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Public.com's Unprecedented Journey: GameStop, Growth, & Breaking New Ground | Bullish Studio Podcast
Oct 20, 2023
Back in 2021, Public was already experiencing massive growth since its founding in 2019. Then, the GameStop phenomenon happened. So, how does a trading meets social media app already new to the scene navigate a situation no one saw coming?
Public's Co-Founder and Co-CEO Jannick Malling reflects back on this experience and more in an all new episode of the Bullish Studio Podcast!
In this episode, Bullish Studio CEO Brian Hanly chats about Jannick's experience founding and growing Public, living and working through the GameStop short squeeze saga, "Dumb Money " the movie, Public’s community base, PFOF, and how the investing app is tackling everything from AI to music royalties to marketing campaigns and more.
Check out Public: https://public.com/
Follow Jannick: https://x.com/malling?s=20
--
About Bullish Studio:
Bullish Studio is a digital advertising agency and content studio passionate about business, investing, and culture.
About This Week In Money:
“This Week In Money” is a seriously not-so-serious weekly show breaking down the top headlines in money, biz, and culture, hosted by Brian Hanly and Mark Moran.
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0:00
that morning my CTO in Copenhagen tobas calls me up and he's obious in Copenhagen he's six hours ahead right
0:06
he's looking at the systems he's like what are you guys doing here like are you stress testing something is there a QA going on like what's what's actually
0:12
happening and I'm like I'm sleeping what are you talking about and I pop open my laptop I don't even think I got out of
0:18
bed and I look at you know obviously the numbers and yeah they're they're up to
0:23
the right I'm like holy if what's going on here I go on Twitter and I start seeing uh obviously GameStop and Wall
0:29
Street bets kind of trending and then then I go down the rabbit hole and then I'm like okay time to get to
0:39
work hi I'm Brian Hanley bullish Studio CEO we're here at the public.com offices
0:45
for another episode of the bullish Studio podcast we're speaking with janic maling co-ceo and co-founder of
0:51
public.com we speak with janic about his experience founding public in 2019
0:56
raising money the experience that the company went through during 2021s epic GameStop phenomenon and we recap a bit
1:04
about the dumb money movie which recently premiered in theaters please enjoy my conversation with janic and make sure that you're subscribed to the
1:10
bullish studio YouTube channel and wherever you get your podcasts thanks and enjoy my conversation with janic
1:15
janic thank you very much for joining us on the bullish Studio podcast yeah thanks for thanks for having me in my
1:23
own home yes for sure it's a beautiful office here you got um so public.com you
1:28
started this in 2019 is yes tell me about the journey what inspired you to
1:35
start a stock broker uh and yeah how it's been going so far yeah yeah um
1:42
so actually back in the days I've been in this space for a long time so I've sort of since I was 17 years old I'm
1:48
like the weird combination of being like a 36 year old that almost have 20 years of experience in this space which is
1:54
like a little bit odd but um so I've known the space inside and out uh for a
2:00
while but only moved to to the us about 7 years ago and I think the idea originally came up just because I knew
2:06
how fantastic a tool the the equities markets were especially in America as a
2:12
European you are even more aware of how incredible the American Stock Market is and so I knew how great of the tool was
2:18
for Building Wealth I was sort of assuming before I came over here that everybody must be then just like taking
2:23
advantage of this and including everyone my age Millennials and was obviously shocked when I found out that was not
2:30
the case and that actually the stock market and finance at LGE was something a lot of people were scared of it was
2:35
very hard to get started it was very hard to find good sources of education and so as we started double clicking on
2:41
all those issues we eventually got around to the idea of like what if you could build and we were the first to do
2:47
fractional investing in stocks so it was sort of like two-sided of hey what if you did not have to Pony up $115,000 to
2:53
buy the top 15 names in the S&P 500 because at the time Google was like totally two grand a share Amazon 3 right
3:00
so what if you could just start with like a 100 bucks maybe even less and then the other side was this whole social Community layer idea of like what
3:07
if instead of trying to get educated by sort of like all over the web and everything's scattered and there's a lot
3:13
of anonymity and you don't really know who you can converse with and so forth what if you just made a transparent Community where everybody can show what
3:19
they own nobody's Anonymous so everybody go under goes kyc verifies their identity Etc then we think you'd have a
3:25
really interesting resource for folks to actually just learn about the markets at large and and get more engaged and build up their confidence to really
3:32
participate over time and so you could sort of see those being like you are
3:37
lowering the structural barrier y of not having to buy one full share over here
3:42
and then over here and that that's the science part and then the art part was more how do we get people to actually
3:47
feel better right about the stock market to change this image and this perception that they had prior to that which was
3:54
very uh and we're going to talk movies today again but but you know it was historically always very like Like the
4:00
Wolf of Wall Street you know the Gordon gecko 87 movie these are just all great movies unfortunately because while
4:07
they're all Incredible movies and I enjoy them as much as the next person um they also I think ended up branding the
4:14
stock market um as something that's just purely purely this and speculative and
4:21
dodgy and riged and all of those things right which means a lot of people Shi away from it even people that probably
4:27
shouldn't have right and so that's so that's all that that we launched in uh yeah in September after Labor Day in
4:33
2019 so we just had our fouryear anniversary congrats thank you and then obviously yeah launch in 2019 grew
4:40
really fast uh right out the gate up until you know February March 2020 when
4:46
we thought oh no here comes the end of what was otherwise a phenomenal business
4:52
I mean in the early days we were doubling the user base every week pretty much right and so um and we were got
4:58
like oh God no like this cannot happen this is terrible timing and obviously in that moment we're dealing with so many
5:04
things that you know those might have been the first 48 Hours where we didn't just look at the numbers every hour right um because we had to sort a lot of
5:12
other stuff out right the minute we went back and opened we're like oh [ __ ] like this is actually wait this is going to
5:18
be an accelerant right because you basically had this huge drop it was like the Black Friday effect essentially I
5:24
think everybody had been on Google you know looking at an S&P 500 Index and and
5:29
looking at 08 and being like if I bought there right and then looking back at that in 2019 or 2018 people like I just
5:37
done that I would have done pretty well and here came this opportunity to massively buy the div again and a lot of
5:43
people took advantage of that especially folks that are young and had the future ahead of them and stimulus checks and I
5:48
think how to buy a stock was the most search search term on Google for a while and it's nut and you know uh yeah and
5:55
and and all that so but so we grew obviously keep growing
6:00
uh very very fast through 2020 I think we we grew the user base 13 14x
6:06
something that range so that's just the month where you're almost doubling every month like you can really never stop and
6:11
look back MH up until the end of the year that was interesting then obviously the election happened in November right
6:17
Biden got elected he said he wanted to vaccinate 100 million people uh in the first 100 days MH and then we uh we
6:23
actually told the team okay guys you know this was a crazy year probably an outlier Year we're off to great start
6:30
we've also raised a lot of money now so we're well capitalized now let's just like reset our expectations let's just
6:37
like next year is going to be very different M and obviously uh 30 days
6:43
later uh GameStop happens and all bets are off short interesting GameStop this
6:48
GameStop situation is the craziest I think I've ever seen there's nothing normal about what you're seeing when it
6:53
comes to this stock right now so then tell me about leading up into this moment of when Gamestop blew up
6:59
obviously you probably were aware of Wall Street bets in the community I mean you started an app that was focused around building communities around
7:05
stocks you must have had your eye on Wall Street bets and the culture of that and where did you initially what was the
7:12
kind of the first thing that you got a call on or the first moment where you're like something's bubbling up here that could be big so uh you're right I I were
7:19
I've been aware of of w for years actually uh narly but I was still surprised yeah and I I I found it fun
7:26
right so I I think a bunch of our developers will always they're sending like these memes around but that's the
7:31
thing it was known to me at the time I'll be honest mostly As like fun Waggy
7:37
Corner part of the internet where these memes were and I would I would like I would almost only ever go there for a
7:44
joke you know what I mean right totally and uh and so I guess I I hadn't been paying enough attention through through the remainder of 2020 where we also just
7:50
have been incredibly busy obviously and so so so that's why like I I couldn't immediately you know um but I think on
7:58
January 28 so on January 27 we have our best day ever W by like
8:07
100% margin right so uh we'd been getting thousands of signups that day
8:12
alone at the time that was a lot for us we're like this is great that morning my CTO in Copenhagen toas calls me up 6:00
8:19
a.m. eastern time right so it's like this like 3:00 a.m. you know Western and he's OB in Copenhagen he's six hours ahead right he's looking at the systems
8:26
he's like what are you guys doing here like you stress testing something is there a QA going on like what's what's actually happening and I'm like I'm
8:32
sleeping what you talking about I obviously get up I pop up my laptop and I don't even think I got out of bed and
8:38
I look at you know obviously the numbers and yeah they're they're up to the right I'm like holy if what's going on here I
8:45
go on Twitter and I start seeing uh obviously GameStop and Wall Street BS kind of trending and then then I go down
8:50
the rabbit hole and then I'm like okay time to get to work it was Co right so we didn't actually have an office we
8:56
didn't we hadn't moved in here yet so what we had done done is life uh my co
9:03
coo and I and I think Steven Oro and a couple of others we were sort of hungering down working out of um Richard
9:11
Parson's office Dick Parson who was one of our early inur investors um look him up if you do he is he a phenomenal
9:18
phenomenal guy and obviously very well respected and um long long career and he was like Hey I'm going to go to Florida
9:24
to ride out uh ride out this Co thing he's old right so he was like you know you want to even need a place to crash
9:30
kind of thing and boy did we need a place to crash and so we we all show up there then I think at 8:30 so before
9:38
Market open we hear that the buy button uh at certain other Road this are about
9:43
to be turned off MH and then obviously just all hell breaks loose and we start
9:48
taking in I mean multiple users every second you know three four five users every second which is like by the way
9:55
like for um photo sharing app or like like we we we had a meeting with the
10:01
Kevin from Instagram in the early days who told us some War Stories too but obviously like yeah what do you need to do you need to create a user email
10:09
password that is it on Instagram right here we need to do full identity verification and so everyone throttled
10:16
us from our identity verification providers you know Bank linking kind of play like so your twio thing was still
10:21
had a card on it our our our analytics system so we were still on the credit card plan in our mix panel accounts
10:29
stuff like that and so it was literally like our CFOs had to just like find these found like like find these people
10:35
just like put us on the invoicing plan because like I said it had only been a month right earlier that we had raised
10:41
A50 $60 million kind of round which is sort of like when it's like okay now it's real we've grown or not there's
10:47
something here and so so yeah so we were we were still a pretty young company and
10:52
um and yeah the SMS verification thing that was just stupid I mean just sitting
10:58
there refreshing it we all yelling at the guy who's just trying to refresh it and every time the page is done loading
11:05
it lost all those 50 bucks of credit and he's just like I'm doing I'm I'm I'm hitting the button as fast as I can it's
11:10
just it's just nuts you know it was a very special time I mean honestly it's a little bit blurry like we're in that office we end up stagging a bunch of
11:17
books so we can hop on and off on various TV segments and msnpc and all
11:23
kinds of stuff and then at some point Apex our clearing custodian firm in gives us a call that they have to they
11:31
have to disable the buying of GameStop as well and we're just crushed right we're just like this is like this is
11:37
like man this was the most crazy thing that ever happened all the source of any
11:43
benefit we got from it now was gone um but then to their credit we worked you know really hard with them
11:49
and they got it up and running before the end of that trading day which was Paramount I think it was maybe like 2
11:55
p.m. or something and just the fact that that was done before 4 p.m. right and then it just like imagine a party and
12:02
you know whatever the cops come in and they're like part's over but then they leave and people just go back to going
12:09
absolutely like that was that was basically what happened um and then even that following day was nuts because I
12:15
think some people still are disabled I think some had it where you could buy one share which is like that was not
12:22
obviously didn't help anybody I think that was more people were like this is still right not working for me and uh so
12:28
those two days were were absolutely just right and up until this point you're you're making money from payment for
12:33
order flow right so you had that that's how you were you were generating Revenue that way and then talk to me a little
12:38
bit about this moment now where you're going through this users are going through the roof buy button back is back
12:44
on what what kind of then inspired you guys to think about changing the fundamental business model after this so
12:49
we had thought about it before okay it's the truth if you look at our series a pitch deck that actually we should have put into that Twitter threat there would
12:56
be good piece of evidence we we did say there is a unit economics slide somewhere where it's like payment for aut flow and I remember you know GRC one
13:05
of our First Investors and um David Stern may he rest in peace was was
13:10
involved with GRE of the old MBA commissioner and I remember him from the back of the room being like so how do
13:17
you make money like how does this work like nobody actually understood it and it's like you know it was almost like
13:22
not believable like what is this thing it seems kind of shady like right uh is
13:27
this the thing that Bernie made of so we were always like man like we
13:33
closed at series a and they were like we got to we got to find another Revenue stream and like the more we but again it
13:40
was like well nobody knows what it is nobody's ever going to care or maybe they will but we thought that it would
13:46
like we thought that the rate of Education in this space would just go steady up and to the right and so we're
13:52
like maybe in 5 years right people will actually start to like estate gradually because we could see that okay wow
13:58
there's an acceleration happening in general financial literacy but also the understanding of Market structures in
14:04
the space but obviously on January 28 and 29 that didn't go exponential that
14:09
went vertical that mass education Mass awareness moment and suddenly suddenly
14:15
my mom knew what a short squeeze was right like and there and once you start understanding those Concepts you quickly
14:22
pretty quickly get a grasp of things like payment for orderflow as well and so we sort of had uh projected that to
14:28
be happening but we obviously um did not project how fast it would happen and so that Saturday I believe uh once we had a
14:35
t chance to take a little bit of a breather catch a few hours asleep we wake up and we realize hey maybe we
14:41
should go back and revisit this idea of actually like going off of payment for order flow because you know it's not
14:47
really a model we've ever loved and it was like on the road map 2024 kind of
14:52
thing whatever like let's pull that forward let's do it now and then we substituted it at the time with like a a
14:59
tipping model essentially tip a couple cents exactly and those were actually two separate ideas that we've been
15:04
Towing this that suddenly like okay came together in one and be like that's it
15:10
this this is this is this is what we're going to do um and I think more than anything for us it was also a commitment
15:16
of like we don't necessarily like we want don't want to build a business right again we were a super young company so we didn't have the sort of
15:23
Innovator dilemma we weren't sacrificing a billion dollar Revenue stream at present day value right future
15:29
discounted but then but then we also knew pay bow is illegal in the UK where I had my old company in Australia and
15:35
Canada everywhere pretty now our band is on the table in the EU so we were also like wait if the net present day value
15:42
of this is on the basis of cash flows over the next 10 years if it's going to be made illegal in five right none of
15:48
this is going to make sense and so all things considered uh we simply ended up in this moment where and I realized a
15:54
lot of people rot those also like bold decision guys but we were a little bit like actually when you really like if
16:00
you were a part of that conversation you saw quickly how it's like suddenly became okay it's actually risky not to
16:05
do it right and and then we also created a situation for ourselves where we could build a business model that's much more
16:11
aligned with our customers and we're not just incentivized to you know funnel everybody into uh the most kind of
16:17
speculative traits and all that stuff and and and that's a little bit something that I think our brand had always kind of stood for and like and to
16:22
be to tell you the truth obviously we had a lot of Hardcore Traders sign up that week especially but generally
16:28
speaking I think we've always been a little bit uh had had more folks that just wanted to do sort of like build
16:35
their own portfolio but have a little bit more of a long-term mindset right very a little turn in our business historically for that reason too and so
16:41
that was uh that was another reason why it it it you know F like how's tipping been doing because like a quick tip
16:47
feels like you can make more revenue from what the payment for order flow would be right like the economics around tipping how is that been going yeah uh
16:54
it was that was a whole interesting thing because we ended up obviously having to you know you know is it a commission is it not a commission how
17:00
does all that stuff work do you tip more on buys or on sales you're do it on sales you know is it a commission
17:05
meaning is it before to pay the tax on whatever gains are from those Etc it has been doing quite well I think we we
17:12
always said hey if we believe that people are willing to pay for
17:18
transparency essentially which we've always thought like we actually think this notion that everything has to be
17:23
free all the time right it's not really true like obviously it's always easy as a business to grow make everything free
17:29
and I think we all realize that during the crazy Bull Run totally just make things free and subsidize it with some
17:35
zero interest Capital One Way and the other and then you have a good business model and you got PR Mar fit right right
17:42
that should actually be like Star Wars meme I don't know we we were just a little bit like no we actually think
17:48
people people don't mind paying and we were looking around the space coinbase was charging one and a half% for crypto
17:55
trades and we're like yeah but that seems to be the most trusted place at the time at least I think I thought
18:00
personally to to buy kind of crypto right relative to a lot of these other offshore things um and so we were like
18:06
actually we don't know that the evidence is there that everything has to be free all the time we think people are perfectly fine to pay if they understand
18:12
what they're paying for right and do they understand the value did they incented value of what they would be paying for two weeks ago no they would
18:18
not have but today after the whole world got tied upside down and we're now February one y yeah we think they might
18:24
and so um and so that's been that's been a great move all around it's been one of these things where it's been honestly
18:30
good for the business but the customers like it too it's it's it's pretty good all the way around and contrary to public belief it's not it's not just
18:37
people that do it actually on the sale gains like I've been pretty surprised of like how versatile it's been and um and
18:44
and again I think it was um it was the right decision but it was never something that we were like this is
18:49
going to be the entire business I think for us it was more a function of can we can we substitute it with something else
18:55
right now and then in the in the two years since we've worked hard to diversify the business out of even just
19:02
equities yeah right we launched treasuries earlier this year so so that that's much more like asset based
19:07
recurring revenue streams they're much more predictable because the other thing we saw the public markets tend
19:13
to have a little bit of a discount on highly transactional highly vola of revenue streams and so we were a little
19:19
bit like well if we can if we can sort of build the business in that direction
19:25
being a very young company not having to sacrifice much that decision yeah we we we think that's the right call that's
19:31
great and now talk a little bit about you know you mentioned treasuries what what's the business look like now I mean how is everything going and yeah post so
19:39
it it looks very different right that's the thing like at the time and that's that that that was so crazy about 2020
19:45
and 2021 which was really our two First full years in business right um we launched fractional on social it was
19:51
like a starting features and for two years we're just trying to keep the lights on as we're scaling user base
19:56
dramatically and so we never really had chance to work on much other stuff right like we we did a pretty good job building out a lot of the social stuff
20:03
because that was also very apparent like the whole social investing phenomena especially after GameStop in 22 and and
20:08
and year to date we've finally gotten back to actually shipping a lot of stuff and so we've shipped public premium I'll
20:15
try to remember everything I probably can't public premium our $10 a month subscription where you can see deep insights on companies we think the best
20:21
way to research any company especially on your phone uh be able to even see things like Vehicles delivered on Tesla
20:28
Uber you know you look at Uber it's like Rider driver growth Netflix subscribers across different countries so really
20:33
like again a lot of the kpis that retail relate a little bit more To Tot that's been a huge hit investing plans which is
20:40
like our ability to like almost like create your own ETF right in a way right to just like you know build a plan
20:46
recurringly invest into it uh great for like the a lot of the DCA like the
20:52
dollar cost aing Community which is one of the most hashtags on public in post so we we we knew that that prob product
20:57
would do well um and uh then we launched an alternative business we actually acquired a company called Otis uh to get
21:04
into that business so that gave us like fraction investing in art and collectibles right but the alternative
21:10
unit is so much bigger than that and so now we're actually rolling out the ability to invest in music royalties I saw that going to be super Shrek which
21:16
is super interesting which is more like a kind of like it's a royalty product right so it's a little bit closer to like a fixed income product with like a
21:22
8 to 10% historical kind of yield right that's been around for 20 years very little decay like we think that's a
21:29
super interesting asset that yeah just historically has only been available for high worth individuals and and now
21:34
through this like reg plus alternative structure we can offer shares at starting at 10 bucks a share so I think
21:40
that's going to be really interesting to follow and then yeah we did treasuries earlier this year which obviously um I
21:45
mean it's been crazy how I think in 2021 the most bought instrument definitely was GameStop 22 is probably maybe
21:53
Bitcoin um maybe like a mix of things kind of and then year to date it's been
21:58
the six-month de wow talk about a whipsaw asset I think what's really
22:04
incredible is so obviously it is a whipsaw and have been giving this a lot
22:09
of thought um as to like why and what's actually happening here at broader scale and I think if you step back if you look
22:15
at sort of like the boomer generation like the E Trade Generation Um they grew up in their trading
22:24
investing Journeys if you will without social media it was a very way you got educated on Etc and so today everything
22:30
is just so compressed right and so you literally have people who came in to buy
22:36
a share GameStop who now have and like this is the majority by the way this is not like one person this is like what we
22:43
see the most like now they're well Diversified they're understanding fixed income products now they're going to get
22:49
into Alternatives as well uh there's other stuff we want to get into like we
22:54
still have a lot of stuff coming out in the next few months even um on the as far as like just building a place where
23:00
you can house all your assets right and so I think that that ramp has just been phenomenal I think it's it's honestly
23:06
pretty unprecedented that a whole generation right can undergo that level of Education in that in that time frame
23:13
right and I think it's phenomenal I think it's great for Society Long Term I think there's so much talk about
23:18
Millennials their personal finance situations right you know uh student depth and like this that and the other
23:25
inflation right and so like one of the only outs true is start understanding how investing
23:31
works and not just stocks fixed income products too and everything in between but I think we're seeing that as a
23:37
generation we can do that and we really understand those things and we can we can just like get those learnings super
23:43
super quickly um and and then we're just trying to be the platform that can then offer you all those products so that you
23:50
can actually execute on those strategies and Implement them in an easy way all in one place yeah and actually so I've know
23:56
I've noticed that there's some data around since 2008 that financial literacy in America has actually gone down a bit and I'm curious what some of
24:02
the work that you're doing on the content and marketing side to help with the educational piece can you talk a little bit about some of the initiatives
24:08
you have going on there it's interesting I wouldn't have guessed that that data point but I do think if you were to double click and secondment by
24:14
generational cohorts I bet it gen Z and Millennial is going heavily the other way around um so obviously our our whole
24:23
thesis on community and social was always like how do you get it like before we
24:28
launch like how do you get educated right and you know my wife had read Tony
24:33
Robbins book something with Millennial managing money and that was pretty great but it's also 800 pages right so most
24:40
people won't do that uh if we're just being honest they won't right uh maybe
24:46
you should but they won't and so then that's one side of the spectrum the other one over here is like all these
24:51
dodgy YouTube like get rich quick learn to trade like come down here exactly
24:57
like that kind of [ __ ] and like what's the alternative right it felt like American
25:03
politics like at this day age it's like where's the where's the in between option where you know and so what we
25:10
started to realize is we think it's going to go much more um if you look at how people learn
25:17
to meditate through using Comm 10 minutes a day instead of taking a two-year trip to tbate or you know yeah
25:24
uh if you think about the 7-minute workout apps that are out there right that's what's more where that that's
25:29
where it is so we were like hey we told the prodct like if we can get people to
25:35
actually scroll through a social feed of their investing see what other people are investing in see the commentary engage in conversation see how other
25:41
shareholders that own the same stock you do react to certain news then that will compound right 10
25:48
minutes a day that's really all we need to do and so um and and obviously 10
25:53
minutes a day is like a good sticking point could also be like you know an hour a week or whatever but but but
25:59
really we found that the B was actually quite low because once they just got hooked on checking out a feed with a lot
26:05
of um educational kind of content and starting understanding other people's viewpoints right um it just it just kept
26:13
compounding and so I think that was actually the whole idea with the social Community you know um and we of we often
26:20
ask like oh where's the kobby trading like feature or whatever like we we we we never plan to add that like um
26:26
because like you wear anything from that totally and it's also the blind leading the blind I never really understood those and for my understanding the SEC
26:33
doesn't love those ideas but some I don't think they do uh not here I think in in Europe they've been um like uh
26:41
they've been more well received but um but yeah but but it's the same if we look at the AI the whole AI thing so we
26:47
launched right I knew I missed one we launched yeah the AI we launched Alpha which is our sort of investing co-pilot
26:55
uh SL research assistant um and again the idea there and a question I get a
27:00
lot is like well shouldn't AI just like manage all our money right and there's just actually no Alpha and it's all beta
27:06
and we're all like and and obviously if you take that argument to the screen it also doesn't really make sense necessarily but even before you go there
27:12
just philosophically we like no you know this is a tool for you this is a resource for you the investor you should
27:18
be in the driver's seat right not the other way around right like you run this tool this tool doesn't run you and again
27:24
that's how you can use Alpha to learn a whole lot in a short amount of time and I think
27:30
what we've seen now in terms of the research that people can do on on certain names and and on even in the
27:36
bond markets now by the way like it's just nuts so much stuff hidden in the filings that just never get to and like
27:43
that's opening up a whole new I know and we we'd actually so we had a good amount so we we acquired a small company before
27:48
Otis um hyper charts shout out to Galileo Russell fellow YouTuber um who
27:56
uh I've been friendly with for a long time and you know he was like on this mission to like disrupt the PE Ratio and
28:02
always found that to be fascinating and so he built this uh this platform called hypercharts which basically was scraping
28:08
ACC filings to present it as structured data so you could visualize it because people understand chats much better than
28:13
a lot of other stuff and uh and obviously he was a big he is a big Tesla
28:18
bull uh has one of the larger Tesla YouTube channels out there and so he started with like also Tesla vehicles
28:24
delivered right and then it grew to the rest of the S&P 5 and because we've been doing that work
28:29
and a lot of the data work there uh not necessarily um you know suddenly you
28:35
move that into like more like vector database instead of something else Etc like suddenly you're all there and then
28:40
we got access to open a pretty quickly uh gpc4 especially and then so you guys have the plugin with them now and then
28:47
and then we basically just like started merging those two ideas right and so that's where it started like a different interface to be able to research all
28:54
those Investments because right now if I go to Apple stock you know I I'm scrolling down this one
29:00
number I'm looking for and we're quite proud of this as public like you know you can actually go to financials you can see full balance sheet statements
29:07
optimized for mobile it's done a really slick way and that's great but if I'm just looking for one data point like
29:14
what was the cash position two years ago whatever now you can just swipe down on that stock it opens the prompt it's
29:19
amazing you just ask and then you end up what we see is you have like this Progressive research Behavior where that
29:25
like one question leads to the next and that is a lot more engaging it's a better way to like keep somebody
29:31
interested because it's so easy when you're just looking at numbers and chart to suddenly like drop off and like oh
29:37
like this is uh so this been super fascinating and then another thing we benefited from is we've operated one of
29:43
the uh larger social investing communities obviously for a couple years
29:48
up until the point in I think it was only in April we launched this um so we
29:53
had a lot of data around how people are using conversations to learn stuff right uh because in no other Financial
30:00
products have you actually ever had conversations right I think even VMO didn't really have comments ever right
30:05
it was just like the Emojis and stuff so so we were a little bit of unique position and we had so much data
30:10
sentiment what what how how how people were asking questions because like when on mobile like we all have this like
30:17
mobile language with a few emojis and like uh acronyms and like and so we were
30:22
just in a little bit of a pole position quite frankly to be the first to launch this and and that's why we we we were
30:27
the First on to the AI scene and and I also think why users have taken like
30:32
it's been received so well because I think our user base especially our members have been used to using
30:38
conversation as a lever as a tool as a resource to to drive their own curiosity
30:43
to drive you know exploration and and research at large and they're confirmed shareholders so it's not like you know there's somebody talking positively or
30:50
negative about a company even though they're on the opposite side of it but it's like they actually own the stock and you could see that and it gives that
30:55
trust L exactly yeah so I guess you know that's that's great now talking a little bit about Community the dumb money movie
31:01
just came out uh did you have a chance to see it what are your reactions thoughts I did I thought it was a great
31:06
movie it was very entertaining obviously you know how much is it dramatized how much is is real like yeah exactly like
31:14
what's up with the Pig I mean uh and like did he really have a brother that was like Pete Davidson like I I doubted
31:21
because he's like a one- of- a kind character in the world right and so but generally the plotline I think was
31:27
actually quite good I think they captured a lot of the nuances of and it's it's it was so awesome to see and
31:33
like I think you know in the months and years after GameStop you started seeing these stories come out of how it it
31:40
impacted different people and I think that what makes it a good movie you have
31:45
you know the college dorm girls and then you've got Steve Cohen right and everyone in between the nurse and and
31:51
and like that's what's so awesome is like you can actually see the story how it plays out because that that's what
31:58
when movies do that kind of thing MH it just gives you a great sense of empathy and perspective right and I think one of
32:05
the best ways to evaluate any movie is the amount of perspective that it adds to you right like you leave the movie
32:11
and you go like wow okay I you know you stop becoming self-aware of things that you had not considered in the past you
32:17
know that's why my favorite movie is like Interstellar or something because it's like it really gets the mind going
32:22
right and and and I think um I think it's in that I think it definitely manages to do that to get your mind
32:28
going to give you that perspective I felt sort of humbled coming out of it and just like you know just Tak it back
32:34
and like obiously trying to remember the time like I said it was still a little blurry totally so it it helped pie some
32:40
of the pieces back together and even seeing like the like the conversation around Market structure and short
32:45
squeezes to your point it helps make those topics that are nobody would ever read about Market structure but now you
32:50
can actually understand why Citadel was involved and what market makers do and the whole practice around payment for
32:56
order flow I think the the one critique I would give it is it's fairly short yeah uh
33:01
most movies nowadays is like two two and a half hours I mean if noan directs it it's three hours plus I think this was
33:08
like an hour and 45 minutes yeah it's a quick one and that's a very short amount of time to explain all these things and
33:15
so I think for that reason uh the payment for aut concept comes up a bunch but it's never really explained right
33:20
and we try to put some material out next to the movie that like just because I think the movie is more fun if you
33:26
understand so that that's maybe the one critique but also that's a good kind of critique I mean most most most movies these days
33:32
people go like could be shorter actually feel like this could be longer totally because there was so many chapters right
33:38
there's the whole pregame starting in I think September or something and then
33:43
and then like those crazy peak days but then also the Senate hearing afterwards and and so there's a little bit like
33:49
three four acts in the story um and yeah it's tough to like really go deep in all
33:55
those in in an hour 45 minutes yeah and you guys had a nice little campaign around it you want to talk a bit about that yeah so uh we wanted to celebrate
34:03
the movie that essentially celebrates retail investors because that's obviously what we are all about and so
34:09
we made a website called ticket to invest where if you take a picture of uh your your ticket to go see the movie uh
34:17
will reward you in a free stock on public as you sign up super clever I love it I love the ticker time machine
34:23
you guys did a while ago if you invested $10 in Tesla years ago wow that's old
34:29
okay okay all right you guys have done good stuff right there that's like preo stuff I think so totally you guys are
34:35
good for the the stunts and then the the song you did um uh around break up with your stock broker Bolton Bolton a good
34:42
one how did I leave out B I was talking for it before I mean that was actually the thing where I was like okay that
34:48
just I mean I think that thing got like half a billion impressions in a week it was nuts uh I remember I went on on on
34:55
squawkbox with um was talking like a few honestly like maybe a year after we were
35:02
launching Town Halls which was a product where we let public uh Company CFO and CFOs have direct conversation with
35:08
retail investors right and so I was talking about that and then in the end he goes like I have to ask you the bolon
35:15
idea came out of nowhere how did you come up with that and so even then it was like I think you called it like one
35:21
of the best ads I've seen blah blah blah since the E Trade baby and this and the other and so yeah that definitely
35:27
that that obviously is uh in public history it's very iconic but honestly
35:32
like still I think in the industry will hopefully go on to have some longevity I've seen it resurfaced more on social
35:37
media since the money thing came out um and uh I mean that story was crazy in it
35:43
of itself because it was just like obviously it happened right before Valentine's Day game right like late January and so we were sitting there
35:49
riffing ideas of like um you know how you could what what what the Valentine's
35:56
campaign would look like kind and then this came up and and our team
36:01
actually just flew to LA and shot it right literally it was like in slack
36:07
and it was like the conversation ends with booking an airline and going to and an air ticket and going to the airport
36:12
kind of thing shot it very quickly uh Drew and Alex from the chain smokers
36:18
helped us land Balton even um because they obviously they're in they're investors too but they're in Hollywood
36:24
and so they know how all the stuff work because we hadn't actually booked any actors or singers or musicians for
36:30
anything at that point right like we uh we hadn't done a lot of Big Marketing
36:35
Splash it it's mostly been these like uh sty kind of projects that we've been doing up until that point um so they
36:42
they helped us get a quick lay of the land and and help help make that happen and uh yeah that's great so what what
36:48
can we expect from public coming up next couple months what does the end of the year look like how you feeling feeling
36:53
very good the I think it's it's it's along those Trends I mean we we put out a report
36:59
actually uh on the status of retail investing uh with the tagline they're
37:04
not leaving uh which is is definitely what we've seen and actually that
37:09
tagline obviously is from the world W Street movie but it doesn't actually really do justice because what it doesn't say is like literally we've seen
37:16
record inflows this year yeah um not just us but like in the in the space at large um and I think a lot of people
37:22
didn't really expect that to happen necessarily but I think you've now seen the sense of like a lot of accounts were
37:28
open in 2020 2021 but it's not like everybody actually went in with all their savings
37:34
mhm uh a lot of people use that as a dip your toe in the water a lot of people open more than one account too right I
37:41
think what's happening now is like people stting to consolidate those accounts a little bit they're like hey I don't want a crypto account a stock
37:47
account a treasuries account like that's a lot of a mess my taxes need that I don't I don't need that in my life like
37:53
why and and and so that's where we've tried to become the place where you can just consolidate all that um and so uh
38:00
obviously working on on more assets as we keep kind of pulling on that threat uh that we'll talk more about towards
38:06
the end of the year but um but that's that's a big Trend that we've kind of seen um this idea of a finance super app
38:13
right everything that you could buy a lot of people use the term Finance super app and that tends to be a little bit more like oh payments and debit cards
38:19
and this that we think more of like maybe the investing super app would maybe be the right thing where like you
38:24
know we're not going to launch a a debit card anytime soon but we're really just focused on being the absolutely best
38:30
place that you can invest across any asset class with any resource you want whether it's a social Community whether
38:36
it's an AI research assistant uh or just really you know high quality deep sort
38:42
of uh almost unique data points on different things that's that's that's what we've sort of over indexed on and
38:48
that continues to be the strategy for the for the end of the year and then we're doing that in the US and then we
38:53
just launched um in in the UK as well nice how's that going is the UK international other markets coming up or
38:59
it's so funny I used to live in London and then I and then brexit happened and my old company got acquired I moved here
39:04
and then I hadn't been back to London until the summer when I went back in preparation for our launch and I think
39:10
what was interesting to see was a couple of things number one I think generally the whole fintech fiend in Europe but
39:16
but even in in London has was massively set back by brexit MH and I feel like there was like a big you know like like
39:23
we are further ahead in the US but actually pre- brexit it was more the US that was like maybe suffering a little
39:30
bit because you still feeling The Hangover maybe of8 or some other things and like so so it's interesting to me to
39:37
see that momentum has really picked up um over there now a lot and generally um the appetite for this uh is
39:45
quite high I would say there are a lot of people who almost all people we've done on boarding calls with the
39:52
first uh many people that signed up and and almost unequivocally the response is
39:57
from a ux design perspective which is something we maybe become like to here
40:04
like this is phenomenal like this is like wow like I have not seen this anywhere else in UK or Europe I think in
40:09
the US you know um and I do design a lot of design myself like I I think I design
40:16
pretty well I think Robin has a very welld designed product always had like I think there's a few like stripe as ftech
40:22
company phenomenal design s so I think the US has always had that right but it it hasn't really existed to the same
40:28
extent in the UK and Europe and that's one of the first reactions that I hadn't fought up ahead of the launch quite
40:33
honestly i' just been like wait what like like all apps like like the bar right you know is uh random 4X apps you
40:41
got to scroll right and left and up and down it just I mean there you go right and so that's that's been the number one feedback point right now I was like the
40:47
quality of this product is incredible and obviously you you always love to hear that so cool well janic thank you very much is there anything else you'd
40:53
like to share where can people find you they can find me on uh obviously public.com
40:58
yanic uh which is easy domain I guess x.com Ming is an easier one now I used
41:05
to say the public one is easier than the Twitter one but I can't really say great by the way it's an epic one yeah yeah
41:10
thanks cool well thank you for joining us and uh we'll talk to you soon congrats on everything you've uh accomplished over the last four years
41:17
and we'll see uh what you got coming up appreciate it thanks for having us thanks Brian
41:25
yep [Music]
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