explosion of startups and the creativity of developers and designers and all of this stuff that comes in there, like having spent any time or meaningful amount of time in that, it gives you an appreciation for how different Ethereum may be from a Bitcoin ecosystem where when you have that- when that foundation layer allows so much different creativity and building and applications, then you get ICOs and you get DeFi and you get NFTs, and you get all of these things that happen in that ecosystem that we’re really just kind of getting started with. It's like a new app store but like two levels down at actually the internet infrastructure layer. And I'm just so- I don't need to know what is going to happen to know that unpredictable, incredibly exciting, innovative things are going to happen in that ecosystem because there's just too much energy for it not to.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, no, I fully agree. Also, adding to that, I think like there's some people that have, or sometimes there's a BTC or like a Bitcoin versus Ethereum discussion. I don't even think that's a discussion. They are two totally different things. So, if someone says that they don't get Bitcoin and/or Ethereum, they are different things. I think the main thing that I really believe in with the crypto stuff is just that decentralized trust mechanism, I think that is the thing that is disrupting a lot of traditional stuff. So, whether it's the NFT or like asset ownership stuff or the DeFi stuff, it's like the no middleman, ultimate trust invention, basically, at a distance also. Like we don't even have to be in the same country or time zone, whatever, all these things. I think that is just a super cool invention. And yeah, I agree. Like I don't know what's going to happen, but if you see the speed, like I follow a lot of people in the crypto space and sometimes there's people that summarize like, okay, this month, this and this and this happened and it is like a thread of like ten tweets, that's just fun. It's just fun. Like not everything has to work, and yes, some things are scammy, but that is exactly what this whole discovery part is about. It's just fucking around, like trying things out.
Eric Jorgenson: Which is your specialty it turns out.
Bram Kanstein: Super fun.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I think that-
Bram Kanstein: I think you still have to pay- You have to keep paying attention basically. So, what I said about selling all the Bitcoin that I had and then later getting back in, if I did a bit more work to get a bit more conviction or convincement, I would have had way more Bitcoin then I have now. And I think the same goes for the Ethereum or let's say the NFT stuff right now. Actually, last week I looked up, someone tweeted about when they joined Open Sea, when it had like 20,000 users in August 2020. I joined April 2019. That's when I created my profile. I saw [board aides 46:57] didn't get in. I saw the [banks 46:59] before didn't get in. I saw [V friends 47:02] didn’t get in, like all these things. And I was just like, oh, this is silly, this is funny, whatever. I wasn't taking that extra step to really, really dive in, and you see that it pays off to keep paying attention and keep trying out. So, that's also a big lesson for me in general, I think.
Eric Jorgenson: The same prioritization challenge I have around which projects should I work on, it's the same thing around like what to study. It takes time to build conviction. I mean, you were early to Bitcoin, but because you didn't have the- hadn’t taken the time to develop this long-term conviction, it's really hard to hold on when you see a 2X or a 10X, and that's how you miss the 1000X. But I think you're- I had to do the same exercise to go through how early are we really? Once this technology clicked for me and I used a few things, it became clear that like this will eventually grow to consume the entire internet. Like no one will be an internet user or very, very few, the minority, will be an internet user without a wallet. That seems clear once you click around in this for a little bit. It's like okay, if you end up there, where are we today? And that tweet you mentioned, actually I pulled it up while you were talking, from Nate Roth, 4.5 billion internet users, 200 million Twitter users, 10 million DeFi users, and 0.3 million Open Sea users, which means 0.009% of internet users own an NFT. And I think that's going to go to nearly a hundred percent, which means we have like five orders of magnitude left on this technology. Right?
Bram Kanstein: Well, you have the adoption curve, the bell. Some people say we are in the chasm. I think we're before even. But yeah, I mean that's so- I think that 300K Open Sea users, I think it's at 600 or 700 now, but Coinbase has launched their NFT waitlist, which has over 2 million people. So, it's going to, yeah, it's just going to happen.
Eric Jorgenson: But people are making new NFTs every day. So, there's no speculation on any existing NFT prices, but there's- do you follow Punk 6259?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah.
Eric Jorgenson: His prediction of like basically everything that you interact with is a non-fungible token, or is a future non-fungible token. Like everything in the world is non-fungible and all of these things will have tokens over the next 10 or 20 years.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. Well, I think him, I think there's a rumor that like he's already well-known, but this is like a pseudonym or something. I don’t know. I like what he tweets, and maybe it’s just my skeptical nature, but I think lots of times, well, I mean, it worked with Bitcoin, right? Like talking something into existence, Bitcoin has been memed into existence. So, I think for the most part, it's true. On the other hand, yeah, maybe I'm a bit too skeptical. But sometimes I think like, yeah, you can kind of overdo it, then it becomes, I don't know, maybe too philosophical or something, like trying to be. I don't know. But it's just fun to read. It's just fun to read like all these just opinions and ideas. And I especially like that, again, maybe the theme of power of the internet, you don't even have to show your face to create an audience, which is amazing. Then it really is about the content you produce. And that is what eventually, I think the internet was even intended to, like democratizing information from people or parts- just people or groups or whatever, just valuable information from anywhere. That's what you're basically seeing right now.
Eric Jorgenson: It's much closer to meritocracy than it's ever been before. And I think we're going to keep getting closer and closer to that, like global meritocracy where anybody can enter, which is going to make so many lives better.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, I think so, too. And what I also think is interesting, I thought about this morning, that Twitter was kind of, before the NFT thing, I think Twitter was kind of like flatlining in some way, like not really growing users and also just the interaction or what people were talking about – I’m very well aware of the fact that I'm in a bubble, but still, but now it seems like we're not talking about this on LinkedIn or on Facebook or on Instagram, like deep premium visual platform. I just made a Twitter profile banner of my NFTs and people have it as their avatars. Like it's also kind of the revival or second life of Twitter, I think. And that's going to be even bigger with the integrations that they're planning, too. I think that's also fun to see.
Eric Jorgenson: I think they're- I mean, I think Jack really gets this and is- I think they were planning on doing a verification. So, like your profile photo, if you own the NFT, it'll show as a verification. They're already testing sending Bitcoin- sending Bitcoin to tip, stuff like that.
Bram Kanstein: But that's the thing, Jack is like us. He's just a product nerd, he likes to- I don't want to compare myself to Jack. Well, whatever, you get what I’m saying. I think like when you hear him talk about this, it's not the billionaire founder guy talking, it's like the computer nerd, internet enthusiastic talking, and that is I think what is super cool.
Eric Jorgenson: He's still the 19-year-old hacker at heart.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. I think of the part from the Hatching Twitter book where it's about Jack, I think, sitting in his car and listening to the ambulance stuff or seeing the ambulances or whatever, that is where Twitter idea originally, or supposedly came from. Like that's what I see, I visualize when I hear him talk about this stuff. So, like, I don’t know, just seeing all these opportunities, what can we build? And that is just super energizing, too.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, it looked like you're building some stuff in Web3. You launched an NFT collection?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, I actually, like a month ago or something, I felt creative. So I made an NFT anthem rap song. I'm not a rapper, but whatever. I just, I showed you my pro mic, I sold it for .1337 ETH. That's a good lead number. But yeah, this is the same example; I've been using Open Sea to buy and sell NFTs to figure it out. And then at one point I thought, well, experiencing it by using it. So, I'm going to make a collection with like a name and then try to send it or promote it or whatever, just to see and experience how it works. Yeah, so I made a collection from a paper that I found, which is called “The Color Alphabet” and it's by a color expert from Australia, and he investigated the question can you build an alphabet of colors that represent letters? And then can you read a text just by seeing blocks of the colors? So, he created a color alphabet of 26 colors, obviously, and their names start with the letter that they represent. So, you have blue and wine and caramel and lime. I made an NFT collection of that.
Eric Jorgenson: That's super cool. What is that process like? How do you create an NFT collection?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, it's actually super easy because the people that create like a 10,000-piece project, you have to write the contract for that. So, you write usually like a minting contract. I don't know how people do it with, let's say, a collection of a thousand. I'm assuming they do it too because manually adding a thousand pieces, well, you can actually do it on Open Sea. But yeah, that's what I use. So, I created a collection on Open Sea. You can add items just one by one. I only have 26, so that's fairly easy. And then once you list them, Open Sea mints them for you, then puts them on I think IPFS. So that's where the image is hosted. And then, yeah, mints it into the contract they use, so it's not a custom contract. But yeah, then it exists. Then it's a real NFT basically. And you can do all that on Open Sea. So that's pretty cool.
Eric Jorgenson: I mean, that sounds basically like listing them for sale on eBay.
Bram Kanstein: It's the same- it's as easy as that.
Eric Jorgenson: Wow. And they take care- so they use the standard smart contract. They upload it to the Interplanetary File System, which is the coolest fucking name in all of the very cool named crypto space.
Bram Kanstein: Yeah. And then, yeah, you also set the royalties. I think, by the way, that is something that's really cool about NFTs. I have the painting here. I paid the painter, but now if I resell it, I get all the money. And I think with NFTs, it's super interesting that you can add that royalty part so that the original creator also get a part of future sales. So yeah, that's amazing because there are some projects who earn millions each week just from the trades and that's how they fund their future development. So yeah, that's I think one of the main things that I think is really cool about NFTs too.
Eric Jorgenson: I think, I mean, the ability, if nothing else about the blockchain, like the concept of a perpetual royalty alone I think is a radical change to not just the art world, but like every resale market that exists. Like why would a car manufacturer not try to capture secondary sales of their own car, or like you can imagine almost anything in the world that will be- whose ownership is digitally tracked to be-
Bram Kanstein: If they applied that to a car, for example, like there's a few cars that do a few hundred thousand miles, but there's no incentive for a carmaker to make that even more or make that car even better because they get money from new sales. So, they don't care if your car breaks down after the warranty. So, I also think that could perhaps incentivize just better products in general. Because then it doesn't matter if a product exists into perpetuity, if they get the royalties for it without doing any effort. Sounds like free money.
Eric Jorgenson: That's an amazing point actually. I hadn’t considered the incentives of that, which is incredible. I mean, that's a huge boon for conservation and climate change. It's like stop this disposable nature of everything from appliances to packaged food.
Bram Kanstein: If we can get the crypto environment discussion out of the way first.
Eric Jorgenson: Don't worry, the switch to proof of stake is coming for Ethereum. We'll get there. Bitcoin, I don't know, maybe not. But yeah, there's definitely, it’s not like our other security and economic security models are carbon neutral. So, maybe we can get there and get renewable energy going. Thank you, by the way, to the Netherlands for building a shit load of windmills and helping us out with that. I was just talking to somebody, an energy expert in the Netherlands, the other day who's like Netherlands is so far ahead of everybody else. They're basically like the pioneer, just taking arrows in the back to solve energy independence and like spread that technology to the rest of the world.
Bram Kanstein: Okay. I’m not really aware of that, but I will dig in. You know what's really cool actually about Bitcoin, I read that the oldest hydro energy plant in the US got turned back on to mine Bitcoin. It's like from 1860 or something and still works. And they’re mining Bitcoins. That’s a fun incentive too.
Eric Jorgenson: I saw [inaudible 1:00:41 Balaji talk about how Bitcoin is actually a pretty decent- it's like a currency battery. So, like instead of storing energy in a physical battery, you just put any unnecessary- like surplus energy that's generated into mining Bitcoin that you can then sell to transact, to buy more energy later. It's just like evens out the [inaudible 1:01:04].
Bram Kanstein: I think Michael Saylor has said this a few times. Like there's countries in Africa that have 90% of all days are sunny days. But you can only- so you could generate electricity there from the sun. And obviously, there's a lot of land, desert-like land where no one’s living, so you could produce energy from the sun, but you can only transport electricity like 500 kilometers or something before it starts to degrade. So yeah, he makes a good point of actually for those countries to translate the abundance of energy that they could actually capture into something, well, he calls it monetary energy. But also, that concept for me, it's just super, super interesting, because yeah, you can translate that energy into money or something of value basically. So, that would be interesting to see for those countries if that's going to work out for them.
Eric Jorgenson: That's incredible. So, this has been a super interesting conversation, as I had a hunch it would be. Is there anything that you're working on that's coming out soon that you are down to tell us about?
Bram Kanstein: Yeah, this is like the part where I plug myself.
Eric Jorgenson: Or just like give us a tease of what- you have the color alphabet out. But what else is on your mind?
Bram Kanstein: That's just like a fun, quirky side project. But I think the main thing is the seedrounds.eu.
Eric Jorgenson: Is that up yet?
Bram Kanstein: Almost finished. Yeah, you can check out the website, but it's almost- I just develop the website on live, I don't care. So, there's a few texts that aren't finished. But yeah, that's like the sourcing and deal curation surface for investors. So, I want to be on that investor or at least like the scouting sourcing side more, which I just really like, I think as we talked about, just discovering what people are working on. And then dive in with our interest for curation, I'm working on a course on content curation. So that's the other thing. And yeah, if people want to follow those projects or follow what I'm doing, I'm BramK on Twitter.
Eric Jorgenson: For the record, Bram told me, I did not have to try to say his name with the Dutch R. I didn't Americanize it without permission, but I gave it my best shot. This seed round is really cool. I'm looking at the landing page now. It basically looks like what- I mean, when AngelLists started, it was an email list and kind of a landing page of opportunities. So, just collecting and syndicating, like distributing some of these deals can be super, super valuable. And I'm always looking for good early-stage investments, so I'm going to have to check this out.
Bram Kanstein: Cool. I’ll let you know when it is live.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, please. It has been super fun. Thank you so much for taking the time and blowing my mind about tiny acquisitions executed in Ethereum, which is like, I don't know, that seems like a fun thing to go after and giving me even more faith that just like fucking around on the internet is a perfectly viable career path.
Bram Kanstein: Yes! Yes! Yes! I think that if we have one TLDR, please put this into the Spotify description, like fucking around on the internet can pay off. You see this with NFTs specifically. Like that's a perfect tagline, man. Can we use that?
Eric Jorgenson: We can make that the title of the episode. The more fun you're having, the better you'll do. Let's roll with that. All right, thanks. Talk to you again soon.
Bram Kanstein: Thanks. Keep in touch.
Eric Jorgenson: I appreciate you hanging out with us today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you both laughed and learned. One thing that jumped out to me from Bram is that he seems to just always be doing whatever seems like fun to him at the time. Naval said art is anything that is done for its own sake. So, try to take a second, consider what you're doing in your own life that's for its own sake, big or small, important or not, anything done for its own sake can be art. For me, it's often a sandwich. Take a few quiet moments for yourself. Breathe deep and be well.