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Interviews with amazing people making things happen across the world of digital media.
New episodes every Thursday.
Mike Stricoff (00:02.262)
Our guest today has some of the most unique experience that you'll find in the world of content. He's been a head of product, a chief product officer, a chief executive officer. Seems like it's been at about a million different companies, including MeToo and Upworthy. He then launched Snapchat's accelerator program called Yellow. Now though, he is a co -founder and CEO of a brand new podcast platform called Cooler. His LinkedIn also says that he was a quote,
web intern at 76ers. Here he is, it's Mike Sue.
Mike Su (00:34.734)
Yeah. All right. Fun fact. this dates me, but I was there Kevin Garnett's rookie year. So I was literally standing in the tunnel that year. Kobe Bryant was a senior in high school and he came to that game. And I remember still remember seeing him in the outside the locker room, waiting to talk to KG about coming out straight from high school. So.
Mike Stricoff (00:58.134)
That is so cool. So, okay, I think I could ask you about that and the Sixers, just like your time there for an hour, but we have other fish to fry today. I really wanna talk about cooler, okay? That'll be like the majority of what we talk about today. We'll also talk a little bit about some of your other experiences. So why don't we just start there? Just give us a primer for those that don't know.
What is cooler? What are you trying to build there?
Mike Su (01:30.798)
Yeah. At its core, Cooler is a social podcast player that helps podcast creators like yourself, build community around their, their, their content. And, you know, this really came about backing up a little bit. My time at Snapchat was really transformative in terms of how I think about product. I consider how my product career, like pre Snapchat and post Snapchat in the sense that I think Evan and Bobby really thought about product from a very sociological point of view. And that was.
very different than sort of the A -B testing data -centric model that I'd been, and framework that I'd been used to most of my career. And so as I was thinking about what to do next, last year around this time, I was spending a lot of time on Twitter keeping up with the Silicon Valley bank meltdown. And interestingly, and not surprisingly, lots of people were saying.
crazy things like very smart entrepreneurs. I, some of them I know, or VCs that I know and respect were saying really dumb things. And a lot, a lot of politicians, no, not to be named. Yeah. but, Twitter's full of them and, you know, and lots of politicians who I think were really smart were saying like, you know, let it all burn down. Silicon Valley socks. And I was like, no, you know, they're, none of that's true. Like, why would you say something like that? And.
Mike Stricoff (02:29.062)
We won't name them here.
Mike Su (02:49.07)
I realized there's no amount of moderation that fixes this problem. It's really inherent to the design of the social graph where you have these wide open networks. And when you have these wide open networks, it's so big that you create the sense of pseudo anonymity. And psychiatrists have this term called deindividuation. And the idea is that when you're in a sufficiently large enough crowd, even though you're not anonymous, you feel anonymous and that anonymity emboldens you to act more erratically, violently, impulsively.
and the best example is, you know, strict, you're super nice guy, but get you in the middle of the four or five in the middle of traffic, somebody cuts you off. You might say some things you wouldn't normally say to somebody in an elevator, right? Yeah, confirmed, just happened yesterday. And you're not actually anonymous in that situation. I could see your face, I could see your license plate, I could literally follow you home if you watch beef, that doesn't end well.
Mike Stricoff (03:29.494)
That is true. Confirmed.
Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (03:43.734)
Yeah.
Mike Su (03:45.998)
And, but yet because of that sort of perceived anonymity, we act in a different way. But if you were pulling onto the Snapchat parking lot, your local YMCA or, you know, place of worship, nobody has to tell you like, Hey, strict, try not to lose your marbles or act like a maniac here. You're like in a place where you care about.
Mike Stricoff (04:06.166)
Yeah.
Mike Su (04:07.374)
And what I realized was that, you know, in our, in the explosion of social media, we kind of have these two polar opposite ends and both have really strong benefits. But on the one end, we have these private chat, communication channels like Snapchat and WhatsApp or telegram, et cetera. And then on the other end, we have these wide open networks like, you know, like Twitter or Tik TOK or Instagram. Well, we kind of lost is that.
in between part, you know, just where I was talking about, if you're pulling onto your Snapchat parking lot, you're in a community that you care about. So you don't, you know how you should behave because you care about your reputation. And then our move online, I felt like we lost a little bit of that. And I started thinking about that problem of community. And, you know, by the way, every study on human happiness is tied to our belonging to, to these communities. Right. and so in our move online, we've kind of lost that connectivity.
And so after being bummed out about the state of technology and society at large, I realized, you know, the one place that is kind of happening in a really magical ways around podcasts is because podcasts are this weird, weird sort of web one .o in a world where everything's moving towards like, you know, sort of 10 second dance videos. Podcasts are like, no, I'm going to be an hour or three hours long of somebody talking.
And because it's audio, because you can multitask, you can listen to it while you're doing dishes or running or driving or whatever. you, you could go so much deeper with someone than you can in any other medium. And so that forms this really special bond, with the host and the voice that you don't get really anywhere else, in media. And so what you see are these sort of communities organically, because of that depth of engagement, these communities started to form.
And you really look at, you know, how, how creators have to form this community. They do the podcast and then they have to go like, okay, now follow us on social media or hit it, throw it, shoot us an email or send it in a voicemail or whatever. And so they're using bubble gum and duct tape to put together this community with like zero help from the podcast player, which hasn't changed in 20 years. Right. And so, we felt like there's a real opportunity if we could help remove some of those friction points to help podcasters create stronger community.
Mike Stricoff (06:23.318)
That is so cool. And yeah, it is definitely a format that is sort of divorced from its audience unless you jump through a ton of hoops like you were just saying, right? So what's the flow right now? So like you have a podcast, you blast it off to all the podcast platforms, and then there's a Discord or a Reddit or like your Twitter account has like replies in it, right? That's sort of like another thing, but it's...
Mike Su (06:34.702)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Su (06:50.574)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (06:52.918)
You know, as we know, it's so hard to get people to go from place to place on their phone. It's just like a Herculean effort to try to do that. So your whole point is like, let's bring all that together and like merge it, right?
Mike Su (07:05.07)
Yeah. The, the desire, the user desires obviously clear. I mean, look as a product guy for 20 plus years on the internet, when you add a extra button or an extra image, 90 % of the audience drops off. So the idea that somebody listens to a podcast on their card and then goes home and says, you know what, I'm going to email it a question is like a minor miracle and a testament to the medium in the first place. And so, but if we could remove some of that friction and also by the way, they're
you know, as you look on social media, there could be a very healthy Instagram community forming around your podcast, but they might not actually ever listen to your podcast. And so the, you know, you could have this rich conversation, but then, you know, people saying crazy things because they've never listened, actually listened or engaged with content or just watch the soundbites. And so when you can marry the idea of like their actual consumption with their interaction,
You can, for example, rank comments by whether somebody listened to it or not, right? Like you can say, hey, strict listen to this whole episode. So therefore he knows what he's talking about. And you know, like Sue, you, you, you only listened to 10 seconds of it. So, you know, maybe what you're saying is not as valid.
Mike Stricoff (08:08.662)
Right.
Mike Stricoff (08:13.334)
Wow, that's really interesting. I mean, if only, yeah, if only there was a way to like, as you're sifting through all of these comments and takes across the rest of social, if there was a more clear way to like know who's credible. There used to be this thing called the blue check mark on Twitter. That was a really good sign of that. Now that's like not as clear. But the...
Mike Su (08:30.414)
Hehehehe
Now it's a clear sign that you paid $8 or whatever it is to subscribe.
Mike Stricoff (08:37.43)
Yeah, exactly. I know. So now no one knows, right? Like the fake accounts that have the blue check mark, you know, it's like fake Mike Sue has a blue check. Yeah. Anyway. So, but I'm curious as we talk a lot on this podcast about how like the current content algorithms are sort of guiding the entire creator community, at least on these content algorithm platforms or caps, as we're starting to call them on this podcast.
Mike Su (08:42.926)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Su (09:06.446)
I like it, I like it. No cap, no cap. So we'll start the no cap movement. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (09:06.902)
We're probably trying to make fetch happen, but like.
No, yeah, exactly. Right. So, but like the everybody is so hyper incentivized to create content for these algorithms and guests on my show are saying they're not even making content for the audience anymore. They're making content for the algorithm. Right. and, and the impact that that's having on our young creative storytellers and producers and operators and the whole ecosystem is profound. And I don't think we have like fully uncovered that yet. So.
As you think about adding social features like directly into a podcast player, how do you think that will impact the way podcasts are made if at all?
Mike Su (09:53.262)
Yeah. So it's really interesting because it's almost in diametric opposition, right? Like as you see, you know, part of what makes something like TikTok very successful is the short form content actually helps the, you know, machines learn faster, right? Like if you within, you know, a minute of consumption send me 25 signals about what you like and don't like, then I can learn a lot faster. And so,
In, in, in interesting ways, the, the algorithms actually then hyper reward the things that help them learn faster. So therefore content is moving shorter and shorter and shorter. The nature of podcasts and what's most exciting about it is because it fits into, it fits into your lifestyle and you can go so much deeper. It's the opposite, right? It gets literally the opposite. It's like an hour long content. So, you know, you get one signal in an hour about whether someone likes something or not.
And so in that sense, the format itself is already diametrically opposed. And so our, and in fact, the social features we build around this drive to deeper community. And so, you know, as we develop, my expectation is that it may change how people, right now community happens dependent on how much the creator cultivates community.
Sometimes it's just radio, it's just broadcast. I'm just talking into a mic and I send it off to the ether and I don't do social and I don't pull in audience questions and whatnot. And that's fine. And that works totally well. but I think what I expect to happen is the ones that have potential for community will begin to see, Hey, if I build a little bit more, if I bring my community a little bit more into my content, it helps them feel closer and more tied into community. And so that.
may influence to some degree like the folks who are more community oriented to do that even more. And once they see other people successful saying, you know, here's a comment of the week and shout out to these people who are on the leaderboard or whatnot. And seeing how that hyper engages the audience and has a positive effect will probably lead to more people leaning more into community.
Mike Su (12:08.174)
But there is a very big difference in the numbers game, right? Like, I don't know about you, but you know, how many podcasts have, because you listen to it, spend so much time with it, realistically, you're probably not gonna subscribe to more than half a dozen to a dozen podcasts versus, you know, your Instagram, you probably follow thousands of creators. And so there's these things like occupy very opposite ends of the content spectrum.
Mike Stricoff (12:23.254)
Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (12:33.942)
Yeah, it's just like how much entertainment time do you have? You know, especially, yeah, especially when you get into some of these podcasts that are like a few hours long, like there's, the ringer has a podcast called the house of our, where they they're doing deep dives on a house of the dragon and they're like three hours long, you know, and like how many three hour long episodes can you listen to in one day? Well, whatever 24 divided by three is, you know, if you were to not sleep or do anything else. Yeah.
Mike Su (12:37.358)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Su (12:50.286)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Su (12:58.062)
Yeah, that's some complicated math I can't figure it out. But yeah, yeah, yeah. But because of that depth of engagement, then well, A, it's just not suited for quick algorithmically sorted recommendations the way social media is. And so I do, part of the reason I'm so excited about podcasts is I feel like it's the last hope in this content landscape where it just has these different.
very different characteristics that are very inherent to the nature of the content that stand. The fact that it exists 20 years into this now, I think sort of speaks to a lot of potential to sort of shift the way social media is on the internet.
Mike Stricoff (13:48.502)
Yeah, let's you mentioned that that like the players themselves, the podcast player apps or, you know, before apps, right? Cause podcasts existed before apps, like apps as we know them now. like the, the actual fundamentals of the player just haven't changed very much. You know, you have the Apple app, which is basically just like a browse experience with a play pause, skip fast forward, whatever, subscribe, super basic hasn't evolved much.
Mike Su (14:07.566)
Yeah.
Mike Su (14:13.741)
Yup. Yup.
Mike Stricoff (14:17.91)
Everyone's got like their version of that essentially. Why do you think that no one has come in and like, like, like moved the ball down the field, so to speak.
Mike Su (14:27.438)
Yeah, it's part of the reason why I'm so also just so excited about the space is you have two dominant players in Apple and Spotify and very little tech innovation and very little and very systemic reasons why that hasn't happened. Right. Like I think. You know, if you look at it for both of these companies, podcast is kind of their side hustle, right? Apple is a what? Three trillion dollar business. Even if they.
ate the whole entire podcast market, it still would be like a blip on their balance sheet, you know, somewhere around the worldwide developer conference catering budget or, you know, the cost, the cost of Steve jobs is a turtlenecks, you know? Yeah. I, I, I would, that catering budget would, would fund us for a long time. I would gladly take that. but it's just like, you know, so low on the priority.
Mike Stricoff (15:03.414)
Hey, don't sleep on that catering budget. That is probably an expensive catering budget.
Yeah.
Mike Su (15:22.83)
that there's very little incentive for motivate, they have a hardware business, they have a multi -billion dollar app store business, the podcast business aside from some nascent subscription revenue really doesn't generate anything. So there's very little motivation for them to innovate. And then Spotify is in a different situation where they very much want to build a meaningful podcast business, but they also have sort of the innovators dilemma where they have this healthy.
you know, $60 billion business that's built on the back of people paying to get music. And so, you know, all of us have been at big companies before. Nobody wants to go into the annual strategic planning meeting and be the person that accidentally, you know, you know, cannibalize the, the golden goose, right. And messed up. So, we want to add these social features for podcasts. by the way, people stop listening to music because of that. And so there's sort of this innovators dilemma where you have to be very careful to build that the sort of.
overlap with the Venn diagram between a great music listening experience and a great podcasting experience. And so what you end up with is, you know, basically what we have today, which is basically a play button that delivers an MP3. And maybe the biggest innovation has been like going to one and a half X speed or whatever, right?
Mike Stricoff (16:33.938)
Yeah, that's it's, it's very true. I often one under talked about story in the world of tech and also content as those two things kind of come together, right? As you know, the apples and the Googles and the Amazons of the world sort of like, you know, they're they've already made their move into content. It's not like they're making that move. Like they're spending, they're making big plays. Amazon has the NFL. Netflix got the NFL in my world of sports and all of that. But I do wonder like,
Mike Su (16:55.438)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (17:03.574)
there is a difference between a company that is completely focused on a craft, right? And it's like their number one core product values. Like this is what we do. If you're NBC back in the day, we make hit television shows. That's what we do. And so everything in their business, all their best people, all their best resources go towards that endeavor. And I know that like Apple's got all the resources in the world, but I think it is an open question of like how...
Mike Su (17:18.862)
Yup. Yup.
Mike Stricoff (17:32.854)
how these big tech companies can make content in a way that is like super deserving of the experience of like shaping our culture, you know? And not to say that they're not like, they're making some great stuff. Like obviously Ted Lasso in particular was awesome and they have a million other cool shows. But just in general, like, you know, and I guess that relates to you is like, you're trying to make a platform that is deadly or completely focused.
Mike Su (17:44.654)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (18:01.43)
on the craft of podcasting.
Mike Su (18:03.854)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, and we're unbeholden to any existing business or our mission, you know, from, from the get -go is really hyper -focused on how do we make creators successful, you know, and, and one difference between us and I think other players, most people start with the consumer first. We take sort of a, almost a B2B2C approach or B2C2C, business to creator in the sense that.
Mike Stricoff (18:31.326)
Yeah.
Mike Su (18:32.206)
We feel like if we build great experiences for creators to engage their audiences, they in turn will build a, create a great experience with the consumer. And so our focus is really delivering value to the, the, the creator first. And that just comes from a like, Hey, what if we were building this just for podcasts and what if, and let's take a really deep look at, you know, how podcasts are created, what's valuable to the creator. And, you know, like, for example, even, you know, one thing we're, we're just about to introduce our being able to put.
you know, within the, on the top of the comment section links to all the deals to your sponsor deals. Right. And so you could be able to basically tap, you know, and podcasts are one of the number one ways to build awareness, right? Like people always listen to podcasts. I found out about this mattress and that mattress, but by the time they want to buy it, they just go home onto their desktop and type in the mattress. And then honey gives them a coupon code and they buy it. And so the podcast did all the heavy lifting of awareness building, but didn't get any credit for the conversion. And so.
Mike Stricoff (19:07.798)
wow. Yeah.
Mike Su (19:29.55)
That's one thing where like, Hey, if you think about it from the point of view of the podcast creator, how do we help increase that conversion rate? Well, we could put it right there in the comment section where the audience is most engaged and that'll help drive higher conversion rates. And that just come to your point. It's when you're hyper -focused on serving a specific consumer, in this case, a creator, it just allows you to do things in a way that maybe might not be obvious to other players who have other...
God's to serve, so to speak.
Mike Stricoff (20:00.342)
Yeah, that's so interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that because I think I've, you know, when you're trying to build a new platform, right? A new tech platform that has, you know, creators and audience together, there's this like chicken or the egg dilemma that sort of develops, right? Because you need creators to supply great content that attracts the audience. But if you don't have an audience, then the creators don't have anyone to like,
Mike Su (20:18.542)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (20:29.366)
show their content to and monetize and all of that. So there are some out there that I've talked to in the past where they're like, what should we do? Should we go for this first or this first? So you guys are making the bet on the creator side of that equation. Like, are you, are you concerned that creators will come in and then maybe like the audience hasn't coalesced yet around cooler and like they will like lose faith in it or like, how do you, how do you get past that?
Mike Su (20:53.102)
Yeah, so our approach is again, like make it super valuable to the creator, right? So for example, in our product, we have comments, we have push notifications when people engage with you, you get, you know, strict, you just got somebody just replied to your comment. We got streaks. So, you know, Hey, it's your streaks about to expire. Come listen to the newest episode of play the point, you know, and these things keep audiences coming back. So on our platform, our listeners will listen at a much higher rate than on any other platform, because again,
Every other platform is just literally throwing a message in a bottle, throwing it in the ocean and praying that somebody will see it on the other end. And so we, these mechanics that have been available to every social platform, any app on your phone have never been available to podcasters. So by introducing these things, our audiences will listen at a higher rate than any other platform. And because they do that, the, the podcast creator will get more free ad inventory per listener.
than on any other platform. So not only will they be able to engage and build their community, they'll be able to monetize at a higher rate. And so to us, that's a very compelling value proposition to the creator. And so for us, this is not about audience growth for the creator, at least in the early stages, this is about audience engagement. So the creator will then, for example, from Play the Point, would be willing to go, hey, everybody join us on Cooler. Let's go talk about the episode afterwards, because I know as a creator,
Every single person I send there is going to listen X percent more and generate X percent more ad inventory per listener than any other platform. And so that approach, you know, and again, this actually harkens back to, you know, Snapchat a little bit in the early days where, you know, I know, Bobby would talk about the early days where they would go onto Thursday, Promenade and, and they were handing off flyers telling people to go download Snapchat and people were like, what, you know, and so,
It wasn't really taken off. And then it ended up, I think Evan's cousin or niece was going to high school in Orange County. She started using it, shared it with her friends. And before I know it, the whole school was using it. And so even though that was just a couple hundred kids and Kim Kardashian wasn't on and LeBron James wasn't on, that community was there and everybody that they wanted to communicate with was there. And so that felt alive and immediately useful to them. And so similarly, if for example, only
Mike Su (23:17.518)
Play the point audience came here and joined the platform. It would already feel useful to their, to the, your community, even if Joe Rogan isn't on here yet or, you know, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (23:31.542)
Yeah, so that you're alluding to play the point being on cooler. You can in fact, listen to the pod on cooler right now, download the app and might correct me from wrong, but there you'll be prompted to put in a code like an access code for an invite. And if you use the word point in all caps, P O I N T, you will be given special access to cooler so you can listen to play the point. How about that? We are on cooler officially right now.
Mike Su (23:40.558)
Yes you can.
Mike Su (23:46.702)
Yup, yup, yup.
Mike Stricoff (23:59.446)
If you go in right now and do everything I just said, you can get in. Now, how about that?
Mike Su (23:59.758)
Yes, sir.
Mike Su (24:05.102)
Exclusive to the Play the Point audience. Early access.
Mike Stricoff (24:07.542)
So I happen to know the co -founder or I'm sorry, the CEO and are you co -founder also? Did I say that before? Yeah. Co -founder ends. I happen to know the co -founder and CEO of cooler. So that was helpful. What is the flow like for the rest of the creator community? Is it like, like do they, are you asking them to do anything special for, for cooler, at least in the interim? You know, cause I know like for this podcast, for example,
Mike Su (24:16.11)
Yeah, co -founder, co -founder CEO. Yeah.
You got a guy. You got a guy. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (24:36.151)
You know, there are platforms like Transistor and some others where you have a singular point of entry of like the titling and all of that stuff and the upload process and then the analytics all kind of funnel into like one spot. Are you going to be like part of all of those things or are there going to be like more bespoke things to do for Cooler?
Mike Su (24:54.51)
Yeah. So that's part of the exciting thing about podcasts as well. If you can't tell, I love this business. But you know, it's an open, it's open, open design through RSS. So literally like we can today, you could listen to any publicly available podcast on Cooler because we're just pulling in the RSS feed. So you have, you don't have to do anything to change the flow in terms of titling, in terms of your uploads and whatnot. And any listen on Cooler.
Mike Stricoff (24:59.702)
Yeah.
Mike Su (25:23.502)
ends up still accruing back to your top line numbers within your hosting servers. When you're looking at your hosting servers, the number of downloads, it'll just be another line item of an app that's providing you downloads. And so literally from a workflow perspective, somebody could listen and engage and drive bigger numbers for you without you doing a thing. But then if you come on, yeah, yeah, how easy is that? But outside of that, when you go into for podcasts that haven't been claimed,
Mike Stricoff (25:43.254)
I like the sound of that. Yeah.
Mike Su (25:52.43)
If you know, say you have a listener who has a podcast, they find their podcast, you can tap on request to join. And then on the backend, once we're verified, you'll get your account will be associated as a host. And then that unlocks comments and you're good to go from there. And you could welcome to drive your audiences there as well.
Mike Stricoff (26:09.59)
That's amazing. And then I guess, yeah, just for me thinking about it, I would, you know, if, if I decided to, I guess I would like start to build in cooler functionality into like the content itself, right? Where it's like, Hey, top comments here, like next week, we'll read them. Like you, you mentioned some of those things that you can do.
Mike Su (26:23.086)
Exactly. Yeah.
Mike Su (26:30.254)
Yeah, exactly. And that really is about then the part earlier where I talked about community. One of my favorite podcasts as obviously my, you know, we already betrayed my six or fandom at the beginning of this, but one of my favorite podcast is this one called the rights to Ricky Sanchez. And they do such a good job of building community around that. You know, they have, they have, you know, to me, there are a bunch of hallmarks of like great community, right? Like communities have heroes and villains, right? So we have a common.
person we celebrate and a common enemy we have, you know, so in their case, Sam Hincky is a hero and the sac, the martyr, and then, you know, the NBA and all the rest of the people who are anti analytics, anti process were the enemies. and then you create these inside jokes, inside languages, a harken back and you begin to identify one another, you know, one of their ongoing jokes is, you know, mainstream media, not saying their name, like, you know, a podcast group or whatever, and they don't say the name. So this ongoing joke was say the name.
And, you know, I've walked two games and wearing their merch and somebody goes like, Hey, say the name, say the name. And so, you know, all these types of things are, you know, and then you begin bringing in voicemails and you bring bringing in like comments of the week and somebody gets shout out, you know, like, for example, if you make your way up the leaderboard on cooler, if I get a shout out, yo, strict just moved up on the leaderboard, you know, this week, dah, dah, dah, or, you know, Sue is on a, you know, 28 episode listening streak. All those things suddenly are the old school like.
Hey, I got recognized, I heard my name on the radio and you know, that's sort of, I call it sort of the lottery ticket effect. You know, when somebody wins the lotto, you read the article, it's fine, but like when they have that photo of some person grinning ear to ear holding that giant check, then suddenly you see yourself and you're like, ooh, that could be me someday.
And in the same way, once you start doing like shouting people out on, you know, comments, engagement, and whatnot, they feel recognized and everybody else is like, I want to vie for that as well.
Mike Stricoff (28:27.638)
Yeah. Okay. So, again, download cooler use code point. So you can listen to play the point on cooler. Cooler .fm. So when you were, you decided to like build a new platform, right. Which we glossed over because we started with the fun part, which is like podcasts themselves, right. but I'm really interested.
Mike Su (28:37.454)
Yep. Just go to cooler .fm. Yep.
Mike Su (28:46.19)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (28:55.702)
in what the process was like to build a new content platform. You know, like I think we like, there's a reason why there's not that many, right? It's really hard to do. And so I'm just curious, like, as you've gone through the steps of like, you already told us kind of like how you came up with the idea or like what sort of like generated the idea, but like, what's it been like to actually try to like launch your own content platform?
Mike Su (29:20.686)
Yeah, it's super, I mean, for me as a product guy, this is like the most fun stage of the company is just building stuff and, and then finding out, you know, the scary part of finding out whether people like it or not, that doesn't work or not. And, you know, you have this sort of, you know, sort of like I imagined what a good artist, you know, you look at the blank canvas and you're like, it could be anything. What could we build? I think for us very important, especially for me, I think.
It was really important to kind of hash out what our guiding principles were. Everything out, like a lot of times I think people begin with like, this feature would be cool. That feature would be cool. But for us, it was really important to kind of think through the underlying first principles of why does this need to exist? What do we want to build? And, and from there, if you can answer those questions and what you build, kind of becomes a lot, those answers sort of answer themselves as you go. And so.
For us, not to get overly philosophical, but at least the very most basic thing was what do I want to do to begin with? I kind of think of, when I talk to my kids about social media, I talk about things that sort of, that filled their cups and things that drained their cups, right? And in that sense, like, if you were like, I'm going to just spend the next 10 minutes on TikTok.
and then three hours pass and you're like, crap, I just blew three hours. How do you feel after that? You feel like, man, you feel a little zombified, you feel a little, you know, like sort of your eyes are glazed over, you're like, my gosh, it's dark outside. But, you know, I tell my son, if you plan to go play basketball for an hour and you end up playing for four hours, you're physically exhausted, but emotionally, you feel full, right? You feel your heart is full, you're like, man, that was so awesome, like I feel great.
And I think similarly, there are a lot of activities like reading books that fill your cup. And I happen to think podcasts are one of those things. If you accidentally listen to a podcast for two hours, I don't think you feel like you... And that's not an accident, by the way. Most of these products, the algorithms are designed to draw you in. And there's a term called the machine zone. That's...
Mike Su (31:34.19)
coined for slot machine designs. They designed these mechanics like a near miss. So you're like, I almost won. And so you keep going and going and going. And then when you reach the machine zone, that means you're no longer playing to win, but you're playing to continue playing. And you can psychologically build these mechanics that draw you in to that machine zone. And when they got you in the machine zone, that's that sweet spot. When you see that little lady sitting at the, you know, 25 cent slots, just going there all day long.
They're in the machine zone because they're not even thinking about it. They're just going. And those are the types of things that really drain your cup, right? Like at the end of it, you know, there's no windows around and you look up and you're like, crap, like I just wasted a whole day and I feel like crap. You know, these mechanics that are that.
keep us getting those dopamine hits draws into those kind of machines. So overall, first of all, I want to start with something that I want to, if I'm going to spend all my life and, you know, pour all the effort into doing something, I want to do something that I feel like fills people's cups. And that's a long way to say like why podcasts in particular excite me, because I think the depth of engagement, the relationships that you build through with the host, and also I'm hopeful as community becomes more and more prevalent, the friendships and relationships you build around these communities.
are really fulfilling. And so those are kind of like the philosophical things we thought about a lot upfront and as pillars and that guide us how, you know, when we're making product decisions, then it becomes a lot easier whether we should do something that tricks people into doing, you know, bad things or good things, right?
Mike Stricoff (32:57.494)
Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (33:09.238)
Yeah. I mean, it's you bring that up. And I love that analogy of like the drain the cup and fill the cup because, you know, and at the time of this recording, we're pretty much still in the wake of the surgeon general calling for a label on social media, right. Which like to me, you know, I think people are skeptical if that will actually happen. And some people think it's not warranted or like whatever. But just the idea that that was even thrown out there is like kind of stark and kind of like.
Mike Su (33:25.966)
Mm -hmm.
Mike Stricoff (33:38.23)
like a moment to pause and like actually think. And I've been, I've sort of been thinking about it, not as well articulated as you, but there are certain things like within social media that are bad. And then there's things that are good. It's not all one or the other, right? It's like, there's pros and cons and there's a lot of cons, right? I think like there's a lot of evidence to support that. But yeah, like the way that you feel after using the product is like, that is something that people don't give enough,
Mike Su (33:51.63)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (34:07.19)
like credit to and, and just from your perspective, I mean, you know, we both worked at Snap. You're building a new platform right now. That's got some social features in it. You know, like how, how do we get through all of, like, how do we fix this? You know, it's like, it's such a, and I, and I try to tell people, I'm like, it's not as easy as like, just stop doing it. Right. Because it's social media is such an important part of how people like learn about the world and get their news and.
connect with people, sometimes in healthy ways, sometimes in unhealthy ways. But then, yeah, there's all sorts of other like bad things associated with it too, particularly with young people. So like, where are we going here with all of this from your like product perspective and like your background? I think it's particularly interesting to hear about.
Mike Su (34:44.814)
Yeah.
Mike Su (34:53.582)
Yeah, well, A, first of all, with all the humility in the world, like if I had a magical way to, you know, fix this, I'd be much further along, probably a lot richer as well. That said, I do have strong thoughts on this. I think...
Mike Stricoff (35:06.006)
Yeah.
Mike Su (35:14.574)
A lot of it is inherent in the design of products, right? Like earlier I talked about social graphs. These are very fun. By the time you're getting to moderation and laws and things like that, it's very, very far down the line and you're basically patching the symptom, not the problem. How the graph is constructed, I think a lot about in terms of how we, you know, friction.
You know, as a product guy, again, like prior to Snap, most of my life I'd been thinking about removing friction, fewer buttons, make this easier, make this, and you know, as technologists, we're always like, let's just like make this a seamless, easy experience. And then when you think about life, and again, I think the core of this is thinking about how do we design more products around our life, how humans behave, our human understanding rather than like just sort of technology. And if you think about life, everything that's made you who you are,
has come through friction. The most meaningful things is if I tell you to tell me about your life story, you're not about like, yo, there was this one time I went to this party and it was the best party ever. And then, you know, somehow somebody gave me a billion dollars. No, it's like that time you had to work really hard, you failed, you know, you failed an exam and that changed your trajectory. All these things come from friction, your relationship with your friends.
you know, if they're just like homies that you just run into at parties, they're not going to be really close friends. But the friend that was there when you really needed it and brought you a meal or whatever, that's how friendships deepen. And when you think about it, we've removed all the friction. So, you know, today I get more happy birthday wishes on an annual basis than I've ever gotten in my life. But because somebody gets an, you know, you send me because you get a Facebook email that says,
you know, wish Mike Sue a happy birthday, you click on that link and you write HBD on my wall. And I'm like, no, no, no, but hypothetically, only if I'm Applebee's and I get a free dessert, then I'll say it's my birthday. But, you know, so we've removed all of the friction and.
Mike Stricoff (37:05.334)
Great today today is your birthday. OK.
Mike Su (37:23.95)
But along with that, so you know, we constantly hear in the headlines like, we're more connected than ever before, but teens are lonelier than they've ever been. And it's because we've removed that friction and that meaning that the friction that creates meaning, right? When everybody just writes HBD on my wall, even though I've got this high volume of things, it doesn't feel meaningful anymore. And so I don't feel that much better. But if one person, Strik, if at my birthday, you sent me a
hand -drawn card and sent it to the mail or you know or showed up to my house to grab a meal together that goes means so much more because I appreciate the friction that comes in it and so a lot of it you know we've designed around a zempik instead of designing the workout machine right like we we designed you know the the shortcut like how do we design the easy button and when you design the easy button it creates it it makes it easier to be toxic it creates all these
you know, crazy behaviors. And so how I think a lot, when we think about designing social products, I think it's really important to think about, you know, in our social context, what really drives, drives meaning and that's the right kind of friction. And so, you know, for example, and how that's like super hypothetical, but in theoretical, but things like being able to have a streak and being able to have a leaderboard that shows like actually how much time I've spent invested in the community. And, you know, wow.
You know, strict has listened to, you know, 13 ,000 hours of play the point. You know, he's really invested in this community. He's rewarded for that takes friction. That takes effort. And that effort means something is not just you create an account and started like blasting somebody on the comment section. This really matters. And so we think a lot about like, how do you design for good friction? And I, my hypothesis is that like, as we think about social products, if we design more for.
good friction and I think gaming does an incredible job of this probably more so than other places where you know you have to beat this level you have to beat this level when you beat the level you feel like that feels so good and so how do we design for good friction that feels rewarding that helps us feel like we're growing.
Mike Stricoff (39:39.638)
Yeah, it's so true. It's like there's this legacy of convenience in our culture, right? Like dating back to like the post -World War II era where it was just like, everything's got to be convenient, right? Easy, convenient. And like, you know, the way that people like work and spend their time has changed and evolved, like thereby increasing that need for convenience. But like, there is like, everyone's always thinking about how to make this easier, easier, easier, simpler, more seamless, like you were saying, but not more meaningful.
Mike Su (39:49.998)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Su (40:07.726)
And it's a lot like, yeah, and it, that's why I often compare social media to fast food, right? Like when, when fast food was invented, it was incredible, right? People were like, my gosh, I don't, I don't need to like slave away in the kitchen to prepare a meal. I could just go to this drive -through, spend 99 cents and get a meal and feed, feed my child. Like this is it. How amazing is this? Right? And it's super convenient. And then you realize, man, I've, we've been eating fast food for three weeks straight.
our kids have all gained like, you know, 18 pounds each and we're all dying of coronary disease, you know, like suddenly it's like, Hey, you know, there are some benefits to this and there are times where this is good, but maybe not every single day. Maybe, you know, the, this convenience, I need to pick my spots for the convenient for me to tap into this convenience. And I think similarly, there's some amazing things that happen because social media removed these types of frictions to the fact that I'm still connected to somebody from second grade, like unbelievable, right? Like it's never in the history of.
Mike Stricoff (40:40.694)
Yeah.
Mike Su (41:05.646)
humanity have I been able to do that? But when that is my entire existence and my social network and my content consumption and all of that, and it's all just, you know, click, click, click a few taps away, you know, it's no wonder that we are feeling bloated and like, it's like the equivalent, somebody needs to make the super size me for, for the social media generation where it's like, you know, how are we feeling after that? And we're just now, whether it's the regulation, whether it's the product design, figuring out like, Hey,
Mike Stricoff (41:28.214)
Yeah.
Mike Su (41:35.086)
You know, if I eat McDonald's today, maybe I should eat. And that was great because I love the happy meal and I love the fries and da da. But like tomorrow I'll eat a salad and the next day I'm going to eat a balanced meal and the next day and then, Hey, I, I just, you know, had a great game at my basketball game or treat myself. I'm going to go get McDonald's again.
Mike Stricoff (41:54.742)
Yeah, I know. If only it were so simple for people to like understand balance in this world. I mean, to be fair, after I have in and out, I'm not thinking about balance. So I like, I have some empathy. and I'm not exactly a temple here, you know? So, but so, okay. So, for cooler, right. When did it launch? When did you guys launch it?
Mike Su (41:59.534)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Su (42:04.782)
Yeah, no, no, no. The animal style really. Yeah.
Mike Su (42:11.126)
Nor am I.
Mike Su (42:21.87)
So we launched in private, like at the beginning of this year, we started off with a bunch of sort of smaller scale podcasts to really iterate around the feature set. And we're just at this point right now where we're sort of the effective point where we feel like the product and feature set is pretty sticky and pretty good. And so now we're soon launching with bigger podcasts.
Mike Stricoff (42:45.75)
Yeah. And we didn't even talk about how, when y 'all open the app with promo code point, or invite quote code is probably a better, better term for it. Invite code point. You're a C you'll notice it that Mike and team have like, they've designed everything about it for like your phone for vertical, at least like the version of it that's on your phone. like four pod it's, it's very unique. It's very different from like at the apple podcast app or the Spotify.
Mike Su (42:55.406)
Yeah, yeah, invite code, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (43:15.574)
podcast player. But so, okay, you've launched it, you've got pods in there, you're telling people to get into the app and start to play with it. What does success look like for you here? And I know that can mean a lot of different things, but just to you, what will be a successful next year or several years for Cooler?
Mike Su (43:38.894)
I think really, and hopefully we're leading the charge, but I'm really hungry for innovation in the podcast. Starting first and foremost as a podcast fan, you know, early on you had this moment, I think when I was talking about comments where you kind of looked up in the sky and was like, interesting, what if we, and I can't tell, probably 95 % of my conversations, once,
you sort of peel back the blinders of like a podcast player doesn't have to just be a play button. You could see people's brains turning and go, if you could do that, what about this? So there's a whole world of innovation that's possible once people start. And so I think for us is to sort of break open and take the red pill or the blue pill or whichever pill it was in the matrix that suddenly people can, okay, yeah. So you want to get red pilled, go in and see.
Mike Stricoff (44:28.31)
The red, red pill.
Mike Su (44:33.101)
my gosh, there's this whole other world of possibilities in podcasts. And so we hope we're leading the way in terms of, of, you know, innovating and building all of those cool features that are, that make, that take us into the next phase of podcasting. But whether it's us or somebody else, we hope that the, just beginning to build this momentum around this idea that it could be better starts opening up a wave of innovation that transforms the landscape.
And we kind of like see ourselves as like forming this little rebel alliance of people who were like, let's just, you know, change as possible. Let's go. Let's get behind this. Let's go. Let's make, you know, let's make podcasting better. And I think, you know, what we hope to see is not only our platform innovate, but also be able to drive innovate. You know, what are all the different audio formats that we haven't explored and ways of audio storytelling? You know, if the more we can lower the creative barrier, the more we can introduce new format, you know, ideas and.
things like that, who knows where, what type of innovation that would lead to not only in terms of the product, but in terms of the content that's created.
Mike Stricoff (45:38.87)
fantastic. I'm really happy to hear everything about what you're doing. And like I said, now for like the ninth time, I'll be I'll be in there. So this show will will be in there. So that's, that's pretty exciting for me personally, just to be part of it. So thank you. Let's talk about go ahead.
Mike Su (45:54.51)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm.
I would love to hear, you know, like not to turn the tables, but I also have a mic. So, but like what, what inspired you to start your podcast?
Mike Stricoff (46:08.086)
You okay, so this is the 10th episode of the show and you're the first person to ask me a question. So good on you. So I love podcasts. Also, I've just been always a fan of like talk radio. I grew up listening to Mike and the mad dog in the New York area. And I would just leave that on.
Mike Su (46:11.534)
Alright.
Yay, yay.
Mike Su (46:30.318)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (46:34.294)
as much as I can, WFAN and of course the three hours of afternoon drive for Mike and the Mad Dog. And I would like literally be in my driveway with my car window down, just listening to the show and playing basketball. This is before, you know, AirPods and you know, like all of that, like that was, that probably is like, was like the best way for me to do that. and, and then, you know, in my, my TV, production career, I was, I worked on talk shows for 10 years, you know, like I love.
talk content. I just like enjoy the process of listening to it and hearing people's perspectives and laughing. And there's just like, it's a really great format. And I actually went on a podcast called Making Media, hat tip to those guys. They're at Colossus is the name of their company. And they're making these like investment podcasts that are like really niche, but have like these really powerful audiences. And I went on it and they were nice enough to have me on to talk about like my career.
All they wanted to do was ask me about Skip Bayless for like 45 minutes. not quite that long, but you know, and I get it. And, and you know, thank you, skip for like letting me talk about you. it was always very good to me for the record. but yeah, it was, it was just a really great experience. It was the first time that I had been on one. Right. And I was like, I kind of liked the process of doing this too, you know? And then I started thinking about like, you know, my other businesses that I do and.
you know, the other things that I'm doing. And it was like really synergistic to, to be creating this content. and also like not for nothing, but I think that the stories that people have through 10 episodes so far, including yours have just been super compelling. And like, I don't know if there's a lot of conversation like this happening across the space, especially with people that like used to work at tech companies, right.
Mike Su (48:25.102)
Yep. Yep.
Mike Stricoff (48:27.158)
So it's kind of a good, it was kind of a good time to start it for me, like professionally, the ecosystem at large, there's like a lot of former tech employees now, right. Then there were like three years ago and I'm one of those people. and, and so are you. And there's, there's thousands of others like us. and so it was just all of the things kind of lined up and I love it. I love doing it. I love getting people on. and so, yeah. And so now here we are 10 episodes into play the point, you know,
Mike Su (48:56.846)
Congrats. I mean, but that's the magic of it, right? Like if you think about even the most successful, like Jason Kelsey has become the first NFL center to be recognized without his Jersey on, right? Like, I mean, and I think about how many amazing centers there have been in the NFL at any given time, but he's a first, you know, and you, it's, it speaks to, again, to the power of the medium because of that level of depth that you get to with someone that.
Mike Stricoff (49:08.822)
I know, crazy. Yeah.
Mike Su (49:26.382)
you feel the strength of the affinity. And so I think podcasts have such potential to become, and already have proven the cultural influence and is just going to be more, right? Like if you think about, you know, Cat Williams did that interview on Shannon Sharpe's podcast and you know, to be honest, you know, Cat Williams wasn't a household name for a while now. And then suddenly he was talked about nonstop for weeks on end.
And you know, you think about like, you know, podcast after podcast, like the all in guys, like all of them individually, incredibly successful business people worth ungodly sums of money, but yet nobody outside of Silicon Valley really knew their name. And now they've become these household names and they throw events and thousands of people come to these things. And so podcasts, because of that depth of conversation and things like this,
You know, we could never have this on social media. You know, if it was on Instagram, people would tune out like, you know, after 25 seconds into the level of conversation that you can have really helps you build a different relationship with your audience than, you know, and again, it harkens back to you in the driveway, you know, listening to bad dog or whatever, right?
Mike Stricoff (50:39.414)
Yeah, just draining 15 footers. Like, you don't even know. I had that group like memorize. Yeah.
Mike Su (50:42.574)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were, before you realized I have the mid range, before you knew the mid range was a bad shot. And statistically you had to, you should have, yeah, yeah. You should have stepped about, you know, seven feet back.
Mike Stricoff (50:50.326)
This is well before the Steph Curry era. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (50:57.11)
Yeah, maybe my life would be a lot different, you know. No, but yeah, actually, but it's.
Mike Su (50:59.374)
Yeah. You still be, you'd be an NBA player with the podcast instead.
Mike Stricoff (51:05.238)
Exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would still have a podcast. So but actually that's a really interesting point. And I know the impact that the podcast sort of like explosion has had on talent is really interesting to me. And you mentioned Shannon Sharp. I worked with him on Undisputed and I think his entire career is really indicative of that. Right. Like his media career obviously the Hall of Famer in the NFL and you know the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
started right out of the league on the CBS show where they had a couple of minutes at most to talk, right? Because there's tons of commercials, there's five other guys on the desk, and it's all scripted. They don't really have a real conversation on those shows because they can. They just don't have time to. As much as Terry Bradshaw would love to talk for three hours every Sunday, there's just no time for that. And he certainly could, I'm sure. But so Shannon went from that and then sort of slowly...
Mike Su (51:40.398)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Su (51:51.15)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (52:02.646)
entered other formats that allowed his personality to really show, right? Like he went from there, then he went to undisputed where I was with him. And I think that's where people really started to get to know him just because like it's a very simple idea for, for content. It's like, if we give these really interesting and talented people time, you will like have a much deeper experience with them. It's not that hard. And so Shannon went to there and now he's doing his first take thing and the podcasts are like,
Mike Su (52:06.158)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Su (52:22.318)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (52:29.558)
the end state of like his journey through the content ecosystem.
Mike Su (52:33.998)
Yeah, and it's funny because I was just watching the NBA finals that just ended and they have the halftime show, they cut to commercial break and they came back for a quick segment which was barely, honestly, each commentator had about three and a half words to say. And I was like, that must be so frustrating as somebody, any one of these folks with so much to offer.
to just basically, you know, Michael Wilbon is trying to figure out how to fit it in less than 140 characters into, you know, and so, and by the way, you know, again, like this goes to on social media, like when, when you tweet, you only have that much room. And so everybody is kind of perceived as sort of the stereotype of who they are. Like, well, you know, strict, the digital media guy, or, you know, this guy's the athlete, this guy's a Republican. And so,
It's really hard to have nuance and which is why I think some of the conversation is so toxic now because we immediately default to like, you know, this person is stereotype. If they like this, that, and the other, they are therefore this and either write them off or their family to me. Right. And what happens when you get to know someone is you begin having, you know, I mean, you could just think about your family. You begin having a tolerance for.
the differences, right? Like, we may be politically different, but we can talk about that and we can, you know, da, da, da, and because I know strict, you're a good guy, right? And I know at their heart and that's what podcasts are. They kind of creates this depth of relationship that then allows a little bit more affordance for our differences. And that is really hard to come by nowadays, right? Like there's affordance for differences. And if we can have affordance for differences, then we can actually have a little bit more conversation without just saying,
you're the biggest jerk in the world or you are, you know, the second coming of Jesus. Like this, you know, and so I think that depth and it again goes to human nature. Like we're designed to be in conversation. We're designed to be in relationship. And if we don't have the mediums to actually have that or they're stripped down into these low friction sort of, you know, bite sized things, it becomes really hard to build the level of relationship that is necessary towards human happiness.
Mike Su (54:52.174)
you know, thriving societies and all that. So.
Mike Stricoff (54:56.022)
That's, I love that. Yeah. And I think your point about the will bonds of the world trying to get their points across in five seconds is, you know, that I'm sure they all understand that, you know, that halftime show in particular is always like a bill paying moment, you know, and then they understand that I think, but I honestly, like, I totally agree with everything you're saying. And I think that the better the talent, the better off that they'll be in long form.
Mike Su (55:13.134)
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Stricoff (55:24.854)
It almost in a weird way to me makes you really appreciate the guys that made this work in the short form, like a Terry Bradshaw. Like the fact that he was able to become this massive personality inside of that format is like remarkable, right? but okay, I'm going to, you, you were earlier. I got one more thing for you. earlier you mentioned a podcast that you've, that you really like. I forget off top my head. Yeah. So I think you're.
Mike Su (55:33.038)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Su (55:50.766)
The Rice and Ricky Sanchez, yeah. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (55:54.678)
you're watching a podcast network, you obviously love the space. Give us three podcasts that like, if you're, you know, I actually happen to be driving across the United States pretty soon and I could use some recommendations. Like actually that is true. So three podcasts could be, you know, there's no, no other criteria there. It could be like a narrative one. It could be a talk show, it could be sports, it could be news, like whatever you think. Three podcasts that like,
Mike Su (56:07.758)
Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (56:24.31)
you think we should all know about.
Mike Su (56:26.67)
That's a good, so I lean towards sports. So first of all, the Rice and Ricky Sanchez, my number one favorite as a Sixer fan, they were all in on the process and Sam Hinkie and everything. It got us through the process, the worst days, the darkest days of it. Spike Eskin and Mike Levin, the hosts are hilarious and awesome. So that's number one. Number two is a podcast, I don't know if you've heard of Ear Hustle?
Mike Stricoff (56:36.15)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Stricoff (56:44.022)
Insane, yeah.
Mike Su (56:55.086)
Okay, so Ear Hustle is a podcast made in prison, at San Quentin prison. And personally, I've been involved with criminal justice reform and nonprofits in that space. And so it's, again, speaking to humanizing, like, you know, if you just on the face of it, like, wow, murderers, killers, whatever, why would I want to listen to their podcast? But you get to understand what the experience is like, how they grew up and, you know, just understanding.
Mike Stricoff (57:00.47)
Okay.
Mike Su (57:23.918)
prison life and all that. It's just a wonderful, wonderful podcast. It shot up to like the top charts a couple years ago. Just really fun listen and the hosts have such personality. And so really love that one. And probably one more recently that's come on my radar is, Pablo Torre's new podcast. Pablo Torre finds out just.
What a variety of topics they cover. You know, Pablo just has this curiosity, you know, so everything from like some kid that was faking himself as a Sports Illustrated for kids reporter to most recently, yeah. Tom Havistro just came out with that deep dive essay on Michael Jordan's sort of false stats in his defensive player of the year, campaign. yeah. So, so, you know, all this stuff,
Mike Stricoff (58:16.022)
I bet that's a catnip for you. Yeah.
Mike Su (58:20.974)
He just finds these weird stories that I love.
Mike Stricoff (58:25.622)
All right, well, I'm a little disappointed that you didn't say play the point, but I, you know.
Mike Su (58:29.806)
Play the point that goes without saying. I mean, if you're listening, if you're listening to this, you're already a subscriber. So this is like preaching, preaching to the choir, preaching to the choir.
Mike Stricoff (58:35.574)
That's fair. That is fair. You literally would have been, but I would have appreciated the breath, you know, your attempt at getting Brownie points. Mike, thank you so much for coming on. That was absolutely amazing. Good luck with cooler. Good luck with everything. And for everybody listening one more time, cooler .fm play the point. You can listen to it there. How cool is that?
Mike Su (58:43.406)
Hahaha!
Mike Su (58:58.894)
It's cooler than anything else.
Mike Stricoff (59:01.174)
Thanks Mike.
Mike Su (59:02.894)
All right. Thanks, Rick.