ProMeet: Bridging the Gap Between Blockchain and Content Monetization (E6)

(logo whooshing) - I'm Phil Larmon. - And I'm Douglas Sporthwick. - And this is "Old Men, New Money." - We're very excited today to have John Azarwal as a former colleague of mine. Joining us, John has started a new company called Promit. We'd love to talk to you, John, about all sorts of things, but why don't you introduce yourself? First, that'd be lovely, thank you. - Yeah, sure. First of all, Doug, I just wanted to tell you that I had an amazing time with you at INX, and I will remember everything, take it with me all my life, that that was the brand this is. All right, so background in traditional finance. I'm French originally.

I don't know if you can hear my accent. Basically, I started my career working for banks, hedge funds, brokerage firm in different countries, so France, United States, United Kingdom. That was my dream when I was a young guy getting to get the finance world. But then I realized that it was a boring world, and I was basically looking for more. And back in the day, 2014, that was quite early at the time, I remember Bitcoin had something like $300, market gap, 5 billion, it was in another life.

I basically fell into it, and I understood that that's what I wanted to do for the next 20 years of my life, because I understood the technology would be groundbreaking and would basically change how people transact, consume, and so on. So then I started basically my entrepreneurship journey, build three companies, for me it is the third one. And yeah, so basically 10 years in this space and looking to bring the old money into this new world, basically. - Nice, very nice. Now, you started off, I think I'm doing market making, is that right? And then INX was after that? - Yes, I started basically doing arbitrage cross platforms on Bitcoin.

We built an algorithm that was plugged to 12 different platforms. What we basically underestimated at the time was the third party risk of those platforms. So it was a juicy business, one, 2% every day on the money. But when you have 20, 25, 30% chances, then one of the platforms basically just blow up. It was the risk that we had to face at the time. Obviously, it's a lot more safer today. And then yeah, I started my first company called BSave. It was the first Bitcoin saving account. The idea at the time was something very simple.

If Bitcoin is supposed to be money, then you need to have some kind of financial services around that basically serve that money. And the one that makes the most sense is obviously a saving account. So I started basically in 2016 there. And it was a time where taxes on Bitcoin was not a thing. There was some on Bitcoin was not a thing, right? And then yeah, we sold the company in 2019. And then, Doug, we met in basically 2018 when we started INX basically. - And INX, I think that was a big move for you into the regulated environment. And I think you were one of the drivers of getting the prospectus through the SEC.

And it was the first day of a prospectus, an F1 prospectus to full offering. And also, it was a little bit backwards too in that we did the IPO before the business was running as opposed to before. So it was almost like a regulated ICO in that respect. And you're saying, this is the idea, this is the vision. We want to raise money and we put out to the prospectus. And certainly that was a very successful raise, but security tokens, they've taken their time in terms of getting global success or global excitement. Meme coins take off or NFTs have taken off, they've had their days, but security tokens are still waiting for that moment.

What's gonna bring that moment? Trump. - Yeah. - So you're really saying, I guess the SEC has been holding or throttling it back somewhat? - Listen, we learned it with some sweat and with our blood. Basically, it's all about timing at the end of the day, right? The vision might be right, the team might be right, the product might be right, but if you don't have the market with you, then it's gonna be a hard lift. And I do believe that the election in the US is going to be a turning point for the entire industry, by the way.

And I think that if the United States of America decides to adopt the technology for financial markets, the same way the Black Rock of the world and the fidelity of the world already understood the potential, but basically started with something that had no regulatory risk, which is basically Bitcoin ETF, because Bitcoin was already recognized as a commodity. I do believe that once there is clear regulation, basically the entire market will start moving forward, right? And we didn't have this moment where government told us, like the young companies trying to innovate, you have the green light, go for it.

This is what we want, we want more innovation, we want more, less friction. We want something that run 24/7, like we didn't have this validation from the government, even though obviously securities markets are absolutely regulated activities and we had to basically navigate those rules, but you remember very well, basically all the hurdles that we had to face, which were basically the education that we had to do with them. Yeah, education is huge. We had regulators that had never heard of what a blockchain is, or wallets or any of these things, like absolutely clueless.

And that costs money to educate them and the lawyers in order to get something like that through. Absolutely, and if you ask me, I think that the only reason why the meme coin and the NFT was basically a success is because that was the last class of assets where retail had the opportunity to participate without worrying about regulation, right? So meme coin is the absolute sheet coin by definition. There is no company. It's something that is created out of fin air. It has absolutely zero fundamental value. Is that something that the SEC might think about regulating? It's very hard to think, right?

Because it's something that is backed by nothing. No people, no company, nothing. So you can't regulate it, but it's the last frontier of assets where retails can participate without worrying about regulation. But it's not the path we wanna go, right? We want adoption and we want government to validate the value proposition. And I think AMP win in November would definitely unlock a path like this.

I have a question for both of you guys, since you guys were both at INX, and as I look at other platforms in the space as well, as you were all going through this process, were you of the mindset where it's better to say I'm sorry than ask for permission on the front end and weighing risk reward as you're going through this process? Because you see all these lawsuits that are going on with the crypto exchanges and everyone's trying to innovate, but yet regulation isn't laid out. So you need to know the rules of the game to play the game. I think that's a California thing.

That's a Silicon Valley thing, where let's break it and then we'll fix it. That's certainly like the Facebook model. But I think when it comes to regulation in the financial sector, you've really gotta follow the rules. And if you break them once, it's very hard to keep going. I think that's definitely, it was our motto, was that we need to not really ask for permission, but we need to explain what we're going to do and then get permission.

- I didn't remember the time 2017, 2018, there was a genuine belief among the team member that what we've seen a year before with ICOs, where basically retail had the opportunity to participate into basically new financial markets, where if you give them the opportunity to invest in great stuff, they will. The only issue with ICO is that it was full of scam and rock pool and things like that. So obviously it's almost like a lottery, right? You wanna invest, but one out of two is going to be a scam. So what we said was, let's do something that is fully regulated, which has basically the SEC stamp on it.

So people know that at least this thing is working by the rules, right? It gives the comfort to investor to understand that this thing is not a scam. Obviously then the merits of the investment and if the investment is going to be succeeded is always a question mark, right? It's not why the SEC is there, it's not to judge the investment itself, but just to make sure that what you say is actually validated by proper facts. And we had success, like it was a long path. We had success on the raise. And the idea was like, okay, if we managed to do it, others will follow. They would be like, okay, we show the path and then others will follow.

But unfortunately, nobody can afford $5 million in lawyer fees just to be able to sell a token to retail when some people just have to push a button, create a smart contract and just sell it offshore, right? Like the lift is just too hard. So that's where it didn't work out so well. - I think we assumed though that we would spend the five million and the next guy maybe would spend a million. The lawyers I've talked, including the ones that we used, now tell me maybe it costs a hundred, sorry, $800,000 and maybe it would take nine months rather than three and a half years. So they say that, but I still don't see a lot of issuances coming out.

What's very interesting with Buildle that Securitize is doing, that's obviously for accredited investors under RegD. But what happens then is you get an offshore company like Ondo Finance that uses that as the collateral. So they're a corporate, so they can buy that issuance from Securitize. And then they just issue it to retail offshore as an investable product, as a money market. And so that Ondo is getting around the rules somewhat and that they're buying an asset to keep in their custody, but Securitize isn't selling to the retail guys, Ondo is. And so there's lots of ways to get around the rules.

There's also, you could do a private company under RegS and just sell to absolutely anyone outside the United States as long as they go through KYC AML. And we're seeing that a lot with different security tokens that are coming to the market now where they're just saying, you know what? It's finding an accredited investor in the United States that cares about a digital security is a needle in the haystack. Maybe we should just go offshore and talk to people in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that are very familiar with digital assets and sell to them. - Yeah.

- I think everyone is really trying to find, I think that what's interesting is there's two different ways to do business development for security tokens. One is to go find a token that's got a huge following, to find a company with a huge following that essentially wants to go to their fans and say, do you want to invest in this new idea or invest in this company? That's one way. And I think the other way is to go out there and find guys that have huge followings that are offshore and they're looking for some sort of collateral instrument. And then you go to someone like BlackRock and you say, listen, I've got $250 million of demand.

Do you have a fund that I can tokenize that we can then sell to these guys? And I think that the first one's very hard. It's very hard to get someone with fans that wants to do a digital security. The second one might be easier. And I think there's going to be a switch in the business development from a lot of the broker dealers in this space in the U of S towards essentially looking for who wants collateral and then finding large asset managers to provide that collateral through a tokenized fund, which is much, much easier to do, but we'll see. - Yeah, we'll see. I wish things can move faster, to be honest. It feels like it's taking too long.

I don't know if you feel me, but- - How much of this do you think is the end consumer type investor thinking that a digital security is the same as all these other scams that were going on that celebrities were promoting and this, that, and the other. And that's why maybe even the celebrity or the athlete is kind of pumping the brakes to say, "Ah, I don't really know if I want to have that messaging out there right now, because maybe I don't understand it as well, and frankly, my fans don't understand it as well. And so I'm just going to wait." - I think a huge part.

- If I may, maybe it's going to be a little bit controversial, but 10 years I'm in this space, and I can guarantee you 100% that a lot of the success in this space is only because it was driven by pure speculation. Like what makes people interested in crypto is for 95% of the use cases in this space today, the ability to make a lot of money quick. And it might be because you invest in a meme coin or because you decide to launch a token, and then you're going to say after one year, "Sorry guys, it didn't work out," but you pocketed $40 million like the front deck guys that I saw two days ago.

So I think this is the missing opportunity in my opinion. This is the missing opportunity because nobody really, truly managed to build a product that bring the benefits of blockchain removing the speculation aspect. And if you think about the benefits of blockchain, what blew my mind 10 years ago when I did my first Bitcoin transaction was not the fact that I can become rich with Bitcoin, not at all.

It was the only fact that when I sent that Bitcoin transaction, I knew that a person on the other side of the globe, just with an internet connection, received the money I sent him, and I could actually verify it online using a blockchain explorer. And that was the aha moment for me when you realize what this technology bring compared to what a wire transfer for a bank means today. I think we need to improve collectively as a space. We had unlimited amount of money. We had unlimited amount of talents. And still, there is still no adoption. And this is basically this that basically drive me nuts. And I said, okay, you know what?

Let me try to build something that maybe is going to be adopted by consumer at large just because it's a better system, not because they can become rich or something else. - I think the UI UX in the space in general is horrible. It's an absolute disaster. It's almost like the developer designed the system. But you need a Johnny Ivy from Apple to come in and say, look, this is how you need to design something to make the public see it. The public doesn't have to know what blockchain something's on. They just have to know that money was sent from A to B quickly and be able to do it in a way that's very understandable and very simple for them.

Now, talking to UI UX, I've seen your new platform ProMeet and what you're doing there. And it's very smooth. It's very exciting. Why don't you tell us about what's going on there? What are you doing? - Okay. So I think I gave a little bit of a preview just before. Basically, there is two world. There is the crypto world and the web tree world. And those guys are basically a niche, right? They talk between them. It's still small. It's not going fast enough. This market is doomed. It's too small. You cannot grow within it. The only way to grow within it is to actually make a 100X and say, thank you guys.

On the other side, you have the mainstream. You have the entire world of consumers, the entire world of investors, which is a much, much bigger pie. And nobody really managed to reconcile the two. So instead of doing like everybody else, taking the small door, building web tree product that nobody understand, I decided to go the other way around. I decided to look at the problem. Let's start with the problem, right? Don't start with the solution. Start with the problem. And the best ID are usually the most simple one, right? After that, it's only about the execution. And the ID is very simple.

How in 2024, in the online world that we all live in, how do you manage to monetize your time online without any friction? If you think about the solution that are offered today to people to monetize their time online, even for streaming, even for a meeting, you would actually be surprised by the amount of friction and hurdles that you actually have to face before you even get started. And now you might understand the value of blockchain in that specific case, because blockchain brings you everything that you will never get in the web two world. It gets you empowerment. It gets you freedom.

And ideally also simplicity, which has been missing a lot so far in this space. Okay, so we took that ID, right? We said, okay, people want to monetize their time. Okay, for video conferencing or streaming or whatever, for whatever reason. Let's build a tool that combine the video conferencing, the streaming and the transactional layer under one roof. Now, that was the very simple ID. So if I want to make it very even more simple than that, like if I want to start a paid event, I can do it on permit in less than five seconds and two clicks. So what did we build? We didn't build a social media because it's we're not pixel markets.

It's crazy to start a social media to those days, like you start, you're gonna lose. We didn't build a marketplace because the marketplace, you have the supply and you have the demand and you have always an imbalance between the two that always really hard to reconcile. So what did we do? We said, you know what, let's build a tool. What is the beauty of a tool? The beauty of a tool is that your market is almost infinite, right? Because it's like when you buy a hammer in a store, nobody's gonna ask you what you're gonna do with the hammer, right? And you might have a lot of different type of people buying the hammer. WhatsApp is a tool.

Grammarly is a tool. DocuSign is a tool. Zoom is a tool, right? So we decided to build a tool, but with a transactional layer in it, which let anyone in the world of internet connection start a paid event in events in basically two clicks. That was what we built. And if you ask me about the complexity of blockchain and how we reconcile this with the ability to target mainstream and not the web free small market, then I can obviously elaborate on that. - So when you say paid event, I guess let's say I'm gonna do a speech or I'm gonna talk to my followers.

I would sign up with Promi and send the link to all of my different socials and people would then come to Promi to watch me and then what they pay as they go? - With Promi, you have three monetization options. You have the ability to do free events. You have the ability to do pay as you go events. And you have also now the ability to do pay per entry event. Okay, $1 fixed or $10 an hour or free. But even on the free events, you can basically transfer money between people. You can tip the host and so on. - All right, so let's say I'm a rock band. - Okay. - And I'm playing a car.

I can send this out and say, "Listen guys, there's a ticket charge $10 fee in order to watch this." And we're gonna have a camera set up so you can watch the event. - Yes, and it will take no more than like I said, 10 seconds for the guy to set it up and to share it with his community, friends, clients, whatever. - Or if I'm a lawyer or consultant and I charge by the hour and you wanna talk to me, then what I'll do is I'll give you a link to the Promi to the meeting, just like I would with a Zoom. And when they come in, based upon how much time they spend talking to me, that's how much they'll end up paying. - Absolutely correct.

The beauty of this system, I can give you the benefits now. Okay, that's the idea, okay? You got the idea very well, okay? But now, what people fail to understand, but they understand it through the experience of the product itself. But if we want to be a little bit more technical, what are the benefits of bringing blockchain into this picture? The benefits are, number one, it's a trustless system. It means that no matter who joined this room, you know that at the time the guy is in the room, you're gonna get paid, okay? Doesn't matter if you know him or you don't know him. So the headache of thinking about when am I going to get paid?

Did he pay me or not? All those questions in your mind basically disappear, okay? Everything is integrated and it's trustless. The second advantages is the fact that at the end of the event, you get paid instantly. Like there is no waiting whatsoever, all right? Because there is no intermediary. So the payments are actually happening peer to peer from the wallet of the viewer to the wallet of the host. In addition, because we're using a decentralized layer, it's a truly global system, right? There is no geographical restriction to be able to monetize from people from all around the world.

And finally, which is the one I prefer, is accessibility. Let me just run you through a very quick example. If you want to start selling tickets on Zoom, you're going to need to have a $1,500 subscription on Zoom. But yeah, you're going to need to have a PayPal or Stripe KYB verified account. You're going to need to take the API key of Stripe and put it into Zoom. And if you look at the explanation of how you do that, you might actually laugh because it's insane. And then because people need to pay, because it's credit card and people need to pay the tickets in advance, now you get into trouble because what about the constellation policy?

What about if I'm not showing up? What about if I'm sick? What about if I'm busy that day at the end of the day, right? So I'm not going to buy it, right? Because I don't know if I'm going to be available or not. All those questions, this is not streamlined. This is not a good experience. So what is good with Promit? What is amazing with Promit is the accessibility part. I explain. With Promit, you don't have to subscribe to anything, okay? You don't have to start paying $10 a month for something that you might not use. With Promit, you can start, like I said before, a paid event in less than 10 seconds, no matter who you are.

You just need an Italian connection. With Promit, you don't need to sign up. Listen, you don't need to sign up. You don't need to create an account. You don't need to create a password. You don't need to put your Gmail. You don't need to do anything. What we created is unique in this world. Why? Because with Promit, you have the ability to do video meeting, streaming, transacting, and getting paid as simple as visiting a simple website. You know all the B2B services. They all ask you to register. They all ask you to pay subscription. This world is fully outdated. Do we do Webtree to do the same thing that those guys are doing?

No, we need to do things differently. And Webtree was always about openness, freedom, empowerment, and what was missing all those years, in my opinion, was the wallet aspect. Nobody wants to create a wallet. Nobody wants to connect a wallet. Nobody wants to know what is a wallet, right? So what did we do? When you actually visit Promit, you don't have to think about creating a wallet. You don't have to think about connecting a wallet. You get a wallet, as simple as that. So when you visit Promit, or it's like you visit the cnn.com, you might actually see a balance. You see a balance. Why you see a balance?

People might not even think about what you mean. I have a balance. I just visited the website. I see a balance. It's my balance. Yes, of course, it's my balance. Who else? So the only reason there is a balance there is because at this time, at this point in time where you visit the website, we created a wallet for you. It's a self-custodial wallet. You have the keys for them. And that's why you can actually start receiving money without any friction whatsoever. So, yeah. - I have a question. Do the creator or the expert, the person making the content, do they have the option to offer a subscription to their audience? - The answer is no.

- Okay. - I explain you why. Take Zoom. You know how Zoom make money, right? They are selling licenses. They had to go that route because it was their only way to actually make money, right? What we offer is truly a tool, okay? It's a tool. So it's not something you ask people to subscribe or anything, it's, how can I explain? It's really on the fly, okay? Everything is on the fly. Like we don't record, we don't host anything. We don't save anything. We don't, it's really a peer-to-peer experience, right? So if you want to start a video conference with someone, then you can start one on Zoom, a paid one, a free one, it doesn't matter for me.

And that's it, you're just going to get paid and that's it, bye. There is no agreement, like contractual agreement between us after the meeting. Like the relationship ends. It's WhatsApp when you send a text message or, yeah, it's basically just a tool. We are not looking to make people stuck into it. It's really about freedom. I don't know if that really answered the question. - Let's say you're a consultant and you send me the link and I go in there. Do I have to preload money on? And if I do, how do I do that? - Yeah, okay. So first of all, before you talked about bringing Solana, et cetera, so we've promised there is only USDC, okay?

There is no speculation like I said before. It's only stable coin. So things that people understand, USDC, equal USD, equal dollar, one-to-one, fine. How do I do that? - So do I have to bring a wallet though with the USDC? Or do I buy it with a credit card? What do I do? - So when you joint commit, you get a wallet. That's number one. You don't realize it, but you get one. Then what the only thing you have to do is to top up your wallet, right? You need to top up your wallet. So what did we do? We integrated more than 10 different on-ramps, okay? Like the best one in the market.

In the US, we actually favor the strike because obviously it brings the trust and the confidence of the US market. And it's a very simple experience because you basically say, "Okay, I wanna buy 10 dollars "with my credit card and I'm going to get 10 USDC "in my wallet." The experience is quite smooth. Like you actually get the money in less than a minute in your wallet. Usually you don't have a KYC process to go through because most of the use cases are below 300 dollar. So they will not be able to borrow you with a KYC team. And we accept Google pay, Apple pay, credit card, debit card, credit pay.

Like we have a bunch of different payment method how people can actually top up their wallet. - All right, so I put 50 dollars in and it's an hour long conversation at a dollar per minute. After 50 minutes, does it just shut down and I lose the last 10 minutes? Or does it automatically go to my credit card and take money again from there? - Okay, so at this time, you basically get a pop up message like five minutes before you run out of money and that ask you, "Hey, I'm gonna run out of money. "Please top up." So you basically click on the button and then you can basically top up your account.

- Credit card information again or it's-- - No, it's a one-time process. The credit card information. After that you just push a button and then it basically charge you. And if you don't, you're gonna be kicked out. - Yes. - Got it. So what's the difference between this and let's say OnlyFans? 'Cause my friends tell me that OnlyFans essentially, maybe you subscribe or maybe you pay as you're watching. I guess the way that I'm looking at what you're doing is it's almost like a peep show and you can do it with professionals or whatever, but you pay and the screen comes up and I'm talking and I'm paying by the minutes or an entry fee.

And then when the time runs out or when I leave, the screen goes down. - Is that about right? What are the types of clients that you're picking up right now? - So just to you about the differences with OnlyFans, if I may. First of all, OnlyFans generated $650 million profit last year. They announced their results last week. I started basically looking at OnlyFans business and talking to people actually using it just to understand how they were thinking. - That's hard research. - It's hard research, yes. (laughing) They use OnlyFans just because they can get paid from OnlyFans for this type of activity.

Now, you have to understand the hurdles that exist today. To become an OnlyFans creators, it will take you three weeks. You have to give your bank account, you have to give your ID and you have to be approved. Once you're approved, OnlyFans will take 20% of what the creator make. - What do you guys take? - And only five. - Okay. - You know why we take five? - You gotta take something. - Because, yes, but because this company can scale without, how can I say? Because we're using decentralized rates, our finance team and as business comes, we don't have to scale the size of the team.

Okay, WhatsApp, it was a company of 45 people, 200 million users, 45 people in the office. - Yeah, telegram, same sort of thing, very few people. - So that's what I'm looking, that's what I'm trying to achieve basically by bringing a tool that is a no brainer to people because it's a way for them to get paid, it's a way for them to avoid long education and it's a way for them to not get too much of their revenue. - Comparing to OnlyFans again, how fast does the creator get paid? Do they get paid same day? Do they have, you said it's three weeks to sign up, but let's say they've made $20,000, how long before they get that money?

- From what I heard, it's two weeks. - So the difference is you're at 5% and you get paid instantly. - Yes, so it's two weeks on OnlyFans but it actually depends of where you live, okay? So it can become complicated. And in addition, you have a minimum. So OnlyFans is not going to pay you $20, okay? You have to reach an actual threshold for OnlyFans to actually start paying you and sending you the money. Now, what is the beauty of blockchain? Micropayment, so what we can do with Promit is you can, if you want to charge $1 per hour, you can. And if someone stay half an hour, you're going to pay 50 cents, that's it.

And the money goes to you, thank you very much. It's in my wallet, it's paid. So there is no minimum as well. So basically it's, like I said, it's pure freedom. Like you don't need to ask for permission to get your money. You don't need to ask for permission to start something or you decide your price. Nobody has decided your price except you. Obviously, the biggest challenge now becomes what? It's not basically finding a way to get paid. It's not finding a way to do meeting or streaming. The biggest challenge for you is and should be finding people willing to pay you for what you do.

This is what people should focus on and not trying to optimize the way they're going to have an approved only fund account so they can get paid depending on the country, complicated. So do what you do best. If you're good at what you do, you're going to find clients and you have a tool where it's very easy, basically is a no-brainer to start making money from it. That's it. - So if you're a creator, this can be a pay-per-view as well, essentially. Pay-per-view right now is done.

You've got to be a big fighter and do something with the UFC or something on television, hundreds of millions of dollars, but I could do a pay-per-view through Promi where I'm doing something and I can charge people at the door and they would come in and watch it, pay-per-view. - Okay, so that's something new that we actually finalized today. I don't know how you know that. - No, I didn't. So what you can do with Promi is, like I said, video conferencing and it's not really streaming. It's more like a broadcasting, okay? So you're live and people are watching you, but basically it's in real time.

But this is not exactly what streaming is about because streaming, if you want to do streaming, you need to have a buffering, okay? A small buffering so you can have the best quality of images and the best sound possible. So what people can do on Promi is actually creating channel where they can basically tell videos, which is back to the pay-per-view, okay? Which is not necessarily live, but you can actually sell videos of whatever you want.

If you're a teacher, okay, and you have a 10-course series and you're going to schedule every month the 10-course series and instead of doing it every time, you just put yourself a video that you record at one time and then you show it every month and then you charge for it, then you understand how this market becomes 1,000x bigger because not only the target audience is huge, but also the live is small. Now, if you include the ability to monetize videos that are pre-recorded, now this market becomes really infinite. So that's what we try to find.

- Now, would you have to record those videos through Promi or could you take sort of recording that you'd done elsewhere? Let's say I've done a recording, it's on YouTube. Can I essentially then upload that into Promi and then use it through Promi? - Okay, so first of all, you don't upload anything to Promi. Like I said, we are a tool, we are not YouTube. YouTube is a platform, Twitch is a platform. You cannot upload anything to Promi. What you can do is stream a video source that is coming from another, not Promi, someone else, right? And through Promi, monetize it.

So to answer your question, you can basically monetize anything, any video source that you want, even a YouTube video if someone is willing to pay for that, I don't know. You will be able to do, but we don't host anything, we don't keep anything. There is nothing basically on Promi. What's up, telling you that they don't store your messages, everything you store on your phone. - Got it. Wow. - So I got a question. So is it then fall on the content creator or whoever streaming any ramifications of what they're doing? Or is like-- - Are these functioning as of today? - Yes. So first of all, we are still a very young company, right?

So we have not seen enough. We do have use cases around teaching, okay? We do have use cases about even gaming. People coming on the Zoom and they want to do some, I don't know, they send money between them because it's just easy to do and they can see each other, right? So you don't have to say, "Okay, what is your wallet address?" "Okay, I see you, I see your name, I send you your SDC." It's like a video wallet, right? So there is a use case there as well. And then we have a bunch of free meeting as well, right?

Because obviously free will always outpace the paid one, but for us, we look at the free way to attract people to the service and bring conversion to the paid. So there are a lot of use cases. It's always, when I talk to investors, they always try to take me to, "Okay, what are the use cases? Which one are you targeting?" And this is a valid question, right? Everybody needs to have a go-to-market strategy. And I'm not trying to avoid the question, but to be honest, when you think about the market and how you need to position yourself to be able to capture as many people as possible, just going in a specific industry is not the right way to go.

Like when chargeGPT came out, they didn't say, "Hey, it's for developer, it's for the type of people, or this type of people." When you use Google, everybody use Google. Doesn't matter what they do in their life, right? It's a tool, you're searching for something. Everybody that order a taxi, doesn't matter what they do in life. What is your go-to-market strategy when you're a taxi company? So everybody does video, everybody does live, everybody does video conferencing, and a good portion of them might actually find ways to monetize it.

So for me, it's going to be about having a marketing budget and just blasting this thing because the benefits of it are clear. And I'm sure that in the mass, because the market is so big, then 10, 15, 20% will at least look at it and say, "Okay, this thing makes sense." And they might talk about it to their friends and so on. So at this point, it's a marketing play, only. Yeah, the market's going to decide how this is going to be used. Exactly. I think when OnlyFans first came out, I think people thought, "If I can teach people how to cook, or I can do this, or I can do that." And then there was one market segment, obviously, that took over.

And so I think that you're in the same sort of boat and that you've got a technology, and the market's going to decide how it gets used and how it starts moving forward. So I got to say, it's pretty exciting stuff, John. Thanks, man. Are the conversations two-way? If I did this, am I broadcasting out to people and they can't talk to me back? Or are there settings where the creator can take people, they can see chats, or they can see faces? How does that work? Okay, one is exactly like Zoom. You can use Zoom or you can use Promit, it's the same. Actually, Promit, it might be actually better because Zoom you pay or you're limited to 45 minutes.

So better to use, actually, Promit. You can schedule the conference in the future and so on. You can do everything, you can record, you can check your screen, you can do all the screen. So Zoom and Promit, it's the same. Now, on the broadcasting part, when you talk to an audience of thousands of people and they all see you, but you don't see them, we have a chat, okay? So people can actually chat between them. They have their picture, they have their name, obviously, they can tip you. So you can see an active chat, like TikTok, right? TikTok Live, you're broadcasting yourself and people chatting on it.

Same, we made it transparent on the phone so you can see the chat on the image, the same. So that's the two things you can do right now. - So let me ask you this. So since you can schedule and people are busy in their life, so are they getting notifications? Be like, "Hey, your event is about to start, hop on." 'Cause obviously that's how the creator is gonna make money, the more people that get on. - It's actually a very good question. Because we're not a platform, technically, there is not a place where you can see all the events happening.

But again, we do it on purpose, which might sound counterintuitive, but if you think very deeply about it, it's not. What we facilitate at this time is when you actually schedule a meeting in the future, you basically have your Google Calendar connection, you just push Google Calendar, you get to Google Calendar, already with the dates, price, the link, and then you just need to have an email of the people that you're looking to invite, and then it's gonna be in their calendar, okay? Beyond that is just a link.

So it's up to you to post it on your socials, it's up to you to send emails to your client, it's up to you to do whatever you want with that link to make sure people don't forget about it or subscribe at your meeting, yeah. - Do people have to come in at the start of the meeting? Or could they come in, if I'm doing something for an hour, could they come in 30 minutes late? - Yes, they can. - If they click on the link? - Yes, they can. You basically set up a start and an end of the meeting. You cannot join after the end of the meeting, but in between you can.

If it's pay per hour, you're only going to consume the time you're in, doesn't really matter. If it's an enterprise, then obviously you might be-- - Yeah, so this is a concert, essentially, and it was gonna be an hour and a half long. You're gonna be doing social digital marketing throughout the concert, trying to get people saying, "Oh my God, there's only 15 minutes left of this concert. "Let me catch the last 15 minutes." Because you're gonna essentially be charging at the door all the way through that time. Just like in a bar. - Yes.

- The door charges $15 to see the band, and it's gonna be $15 if you come in at the start or if you come in with 20 minutes to go. - So the core thing is I give you the options, and then it's up to you to do whatever you want depending on the business you do and what you think is best for you. That's basically the approach. If you look at, again, at Twitter, at Facebook, at Twitch, you have so much modulation, so many rules. It's heavy on people, to be honest, so you feel it. So it's not our positioning. Our positioning is, okay, here are your options and do whatever you want, whatever you want with it. Up to you.

Like I said, there is no login anyway, so the process is very seamless, very seamless. - I think we created something cool. - By the way. - Let me ask you a question, and this may be a hard question, it may not. So if I'm a creator and I look at the different models of, heck, look at the gym model. You've got the Planet Fitnesses of the world that are nine or $19 a month or whatever the heck it is these days. And really, they know that maybe, I don't know, nine, 11% or whatever that percentages of their actual membership base are actually gonna come into the gym. So their model is more almost like psychological.

Sign up, if you use it, maybe, maybe it just makes you feel good that you got a membership. So is there an option that a creator can say, or maybe their fans are like, "I wanna continue to tip you." Because as I look at this as an investor or whatever, I like that subscription model. I like the opportunity that my fans can almost set it and forget it. And that may be counter to what your thesis is. But then that rolls into the next, what is the pitch to the creator to switch? I know that's obviously a valuable thing is, hey, you're paying a less percent, you're paying, you're gonna get your money instantly.

But what about those other things that may be important to them to get those mega creators to your platform to really bang this thing off? - Great question. Number one, there is nothing innovative about subscription. So for example, you can actually subscribe to a creator on Instagram. Patreon is also about subscription. Patreon is big, 2.5 billion value. But this is not Webtree. What is Webtree? Webtree is about transparency and fairness. When I, how many subscription can I have? How many subscription can I subscribe to creators?

I want 10, 15, 20, you think it makes sense to actually subscribe 20 times 10 when I know that I'm going to consume maybe what? 5% of the content that those guys are actually creating. That gives, it's not authentic to me because that creates a feeling for the guy that subscribe that say, oh, this month I didn't watch nothing about this guy. I'm gonna do-- - That works in streaming right now. - I pay for, I don't know, 10 different streaming services on my television and I only watch one show. I'd rather just pay for the show.

- So I look at this, it's a very end user friendly, economically and almost like ethically friendly for that end user, right? And then it's that is going to drive the behavior of the creator to say, look, the reason why I'm really doing this and the reason why I'm here is because of my fans and my fans are gonna basically dictate this is the right thing to do. So this is the way I'm hearing it in my brain. - Let's talk about the creator now because what you're saying is there is downside for the creator.

The cool thing again, not being a platform because you are creator on Instagram, you are creator on TikTok or you're a creator on X, you cannot be a creator everywhere or YouTube, right? We are not a platform, we are a tool, okay? So we are not looking to bring those people to stop what they currently do. You understand? It's just a tool, it's a compliment. Like you can build your community on social media, this is the place to be, this is where everybody is, this is where you actually get likes and action and cool stuff and messages.

But when it comes down to actual monetization, maybe it's the time to actually create a comment link in two seconds and give it to the people you want to monetize from. So we are not competing against them. It's so it's a compliment. There is only upside, it's just an additional way to monetize your time. And each subscription works for you and you manage to bring a lot of subscription people, right? But, and then you just create content for them somehow.

That's one route, but I think it's really-- - It's almost like a try before you buy type thing where it's like, you could almost be an on-ramp, I don't think that's the strategy, but I mean, it almost could be where it's an on-ramp, it's try before you buy, you see it before you have to enter into all these different subscriptions. But again, it's a compliment to what's going on and then you can, that would gain some more exposure for pro-meet. - I think we are more on no-ramp because it's very hard to convince people to take a subscription. - Yeah. - Very hard.

A lot harder than actually see something that interests you and say, "Okay, you know what, I'm gonna put one box into it." And the beauty about pro-meet is when you have a $20 balance, you can actually consume that $20 with any pro-meet event. Doesn't matter who you are. That becomes now a different model. Instead of getting stuck with one guy that you have to pay every month, now you have a panel of different people where you can only pay for the content that you consume, but also there is not only downside because you're opening up your market to people that might actually never want to pay you, right?

"Okay, I'm just gonna try." So you actually expand your target market because they're gonna give a try for small amounts. So there is up and down. - Yeah, my cable bill, my cable bill has so many different subscription services. And if it was to be switched to something like this where my television's holding like a $50 balance and then just based upon what I watch, it just takes it from there, I'd be so much happier. Obviously, the more TVs you have and the more kids you have, it'd be expensive. But your way, I think, makes a lot of sense for the individual. But what you're building here sounds amazing.

And we should really start, Phil, and I should start thinking about using Pro Meet as well for us. But I think we reached time, Phil. - Yeah, I think, Jonathan, thank you. We've talked about a gamut of different things. I think probably our listeners are, we started off digital securities and now we're talking about a new generation of content revenue with very low friction. So I think they got a very wide experience of how blockchain technology can be applied. I'm excited to see this, and yes, I think we definitely need to take a very hard look at using this platform for you. - The good news is, John, Phil's in Hollywood.

He's gonna run downstairs right now and talk to all the stars. - That's right, that's right. - Yes, and-- - Thank you so much, John. - Thank you. - My pleasure, thank you guys. - All right, everybody. - Thank you very much. - This is another edition of Old Men, New Money. We'll talk to you next time.