Just Keep Your Head Down and Build - Jason Goldberg, Open Simple Token (OST)

Transcript

hello and welcome to the blockchain and us we're pioneers and thought leaders talked about their journey in blockchain technology crypto assets and a token economy and I'm your host manuel staggers this episode has support from my very own the blockchain and us newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can immediately pick those interviews you'd like to listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.cannainsider.com/careers [Music] a scene is the founder and CEO of open simple token OST and a veteran internet

entrepreneur with a long history of scaling products to millions of users he started his career in technology at AOL in 2001 and has launched and sold several tech companies since 2016 jason's passion has been to drive mainstream consumer adoption of blockchain technologies and now to the conversation with Jason Goldberg hi Jason and many thanks for taking time today thanks so much for having me really appreciate it and it really excited to talk about watching and OST and all things nourish ap-- let's jump right in with OST can you first briefly explain what your vision is with the project yeah sure I mean you know we really look

at OST is trying to be the essential tools for forward-thinking companies to to build new economies and we look at that while a lot of folks that looked at blockchain as entire and a new kind of ecosystem and an entirely new kind of new nude abscissa Torre's application this kind of building from scratch we looked out the markets starting a couple years ago and we thought that there's great opportunity to help existing companies with tens of millions of users leverage blockchain and leverage decentralisation technologies to help improve their position and provide better customer experiences and end-user experiences and hopefully we

think that blockchain will a transformative technology and that'll be a blend of web 2o companies kind of bridging to web 3 and kind of entirely new businesses beginning as web 3 bit free projects and we're just really excited to be providing tools that help you to build that bridge and also to help blocking enable businesses mm-hmm cool I've seen you mention it many times in several talks the difficulty of adoption of blockchain technology in especially in consumer apps so why is that so difficult well I think it's just still early days as it is and I mean we're talking about you know you know a complete paradigm shift from entirely centralized businesses where you know the norm since

you know decades has been that you know you have these large companies that control everything and they all these are data that control kind of the economics of the value creation within every kind of community and you know blockchain has the potential not yet achieved as potential to disrupt that and you push the value realization closer to the value creation answer to enable you know the individuals and entities who are creating value in communities and systems to capture more of that value and to enable a more seamless you know transactions and

transfers we go into number different you know benefits but all of that is still very very early but I kind of when someone asks you know says to me you know where is all the the blockchain usage and I kind of say you know you know you know replace them we're blockchain with the word Internet in 1995 yeah and that's kind of I think where we're at is that you know there's an order to these to kind of you know adoption curves and you know you first you have infrastructure and then scalability and then comes usability and then comes adoption and these things happen in a certain order for a reason like there's no there's no reason to build elegant user experiences until you have happened of the infrastructure that

in place that will scale and and and see you and then you don't you're not gonna have apps take off and you have really elegant user experiences and you know I think the the aspect of you know blockchain and you know being tied to the crypto and the fact that there is a market price that everyone's seeing you know by the second admitted every day were cryptocurrencies has just created a dynamic in the technology adoption cycle where the Hideaway exceeded the reality way too fast and the expectations of people who looked at crypto as investors not crypto as enabling technology is it was blown way

out of scale and had a proportion that and you know it's it's still early days and I think I'm a huge believer in long term potential technology that's a set up front you know I think that the technology the blockchain technology will permeate various parts of business and it's not in either war I think will be some businesses that stay entirely centralized there'll be some businesses that adopt increasingly decentralisation principles on behalf of providing better experiences their users and then there'll be new businesses and projects that you know come about that are entirely decentralized and I think all that's going to happen and it's just a matter of time and it's a matter of developing the first you kind of mass

market use cases mm-hmm what rule does the blockchain hype and and also the you know the anti hype where you have a market crash like currently what what kind of role do these market conditions play in the adoption of the technology yeah a few things gonna mention this I think a lot of because of all the hype and all the the money in in in box chain and crypto over the last year or two years I think that you know even a lot of the projects unfortunate got caught up in it and they started selling these big dreams and visions of delivering

products that you know would get you gain you know hands and millions of users much faster than was ever realistic and I'm very proud you know that we we haven't been we're project out that we've been saying all along this is going to take time and we have a very focused strategy which I walk through in a minute and we've been following it but I think what a lot of the adapts the decentralized applications and the people who've been supporting taps for God which is you know it's like a kind of a first principle of any you know growing any business these days especially in an online business is that you know you can't just build product and assume that you're going to gain an audience that distribution is is part of the product

you know often you know founder of LinkedIn you know my mind went best product managers at technology visionaries of our time he's all he's always said that yeah that the first priority is distribution and then features because there's no sense in building features let's get people to build them for good point and and that's something that I really ascribe to and really believe in it's it's really fueled our go-to-market strategy or OST but I think industry forgot that and so you see that the launch the and you people launch these DAPs and no one uses them and it's like you know there's no sense to build technology technology

sake or you know build technology in search of a user you know any anybody who's been around entrepreneurship that our our product management will tell you that you know you have to figure out what what problem are you solving with your product and build build out from there versus other way around yeah I mean it seems sometimes in many of these projects the main problem is that there's a huge stash of cash yeah that's the problem you're solving you just ship something yeah and so you know we we started you know the this OST was originally called simple token OST stands for open simple token you know we started working on the ideas of this in early 2016 in 2017 we early 2017 we refined the technology roadmap and and

we started with a goat working strategy not with technology strategy if we built the technology strategy around our plan to go to market and so you think we've been at this you know three full years now and which i think is you know it's like we're in we're old veterans in the blockchain space and we haven't beer from our strategy and I think our I'd said it's to counter theses that we had at the beginning of forming simple token OST that we still hold true today and I think it really held well for us but they were you know for a long time during the hype real hype everyone thought that we were you know they

thought we were kind of crazy they're got like if we were kind of the anti narrative and sometimes it's the anti narratives that are the were the ones you should look closer at so you know the first kind of kind of anti narrative that we had was you know everyone was talking about well everything's gonna be tokenized everyone's to do an IC o---- everyone's just gonna build their own ERC 20 toe and and we looked out at the market and said this is crazy that they're 99.99% of companies are not going to do their own IC o---- they're not gonna want the legal repertory headache caught me doing so they're not going to want to you know mint their own tokens meaning they'd have to hire blockchain developers and cobble

together various protocols and you know build everything themselves and and we just thought it was unrealistic that this notion that everyone's just going to to IC o---- and we really and we also saw this kind of you know the we predicted the regulatory climate was not going to support you know people doing i cos that it really just selling securities and not proving utility verse and not taking precautions around you never promising you know anything around investment or return investment and we saw were doing this and we saw and we saw that you and especially i say you know summer 2017 and then especially in 2018 you saw it you know massive icos

where you know really just kind of ignoring reasonable you know kind of conservative principles around avoiding you know decades of securities laws all right and we're kind of and and so we can said like this this is a very very short window where you know that that everyone's gonna you think you can think they can do their own ico and see this kind of free money we saw though this is going to tighten and well we were you know we said we're gonna build is the tools that businesses need if there's a reason for them to have a token so a branded currency that would function more like a stored value inside of their

application that we would provide the tools to enable them to do that just like companies have used tools whether it's AWS or hosting or Salesforce CRM or Twilio / messaging good analogy on stack to enable businesses use and and a lot of folks said well why does everybody need tools they're just gonna you know created near c20 token and when I come on it's like you could say you know why doesn't everyone just build their own Co their own CRM or build their own messaging or you know companies always use tools do not have to deliver themselves so that we developed kind of a kind of a full-stack approach to you know how do we enable companies to launch their own branded currencies

without the legal regulatory headaches involved without been acknowledged themselves yeah that's a the second kind of counter-narrative that we had was the other thing that developed the same time was everyone in the industry you know the last couple years was running immediately to adapt like everything was well you know it adapts to take over the world and you know distribute applications are the only thing that we should you know focus on you know why would anyone want a centralized application anymore and so you know everything in the entire industry was brown the vision of daffs and you know it's a building building tools for DAV's protocols for the apps and apps themselves and our thesis was you know as I said apps are interesting

but they're gonna take many years to materialize and in the meantime you know we we said from the very beginning let's focus on where the users of distribution that's and we said let's focus on mainstream applications mainstream businesses you know with with existing user bases with you know millions over tens of millions three hundreds of millions of users who want to be giraffes they want to stick their neck out and they want to try new technology and figure out can it provide a better user experience and give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace build more trust with their users and we said let's build for them and I tell you I really feel like for a long time we were the only people in the industry even looking at that and you know I would talk to you know kind of crypto

investors maybe like you know what they weren't you just building for the desk and they you know why don't they just use your protocol and why are you building like wheat you know with SAS dashboards api's and SDKs and like why do you need this why don't they just take what your what's in your get up and run with it and I was like because that's not how companies work and it's like and so you know we give you know large company X who has you know ten million or 100 million users the ability for you know their developers to easily integrate test pilot a branded you know token within their within their app without having to write a single line of blockchain code and we give them all the tools they need to manage analyze how

their economy is working I can tell if there's you know these two things combined is you know the entire reason why I'm sitting one of the guys are now sitting you know humble yet confident about our position I really believe that we are set up for incredible success in 2019 mm-hmm it's I mean you said a lot of things I wanted to bring up in the future questions but I think this is a really good summary and sums up your position and and even part of your strategy very well even though I'll I'd like to ask a few more things about the strategy later but maybe let's start first with you mentioned before LinkedIn right or you mentioned a consumer app with perhaps you know tens of hundreds

of millions of users like like whatsapp for example I mean first of all why would they want to tokenize their app yeah any business that is innovative is always looking at what's on the next frontier and seeing you know what's coming around the corner and how do they build competitive advantage in the marketplace and what a lot of businesses are realizing with blockchain is that you know watching and tokenization can enable them to build a few things one is you know increased loyalty so having a bread currency that could be used for rewarding and incentivizing

user behaviors okay but let's say let's say your whatsapp I mean you already have the trust of people and they're they're locked in right so I mean why would they they'll just sit a gap because I haven't necessarily you know I'll think in a second as to why whatsapp might it might want to open I hadn't really thought that broadly um so so that's one and then I think there's you know under under arching this is the notion that you if you go from kind of central database to public blockchain you create a layer of transparency and openness and Trust with your users and I think you well we have found is that not every business is you know ready to buy

into that but ever but but most forward-thinking innovative businesses they see that this is coming and the ones that were working with they say well we don't want to be the ones who are gonna disrupt it by competitor who figures this out we want to be the ones are out ahead and trying to figure it out and that's why you know we find that you know the companies working with you know they're looking at you know how to use a branded currency to you know to build loyalty to to send advise user behavior to facilitate more seamless cross-border transactions they have a common currency kind of within their application to provide openness and Trust to their

users to provide new ways to you know to give value or rewards we give you warts the people who are grading the value in their ecosystem so turn like their ecosystem into an economy those are things that you just can't do you know it'd be on currency if you in you know if you were to reward everyone who you know liked your uploaded you know been a nap you can't send people you know kind of a cent or a fraction of a cent at a time but you can do quite easily you know with tokens and and so so you know we have you know a wide range of examples in terms of our partner companies

overlooking the market next year one that I'll point out is coming up Hornet which is working with the LGBTQ foundation and they're going to be one of the first companies to launch with us early next year and that's a social network yes a Hornet is a social network for the gay and lesbian community about 30 million active users a 5 million monthly kind of recurring right now and what they're looking at is they already have a strong cohort of power users and they're looking at starting with us power users looking at can they reward the power users for helping the community with certain actions so one of those actions are bug testing or spam

reporting or writing articles contributing content and then then provide ways for the people who are earning those LGBT tokens to first spend them with inside of Hornet so for whether it's you know subscriptions or other kind of kind of features within within the app and then the next step is looking at how they actually can spend them with Horan's partners and then it goes from those partners then could have a decision whether they want to you know you know either cashed out what they perceive a war spend it back on apps like Hornet or others for advertising or promotion so creating a full kind of economy there and that's a real example and it's one

where you know we've been in a meeting with with their team every week we have a workshop and a project plan and you know we're gearing up to launch this in you know in in early you know 2019 the timetable is an early q2 and um and that's you know that's it's very real and and when it launches you know it will you know over it'll already be by far larger than eat your tap that's out there and because they'd be installed they see users and they have people already there RIA playing these roles no we gotta go do it we had and you know we're work we've been building all the the infrastructure and the tools to enable you know apps like hornet to to be successful with this i'm able to

LGBT so can be successful and it's not easy stuff it's very very there's still a lot of a lot of details and get to solve there are problems such as we've built a layer to scaling solution on ethereum we build easy way to her companies like you know hornet to write smart contracts without writing space let it be code on their side to you ten user wallets that are user friendly that don't require what people think about today in terms of like a meta mass type um experience and it's a really hard problem solving around both the scalability and usability blockchain and we're you know really excited bring that to market and in a horde it's just one example right so oh s DS client partners they depending how you count them they

have you know more than three hundred million or 400 million monthly active users between them and 2019 is when we're bringing into market uh in one of one of the apps that we work with unsplash they you know n slash has about 10 billion billion photo fees per month one two billion api calls they're the embedded photo image search on apps like medium and Trello and Squarespace and you know looking at tokenizing that is not something that you just say you know you know you can't just flip a switch I mean that really carefully it's not done in in the afternoon yeah yeah exactly but but but again these are you know these are potentially you know kind of

game-changing moments I couldn't look back so you put it like this in the scheme of things where we're at in terms of the crypto lifecycle and the hype cycle I kind of say you know the the the market downturns a great thing it's going to focus on quality it's going to get a lot of the scams there's some people were just playing scams there's also people who they're kind of like Project scam they're not like intentionally scamming they're more just they have a vision if no way to execute on mmm and it's just kind of remove a lot of the noise I mean if there was I'll you know a few months ago I said over the summer earlier in the year where you talk to some people in blockchain and there is impossible

attempt to tell any of the projects part because they all kind of it's just a blockchain and we need all that noise to go away and it's time if if 2018 you know was let's say 2017 was the hype 2018 was the bust 29 teens got to be the put up or shut up and but even a 20-19 I don't look I think I think we're gonna show some really interesting results but I would also caution that you know 2019 s I think is gonna be the start of proving real use cases and that you know more like 2020 is they're more realistic where we see then the first kind of a mainstreamer mass market kind of liftoff but you know we could be proven wrong who knows but the I think the industry's

waiting for its Hotmail moments I don't recall but hotmail was the first viral mainstream use of Internet and you know people who were surfing around webpages that were slow to load and kind of just learning that there's information online and then suddenly everyone had a hotmail account and the and so watching is waiting for one of those moments and once we have one we'll have another another another and some of them I think will come from predictable places and some of them will be totally unexpected and once those start to emerge this whole thing will take on a whole new life mmm cool I mean do you think one of your projects that you just mentioned Hornet and unsplash could be a hotmail I think so yeah and I think there's others

that were working with that we have not announced that as well and again you know forward-thinking companies who call the drafts who don't stick their neck out and you know try things and see you know what sticks and try to see if they can deliver better user experiences that some of those can hit and if you have ten million or 100 million users and something hits it'll really hit hmm okay fingers crossed Jason you've been in tech for almost 20 years and though I mean when when did you first job in tech well I mean I remember the first time I you know use a web browser was the mosaic web browser I use

like gonna go over and kind of tell that in college but I remember I was working at the White House from 1993 night 98 and I remember it was somewhere in 1994 and I thought by where I used the mosaic browser and I was like wow man that was meant to got in town Khalil who was running the technology office at the White House and we just knew that they were there was this was something I went to Stanford Business School in 1998 and was really immersed in the valley during the dot-com boom worked for a couple of you know internet startups at the time there were a b2b company that was way too early they had a great idea called

medium and then did you know I work today well for cookies right hey well within to dial up times yes an AOL in 1999 I presented a deck that no one at AOL wanted to listen to it basically said this business is gonna go away if we don't figure out broadband that's hard for it's hard for companies to read you just mentioned they're with AOL right that they didn't want to see that they will be disrupted at some point and I mean is that in your experience or in your view is that somewhat similar to what's happening with blockchain technology today where you have some of these big tech incumbents or otherwise

you know maybe even financial firms who just do not want to see that at some point something new will come along and and do away with their business model I was with a very you know smart well-respected venture capitalist couple weeks ago and she was arguing to me that you know why would a large company that has a forward system loyalty system like a point system once you put on a box chain because then they would be interoperable with other systems isn't it to their business advantage to stay close and I was like wasn't it to AOL's advantage that they closed as well see how that worked all right I mean AOL was the open walled

garden right and I mean yeah I like some companies will come kicking and screaming into the new world but those who embrace it first will figure out a way to use it advantage will gain huge spoils and so we're working with another company which we have not announced yet who they have really figured out that if they have a Points program they've figured out that so they have a loyalty program it's you know sits in a database right now to figure it out that if they move that to a blockchain that they think that they're gonna get a huge net gain from a kind of a trade kind of balance that more people are gonna want to move into them than out from them because they have a you know a low price point high frequency and so people who

are earning you know say you know tokens or points elsewhere will want to bring them into their sin to them because they have more more frequent and more often kind of use of points and so they say but the only way a person to get the benefit of that is we have opening ourselves and so for us is a you know us that that's that perfect you know kind of set up for us because you know we're providing technology and the the interchange solution for all these various branch open economies to to trend out together well and and again it's like it's like you know I would say a completely different example in the airline industry you know I think there's a way for instance that Airlines

always operated and then you know come any Southwest Airlines you came in the US and they you know they completely questioned the model they said you know we're just by friendly or - more cheerful customer service and we're gonna have a different kind of routing model and different way we treat our boys and they're the most popular around the world and they figured out that providing a better customer experience and giving more value to the users in the customers then to them could you know could be a better business and now and then everyone wanted to be Southwest Airlines example again and again and again I think so it's like you know all it takes is a couple of these drafts to show that they've really you know moved some KPIs a meaningful way and everyone's mm-hmm

yeah and everybody wins including the user for once because you get a better product I mean I just wanted to ask in your view how will tokenization change the way we use software you know I think that it's a good question I mean I think that it's possible that some software will run on tokens it's some it's a break down more you have you could have open source technology that the user is more or less interact you know less like buying from a company and more you know paying into the ecosystem and obviously

gonna rent model subscription models taking models and anything a little more than specifically about in terms of it terms out though okay you said before there will be entirely new services coming up you know next to just existing services that just have a better UX but there will be entirely new things that may be creating scent ifs that previously weren't there people will use new kinds of software I mean is there something on the horizon that you see already materializing maybe that that is some kind of new thing that could come up in in software I back yes I see more like the potential but I also has it entity that guy I I'm not one who just gets you really excited about look at the capabilities in this technology it's let's start with the use case then even

mold the technology to meet use case but I think you know for instance it was a an example and I have no idea who will create it now we'll get done but you know Facebook is a you know one of the most you know impressive you know turning advertising kind of vehicles that's ever existed but I mean Facebook across all their properties and you know Google you know and it's between Google and Facebook year you know dominating the world on the advertising and and yet you know the the walls didn't capture a lot of that about us you know the data they they have is limited so you are

browsing history and kind of things you like and you know they don't but now if someone anonymously could build a kind of a system that users could opt into that is based on their token transfer history that suddenly becomes some really interesting new way to you know to help advertisers or or you know kind of commerce providers target and reach consumers in a way that consumers want to be reached a more of an opt-in basis but also having access to a lot more information that's you know BOTS anonymize it can be more more more useful at targeting to the user mm-hmm

yeah interesting we already spoke about some of the technological hurdles to to mass adoption at the beginning but what other challenges do you see to mass adoption of blockchain technology I mean I think I mean I mean scalability is a big one um yeah and see you know people have an expectation that you know I now be a people carrying you know billions of people are carrying supercomputers and their phones that have more powerful cameras than ever before and people expect you know instant gratification and they expect applications to run fast it's like transactions to go through

smoothly and those are like table stakes that until blockchain can solve you know for that you know there's you know it's hard to imagine people accepting a degraded experience just because it's more decentralized and so I think this notion of you know be like well you know people will accept a lesser experience because they have more you know control over them you know over their own usage I think I think that's a very hard sell and so I think there's a lot that needs to happen on the the use of the ability of blockchain and a scalability and the throughput and there's a lot of great projects that are working on those things and but you know

you can't expect mass adoption until you are are able to give an experience that's on par with what people have you have today and and then provides additional benefits that they can't get today hmm yeah and that's gonna be super difficult I think because services like Facebook Google Apple are just super simple to use in them so there's a lot of catch-up that you have to do if you're a new interim there absolutely if you're an app that you know has an existing say the loyalty program today and that program is you know a closed loop

loyalty program where it's you know basically managing a database so the user doesn't really own their points they have points that the company can always you know expire or change the value of and can only spend them back with the company how many indicates how much they're worth if that company moves their users to a blockchain based a kind of program where the principle of you know you earned it you own it and if you don't like the offers we have you can always spend it somewhere else that's a much better user value proposition it's just about making sure that the experience of participating that in that is aerated or the appetite what-what do you think will happen to

some of these tech giants look I I don't know any inside information I can tell you that my expectation would be Microsoft focuses on the enterprise Amazon focuses on the enterprise this Google takes us to wait and see and Facebook probably has large number people inside Facebook trying to figure out how they figure something out and block change of course someone else does but the Veii end up probably buying a couple companies also cool I mean Trent pecan Iggy right he introduced us and yeah and he said his view was that Facebook should just tokenize itself easier said than done yeah absolutely you know it again like going back to the example I had with you know with my time at AOL is you know when you're talking

to business that's highly profitable that has huge operations I built a certain way you go in and tell them hey you know you need to change everything and go this other direction it's hard to gain an audience and you know Facebook is a you know highly profitable business you know great you know great profit margins it's it's it's you know the revenue grows incredible they've they slowed down from the user growth but they're not overnight going to change in our business model now do they try some things sure yeah absolutely I mean I they should and I'm sure they will in your work or in your life also which people inspire you that's a great question I mean I think I'm definitely

inspired by builders you know people who you know defied the odds and you know created products and organizations and movements that you know that that's something I look up to my parents inspire me my colleagues inspire me you know I I'm 46 years old and I feel I'm very humbled and privileged to to get to do what I do every day and to work with I mean I've worked with a lot of people today who have worked with for many many years I cofounders Anil and I've worked

together since 2008 you know uninterrupted and many of the people on the team have been with the company or their previous companies we've worked on for four five six seven years of our founding team you know Chris dark and Rene Wong I've been working with since 2012 a lot of our investors Tencent breaker off to me back to me for years and I'm just very humbled by the people's belief in our ability to build things when you got started in in your career in tech did you have any mentors or role models um yeah I've had lots of mentors in my career I think you know

there's you know I point certain people out there was a guy Jim Bankoff at a well who I thought I really admired his his management style and making styling very product focus is like product first with Jim what sorry to interrupt there what was what's maybe won't take away from that from the first experience you know one thing that you'd say you learned from this particular mentor I would say product product bursts and that you know you need that product needs to solve a problem but the end user you know you know you can have all the vision in the world but if you don't have the right product to meet their

consumer needs at the right time come together I mean the reason I ask therefore this takeaways because I I'll always remember there was one thing when I was about 20 years old somebody told me said always finish everything yeah never leave anything just open you know just even if just take 10 more minutes and just wrap it up in a form where you can present it yeah I'm gonna show you to my father you know I remember a long time ago you know he instilled in me you know back in at school it was you know if you think you've gotten enough done together be and you know what needs to get done DNA why not get it done I've had is like attention to detail and the jobs not finished until it's really done yeah and

and don't just settle you know settle for okay mm-hm yeah yeah that's a good one definitely how do you personally keep a balance between what you're working on in technology and in a blockchain space and the other aspects of your human existence I mean I would say couple things there so one is maybe you said you know I was in tech and I on blockchain to me there's no difference understand Tech and I'm a builder and I like building companies and bringing people together to solve problems together and you know I'm I'm fortunate that I get the opportunity to do that every day with you know a team of incredibly hard-working dedicated people who believed in our vision and they're

executing on our mission and you know in our strategy so that's just that in itself is there is this the reward can you do that every day we don't get caught up in the hype we don't get caught up in you know I've been to one blockchain conference this year and that was by design I said let's keep our heads down that these things can be just taking a lot of kind of you know when the when the market was up everyone thought they were the smartest people whole world and you know there's you know when the mark when when the stocks up 30 percent don't don't get to thinking you're brilliant as went down 30 percent you don't wanna thinking it they're stupid and you know so we kind of look at is that just keep

your heads down and build and the the ultimate measuring stick here is going to be do our customers our clients use the product that's it hmm if they do then we're pretty success and if not the rest is just noise you know it's like you know when when people ask me you know what should the price of OST be for instance one of they say don't comment on the price and I say that did I'd say it's you based on whatever the users of it you know because there it is it's it's based on and what's needed so that's a know things is I I work out every day just my personal perspective I

you you won't have a clear mind you have a clear body and I work out every single day and try to eat healthy and and just you know surround yourself with good people who you know you know most people don't you know I don't throw myself with just you know people doing what I'm doing most people don't run companies that are you know leading edge of in technology and I think it's healthy to have a mix in your life Jason if you could go back and change one thing in your career what would that be there were times in my career where I lost the humility and bought into the hype and I

think particularly during some of the the fab rocketship years of you know in 2012 especially I think we went from doing about 18 million in sales the year before to 120 million and you know when we had you know everyone telling us just you know how this was you know how great we were and we we let it we let somebody go to our heads and that's something I vowed to never do again and we have to earn it every single day and every single week and every single month I believe in what we're doing but we have to earn it mm-hmm okay Jason what's in the future for you and OST in the next few years well you know 2019 is we want to bring you know a lot of these clients to market and some things we do will work and some things won't and learn from the

ones that do lean into them and focus on those and then try to adapt from the ones that are not working and you know build up the client base build out the product stack on technology further I see this as you know people ask me how long do I think that I'll be kind of working on a running OST and you know I say this is this is a ten year plus journey and at the very beginning of a cycle and if I look at the companies that I admire most today I'd say like Amazon the top of the list and I'm no Jeff Bezos he's a lot smarter than me a lot more successful and I think I'll ever be but I mean he's been running that company since 1994 okay and you know that that's a commitment I hope to

be able to have that you know that kind of opportunity cool Jason this was fantastic many thanks for taking time thank you cheers thanks so much for joining us today more info on our guests and our sponsors is in the show notes of this episode and on the podcast website the blockchain does calm to help people find this podcast it's important that you download subscribe and give it a top rating and review on iTunes or on the podcast platform of your choice I'm Manuel staggers and I thank you very much for listening [Music]