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Gabe Whaley

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2024-11-26
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2024-11-26
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  1. “I don't know if it's the kindest thing, but I remember this meant a lot to me and it meant a lot to a lot of us here. There's a very well-known artist named Paula Pivi. She's represented Italy at the Biennale, very, very far along in her career She's also represented by Periton, who we're represented by. And she wrote us a note, I think, six months into that time where we were starting to get accepted by that world. I paraphrased, but her notes said something along the lines of, of all of the greats that I've gone to know over my career, mischief is the one that seems to represent the future that they would have wanted to see. But then she also accentuated what that make sure that you don't create for them at the same time. And that kind of stuck with us. That's just the first thing that came to mind when you asked the question.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And then you look at what performs well, and then you mimic it, you copy it, and then ultimately like when you zoom out, everyone is just feeding into this frenzy, which is a bummer. But I think everything moves in cycles. And I also think at the end of the day, human beings are deeply creative species. I'm bullish that we're going to figure it out. The pendulum will swing in the other direction before too long.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I don't know. Personally, it feels a little bit depressing because I don't know if people are creating as much newness versus, and this sounds so jaded and cynical, but I think people are just creating what their gods are telling them to create. And the gods are TikTok. The gods are Instagram. And any moment where the algorithm changes or like there's a new platform update, people change their behavior. Feed that algorithm. Exactly, right? Like they're not creating.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, it sort of has all the right ingredients there as an adversary, which is turbo tax, and there's plenty to unpack with turbo tax. There are monopoly and their dark UX patterns and how it's just a questionnaire at the end of the day, but they upsell you for like all these random things through fear. Plenty to unpack there. So good adversary. We also believe it shouldn't cost you money to file your taxes. So there's that as well, and then there's this other observation that everything is becoming anime or everything is becoming, if you want to consider metaverse avatars, games, like everything is heading in that direction. One of the things that we love to do here more often than not is jam to completely polar opposite worlds in together to create something new. And that led to TurboText 3000, which is our free competitor to TurboText.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “It's got to be the tax software. It's the box set of our turbo tax competitor. It's got the CD-ROM and the booklet inside, but on the outside, it's just anime. I think that's a really, really good example.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Inspired by what mischief does because unlike most kids in design school or art school or fashion school, like you get the degree and you go get the job and typically it's some sweatshop at like an ad agency or a fashion house or a design studio and you have to like politic your way up to creating more bullshit work that you don't really care about. So that may be in your spare time you do something that's creatively fulfilling. When they see mischief, they believe that it's all possible. That's kind of cool. So I'd like to keep that going as long as I can.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “No, not at all. Not at all. I think we're like getting to a point where this can be important from a historical point of view, but to do that, we need to last a bit longer. Five years is not enough. Ten years is not enough. It probably needs to be closer to 20 years. Sure, part of this is vanity driven. For sure. But the other part is, I think it's the highest caliber of personal challenge, which is how do you make sure that what you did was actually important? How do we make sure that we survive this test of time so that it was important enough for kids to actually learn about this in art school or their history classes in the same chapters of Duchamp and Warhol and maybe we're creating like a new area of study altogether? Who knows? Part of me, I'm also like getting older. I'm like in my mid-30s now and I spend a lot of time talking to students. I'm so excited when they are in”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Continues to be the case. And then the other part is for better or for worse, we want to see this last as long as possible. And we don't really know what that means or what that looks like.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That, which is a crazy thing to think about, is not what a real business would say to do right now. It's continue to hemorrhage as many free eyeballs as you can no matter where they come from or what the intention is. Just keep doing it. For us, I think it's an important time for us to think about how do you make that a little bit harder for people, how do you create more secrets? So that's another crossroads that we're at. And then I guess from like a business point of view, we also have to think about the difference between quick short-term cash and long-term cultural importance where our motivations are. The opportunity to make money tomorrow exists. But then we have to remind ourselves, was that the goal when we started? Or has our goal changed? What is that now? And I think where we're ultimately navigating to is when we started this, it was always how do we create a world for ourselves where we can just make all this stuff in our heads and then do it with our friends. And I think that very much.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Because there was value in the secrecy when nobody knew who we were, and they couldn't understand our intentions or motivations or our goals. But now that we're more visible, I think we're hitting a point where it makes sense to share a little bit more in hopes that other people see this and walk away rethinking their own perspectives on like creativity and the act of creation and doing things, which I think is really good. So those are sort of the philosophical internal struggle crossroads. But then there are other crossroads too. In the world right now, I think virality is increasingly just a cheap tool. Like I said earlier, back in the day, the act of going viral was black magic. Ten years ago, but it's not the case now. It feels artificial, cheap, kind of gross. So we're thinking a lot more about almost how to suppress virality actively fight.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, yeah, it totally does. There are a few things that are going on. One, our context has changed. We're not unknown underdog as much anymore. I wouldn't say we're establishment, but we're just a lot more well known. That changes how we see the world a little bit, and that also changes the type of work that we can do a little bit. Because we're just bigger. The other part that that also impacts is it changes a little bit about how we see ourselves.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “High emphasis on the ability to roll up your sleeves to be scrappy, to get through that impossible task. We have a big emphasis on being a good person, which I know everyone says, but for us specifically, that means you're humble. You don't bring an ego. And what that usually ends up also meaning is that people here are nerdy and introverted. So even though I think we're pretty well known now, you might even say famous. If we really wanted, we could start showing up in these circles with these socialites at these clubs and parties, but we don't. No one here does. No one here cares. In fact, I think a lot of the people here when some of our stuff really pops off, they actually don't know because they don't even care if it's big or not. They just care that they made it. And I think that sensibility is really valuable. That's why this place exists even today. And that's why we really haven't had many people.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “The initial core group, so there's like a founding team of four others. We started jamming together back in 2018, I think. And there was no sense of recruitment there. It was just the vibes. Vibes, and we all had nothing to lose because we had nothing going for us. This was pure luck, but we're still so tight and aligned even today, even though we've grown and our own context has changed and mischief's place in the world has changed. But there is something so magical about being in a room with that initial group of people where you're just grooving. We were just so remarkably on the same page, but had such complimentary skill sets, nothing like it. But then, of course, like you have to grow and you have to like find your team. And I think you place a lot of value on things that probably end up reflecting yourself a little bit. I think like attracts like and for us, we have a high.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Definitely not meaning. I don't think we're smart enough to even know that for ourselves much less other people. The feeling of being alive? Yeah, maybe. The truth is I just don't even think we're that profound about it at the end of the day. It's a lot simpler. We see the world in a very particular way, and then we communicate it in a very particular way. And I think in some senses, music is the best analog. I think mischief is a band. And we have a very particular sound. We have a particular set of instruments. And we've been on tour for a few years now. And it's going pretty good, which is great because when we first assembled, we were only playing at weddings to really continue this analogy. But then it started to work. We just have a sound and people seem to be into it.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “There was a website that we made a long time ago where it was first person social media footage of dining experiences at the finest dining establishments in New York City. So imagine like vertical videos of, oh, I'm at Carbone. Here's my meal or like NOMA or 11 Madison or Per se or Liberna den. And then we created a website that published all this footage so that you could download it and post it to your stories So it looks like you're eating at all these places. And people did it. So many people use this”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Those are the only things that matter to us as human beings and obviously OnlyFans takes like a huge one of those and then TikTok Instagram social media takes a huge one of those and then the rest is just fun and games.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Just humans at the end of the day. That's all it is. There's nothing profound about it, it's just whatever Maslov's hierarchy of needs, it's all bullshit. All human beings care about is being able to eat, sleep, and reproduce and flex on your neighbor. That's the true.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So, my best friend from childhood, he's a postdoc at Columbia and Biomedical Engineering. So he helped us basically like identify and then modify a manufacturing process that allowed us to create this handbag at like a microscopic level. We made it. There was like an image of like a little green speck on a thumb that just spread like wildfire last summer. And it said everything that everyone is already thinking about fashion, which is it is absurd, but not in a hateful way. It just, it is.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Because we noticed this pattern of the smaller the handbag gets, the more expensive it seems to become. And we're like, well, let's make one really, really, really small and then it's sold at auction for $64,000. So most expensive handbag of all time by volume, for sure.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Symbolism and cultural readymades. And because of that, I think it is such a rich space to play in, because also it is so tied to identity. These are symbols that are created by designers that are created by brands that you wear on your body. And in some ways, they kind of serve the same function as a painting in your home might. So I think it's interesting. When mischief sees that, we're like, okay, you can try to focus on creating things that are aesthetically pleasing. And that's one way to go. But you can also seek to exploit the tensions that people have between these objects, not just from an aesthetic perspective, but also like a value perspective, an identity perspective. Last summer, we made a handbag that was the size of a grain of salt.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I think fashion is two things. I think on one side, fashion is utility, basic needs, shelter, protection, and then the other side is fantasy, costumes. Human beings love costumes. Personally, I hate Halloween, but people freaking love Halloween. And then I go to these fashion runway shows, and I'm like, wait, they're just celebrating Halloween early. This is crazy, right? It does come down to fantasy. And the fantasy is not just tied to aesthetics, but it's also tied to value and legacy.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “A nose for cultural, it can't work, it can't last. Actually, I hung out with them a few weeks ago. And he said, yeah, I remember that conversation. And honestly, if someone came to me today pitching what you were pitching, I would tell them the same thing. Like it shouldn't exist. I agree. It shouldn't.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, yeah. I should have specified earlier. I think most people in their careers do hit this wall and they learn how to deal with the impossible task. The thing about West Point is like I got it on day one as an 18-year-old. Super valuable. For us, I mean, mischief is the impossible task. We shouldn't even be here, right? Like on paper, this doesn't make any sense. There's a good friend of mine who is actually, he spent some time in VC, and I remember talking to him in 2019 when I was trying to figure out if I was going to raise for this or not. And he was like, honestly, I like you, but I don't think you can do it. And it has nothing to do with you. It just doesn't work this way. This kind of thing doesn't work. You need such a repeatable hit rate.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “It was huge because I learned about culture all at once on a flat spectrum. I was learning about urban outfitters at the same time of learning about Kanye West at the same time of learning about Marvel and also Instagram had just been bought and the social network had just come out. I was getting all of these things as if they were part of the same core curriculum. I do think that was very valuable. And you just have such an open mind because you're like the world is so big and I don't really know where I belong here. I think that was everything actually.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Was someone on the team who was a lot smaller. I mean, she was probably like 70 pounds and she had an 80 pound bag as well. And she had a pretty bad trip because we're just running. You got to go without hesitation, he picks up her bag as well, hands her weapon, and is like, let's go. So he shoulders close to 160 pounds and books it. And then once we like get to safety, hands her back the bag, no questions asked, no issue. And I remembered seeing that. I was like, I like that. You take care of your people. You don't make a big deal of it and then you move on. I thought that was really good. Those were a couple things that stuck with me. The bad things, I don't know. I think it's all like pretty good experience, actually. It's more so if I stayed, I was going to just keep getting in trouble. That's when really bad things would happen.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Cannot only a few in the world ever. Again, not their problem. You just have to find a way to get through it. And I think that was really valuable because mischief is used to taking on things where it's like there's not really a playbook on how to do this. It's not straightforward at all and you just figure it out. You roll your sleeves up and you figure it out. And I think that was a really valuable thing for me personally. And then so cheesy. The leadership lessons are also like really good. I remember being out in the field during your summers out doing patrols for months. We were out in the field and there was a simulated mortar attack. So you like see the things flying in, you hear the sounds, and it's like, all right, we got to get out of here. And I remember my platoon leader was like, all right, we need to run this way. Like, grab all your stuff. So it's like you have an 80-pound bag, you've got your weapon. You're running.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Exactly. So I did the hardest part, which was the first year, and then I stuck around for one more year, which was about how long it takes to quit. So, I mean, personally, I probably needed my ass kicked a little bit. I wasn't a fully formed human being yet. So there is something to say about the discipline and the work ethic that you get from it. I think the biggest thing is West Point to train you for what you're going to do later, they get you really comfortable with the impossible task. So the best example is the rule for the academic curriculum is for every hour that you're in class, you're assigned three hours of homework. But West Point doesn't run like a normal college where you choose your schedule and stuff like that. No, you're in class for seven hours a day. So if you do the math, the math doesn't add up. Not their problem. You just have to figure it out. It's impossible. Let's say you get in trouble. You have to do a thousand push-ups. Not many people can do a thousand push-ups.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “We make stuff from nothing. It is literally like an act of God. There was nothing and then there was something. It's been that feeling ever since the beginning, even making my first website. It was such a eureka moment for me where I was like, holy shit, it wasn't there. And then I literally spoke and now it is. That's a crazy feeling. We can never forget that feeling.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “It's a tricky one, and it's something that I couldn't even say I've nailed perfectly. It's something that I'm just constantly working on. And every time you feel it slipping, you have to be so alert, acknowledge it, and deal with it immediately. But there are like tactical things that you do. And this is probably all the MBA business school self-help book type stuff. Choose the right people, fire the wrong people, set the right vision. These things are cheesy, but they're true. There's more to it as well. How do you create an environment where fear isn't the primary motivator for someone to get their job done? How do you curate a physical environment where people feel like they can make mistakes? How do you celebrate the act of creation and not the act of virality, for example? We never celebrate when something hits. We don't celebrate when something goes live. If anything, we'll celebrate the day before just to acknowledge the act of creation, which”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Pause and think a little bit, oh, interesting. I never thought of it that way, but it's totally true. This is just a reflection of a phenomenon that already exists. And then at the end of the day, hopefully you just see it and embrace this idea of pure unbridled creativity. That's what it is at the end of the day. It's the idea that nothing that you see in front of you is what it may seem. It can be an opportunity for something like so much more. And hopefully like people are seeing what we do and they feel inspired to break some rules, make something, or do it in a different way. The rules are all fake.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Right, right. I love that. It will be different things to different people, but I think there is this feeling of subversion. There is this feeling of levity. It's kind of funny, but like not funny in the way that you see on Saturday night live.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “To be okay with the idea that the next thing after the Big Red Boots is anime dating text service software. And we churn a ton of people from that because they're like, I was here for these shoes. Why are you sending me TurboTax competitor anime dating cafe? But what that does is we're building the world for ourselves that we want to exist in where creativity is that ultimate North Star from a value perspective. And so supply and demand isn't as much of a tool to like move more of the same. It's more of a way to generate attention that helps us distribute an idea and a concept that can hopefully educate a significant enough percentage of those people to stick around with us for the ride.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Up close micro perspective not selling enough compared to your demand makes sense. You want to hold that over for later or something. But for us it's not really about that. It's about every two weeks we release something new. And they're all going to spike at different levels. Some are going to be bigger than others. But we're at a point right now where they will all be a spike. But every time you do a spike, it builds off the foundation that was left by the prior spike because there is continuity, there's retention. And so when you zoom out from the past five years, it's actually just one big upwards curve because you're building on what was held over from the prior. Now, the tricky thing for us when we're doing that is we are not selling out quickly of big red boots so that we hold over an audience to sell them big red boots again. We are holding them over and then we need to educate them.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “The feeling is we've looked at each other when it's happening in the past, and we're like literally what we say to each other is, all right, buckle up because this is no longer in our hands. We don't control this anymore. It has taken a life of its own. The narrative is going to change. It's going to find different audiences. They're going to reshape it to fit their perfect image. That's what happened with the Big Red Boot. At the beginning, the first few days of it starting to really pop off. It existed in these niche underground, creative fashion spaces. A cool underground thing that not that many people knew about that you could style creatively. And it was cool. And we're like, this is amazing. We want to be in these underground spaces. But then it hit mainstream so fast that it became basically like a tool to go viral. And I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing. It just changed shapes. It had a different meaning at that point.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “That they were like, wait, if I do content with the big red boot, I'm going to get 100x to views that I usually get. And then in addition to that, people were sharing it like the old days. People were literally like finding screenshots of this boot online and sharing it with their friends on their platforms. So you're getting old school virality, pure emotionally driven sharing with new school virality, the algorithm has smiled upon this, creating the perfect storm of a pretty iconic image, not in the sense that I think it's important or not, but it's just so recognizable. Never seen anything like it.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Share it or share the reaction to it. Oh, and then one other thing was there had been a lot of talk of AI and metaverse and I don't know. The big red boots looked like it was Photoshopped onto people. Like it existed in this strange uncanny valley of is it real or not real? So all of these factors combine to create this perfect storm that we had no idea was coming. We made them and we only made a couple hundred pairs. I remember looking at my partner here running around in the studio with them and we're like, those look kind of cool. Let's make some, but nobody's going to buy these. And they were really expensive to make because we made them at a really high level of quality. So we're like, we'll make a couple hundred and we'll just sell them. And I think it'll be cool. Like I think people will talk about it and it's interesting. It got so big. Everything hit the algorithm smiled upon it. And then as soon as people realized,”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Definitely the big red boots for better or for worse A year ago, we made these big red boots that just look like an astroboy. I mean, that's it. There's nothing really that profound about it. But I think we made them at a time where there were a few things happening. One, in the fashion space, there was this movement towards the absurd pieces. So that was happening. Additionally in the fashion space and sort of just like in general, we live at a time where people aren't sharing new information. They're actually just sharing content of them reacting to new information. That's another thing that was going on. We were sort of at this peak of the hype cycle around sneakers and footwear and resale and all of that as well. And we're at a time where like the algorithm is what dictates virality. But the alternative is still true, which is when human beings see something that resonates with them, they will find a way to.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Cold turkeys on my Instagram to private. And I was like, I will never let not even just VC, but like, I will never let any specific world have that much influence on the things that I choose to do.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “And so there was a time where I think mischief was being pretty celebrated by Silicon Valley, at least in the early days, like every early stage company when you raise money. It's like, wow, this is the next hot thing and whatever. But then we started doing things that maybe didn't really speak to the tech world or the VC world as much. It was speaking to like other worlds. And then you started to sense some tension and lose that early fan base. And there was an aha moment where I was realizing I'm really paying attention to their feedback. I'm seeing what they're saying online, reading Twitter and LinkedIn and seeing people do the big threads, analyzing what our new move was and what they think we're doing wrong. And I was like, holy shit, I almost fell for this. I almost started creating exclusively for that world because it's where the money came from. So I deleted my LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook. I got off.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “But what I didn't realize is A, there are good ones, people who are down to embrace the long-term vision, even one as ambiguous as mischief, and also like have our back through all of the crazy things that we've been through. And I think we've had really, really good ones. But I'll say the bad part, which is I think VC and also tech in general are just so self-important and so insular to like their world that they forget about the rest of the world and how real people think and like what real people care about. Maybe that's fine because I think most people in various industries do that too. The other part is generally”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Honest answer, just like any other industry, there are good ones and then, like, not so good ones. I think this is less about venture investors and more of just the nature of all of these different variables that have descended on the world in the last, I'd say, five to ten years of a lot of capital and hype being way more valuable than like long-term sustainability. And I think venture capital in many ways became a sort of quick fix to someone's vanity. And when we realized that, we were like, well, we should raise money because we can like play this game.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Bottom line, yeah, and I think in the most, I guess, concrete sense of the word, we even look at the law as a creative opportunity. And when you really think about the law, and hopefully all of us know this by now, the law is clearly not objective and it is not set in stone and it can be changed on a whim based on who's in power at any given moment. So for us, we actually embrace that as a very creative opportunity to maybe change the way that the law is interpreted or even like create new laws. And I think that's very interesting, actually.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “And so very similarly with mischief, you look at these institutions, you look at how these herds of people operate in like different worlds and different concentrations. And you understand where their lines are. But we really see the lines as like opportunities, not constraints. They're just creative opportunities.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “That line is specifically something I remember writing down when I was at West Point because there were just so many rules. They typically drove most people crazy while they were there. Because, I mean, it's the army. If you break rules, you're going to get in a lot of trouble. It's as simple as that. And there are so many rules for everything that it's impossible to not break a rule. But for me, and maybe this is my problem, but every rule was an opportunity to like create some sort of absurdity that I thought was just really entertaining, even if it meant I had to do like a thousand push-ups for it. This is my coping mechanism. I'm going to put a copy of the communist manifesto on my bookshelf during the inspection just to see what happens. And of course, you get destroyed for that. But it's so funny when they see that on my shelf.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “About 12 months in advance. So even now we know all of next year's calendar already. Wow. Yeah, we're already working on it.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Are run through a fairly long tail vetting process that involves evaluation based on normal things like can we afford to do this? How much money are we going to lose doing this? Will we make money on this? Is it even possible or does it need further research? But then also things like does this shape the personality of mischief in the way that we want? It's almost like mischief is a child and we're like raising it. As soon as we land on concepts that we feel really good about we actually put them in a pile and then forget about them and that part is what makes this take six months because then we will open that pile six months later, look at them and be like, okay, I already forgot about these ideas, but now that I'm looking at them again, do I still feel very excited about them? Have they survived the test of time? And if they do, then they are ready to slot for production. And typically that's done.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Real spaces, and then as a result, you create ideas that are able to exist in these spaces as well in a way that's very interactive and almost experiential in a way. So that's the vibe part, but then brass taxes, you brainstorm rigorously multiple times a week. They're timed on the same schedule every single time. There's a curriculum planned in advance. It's almost like designing a school curriculum. So like every quarter there are topics and concentrations and themes that we think are important for mischief in the future and then also topics concentrations and themes that we have no idea about just to like challenge ourselves with new information and keep challenging ourselves to not just exist in our own bubble that we've created. The brainstorms happen. Every idea is documented. We have an entire library of these ideas and then over, I'd say like a three to six month period all of these ideas.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “And then creating also this culture where it doesn't feel like it's just my ideas getting made or the ideas that I like. That really boils down to creating a certain sense of codes and sensibilities that we all sort of agree on culturally. And you see that come through in the work. So that was the most important thing that I ever did because at the end of the day, the people who come up with the ideas that mischief are actually everyone. You can work on the finance team. You can be our general counsel. You can be on the manufacturing production team. Anyone here can come up with a good idea. Anyone is capable of coming up with a good idea. And in fact, it's more valuable to get good ideas from people who aren't in the business of good ideas because their vantage point is real versus people who, there are people whose jobs are to come up with ideas, but they don't exist in a space that they can actually reflect on. It's fake. We choose to exist in”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “What is the process? The most important thing that I think I've done here was create a system where people are not afraid to have ideas. So if you think of any other creative workplace or creative industry, typically like junior people are pitching to senior people. Jobs are on the line. Pride is on the line. You're afraid to be wrong. You're afraid to be judged for a bad idea. To me, those are like the killers of creativity. So from the beginning, I did a lot of work, A, curating the right type of people where ego is not an obstacle to having a good idea or preventing someone else from having a good idea. Creating an environment where people can feel a little bit reckless. They can make mistakes. They can make a mess. And that's very straightforward. You look around at this space. It feels like you can make a mistake. Being in a warehouse is really important, actually. If we were in a white box in Soho, you wouldn't want to mess it up.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “I think you nailed it. It's nihilism in the sense nothing matters, and we're not necessarily going to make the world a better place, but maybe this will ease your fall. And in that sense, it's a little bit hopeful too. We're not mean spirited. We're not edge lords necessarily trying to like take the piss out of an institution or something like that. I think there's just a hidden way of seeing the world subversion can be a higher form of creative output. It just fuels us for some reason. There isn't even necessarily like a higher calling beyond our personal desire to make the most creative work of our lives.”

    2024-11-26 · Invest Like the Best · Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.398] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source