Ep: 222 - Year end special, AI design with Jamey Gannon (@Techbimbo), Disrupting the payment stack with John Egan (Polygon), retail investing in 2026 with Andrew McCormick (eToro US), and Quasimatt on Cultural Moods

[00:29] Here's this week's show. [00:31] you [00:33] Happy holidays. Happy holidays. [00:37] Welcome to the Christmas... [00:39] holiday special it is that Christmas Christmas and all of the holiday special any any holiday that anybody wants New Year's special as well including or just like Thursday to like PTO celebration yeah yeah [00:54] Uh, from boys club to you, from our club, from your club. [01:02] Here we are. Here we are. Someone in the chat just said locked in. I love that. If you are here, please jump in the chat. It's truly my favorite part of the whole thing.

I have it open too, so I can see everything that people say, and I'm going to be locked in on the chat. And you have to click into the stream, and then there's the opportunity to chat. If you comment on the thread, you don't see it. We don't see it right away. So just so everybody knows. [01:20] We are locked in. How's it feel? [01:23] I'm Natasha. Oh, I'm Dina. [01:25] Miranda. [01:27] Special guest. Yeah, guest appearance. This is part of Boys Club. This is a few people from Boys Club.

We have a really fun show. Just a quick rundown before we get started here. We have four guests. We're going to be talking about AI design prompting with Tech Bimbo. We have John Egan coming, who's the chief product officer at Polygon. He was formerly the head of CryptoStripe. He's a very serious person. We're going to talk about payments with him. Andrew McCormick, head of eToro US. I've never talked to someone from eToro before, so I'm excited to... [01:55] Have a chat with him. Talk about retail. I feel like I have some...

[01:58] Was Anna Stone at eToro? I feel like I have a history with eToro, but I can't pinpoint why. You have a history email thread with them that I was reading through. Doing some recon. You've been chatting with them for a while, so that's all I know. I know that they've done some major out-of-home buys that I've seen. A taxi take, I think maybe London. [02:19] We're going to find out. And then Quasimates coming to just close things out on a strong note. End of year special. End of year special.

[02:28] of the year for, [02:30] the boys i want to get through a lot of stuff quick shout out to polygon we had some big news yesterday that i want to chat about but first if you've touched crypto in any way chances are you've already used polygon it's a chain quietly powering a bunch of stuff that actually works [02:43] that people actually use, like Stripe's crypto payments, betting on polymarkets, prediction markets, and a bunch more. [02:49] Big news out of Boys Club HQ re-polygon yesterday. Big news hit the timeline. [02:54] Big news at the tie line.

We love Polygon. We've worked with them for the past year. [02:59] And we are entering a... [03:03] Official situation ship with an entanglement and an entanglement and a, um, [03:09] Yeah, and we're very excited about it. It's a huge deal for us at... [03:13] Boys Club, and I feel really blessed and honored to be in the situation that we're in and feel like we've worked really hard and it feels really nice when you work really hard and something comes together. [03:25] Totally. I think [03:27] It's really cool. And I think that in terms of...

[03:31] what it means for us. It's just like enabling us to do what we're doing and amp it all the way up. This has been the case for the last couple of months. So [03:42] If it hasn't felt different to you, it probably won't other than you'll see. [03:45] More. More. Only good stuff. It will only mean more boys club stuff. [03:51] in your life and on the timeline. And in many ways, nothing will change. And in other ways, there'll be just a lot more exciting stuff. Yeah, exactly. So we remain...

[04:01] Totally independent, which is the exciting part of all of it. And I think that Polygon, yeah, we have been working together for the past year and we've gotten to know them. [04:11] like culturally, operationally, and they're [04:14] such a [04:15] standup squad across the board at Polygon Labs. Totally. Yeah. Long-time listeners know that we've had many different iterations of what Boys Club is and what the business is and what it isn't. And we've had many conversations with various... [04:30] Parties. Parties over the years about... [04:34] various different iterations of what like an entanglement could look like and [04:38] This is the first time it's felt like it really right for all the reasons.

And so, yeah, excited to take the next step. Yeah, and I think the reason that you're maybe hearing vagaries is actually, like, intentional. Because, like Dina just said, like, it was the first time we were able to have a conversation that wasn't just, like... [04:57] standard cut and dry black and white. It was really about like, what does boys club need to grow and keep doing what we're doing on a larger scale? Yeah. Nuance. There was room for nuance, intentional nuance. And. [05:10] It's a dynamic environment. Boys Club, we love to never have something that's just...

You know, we live in the gray. Womanhood is a spectrum. It sure is. It sure is. Anyway, I think that if you're looking for a feeling from the boys, it's... [05:27] Really excited and feel really genuinely proud of it. [05:33] Every single one of us. Yeah. And thanks so much for everyone's kind words. Oh my gosh. Everyone was so nice on the timeline. What a wonderful response from so many people that. [05:43] I said this in a thread I did, but... [05:45] I've met so many wonderful people. And like the joke is, it's just about the friends you meet along the way.

And that meme is true. It's funny because it's true. And I've met so many wonderful people doing this job. [05:58] have had many iterations of myself and of the work. And it's been really nice to be in and amongst people who leave a lot of space for that and – [06:09] Just love y'all. Love. And gratitude. Okay. We have a couple things we want to get through before first guest comes. Okay. Totally. The one other thing is I do want to say. [06:20] Ava, [06:21] is in the chat. She's the newest boy.

She's in, I won't talk to where she is, but she's traveling for the holidays, but go follow her on Twitter. Nice. She's new to Twitter. The timeline. Um, but also, yeah, Ava has been, if you've been at our events, you've probably met Ava at some point in the last couple of years. She's been writing, writing hard, hard and working with us in all sorts of ways. And it is so awesome to have her. We've been wanting to, yeah, for so long. So it [06:51] Okay. We are going to do a little year in review.

Great. I'm going to, you're going to bounce. I think so. But you have some funny things to say. Okay. [06:59] Great. I was hoping you'd stay. Okay, so we have a few questions. [07:06] A Kate note? Okay. Posture check. I'm going to ask you the first one. Okay. And you can skip or... [07:12] Go. Okay. Man of the year. [07:15] Okay. I've prepared. I have a list. I know. You have a few different questions that I don't have answers to. Okay, great, great, great. Okay, I have a list and it's as a list of men, a list of men of the year binder full of men.

I have a binder of men and I'm excited to chat through them all. Just I'll do a quick hits. [07:31] Jack Dorsey. [07:32] Interesting. Eric Adams. [07:35] Mira Mirati. [07:37] Okay. Nathan Fielder. [07:39] Okay. The Pope. [07:41] And Dr. Orna. [07:43] Wow. Incredible list. I was just like in a flow state this morning. I was like, okay, who, who's really, who's my men of the year and top of mind. And all of those, all of those, all of them have been an embodiment of [redacted address] or the other. A hundred percent.

Yeah. Wow. I really love that. That's my list. What about yours? 50 cent. [08:01] Oh, he's my man of the year. [08:03] incredible have you watched the documentary over my timeline i haven't i haven't watched it i've watched some of it and it's a few things one once you know you get in an algorithmic hole and i have watched enough 50 cent clips now to be in one yeah and there's so many wonderful things about this person but one of them being that his level like his commitment to petty yeah is so powerful and i respect it and admire it and it couldn't be me but i i want to move closer to that type of

[08:33] yeah um he dated petty with a production budget petty with money yeah and also a few years ago i think it was maybe 10 years ago fact check me on this somebody because it's not accurate exactly but he ran out of money i think was fiscally irresponsible and found a wallet of bitcoin and that's what got him back to his are you for real i think so we need a fact check on that anyway incredible that's my minute any men for you i'm really racking my brain totally fair [09:03] Oh, I'm sorry.

That's a private man. That's a private man. I actually, I guess. [09:08] Bye. [09:10] Thank you. [09:10] Mom Donnie comes out for me. Nice. Okay. It doesn't all have to be... I was taking it as a Time Magazine approach to it. Of course. Person of the Year. Of course. Which is... [09:21] Well, also, like, it's not only complimentary. It's, like, just big compliments. [09:25] Oh, interesting. Mind share. Yeah, I agree. Which is why I feel Mom Donnie ticks that box for me in a lot of different ways. So that's all I have to say on that.

Okay, favorite day on the timeline. [09:37] Okay. Women in space. That was a really good one. I thought I thought that was really good. Katy Perry kissing the ground. The weird door not working. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, just so many. Also, the conspiracy theory around it not ever happening. Yeah, I loved it. Just like it being something. Just fun. Funsies. Totally. Funsies go to space. I don't know. Just everything about it is so ridiculous and enjoyable. Gail King, too, right? Gail King. She was in the crew. What is happening? It really was peak internet.

[10:07] Internet, like really wonderful. Yeah. You guys? Mine was Conclave, the Pope Day. Oh, that checks out. Pope Day was huge. Huge for some of us. Huge. And just was one of those days where it was like... [10:20] I [10:21] It was so wholesome. We're all just there looking at... [10:26] a chimney in rome and wondering what's going to happen yeah so yeah it was such a human uh mirenda do you have one uh yesterday oh that's cute that's so sweet i love that um okay best comeback [10:43] Thank you.

[10:43] Elizabeth Holmes. [10:45] Oh. Nice. [10:50] Nice. She's back. Back on the timeline. I actually was falling asleep the other night, and I thought... [10:56] Yeah, she sold her Twitter. I had full body conviction about what has happened. Totally. Although I will say I have never subscribed to anyone on Twitter before. You subscribed? I subscribed. You're waiting. Watching and waiting again. Because she was like, I'm starting a book club. [11:12] And I was like, I want to be in her book club. And it was a dollar. And I was like, great.

So you're her lead. I mean, voice club is one victim because no book club, right? No book club. I haven't seen a lot of book club yet. But I also like subscribers. She's going to be waiting a while. To give her money is. [11:28] And also it hit Dave's credit card. And he was like, what? He's like, what are you doing? [11:35] Oh my gosh. [11:37] what's the best comeback for you? Um, this is just felt top of mind. Lily Allen. [11:42] Full Lilian comeback. Huge. Anti-Lilian. I could see that for you.

I love, it's a bigger conversation. I was a huge fan when she first came out. And I do really like the album, but I find the press around it to be grating. [11:56] Totally. But I do think she's back, SNL, after 18 years. I think she's back... [12:02] Thank you. [12:03] that [12:04] I have a lot. Just say it, Dina. Well, I just like... [12:08] when i listen this is a larger conversation but like i'm listening it's layered to the album [12:14] And... [12:16] There was like some consent that she had.

This is not totally off topic, but like there was some consent that she had in her relationship to have an open relationship. Yeah. And then she changed the goalpost and she got mad about it. And it's now this whole thing. I think that's actually exactly the opposite. I agree. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe, maybe not. But like, of course, she she is writing. It's the goalpost. That's one of her lyrics. All I'm saying to say is it's. [12:44] It's petty. It's petty. If nothing else. It's petty. Wait, petty is maybe my theme for it.

Anyway, it was just the first one that came to mind, just for the record. It's not. It was definitely a big comeback, though. It was totally. Yeah, true on comeback. Tick. Maybe not going to endorse on. The way she went about it. See, for me, I'm like, I love a. [13:05] Scorch story. [13:07] Oh, I had a before he cheats idea in Hell Half No Fury in Tennessee or in Pinch and Forge where I went for Thanksgiving. They have this thing that's like they do there, which is dinner theaters. [13:19] There's all sorts of different kinds.

There's a Dolly Parton one, which is the one I went to. I was totally over-served there. And it was so much fun, and it was so kitschy in all the ways you can imagine. Anyway... [13:29] I had this idea as I think like in a hangover state the next morning where I was thinking of different dinner theaters that you could do. And I thought of a Carrie Underwood. What's his name? Carrie Underwood before he cheats style dinner theater where you're given a side of who it is. And like the whole show plays out in front of you.

And wow. Wow. Good, right? High concept. I love it. Thanks so much. Okay. She needs a boost too. I think that from what I've read, she's been kind of down bad. [13:59] head with like a farm or something. I don't know. Oh, a dinner theater. Yeah, I think she should do that. I think she's been like not booked and busy. Okay, so Carrie, let me know. Yeah. Oh, my comeback also music is Biebs. Oh, totally. Just absolutely love music. [14:20] To see him return to the music scene. I saw that was on your top songs.

I am in the top zero, 4%. Wow. Wait, did you see Lottie Day was Beyonce's top top? [14:31] listener of all time of all time number one it was incredible and the tweet i saw the thread i saw about was people people were like we've been looking for you and she's like like the bay hive it was so sweet i loved it wow achievement um but she was like yeah she like puts it on when she sleep like you have to be listening to it oh my gosh all the time in order to get to number one spot but it was impressive i do think there's like a real commitment to like supporting like the stream count in some of these right

[14:58] fandoms as well so yeah just like rolling it on on mute while you're sleeping um okay best quote i have one which was from uh this is kind of a niche throwback but [15:08] The Kid Rock World Queen moment. Oh my God. Honestly, Jess was thinking about that as comeback because he really reentered my orbit with that moment. That was the craziest video I've seen all year. That's saying something. Yeah. And the quote being, somehow I have one in my fucking house. We're talking about the orb. Incredible. Wow. That's really great.

That's really great. Surprise and delight. Mine was everything is computer. [15:37] Yeah, I feel like that's a bearing. OK, last fumble. Biggest fumble. I have one. [15:44] Great. I don't really have one. I do. Oh, what's yours? Go. [15:47] Sean Wyatt and Nina. [15:49] This is pop culture. Yeah. Okay. So Nina Dobrev from Vampire Diaries. Does that ring a bell? Nina. I don't see that for Dina, but. Okay. Well, she's an icon, a legend, like one of the most beautiful human beings to ever walk through the face of the earth.

Just, yeah, really. [16:06] A special bird. Sean White the snowboarder. And Sean White the snowboarder, who I referred to as Carrot Top Dupe earlier, because I'm so mad at that fumble. I can't even believe. And also they were engaged for like a long, long time. So everyone sort of saw it. [16:21] I think you cheated on her. That's the word on the street. I wouldn't even care about the fumble if it was just like they grew apart. But to have it be a story of... [16:29] Mm hmm. Non consenting, unethical cheating.

Not not for you. No. OK, mine was mine's a little bit more pointed. Great. Farcaster. Yeah. [16:38] Oh! [16:40] Whoa. And here's the thing. Here's what I'm going to say. It's not a fumble on anyone individually. Totally. I actually think that Dan... [16:49] has been a great founder through this and like has taken a lot of heart, made a lot of hard decisions. I, I, however, think that like there was an experiment that failed around decentralized social, at least for now, but, [17:04] And it will work in the future in some way or shape or form.

Man, that just brought up so many other PR fumbles for me from this year. Really? Yeah, totally. [17:13] Um, [17:15] BlockWorks announcement of their shift from media into consulting and data platforms. That was just an interesting case study around... [17:24] Having the right comms partner in the room. And honestly, so was Dan's recent. [17:29] announcement around the farcaster thing like that felt like actually his message was it's not working we're going to try this other thing for growth we're going to keep the social network we think that the wall it's really important for the growth of the social network totally all of that was there but the way that he announced it order of operations was off yeah same with i would say a similar kind of totally and i think the lesson in that is that people don't read people don't read perception is reality and call boys club if you want a comms partner that can help i love that i'm gonna head okay okay great let's bring up our first guest [17:58] So Jamie Gannon at Tech Bimbo, your bio, a very good branding and AI person based in New York City.

I love that. The creator of com, which is an AI design course. Just overall, a great follow if you're interested in creative prompts, design inspiration and AI and branding. And so excited to have you on the show. I've been a longtime follower of Voice Club. Oh, that's so nice. Thank you. Okay. So tell us about your background. How did you get into the prompting game? [18:27] Yeah. So I am a brand strategist and creative director. I mainly work with early stage tech companies, sometimes e-commerce. I also had a crypto phase.

That's like many of us. Totally. I guess you guys are still in the crypto thing. But yeah, I guess. So I do a lot of branding work. And I also have a supplement company that I run with my boyfriend. It's called. Supplement? Okay. It's called Portal. It's a sleep supplement. Okay. [18:57] ton of time into it so we don't have like a huge like bankroll to get a ton of like people to do websites or product photography and stuff like that so um as a designer i want the site to look really good because it's kind of a reflection of me and also it's just like fun and it's just like [19:13] Uh, so I was kind of exploring like, okay, how do we get better product photos?

Like, how do I get a better website and just make everything look better? And I realized like doing the product photography or, or buying stock photos or doing a photo shoot is like really expensive. Um, [19:27] So I started playing with [19:29] uh, AI to just as simple as like, just doing like, it's, it's a drink. So like just making the drink. And then it got into like making like really editorial, like stock photos and like, you [19:40] you know, how to's of like how to use the product. Um, and now I'm doing like full on product photography, um, [19:46] Also, like, UGC.

So that was, like, the first, like... [19:50] real flow where I could build like an entire brand yeah using AI where it like really unlocked for me I will say the there's a lot of people who are doing like prompt design stuff but I will say what sets you apart [20:02] Like in the top point zero, like by a huge mile is how editorial – [20:08] and differentiated all your stuff looks like all of it that I've seen. It's really, it's really impressive. Thank you. And yeah, we're just so into it.

How do you like get to that? [20:18] Yeah, I mean, I think... [20:21] It's not much different than any other creative process. You know, you have to have... [20:26] a goal in mind of what you're going for, but [20:29] At the end of the day, you're just... [20:31] iterating obviously there's like certain tools that are going to be more likely to give you like a super realistic look or like a super editorial look but even if like you know that [20:40] You still have to... [20:42] have a good references and like create a mood board and like know, [20:46] what you want.

[20:47] in terms of giving a direction. So it's just like creating a logo. You start with... [20:53] You know, what what am I making? What is like the style going to be? Let me find some references. Let me think about. [20:59] I want to go about this. And then it's just trial and error. It's a lot of like, [21:03] iteration and like seeing what works and then [21:07] Mm. [21:08] You know, if you get to like a point where it looks really good, but like, let's say in Mid Journey, like the style is really cool, but like the skin is kind of like smooth, like the hands messed up, then I know, okay, I should move it into a different tool or maybe even just Photoshop.

[21:22] to kind of like finish it out, basically. Do you, how have you gotten to the tools that you are using? [21:29] Do you use a mix of all of them? Do you have some favorites? Like, [21:32] I feel like that's, I get stuck even there where I'm like, where do I start? Yeah. So I would, um, I started using obviously chat UBT for like tech stuff, but, um, I started with mid journey and I think it's a good place. Is it still only in a discord? Yeah. [21:47] No, it has a beautiful app.

Oh, wow. [21:51] Yeah, a really good agency to sign up. I'm blanking on the name right now, but – or web platform, whatever. It's really beautiful. I like – [21:57] recommending people start with my journey for a couple of reasons. And I'm doing this in my course as well. It's like really easy to use. And there's also a lot of like levers you can play with similar to like a VSCO or something. [22:10] Not exactly like filters, but in terms of like... [22:14] It's not just like an empty prompt box, you know?

Okay. You can have mood boards. You can have personalization. Oh, cool. Okay. You can tune up the style or tune down the style. There's also like a whole community of like... [22:26] People that you can, like, take their prompts or, like, take their profile codes. So that's a really good place to start. And then also if you want something that will, like – [22:34] Almost 100% give you like a beautiful image, maybe not necessarily realistic or exactly what you prompted for. Mid-Journey will do that. But something like Nano Banana. [22:43] like in a banana pro, it might just look kind of boring or bland.

Okay. I feel like where I... [22:50] Something that you've been able to like pierce through that I have not yet and I haven't seen a lot of other people is that everything that I generate – [22:58] There's like a... [22:59] sheen over it that I'm like, oh, this is clearly AI generated. And like, it's usually fine for what I'm doing. Cause I'm not at the level of like product, whatever, but like, [23:09] Everything is like even today, the Cathie Wood. Did you see the Cathie Wood thing? [23:13] Or it's like, [23:14] And like, ma'am, that's obviously like an AI-generated child and like a photo.

Like you can tell from that thing. But your images seem to like have – [23:24] Are you a texture that... [23:26] It's... [23:27] sets really sets it apart are you pulling it into photoshop and then like finishing things there like how i i don't do any like retouching in terms of like style the only retouching i'll do is like you know if there's like a weird [23:40] I don't know. Like – [23:41] Really small stuff. Okay. Or like making a mock-up or something. Yeah. When it comes to like the texture stuff, I think...

[23:48] It depends on what you're making. Like, I had this one sort of series go viral, like my, like, Party Girl series, where it was all these, like, super grainy, like, 2000s Lindsay Lohan-inspired, like, digital camera photos of, like... [24:02] Kind of like influencer girls today in that style, like partying or on boats or whatever. And that happened to look really real because... [24:11] I nailed that like... [24:13] digital camera sort of like prompt and mood board. Oh, or like input system, basically. But if you try that same thing, [24:21] And in my course, I talk about this.

If you apply that to skiing, go skiing. I take digital camera pictures when I'm skiing. You would think that, OK, if this digital camera [24:31] system works for this. It should work for this other one too, but it's, it's not how like the model works. It's, it's way too focused on like being dark and grungy and, and the references that I've given it. So yeah. [24:41] You have to kind of... [24:43] change your approach depending on the mood and what you're making. So my process is like different. If I want something like really...

[24:51] dslr and like crisp i'm gonna use like different prompts different references than i am for the like digital camera stuff yeah so it's not one thing [25:01] So what's your take on AI art versus, like, there's, you know, a lot of discourse around that right now. Yeah, I mean... [25:09] If we're just talking about the art, [25:13] I mean, I feel for the artists that like, you know, they're like, it gets in the way of like, [25:18] important things in the process even if let's say the output's good like yeah there's important things when you're making it that like make art what it is uh but i think in terms of like [25:26] commercial artists or like designers it's just so much cope and it's really funny because I actually saw a talk about this a couple months ago by this guy Claudio [25:36] And he was going over like...

[25:38] basically like Luddite thinking throughout all these different times in history. And like, [25:44] artists when the camera came out were saying the same thing they were even like the camera's going to steal your soul um musicians when i guess like the synth came out or like whenever like electronic music started coming in same exact conversation i also didn't know this like even like graphic designers massima vignelli i think [26:00] like did like the subway in New York, he didn't like Photoshop even. So like even tools is like, yeah. [26:07] you would think it'd be universally loved.

He was like, no, it's gonna get in the way of my design process. So this is just like a tale as old as time. [26:15] And yeah, I think a lot of it's co-presentation. [26:16] And a lot of the people that like, [26:19] really hate on it, make it their like brand to hate on it are kind of just losers that like, don't, like they don't even have, they're defending these like great careers they don't even have. [26:30] Heard. Heard. Heard. Heard. Nice. Nice. Shots fired. No, I get that argument very much.

And I think that there's, yeah, like the democratization of tools. [26:41] And yeah, music tools, I think there's the same sort of stuff that's rolled around when that happened as well. And I think it's like... [26:47] You have to see that as net positive for more people to be able to like create. Not everyone's going to create well. And like that's always going to be the case. But like that doesn't mean that. [26:59] that. [26:59] shouldn't be available to them to use. What's you seem to go viral or like have these viral moments every once in a while?

Like, do you get a lot of stuff back? That's, [27:10] If I go really viral, yeah, there was one. I did a post of like – [27:15] Like hot girls are using AI. I got like 27 million views, but are you monetizing? Yeah. Oh, great. I put it in the newsletter. Elon box. Yeah. It's great. Oh yeah. The UBI. [27:27] Oh, no, no, no, no. I put your hot girls are using AI in the newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. So they like, basically they take a regular photo and they're like, put a horse behind me or put a puppy in front of me and it went super viral.

And, [27:37] the quote tweets were like so vicious i had so many like other kind of like design thinkers reaching out to me they're like i knew the ai hate was like bad but it's like so delusional people were quote tweeting with like collages they made on like pixart they were like here's something i made in like 2014 that's so much better and it was like [27:54] objectively worse right like just horrible and then there's people commenting like you know [28:01] Imagine how many trees they killed to make this. They're killing the environment just like...

[28:05] insane, like anti-AI psychosis. [28:10] What do you say to stuff like that? You just ignore it? [28:12] Yeah, I mean, I think that [28:15] It's better for me because like the less people that know how to use these tools, like the more I use them because people are going to want them. Yeah. Obviously, or businesses at least so. [28:25] Yeah. Okay. I want to get into some of the work that you've seen using AI that feels really good to you. So best campaign campaign. [28:35] Well, I mean, I think the best AI campaign, we probably don't know about it.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. [28:42] I don't think that. [28:43] I don't think we're going to know. [28:45] What did you think of the Crew drama? [28:49] I think I read an article about that. Did you see that they did a campaign with AI? Yeah. I'm trying to remember what I thought about that. I think I liked it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that upset me about it was there were some very obvious errors. There was a leg that was like... [29:05] pointed... [29:07] backwards. And I was like, how did that get greenlit?

It's a little bit weird to me how... [29:12] Um, there's, [29:15] It seems like there's not like checks and balances around AI production in traditional businesses now. [29:22] They don't know how to do that yet. Yeah. I also think this is something that I've been like learning too, as I get better at it over the last like six months to a year is like, you're so excited by like the novelty of it. And the fact that you can like produce something at all that like, [29:36] that high lasts for a long time.

And then you look back like three months later and you're like, Oh my God, like that totally looks like AI. Um, or you're like, Oh, it's fine. Like, it's fine. [29:44] Let's focus on like this subject, like this looks so good. And they forget the broken leg or whatever, because the rest of it is like so fun and cool. [29:50] That's like a part of like getting good AI is like being like radically honest about like [29:54] Does this look good? Same thing for design or even like fashion too. Like tell ourselves all sorts of lies.

[30:00] Yeah, totally. [30:03] Okay, worst campaign. [30:05] I was wracking my brain trying to think of this earlier. I think I haven't seen too many bad ones. I think people are still being pretty careful. I know the Coca Cola one went pretty viral that had a lot of hate. [30:17] But honestly, I mean... The McDonald's one last week, too. Yeah. Yeah. [30:21] Oh, yeah. Oh, the Skechers one was bad. Yeah, the Skechers one was bad. [30:27] Oh, I haven't seen that one. There's lots of like regular bad campaigns too. Totally.

Yeah. That's kind of how I took this question. I was like, I mean, look at a luxury perfume ad. [30:36] Like, and they probably spent like... [30:39] I don't even know production budgets, like upwards of like hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce that when like you probably could have just done – [30:45] The thing with AI. [30:46] too. Hire Jamie. [30:48] There you go. Um, what, how do you think marketing roles are going to evolve over the next few years with all these tools? [30:55] Yeah, I mean, I think...

[30:57] This is a big question. I think high level like design and marketing. [31:03] And like storytelling, it's all going to kind of become like one role or one team in some ways. I think like the top 10% of like anything... [31:12] you know, whether you're an illustrator or a designer or marketer, like you're, you'll, you can stay kind of like in your niche, but [31:17] Overall, the fields are going to kind of meld together and, um, [31:22] I think that's because like... [31:24] With... [31:25] marketing and design, because I do a lot of branding, obviously.

When you're interacting with your brand guidelines or trying to make a website or an ad, it's not going to be using a template or using just your brand guidelines anymore. It's probably going to look more like [31:40] using chat GPT, you might like... [31:43] have a design system that you make and a set of like negative prompts and like [31:48] rules and context that you give this ai that you can then like prompt in the natural language to like make you a holiday poster uh you know in your brand style or make you a landing page um and then like on like the even like crazier end is like let's say you're like [32:05] a skincare brand and you have this like, [32:08] AI interface that has all of your product photography.

Uh, it can make any new product photography, uh, [32:14] It has all your design systems. It has all the sentiment about what people are talking about. [32:19] And you're like, hey, I want 30 static ads with testimonials, all new original customers for each one. And I'm going to plug you into Meta. And I want you to use my like top 10 segments. So that might be like women with aging skin. That might be new moms. That might be teenagers. And then it'll write. [32:39] Each ad. [32:40] like for them in that context.

[32:42] with your brand guidelines and then maybe even be able to like, [32:46] take the results that those ads get, [32:49] and refine them and like do it all on its own marketers, marketers, [32:53] especially are going to be more like brands like engineers in a sense. I don't know what word is like the right one at this point, but yeah, they're going to be doing a lot more, [33:03] prompting, curation, [33:05] I hate to use the word taste, but taste is going to be a big deal. Knowing what to make, why to make, and when to make it, versus the actual execution, which will be totally...

[33:16] I feel like what I've learned from this conversation is that the mood board and the briefing process to the AI is everything. And that you're particularly... [33:26] part of your talent and what you found is like that really being intentional about that stage, like inputs affect your output and like, you're not going to get a good output unless you're like very, very, [33:37] intentional about like how you're shaping what you want to be in the upfront yeah i like barely in my course like i go over prompts a lot but like [33:46] Most of the prompts, and I posted about this, are, like, one or two sentences max.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Like, depending on what kind of thing I'm making, like, if I'm just making, like, sexy girl sentences. [33:55] For example, with some of my mood board systems... [33:58] I can just literally say, like, sexy girl, and it'll come out, like... [34:02] Super realistic, super cool. Versus other people, you know, if they don't have this, like, system kind of built up. I hate calling it a system because, like, everyone calls their... [34:12] system workflow process. [34:16] Yeah, they have to do like this huge JSON prompt, and it's a hard way to work.

Okay, should we do show a minute? Yeah, I think so. Great. So we have a... [34:25] A fun bit here that we do, which is we have our guest, Shil. [34:31] Something, anything for one minute. [34:34] And we'd like to do it with you. Do you have something prepared? [34:39] I don't. I mean, I can do my course. Okay. Great. I kind of wanted to hear about your supplement. Oh, okay. Okay. Great. Ready? [34:49] go okay so portal is an all-natural sleep supplement it uses magnesium l-theanine epigenin and glycine uh and basically my boyfriend and i created it a couple years ago uh we based it on andrew huberman's like sleep stack um so it's all like clinically validated doses and science fact and basically what it does we have a whole science page that is going to explain this way better than i do but all these ingredients not only like help you relax and fall asleep but they do a bunch of [35:19] brain and in your muscles to like make your recovery better.

So if you've ever been like really sore from the gym, [35:25] Um, and you take a magnesium bath, you take a magnesium supplement, you'll usually wake up like way less sore than you would have been otherwise. Um, [35:31] And glycine, too, it makes people dream a lot. But it actually gets in your brain and helps your body cool down, which helps you fall asleep faster and stay asleep. We're out of time. But that was absolutely perfect. Where can people get it? com. com. Yeah. [35:49] We'll drop in the chat. And then your course, how can people find out more?

You can go to com or just follow me on X at Jamie Gannon and I'll be providing updates. Hopefully it's coming. Like. [36:03] Jan 1. Great. A little sooner. Yeah. [36:06] You'll see us there. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. So nice to have you. [36:13] We have John Egan, Chief Product Officer at Polygon, formerly head of crypto at Stripe. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So excited to have you. We have spent some time together and heard about your vision and excited to talk about it today.

But you are a man that knows a lot about crypto. You know a lot about sort of how institutions, I think. [36:33] Think about crypto more than a lot of other folks who are working in this industry. So I'm curious, what's your sort of take on where the industry is at right now? Just sort of high level like CloudCheck. Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty exciting moment. I think like stable coins are here to stay. No one's really arguing about that anymore. Yeah. There's sort of a joke in the industry now.

It's like stable coin panels are the most boring panels to go to. We don't have anything to disagree about anymore. We all stand up there and say, oh, it's going to be amazing. We're going to connect the world. [37:03] is [37:03] And everyone just sort of nods. Yeah. That's probably going to happen. No conflict. Yeah. And I think you could argue the boredom is exciting, right? Like we're finally not arguing about whether or not this core capability is possible anymore. We're arguing about like what's the right way to bring it to the world.

And that's really cool, right? So that means we start to see winners in the space like Polymarket emerging who are really winning on UX for the first time, right? Like crypto is winning on UX instead of like winning on some kind of an arbitrage. And so I think that that's really exciting. [37:33] We're going to start seeing more brand names kind of come into the space. Polygon worked recently with MasterCard, worked with Revolut. These are consumer-facing brands that are more going to rely on crypto rails in a way that doesn't feel like some arm's-length moonshot bet.

It just feels like here's how we're going to deliver our services to you better. Here's how you're going to start your business, and it's going to work all over the world on day one. And I think that that shift will just go exponential over the next year. [38:03] You know, a lot of crypto companies that sort of offshored out of the S. to sort of escape what they thought the regulatory environment was going to be years ago, like are all coming back now. We're seeing a big inflow back from London to the

S. that's really exciting. New York specifically is getting a lot of crypto excitement. Yeah, we're trying to build a polygon office here, like larger and larger. So I think we're going to see way more of that. And you're going to have a lot more conversations about like the application of what the blockchain is being used for. [38:33] that the point where we've reached the beginnings of table stakes for like moving tps is getting up to the number we wanted to get to sort of like the moment when the electric car came in and we all stopped talking about zero to 60 because okay fine like two seconds is probably fast enough for a consumer car like we're getting there we're not there yet we're still a little ways but we're getting there in crypto so really exciting time okay so table state uh yeah you spoke about sort of there that it's arrived we're here it's the technology is to a point to a point where it's

[39:03] really usable as chief product officer? Like what is the shape that you think it will take? [39:10] Yeah. So maybe I could like go backwards a little bit. I was previously at Stripe running crypto there. And the pitch at the time was sort of, OK, the only way we're going to get all of these traditional folks to sort of move towards crypto was to go ahead and like build crypto into the payment processing system that they're already sort of attached to. You're sort of working your way down the stack from like the application towards the metal.

Abstracted. Right. Right. But now like working downwards. Right. Because we want to, you know, in a company like Stripe, you want to expand the amount of the stack that you own. [39:40] At Polygon, we're already at the metal. That's sort of the exciting part. And when you think about money movement globally, it's already happening. Polygon was early in LATAM. Polygon was early in APAC. And because of that, the money's already started to move. And it's almost the opposite challenge. It's like, how do we move up the stack? [39:57] How do we go and get closer and closer to the brand being the brand that you rely on from the moment of the decision to move the money all the way through to the metal that moves it itself?

[40:06] And so there's a lot of big plans in place kind of coming up over the next year that will make it easier for everyone from a consumer to be able to think about Polygon when they're moving money and be able to execute on that sort of brand recognition. All the way to institutions like banks, you know, or like money movers or remittance companies who can all rely on Polygon end-to-end products. [40:28] as an application partner, as well as a kind of core technology partner at the Metal. And so we've always been this to a certain extent.

Polygon's always been really deeply a kind of shepherd to the community. If you're running a bank and you're thinking about crypto, you've probably talked to our BD team, you know, sort of expanding that. [40:45] Oh, uh, off where we can be sort of the first party to help you also move that money directly. So there's a lot of plans kind of coming into place there. I think Mark had spoken a little bit about some big moves we're planning to make in the acquisition space recently. I think there's going to be a lot there that gets to come out soon.

So that's like, that's the high level. Um, you know, maybe as you get like deeper down, it's also all about like, well, what does that open up for the world? Right. What does it mean to, you know, run your business on Polygon? [41:11] That means your business can start global from day one. That means your business can gather yield no matter where your money is being stored and in what currency. That means that your business can run 24-7. [41:22] as it's translating into and out of local currencies as necessary. You should be able to think about the brand that way, not just in terms of like, okay, this is the metal on top of which I might be able to build those applications.

So it's a little bit of a duality of sense for the brand, but it's a really exciting moment for an opportunity to kind of expand out into ownership of the stack. I've heard you talk about some of this before, and I think some of the solutions that you spoke to, [41:47] get at it, but I think there's a... [41:50] foundational misunderstanding for a lot of people in this industry, but I think just generally the general population of people who work in tech who don't have an understanding of how difficult it actually is to move money.

And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that, like what is actually happening? [42:08] at Stripe or at a bank or behind the scenes of these things that feel I get pushed back a lot from people saying like, well, money is already digital. Like, what's the point of crypto? And so if you could just speak to that a little bit, I think. Yes. So much of our perception of moving money today is really this like virtualization layer that's been created, which is actually backed by various types of credit and deals and signatures on pieces of paper and middlemen and risk assessments.

So when you go and like tap a credit card, it's in the name, it's credit, [42:38] It's not actually getting out of your account. Even when you go tap a debit card, it's really not. We're running on banks. These things are running five days a week, eight hours a day, cutoff times, sometimes worse than that. And so the reality is you have sort of this virtualized layer that works really well for specific applications, like tapping a credit card. And then a settlement layer underneath it, which is where the money is actually moving.

And that layer is still trapped in the 50s. [43:01] That layer is moving very slowly. It's moving over systems like the wire system, which is kind of like an email system for money. You're opening up your list of wires, you're clicking through them, you're bringing them inwards. And that really only works in the geos that you are most local to. So in the US, we have access to the US market for this, which is great. But... [43:20] If you wanted to go and take an immediate payment from a higher-risk geo, someone you don't know, you can't risk assess somewhere in APAC, it's actually pretty tough to do because of that virtualization layer.

You can't make a risk assessment on them. You can't make a credit decision about them. So you really don't trust that transaction until it gets to the settlement layer. And that's why so many businesses and people, too, are so geographically constrained without some kind of middleman between them and the business. [43:50] look at like the AliExpresses of the world as kind of these like, okay, now I have a trusted middleman who deals with all of this complexity on the other end for me. Like what's really cool about bringing the settlement layer up, right?

Like making that the high speed, easy to access programmable layer is you don't need all of those middlemen anymore. You really just need the settlement layer. So I can say, send me $10. And thanks to stable coins and thanks to on and off ramps globally, you know, and thanks to better application layers helping you connect into the [44:20] Make that transaction happen. Know that it's not reversible. Trust that the money's actually been moved, even though it's 11.58 m. on a Saturday. And then deliver your what's increasingly becoming a digital good or service back to [44:33] without any of the overhead.

And I think that that's like the thing that's changing at a wide level, right? At a global scale. And it's working its way down into the local scale. You can actually think about email this way, right? When email first came out, it was super clear why it was valuable for trying to send an email to India. Clearly that was better, right? Than sending a letter. But it didn't actually make that much sense to send an email to your neighbor. [44:57] Right. Why wouldn't you just walk next door and like carry a letter over?

Because your neighbors got to dial up. Right. And chew up their phone line and wait for AOL to open and get the you've got mail. Right. And hope their kid doesn't pick up the phone and wreck it before they open it. You know, but over time, all of these other things started to happen at the technology layer. Right. We got Wi-Fi and high speed Internet and we got our phones and we got push notifications. And all of this cool stuff happened around the. [45:20] this very core thing that was shifting, which was how we move messages.

Same thing is happening, I think, today for the first time really globally for crypto. That's a really great way to bring it to life. I think one thing that comes up for me when I hear you talk about sort of moving that settlement layer up to the virtualization layer, is that what you called it, is that – [45:39] As a marketer, one hurdle that I can see is that you're moving into a domain where there's [45:48] brands that have been building equity for decades, if not centuries, that you're starting to compete with the visas or whatever point of sale.

[45:57] that consumers are used to seeing and to trusting. And I guess, you know, [46:02] question for you is kind of a hot seat question. Like how does, [46:05] Polygon has polygon able to play in that space or is it not going to be Polygon and it's going to be a partner like Revolut or someone else? Like what's what's your sort of perspective on that? I mean, the easy answer to that is that's a partner initially, right? Like Visa becomes better. [46:22] thanks to Polygon. Visa does rapid settlement thanks to Polygon.

This gap between a merchant making a sale and a settlement happening decreases because Visa's a lot of different things. Visa's a UX layer [46:34] which is like I go have a credit card that looks cool and I tap it. And then it's all that underlying capability. A lot of that is pain for them. [46:41] that they are abstracting for the user. So it's not actually like a guarantee that Visa has to disappear. Visa's front-end consumer-merchant relationship is pretty valuable regardless of what settlement layer is in the middle. So I think that's like the maybe – [46:55] easy get out of it answer, right?

Maybe the like less get out of it answer is, you know, [47:00] As we get like mobile application revolutions for how we move money around, right, the value of that card might start to change. And instead I get to pick, right, PayPal was like into this ages ago thinking about it. And a lot of the rest of the world is already there. And if you're in Argentina, everything you do, right, goes over Mercado Libre, right? And everyone has the app and everyone's scanning QR codes. And we're behind in the, just like we were behind with Tap2Pay.

We were behind with like, you know, scanning cards. And so that shift changed. [47:29] brings a lot of disruption opportunity when you also don't have the technology challenge underneath. So you could look at it through both lenses. But I try not to underestimate just like the consumer brand value of like a credit card today. Because for consumers, you're also getting, you know, rewards. You know, you're getting a good user experience. You're getting financial planning. There's a lot to be built. And the opportunity is there in crypto for that now to be rebuilt, you know, by new people.

Or for the incumbent to go and move quickly and adapt. [47:59] lucky position at Polygon, we get to sort of play both games. We want developers to create the new, and then we want to be able to help players like Visa take advantage of this new technology quickly. Yeah. I also think there's no other industry where consumer trust is more important. [48:13] And so that brand is so valuable. [48:16] I want to talk a little bit about you came from Stripe. You could have gone anywhere. Why did you end up at Polygon?

Because I saw Polygon everywhere. Like I kept running into it. It was sort of like the quiet layer on blockchain that was actually doing the valuable thing, right? It was the first chain that was integrated at Stripe for stablecoin transactions. We'd go to LATAM, and that's what everyone was already moving money around on. That's what, like, applications were already being built on. [48:46] It's unavoidable. It's the reason it comes up so many times. I'll probably say it seven or eight more times in this conversation. But I care a lot about brands.

I think it's tough to build a brand. It's tough to take even a good product and fix a broken brand attached to it. [49:01] And, you know, I think it's the right moment as well for a chain. [49:06] to start to own the wider stack. I don't think that's been true. [49:10] for a really long time, or maybe ever, right? For it to like start working its way up. And when I do that sort of evaluation, Polygon's unique in that the foundation and the labs organization are incredibly close. [49:20] So Sandeep is sort of the spiritual leader, even though Mark is kind of our CEO in the labs organization.

That is not true. [49:27] of most chains. Most chains you go in the labs organizations and they're really far away from each other. Yeah, yeah, you know, technology decisions are being made over here and labs is over here kind of taking guesses. Yeah, and I think you have to push those two things together. [49:38] really closely. And if you don't do that, you know, you really can't move fast enough for when the opportunity arises. So I think like all of those, the team's amazing. You know, I think Sandeep's story is indicative of like the kinds of people who ought to be running crypto organizations, right?

Comes from a place, you know, where if he'd had access to these types of tools on day one, he could have built the types of businesses that he had to go and build the tooling to be able to build. Yeah. [50:03] And I think that's... [50:04] organic and very real. I also just think, you know, crypto is an interesting moment. It's like a good time to come into the chains. Like I joined I joined Stripe when the public value that they'd sort of announced had been slashed. You know, I joined Facebook just before the IPO crash.

Right. It went IPO at what, $38 immediately almost crashed to like 16. [50:23] You know, crypto is on its back foot in a couple of ways for chains right now. And I think it's doing that kind of Amazon thing where like the price is dropping, but all of the internal metrics are skyrocketing. Yeah. And that's I can't think of a better time to get in. Yeah. For realists. Okay, so big vision. And I love to hear you talk about this idea of owning that whole stack. And it's huge as an idea.

What do you think are the... [50:51] hurdles. [50:52] that [50:54] can come in the way of that vision being expressed? I think the order that you go and execute against something like that's pretty tough to decide. You can sort of look at the world and start just throwing things against the wall and almost look more like a labs organization than you want to. The journey of here's a blockchain, now here's the next layer, let's make it easier to get in and out of fiat for everyone in the world. So when you're using Polygon, you're guaranteed to be able to off and off ramp.

[51:18] like easily obvious step, right? Like that ordering, I think is really important. I think the UX that gets built on top of it is really important. I don't think we have kind of a standard solution to the like payments experience, even peer to peer today on chain. The idea of a receipt is pretty complicated. Still, the idea of like what your address is, is pretty confusing. Yeah. And I think all of the attempts to do that thus far have been pretty [51:45] you know, early stage. You know, it's like even

eth, you know, web addresses. You know, you're sending money to like a domain. It's a little bit strange. There's a lot there, I think, that needs to be dealt with. And if you don't do it just right, consumers will sort of, [51:59] Just move on, right? Consumers are practical and for good reason, right? We don't have time to go figure out everything the market's doing. So the actual go-to-market here is, [52:07] is a huge chunk of the work. I don't know if you could sit there refreshing the Polygon page. But even just the way we iterate talking about ourselves, Polygon's been around for a long time.

We're incredibly reliable. [52:18] It's a little bit weird for us to think of ourselves as the stalwart, trustworthy thing in an industry of disruptors. But that's a lot of what Polygon is today. It's trustworthy.