EP 333 – Learn Why Patience and Persistence Are Key to Thriving as an Entrepreneur in Japan – Brian Yun – CEO of Woodstock

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:03
Okay, let’s go. Hi. This is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. Brian Yun, a co-Founder and CEO of Woodstock, is with us today, Brian, I cannot thank you enough for doing this today. Before we start, let’s give our listeners a little bit of your kind of interesting background for some context, yeah,

Brian Yun 0:23
yeah. Hey, Michael, thanks for having me. So my background, yeah. So I was born and raised in Korea and immigrated to Vancouver, Canada when I was 13. So started, yeah. So started, like secondary school there in Vancouver, beautiful place, spent five years and then went to Toronto. Well near Toronto, went to an engineering school near Toronto for five years, studied electrical and computer engineering. So I’m an engineer by training, and that kind of like, sort of shaped my character and my career over time as well. And my last internship while I was in college brought me to Japan. So I was like 22 at the time, and, yeah, I love Japan, and loved experience. I came back full time for a full time job opportunity at one of the international banks and built like trading systems. That’s how I started my sort of investment banking as an engineer, initially for three years, and then I got a chance to become a trader. So I was always passionate about markets, financial markets and equities. And so I loved it initially. So I did it for six years across two different banks, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, and I liked it, but I realized that I like equity not because of, like, moving money for hedge funds, but I like equity because I like how the companies build their revenue streams and diversify and manage risk and cut costs and like, generate profit. Like, that’s what i i that i liked more. So I was always like investing on the sidelines and understanding, like, how the companies operate, learn competition, you know, try to project their, you know, their future outcomes, right? So that’s what I was passionate about. So I initially I thought I would be really, I thought I would really like trading. I did for a while, but then, you know, I like the fundamentals of, like, the building companies and operating companies even more. So that’s, that’s when I realized I wanted to, like, go back to my root tech and actually join a tech company, right? So I joined Twitter for three and a half years. And luckily, like, Twitter was just growing massively, yeah. So, yeah. So I joined, it was, it was an interesting time. Actually, Twitter was on headlines for, like, a lot of negativity, right? It was the stock price was, like, just taking a nosedive, and it was crashing. So everybody around me was like, why are you, you know, leaving your donate Morgan Stanley job, right? And enjoying joining a sinking ship? I’m like, No, it’s not a sinking ship. And I guess Twitter is called x now. It’s a very different place now, but, yeah, but that aside. I mean, it was a, it was a really interesting, like, culture shock experience as well. Like, how they do things, and tech company very different from how, you know, you know this, like how the investment banks do things, right? So I love the experience of actually working in a tech company and building businesses. So I had, like, few different roles at Twitter, and then I love the social media aspect of it. I really understood the leverage that you have of having internet as an audience, right? So you can do a lot of things, and obviously people, you know, understand this very well now, I guess, you know, with Tiktok and a lot of like, you know, influencers, but when I joined, it was still kind of early, building audience and making advertising revenue and that kind of stuff. But I left Twitter for a couple reasons. One is kind of this, like the privacy GDPR and came up and kind of becoming hot topic, and Facebook was now meta was in kind of trouble, you know, with Cambridge Analytica. And I kind of felt like, oh, this may be not the, you know, the rising star anymore, this whole industry. It’s probably gonna, not gonna grow exponentially from here. So, and at the time, Coinbase was kind of like, ready to build out Asia. So I was, and they approached me to ask if I’m interested. I’m like, hell yeah, this is like a rocket ship, right? But it’s so but

Michael Waitze 4:24
it’s also like the perfect combination of all of your skills as well, right? Because the engineering and digital currency and but also the investment angle of it, this is like fits in perfectly with what you were,

Brian Yun 4:34
yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was very happy to hear from them, and I wanted to, I really wanted to join. So, yeah, so I made that decision to leave x Twitter at the time and join Coinbase. And I was also like, you know, I’m always like, believing in the non linear upside. And Coinbase felt like one of those opportunities that is very hard to like, you know, I wouldn’t miss that opportunity. So I, I jumped on that rocket ship, and there was like. Two years before IPO. Oh, wow, good for you, yeah, yeah, the outcome was, was quite good. You know, a lot of fluctuations, obviously, in the market. But yeah, I think the crypto opportunity was, was kind of interesting. So I did Coinbase for about two years, little over two years, setting up the licenses for them in Japan and help hire a bunch of people and set up the operation. Then I realized actually, like, I want to do even more. I want to build my own company. It’s like, again, coming back to what I was, why I was interested in equity, in the non new upside, is because I like building and operating, and I like to have the full control of my fate, of my business so, and it kind of suits my personality, very, very well. So I thought it’s the right time to take this risk, right? I have, you know now I have can take more risk. I have enough risk tolerance, and I can also see myself really enjoy this, right? So that’s how I became an entrepreneur. Luckily, Coinbase also really supported my decision at the time, and they also packed us a little bit with their Coinbase ventures. And yeah, that’s how we started about three and a half years ago, and now here we are running What’s that?

Michael Waitze 6:14
Can I back up a little bit? I just want to talk a little bit about engineering into trading, if you don’t mind, yeah, yeah, for sure. I remember when I was sitting on the trading desk at Goldman Sachs, and we started hiring engineers to sit with us, right? And, you know, I was joking with somebody about this a couple of days ago. I was joking actually, with a guy from CNN who was going to be on the show soon, and he’s in the sort of advertising, programming advertising business, which, frankly, is not much different than algorithmic trading, right? And we were talking about how those things are similar, yeah. You know, when I first started trading, I was on the trading desk at Morgan Stanley, on for training in New York, and it was literally just like a bunch of guys from Brooklyn, right? A bunch of what I would call wise guys and tough guys. But over time, we started hiring PhDs and engineers from MIT and from Stanford and stuff like that. And when we started hiring them, I would talk to them, like, why do you want to be a trader? And one of the guys said to me, and I’ll never forget it, engineers are trained to minimize noise and look for signals, and that’s kind of what trading is, right? Just get rid of all the extraneous information. Look for the signals about which way the market’s going to go or which way an equity is going to go and then make decisions. I’m curious what you think about engineers as traders.

Brian Yun 7:27
That’s a very interesting perspective. I never thought of it exactly that way, but now that you mentioned it, I think that’s that a lot of that is correct, right? Like, you know, I never actually worked on as a trade on the buy side. I was a sort of the sell side algorithm trading, right? So looking after hedge funds, but I understand the mentality of, like, the logic of reducing noise and actually looking for the right signal and alpha. And actually, that’s like, quite similar to founders mindset as well. There’s a lot of noise in the world that kind of, like, distracts you, hey, like, maybe you need to do this. Maybe you need to pivot and do this thing. Like, everything looks greener on the other side, but nothing is easy. You got to remove all those temptations and, like, stick to your belief, you know. And sometimes, like, every day, it’s like, noise in the world that kind of like, oh, you know, this other startup raise this much money and they look great. I’m like, Yeah, AI is great. Like, yes, but what is there to really, that can actually sustain? I mean, it’s great. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying, I’m not generalizing Yeah or anything, but, but just yeah, it’s just a lot of noise in the world that may not be sort of relevant. And understanding that noise first, and just separating that from real signal is, is a key skill, I think, as an engineer, also as a trader, I guess, also as an entrepreneur.

Michael Waitze 8:46
Can I ask you this? So you’re at, you’re at Coinbase, right, which must have been just a phenomenally interesting place to work, but it sounds like you were there when they were setting things up, like if you literally had to go and get the licenses and figure that stuff out. In a way, it’s a what’s the right word. It’s like the testing ground for your own entrepreneurial journey, in a way, right? Because you’ve got to figure out all these little things, and you’re sitting there going, Wait a second, I could do this for my own company. You’re either making physical notes or taking mental notes, which is perfectly fine, right? And again, they supported you because they saw what you were but when you were there, can you talk about maybe some of the things you learned? Because you talked about the difficulty of entrepreneurship that then helped you start Woodstock,

Brian Yun 9:28
yeah, yeah. Thanks for that question. It’s really a key question, I guess. So I learned a few things so, you know, going through the regulatory sort of, like, filings and back and forth with, like, answering questions. And you know, it takes forever for these crypto operators to get their licenses, yeah, and securities brokers to get their licenses, but that’s the reality of setting up businesses. It takes a long time. And so it kind of teaches you patience. And there’s also a lot of pressure in the world that says, like, No, you got to do this quick. Quicker. And that’s also true, because you also need to maximize shareholders value, yeah, right. So all that time that’s getting burned, and then the burn rate, like, who’s Yeah, but, um, so it’s, it’s really the balance of, like, having that peace, right, while receiving all that pressure and noise, but also, like, Okay, this is a long game and staying focused and doing things right. It’s all it’s really important soft skill to have right when, when founding a company. And I thought, okay, like, if I can endure this at Coinbase, I can probably do this for my own company. So that’s one, one thing that I learned, and that regulatory like back and forth is so valuable. Yes, I need to now. You know, we’re, we’re licensed as an intermediary broker now, and things may change in the future, but, yeah, we’re very regulated now too, so we need to navigate that space. Another key thing that I learned is like, there’s so much and there’s so much, I guess, variance in the market, right? So if you remember, like, crypto now, it’s molatown, but, like, few years ago, it was even way more, right, 2019 like, 2021, like, it was just like a huge roller coaster, right? And now, kind of Japanese yen moves like that, just a joke, but, yeah, but yeah, that sort of that unnecess, you know, unexpected sort of outcome, the variance, it just makes it things really hard, right? So how do you actually stay stay focused, and, like, in long term, I guess, focus for the long term outcome. But also, like, really believe in yourself while there’s so much, you know, sort of ups and downs in the market, and Coinbase really taught me that, right? Like, the price, the share price, with the bitcoin price and all these asset prices, it’s very hard to model it out, right? So I was basically just Biz Ops, and it’s very hard to model out like, okay, like, if you use this past one there, it tells you very different story than if you use like this other year, right? Because the volume and the price, everything changes, right? So how do you actually model this out and actually believe it in the outcome?

Michael Waitze 12:09
Can I ask you this as well? Because this is, look, I lived in Japan for 20 something years, and I actually dealt with the FSA, the Japan Financial Services Agency, a couple of times. We were audited, once when I was at coldman, and then I think another time when I was somewhere else, I can’t remember. It’s a very unique institution. But from what I’ve here, and I published an episode today on one of my other shows that like they’re changing, they’re much more progressive. They’ll chat with you on WhatsApp, like they’ll do a whole bunch of things that they weren’t doing in the

Brian Yun 12:35
really?

Michael Waitze 12:36
yeah.

Brian Yun 12:36
Chat with you?

Michael Waitze 12:39
So I was that new guy who’s building, yeah, I was told talking to a guy who’s building an InsurTech company. He was like, yeah, if I want to talk to them, I can just, like, check them really quickly on WhatsApp, and they’ll respond to me, and maybe we’ll set up a meeting or chit chat and stuff like that. It’s way more progressive than it was when I was there. But wow, you and I have, like, something in common, even though it may well, we have a bunch of things in common, right? But we’re both foreigners in Japan. And I think it ends up being, I always thought that, like, it kind of went two ways. One, I got a little bit of a discount on everything, because they were like, he doesn’t know how this works. But on the other hand, I got the reverse of, like, he doesn’t know how this works kind of thing. Do you know what I mean? Can you talk a little bit about that experience, not just with the FSA, but just like in general, in

Brian Yun 13:21
general, yeah, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. So I also feel that way. So, yeah, so sometimes I do feel that, you know, I have it harder because I’m a foreigner, and it doesn’t matter how you know good Japanese, I speak Okay, and I do speak pretty fluently, not native, of course. You know, it came when I was, like, 23 right? But I speak it, you know, pretty fluently, you know, by now, but, but it’s not the same, right? I’m still a foreigner running the business, but at the same time, yeah, you’re also right. Like, sometimes because I’m a foreigner, I’m not, you know, I’m not expected to behave the same, like the norm that the societal norm that they expect. I can be little, you know, I can sort of walk on the edge and be okay, like, Oh, he’s a foreigner. That’s okay, you know. Like, it also feels great when you have that. So, yeah. So I think net, net, I actually do like it. I think it also gives me a competitive, a niche edge that others don’t have, because if it’s hard to stand out, it’s like, oh, you’re one of many, many Japanese entrepreneurs. But if I’m a, you know, a foreign, you know, guy, people call us Gaijin, right? Guy, Coco Jin, but, yeah, if I’m a, you know, I’m a guy, Gaijin for foreigner founder, you know, if I want to, I want to, yeah, I want to be successful so that I can, you know, show that, you know, even foreigners can, can build a great, successful business in Japan. And there are not that many cases. And, yeah, I think that’s one of the reason I one of the reasons why I’m really passionate about building in Japan.

Michael Waitze 14:59
Yeah. Has the startup ecosystem changed a lot in in Japan, in general. I mean, Japan’s a big country, right? So it’s hard to say for sure. But, you know, Fukuoka, about five or six years ago, decided to want to be startup city, and in Japan, the governor of Fukuoka has made a really large push. My wife lives there, so I’ve been down there. I’ve been to startup city like I’ve done all those things, but then you have Kansai, right, where Osaka and Kobe are also striving to be this. They’re working with, I think, 500 startups or some such thing, I can’t remember exactly, yeah, and then Tokyo’s looking around going, Whoa, whoa. Everybody like, hold my beer, because we have all the money here. We have all the resources here. We have all the financial services companies here, and huge corporate headquarters. We should be doing something too, like, how does the startup ecosystem look to you from your perch, building a company from scratch? Yeah,

Brian Yun 15:50
yeah. I’d love to see more decentralization, right? More and more decentralization for Japan would be a huge boost for the economy. However, I also, you know, I think it is very Tokyo centric, right? You know, they have, like, startup events and, like, sometimes in Naha, you know, Okinawa, and sometimes in Kyoto and stuff. And people travel, yeah, that’s great, but it’s hard to start a headquarter in some other city, taking that much risk that you’ll be, you know, that you’ll be so like, away from all the information flow and the capital flow, right? So I don’t think that many better startups would actually take that risk. But that said, you know some of these, you know local cities will localize the the fukuokas and the osakas of the world of Japan will, of course, yeah, the startups and capital, right? So I’d love to see things change over time, but I think still a lot of it is just, of course, it’s all Tokyo.

Michael Waitze 16:54
Yeah, look, I’ll comment on my own region, right? They’re trying really hard in KL they’re trying hard in Bangkok, where I live. They’re trying super hard in Manila, but at the end of the day, all the money’s in Singapore. It just is, right? And in a way, there’s this big magnet of some of the guys and gals here to go to even Silicon Valley, right? So I get it. It’s just like you have to be where the money is. You have to be where the other headquarters are, because those are where your potential clients are as well. And if you’re getting on the bullet train every day. And I love Fukuoka. I’ll support everything that they do just like you, right? Because, yeah, you know, I have a place there, but still, it’s hard to get away from all the capital flows. Yeah, let’s talk

Brian Yun 17:30
about unless, go ahead. So go ahead. I mean, unless your core, you know, business has a very strong reason to be sure.

Michael Waitze 17:39
Yeah. And look, I live in Bangkok. I’d love to see the startup ecosystem being be bigger, more vibrant, be better. But every time somebody starts a company here, they incorporate in Singapore for different reasons than it is in Japan, not the least of which is it’s governed by English law. And I don’t mean the language, I just mean the system of English law. And particularly for companies in Thailand, it’s just way better to be incorporated there. Yeah. You worked at Twitter, and it’s just so obvious to me that, like, when entrepreneurs build companies, in a way, it’s almost based on, like, a combination of their life’s experiences, right? Yes, and I don’t think you tell me where I’m wrong here, but, like, I don’t think you could build a social investing app for people as well as you are, without having had that experience at Twitter, right? Because there’s no epiphany in life. You don’t just wake up one day and go social is going to be really important. But you lived it for a while, and you’re like, I see the impact here. I work in the financial services industry. You Cho alone has like you chose. So the postal Japan, postal savings alone has over 2 trillion. And yeah, I’m gonna say the right word, dollars, right like in savings there so a massive pool of money to invest. And for people that don’t believe it’s in trillions, just check Google, you’ll see it. But those things all coming together must have inspired the building of Woodstock. Yeah, no,

Brian Yun 19:04
that’s right, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. So I spent some years at Twitter understanding, you know, the magnitude and the leverage that you can have by using internet, right? And it’s sort of the quickest way to reach your target audience, and that’s really powerful, right? So you either, you know, worked as an you know, you built your own audience as an influencer. That’s one way to really understand the power, and you obviously live it, right? But me, sort of working in Twitter, just understanding the inside of how this thing actually works help me understand, you know what, it sort of, what it’s like to to build an audience. And it’s not, it’s not easy, of course, but once you have it, it’s just like, Yeah, really. Like, drastically reduces your CAC, if you think, if we think about from a business perspective, but also, like, just from, you know, just from a customer sort of engagement perspective, it’s just so powerful. And, you know, that’s, that’s powerful from a business perspective, but from for users, right? They learn so much they can potentially learn. There’s also, again, a lot of noise. But if we can make it a really an interesting platform where investors come and interact and learn together, that can, I felt that that can really move the needle. Because, like, again, like, yeah, trillions of dollars of cash just sitting idle and doing nothing is just so bad for this country, right? Japan. So, like, we got to do something. But then how are you going to do something? You’re not going to just write more, you know, newspaper articles, because no one’s going to really read them. Like, it’s not going to move the needle. So you got to do things that move the needle. And, you know, luckily, Japan is a very, very heavy social media consumption. So you see, Twitter is like, bigger than us. Elon Musk confirmed it. The conversation that’s happening on Twitter in Japan is bigger than the US. Wow. And then Instagram and Tiktok and every social media that reaches critical mass, it just gets really, really big in Japan. So the penetration, and there’s few reasons for that, right? Like, people spend a lot of time on bullet, like, on train and commute, and then they just, like, build it, find their friends, because their friends, friends are there. It’s just kind of like, draws people, like, really, really, you know, draws people on, onto those platforms. So we got to leverage, what does the things that work in Japan and leverage, leveraging that you can now build businesses and you can now build things actually will move them again. We, if we want to unlock the trillions of dollars of cash, we got to do we got to start from social media. That’s our philosophy. And luckily, I had that experience from Twitter. So yeah, I thought, Okay, this is, I’m kind of, like, destined to do this. It’s what it sounds like to me, kind of kind of the right fit, to be honest. So yeah, so I thought it was, yeah, a great opportunity to make an impact.

Michael Waitze 21:51
So what are some of the biggest challenges, just to educating people, and young people to invest right? Because they look at their parents and just think, oh, they were in the stock market. Maybe they remember the bubble from, like, the late 80s, early 90s, their parents got burned and stuff like that. And, you know, back then, and I was there for the end of it, you know, you’d have brokers literally coming and knocking on your door, but that doesn’t happen anymore. So they still do, they still do, but, but young people, I would think, way less receptive for someone just like knocking on your door going buy some of this startup. You know what? I mean, that’s not going to work. Yeah? So, yeah, yeah. How do you do that? What is Woodstock doing to do that?

Brian Yun 22:27
Yeah, the challenge is, you know, and this is going to take some time again, like building businesses takes a long time. So I’m not surprised that it’s going to take a long time, but, but basically, a lot of, you know, Japanese people, they trust their friends, and they won’t trust like company PRs, because those are basically like company PRs, you know, in other countries where sort of, the investing is already kind of like norm, and it’s like, you know, of course you would invest in money and sort of, you Know, pass it back to whatever it is, but people are circulating their their assets, right in Japan said it’s kind of like, you know, the the older generation says, like, oh no. Like, we lost money, whatever. So that, sort of like, that precedence makes it harder, of course, telling their kids not to touch things that you know, that are volatile and risky, because they kind of went through that painful experience. So that’s definitely a hurdle. But again, like and also because that, that sort of culture, is there friends, you know, the users, the young users, who are really happy with our platform, they also sometimes are hesitant to tell their friends, because they don’t want to look like they’re, you know, into some cult, or some, you know, something crazy thing that they shouldn’t be. So they’re pretty they’re pretty shy. So we talked to a lot of our users, and users tell us, like, oh, you know, I want to tell my friends, but I don’t want to look, I don’t, you know, look stupid, or I don’t want to sort of lose my face burning that bridge with my French, my friendship. So that’s the that’s the part that’s going to take a long time, but we’ll get there. But

Michael Waitze 24:11
I mean the Japanese market, and I don’t have it up in front of me right now, but you know, when I arrived again, just to give you a little bit of perspective, I want to get this number right. I think it was 39,000 when I arrived in arrived in Japan on February 20, 1990 we come, but we can go back and look, it’s a long time ago. And recently the indices, like passed those numbers, there’s been a massive rally. And you had to have been in Japan when I was trading. It was literally, like, just going down, down, down. It went up a little bit, then went down further. Like it was almost if you were making money, you were a genius, either that or you were just shorting everything, yeah, but has that market rally helped you at all?

Brian Yun 24:48
Of course, yeah, definitely. So, yeah, nobody wants to invest in a down market. Some, some professionals will short it, whatever. But retail, we were talking about retail people. So, so, yeah, it’s not only that they lost a lot of money. The older generation lost a lot of money at the bubble burst, but the Nikkei didn’t really help. If, at best, they went sideways for a long time, right? So the recent rally over the last couple of years have definitely helped, and also the crypto sort of Bull Run in 2017 I think it really woke up the the younger people. So they like, there’s about 6 million accounts now who have a crypto, you know, accounts with crypto, various crypto exchanges, and it’s, yeah, it was kind of surprising, an eye opening experience for me when I saw that, it was like, Oh, that okay. Like we say, Japanese people are conservative. But actually, if you double click into that younger generation, of course, of course, they’re concerned. They should be considered. They’re old, right? Like they should be. That’s the right thing to do. But the the younger generation, you know, they’re in crypto, and they’re, you know, they’re taking risks, right? And if you actually look at other metrics, if you look at other signs, right? Like the horse racing, the FX market, the margin trading is biggest in the in the world, right? So Japanese people, you cannot say they’re conservative. It’s just a demographic. It’s very a lot of older generations so on as a whole, yes, it’s a conservative country. There’s a lot of cash left and sitting sidelines, but it’s basically owned by a lot of older people. That’s why. So we gotta, we gotta make that shift. We gotta change that from the younger generation. We can’t really change the 80 old, 80 year old, and they should just, you know, be conservative.

Michael Waitze 26:35
Look, one of the mistakes I think that new investors always make is they think they have to make really big bets, right? I think they forget about this idea that, like, first of all, they don’t understand compounding at all. And they just think, well, if I don’t have 100 grand, like, what am I doing in the market to begin with, right? Because I can’t make that much money. You want to talk about starting with just, like, a small amount of money, why it matters, and what the Woodstock approach is

Brian Yun 26:57
here, absolutely. Yeah, so, um, so few, few approaches that we have, like we talked about the social elements. So the social element is great because investing is actually very, very psychological, and it’s very emotional, right? So you get emotionally drained when the market keeps going down. So it’s really good to have friends who you can talk to and just have that share that emotional feeling ups and downs, right? So that’s one angle. The another big approach that we have is like, yeah, we have to make it so small that they can, everybody can afford to invest, right? So, you know, Japanese stock market, one of the big, biggest problems why people don’t invest in equities is because, you know, you have to buy 100 shares of Company, right? Basically, right, round, lots and lots, yeah, around, lots and on, like, what? Why? That doesn’t make any sense, right? So, yes, there are brokers who now allow, like, you know, odd lots and whatever. But you know, basically, it’s, it’s, it starts from 100 shares. So that really just puts away all the old, you know, the younger generation, they don’t have that much disposable income, right? So our approach is, yeah, let’s just make it really easy. Nobody needs to have, you know, even hundreds, you know, we can start. We basically at Woodstock. We recently made a change to make it to tradable from 200 yen, that’s like $1.50 Yeah, even less, right? So, yeah, so we basically make it possible for everybody. Let’s at least remove that hurdle and yeah, make it fun and make it like, oh, you can learn investing. Yeah, you might lose, you know, 10% of 200 yen, you might lose 20 yen. Learns a valuable learn, a valuable lesson. That’s great, right? So nobody loses in this scenario, right? That’s the, that’s the scenario that we wanted to create. I

Michael Waitze 28:45
like this. I like this idea of having a position. This is one of the things that we used to talk about a lot, right? For guys and gals that have never had a position, you don’t understand, like, the psychological impact it has on you, whether it goes up or down, right? Because if you’re if you’re winning, it feels great. You’re like, I’m a genius, and if you’re losing, you’re like, Oh, I’m an idiot. And you’re right, it’s super social. Like, even if you go back and look at crypto in 2017 and 2018 when it was, like, really going down, if you just, like, held it and stopped looking at it and didn’t day trade it, well, then it went from whatever it was back then to 60 something 1000. Like, you should have just done nothing. And if your friends were sitting there supporting you and just saying, Don’t worry about it, nothing happens overnight. This is this thing I want to get back to. This is the thing I want to get back to, because you said this before. It’s going to take time, right? And it’s going to take time I made up this phrase, like, everyone’s an overnight success 10 years later, right? Because that’s when people notice you, like, oh my god, Brian’s a genius in like, 2034

Brian Yun 29:43
Oh yeah, Brian was just there, right, right again at the right time.

Michael Waitze 29:47
You’ve been slogging for 10 years, but investing is the same way. Yes, right? Like, even the PayPal guys didn’t wake up and then, like, a year later, we’re all billionaires, right? Just stuff, just takes time. Gestate, you. And even Amazon took two decades before it was profitable. Like all this stuff takes time, and people have to realize that investing is the same thing. Do you want to talk at all about the Woodstock index as well? Because I love the fact that you’re building indices. Talk to me about, wow. Well,

Brian Yun 30:14
I’m impressed. You know about our Woodstock index? Yeah. So this is our, so this is our so we Yeah, so thanks for doing the homework. Thanks for looking back. So with stock index, let me just explain what that is. So it’s basically a community index, so just like SNP and NASDAQ index, right? So we built our own index that is owned by community, and it’s weighted by how much you know people actually have positions collectively as a community. And so we add them up, and then we also weight that by the market cap of those market operators. And then we basically yeah, and then we just choose 30 so the 30 companies will represent the performance of Woodstock community as an average of everybody. And we just Yeah. We’re very transparent. So every day, it basically shows how we’ve done the previous day. And we also compare that to SMP compared to 10s that, you know, we started this last year, April, and ever since that, we just show that every day. And, you know, we’re higher beta. So that means higher risk than the market, because then that’s because of a lot of people choose to take higher risk positions, like Nvidia and Tesla of the world. But it doesn’t need to be, then things can change. That’s also the beauty of this index. People can just decide to, okay, I’m gonna, you know, reduce my risk and also take this other, you know, more passive, more, I guess, stable, you know, companies, let’s say Coke or whatever, and that will change the weight of the index, so it kind of represents how we’re doing as a as a community, over versus the benchmark indices and s and p and s that I think so.

Michael Waitze 31:49
Is there a hope for Woodstock as a company, that the Woodstock index, where Woodstock’s indices, if you build more of them, will become so well known that other people have to invest in them. And then, you know what happens after that? Yeah, yes,

Brian Yun 32:03
exactly. So that’s, uh, that’s, it would be a really good scenario, right? The index becomes popular, and everybody wants the, you know, the that becomes so valuable, the information of how much what people are buying and selling, becomes way so valuable. And then we also want to make it over time and again. Things take a long time to set these, set these things up. I like it. We want to make it trouble, right? Yeah, make it

Michael Waitze 32:27
turn it into an ETF, whatever, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if you do that, and then if look, the reason why topics moves, the reason why nikke moves, the reason why the s, p moves, is because people are benchmarked to it, right? So if, if it goes up, they have to buy more because they have to their performance has to keep going. The individual stocks in there have to their weightings change as it gets higher. If it’s market cap weighted like these are things that a lot of people that invest in indices don’t necessarily know, but you do, so if you can get people interested, then they’ll do the same thing they do with other indices, right? They’ll just buy the top five stocks in the index, and then then the index will change, and the that dynamic is going to create more interest, which then gives this virtuous circle, right? So that’s super cool.

Brian Yun 33:06
That’ll be a great business outcome, yeah, so knowing that we are not ready to make it into a tradable asset, yeah, we started this index first so that one customers can understand what index means and how these things actually work, yep. And also, too, we can start building the track record. So it’s even if it’s not tradable yet, it has a lot of value that it’s already generating for us.

Michael Waitze 33:29
I love this idea. Is anybody even do is anybody else even doing that? I haven’t heard about this before. Maybe they are, but I just haven’t spoken to the right people. I

Brian Yun 33:37
don’t think so, not at a retail Trading App. Yeah, I don’t think so either. So yeah, we actually intentionally don’t look at other competitors apps so much because I don’t want to. I don’t want my product ideas to be biased. Yeah, same competitor,

Michael Waitze 33:49
same, same, same. So, yeah, yeah, I don’t look at what other company, what other media companies, are doing. I don’t care, because I don’t think their ideas are as good as mine. And I feel like you have the same idea, which is super great. So this is a little bit of an edgy question, but like, what does the future look like to you? Once you get this community, you also have the opportunity to offer them other financial services. I presume crypto is already a part of this, if not. And I’m talking about, like, other very different financial services, like even being a distribution mechanism for insurance. And I always ask this, right? Because I have the biggest insur biggest InsurTech podcast in the world. But if you have all these people in one place, and they trust you, because that’s the whole point about financial services, right? If they trust you, then they’ll believe your other products. What does the future look like to you?

Brian Yun 34:36
Yeah, so I want you know, let’s, let’s take a step back and why I want people to invest. So it’s it’s people, and, you know, it’s very important that people understand the compounding, how money compounds. But I think there’s more to the investing. So let’s, let me talk about that a little bit. So there’s more to investing, because the financially literate people general. You do better in life in terms of the wealth and how their career progresses. And the reason for that is once you understand the risk or reward decisions, and also you understand, like, how the companies operate, cut costs, generate profit, how they interface with their shareholders, and governance and all these things really make you a real like professional in business. So, and that’s there’s no better way of learning that than having some position in companies and actually following those companies. So I think that’s actually really, really good for Japanese people to have as a skill set going forward. So I want really young, the young people, to understand that it’s not only about growing your money, it’s it’s actually much more than that. So, um, so yeah, coming back to your question, now that with with that context, coming back to your question, I want Woodstock to be a go to place for any investing so whether you’re investing in as you know, stocks or bonds or crypto and FX, whatever that is. And our priorities will obviously change, and things would take a long time, but for sure, Woodstock could be a good, a good place where people trust and, you know, they if I go there, I can get valuable advice, advices, and not like, recommend, stock recommends, but like, as in, like, you know, just people just giving, you know, coaching, like, oh, you know, this is, this is a good book, or this is a, you know, how you should think, like, that kind of advice, right? So this is where people should come for the community. They’re valuable community, and also for easy access to markets, and also easy access to a bunch of different financial products, but also just be a better, you know, financial literate. Just increase your literacy in the markets, and therefore just become a better professional. Yeah.

Michael Waitze 36:48
I mean, look, I have friends in Thailand, right, that have not made through salary and personal income, a ton of money, but started investing in little bits and pieces over time, since their mid 20s, and now in their mid 40s. I won’t say they’re financially secure, but they don’t rely on their income anymore for like, what their future’s going to be, because they’ve just built up. So I don’t even want to call it savings, per se, but they built their own financial security just through this idea of compounding. And literally, I’m talking $30 a month, $50 a month, little bits and pieces. And I’m amazed anybody

Brian Yun 37:25
can do it. Yeah, yeah. Can do it. I’m amazed. I’m funny so powerful. Yeah. Okay.

Michael Waitze 37:30
Is there anything else you want to tell people about Woodstock before I let you go?

Brian Yun 37:36
Um, yeah. I mean, Woodstock, we just started three years ago. And we’re, you know, just getting started, but we have a big dream to, you know, really change the shape, reshape how people invest and how they think about markets. And I think, you know, the era of, you know, following professional research analysts recommendations and following that kind of like, you know, TV, what you know, mad TV says. And I think that era is over, yeah, I think there is going to be more and more people that are very, very quick at understanding markets and very quick at sort of grasping these their edge and, you know, in various different industries and and also, yeah, I think the financial apps that are there out there right now are getting outdated. So I think this social aspect is really going to change the world. And more and more people, we kind of see that already with the Gamestop and ready. It’s kind of like a signal that this is happening and people are and hopefully they’ll use it for in a good direction, you know, not like a gambling kind of way. So we are, yeah, we’re Woodstock. We’re trying to make that happen, starting from Japan, because I think it’s a really good culture fit to do that, but hopefully beyond Japan too, in future. So yeah, thanks for having me again, Michael. This was great.

Michael Waitze 39:03
It’s my pleasure…

Brian Yun 39:04
letting me tell my tell my story.

Michael Waitze 39:06
It’s my pleasure. Brian Yun, a co-Founder and CEO of Woodstock. I really appreciate you coming here and doing this today. This was awesome.

Brian Yun 39:15
Likewise. Thank you so much, Michael.