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Explore the evolving world of design with Cameron Craig and Keith as they tackle the challenges of complex, monolithic products and the critical role of human-centered design. Each episode dives into topics like organizational change, the future of design in tech, and the emerging influence of agents on user experience. Perfect for designers, strategists, and leaders, this podcast offers insights on adaptability, communication, and the strategic thinking needed to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Cameron Craig (00:00.128)
And we're in. Yo Keith.
Keith (00:01.729)
Awesome. Garen, how's it going buddy?
Cameron Craig (00:04.91)
Hey, a few things. I have my University of San Francisco sweatshirt on today, which is the place where I learned to be a systems thinker. And, and I have the matching Peaky Blinders hat on. One, I don't know if it's for Boston, if it's for doing damage, it's something. It's got a vibe to it.
Keith (00:11.908)
Nice.
Keith (00:15.662)
Okay.
Keith (00:27.963)
It makes me think of was that guy rich me that the gentleman but they're in like the UK and Yeah, that's what makes you think of the gentleman. It's like I saw something happen in your coach. You're like you're like coach right now
Cameron Craig (00:35.404)
Yep.
Cameron Craig (00:39.084)
Yup. Yup. Yup. I don't often wear the Peaky Blinders hat and oftentimes I wear it backwards all Samuel L. Jackson style, but this one's got the, the, you know, yeah, it's full mass hole.
Keith (00:47.555)
Yeah, yeah, sweet.
Okay, it's like there's definitely some like scotch or Irish clan going on with that pattern there.
Cameron Craig (01:00.504)
For sure, for sure. But you know, it's partially also, you know, to pay a little bit of homage to you and, you know, your Massachusetts roots.
Keith (01:06.565)
channeling your inner mass hole, Massachusetts asshole. Yeah. People who don't know, they call people from Massachusetts massholes because they drive like crazy assholes and they're like literally right on the end of your car at all times and I know, it's an acquired taste.
Cameron Craig (01:24.782)
I mean, when I lived there for a year, never had I been so frightened of driving in my entire life. And I think the capstone of it was the day that I looked over at the dude in the giant Buick next to me. And he had like, I kid you not, he had the globe, like the two sheets of the globe fully open, resting on the steering wheel. And he was driving with his legs and reading on the freeway.
Keith (01:45.339)
my god.
Keith (01:51.429)
Dude, pre-cell phone. Road rage is a whole nother thing, because there's a lot of Irish roots in Boston. And Irish temper is, it gets a little spicy sometimes. So what are you going to do?
Cameron Craig (02:05.25)
Yeah, yeah, all I can think about is like, what's your name?
Keith (02:09.402)
my god. Yeah, you can't yell at people that people go crazy. Like, we'll get shot. I mean, it's I'm kind now I feel like it's just kind like par for the course in New York, but it was. Yeah, it was an issue even in the South Shore and the North Shore of Boston. So wasn't just the city to but
Cameron Craig (02:11.052)
Tony! What's your name? Zekiel! Anyway.
Cameron Craig (02:32.056)
Yeah, you're right, it gets spicy there. Anyway.
Keith (02:35.448)
Yeah. So it is November 9th. Today, Mercury is officially retrograde. And this is a huge trope amongst astrologers, but basically Mercury rules communication, technology, how you read, write, speak data. And when it goes retrograde, it's a time of like reevaluating, redoing, but basically it's, it's based on our perspective of, seems like it's going backwards because of the kind of like, it's like an optical illusion basically from the placements of like the plants and relative to the earth and the sun. But.
The tech does get whacked and like today, you know, case in point, like I got on the train to go to the gym. It skipped the train stop. I'm supposed to go. I tried logging into this thing. It's like your mic is blocked. Your video's blocked. We've been having tech issues for a while because of just grumblings or whatever, but this is like, I'm like, okay, roll the dice, see what happens. So we'll see. But real quick, this is an interesting, this is the last,
Retrograde maybe to where you're honest is back in Taurus. So what started in 2018 in terms of what you love what you value value systems That's when crypto took off like crazy Once it goes back into Gemini in April like that's when I started they see I think we start seeing a shift with the economy What's really going on with the dollar? I mean the debts getting Exponentially bigger they have to cut entitlements and things. So again, not like a
Cameron Craig (03:39.031)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Keith (03:57.263)
precise prediction, but these are the kind of tides and the weather patterns that I'm seeing moving forward. think you could, know, that's what I think is going on. So how's your tech going cam?
Cameron Craig (04:07.278)
I mean, I'm.
I'm feeling it in a similar way. I, which is hilarious. Like East coast, West coast, right? You're on the train, train skips the station. I'm trying to service my car. It's not a big deal, right?
Keith (04:23.212)
Mercury's transit to so mercury rules cars and trains too. So there you go
Cameron Craig (04:26.624)
Great. So I own one of the most common cars you can own, right? The 2017 Audi Q5 with a three liter engine. I mean, they've made this engine since the 90s, right? Like this is not uncommon tech. And I roll up to the standard Jiffy Lube, which, you know, my expectation is they're probably servicing some Audis, right? Like it's nothing, it's not like I'm showing up there and I'm like,
Keith (04:36.772)
Okay.
Cameron Craig (04:55.212)
Hey, I this super arcane Fiat from the 70s. You guys got an oil filter and like this really highly special oil with, know. So anyway, I roll up.
Keith (05:06.03)
could see an Audi guy trying to save money and go to Jiffy Lube rather than going to the dealership. So that totally tracks.
Cameron Craig (05:11.286)
I mean, dude, I care. I give zero shits about this car. Like it's got over 100,000 miles on it. It smells like dog. It's got it. It probably still has some, some, you know, old decaying goldfish from when my son was a kid and didn't care and threw them around. I mean, we've owned this car like since he was like five, right? Like it's not, it's not, you know, this is not a cherished prize car we're talking about. So anyway, I roll up.
Keith (05:15.354)
my god.
Keith (05:31.39)
my god.
Cameron Craig (05:42.251)
I can hear the disassembly happening beneath me and it's like, go, you know, in the waiting room, we'll come get you. We'll tell you, you know, what we think you need. It's, yep, great. Got it. So go in there, hanging out with all the Toyota owners and, you know, five minutes goes by and dude comes in and he's like, Hey, can I show you something? I'm like, sure. My car is no longer in the thing. It's like idling out in front. It's like, no, it was like, what, what are you showing me? He's like,
Keith (06:05.786)
I thought I was gonna say it was like in pieces, like disassembled in the whole shop.
Cameron Craig (06:11.63)
Oh, I'm showing you to your car. Oh, great. What's what's happening? He's like, no, nothing. Just, you know, parts like beat it, beat it essay. You know, it's like we don't have the filter. We don't have the oil. We got nothing for this thing. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, you guys are kidding me, right?
Keith (06:18.042)
like a red carpet or something.
Keith (06:25.198)
Okay.
Keith (06:36.708)
They didn't have anything, they didn't have any parts or oil or anything?
Cameron Craig (06:38.254)
Nothing. No oil. He's like, we don't have the right kind of oil. I'm like, right kind of oil. Like synthetic anything. Don't care. Yeah. Give me the 520, the, you know, 030, whatever you got. Don't care. Like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, okay. And the filter? It's like, nope, we don't have that. Haven't had that in years. What? Okay. So, you know, it was like, at this point, I'm kind of testing the guy.
Keith (06:44.302)
Take 10 W 40. Yeah
Cameron Craig (07:07.468)
Is it a can filter or is it a paper filter? And you know, I know it's a paper filter, like, it's a can and yeah, we don't have that. Like the cans are getting really hard to, you know, keep in stock. Like, like most companies have gone to the paper because there's less weight. Okay. And at this point I'm like, I just need to go.
Keith (07:07.993)
curious.
Keith (07:27.034)
Yeah, dude. So when these kind of fuck ups happen, it's the rejection is like a protection kind of thing because they're gonna put like dog food basically in your car and totally mess it up. And then you're be like, Oh, now it's a $2,000 problem later, like a month down the road when you're like driving to like, you know, the coast or something.
Cameron Craig (07:42.252)
Yeah, well.
Cameron Craig (07:46.064)
So again, from one part of, since we're trying to bring this back to two things, retrograde, that was an epic fail. And it was an epic fail because these guys are in front of computers. You can hear the click, click, click, click happening immediately when you show up, right? They're putting in the VIN or the license plate or whatever. They've got some way of figuring out the exact model that you have and everything, right? And you would think in their system,
Keith (08:10.381)
makes it look like healthcare.
Cameron Craig (08:16.557)
Like, cause they're not on their own. They're either a franchise or they're, you know, corporate owned stores. And I, I think in the area, not, not to go too far down this, but like in my area, I think they're franchised, but they still, I was like, Hey, you know, where's the nearest one that can do this? It's like, the nearest one's on this street. Like, okay, got it. Which is way too far for me to drive. Cause like, I'm trying to get this done, hit a hardware store and come back in and meet up with you.
Keith (08:23.863)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (08:47.311)
It's like, there any way that you can look and see if they have the filter in stock? And he's like, no, no, no, we can't do that. It's like, you can't do that right now or like that feature does not exist in your software? He's like, yeah, no, like I can't see what other stores have. I'm like, okay, fascinating. So.
Keith (08:49.433)
You
Cameron Craig (09:05.743)
I pushed the eject button on all this for the exact reason that you just said. was like, this is clearly not simple. This is clearly not something these guys have the either give a shit to want to do or the systems to figure it out. Like, I'm just going to go to the auto parts store, buy my own filter, get the oil and be done with it. Like that experience on the other side. Dude, dudes like right, like I never get this kind of service in an auto parts store. Dude's like right next to me, standing as I'm looking at filters. He's like, Hey, you trying to find a filter? Yeah, yeah, I am. What do you got? It's like.
Very common Q5, like 2017. He's, oh, the three liter motor? Yeah, yeah, the V6, yeah, got it. Yeah, and he's like. Yeah, the valve train sounds like shit, right? Yeah, yeah, that's the one. So, he's like, you know, I'm there with the paper catalog, Keith, right? Like I'm hearing you in the back of my head, like, hey, shit's going down this week, you know, all.
Keith (09:40.665)
Yeah, rattles a little bit right? Yeah, I used to have one. Yeah, yeah, dear.
Cameron Craig (10:02.317)
All technology not not going to necessarily be stable. Yeah. I'm like, I'm going for the paper catalog, right? I'm there and you know, got my finger and like oil filter. Yep. Got it. Now I've got the number. I'm looking on the looking on the wall. And he's like, I'm gonna go hit the computer. you know, like, can I grab a couple of the things that you got in the basket and just take them up there? Yeah. Yeah. Great. Perfect. So I grabbed
Keith (10:03.886)
But a backup, good man.
Keith (10:27.523)
Dude, awesome.
Cameron Craig (10:29.697)
find the filter, head up there, and he's like, yeah, and he's got the same filter out on the counter. I was like, where did yours come from? He's like, the back. He's like, where did yours come from? I'm like, the front. He's like, amazing. How often do you have two people, which he was being hilarious, he's like, two very smart people, two different ways of finding the thing. He's like, you went old school, I went new school, here we are. I was like, it is amazing.
Keith (10:56.153)
Perfect.
S crazy.
Cameron Craig (10:59.727)
So I got to have a very human interaction, which honestly, in all of this, I really appreciate it because oftentimes in any of these situations, it's totally like the thank you drive through. It's like, go in there and wait, and you're like, OK, I will go in there and wait. Half the time, I don't even know if they've actually changed the oil or if they're just topping it off. I don't even know if they've changed the filter. And they just hand me the bill. Here you go. And so I.
Keith (11:11.117)
Mmm.
Keith (11:20.479)
yeah. Yeah.
Markup too.
Cameron Craig (11:27.607)
I appreciated the honesty, like we can't do anything for you. was annoying in the moment, but it was a little bit like, all right, you guys have saved me from myself maybe. And then, you know, on the other end in the auto parts store, the dude was so great. was like very service oriented. Like he was going to bridge my knowledge gaps.
Keith (11:35.191)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (11:45.552)
And then he acknowledged the fact, oh dude, you went old school. I got a computer up front that solved the same problem. But look, it took me five minutes to go in the back and try and find it. You were with the paper catalog and the shelf. So it's fun.
Keith (11:58.362)
Yeah, there's many ways. Yeah, dude, a couple things came to my mind as you were telling me the story. Always have a backup, especially now. Get a paper catalog. Okay, cool. We can just double check to make sure the serial number is right or the stickers are off on the little shelf or whatever. And then I think initially you were like, screw it. I'm just going to pay to get the service done. They can do it in 10 minutes. It's just like they put it up, pop the thing. It's easy, right? But you got to... Yep, there you go.
Cameron Craig (12:21.496)
Yep.
Yep, I was paying for the convenience.
Keith (12:27.609)
And it didn't wasn't actually worth it. So it's like DIY No one knows how to DIY anything anymore So the fact that you had to do it gave you the backup to kind of like make it happen and it worked out even better so Yeah
Cameron Craig (12:33.581)
No, for sure.
Cameron Craig (12:39.263)
So can I share an interim step with you? Because again, part of it was like, I'm pretty sure I'm right about the paper versus the can, right? Like, I'm pretty sure. And I was driving. So, you know, at the next point of stopping off, which was a little side road before hitting the auto parts store, like I better make sure I know what I'm talking about before I go in here. So, you know, like we talked about last week, got the phone, knowledge in my hand.
Keith (12:49.186)
Okay.
Cameron Craig (13:09.059)
Like give me the Q5. Yep. Give me the Q5, three O T, you know, oil filter. Give me a picture. And so, you know, of course like Google AI is like, here are all your options. Here's your shopping option. So like what comes up, you know, the first thing that comes up eBay, like go buy your filter on eBay. was like, might be a totally reasonable option if I could get like five of them, you know, I probably am.
Keith (13:09.497)
Chachie PT whatever yeah
Keith (13:29.975)
haha
Keith (13:37.859)
Did you look at the cost from auto parts or whatever relative to eBay, how much it cost?
Cameron Craig (13:44.142)
I think it ends up being about the same, right? Like you're gonna pay tax in either situation. The filters themselves were a little bit less money. And if you bought them in a bulk of five, either on eBay and ultimately like down the page was Amazon, both roughly the same price between the two, but the price was less than brick and mortar retail, but you're paying shipping in either instance. So like, I think you combine those things and you're probably right back to the same price point.
Keith (13:59.469)
Sure.
Keith (14:09.495)
Yeah.
Keith (14:12.824)
So then it's like, how fast do you need it? Yeah.
Cameron Craig (14:13.815)
It's all a commodity. It's yeah, it's all a commodity at this point, right? So.
Keith (14:18.722)
But it would be cool if the, not Jiffy Lube, I even they could probably do it too, but if it's a franchise and you own the thing and you have some leeway on where you can source your parts, there's a main channel you can go through, kind of like if you have like a Burger King, you use their meat, their product or whatever, because it's a car, if you can find the parts on eBay, but also I think it's probably other dealers, or it's a guy who's just has a huge warehouse.
without it's like the ghost kitchen, but it's a ghost auto parts store effectively. You know what I mean? It's like a faceless store. You can get better deal that way. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (14:54.477)
Yeah, that exists. That exists. mean, that's how like small independent shops and even some body shops and even some dealers get their parts intraday, right? Like these guys have solved.
Keith (15:06.381)
Yeah.
Keith (15:10.861)
Back up.
Cameron Craig (15:11.245)
I guess last mile really, right? Like I live in a large metro area, as you know, you do too. There's probably one of these in each of our areas where it's 45 minutes away from most things and they can get something on a truck out to the South Bay where I live, like intraday. So like I've taken my Q5 to an independent repair shop and you know, the dude's like, yeah, dude, don't even.
I'm like, do you want me to go grab like X, Y, and Z? Cause I know sometimes those things are hard to find. He's like, no, dude, don't even worry about it. Like, I can get that here within the day. He's like, I'm sitting in front of the computer right now. I'm on their site. Like no, no issues. Like, all right, cool. You know.
Keith (15:50.553)
The irony of Macy's couldn't see into stock in other stores. was still, I mean, when you get down to a certain amount, it's hard because it's like, there's two left. It could be in a fitting room. It's like, there's, kind of like an in-between state, but not being able to kind of have like, like you're going to have it or not. You know, it's like, I don't know, something like that can oil change. Like that's so common to get done. It's kind of like a millennial going to buy a drill at Ikea.
Or they're just like, fuck it, I'm gonna pay TaskRabbit, because like, they don't have a drill. It's like, every guy should have a drill, by the way, like a real drill, like a Makita or something, not like a fucking, a kid drill. But
Cameron Craig (16:23.354)
Mm.
Yeah, don't get the IKEA drill and don't get the black and dagger.
Keith (16:29.864)
No, it won't last. But B &H actually did this too, because they had some things that they couldn't fulfill until the late afternoon, and some things they could fulfill in like 20 minutes. And it's the same deal where they had like a huge warehouse, you know, up in the Navy Yard over here. And yeah, just get it and then it takes a little bit longer, but you still basically get it same day. So
Cameron Craig (16:50.51)
Yeah, yeah, it's very cool.
Keith (16:53.144)
Yeah, eBay is an interesting case. I mean, it's kind of if you think about like e commerce now, it's kind of like hasn't really changed. And it's like, I don't know, they seem like one of the big companies that are ripe for disruption nowadays.
Cameron Craig (16:56.152)
Yep, it is.
Cameron Craig (17:10.212)
I mean, it's my go-to for a lot of things, right? Like if, you know, if you're listening to our podcast without the video, you can't see any of this, but Keith can see it. Like everything on the wall behind me, in fact, everything on every wall in my office has come from eBay. I'm no stranger to the car parts thing either on eBay. I'm actually no stranger to buying cars or other things, mechanical. I'm no stranger to eBay, but you're right. Like, dude, talk about something that has not.
changed when they've tried to change instead of like doing something that's unique to them or something that could make them peerless in their particular marketplace of marketplaces. They tried to copy Amazon to disastrous results. Like, why would you do that? It's like you're going after the people that have the financial capital and the wherewithal to like outweigh you on a number of things. Like they've got a million people working on IP. Like, why would you do that? Like
Keith (17:41.793)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (18:09.424)
It's not a strategy.
Keith (18:09.46)
I no. mean, but they don't really think about the viability of the business. I the thing about Amazon too is you guys were vertically integrating the supply chain because it became a choke point and they were just like, screw it, we'll just buy our own planes and do our own logistics. And if you want to make a marketplace just because you can, like Macy's tried to do, and they started doing it, it's like the problems compound when the data's messed up and you can't find things.
All the issues you have with infrastructure get exponentially worse by orders of magnitude when you don't have the right foundations in place because it's just You can't support it. It's like if you're going to something that's completely You know seamless at that sense, you know, it's not there's no physical store presence. It's everything has you have to have the The vertical integration out back through modular components to make it like predictable and they just didn't
Cameron Craig (19:07.92)
Well, let's maybe slow this down because I think you're on to something, right? Like we're talking about a legacy, a now legacy, like Amazon and .com darling 20 years ago, truly innovative model, something that really took Web 0.5 and moved it to Web 1.0.
Keith (19:18.826)
a dot com darling 20 years ago.
Cameron Craig (19:34.135)
Survived web one dot o and actually kind of started to be like web two dot o, right? and I think there's some fundamentals there that all of these companies and and and And while I'd like to focus on the square box that is eBay and maybe maybe that is our anchor for for Part of what we're talking about like it's no different than Macy's and it's no different for Amazon, right? there are these these fundamental core pieces and
Like you and I were talking a little bit about this over the week about what some of those things are, right? Like you've got an audience, you've got user data, you've got in the case of eBay very much so user generated content, right? Like not just the ads, there's community content that they have. There is now video streamed content in the form of something that is eBay live, which
Keith (20:09.462)
Yep.
Cameron Craig (20:29.836)
I've never paid attention to. I've seen it in their filters.
Keith (20:33.303)
I didn't even know they had anything like that. Like QVC for eBay kind of deal.
Cameron Craig (20:38.18)
It kind of looks like the way you would imagine. I mean, it looks like everybody's. I don't want to say sci fi, but everybody's Hollywood version of a live event where there are there's an audience listening to somebody like you and I and down in the corner, there's like.
Keith (20:57.717)
We have a hundred of these steak knives. You want these steak knives. They're amazing. We can cut through tires. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (21:00.516)
And there's like hearts floating up and like, you know, like happy faces and like there's streamed comments like, you know, Keith and Kim, they're so fricking smart. I'd buy that Peaky Blinders hat off Kim's sweaty head. You know, and I'm like, who's this for? Right. But I mean, we can come back to that, I guess. It's like, but but looking at these things, right, like you got a network of things that are going on. You've got a product catalog. You've got.
Keith (21:21.633)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (21:30.018)
you know, a community that is bringing product in, right, which is honestly something that Amazon probably tried to copy from eBay and other marketplaces, right? It's like we don't necessarily need to own the product curation, the product merchandising, and in some ways where we can efficiently do. Yeah.
Keith (21:54.049)
They're the 3PL.
Cameron Craig (21:56.091)
where we can do all of the delivery and the last mile or the middle mile, like, because we're a big giant system and we need to put things on planes and on trucks, like, and in warehouses, we will offer that as a service to sellers, but owned inventory, like, we don't necessarily need to own inventory. And I think, you know, that's probably in the early days with eBay, one of the things that...
kept them afloat from the dot com bust, right? Like they didn't have inventory sitting in warehouses that they owned. And they actually in those, at that time, you know, I think the best that they were doing was they would ship you a stack of eBay branded boxes and eBay branded tape, and they would allow you to, you know, put things in a eBay branded box.
Keith (22:27.37)
No.
Keith (22:37.589)
Hmm.
Cameron Craig (22:44.302)
and send it off. And I think for a little while they were actually doing something which we tried to do, think at Macy's as well, which is, you know, when we were trying to do the marketplace, like, could we take care of figuring out what the cost of shipping is? Could we work with somebody like FedEx or UPS to cut these sellers of ours a deal? I believe eBay did that. I don't know if they're still doing that, but.
You know, early on, you can see where that was an advantage, right? Like they're not taking on all of this overhead that all these other companies like Macy's were taking on because everything that we had to sell, we had curated, merchandised and ultimately put into a warehouse. We'd cataloged it. We had, you know, oriented it for sale, promotion, etc. All of those things where eBay. Sits around and it doesn't sell.
Keith (23:11.628)
Totally.
Keith (23:37.483)
Doesn't matter. It's not on your balance sheet. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (23:38.674)
Doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, there's only the cost of the bits to your points earlier in our podcast that eBay is responsible for. They got to store the images. They got to store the description. And they have to wait for the sale to happen for them to be like, Keith, I'm taking the 250 from you and the 250 from Cam for the exchange of the product between the two of you.
Keith (23:50.496)
nothing.
Keith (24:03.042)
Well, that was a big UX innovation was the auction interaction design and the building of reputation and trust on it. Because that was like just after people started becoming comfortable putting their credit cards on the Internet. like, well, if I can put my credit card on the Internet and not get hacked, what else can I do? And that was like the next thing. And I think, you know, eventually the buy it now became the innovation for eBay because it was like, screw it. I didn't want to deal with the auction. I'm just like 100 bucks for this thing. I'll just
get it, know, whatever sweatshirt, know, memorabilia, whatever. you know, now I think as a legacy, like the returns part could potentially be an issue, but I think they're like doing like protected returns or whatever. But you know, at some point it's like, it's another e-commerce store. So it's another, you find other small communities around like computer parts or you're buying, buying server. I'm looking at how can I, you know, can I build a cheap Xeon box with cheap Ram or whatever to build a NAS right now? And I'm watching videos on YouTube and it's like,
Can those guys all do like partnerships or work together to build a sub community? Because as soon as one guy in YouTube talks about, hey, buy this motherboard, the cost doubles at the same day because the dudes on eBay figure it out. And then everyone's like, pissed off who were like his followers on YouTube at that point. So it's like you have all these different patterns kind of collapsing right now. And it's like what I haven't looked at the financials.
eBay so I don't know what the revenue is or kind of like what we're putting all their kind of like capex or their opex or whatever right now, but I mean It feels like craigslist when you still use it not in a good way. It you know what mean? It's like You're like this is this just feels like old like can I trust you now? Because you guys even like changing and getting with it's like going into like filings basement It's like they're not even around anymore. They're reminiscent of like your mom dragging you, you know
Cameron Craig (25:38.705)
So there's...
Yeah, yeah.
Cameron Craig (25:55.152)
Yeah.
Well, mean, so a few things.
eBay has made the determination that they should not compete with Amazon. They did that a few years ago. They reduced a lot of those programs. They think they sunset a bunch of the programs that they had that were in that space. It's not to say that you can't, as a seller, bring a massive catalog online to eBay. I think you can still do that. But in terms of trying to go one-to-one with Amazon and, you know,
do refills of soap and things like that. I mean, like all the things that they were trying to do in a marketplace, you know, if they're doing it, they've de-emphasized it. And in some ways it feels like what they've done is they've gone back or they're trying to go back to their roots, right? It's a community and they're trying to build things into it that feel like community. At least this is one man's observation who's on their platform almost daily. And
You know, I looked at their stock a few weeks ago and I would say they've been rewarded for that, right? Over the last call 18 months, maybe 20, 24 months. You know, the stock price has gone up. They've they're beaten the S &P, right? Like I can't remember how much it's gone up, but it's you know, it's a healthy percentage. I mean, I could probably go look. But.
Cameron Craig (27:30.712)
From a systems thinking model, it feels like a couple of things are going on, right? And if we think about the steps in systems thinking, right? You got events, you got patterns and trends, you have an underlying structure, which is oftentimes the core foundation of like what your business is. And beneath that, you have the mental model. Like, what does all of this mean? What are the beliefs? What are we like trying to do? What are we trying to do? And what are the people that work with us in our network?
trying to do, right? Like the network model matter matters in this, especially when you're talking about consumers and you you got kind of against each one of those things, you have the action that's going on, right? So events, what happened and how do we react, right? With this like, God. And again,
Keith (28:21.28)
Like when things get so like transactions basically. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (28:26.605)
Amazon continues to eat our lunch despite the fact that we're like pouring money into this. Right. So reaction. We're going to stop doing this. It's like, what are the patterns and trends that we're seeing? Well, you know, the old school thing that we've always done and the community that we have has always worked. Right. It's like they're anticipating certain things changing or shifting back towards that. Right. There's a nostalgia there that I think they're they're probably trying to capitalize on and
You know, the combination of the reaction like Amazon's still eating our lunch and trying to anticipate what they think from their past they can do and capitalize on a trend, which is the nostalgia. You know, it feels like they've moved themselves back into that space. Like we're about auctions and live events and things like that. But it's about, you know, these basic pieces. It's it's a community that does user generated content. And it's a very big catalog that, you know,
They're the first mover, right? Like they were the first true marketplace, the first real like online auction space. I guess weren't you go, go,
Keith (29:36.786)
It doesn't-
It just doesn't, it's like a bunch of disparate components bolted together without any cohesive unified vision. Like if I just want to message somebody like dude, it's painful. Like chat apps and chat. Well that not even just the, the, the speed, but it's just, it looks like it's a shitty wire frame from like 15 years ago. It's like, it doesn't have to be designed super nice, but it's like everyone uses email. You know, why can't you, you know, having to try and own.
Cameron Craig (29:54.179)
It's slow.
Keith (30:09.525)
that piece it's just I think that they're holding on to certain parts of it and then if you're going to own it you what are you really doing with it like they're not you know like if I look at all these computers and it's like how do I know if this is a good buy or not right if I'm looking at a dual zion like can these chips be upgraded is this worth it is a good deal relative like you know a newer version came out guess what you can buy the last one at 50 off and it's still good because the new one's only like a 15 performance increase and it's like pulling in
the UGC outside of eBay that also support that from people who are, you know, good influencers or whatever, like on YouTube. I mean, there's not, there's no way they're not pulling all these things together. Like it still feels very old web 2.0 mindset when it's like, at some point, this is just going to be like, you're going to find it in AI, and you're going to ask like comment or some AI browser to beg, dude, is this legit? Is this bullshit?
Do I need a paper filter or do I need a metal filter? Okay, paper, cool, because I had that one weird car with a Cadillac convertible blew up, now I need a metal filter because it's too close to the thing and whatever, you know. To know all that, like getting all that there.
Cameron Craig (31:09.453)
Yeah, dude.
I mean, I think you're nailing it, right? Like where I was going with the whole systems thinking model, at least the top two parts, right? Like you're reacting and you're anticipating and you're trying to deal with the events that are happening to you and you're looking at patterns and trends and you're trying to like anticipate and like both of those stages in the systems thinking model are very much defensive position, right?
They're like, I'm trying to hang on to this. I'm trying to defend this. I'm trying to like capitalize on the it's old mentality. It's I'm trying to capitalize on the things that I used to do. I'm trying to grab nostalgia. I'm trying to hang on to my audience. Like none of this is you're going to get buried. Like none of this is new, new thinking. Right. And like that eBay live thing, it could be really cool. Not for me, not for me. Like, right. Like as an old
Keith (31:42.76)
It's old mentality. Yeah.
Keith (31:52.736)
They're gonna get buried.
Keith (32:03.775)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (32:08.112)
Gen X guy who grew up with eBay and was like in his late 20s or mid 20s when he first started using it. Like that was cool for me. But I put that in front of my 13 year old and he's going to be like, what kind of like absolute bunk is this? Like sadly, like he has collecting habits and hobbies similar to mine, Different, totally different genre of thing, totally different product category, right? Like he's, I mean, yeah. And the back in the day, but like shoes, Keith, he's like, dude, he can get
Keith (32:31.231)
Pokemon cards.
Keith (32:36.72)
dude, yeah the kids in sneakers are crazy.
Cameron Craig (32:39.088)
Like he can go toe to toe with you in terms of like, you know, the sneaker trade. you had the, like you were, I think you were the first person I had ever met where it was like, I actually cannot identify the pair of shoes that Keith's wearing. And I had to go and like Google it and be like, what is this? And you know, of course, like, you know, you live in a major fashion center. I do not. So the fashion trends, the Supras, baby.
Keith (33:04.713)
gold super is wearing in the boardroom too as a statement. That was another story, but yeah.
Cameron Craig (33:10.854)
So so so he's a sneaker head, right? Like and and I'm like, dude, I do not want to deal with any of your dodgy sneaker websites because, know, like my credit card information, like he's like your dad, I have a bunch of cash like. And we'll get we'll get into his entrepreneurial on this at some other point, right? But like suffice it to say. He had a he had a hack going at school where he was supplying the kids with snacks and the whole.
Keith (33:25.684)
yeah yeah.
Keith (33:30.787)
I have to a note about that.
Cameron Craig (33:40.069)
trade was cash only right like as these things tend to be so so all right so back to the sneakers right he'll show up with like the pile of like five dollar bills or the pile of ones and he's like i got like i got 90 bucks dad
Keith (33:42.973)
Arbitrage. Amazing.
Keith (33:59.135)
You're you hang out with strippers? Like, where'd you get all these files from?
Cameron Craig (34:01.714)
He's like, want to flip some ones? So here we are on some dodgy sneaker site and he's like, they won't take my green light card. we got him a debit card for kids, right? That we can monitor, it's a physical card, but there's an online component and we have an access to the backend.
And he's like, they won't take my green light card. I'm like, of course they won't take your green light card because there's way too many security features with this. Like green light's going to reject this. And he's like, yeah, it keeps rejecting. I'm like, cause you're on a dodgy sneaker site. So he convinced me once to do this for him on one of these dodgy sneaker sites. And we got the sneakers and the sneakers ended up being all right, but like the entire time for like the month and it Keith fulfillment.
Keith (34:35.709)
Yeah, buying sneaker stores, yeah.
Cameron Craig (34:56.55)
took more than a month to get these shoes.
Keith (34:58.517)
Yeah, it's probably some of the teenagers on the back end doing this shit like through eBay. Like, okay, I got to find it on eBay and I got my spread. I mean,
Cameron Craig (35:04.038)
Probably, probably. the shoes ended up coming from South Korea.
Keith (35:09.48)
no way! That's cool.
Cameron Craig (35:10.416)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was like some crazy rare, you know, dunk that he wanted. Like the Fruity Pebbles dunks. And, you know, I'm like, dude, there's no way like we're ever gonna get these shoes. I'm out 140 bucks. Like, I'm also like now worried. Like, thank God I used a credit card that I know I can like.
Keith (35:17.301)
Okay.
Keith (35:20.757)
Fruity Pebbles.
Keith (35:29.779)
Yeah shoes are expensive dude, like crazy.
Cameron Craig (35:37.393)
you know, draw like metal box around like the digital Faraday cage. Like these people can't scam me. All this stuff, right? And I'm like, dude, why are we not just doing this on eBay? And I put him in front of eBay. He finds the shoes on eBay. I was in a place where like after three weeks and not hearing from, you know, this company that we ended up buying the shoes from, like, these shoes are never coming, right? And it's school time and he needs shoes that he can actually wear to school, like, you know, not
Keith (35:43.763)
Yeah. For our protection.
Cameron Craig (36:06.834)
put in a case with a remote control where the shoes get pushed out and the light turns on. Like these are actually shoes he's gonna wear. And I'm like, we're getting near to school time and I gotta get these shoes. So like I'm on eBay and I'm like, dude, they have the same shoes. And he's like, no. It's like, I'm, no. Like what, why? It's like, one, not buying anything on eBay. It's like eBay's junk. I like, I mean, dude.
Keith (36:12.543)
Eheh
Cameron Craig (36:34.574)
It's reliably delivered things from, you know, arcane auto parts to an entire car to like a $20,000 watch. Like, I trust these guys. And he's like, I'm not shopping on eBay. And he's relentless. Just like, nope. Nope. Just won't do it.
Keith (36:43.561)
other collectibles. Yeah.
Keith (36:52.371)
Really? Because it would. Did he say why he wouldn't want to do it?
Cameron Craig (36:57.262)
It's he thinks he's got a higher probability of getting junk or fakes or something from one from eBay than he does from rando sneaker site. Like, dude, they have so many guarantees and so much price protect all the goodness. Right. And he's like, I won't like do not spend my money there. Like, all right. All right.
Keith (37:07.786)
Huh.
Keith (37:19.349)
What were the, how were the prices? Were they comparable to like the Korean place? Ish? Yeah. Within a minor spread.
Cameron Craig (37:21.81)
Yeah, I mean comparable, comparable. Yeah, I think the Korean place was a little less. But at the end of the day, the point here being not to go too far down into my son's psychology or whatever, if they're trying to attract that audience, and I believe they need to, the eBay live thing ain't it. He's like.
Keith (37:35.349)
Heh.
Cameron Craig (37:45.927)
Dude, no, this is like budget TikTok. It's like truly budget TikTok. And he's like, and the people that are talking to me on this, he's like, I sat him down for like 15 minutes. I'm like, just watch a bunch of videos. And he's like, okay. And he's like, no, no, like this doesn't change your mind at all. He's like, absolutely not. He's like, everybody on there was a toll scammer. Like, okay. And I'm like, me one that's credible. And he like goes and finds some TikTok video and it was like.
Keith (37:51.977)
That's what it is.
Keith (38:07.433)
Did you show him? Was it?
Cameron Craig (38:14.78)
Right? Like I'm not seeing it, but he's like, it's TikTok dad. Like, come on. you know, one person says that these guys are scammers and it's going to spread like wildfire and like they'll never sell another shoe. And I was like, huh. All right. Now we're onto something. Now we're getting somewhere.
Keith (38:29.703)
Okay, so this is interesting. the reputation UX mechanism has shifted that the media being zero marginal cost is so fast to spread that it becomes like a a group punishment almost instantaneously versus that's interesting. So
Cameron Craig (38:46.48)
Yes, Keith.
Cameron Craig (38:50.546)
And he's like, what am I going to do? Like give these guys a thumbs down on, you know, he's like, am I like, okay, I buy something from them and I write a nasty comment on a, on a marketplace that nobody my age uses. Like, what am I going to do? Like, it's like going to say Alex 13 year old kid, you know, he's like, who cares? He's like, but you blast somebody in social media for their like ghetto, you know, kind of not savory tactics, you know? And he's like that.
Keith (39:18.879)
So, man.
Cameron Craig (39:19.666)
He's like, that just ends them. I'm like, all right. and again, I'm not 13. I don't know how much of this is truth. But this is like, again, user test of one. This, this kid's like all in. It's where the kids are.
Keith (39:35.935)
Well, that's what the kids are, right? So that's where that generations attention span is. So at some point then I wonder how long it takes until eBay gets absorbed by TikTok because not in general, but look, the point is the interface of we kept talking about all these interfaces are commodities. So these interfaces are commodities. That's effectively what was the carrier wave to get in to like use eBay.
and it doesn't have any value anymore, then at some point they're going to run on fumes because TikTok just makes their own thing based on an audience that's younger that wants different things. I mean, you're not looking at stuff as like, I don't know, I don't use TikTok that much, like, you know, it's not like a multi-product page. Well, it's just...
Cameron Craig (40:19.867)
No, I don't either. So I'm way out of my depth. No. It's more the community end of it, right? Driving it. It's like, here is taste, here is trend. And whether or not that's sustainable, that seems to be the thing. It's like, trend is developed through these taste makers. is not, I mean, ran into this at Macy's. Macy's was looking for.
influencers back then, right? It's like, we need these guys out in the community, like even the beauty box, right? Like back to that story. Like we drove, we drove sales through influencers.
Flat out, right? Macie's had one part of the equation, the influencer had the other part of the equation, you bring the two things together, like Voltron, like all of a sudden you got a giant, you know, alien killing robot.
Keith (41:01.81)
Yeah, but that's...
Keith (41:12.756)
So I think there is like, if eBay live, it needs to not be a thing that they own. It needs to be a channel that they can hit where somebody can just like make their own home studio and they can broadcast on YouTube, TikTok, eBay, all these places at the same time. And they have like a branded store. mean, again, it's like, where does the buy button go to? Does it matter? No. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (41:37.406)
Doesn't matter? Well, mean, so you're bringing, like, it's brilliant. I love that. I mean, maybe the thing that we should think about too is the opposite end of that. Like, why does, in analyzing the underlying structures and kind of trying to reform that, why does their interface matter? Like, why wouldn't you bring, like, back to,
Voltron thing, Like Macy's knew that they had they had a audience of buyers and they had a relationship with providers of merchandise, right? That these other influencing audiences value, right? You bring those things together and all of a sudden it's like the best of all worlds. Like the influencers get to tag on to products that they love and value. They get to
Keith (42:15.241)
Vendors, Sellators, yeah.
Cameron Craig (42:33.349)
do it through a legacy retailer, which they don't hate, but they don't love either. It's like they're just ambivalent to it in some way. But because it brings them a different audience, right? Like you're bringing two audiences together. Influencer owns one audience, Macy's owns one other audience. But Macy's is bringing product and the relationship with the vendors. And Influencer is bringing merchandising and their own audience, right?
And you're connecting those things. You're like, Hey, here's an easy way for you to get the things that the influencer talked about, which the influencer then doesn't have to do the, well, you know, maybe let's go and look and see where you can get this. And, you know, Macy's has the ability of also doing promotion. They're like, Hey, influencer for you and your followers, we can figure out, you know, how to get you a different gift with purchase, which I think is what we actually did with the box, or we can get you a discount on the product, right? Like.
You push this for the next week and everybody that you push to us, here's your promotion code, right? Like here's a code that you can use for just your flock to come and buy things on us cheaper. Like eBay could do that. Like I don't know why it is that, like to your point, insert the eBay buy button in a TikTok video. Like why wouldn't you do that?
The other thing that you brought up, I think is fascinating, it's like, chat GPT, like, Walmart and chat GPT. I don't know why everybody isn't looking at that and they're like, what API can I make available to all of these LLMs? Because eventually, if you're hanging on to your own interface, one, it's expensive. You gotta have people around to maintain that nonsense.
Keith (44:01.607)
Yeah.
Keith (44:30.034)
Well, it-
Cameron Craig (44:30.087)
You have to have people around to like figure out how to make the search engine work, et cetera. Like these large language bottles are going to know intent. Yeah.
Keith (44:37.756)
It comes back to like search patterns, right? Yeah, exactly. Intent. It's like, is it a known item thing? Like I need an oil filter for this car. I know it's going to cost 30 to 50 bucks, whatever it costs. Or versus like show me cool shit that's like sneakers that I haven't seen yet that are like amazing. And you're trying to do that on like eBay. It's like, it's you don't even know what the hell you're looking for. You don't you don't know. But you go on TikTok. It's just like like there you can't keep up with the trends at that point. So
Cameron Craig (45:05.519)
And maybe you shouldn't, maybe you should just be like back to the Macy's thing. Be the connection to the product. Like stop trying to be the thing. Like you can build your own. And the other thing is like this weird like approach to all of this stuff is analogs. Like we have this and so we have to do this. It's like well you can continue to do that and if it's working for you do it but like why are you not also and I like.
Keith (45:13.598)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (45:33.704)
triple underline the word also, and showing up in chat GPT and just like, if chats like figured out, it's gone all the way down to your product catalog and it's figured out the exact thing that that camera Keith wants, like back to the thing that I think we were talking about a few weeks ago, the stupid like, you know, I want a prime lens for my, what camera did you make me buy?
Keith (45:34.108)
Yes, and... yeah.
Keith (45:42.846)
Yeah.
Keith (46:00.486)
EV10 Sony EV10 there you go. Yeah
Cameron Craig (46:01.563)
The EV 10. Thank you. Yes. Like if I got a prime lens for the EV 10 and Chachi PT or Claude has found it for me and it's literally like, here it is cam and it's an eBay and it's it like Amazon and you can get it from Amazon in two days. You can get it from eBay, like buy it now. And the eBay price is 10 bucks less than the Amazon price. The shipping's the same. And I've kind of figured it out. Like even though Amazon says they can get it for you in two days, like
You kind of passed the buying window for today, so that's three. So likely either place you're going to get it in the same amount of time. Like, why the F are we not just literally like, cool, thanks, eBay, not even click. It's like you just say it, right? And like the product gets handed off to like eBay's shopping cart API and I buy it. I never touched the eBay website. Like, why is that not a thing?
Keith (46:44.08)
and give her the options because I mean I think this is going to be
Keith (46:56.371)
Oh, there's a dude 30 miles away, we can just like Uber drop it off for like another 10 bucks and you'll be there tonight. And it's like, just take care of it, dude, this is the idea of like simplicity, convenience, trust, like, I know it's gonna work. I know it's gonna happen. Trust simplicity, like, how do I need it? When do I need it? You know, and then convenience like shorten the time it takes to like, okay, maybe I'm going to a wedding, and I got to catch a flight, but I have to leave earlier because, you know,
Cameron Craig (47:00.696)
Dude, that'd be badass. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith (47:23.633)
the government's still on strike and there's no TSA people. I need it in 10 minutes. I need to go to the best buy off the street, but I'll pay the premium to have somebody gut it for me, fulfill it, drop it off as I'm taking a shower, getting ready to, know, those things can be thought through. That's what the agents are gonna be good for and the more you interact with it, the more it's gonna know what you need and how you need it.
Cameron Craig (47:44.967)
But your inputs and outputs again are the thing that you need to tie in there. And like, I feel like...
I feel like that part's missing. And again, as I keep thinking about the systems, I'm sure.
Keith (47:59.411)
100%. I bet they're like wallowing the data off too. bet I don't even know if you can maybe you can search it. I don't know if you can or not.
Cameron Craig (48:05.844)
Why? I'm gonna guess there are probably phrases around that place from their product people like, we need to own the shopping cart. It's like, okay, that that's a statement that doesn't make sense to me. Like you still own the shopping cart, like to check out the web ID. I know that everybody probably has a different name for it. like the
The number that is representative of the product in the catalog that you are buying gets passed off to your shopping cart and the fulfillment process, the output, right? The input, I don't care how a user got there. Search engine, Google, went to the eBay website, searched it on their on-site search. I don't really care. At the end of the day, like the...
Keith (48:32.904)
Yeah.
Keith (48:56.307)
It's just data, dude.
Cameron Craig (48:56.34)
The user is now in possession of the web ID and is literally like buy it now. Like why do we care? Why do we care what channel they came in through? And it feels like everybody is like, yeah, like, you know, we need them to do all of these things. Like no, you need to move product. Like forget about all of the other things. Yeah.
Keith (49:17.243)
reduce the friction yeah it's not thinking about as a way to reduce friction rather than owning
Cameron Craig (49:22.408)
Like if you wanna do the community things, go for it. It's an and. Like I'm not saying don't do it. It has a value for an audience and you own that audience, like keep doing it. But like why do you think that you own less of the audience who is using chat GPT to find the prime 50 millimeter lens and is like, I trust eBay, bye.
Keith (49:28.188)
Yeah, the-
Cameron Craig (49:45.715)
Like I don't need to look at the website. I don't need to go through all the janky interface that you talked about that looks like it's still from like 2002. I don't need any of that. I'm going to need that even less. are you on there?
Keith (49:51.507)
dude.
Keith (49:54.951)
Dude, they're eBay live.
Dude, it looks like fucking Pinterest, but with like, if you're to do a live, like go where the people are, like put it on YouTube or like TikTok or, you know, like integrate that, like don't try and compete against like you're, you're competing against like billions of infrastructure. And dude, their revenue for last year was only $10.3 billion. Like they're not huge. I mean,
Cameron Craig (50:07.57)
Yeah
Cameron Craig (50:19.134)
I know. No. But I mean, again, like if you're trying, like, I don't know, Keith, like you have it up on your screen. Is it, are they basically repeating the same pattern? It's like, instead of competing with eBay, or not eBay, instead of competing with Amazon, are they now trying to compete with TikTok or Pinterest? Like, why would you do that?
Keith (50:38.297)
Yeah, hang on. Let s-
Because monolith cam, that's why.
Cameron Craig (50:45.554)
Well, so again, back to the systems thinking model, right, Keith? One of two things is either happening, you've stopped. And you know, I'm kind of thinking, I'm thinking about this in the classic, you know, Goodman model of the iceberg, right? if they literally, yeah, I can see it. I can see it.
Keith (51:05.127)
This is eBay Live. Can you see it?
It's yeah. I mean, sorry. Anyway, this is terrible. Not terrible.
Cameron Craig (51:14.706)
Yeah, but like, wait, have you gotten to the, well, no, like go, can you actually get onto the experience like out of the search engine and into like actually see one?
Keith (51:27.525)
It looks like it's in eBay. This is the way.
Cameron Craig (51:27.966)
Like if you go to the website, yeah, it is, it is. Yeah, leave Google, go to eBay and then try and find an actual.
Keith (51:36.657)
Yeah, this is eBay.
Cameron Craig (51:39.424)
now.
Keith (51:40.369)
Yeah, eBay.com dude. This is it. This is eBay. This is it. They're trying to redesign TikTok and put a buy button here. Like this is their thing. Can you hear this?
Cameron Craig (51:43.635)
What is that?
Cameron Craig (51:54.057)
Huh. No, I can't hear it. I must not be seeing what you're seeing. It must be a different screen. No, I'm seeing Google.
Keith (51:58.868)
you're not. Hang on. hang on one second.
Cameron Craig (52:06.374)
Well, while you're doing that, guess, the thing that the thing that I'm thinking about, though, is it feels like instead of kind of getting down, you know, Goodman's systems thinking model where you're actually dealing with reforming your business, reforming the model, reforming, you know, the experience or, you know, trying to get down to honestly what Keith and I are talking about in this segment is the transforming part. It feels like
Keith (52:06.375)
Mercury retrograde
Cameron Craig (52:35.72)
they're still above the water looking at anticipate and react. And again, I can't see what's on Keith's screen, but I'm assuming it's what I saw with my son. And if it truly is that, then I think the question that I'm asking Keith is, are they repeating the same mistake and now competing with another thing? Yeah, there it is. That's it. Yes.
Keith (52:46.418)
I'm finding a hang on one second.
Keith (52:59.268)
Yeah, so it's like it looks like pinterest and tiktok and if I click on one of these
Keith (53:11.493)
It looks like TikTok.
Cameron Craig (53:13.682)
Yeah, you got somebody who's like in their apartment with a webcam facing at them and they're like, hey, look at this amazing merch that I have, you know, it's Pokemon cards that are instead of being two and a half inches by one and a half inch, these things are a foot by.
Keith (53:21.084)
Yeah.
Keith (53:39.026)
AHHHH
Cameron Craig (53:45.224)
Yeah, that's bad. That is bad. Mm-mm. No.
Keith (53:47.154)
Can you hear this? The music? No? Okay. We gotta figure out how to pipe audio in later. I guess because the auction went over. I mean, this is a good idea in terms of like the livestream thing, but the way that they're doing it, it's like no one's gonna know to go here. Like look at this, have no, no one's watching these things.
Cameron Craig (54:05.476)
No, no. And again, why would you why would you make me go to a different video watching social network simply because this is just about buying something like why wouldn't I just be on a main social network and have the ability to buy or have an auction running like why wouldn't I just insert the auction functionality.
Keith (54:16.53)
And dude
Keith (54:33.85)
Yeah, I mean seeing people bid in the back end like live could be fun to watch but again No one's gonna come here to like no one's even thinking about eBay doing this. So
Cameron Craig (54:33.864)
Like, go to where the people are.
Cameron Craig (54:46.388)
Well, and even if they are, aren't there bigger platforms that are doing exactly this?
Keith (54:46.61)
I don't know man.
Keith (54:51.128)
mean it's just a live stream so at that point it's like there's no reason it shouldn't be on all the major like IG and TikTok and stuff
I dude.
Cameron Craig (55:00.442)
So yeah, just insert auction function. They should work with IG or whoever to insert auction functionality, but there's probably like to your point, some sort of walled, walled IP garden. No, I don't want to hand my buying process over to IG or which I mean makes no sense because like, dude, Facebook marketplace.
Keith (55:21.808)
I mean, even if it costs like 10 or 15 percent and you know, it's a carry trade like or like Kerry check and R. There's like a spread. Yeah, if they made 30, 40, 50 percent more in revenue, then it's like, screw it.
Cameron Craig (55:27.186)
Yeah, Revdroid. Yeah.
Keith (55:36.966)
I don't know, man. think there's definitely something there with the community and the people who care about the things. think it's finding a way to help. if they can advertise more or get connected with the right audience, they're going to sell more product. And it's finding the right people at the right time, but leveraging all the current channels, it just seems still kind of like antiquated in the mentality that is trying to design, drive the design part of. There's nothing if a design is like fonts.
in you know, the what do call that shit like the design system or whatever like
Cameron Craig (56:12.595)
Yeah. Well, you're hanging on, again, we talked about this last week. It's like, as you're trying to do something different, the thing that you want to be is lightweight. So shed a bunch of the things, right? And like this, and we said this last week too, about the internet being in beta. Like we honestly don't know what the HCI is going to be. We don't. And instead of basically
Keith (56:28.721)
Yeah.
Keith (56:37.5)
No.
Cameron Craig (56:41.865)
getting light and taking the best, like the best most saleable thing around your product and putting it everywhere. It's like everybody's like doing this like, no, I need to control the cart. I need to control the catalog. I need to control like my particular audience. I can't blend my audience in instead of looking at like the building blocks of what you have. It's like, okay, you have a massive catalog.
You have a very large audience. have 30 years of trust and you actually have built programs to increase trust, Like which simplicity, convenience and trust, like trust really matters. It's like the, it's the hardest thing to build. Like stop worrying about your interface. Like if I'm, if I'm on TikTok and I can buy something, buy it now, like forget auctions. Like if I can buy it now and just
Keith (57:20.89)
Yeah. The main currency. Yeah. It takes a lifetime to build.
Cameron Craig (57:37.821)
just the brand of eBay is showing up in TikTok?
Keith (57:40.722)
get the eBay guarantee. I'm like, all right, you know what? Screw it. can like if I have to deal with it, can reconcile like fine because then you get you get like the the Xers versus the new kids again. It's just like how do want to buy it? Who do you trust to do the transaction with? We're just kind of the facilitator right now.
Cameron Craig (57:43.967)
Totally. Totally.
Cameron Craig (57:54.868)
And it's like if it's if it's hopelessly uncool. Yes. Yeah, yeah, like we are your we are your non. Like supply chain from China, like exclusive products. I mean, they could do so much damage against. Right, they could do damage to Amazon, they could do damage to real real, they could do damage to like all these other things like just show up where the kids are.
Keith (57:57.328)
they become like MasterCard at that point. They're like the merchant processor. Man.
Keith (58:13.702)
Which is a problem Amazon's coming up with now. Yeah. Fake stuff.
Cameron Craig (58:24.287)
Don't like make the kids come to you, go to them.
Keith (58:27.193)
Or the adults. know, kids show you something. actually, you know what? OK, I can actually like hang out and watch this for like 10 minutes tonight. And like, cool. I found a carburetor. Or there's a dude who rebuilding a carburetor. like, this is cool. This is like shop talk. I can watch a guy do that for 10 minutes, and that's cool. Versus maybe I buy shit from him because you know, by the way he's doing it, he knows what he's doing.
Cameron Craig (58:29.064)
or the adults.
Cameron Craig (58:35.219)
Well and that... I mean...
Cameron Craig (58:47.413)
which that's the piece, like again, like.
Cameron Craig (58:53.141)
I'm dumbfounded, right? It's like, everybody's so anxious to hang on to the things that are in their walled garden, their branded walled garden. It's like, can you hang back for like five minutes and let somebody else's brand be out there for five minutes? And then at the crucial moment where your brand actually matters.
Keith (59:04.027)
Dude.
Cameron Craig (59:18.387)
and what you bring to the table in the experience or in the delivery or whatever actually matters, can you hang back for five minutes and then be the front facing brand, right? Like, why is everybody so dead set that they have to be in control of the brand conversation from beginning to end?
It's like let the guy with the carburetor on TikTok, let TikTok and the dude with the carburetor have their moment of being branded. Like that's what an influencer is there to do. He's not your brand. He's his own brand. And whatever platform he's chosen to be on, like that brand brings cachet. Now, like they're not good. I mean, dude, even IG.
Keith (59:54.149)
Right?
Cameron Craig (01:00:06.701)
I bought stuff on IG. It's been an absolute disappointment in every, it's like the sketchy sneaker site, right? Like it's the worst of the worst where I'm like, is this gonna ever show up? my God, I ordered this thing like three months ago and it's still not here. geez, I'm trying to communicate with these people and there's no domestic, like no one's here to...
Keith (01:00:29.701)
Because big tech, it's like six people in an office responding via email with no, with some bullshit ticketing system. It's not.
Cameron Craig (01:00:36.263)
It's not even that anymore, dude. It's like canned answers out of a chat agent. That's exactly what it is. like every like when I finally found a, you know, like chat icon, it was like immediately I'm like, I am not talking to a person. This is absolutely like a bad like robot like.
Keith (01:00:42.267)
God.
Cameron Craig (01:00:55.687)
Not even like smartly trained robot. Like they're not using like an LLM. They're using some really bad decisioning system that's like, what's he complaining about? it hasn't shown up. Okay, here are like the five can responses. Like, did this answer your question? Like.
Keith (01:01:07.121)
Would you like to hear your recent order? It's like, guys, so maddening, too.
Cameron Craig (01:01:11.411)
So like at that moment, I'm not thinking about IG. I'm not thinking about anything. I'm just thinking about the company that I'm dealing with in that moment. And it's not a positive brand experience. It's a shit brand experience.
Keith (01:01:22.925)
it this was the you yeah this is we tried to explain this at Macy's too they didn't understand that we're gonna get punished
Cameron Craig (01:01:30.344)
Like, and this is this is the place where it's like, all right, dudes, like if I were working back, back to the thing that we're talking about it a very simple if I were working with eBay, all that eBay goodness, all that eBay trust comes in. like, I don't I don't need you to go to eBay. Right. Like you can be on IG and deal with the front part of it. But now.
Like the back end part of it, like all the customer service, all the delivery is eBay. Like I'm probably actually not even like that worked up at this point. I'm like, I just trust that they're going to get my stuff to me. Positive brand experience.
Keith (01:02:06.514)
I mean, if it's the data and eBay's handling the transaction and they're going to give a percentage or a piece to Instagram, just have it go back to eBay where it's like, okay, who's the transaction you bought on eBay? Just go there. And then you settle it on the back end through eBay, because that's what you trust. That's what you're to knowing how to use in terms of like a UX paradigm. It's like, don't just do that? And then it's like, okay, cool. And then you're offloading all that return bullshit, all the communication, you have to deal with that. And it's like, it's a
Cameron Craig (01:02:27.859)
Yeah.
Keith (01:02:36.081)
It's a context-based process that just kills you because it just gets so expensive as you get bigger as a company.
Cameron Craig (01:02:42.665)
Well, and at that point, like I've jumped walled gardens. I'm out of the meta walled garden and I'm now in the eBay walled garden and I'm dealing with the part of the transaction or the part of the interaction where their brand matters and I trust their brand. Right. Like that's the piece that I'm just like trying to rebuild these things in our walled garden. Right. Like makes no sense. And
Keith (01:02:59.035)
Trust. Yeah.
Keith (01:03:11.323)
Dude, it's like infinite tech debt.
It's like, God.
Cameron Craig (01:03:16.017)
And it's and you're trying to you're trying to spend and throw money at something that somebody is already owning. They're the first mover now and you're trying to come in. It's like it's like the same thing. Why would you try and do all of this? You know. Infrastructure and supply chain things out of China like like Amazon does. Why would you do that? Like they they.
have first mover advantage, they're years ahead of you. have like scale, they have the financial wherewithal to outlast you. And now it's like, okay, well, we've got a video service and we're doing live stream videos where we're trying to sell things again, like IG, the other meta platforms like Facebook still doing this. And, you know, now you've got also like TikTok and other places where those things are that front end interaction.
Keith (01:03:49.489)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:04:10.782)
What? Like, just show up. Don't rebuild it. Just show up. Like, take the things that you're like expert at and bring it with the things that they're expert at. And like we've said about the humans, it's the same problem with like an individual. Like we're like, dude, like check the ego, you know? Like bring the two things together to proceed up.
Keith (01:04:11.044)
Use it.
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:04:35.922)
up the mountain, you know? Like, be lighter weight. Like, you do not need to bring all this nonsense with you. Like, it's the same thing just at a corporate level and like, nobody can practice that.
Keith (01:04:38.895)
Yeah.
Keith (01:04:43.586)
It's so expensive too.
This is like a different version of Pluto and Aquarius to like the destruction of old tech, the destruction of the way people interacted. Because right now Pluto is about control too, not just like destruction, rebirth or reconstruction. So all these companies want to control things and try and do it all themselves rather than being like, you know what, screw it. We're going to kill our darlings. We're going to like lock this piece off. We're going to share it. And then you're going to fuse something new.
On top, it's almost like what open source to by giving away for free where it's like, okay, cool. IG's got like the streaming and the attention part of the platform. have the buy e-commerce like, you know, trust with returns because you don't know who the hell you're dealing with. It's annoying because people, people have weird interaction. Like people, if you're trying to return and deal with somebody on Instagram that you're transacting cash with, this is like dude sliding into chicks, DMs land. Like that's the mental model that people are.
and instagram with not like hey you know give me this computer part for like 20 bucks whatever blah blah how old is it you know is it is it still working and just solder a thing you know it's i don't know it there's something here
Cameron Craig (01:05:55.051)
I mean, well, I think this is the first of many a case study that we're looking at from a systems approach, right? Like it's not a holistic thinking. It's a very, like, you called this out last week. Like, this is monolith. You are, like, we've just gone up a level, right? Like, instead of looking at.
Keith (01:06:13.145)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:06:18.012)
what's happening between a designer and a product person and an engineer, like those are all monoliths as well inside of a closed system. This is looking at the entire system within a market or an economy, right? Like, so eBay is doing monolithic behavior, right? Like, instead of looking beyond its four walls and saying, how else can we show up? How can we...
atomize the goodness of eBay and and deliver it wherever it needs to be delivered. They're sort of like, well, let's recreate these other structures, these other monoliths within our within our four walls. And that is not a holistic thinking way of dealing with it, especially in a place where the entire system right now is being disrupted. Like this is the time where you're like, throw out your old conventions.
Keith (01:07:08.942)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:07:13.662)
Right now is the time where everything is breaking and everything is like test and learn. It's beta. Like we said this last week, it's all beta. Like your risk profile should be going up. That's all I'm saying. Your risk profile should go up. And if your risk profile is not gonna go up, you're probably gonna get scrapped. like Meta's only gonna keep going towards Amazon or, you know, they're gonna like...
Keith (01:07:23.248)
All those all paradigms, yeah. Yeah, well.
Keith (01:07:40.88)
Oh, they have a Facebook marketplace right now, which I've I sold a bunch of stuff on. So it's like, it's good enough. It's a little sketchy because you can. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's but the transacting trust part is what eBay really owns. And that is what the core that they want to keep and like guard with their life. But that that is the yes. Like everything else is a distraction. And the more they pump into all these other things, it's going to kill them faster because it's just going to bleed them by a thousand paper cuts, digital paper cuts.
Cameron Craig (01:07:46.773)
It's good enough.
Cameron Craig (01:07:58.039)
to focus on that.
Cameron Craig (01:08:08.232)
Yeah, yeah. mean, trying to trying to build their own version of TikTok is about as silly as trying to build what they did when they were like, we're going to compete with Amazon. It is going to be a money sink. And it is going to be one of those things where they literally are. Every innovation they have is probably
Keith (01:08:18.873)
I mean...
Keith (01:08:24.251)
dude they're paying probably Amazon cuz AWS for all the fucking real-time compute and just like it's like There's their own money way like literally they're losing money and paying them. It's like the God is a hemorrhaging
Cameron Craig (01:08:31.828)
I can't.
Cameron Craig (01:08:36.618)
I have nothing to say there, but that OSINT is available to you if you need to understand that. But like I'm saying, like TikTok's trying to infringe on that as well, right? Like they're trying to become a marketplace, but their entire take is we're not gonna show you the catalog, we're just gonna show you the content, and like you're gonna get swept up in the content and you're gonna buy stuff, period. No catalogs, no...
Keith (01:08:41.368)
hahaha
I was yet.
Keith (01:08:59.554)
Yeah. It's like.
Cameron Craig (01:09:04.32)
Like they're getting you at the point of inspiration and they're just like, I gotta have that. And they're not like trying to service the dude like me.
Keith (01:09:09.946)
And then they're building a browser in the app and tracking everything you're doing and like the virtualized browser and it's like, dude, no, like this is stupid. That's why I don't want to buy and deal with that stuff. I'm like, no, because they're copying your clipboard off your phone and stuff too. So it's like, if you copy the passport, mean, yeah, not passport, password, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:09:27.188)
Yeah, we're not the market. We're not the market. But they're going after the market of kids that are going to be shopping probably at scale much longer than you and I are going to be shopping at scale. And that's the thing.
Keith (01:09:44.376)
Maybe.
Cameron Craig (01:09:44.853)
If you want to go walled garden and you want to do things the way you've done it, that's fine.
Recognize and own. I mean, this is like a very Warren Buffett type strategy, right? Like, recognize and own the audience that you know you can serve and be content with how they do things, what they do, where their spend is and like optimize and maximize for that. Right. There's plenty of other things like as a a Gen X or still using eBay on the daily that eBay could do to make my shopping experience much less frictionful. I'm telling you, it is not eBay Live. Like fix your
fucking search engine and fix your filters like those things like why they haven't done that over 30 years is beyond me I don't know like again low-hanging fruit probably something that somebody could bang out in a quarter or less probably like you put a team on it you could probably bang it out in like two weeks do it in an iteration
Keith (01:10:38.294)
Dude, this is the same thing with Macy's. This is the next consulting job. It's a fixer. There's search and filtering and get rid of the interface.
Cameron Craig (01:10:48.872)
I tried Keith. I mean, that was my first gig at Macy's like before I was like had my role. Like when I was a consultant, I was the dude trying to solve like all the interaction design and all of the like information architecture with the and I was like, here are the five use cases you need to solve, you know, don't ever show me this again. Show me only this show me this and this, you know, and it was like they were not hard use cases to understand and dude.
Keith (01:11:00.676)
And it came back to the tech. Yeah.
Keith (01:11:17.602)
Yeah, it'll get harder for these companies before it gets faster, better, because at some point they're gonna have to hollow out. They're gonna have to hollow out more employees to cover their cost basis. And then eventually at some point, the CEOs gonna be like, what are we doing? Like, we just got to like get rid like make hard, hard cuts to make this stuff happen. And, you know, there's no reason. I mean, God, you have these kids doing what are they called? Like systems design.
Cameron Craig (01:11:19.531)
I mean...
Keith (01:11:47.374)
interviews like all these patterns for scaling and caching like it's pretty well thought out now that you know scaling vertically and horizontally like this is not Anyway, yeah the legacy men
Cameron Craig (01:11:58.04)
I don't know. mean, so like, go completely outside of the systems, we've been talking about. If I were an 18 year old with some time on my hands, and I was thinking radically about online commerce and a marketplace and a creator community or an influencer community, you know what I would do?
I would be the intermediary and disrupt that. like eBay doesn't want to show up in this thing. I'll show up in this thing. Like you said it, I'll go source the thing in South Korea and I'll get it to you on a rat on a reasonable timeline. I will push. I will. I will push the buy button.
Keith (01:12:41.033)
charge dude there's some kid at Y Combinator probably doing this yeah and they'll automate it
Cameron Craig (01:12:46.719)
Like, or, or I will be the guy who builds the agent that goes and scans eBay, Amazon, Tmoo, whatever for this. I will like run the engine. I will insert my own branded buy now button into, take your pick eBay live. I'll do them all. I'll do eBay live. I'll do a TikTok and I'll do Instagram. I'll do them all.
Keith (01:13:07.025)
camo
Keith (01:13:15.107)
Maybe maybe that could be their initial pilot finding kids to try and do this to kind of connect the two things and see if they could vibe code it. I don't know. At this point there's tons of talent that is on the market right now that I'm sure willing to work to try things that you know bargain basement prices if you give them something decent to kind of get into. But you know if they do it right you can't just give them 40 bucks an hour doing some bullshit job as an intern. You got to like
You got to leapfrog them, give them authority if they do it right, and then get them into the org chart where they can actually make a difference and then support them. This is maybe a next iteration kind of thing for the next episode or later. But I I think we kind of got into like the macro micro of the interface, the business, the culture, and why that's kind of like, prohibiting them from kind of disrupting. But then if you actually want to fix it, that's a whole nother op, but it's doable.
Cameron Craig (01:14:13.151)
Yeah. So, I mean, how would you sum it up? Right. Like, I think we've thrown out a bunch of things. Like, I got a few things, but like, what, how would you sum this up? Like, if somebody were saying, OK, cool, like, imagine that somebody from eBay or Macy's or.
Keith (01:14:14.415)
You just gotta have the will.
Cameron Craig (01:14:32.479)
even Instagram or TikTok or sitting in front of us. Like what's the summary? What would you tell those people? Like say we were invited to a round table and we got somebody in some level of authority in one or all those companies. Like what would you tell them?
Keith (01:14:47.033)
The way you need to think about this is like open source. When you give something away for free, you're destroying the value, but it moves it somewhere else up the chain. So you have to figure out what you want to own, which is the trust and the transaction, and then everything else is a commodity. figure out how to, that's how I think about it, the very simplest part, because if you don't do it now, you're going to put money into tech and to HR, it's just going to kill you. It's just too expensive.
Cameron Craig (01:15:04.961)
Love that.
Keith (01:15:16.793)
And it's bullshit that's not going to actually convert into any kind of Royk any kind of return on your capital at all. That's how I think about it.
Cameron Craig (01:15:22.793)
Mm-hmm. I love it. Yeah, I love that. think that's... I think...
Keith (01:15:26.073)
How would you think about it?
Cameron Craig (01:15:33.944)
I think the very, very basis of it is the and, right? And in some ways, yes and, I think what you just said is a better encapsulation of it in terms of like the open source model being like a business model that you go after. Like I 100 % agree with that and I think that summary is an excellent one. I think the level of depth beneath it is within that,
Keith (01:15:38.019)
Yeah. Yes and.
Cameron Craig (01:16:01.339)
focus on the things that you bring to the table in that open source model and like not just double down on that, triple down on that and rely on the partners that do the thing that you don't do at the same level that you do it, right? So, then,
The problem that you're solving is the interop between those things. And that is like, while still at times going to be a weighty problem, whether it's like contract negotiation or systems, talking to systems or figuring out like how everybody gets paid. Those problems are problems that you can solve in a much shorter period of time.
Or you can decide it as a problem that you cannot solve, right? Like it is not high risk in terms of like what we think we can solve it and how we solve it is this complex set of technology that's going to take us a year to two years to build. then hopefully like the market hasn't shifted and hopefully like, you know, people care. Like I got to imagine that eBay live thing was not easy to build. I don't know. Maybe, maybe I could be wrong. Like I certainly don't know. But like.
Keith (01:17:05.839)
No. it's there. What the hell? It's what was that thing that Twitter bought before it was? God, it was like it's a live streaming thing. there's there's a whole bunch of stuff you have to deal with with it. And don't forget, you have leverage if you want to try and like sell this to like Instagram. they're gonna be like, oh, we want 30 % of a transaction. It's like, well, how much you guys really spending on trying to deal with returns and like, you know,
Dude, do like a six month? Yeah, exactly.
Cameron Craig (01:17:36.834)
Like I said, business problems are way easier to negotiate than like hardcore engineering problems. Like, and they're oftentimes faster and cheaper to solve, right? Like, you know, sitting around a table and negotiating what everybody's cut is, it's annoying, but it can be done in a much faster way with an outcome that you can predict.
on a timeline that's gonna be way better for you than like, ah, we gotta build this, and hopefully the market, that's the thing too that I, I wanna overemphasize this, because we brought it up again last week, and the market shifts right now, where things we anticipated would take a year or two years to deliver, are happening in weeks.
Keith (01:18:19.383)
yeah, it's like icebergs shearing off of like continents like it's massive.
Cameron Craig (01:18:25.749)
I mean, I want to build.
like ground level builds, I want to do as little of that as I possibly can. And value delivery, like if something takes more than a few weeks to a few months to get a strong signal for the value, I'm like, don't do it. Like don't do it. that's, you know, not to switch over to what I'm doing, because we kind of already covered that and I can't talk about it in any rational detail, so I'm like, let's just avoid that.
Keith (01:18:48.066)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:18:59.807)
that principle of value delivery right now that builds, has been, and you said that last week and I've held onto that, it's absolutely right. Whatever the value that you can deliver right now, it's like the future value of money, right? It's like that same exact concept, but with IP.
Keith (01:19:05.506)
compounds.
Keith (01:19:20.034)
Just kind of cashflow. Yeah. Yeah. Or is it? Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:19:22.507)
Like do it now and get the money in because you're going to need to keep getting the money in over time. Like the longer you wait to start getting money in, like your profitability is already like in a negative, you're trying to build back from a negative state. Like where everything that I'm doing right now, like the money spend is like people's salaries over the weeks that we're doing it, right? Like.
Keith (01:19:32.758)
Yeah, try it. Do a pilot program.
Keith (01:19:49.035)
dude, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:19:49.773)
the sunk cost is so low compared to, and then we have tech debt and now we have a process and we're paying for the compute to run all this stuff. if I'm putting on something out on our compute and I am using any kind of AI to deal with it, I'm like, this cannot be like experimental for very long. Like the cost of that stuff is gonna either kill us or there's some higher...
Keith (01:20:13.815)
yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:20:17.848)
There's some higher value thing going on that that compute needs to be used for, and it's not the thing that we're building.
Keith (01:20:26.206)
So 100 % and one last thing is I also think about who you sent to do the contract negotiations because Macy's they were not very good the way they're negotiating a lot of these contracts and they didn't know they're getting the data fleeced. So this is an opportunity to look inside eBay to find people who are younger and hungry who can be trained on how to do sales. Like you don't they don't need an MBA they need like a you know an eBay MBA about how to understand how to like where's the leverage what do they really want what is it moving the needle.
You know, because then if you send someone who's been around for 25 years to talk to some like 25 year old, like they're going to judge in both directions. So you got to find, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's ways to reinvent the company slowly, but you have to like start building the right kind of team with the right mindset, like from the get go. So there's seeing value that way too, not just value in terms of like, we getting signal from the thing we're actually building, but it's like how you re-engineering the culture and the process too.
Cameron Craig (01:21:04.566)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:21:22.422)
Yeah, but I mean, like one thing about your, one thing I wanted to bring back around that you just brought up about the open source thing, like that model is really powerful because it keeps everybody focused on the thing that they're good at. And if an open source, like covenant or contract is negotiated the right way, what it also does is it allows people to tap in and pull value out.
in commensurate like levels, right? Like I'm doing X and I wanna pull X amount of value out of this. I wanna take this IP that you guys are building and I wanna apply it this way, right? Like that model.
Keith (01:21:52.062)
Everybody wins. Everybody's doing what they... yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:22:08.694)
It just simplifies everything and it's not gonna solve every problem and there's certain things that are like so close to the core of like what you do and you know, the golden goose or however you wanna describe it, that you're not gonna bend, you're unwilling to like negotiate around that and that's fine. Like I don't see problems there. think, you know, but it keeps the focus on just those things versus like, God, like all these things we now need to figure out, like how are we gonna do? It's like if you're just hanging on,
to the things that you know are like the pieces that you bring to the table that are your like secret sauce or your like magic part of the equation. It's a way easier thing to negotiate. And it's a way easier thing to like think about to enhance like, and then all of your resources go into enhancing just that thing. You're just like, we are laser focused on this because it solves problems for us. But in this open source model,
Keith (01:22:48.546)
Business School 101, dude.
Cameron Craig (01:23:02.89)
It is the contribution that we bring that is going to have this ongoing value. And it's like, if you just stay focused on that, I don't know, it just makes all of that easier. then like one other thing that I was thinking about, like from the human side of it, how often have you been like,
Every single time I'm in a negotiation where I have somebody sitting across the table who is not my direct competitor, but like bring something to the table that enhances it. And they're like, and your stuff enhances it. Like the energy and the excitement around that like conversation is nothing but a positive. Like every single one of those conversations I've been involved with, everybody leaves with a smile on their face. Nobody's like, God, like those guys are, you know, they're absolutely going to fuck us. Like we're going to be in this place because there's no, there's no.
Keith (01:23:46.614)
Yeah, do a real deal.
Cameron Craig (01:23:49.613)
There's no competition there. It's like everybody wins in this situation if we figure out a way to work together. And everybody's like, yep. Like, smiles all around the table.
Keith (01:23:58.87)
And actually do it. Yeah, don't just say it like fulfill. It's like triple wins, dude. People are doing jobs that I've doing you're making money positive cash flow and customer needs to get what they want. It's like it. It's super easy. Yeah, in theory.
Cameron Craig (01:24:04.492)
Yeah. Yep.
Cameron Craig (01:24:09.598)
One and problems are getting solved. Problems are getting solved that you're no longer on the hook to solve and and that yeah, a contract negotiation can always go wrong or always go bad. The implementation can always go wrong or go bad. I'm not saying it's like all rosy, but like the the number of times that we and again at Macy's we had this like we're like, hey, we're going to go see you to do this because like we need this thing built and we need you to figure this out and there and people like. Hell yeah, like I'm.
AMP to go and figure that out for you guys.
Keith (01:24:41.089)
Do something interesting that's just not boring and wasting money like usual. like, you're doing this the right way. Like, okay, yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:24:48.972)
And you're not going to annihilate me. You're actually going to let me have my IP as a part of the system. And you're going to thank me with either money or recognition or some or audience. Like again, with the influencers, like we're to bring audience and product. And they're just like, hell yeah.
Keith (01:24:58.807)
or both.
Keith (01:25:08.017)
This is what I mean by like sales and training the youngins to do good deals. Even if it's like people who've been there for 20 years, like there's, you got to have the right representation and the right mindset doing these kinds of things. Otherwise you're just going to recreate the same old system. It's going to blow it up.
Cameron Craig (01:25:24.096)
Yup. Yup. Yeah. Or you're going to get blown up and you're going to burn a bunch of capital trying to catch up. that, like those things don't feel good. If you're sitting around the boardroom, that is not a happy conversation. That is a risk analysis and God, like this could go wrong, John. And you know, you're going to lose your job if we have two years of sunk cost against some project that's not going to deliver. It's horrible.
Keith (01:25:50.881)
Yeah, mean that, yeah, that's, everyone's stressed at that point and guaranteed to just do the same old monolith and that'll just kill them faster. It's gonna have the opposite effect of what they want.
Cameron Craig (01:26:04.214)
Yeah. And in a, in a market where you got to move fast, like I just, like your open source thing really resonates. makes a lot of sense to me. And like, I'm so glad you said that because it's like, it's very, it's a very tangible model that is very grounding where you're just like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's about the negotiation. It's about fi it's about you, you put in and you take out, right?
Keith (01:26:21.303)
Free. Yeah. Give it, you know.
Keith (01:26:27.851)
If you do it right, everybody wins. That's the beauty.
Cameron Craig (01:26:31.552)
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well, this was Yeah, we got we got super excited at the end. And we came up with like reasonable things that like people could execute against which is tangible and feels good.
Keith (01:26:34.413)
Cool man. That was a good episode.
Keith (01:26:42.125)
I think there's a...
Keith (01:26:47.605)
Yeah, I mean, again, with the systems part, this like, the strategy of kind of what to do is one piece. And then there's kind of like a sub strategy underneath that. I'm on how do you, and like, how do you actually get the old eBay to go along with it and like, sell it through and get the change because the change management piece is like a whole other animal. But I think starting with a good vision and value system and finding, you know, sticking to what is really core. And this is like the format formation conditions. This is what they do well.
Auctions and trust, transacting trust. It's like getting back to that and that was the most important thing. That's what they want to own.
Cameron Craig (01:27:22.188)
Well, I hope, I mean, again, I doubt that anybody in power at eBay, unless you've got a hack for that, I guess we could figure that out to get this in front of people if we thought it was meaningful. But I guess one thing, I hope companies like that figure it out because for me, as a user of eBay and you know.
I will say it's not all about the transacting. Some of it is about the community or the knowledge, right? There's a lot of knowledge that I gain daily through using eBay, which sounds strange. with the hobbies that I have, sometimes you need to understand certain things. You need to understand the availability of things or the difference of availability of things. And sometimes you just need to know how things work. It's like, you know,
Keith (01:27:57.067)
Yeah. What's...
Cameron Craig (01:28:13.569)
by looking at certain models of cars as an example, I can figure out like, these things all have the same part structure. So I don't necessarily need to buy this very arc, I mean, turn signal relay. Like through eBay, I figured out, there's a different type of turn signal relay, which is not unobtainium. It's actually quite available and it's 1 50th the cost of like the unobtainium one.
Keith (01:28:42.443)
Yeah, dude.
Cameron Craig (01:28:43.521)
It plugs right in. It literally, Keith, was like, boop. It was like, huh, what if this is gonna work? Flip the turn signals on, everything works. Great thing was, I never have to worry about that again. It cost me 13 bucks where it was gonna cost me like 280 and the $280 part will break eventually. The $13 part will never break because like the technology has been upgraded. And I learned that like through looking at different things on eBay and talking to like one dude. And he's like, yep.
This is a common hack for this problem and like welcome son, like you no longer need to pay full price for things that are gonna ultimately break. And I was like, this is amazing.
Keith (01:29:23.233)
Yeah, that dude in that conversation could become like a pair shopper not like we're go shop and look for a dress together but like help you figure out what the hell you need and then find a way to like, you know, this data and value behind that social capital like that's what they have to figure out how to unlock. Like everything else is just a medium and a channel like they don't. This is gonna be an interesting follow up for like later about how you reinvigorate kind of old web one web two companies that
Cameron Craig (01:29:40.248)
Yeah.
Keith (01:29:52.801)
you know, they became successful businesses and how do they, how do they disrupt themselves? And, know, I think at some point the pattern, there's going to be a system to emerge out of the pattern to kind of do that. But
Cameron Craig (01:30:03.223)
Yeah, so maybe maybe the one last thing I'll say and then I'll let you have the last word. I would say. And I'm not often plugging. My employer for. For a bunch of reasons, some of them at times I'm like guys, I don't understand what you're doing. But but in this particular area, I will say this, I've never worked in an environment. That.
thinks more broadly than the environment that I'm in now and down to things like thinking about is there a better way of doing this? Could we buy something versus having to build it? Could we partner with another company and ultimately get to the same outcome and actually not be in a place where we have legacy tech debt or legacy
Keith (01:31:00.501)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:31:02.089)
human debt or whatever, right? Like, and you know, I've seen that cycle ramp up even faster and further than it was when I first started working there. And it's one of the things that I think is in the DNA there where the, the risk analysis happens. And then eventually there's an opportunity analysis and the two things come together and they're like, it's a, and they just do it.
Keith (01:31:29.28)
Yeah, feasibility.
Cameron Craig (01:31:30.829)
They just do it. They're not afraid of it. They're not overthinking it. They're not, you know, they're like, we'll learn something and the value is going to come and the risk is this and let's move, right? Definitively let's move. So over to you, Keith, take us out. What do you got?
Keith (01:31:52.16)
I think every company has the opportunity to do that right now, especially the bears and urban solo. The stakes are more high. You just have to have courage to go through and try different things. And, know, this to me comes down to like a lack of leadership or leadership that doesn't know. And if you don't, then you got to find the right people. But there's no reason these companies can't do this right now. I mean, everyone's worried about AI being disrupted, but no one's really talking about how can they
exponentially increase what they're doing for like the business, the customers, the employees, everybody at the same time moving forward with you know it it's limitless at this point it's just a lack of imagination so
Cameron Craig (01:32:36.183)
Yeah, that's fair. I love it.
Keith (01:32:40.672)
That's it. It's a good one. I like this. I like this auditing old companies, think, moving forward. It would be good to look at like the financials a little bit and start looking at maybe we can this later to see like, okay, what does a $10 billion company look like versus like a 50 or $30 billion company and, you know, just to kind of work because there's some simple things I think you could kind of like figure out with financials, you don't have to get too in the weeds, but it would
Cameron Craig (01:32:53.113)
Mm-hmm.
Keith (01:33:09.43)
help crystallize and maybe land with some of the suits a little bit more too. Because like, we need to do 10 % revenue increase based on, know, relative comps or whatever. know, every company is different, but TBD.
Cameron Craig (01:33:21.709)
Yep. Yep.
All right, cool. As always, thank you, Keith. Yeah, really fun. Yeah, very exciting and thanks again, both for the pre-planning on this one and kind of leading us through. Really appreciate it. Cool. See you soon. Thanks, man.
Keith (01:33:28.32)
Yeah, Super fun cam. Can't to do the next one.
Keith (01:33:39.403)
Yeah, Awesome. All right, dude. Catch you next week. All right. Later.