Episode 744 | Bluesky, TinySeed is Raising, YC Backs Competitors, and More Hot Take Tuesday Topics

Rob Walling:
Welcome back to Startups. For the Rest Of Us, I’m Rob Walling. This is Hot Take Tuesday. In this episode, we talk about the rise of Blue Sky and a r and Tracy wind up making a four figure cash bet about where they think Blue Sky’s going to be three years from now. Talk a little bit about TinySeed and how we are raising our next fund, how Y Combinator backs competitors and more hot take Tuesday topics. Before we dive into that, the SaaS Launchpad course, this is the most comprehensive and best course I’ve ever released on early stages, the very early stages of just getting started. Idea validation, launching, building a launch list, getting to your first revenue. The course is live and we now have a free sample module called the DNA of a great SaaS idea. It’s a 28 minute video. This is 28 minutes of about, I think we have nine and a half, maybe 10 hours total of instructional material as well as dozens of worksheets, checklists, forum where people are discussing the ideas and throwing ’em back and forth. 

It’s at SaaS launchpad.co if you want to check it out. This is the first and only trial that we’ve offered for this course to give you an idea of the level and the quality of the content because the quality of the content is far, far superior than stuff I’m putting out on YouTube. It is far more in depth and it is a book level depth in a video course with full transcript summaries and all that. So SaaS launchpad.co, click the start free button to download the free sample, the DNA of a great SaaS idea. And with that, let’s dive into Hot Take Tuesday. This week I’m joined once again by Tracy makes on Twitter,  

Tracy Osborn:
Well, I’m there, but or tracy osborne.com on Blue Sky.  

Rob Walling:
Ooh, blue Sky. We’re going to get into that in just a moment. And Mr. And our set on Twitter.  

Einar Vollset:
Absolutely. How you doing  

Rob Walling:
As well as your real name? Are you on Blue Sky?  

Einar Vollset:
No.  

Rob Walling:
All right. Are you going to get on Blue Sky?  

Einar Vollset:
No.  

Rob Walling:
All right, so let’s talk about  

Tracy Osborn:
This. I would bet money you are.  

Rob Walling:
First topic of the day, is Blue Sky going to do it? Meaning do we think Blue Sky is going to survive and thrive? Tracy, I’d like you do. I need you to steal, man, this argument of Blue Sky because it sounds like you are leaving Twitter in favor of Blue Sky. Talk us through what’s going on.  

Tracy Osborn:
I am a Twitter OG whenever that year. That was way back in the day and I freaking loved Twitter seven, and it was one of the things that really catapulted my career in tech and I thought I was all in. But I got to say the vibe has changed and the vibe has changed pretty significantly in, it’s been changing for a little bit of time due to certain events with the selling of Twitter and whatnot. But I feel like it’s very different in the last few months. And for me personally, it doesn’t suit my purpose anymore and it’s not a place that I find very fun. It’s not useful for me for my career stuff, and Blue Sky seems to be taking hold. It’s like Twitter in 2007, 2008, and that’s really fun. So I am over on Blue Sky enjoying those early days where people are doing a bunch of little apps and creating analytics and doing little silly things. All the things that you go to be able to do on Twitter with the API stuff, I’m sure it’s going to change and evolve over time, but it just, it’s the kind of thing that I want to be a part of rather than what Twitter has turned into now.  

Rob Walling:
Got it. So for you it’s a personal preference of the type of social media that you’d like to be part of  

Tracy Osborn:
And I also feel like there’s an opportunity, might as well make an account. I did one for TinySeed, just I’m going to cross post between TinySeed and Twitter and Blue Sky for the time being because I feel like might as well. And if it does take off then it’s already there and it’s pretty nice to have that in there because Blue Sky, you can verify using your domains, so it’s really easy for people to find TinySeed. It’s just TinySeed dot com. So I feel like there’s some business reasons to do it, jumping on a network when it’s early, but largely for me it is personal preference in terms of the way I want to experience a social media network  

Rob Walling:
And our V set, what’s the counterpoint?  

Einar Vollset:
These are all good points. I think I just can’t be bothered to join another thing. I’m like, why do I care? I mean honestly, I’ve been on Twitter since 2007. I think I am on there all the time. You see, it’s changed radically. It hasn’t changed all that much for me. It’s always kind of been a show for years now. That’s what I’m used to. It is what it is.  

Tracy Osborn:
I mean, you’re in good hands with your posting, so it is. That’s true.  

Einar Vollset:
And 

I think certainly it used to be a certain kind of place I think before and it was pretty left wing, it was pretty progressive, it was pretty of a type and I think it’s become more balanced let’s say now than before. And so I think you’re more likely to see things that maybe you don’t agree with than you used to. I feel like it used to be very, if you were a San Francisco type liberal, you get a lot of reinforcement of the things that you believe on the old Twitter versus now you definitely get some of the other stuff. And I don’t know some of the stuff, there’s no doubt that I see full on. I see both communists and Extreme right wing white nationalists on Twitter more than I used to, but I mean it’s always been for me, I just don’t think it’s changed all that much I think.  

Rob Walling:
And how about Blue Sky? Do you think Blue Sky will gain traction and be around in three years and be bigger than it is today?  

Einar Vollset:
No, I think it’s just a hissy fit to a degree. And I feel like it’s been that there’s been Threads was kind of the same. What was the other one before that? Wasn’t there another one? Not this Macon Bason. There you go. That was the new thing that was supposed to be a thing, and I’m like, yeah, okay, great. If it becomes a thing, then it’ll be a thing. And I am not saying I’m not going to wander over there, but right now I’m like, look, I only need so much screen addiction. Twitter gives me plenty of that.  

Rob Walling:
And for me, I think we’ve kind of heard two viewpoints here pro and con, and I’m genuinely the middle. I do have an account on Blue Sky, I’m Rob Walling dot com if folks want to hook up with me there, and I’m more doing it to keep an eye on what’s going on. I am posting some of my Twitter posts over on Blue Sky. I find that the community is much smaller. I know everyone that I’ve followed in essence, which is interesting for now, but the volume over there, it’s just very light. If I open Blue Sky a couple times a day tops, I’m like, oh, I’m all caught up because I’m just looking at the people you follow tab and I only follow hundreds of people. So it’s not just this constant free flowing flow of stuff that I don’t necessarily care about Twitter for me, I don’t care about the political stuff. 

It just doesn’t bother me either way, left or right. I’m just kind of like whatever. I mean, if something’s offensive, obviously it bothers me, but I’m not seeing an inordinate amount of left wing or right wing or whatever. I’m just seeing. I don’t care about, I’m seeing stuff from whether it’s Elon Musk or some celebrity who posts something or blah and it’s just like, I didn’t follow this person. I don’t give a fuck about this topic at all. So that’s the thing that I’m a little fed up with. So I’m going that there’s the what is there, the four U tab, and then there’s people you follow tab, but then I go to people you follow, there’s a reason. There’s an algorithm that is boring. There’s a lot of people I follow that’s like, man, I really don’t care about what’s going on with you.  

Einar Vollset:
I’ll say that one thing I have started doing with the following that I had to do when you guys sort of forced onto the four U tab is when you see things that you’re like, it’s stupid, tell it. It does work pretty well. I feel like if you’re just like, I don’t seeing what I see on Twitter, I’m like, whoa. Or X, sorry. Then I think like, well, you’re just not telling it what you don’t like, because it pretty quickly shapes into if you spend half a day looking through and being not interested, not interested, not interested, it does update pretty quickly I would think.  

Tracy Osborn:
So I have one more point before we kind of evolve the conversation, but I just wanted to bring it back for folks who might be thinking about should I move over and the vibes of blues for folks who are indie hackers, makers trying to share what you’re doing in public. So if that’s something that you look forward to being part of a community of folks, sharing what you’re working on, how you’re building your next indie project and whatnot, then I would say check out Blue Sky. I think that in particular, that area has been really taking off.  

Rob Walling:
And Tracy, your prediction, do you think Blue Sky will be around in three years and bigger and have more traction than it is today?  

Tracy Osborn:
I would bet so. I could be wrong, but it feels like it terms of the herd instinct of folks and the herd instinct of tech press and whatnot. There’s more now than there was when Macon and Threads and everything else launched a few years ago, including Blue Sky, which was the two years, I guess Blue Sky has been around for a few years and nothing was really happening. And then finally this magical moment happened where people all of a sudden moved over and they had that inflection point. I think that now makes the service more useful.  

Rob Walling:
And so just because we want to keep things interesting. Tracy Einar, what are you going to bet? What kind of cash are we going to put on this bet of It’s a three years out, so someone’s going to have to remind us. Reach out. Listen to this episode.  

Einar Vollset:
I think it should be a hundred bucks.  

Rob Walling:
Oh, I was going to say a  

Tracy Osborn:
Thousand.  

Rob Walling:
Wow. Whoa. Now we’re talking. Yeah. All right. You heard it here first. Tracy Osborn. Thanks. Three years. Wait, AER has to agree to  

Tracy Osborn:
1,002.  

Einar Vollset:
Whoa, whoa. What’s the definition of being around here? Because I can see Tracy buying bluesky.com and just spinning up her own little thing three years from now just to get a,  

Tracy Osborn:
Which bluesky.com is not the network,  

Einar Vollset:
Isn’t it?  

Tracy Osborn:
That’s someone else. So I’m sure they’re just  

Einar Vollset:
Wait minute, wait a minute. Why do they name it bluesky if they don’t own blues sky.com? What is the domain then?  

Tracy Osborn:
It’s like B sky.  

Einar Vollset:
What? Actually let’s make it $10,000. This isn’t going to last you into the fucking next year. Forget it.  

Tracy Osborn:
No, I’m capping out a thousand here.  

Rob Walling:
So a thousand dollars and yeah, not that it’s around in three years, but that it has significantly more traction. Do you know what’s the daily active users right now? Anyone?  

Einar Vollset:
I mean it’s Tracy and you guys. That’s two.  

Rob Walling:
So I just did a quick Google and it says that Blue Sky has 20 million users. That’s not daily active. That’s not monthly active. It says user. So I’m thinking that’s registered account. So what is the definition of in three years, this being around and having significantly more traction,  

Einar Vollset:
Significantly more, a hundred million.  

Rob Walling:
I was going to say 50 or a hundred. It’s got to be somewhere in there. If it’s 30 is not it. This is a dying social network. If it adds 10 million in three years, so let’s say a hundred, I like that.  

Tracy Osborn:
I would also say if Rob Walling posts more on Blue Sky than Twitter, at that point, I would consider it a live network at that point. Wow.  

Einar Vollset:
Okay. So all I have to do is convince Rob not to post more on there and make a thousand bucks. Hey  

Tracy Osborn:
Rob, you want to make 500 bucks? Sure deal. Do that to your detriment,  

Rob Walling:
Moving on. And where is Threads and all this threads? What are you doing, man?  

Tracy Osborn:
Threads just engage. Every time I open Instagram, it’s like, Hey, let’s look at the thing that make people pissed off so they’re all responding to this. So for me, it’s threat. I mean, I clicked on it a few times. It is interesting. People are like, oh, I was at the airport and Delta screwed me over and I talked to this person and I clicked on those a few times because like, Ooh, I want to know what happens next. And then I realized, wait, it’s just pulling me in by making me pissed  

Rob Walling:
Off. Exactly. It’s the worst of  

Tracy Osborn:
Social media. And so Zuckerberg, he just announced, he finally put in, because Blue Sky is taking off, they added an option. So you can just see the folks you’re following on threads. They’re feeling some pressure from Blue Sky and they’re changing threads in response. I think folks are so fed up with threads that I feel like they’ve kind of missed the boat, so to speak.  

Einar Vollset:
I don’t get it. So the reason I think I didn’t sign up for threads was I have a private Instagram, just family things and you have to use this account. And I’m like, no, I’m not doing that. This is a private, this is why I never signed up for Threads. I just didn’t want to open that Pandora’s box. So why aren’t people pissed off with threats?  

Rob Walling:
It’s just too algorithmically driven. Everything is engagement based. All the posts you see is people being angry or people doing When I post A, so what are the most underrated guitar solos of all bands from the seventies? And then you want to weigh in, right? You’re like, oh my gosh. Well, obviously Jimmy Page is solo on StarWay to Heaven is just underrated, dah dah, dah.  

Einar Vollset:
You’re so old. Dude,  

Rob Walling:
That’s seventies. Are you nearly 60? No, not even close. And so that feels just rude. I wonder.  

Einar Vollset:
Played rude. There we go. Perfect.  

Rob Walling:
For listeners who don’t know, I just held up my a RP card. Someone thought it was funny to sign me up for the American Association of Retired People here  

Einar Vollset:
In the United States. It wasn’t a problem.  

Rob Walling:
Anyways, it’s engagement bait. It’s just vapid content. It almost feels like just listical type stuff. So I go there, I don’t go there anymore. I’m just like, I don’t need this in my life. It’s not interesting. So let’s move on to our second topic. I hear rumor that TinySeed is raising their third fund, a r vol set TinySeed dot com slash invest. If you are an accredited investor and you want to invest in US companies or UK entities, you want to talk people through what’s going on. We’re just kicking this off.  

Einar Vollset:
I mean, I guess most people know TinySeed and what it is and why we’re doing it and all that stuff. We’ve been doing it now since 2019, so it’s been half a decade. Unbelievably  

Rob Walling:
First startup accelerator for SaaS.  

Einar Vollset:
Yeah, and it’s worth thinking about 2019, what was going on at the time. It was right around the time actually it was Sam Altman now of OpenAI who wrote an article, I think he was YC president at the time or maybe he just left or just starting. He wrote this article saying how to invest in startups. And his main point was don’t invest in anything unless it can be 20 billion. And really TinySeed was sort of a response to that. It was like, look, there’s got to be a different way to help founders who wear successes selling to private equity or strategic for 50 or a hundred or a couple million dollars. That sounds like success I think to most people. And so really that’s what we’ve been trying to do with TinySeed and we’ve been doing it, like I said, we did our first fund 2019 deployed. 

That was kind of at the time I actually got some advice saying, you should call this your fund zero prototype fund. And I kind of wish I had done, but I didn’t. So it is our fund one. We raised about $5 million. I’m sure our compliance person is going to shoot me now, but our sort of mark on there is we’re at about two two and a half x markup on that fund, which it’s not quite apples to apples, but certainly Carta came out with a venture benchmark report here earlier this year and we’re basically in the top five to 15% of most metrics of venture funds. We’ve started returning capital from that fund. And then we raised our second fund in, well, two funds really. One US focused and one European EMEA focused in 2021 in 2022. And those are also starting to sort of trend the same way. 

And really this fund, the strategy here is like, look, we think this seems to be working and we’re sort of just looking to keep executing on that strategy. So if this is interesting to people get in touch through that invest page, you’ll eventually end up in my inbox and I’ll reach out and I can share some more information. And like I said, you have to be accredited or a sophisticated investor depending a little bit on the fund and there’s some minimums and some things there, but certainly get in touch and I can describe what we got going on.  

Rob Walling:
And we’ve invested in a lot of companies approaching 200 B, two B SaaS companies, and so that we’re going to continue investing hopefully at that pace over the next several years. So it’s a really nice way to index in quotes into a lot of early stage B2B SaaS companies. I don’t know of any other place that you can do it. We do it just the ecosystem of MicroConf TinySeed, this podcast and my books and all that. It really has, if you’ve ever been to a MicroConf event in person or online, it’s a unique group of folks and a good chunk of the TinySeed companies come out of folks who are in this community.  

Tracy Osborn:
I mean, it’s the REDDEST community, the best community out there.  

Einar Vollset:
Yeah, it is. I think it’s one of those things where it’s like, look, if you believe that sort of B2B SaaS, the mostly bootstrap, there’s value creation there. It is one of the better ways to access that market. It’s hard to do as an individual investor just because it’s so early. You really need to be making enough bets that you have the chance of finding the ones that do really quite well and getting access to that deal flow. And that’s very, very hard to do as an individual investor and probably only a handful of people worldwide could do it in sort of the same way that we do.  

Rob Walling:
Our third story of the day is TechCrunch article about Y Combinator. It says Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies. Their data shows it’s not just AI code editors. And to give folks background, if you’re an accelerator and you’re investing in a lot of companies, you inevitably will back competitors over time. And at TinySeed, we have also had to face this because you can’t invest in 200 B2B SaaS startups and expect to never invest in two companies that compete, right? So 500 startups has this Techstars yc, they’re all going to have it, but this TechCrunch article where they analyzed the data was interesting. I have kind of mixed feelings about it. I think I’ll probably kick it over to Tracy for first thoughts.  

Tracy Osborn:
The thing that really resonated with me, particularly because I’m part of the TinySeed applications process and going through interviews and picking folks and sending over offers, is that they specifically called out that they are backing the founders, not necessarily the idea, which is very similar, pretty much what we are doing as well because things change over time. People pivot, they find new ideas, they change their positioning, and folks can already, even if we try to do it based on the companies themselves and try not to back competitors, then eventually they’re going to be competing At some point people are going to, they might pivot, move around, might. Yeah, totally over time. So I thought I really resonated with that part and I was like, okay, good. I mean that we won’t really compete with yc, but it does show how the right person, the right driven person who is all in just executing super fast and doing really good stuff. It’s something we do at TinySeed and YC is doing that as well. But also yc, what are they doing per batch? I guess they’re doing four batches per year now and hundreds per season.  

Rob Walling:
I think it’s 150 to 200.  

Tracy Osborn:
Yeah. Well at TinySeed we have some competition, but then you step back at yc and then of course they specifically say in the article that even within batches and even within, I forget what they call it, but a cohort with their one partner, they’ve had competitors within that. And I’m like, that’s a little bit too close for me for my comfort with TinySeed. I want people to feel comfortable. This is something I did I had to deal with in 500 startups because I was with another startup doing wedding stuff, and that’s a whole podcast on its own, how awful that was. So I’m always cognizant of that at TinySeed. I’m surprised at YC doing that, but they’re kicking butt, so they must be doing something right.  

Einar Vollset:
I think it’s hard. One of the points that we make at TinySeed founders too is like, look, even if we had a strict, which we don’t, a strict policy, we would never back somebody who’s competing to anybody, not possible, but companies pivot all the time. It’s almost like a religion just to be like, it’s not working. Let’s do something completely different. And what are you going to do? Say people like, sorry, you can’t pivot into what you want to pivot to because we’re already backed someone doing that. That’s not going to work particularly as a minority investor, but just in general, it’s just like you can’t stop people doing that. Like I said, and the batch sizes are now, I think it’s more than 150 now. I think it is probably a couple of hundred. It used to be for the longer. I think 2020 or 2021 was the high point. It was like 300 or 400 per batch,  

Rob Walling:
But they were doing two batches a year. Now if they’re doing four, it’s got to be a little smaller. Yeah.  

Einar Vollset:
Oh, that’s right. Oh, then it might be a hundred or 150. I don’t know.  

Rob Walling:
So folks have an idea. We back across Americas and emea, we do two rounds per year every six months, and we get about 22 to 30 companies between both of those. So still a good pace, but it allows us to be a lot more hands-on and ideally not back direct competitors within the same batch. That’s kind of something we have been able to avoid to date because that feels like it could be a little bit awkward.  

Tracy Osborn:
I should mention that if there’s anyone who’s like TinySeed or yc do both. We have a few folks that have gone into TinySeed and then gone to yc. There’s advantages. I say obviously as someone who’s running a TinySeed accelerator program and being very biased towards it, but also my husband went through Y Combinator for different programs like YC is what they do, they kick butt at. And what we do, I think we kick butt at it too, but they don’t necessarily conflict. So if there’s anyone who is like, you know what, I’m looking for an accelerator program in B2B SaaS, we are fans of yc and we do encourage folks who are in TinySeed that feel like that’s the place where they want to go to jump into that, but you’re going to have a very different experience in terms of that. We have a lot fewer founders, a lot of you companies, whereas in YC, you’re going to be one of thousand. But they have other advantages that make up for it.  

Rob Walling:
And we focus on B2B SaaS. We are some of the best in the world at this. And so if you are B2B SaaS, you’re going to get more direct help. But man, if you want to raise buckets of money, this is going to play a better place than yc easy to raise. Our next story is an article on Swapnil Han’s blog. Sorry about the pronunciation there. We will certainly link this up. Title is procrastination and the fear of not being good enough, and it’s actually a short article. There’s some headings, am I just not good enough? Do I care too much about what others think? Pushing through to be able to ship stuff. The reason I bring this up is imposter syndrome is often talked about in startup space and we see mindset being such a critical element to founder success that we actually retroactively went back. 

We have our tiny C Playbook, which is seven different modules. We added playbook zero that is all about mindset. And this is a big part of it is getting over imposter syndrome. It’s not fake until you make it because faking it, I have such issues with this online of people faking stuff that’s not real, but it is internally maybe having more confidence than you think you, you should. But people get hung up and they get analysis paralysis and they don’t take action. They don’t know if what they’re doing is right and blah, blah, blah. And that is really what I wanted to call out because I know a lot of founders feel this and I know a lot of founders deal with this as they’re starting their company of not knowing what to do next, not knowing if they’re going to succeed, wondering when everybody’s going to find out they don’t know what they’re doing. So to kick us off and our ep, have you seen this trait in founders and what is your take on getting over it?  

Einar Vollset:
Yeah, I think it’s actually one of the biggest mistakes you can do as a founder. That’s sort of what I think. And I think not like fear not being good enough. That’s hard. Just get over your fear not being good enough. But I think what it materializes into a lot of the time is like you say, analysis paralysis, needing more and more and more data and favoring analysis over just action. And it’s one of the things that we tell our founders pretty early on and just try to hammer into them. And if I could filter it for this at the interview stage, I would just because I think it’s so important just as having a bias for action and being okay with operating under uncertainty. We had to kick off in Barcelona here a couple of weeks ago and I told this piece then I was like, look, a lot of the time this analysis paralysis or not moving fast enough, not moving stuff tends to be because founders, they really want to reduce uncertainty. 

They kind of don’t want to spend resources or time worrying that it’s the wrong thing. It’s uncertain whether they’re going to get a payback, particularly if you’re sort of bootstrapped, you don’t have a lot of resources, you don’t want to waste it. But my point that I was making these guys is like, look, you want to embrace uncertainty. That’s what you need. If you didn’t have uncertainty, you’d be dead in the water. As a startup, if you don’t have uncertainty on something, there’s nothing for you to exploit. If there was an market opportunity that had zero uncertainty about it, how to do it or whether it was worth doing, then someone more better resource than you would’ve already done it. And so a startup person as even as a bootstrapper, you want to operate in environments that have reasonably high uncertainty and you don’t want to wish it away. 

And I think your superpower as a startup founder tends to be tolerating operating uncertainty and making mistakes and still being able to move fast and do things under those kind of conditions. And I think sometimes around founders who sort of wish there was less uncertainty, but I actually think that would be a mistake. I don’t think there is put a gold at the end of the rainbow if there is no uncertainty. I just don’t think it’s a thing. You have to embrace the fact that, look, if you want no uncertainty, you should go get a job. And even that’s not completely uncertain, but you shouldn’t want to be a startup guy if you can’t oral, if you can’t handle that uncertainty and sort of embrace it.  

Rob Walling:
How about you Tracy? What are your thoughts?  

Tracy Osborn:
I definitely drink the TinySeed slash Einar.  

Einar Vollset:
There’s  

Tracy Osborn:
Another place where I see there’s a side to this. I see in myself I, I’m an information gatherer and I love reading things, everything I can about B2B SaaS and sales and churn and all that kind of stuff. And there’s a paralysis of then knowing what the right way of doing things and being aware of how much work it is to do it the right way. And then I kind of procrastinate because I’m aware of how much work it is. Whereas before when I was just getting into startups, I kind of just flung myself into things. I got things done because I didn’t actually have an awareness of how much work it actually would be. And I was blissfully unaware about of what it could be like to be a founder. And so I was just executing fast and doing the 80 20 and all that kind of stuff. And now it’s a little bit intimidating when the full sales process and all that kind of stuff, rather than just being, getting on the phone with someone. It’s easy to procrastinate when you have too much information.  

Einar Vollset:
I think sometimes it’s just a matter of I didn’t realize that we couldn’t do it, so I just did it. Actually. 

It’s like General Patton during World War II famously, or maybe if you’re just a nerd, he got an order not to take to bypass this German city because he was going to take four divisions and they didn’t think it was worth it. And he radio back and says, I took it with two, should I give it back? Kind of thing. So I think there’s a certain amount of that. The ignorance is blissing, but I also think one thing to internalize also is that most doors are two eight doors. There’s very, very, very few things in the startup world that can’t be undone if it turned on out to be the right thing. And it’s just to a degree just kind of try it and see it tends to be the best approach.  

Rob Walling:
Our last story of the day is about Australia proposing their quote, world leading ban on social media for children under 16 from Reuters. We will link it up in the show notes. Tracy Osborne is someone who has been on social media since you were 16. No, I’m just kidding. But  

Tracy Osborn:
I mean kind of. I was 11 years old. Was  

Rob Walling:
It Tumblr?  

Tracy Osborn:
No, this is before Tumblr. I had  

Rob Walling:
TI  

Tracy Osborn:
Had, yes, I owed bed a chat into my website. I had a Terry Brooks fan website and I had a chat on there and Terry Brooks, the author, fans around the world would use my chat and my dad would be like, what are you doing? Are you in a chat room? And I’d be like, no. And I go back to talking to all my friends on the internet. So technically yes, there was some sort of social network that I was probably not supposed to do it that time, but as an adult, as someone who is in her forties, I feel like the internet has kind of updated. I’m curious, Rob, you have kids and I’m curious what you think about this. I don’t have kids myself. I just have my own experience of,  

Rob Walling:
Yeah, it’s interesting and then I’ll pass it to a R as well, because a R has kids under 16. I don’t think social media is good for anybody. I especially don’t think it’s good for kids who are just so much more addictable, which is not a word, but it’s just easier for them to just get hooked on stuff. As you can tell by you, give a 10-year-old an iPad and they’ll play it for 24 hours straight and not eat and not sleep and all that. Not saying adults don’t do that, but it’s definitely the brains are still forming. So I don’t think social media is good. I also don’t think kids having cell phones carrying around all the time is good. And yet I have a 14-year-old with a cell phone and I have an 18-year-old with a cell phone. The question for me is, do I want the state legislating that? 

I guess if the state does, then that makes it easy across the board because then when my 14-year-old says, but you won’t let me on insert name of Snapchat, it’s like, oh man. But all the other kids do, and if the country bans it, then it’s not an issue for me. Now, do I like the country or my government overreaching and telling me what kids can and can’t do? Well, I mean I guess they do it for alcohol, right, and smoking. And is social media as bad for them as that? It could be debatable, right? They’ve done studies of the high suicide rates. So I overall am probably just fine with governments limiting children’s use of social media. I do think it should be the responsibility of the parents, but I just know so many parents that don’t it much be like, let’s say there was no drinking age minimum and there was no smoking age minimum, that would be a problem. 

There would be parents that wouldn’t care, wouldn’t enforce, and we’d have 13 year olds, not that we already don’t, but we’d have 13 year olds smoking a pack a day and drinking a bunch. So I do think having the laws and some barriers is not a bad thing for the government to impose. My kids are barely on social media. They’re more like in Discord and they’re in messaging apps where they message friends, but they’re not in public places where they’re posting. They’re not doing Twitter, Instagram to public audiences. Einar Vollset, you have kids under 16. Are they on social media? And what do you think of policy like this?  

Einar Vollset:
Well, it sort of depends. I define social media, but no, they’re not on social media that I’m aware of anyway.  

Rob Walling:
That’s the thing.  

Einar Vollset:
They’re on discord with their friends and YouTube is a constant in my household. So that’s the thing. Yeah, I guess I don’t more the libertarian side when it comes to this. I don’t trust the government to tell me what to do with my kids fuck yourself kind of thing. This tends to be my standard MO when it comes to, I’m like, really? You’re going to regulate this? And this is me having been in academia. Anytime there’s a newspaper piece about what experts found, I’m like, did they now? Okay, I don’t believe you. So that tends to be the thing too. So I’m like, look, good for you Australia. You do what you need to do. But do I think, would I be excited if Gavin Newsom decides to this apply to California? No, I wouldn’t. I would almost be like kids that sign up for social media. But that’s probably more my personality, more anything else.  

Tracy Osborn:
I mean, I look also back at my 11-year-old self clicking through all the, are you 13 messages on the internet? And I was like, yep. Even though I was 11. So it’s not like it’s hard to get around.  

Einar Vollset:
No. So I actually only peripherally paid attention to this thing. And the Australia thing is, look, the more concerning thing, and this is again, the more libertarian side of my personality is like, how are they going to enforce this? And the answer is apparently that they’re going to require all Australians to provide identification to access the internet. And at that point I’m like, no, no, you don’t get to do  

Rob Walling:
It. That’s the problem is these things infringe, right? They start getting real up in your face. Yeah,  

Tracy Osborn:
They have good intentions, but the outcomes are terrible. Yeah.  

Einar Vollset:
Yeah. So that’s my view. I’m like, I don’t think so. My personal view,  

Rob Walling:
Tracy Osborn, if folks want to keep up with you, you are. Tracy makes on Blue Sky.  

Tracy Osborn:
I mean it is. In my title it says Tracy Osborne parentheses. Tracy makes literally for you, Rob. I put it in there.  

Rob Walling:
I’m going to say this is not going to die with you. You know that Tracy Osborn dot com on Blue Sky and our vol set while you are in our set on X Twitter, if folks want to keep up with you, they should head to TinySeed dot com slash invest.  

Einar Vollset:
That’s right.  

Tracy Osborn:
He’ll be our best friend. If you come with a bucket of money,  

Einar Vollset:
Buck I money. I’m only accepting pockets of money these days. No small change. A hundred dollars bills only. Yo,  

Rob Walling:
Thanks for joining me. You too.  

Einar Vollset:
Thank you.  

Rob Walling:
Thanks to tracy osborne.com and a r vol set for joining me this week on the show. And thank you to listening to this episode and with you’ve been listening for five or 500 episodes, I appreciate you being around. If you keep listening, I’ll keep recording. This is Rob Walling signing off from episode 744.