In the Are.na Trying Things With Charles Broskoski

Charles Broskoski
Things in the open is like scary but like tends to be rewarding yeah that was what it was in response to the sort of like like we want we would love for a social network to be like more like Gith and less like…
Speaker 2
Well, if I think about it, that was probably around the time BuzzFeed was just coming up. There was this big clickbait debate that was raging. So it was like, okay, the stuff that on the social network seems to be getting rewarded is the lowest common denominator. Yeah, totally.
Charles Broskoski
But I think, I mean, I wouldn’t say we were completely wrong about that, but I think we stopped saying that phrase because it’s not really that much of a problem now. I think more the issue is like with all the stuff around, with all the content in the world, like how do you develop a relationship to the things that you think are important? You know what I mean? How do you do that in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re, you’re like turning your interests into some kind of commodity or something to like use as competition? Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that one, that’s like a trickier message. You know what I mean? Because what, like how people read that can be different depending on where you are. You know what I mean?

Charles Broskoski
But I think, I mean, I wouldn’t say we were completely wrong about that, but I think we stopped saying that phrase because it’s not really that much of a problem now. I think more the issue is like with all the stuff around, with all the content in the world, like how do you develop a relationship to the things that you think are important? You know what I mean? How do you do that in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re, you’re like turning your interests into some kind of commodity or something to like use as competition? Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that one, that’s like a trickier message. You know what I mean? Because what, like how people read that can be different depending on where you are. You know what I mean? Like you can be into it, but you can always be more into it. And like, you can do that in a way where you might not expect, you shouldn’t respect, you shouldn’t expect a reward out of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, like, how do you have like, a relationship with something you’re interested that is more like love and less like a business or something? So that’s, I mean, that’s like kind of a modification on our early position. But it’s very, it’s like highly specific to us.

Charles Broskoski
Interesting because the growth stays pretty steady within a window. But anecdotally, I feel like I do hear that more like people like it I mean we’ve been doing it for 13 years I’m really used to people not knowing anything at all and now when I mention it Like more often than not people know what it is and it’s starting to not be surprising you know what I mean which is surprising itself okay so say more about that.
Speaker 2
Why is it, why has it become not surprising? What was surprising that is now not?
Charles Broskoski
It’s surprising, it was surprising for a long time because it, I mean, it still is relatively small. It’s under a million people, accounts. Okay, paid and unpaid. Everything yeah yeah um I mean paid Jesus yeah come on different we’d be upsetting your ranch yeah exactly surprising I mean it was just surprising because it stayed small for a long Time and it’s grown very slowly yeah so like usually if I meet someone and or prior to like recent if I met someone who knew of Arena, we were like meeting at an Arena event or something. And now it happens a little bit more in the wild. And, yeah, it’s surprising because it’s just, you know, it’s like our baby’s growing up. I was like trying to make a career as an artist beforehand. So was almost every one of the people who I started it with.
Speaker 2
Usually the other way around. People fail as entrepreneurs and they go be, well, VCs first. And then they go be artists of state.
Charles Broskoski
It’s funny because I said this a really long time ago to, it must have been a VC, that I thought it was easier for artists to learn how to be business people than it was for business people To learn how to be artists. Okay. And he was like, no, I don’t think so. But now I’m like, you wouldn’t say the same thing today. You wouldn’t?

Charles Broskoski
Like recent if I met someone who knew of Arena, we were like meeting at an Arena event or something. And now it happens a little bit more in the wild. And, yeah, it’s surprising because it’s just, you know, it’s like our baby’s growing up. I was like trying to make a career as an artist beforehand. So was almost every one of the people who I started it with.
Speaker 2
Usually the other way around. People fail as entrepreneurs and they go be, well, VCs first. And then they go be artists of state.
Charles Broskoski
It’s funny because I said this a really long time ago to, it must have been a VC, that I thought it was easier for artists to learn how to be business people than it was for business people To learn how to be artists. Okay. And he was like, no, I don’t think so. But now I’m like, you wouldn’t say the same thing today. You wouldn’t?
Speaker 2
No. How has it been for an artist to try to be a business person? Cool. Great.
Charles Broskoski
Really? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I’m a big, like, when I talk to students who are in, like, art creative programs, I always recommend starting a business. Oh, interesting. Why? It’s a couple of reasons. One is I would like to see more diverse businesses out in the world.

Charles Broskoski
You know, you like you want to see like arena is one type of social network. I think there could be hundreds, you know like agreeing representing all different types of people yep um not that people have to be siloed but like everyone has the idea of how they want To interact in the world and our idea is something that’s a little bit more introverted like I don’t think that that’s the ideal for everyone you know what I mean so why don’t you think There are more it’s really hard you know but it’s you make it look easy I mean we’ve been doing it for no come on you are no that is 100% 13 years in? We are struggling in public for 13 years. I don’t want to diminish what you’ve done. I mean, I’m not saying, hopefully you know I’m just teasing. No, no, I know you’re teasing. Okay, good. Yeah, no, I’d also, yeah, I agree with the tease. I would tease myself for that. Like, if you want to do something that is creative, I think, like, yeah, starting a business is, like, you will have more creative problems to solve yeah anything else to someone who’s
Speaker 2
Creative or views themselves as a creative or an artist they don’t they think business is like a very mysterious box that they aren’t equipped to open yeah to even start to look at it so Wildly overwhelming to them I want to hear the pitch and maybe we can deconstruct it because hopefully…

Speaker 2
It feels to me like there’s a real moment right now, especially post-Zerp, where people are like, money’s harder to get. Businesses are harder to start. Tech feels different. It’s now moving to this very, like they’re trying to remove humans from the loop altogether. And yet it’s that humanity that moves so many people. And so I think people are struggling with that. It’s part of my theory as well, pet theories.
Charles Broskoski
Yeah. Do you think it’s harder to start a business now?
Speaker 2
No, I think it’s easier than ever to start a business.

Speaker 2
Easier than ever to start a business.
Charles Broskoski
Yes, I agree with that. I think it’s harder to start a business if you are required to have an influx of money when you start.
Speaker 2
Well, I would say that I think probably the friction isn’t the tooling to start a business. Certainly, you can go on Stripe Atlas and set up an LLC. You can set up c-corps like it like it all of that mystery is gone i think one funding has become such a gating factor for this generation at least ideas worth pursuing are ideas that are Fundable yeah yeah and so i think that’s this like i think for a lot of them it’s just like very real gating factor of to start a business and not look like it’s a side product. There’s some desire to have it look very real very early. And so getting funding validates it. And then I think there’s a lot of people who, if it’s not an obviously huge market to go after which is again factors into any kind of funding discussions like it’s not worth their time Yeah to pursue it how do we lower the stakes because it feels like yeah the stakes for starting a business if you’re young and ambitious are incredibly high totally one hard thing to communicate
Charles Broskoski
Is like exactly what you’re saying that you can’t have the entire vision for what is going to become like straight out of the gate because it will never work like that i mean maybe it will For some people but like it tends to be easier if you can just say i’m going to start a side project like we’re gonna do this thing very very

Speaker 2
Also a noun. I think there are a lot of people who want to be cool. Yeah. And I think I see it in entrepreneurship. It shows up in entrepreneurship a lot. Like they want to work on a cool project. They want to work on something that would be perceived as cool or would make them look cool. And those never work. Why do you think that is? And I think this is what is getting closer to that question that that per or that statement someone made about me which is like tech isn’t cool yeah yeah tech doesn’t reward cool it’s not Interested in cool yeah and yet there’s all these wide-eyed founders who are young and and want to do cool things on the internet and yet yeah that doesn’t get rewarded for some reason
Charles Broskoski
Yeah for me my theory is that it tends to be like when you say

Speaker 2
And those never work. Why do you think that is? And I think this is what is getting closer to that question that that per or that statement someone made about me which is like tech isn’t cool yeah yeah tech doesn’t reward cool it’s not Interested in cool yeah and yet there’s all these wide-eyed founders who are young and and want to do cool things on the internet and yet yeah that doesn’t get rewarded for some reason
Charles Broskoski
Yeah for me my theory is that it tends to be like when you say when one thinks like i want to work on something cool you think about how that thing will reflect back on you you know what i mean Like what what it will do for you like how you will appear to be as a person and to me i think the coolest thing the coolest way to be is to just be into whatever the thing is that you’re into You know what i mean like i

Charles Broskoski
Some reason yeah for me my theory is that it tends to be like when you say when one thinks like i want to work on something cool you think about how that thing will reflect back on you you know What i mean like what what it will do for you like how you will appear to be as a person and to me i think the coolest thing the coolest way to be is to just be into whatever the thing is that you’re Into you know what i mean like i do like understanding what draws you to a to a subject an, business, whatever, and like being able to build that relationship, you know, to be able to make That tie, that pull stronger.

Charles Broskoski
No i would i definitely thought that for a long time and i mean the first time that we that i emailed with you was like i mean we were kind of we were trying to raise money yeah and we were unsuccessful And like actually doing like crowd funding or something we did a crowdfunding round yeah yeah um but like to this day i mean the more time that goes on the more i’m like thank god i was really Bad at that because like we would have i i truly think that we would have like it would have been done why do you say that the thing that was really tricky for me during that time period and That was also the time period when like people were raising money from like nothing you know so I would hear all these stories of like um you know this like random person just like had an Idea and got like five million dollars for it um and it i was one of those people who felt like this is how you do it you know what i mean like this is how you have to of course this is how you have To like like there’s what did that come from just you’re not trained as an entrepreneur no i mean but you just it’s in the sort of like it’s in the water yeah and there are and there and there Weren’t a lot of examples I mean or if there were they felt like real exceptions not like something you could count on when I was you know trying to talk to people I could tell that there Was a disconnect between what I saw as like the future of arena and what like they’re looking to hear. You know what I mean? Where was the disconnect? I mean, the disconnect is in like how fast it’s going to grow and how big it’s going to grow. Right. And like I have always known that it has to grow at a certain pace or else it will just be bad. Especially the type of like the type of structure that it is. Like if it if it doesn’t grow the right way, it will just suck. And then it will cease to have any value. So having these conversations where I’m like, okay, well, what’s the version where Arena is like a billion dollar company in 10 years? And describing that version is like… Did you try? I tried but i’m like i’m sure one could tell that my heart was not in that you know what i mean like right i’m just it’s just so paint that what was that pitch what would be the most bombastic Pitch you could give for arena well it’s bad also which is the i mean it’s

Charles Broskoski
What would be the most bombastic pitch you could give for arena well it’s bad also which is the i mean it’s like it’s like evil so i don’t even want to say i want to see evil charles come out No i don’t want to say it because I don’t want someone to have the idea I mean I’m sure other I mean it’s basically like like the the thing that sort of like Pinterest is trying to turn into Like Pinterest in my opinion is such a missed opportunity like conceptually because they describe everything as ideas but it is truly a shopping platform yeah so all of these people Who like understand the concept of Pinterest and what you’re supposed to be doing like it ends up being like funneled into a shopping tool which is such a bummer because then you tend To think about there’s a psychology to that too where you’re thinking about ideas in terms of commerce and you think about these things in terms of resources and

Charles Broskoski
But it’s 13 years in, like we have a deep relationship with these people. We have a deep relationship to the problem and the thing that we’re doing. Like it’s, it’s going to be different. The thing that bums me out about it is like some competitors I know are, you can see what they’re angling towards, the exit that they’re angling towards. And it bums me out because I’m like okay this is going to be another case where someone joins a service they feel some kind of connection to it and then they’re going to be really let down And like those stories keep happening and make people not want to you know what I mean you’re just, I’ll just keep it all on my computer. Like, I won’t, I won’t engage in this stuff anymore. If like, this is what’s going to happen. Because you have this, it just happens constantly.
Speaker 2
Sometimes being long-term thinking makes you long for the old days versus thinking about the future meaning oftentimes what I hear when someone says long-term thinking like we’re Not going to change we’re gonna like you know we’re just in this for the long haul you know you you grew up skateboarding I grew up skateboarding like skateboarders are literally the Worst when it comes to this yeah rules yeah yeah yeah

Charles Broskoski
You know what I mean? Like in, in describing these things as a relationship or describing it like love is like, there’s a reason for that because there’s no making that efficient. You know what I mean? Or like efficiency is not like the, like the goal or it’s not an aspect that like really makes sense in that paradigm. The paradigm is like, how do you make the relationship stronger? You know what I mean? Not like, how do you do it as fast as possible? So yeah, I tend to think like, like, and that’s not to say that there’s like no AI ever, but I think the way that this sort of like very dumb ways that people apply it to existing businesses Where it’s just like this like shitty layer on top of things are other phrase that we have been saying forever, which is fucking algorithm. That’s kind of where it comes from which is like you know it’s it’s not necessarily I mean whatever it’s a shorthand for like personalized recommendations you know people tend to think Of like all like algorithm as encompassing like only personalized recommendations but that’s what we mean by it yes you know which is like that is also a sort of like evil from these platforms That are collectively. Do you think it’s innately evil?
Speaker 2
Like, I mean, you know, when that first thought came to my

Charles Broskoski
One of the reasons, one of the many reasons why we would never do like algorithmic recommendations for people is that we respect a person’s idiosyncrasies too much to ever think that We could guess what they might want next. You know what I mean? Like the reason why you might have liked that Airbnb is something completely different oh I was traveling with my kids yeah my wife yeah and I think it’s the same way with everything you Know it’s like people are weird and