DIGG Returns with Reddit and Digg Founders, Where To Get The Best AI Prompts, How Crocs Built a Cult Like Following

0:00So, Dig returns with Reddit and Dig founders. So Alexis Ohanian and Kevin Rose who used to be rivals. So just so everyone knows Neil used to be a pro at dig. He used to be he used to get top page all the time and The thing is I don't I don't know what they're trying to do with this I mean I'd rather just start a new brand like there's no reason to bring back dig in my opinion because it kind of just died But what's your take on it? So it's funny because we both have this in our sheet you said dig returns and dig returns with reddit and dig founders Yeah, and I put my title was no one cares for a new dig.

0:34Yeah, they're not solving for anything new It's like I saw the screenshot previews at TechCrunch right because TechCrunch was one of the there was quite a few News websites that wrote about it, but TechCrunch had a few screenshots that were provided by them I was like, okay, so this doesn't look like anything new. Do I need another reddit? No Are they solving anything near doing anything crazy? No So why should I use this site? You could have a better user interface, but I have no issues with the current user interface at Reddit. You know what's interesting? I'm noticing this, I don't know if you're noticing this, but a lot of these people that became investors are all itching to become founders again.

1:09So you look at Chamath, okay, he's got 80, 90 or whatever, or something like that. The coding company, right? They try to make software cheaper or whatever, right? And then Freeberg's Ohalo, right? I'm talking about the all-in people. What's Ohalo? Ohalo is like his, some science related business. I think that I don't want to butcher it, but I know he's like a science nerd, right? And I know so my point is I think we're seeing a lot more people like recently I'm saying oh, you know people going back to building Software and then you can see Alexis Ohanian's like yeah, you know both Kevin Rose and I are back But they were all just doing investing last couple years and there's nothing wrong with investing But it seems like everyone's trending back to becoming a founder and they want to they want to build again Rose has amazing track record as an angel investor.

1:53I don't know how he's done as a venture investor at True Ventures. I'm going to assume he's done well, but his angel investment, he crushed it. He had a lot of them like Stripe and what he would start doing because back in the day he was known for creating highly produced videos. It was much more unique back then and he would create these videos about some of the companies that he wanted to invest in and he got in and wrote checks. You know Kevin's the reason I found out about treehouse and then eventually yeah then work there for a little bit but that's because he used to do those interviews back in the day before anybody else did because they're super high quality interviews yeah called the foundation and he did it with Elon before too I don't know yeah yeah but anyway I don't think anybody I hope they do well but I don't really think it's a good idea yeah Eric and I don't wish him bad luck or anything like that we want to see everyone succeed why not especially if they're not competitors but as As individuals, everyone can relate to this, why do you need another alternative that's doing the same thing when you're satisfied with the current solutions?

2:56It's like someone saying, I built a better search engine than Google, okay? But every time I do a search, Google pretty much answers my questions and it gives me what I'm looking for. There's no need. And then people are like, oh, ChatGPT is going to replace Google. If you look at what people use ChatGPT for versus Google, it's very drastically different. I actually posted on something on X. It was a chart. I also put it on my other social channels. We did a survey with over 5 ,300 people, and we asked them, are you using ChatGPT for search over Google? That was it. Now, keep in mind, there's other use cases for both ChatGPT and Google.

3:38If you're a free user, 3 % prefer ChatGPT, the rest prefer Google or another channel. If you're a plus user, 5 % prefer ChatGPT, and then the rest prefer Google and other channels. And if you're a pro user, paying$200 a month, which I believe is the price, 6 % prefer ChatGPT, 87 % prefer Google, 1 % prefer social media, 6 % other. I'm trying to look at my screen right now. My screen time. Okay, last week averaged three hours and 16 minutes. I'm trying to see what I spend the most of my time on. Oh, that's funny. Okay, one hour. Okay, the only LLM I see in the top 10 is Grok. So one hour on Grok I spent three hours and 33 minutes on Instagram and then three hours and 22 minutes on X.

4:25So take that for what it is. I might But not a lot of chat GPT here. Yeah, and do you have a Google app for search? No, I use Safari for that, so three hours and 13 minutes. On Safari? Mainly Google, I'm assuming. Yeah, so I'm searching around on Safari, or I'm clicking on a link or whatever. So it's still a lot of my time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. I think chat GPT is amazing. I use it very heavily for research. Yeah. Like deep research, and that's my main use case for chat GPT. I don't know what yours is. Deep. No, I do it a lot for research. I do it a lot for like just anything I have a question on.

5:01Okay, for example, I had an issue with my, so I want to hook in my DJI microphone with this and it doesn't hook in natally, right? So I just went to Grok for it instead of Google. So that is a use case change. Yeah. And then it basically solved the problem for me. So I am using it more for random questions too around health or like how I should be using these supplements or whatever. But I'm not completely off of Google. So that's what really matters. Out of the 13.6-ish billion daily searches, last report I saw was 8 % are question-based searches. So around a billion are question-based searches.

5:38Now that I have it, we'll see how I am in like a week or two weeks because you know how I am with new things, but we'll see how I'm using Manus in two weeks or so or if it's just a fad. Yeah. I also use AI to like analyze data and numbers. I think it's very useful for that. Yeah, that's like the best where you can dump in entire books and novels and it just analyzes it. But I don't have that kind of stuff to input into ChatGPT on a daily basis. Yeah, you don't. But I mean, you could take all your blood work. You could take your financials. You could take, yeah, there's not a lot of that stuff historically.

6:08You could take what we should do with this podcast because we're coming up on 3 ,000 episodes is take all the data from the podcast and just see how we've changed over time and how we behave on the podcast and then what we generally talk about, what we disagree on, what we agree on, all those things. Yeah, my sister was I was on the phone with her technically I talked her almost every single day, but Why is that technical? Well when I was I was saying how I was on the phone with her like a month and a half two months ago But technically I talked to her every single day But a month and a half two months ago was talking to her about a bump on my head and I did MRIs CAT scans tried everything to figure out what was causing it.

6:47I thought it was a cyst wasn't cancerous luckily and and when we're going through this process, none of the doctors could figure it out. And I went through a lot of doctors and here in Beverly Hills we have some amazing surgeons and doctors and neurologists. One of the neurologists that I went to taught at Stanford for ages. So I literally tried everything. I don't know how much I spent on it. You know, after insurance I probably spent four or five grand because a lot of these people were not covered. and uh they couldn't figure it out and my sister was like oh just have them give you a digital copy of your mri and your casket and i was like why he's like our other friend had a medical issue doctors couldn't figure it out and my sister's based in san francisco yep it's like uploaded to chat gbt and it actually solved it to them they didn't do anything on them but they took that data went to the doctors and it actually worked out for them and i was like huh this is a bad use case yeah no that that's an amazing so here's the thing i tried to do this with my dentist motherfuckers so you know what they did oh yeah they kept trying to call me like dude why do you need to call me just send it to me right and then like oh we need to do this hip episode okay fine i signed the hipaa compliance thing right and they're like okay which office would you like me to email the cds to i'm like what are you talking about dude just send me the file so i could just have because i had a bunch of friends because we're talking about my wisdom teeth right i still have my wisdom teeth but by age 38 now they haven't caused problems for me so i've talked to a couple of like family and friends that are dentists who are dentists and they're like yeah if it hasn't caused issues for you you can probably you're probably okay because naturally these the the people that are pulling your your wisdom teeth out they want it to come out yeah because they're incentivized to do that right but the fact that they won't send me the scans like that pisses me off so i don't know even know how you got the scans because i thought they had to send cds uh i did not get the scans yeah i tried another solution before i went even down that path and the last solution work.

8:42Yeah, but that works. I mean, the point is, I think, I think we're gonna start to learn how to ask better questions. And maybe this will lead into one of my topics over here. Because the better questions - Oh, wait, wait, wait. Really quick, with wisdom teeth, I still have my wisdom teeth. You do? I never got them removed. Yeah, because I've never had cavities before. You probably have. I've never had cavities. One cavity in my life, and it just came recently. How? In between teeth. Like, you know, some people have the cavities at the top. Mine were in between the teeth and I tried so much. Dude, I'm so crazy.

9:15I brush on average three times a day I floss twice a day in the morning too. Yeah in the morning too. Yeah, and I use like this plaque remover on top of that Yeah, at least once a day. Yeah Good toothpaste and I use What is it rise well, I used the arm and hammer that has thera breath you got to check out rise well, okay, all right, okay and And the dentist was telling me, you know, like everything. He's like, you know, most people just want to do bad stuff. He's like. What does that mean? Do bad stuff? Like do more treatments. He's just like, you have other little tiny holes. But he's like, if you look at from when you first started coming to now, your teeth are filling back up and your cavities are disappearing.

9:59And he's just like, I found this ointment from Japan. They've been using it for years. It helps fill it back up. So regrow so your cavities go away. So you don't. What's it called? I'll get it. Just remind me. I'll text you the image word of mouth marketing guys. It works But the point of making is like this dentist spot on it's like it's very rare to meet someone He's like I could treat you, but I don't want to let's try to figure out how to holistically solve this so you don't have to Get any cavities or I don't have to drill. He's like that's a bad way of living. Yeah, and this guy's expensive It's called sunset dental best dental clinic.

10:33I've ever been to dude. I'm laying on the chair There's a damn TV in the ceiling Who cares about that? No, no, but like everything like if you have a problem with your tooth He has 3d printing in-house yeah, and right then and there while he's doing it like when I had a cavity He 3d printed stuff and just put it into my mouth Wow like the guy's just legit I was like huh, I'm like yeah I'm only one of the few people that can actually do this in the world. I was like all right I want details after But was I saying oh I was saying look we're just talking about AI use cases. That's how we got to this whole thing, right?

11:06But it comes down to how good are your questions at the end of the day. And most people don't know how to ask good questions. And I think somebody tweeted this yesterday. I think this guy, Peter Yang, was like, well, if these AIs are so powerful, then how come people aren't asking the right questions? And I was just like, not enough life experience or not enough context in the space that they're in. So you have to know how to ask the right questions. And there actually is an X account here. So if you want to know how to ask the best AI questions or get the AI prompts, there's this account here called a pollinator 3000 okay so i'm not going to spell it out yet but i'll call it out in a second but um he he lists a bunch of prompt here so this prompt will turn any goal you have into a crystal clear checklist of tasks and list the daily habits you need to adopt to achieve them right or he'll have another prompt where it's like you are um you have founded multi-billion dollar companies and you are no nonsense person you're very direct and I want you to uncover all my weaknesses and things like that.

12:00So it'll ask a bunch, a series of questions over here and then you basically create like a coach or whatever you need, right? And then you can upload whatever health data or whatever business data that you have and then it'll be brutally honest with you. I think people, once you start asking better questions, maybe first you use these prompts, but then that will guide you on how to ask better questions because if you don't know how to ask good questions, you don't know how to use these things because these things are just tools at the end of the day. Yes, and the best part about following that account on X, I've seen it, I don't follow it.

12:30And when you see other good prompts from them or other people, it'll start getting you to think and learn how to actually create better prompts yourself for your industry. And that's the key. You just need to understand how prompts work and what's going to give you a good output versus a crap output. Yeah, I'll give you another real good one and then we can move on. I'm curious what you want to pick next. but so this prompt here says, this prompt will turn any YouTube video into an actionable step-by-step plan, ignoring all theory and fluff. So it says, you are now an implementation extractor.

13:00Your only job is to analyze this YouTube transcript and extract purely actionable steps, completely ignoring all theory, background information, stories, or fluff. Follow these exact rules and then just says, you know, only include specific concrete actions that someone can execute on immediately and it just goes down the list. So the point is, you start to read a lot of these and they're effective for you, then you start to figure out, okay, what are your other problems? And then craft these prompts around that. That's how you're going to get better. Because if you don't do this, then you're really going to fall behind.

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15:39Yeah, do you know we have um VP of digital at Crocs has come to a couple of leveling up events in the past. Yeah, but go on. Do you wear Crocs? I don't do you know have you ever wore Crocs? No, but I know they really came back the last couple years When they started doing these custom Crocs like Hormozy wanted to do a custom Crocs And they were trying to get a deal done, but it kind of fell through. Do you know what put Crocs back on the map? I thought it was these like custom branding things Justin Bieber. Justin, how? Oh, because he wears them all the time. Yeah, he made them cool again. And it just goes to show in marketing, your true moat is your brand.

16:20There's not much more to it than having a strong brand because, dude, there's so many Croc knockoffs and there's some that are more comfortable than Crocs, but what makes Crocs so successful is the brand. It's the same with Jordan's shoes. It's like the only reason Jordan does so well is because that brand if you and I created a shoe company today We don't know anything about shoes Would you agree if we had 10 20 million dollars? Within a few years we could figure out how to make a shoe Just as comfortable as Michael Jordan shoes if not more yes, but we probably will generate little to no sales You agree with that as well.

16:59Yep, and what makes Jordan shoes sell is the brand If anyone hasn't tried I wear shoes by Xenia called second skin I don't know how much they cost call it a thousand to a thousand three hundred bucks. I'm taking a guess They're much more comfortable than Michael Jordan shoes from Nike. Okay, I'm looking at this right now So I'm like how did how did croc get so big these last few years? So it does mention they partner with high-profile names like Justin Bieber bad bunny post Malone and even luxury brands like Balenciaga creating limited edition crock drops. And then people started wearing gold Crocs in 2021 Oscars, Nicki Minaj spotting them, sporting them on social media.

17:39So I think it's a lot of influencer stuff. And then also it says, okay, this was listed as number one. It was like, well, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people shifted priorities towards casual, cozy lifestyles. And their Crocs fit perfectly into this trend and sales skyrocketed. I'm not so sure about that. I think the influencers drove a big part of it, but just keep in mind, influencers usually, if they stop talking about it, it's just like this. It's like a PR bump. From my understanding, when Justin Bieber started wearing Crocs, it wasn't paid. It was just people saw it and they thought it was cool.

18:11Same with Justin Bieber and Champion. He brought the Champion brand back. Yep. So, okay. Finally, Crocs got smart with business strategy under CEO Andrew Reeves. They refocused on their core clog, streamlined operations, and boosted digital sales, which now account for a big chunk of revenue. So Focus is a big piece of it as well. by the way how much it's a six billion dollar company how much revenue do you think the jordan brand did in 2024 10 billion close 7 billion ah they're bigger than crocs crocs did 4 billion in revenue in 2024 4.1 yeah but going back to the jordan brand dude the guy hasn't played basketball in forever but he's when you're when you are known as the the best of all time the greatest of all Your brand will last yes, and he did he gets five percent of brands wholesale sales you have revenue yeah 350 Yeah, he has net worth has come from Jordan shoes that hasn't come from anything else yeah from being great at basketball yes Yeah, and you could say like oh, you know he made money from his NBA Wizards right but the Wizards were poorly run under his own you need the Bobcats Is it Bobcats now?

19:25So he played for the Wizards, he had a minority stake in the Wizards, and then he had a bigger stake, I think, in the Bobcats. Which now are back, they're back to the Hornets again. Is it, is it the, what did he sell? Charlotte Hornets. Yeah, he sold majority stake in the Hornets. Oh, you're right, he played for the Wizards. But either way, the Hornets were poorly run team-y as well. Yep. And I don't know why, but he still made money on it just because all teams went up in value. But where he really made his money is the shoes. Dude, okay, we can move on from this, but this is, okay, this all wraps together.

20:01How does this tie in with marketing, guys? Well, okay, one, we're talking about branding right now, but his stake in the Hornets, so he bought, this is a lesson in business for everyone. So he bought the team in 2010 for 275 million. He acquired 65 % of the franchise's equity. And I know for a fact, I read stories about him getting involved, because he's a really competitive player. I think there's a video of him slapping one of the players, too, he's just gonna take it anymore, right? Because he's so competitive. I think sometimes he just wanted to lace up. And I think in one of the practices, he got in and he just started kicking everyone's ass in terms of playing.

20:32But in 2023, Jordan finalized the sale of his majority stake to Plotkin and Rick Schnall for about$3 billion. Post-sale, he kept a minority stake. So he still made money on that, too. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, but my point is, a lot of these guys, Shaq, for example, I think he owned a ton of five guys. And he owned like he owns like um, what else he owns a chicken company my chicken company What owns a lot of rust? He's always the general insurance So the point is if you're competitive you're gonna find a way to to do things in the world and usually that leads to business Big chicken Papa John's Auntie Anne's and Krispy Kreme and he got smart because he learned that you need to take equity and come so if you have a brand And you somehow maybe you have to keep promoting though.

21:16You can't just promote it one time and that's it So anyway, we took a little detour there. Yeah. For Papa John's, dude, this is funny branding. His restaurants in Atlanta, he was promoted the Chacaroni Pizza. I love that dude. He's so funny. He's on TNT, so he knows he needs to stay relevant. So him and Charles Barkley, they're always fighting each other on TNT. But it's good because like it's like Tom Brady being on TV. So they're still they still need to stay relevant and it helps with their business ventures, too. Well, O 'Neill previously owned 155 Five Guys hamburger restaurants, which was roughly 10 % of the total company.

21:52And then he divested, right? Yeah. So anyway, that's where we're going to end it today. Thank you all for listening. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.