0:00

Welcome to the Met favor show where the

0:02

focus is on helping you grow and preserve

0:04

your wealth. Join us as we discuss the

0:06

craft of investing and uncover new

0:08

and profitable ideas all to help

0:10

you grow wealthier and wiser. Better

0:13

investing starts here. Met Faber is

0:15

the co-founder and chief investment officer

0:17

at Cambria Investment Management Management.

0:19

Due to industry regulations, he

0:21

will not discuss any of

0:23

Cambry's funds on this podcast. All

0:26

opinions expressed by podcast participants are

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solely their own opinions and do

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not reflect the opinion of Cambria

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Investment Management for its affiliates. For more

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information, is at Cambria. Today's show

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is sponsored by Cambria. Do you hold

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legacy investment positions with significant gains? What

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if you could transition into an ETF

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without facing a large tax bill? You

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can, with a 351 ETF exchange. Here's

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rules and diversification requirements are

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met, the investors essentially able

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to seed the launch of

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the ETF without an immediate

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taxable event. Because ETFs typically

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don't distribute any capital gains,

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investors don't face taxes until

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they sell their ETF shares,

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allowing for better control over the

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timing of the tax event. Are you

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to take the next step in innovative

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tax-savvy investing with Cambria today. Cambria Investment

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advisor. The information set forth here is

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for informational purposes only. It does not

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constitute financial investment tax or legal advice.

1:33

Past performance does not guarantee future results.

1:35

All investments are subject to risk, including the risk

1:38

of loss or principle. Welcome back everybody. We got

1:40

another awesome show today. Our guest today is Aaron

1:42

Frug, founder of Griffin, the company that helps you

1:44

buy stock where you shop where you shop. We talk

1:46

a lot about financial literacy and

1:48

helping more Americans invest and I'm

1:50

excited about what Griffin's doing, the

1:52

potential to help get more particularly

1:55

young people to invest. Aaron, welcome the

1:57

show. Appreciate it. So this is going

1:59

to be fun because long-time listeners of

2:01

the podcast and on the blog have

2:03

kind of listened to me talk about

2:06

investing and all my crazy ideas over

2:08

the years and also my angel startup

2:10

investing journey for many years been looking

2:12

for a offering somewhat similar to what

2:15

you guys are doing and so listeners

2:17

full disclosure I am now an investor

2:19

in Griffin twice I think but also

2:21

a client so I have an account

2:24

so we'll talk all about this but

2:26

the reason being is because I like

2:28

what you guys are doing. For the

2:30

listeners out there, don't have never heard

2:33

you guys. What's Griffin? Give us a

2:35

two-minute overview. Yeah, so we're Griffin. Griffin

2:37

stands for the greatest revolution in finances

2:39

now. And we built an app that

2:42

automatically invests people where they spend their

2:44

money. So if you go and buy

2:46

a cup of coffee at Starbucks and

2:48

invest in a Starbucks stock, you shop

2:51

at Whole Foods and invest you directly

2:53

in Amazon. Basically, our whole intent and

2:55

purpose is to normalize investing and connecting

2:57

into people into people's lives. the reasons

3:00

why people don't get started. It's actually

3:02

a lot more psychological. So it's how

3:04

do you get people to feel good

3:06

enough, confident enough, exciting enough to just

3:09

get started. It's sort of the riding

3:11

the bike concept. You can tell somebody

3:13

as much as you can about how

3:15

to ride a bike, but what's the

3:18

best way to actually just get them

3:20

started? And that's going. basically explain so

3:22

you on board you set up a

3:24

brokerage account then what so it's kind

3:27

of just like getting started opening up

3:29

any brokerage account or even you know

3:31

when for people who haven't invested before

3:33

it's like opening up a bank account

3:36

so you go on you you give

3:38

your information you kind of create an

3:40

investor profile but it's sort of a

3:42

easier set it and forget it type

3:45

of thing so you just connect your

3:47

bank and your favorite cards that you

3:49

use we built a technology that like

3:51

tracks the transactions, determines whether or not

3:54

they're public, and then it automatically invests

3:56

you across where you spend. So the

3:58

cool thing about fractional shares is that.

4:00

where you're able to invest with very,

4:02

very little amounts of money. So most

4:05

of our customers start off with $1

4:07

per transaction. Let's say you buy something

4:09

out, Starbucks, at that time you are

4:11

investing $1 into the company, and that's

4:14

sort of added up over the week,

4:16

and then you can own all the brands

4:18

that you're spending with. So just

4:20

to make this relatable listener, so I

4:22

have an account, it's got almost

4:24

two grand in it, so we're moving

4:26

up, but each week. You get this

4:29

update because it sinks to your credit

4:31

cards, it sinks to your debit card,

4:33

and where you make purchases. So if

4:35

you look at my companies, for

4:38

example, not surprisingly, Amazon's on the

4:40

top of my list, been buying

4:42

a bunch of my wife's new

4:44

books on there probably, Papa John's,

4:46

we got Wal-Green, Starbucks, Uber. And

4:48

then we always have some random

4:51

ones. I'm like, cheesecake factory. I'm

4:53

like, I'm not responsible for that.

4:56

That's got to be my wife

4:58

and child. Albertsons, and it's funny

5:00

because you'll see ones like into

5:02

it, which is one of my

5:04

nemesis, but we use them for

5:06

quick books at Cambria. And then

5:08

you'll see ones that are like,

5:11

oh, it's interesting. How does that even

5:13

tie in? And waste management, you

5:15

know, what's going on in the real world?

5:17

How do you set up the amounts? You

5:19

know, so if you're an investor that comes

5:21

on, is it something where you say, look, I want

5:23

a dollar to go in or do I set

5:26

it per company because I have a lot more

5:28

Amazon than I have everything else in my account.

5:30

How's that work? Yeah. So we, when we

5:32

first started this, we went around and we

5:34

interviewed like 500 people around

5:36

our university and then everybody was

5:38

outside of it. And we asked them a lot

5:40

of questions about why they invested, why

5:43

they didn't invest. One of the things

5:45

that like made people most comfortable

5:47

was having a consistent same amount So when

5:49

we start off and we tested this

5:51

out too like everybody starts off

5:53

with investing one dollar at a time

5:56

So no matter how much you spend

5:58

it's completely based off of frequency You're

6:00

investing $1 in a company where you

6:02

make a purchase, but you can change

6:04

it within the app. We have some

6:06

people who are investing $50 every transaction.

6:08

It doesn't matter. You can choose that.

6:10

You can set limits. You can even

6:12

turn off companies you don't like. So

6:14

if somebody, let's say, doesn't believe in

6:16

a brand, they can actually turn it

6:18

off and not invest in it when

6:20

they spend there. Yeah, I had to

6:22

put Amazon on pause today. I didn't

6:24

want my account being 100% Amazon. Here's

6:27

why I think you guys have found

6:29

a really interesting wedge in product market

6:31

fit. So listeners heard me, you know,

6:33

complain a lot over the years, but

6:35

particularly during the financial crisis when kind

6:37

of meme stock mania was going on

6:39

about. You know, we don't teach financial

6:41

literacy in school and so a lot

6:43

of people learn through various channels and

6:45

in particular one of them just being

6:47

the product providers and one of the

6:49

problem with that is a lot of

6:51

them are casinos and not to pick

6:53

on Robinhood, but you know a lot

6:55

of what many of these offerings teach

6:57

is not the lessons they should be

6:59

being taught you know it's hey we're

7:01

encouraging you to trade a lot we're

7:03

going to encourage you to do all

7:05

these other things trade options zero day

7:08

options like all these crazy things they

7:10

have no business trading but what's beautiful

7:12

about what you guys do is look

7:14

I managed an ETF company for financial

7:16

advisors for sophisticated investors like great we

7:18

have 16 ETFs but a little bit

7:20

lost in that is the tangible real

7:22

world connection for a new investor. This

7:24

is like the Peter Lynch one up

7:26

on Wall Street. You know, and so

7:28

what you guys have is you now

7:30

have that connection to where people can

7:32

say, oh, I get it. I'd spend

7:34

a ton of time and money at

7:36

Starbucks. Like, I should probably buy that

7:38

business. I'm now owner. And that's a

7:40

very cool lesson to explain to people,

7:42

younger people, new people investing, but also,

7:44

you know, as people build their portfolio,

7:46

I think it's a really thoughtful approach.

7:48

When did that light bulb come on

7:51

for you guys? When did you guys

7:53

figure that out? I'd like to take

7:55

credit for this. When we first started

7:57

this, we were just trying to figure

7:59

out like how... because when we asked a

8:01

bunch of people like do you invest or do

8:03

not invest it was always the same three things

8:05

I don't have enough money it's not made for

8:07

me and I don't understand it but like every

8:09

person we spoke to said that I know that I should

8:11

and so I think that like the average

8:14

person develops a relationship with money it sort

8:16

of starts around 16 years old and sort

8:18

of what we were sharing earlier like people

8:20

most people don't get started until early 30s

8:22

so it's like a very long time to

8:24

build a relationship with money to build a

8:26

relationship with money and then not get We just

8:29

kept trying to think like, how do you

8:31

make this more and more fun? That's really

8:33

the only way to kind of explain it

8:35

and where people felt like they actually knew

8:38

what they were doing without this barrier of

8:40

like, I have to learn, I have to

8:42

learn, I have to trust somebody else to do

8:44

it. And one day my sister and I

8:46

have to trust somebody else to do it.

8:48

And one day my sister and I were

8:50

out of Starbucks and the briefs said

8:53

that I should really own stock for how

8:55

much stock for how you've said this, but

8:57

like. Now I was like, I wish I

8:59

would have bought Apple stock when I first

9:01

bought the iPhone. It's something that can now

9:03

tag alongside and be a part of you.

9:05

And I think it's almost like the,

9:07

the simplest, most human way to

9:10

just get started. And so I think that's

9:12

our goal. Like even our designs

9:14

when you're like, I'll never speak

9:16

poorly about another company. I think that

9:18

there's been a lot of technological

9:21

advancements like. ETS are a great

9:23

way to like own a bunch

9:25

of companies and to get people

9:27

invested and obviously like we were

9:29

talking about for like a you

9:31

know more sophisticated investor, but I

9:33

also think that like if you look

9:36

across the board, every finance app

9:38

looks the same. Everyone has

9:40

a graph. Everything has stock ticker

9:42

symbols. It's very overwhelming for most

9:45

people and to actually like manually

9:47

take the time and like more

9:49

people do research buying cars. then they

9:52

do stocks. Like it's either through

9:54

emotions or friend referral for the

9:56

average investor. And so the effort

9:59

that the. emotional effort to buy

10:01

something in the fear of being

10:03

wrong is so high for most

10:05

people. That's why there's 178 million

10:08

Americans still uninvested. This is the

10:10

problem that I'd had with so

10:12

much of finance and investing is

10:14

there's so much jargon and it's

10:17

so abstract. So even if the

10:19

Warren Buffett advice, hey. go by

10:21

90% go by S&P 500, SPY.

10:23

But then you're like, well, what's

10:25

that? Like if you ask the

10:28

average investor what's in there, like,

10:30

you know, they're gonna have a

10:32

struggle. And then when it's down

10:34

10, 20, 50% or whatever it

10:37

is, you know, they're like, well,

10:39

I have no emotional endowment effect

10:41

connection to this. But I think

10:43

this is such a massive. potential

10:45

benefit and we'll talk about this

10:48

in a minute about investors having

10:50

a connection to the brands and

10:52

ownership. So they're not just a

10:54

customer, they're now an owner and

10:57

that changes everything in all of

10:59

the way that people think about

11:01

investing in my mind. Tell us

11:03

a little bit about who you

11:05

mentioned this to me before and

11:08

I know some of these answers,

11:10

but the traditional demographic is not,

11:12

you know, an 80-year-old

11:14

person that's got 100 million. Who is

11:16

your traditional client? How do you guys

11:19

think about this? And has it changed

11:21

over time? Yeah, so we were pretty

11:23

fortunate that a few years ago we

11:25

had a video go viral on TikTok.

11:27

I think it's at 47 million views

11:30

now. Basically, it was just sitting in

11:32

front of a camera saying this is

11:34

who we are, this is what we

11:36

do. I'm pretty sure the top-like comment

11:38

was, this is so exciting, I'm going

11:40

to own all of McDonald of McDonald's.

11:43

And it's like it was is a

11:45

very interesting, you know, response from a

11:47

lot of people. And so when that

11:49

happened and like through a lot of

11:51

organic content, we're seeing a lot of

11:54

like across the board, we see first-time

11:56

investors, but definitely it was like next-gen,

11:58

younger people getting started investing. Recently,

12:00

we've switched to a subscription

12:03

model, which has been phenomenal

12:05

for us, and we're like, it actually

12:08

makes us able to achieve a

12:10

lot more things. And by doing

12:12

that, our actual main customer now

12:14

is a, we've always been majority

12:17

female user base, but right now

12:19

it's a female in her 40s, and

12:21

sort of the head of the household

12:23

parent, like, basically who we

12:25

call like the chief family officer,

12:28

and It's been very exciting to see

12:30

that there's a lot of like comments. It's

12:32

like, hey, you know, this is my first

12:34

time I've been invested. This is amazing and

12:37

like fun and I want to be able

12:39

to use this for my family. So our

12:41

goal is to build out family accounts

12:43

and sort of expand upon what's being

12:46

asked of us. I mean, so we're going

12:48

to dive into a couple topics here. You

12:50

know, one of which is again, going

12:52

back to this education component, money is

12:54

such a taboo topic. pretend like you're

12:56

the head of household, your family, you're

12:58

the mom, you're the dad, and saying,

13:01

hey, you know, open you account, it,

13:03

he trade or Schwab, and we're going to

13:05

buy some ETS, or, you know, even worse,

13:07

in my opinion, is like, hey, we're going

13:09

to stock pick, and you pick a couple

13:11

stocks, and, you know, the problem is it

13:13

creates this very weird dynamic within the family

13:15

that if, say someone picks a great performing,

13:18

you know they're proud hey i i i

13:20

impressed my father look how much money we're

13:22

making let's say you pick a bad stock

13:24

you know and it goes down there's shame

13:26

embarrassment i don't want to talk about it

13:28

where the dinner table hey you idiot you

13:30

bought invidia and it went down eighty percent

13:33

on and went down eighty percent on and

13:35

on right but this is different like

13:37

because it has this tangible hey you

13:39

guys you realize we went out to

13:41

cheesecake factory tonight or we have this wall

13:43

street journal on and on we're actually

13:45

investing in these in these companies in

13:47

these and investing, which I think is

13:49

the key connection. There's a couple

13:52

experiments you guys could run when you

13:54

get much bigger and you have these free time

13:56

and put some, you know, PhDs on staff,

13:58

one of which would be this. helps you

14:00

hedge your human consumption. And so listeners,

14:02

if you think about this, you know,

14:04

and you think about inflation and you

14:06

think about, you know, what you spend

14:08

money on, everyone has a different inflation

14:10

rate. You know, we report 3% that's

14:13

the inflation rate. Well, you know, eggs

14:15

are 12 bucks now or whatever they

14:17

are, but TVs are way down. And

14:19

so where you spend your money, it's

14:21

an interesting hedge and discussion. So it's

14:23

also funny because you can talk about

14:25

your spouse. You'll be like, man. My

14:27

spouse spent so much money on Amazon,

14:29

but for every dollar we put in

14:31

Amazon We're putting into this account. So

14:33

we're it's rising tide in some some

14:35

ways But again, it makes it a

14:37

makes it it it's almost like a

14:39

mortgage You're putting that money away and

14:41

putting it to work I think I

14:43

heard you mention at one point that

14:45

you know stakeholders shareholders that own some

14:47

of these companies actually spend more at

14:49

the underlying company. Do you guys do

14:52

a study talking about I think Walmart

14:54

might have been one? Yeah, so we

14:56

looked at kind of kind of where

14:58

people are spending before they own stocks

15:00

and then after they own stocks. There's

15:02

no incentive at all. It's just literally

15:04

the concept of ownership. And we've seen

15:06

like, for example, Walmart, after six months

15:08

of people owning stock, they spend 234%

15:10

more at the brand. It's just a,

15:12

it creates loyalty in a new and

15:14

unique way. I think that there's a

15:16

huge opportunity for that in the market.

15:18

Let me expand on this idea for

15:20

you. and hopefully it's something you guys

15:22

run with. The credit cards have done

15:24

a really good job of this, where

15:26

they have, you log into your Amex,

15:28

log into your chase, whatever, and you

15:30

see rewards, and it's somewhat annoying because

15:33

you have to go in and opt

15:35

in, you know, every quarter, hey, here's

15:37

all the deals you have, and there's

15:39

like a hundred of them, right? But

15:41

again, you don't own those companies, it's

15:43

just benefits and rewards, however, we have

15:45

some old Twitter threads, and I'll send

15:47

them, and I'll send them, and I'll

15:49

send them, and I'll send them, What's

15:51

the most interesting shareholder stock perk? The

15:53

most famous, of course, you own one

15:55

share of Berkshire, you get to go

15:57

to the meeting. the years there's so

15:59

many that are kind of hilarious and

16:01

funny Starbucks used to put a Starbucks

16:03

card in the annual reports right they'd

16:05

mail them to you and you got

16:07

a gift certificate to go spend at

16:09

the company but there's a lot of

16:11

the companies and so we were joking

16:14

I got too much on my plate

16:16

but I was joking I said someone

16:18

needs to build a website that just

16:20

lists like hey here's the top 50-100

16:22

shareholder perks that no one knows about

16:24

some of which you should just buy

16:26

one share that way you could get

16:28

the perk like it's that beneficial

16:30

like hey if you're cheesecake factory you

16:32

know owner 10% off whatever maybe you

16:35

get free dessert right but you know

16:37

who does a really good job of

16:39

this is the Japanese. And so it

16:41

is a massive culture of stakeholder rewards

16:44

for public companies in Japan. And so

16:46

you can go do a laundry list

16:48

search and we'll add these to the

16:50

show notes listeners. If you have any particularly

16:53

interesting ones, leave it in the

16:55

comments on YouTube or on Twitter.

16:57

But it's really fun to see

16:59

some of these. And so now

17:01

you have a really interesting wedge

17:03

where you're in between the consumer,

17:05

say, hey, I know they're shopping here, but

17:07

also that they're an owner, and hey,

17:09

let's offer. And so you guys do a

17:11

five bucks a month subscription, 36 bucks a

17:13

year. So not bad, but you could

17:15

say, hey, look. Eventually, we

17:17

want to get you to where the

17:20

rewards dwarf this payment, right? So you're

17:22

getting extra benefits by just being an

17:24

investor here, and we're kind of going

17:26

to the companies at some point say,

17:28

hey, you should offer to these people

17:30

because also now that they know

17:32

they're an incentivized stakeholder, they'll

17:35

spend more. I think that's our goal

17:37

because I genuinely believe it's a

17:39

win-win. I'm already spending money at

17:41

these brands. Why not own them and have

17:43

them be a part of my life and

17:46

then like... those companies grow I get to

17:48

be a part of the growth of where

17:50

like I'm already patronizing to if I then

17:52

have the benefit of like actual real benefits

17:54

that come with stock ownership like the the

17:56

intent of the stock market and what it

17:59

used to be is like you were

18:01

an owner, like how do you feel

18:03

like an owner and be actually a

18:05

part of these brands where it's not,

18:08

yes, growth is incredible, people invest for

18:10

the benefit of the long term, like

18:12

that's our goal and our hope too.

18:14

And if we can get people to

18:17

start a lot earlier, amazing or people

18:19

who have never invested before, like that's

18:21

the intent. It's almost like an entirely

18:23

new class of consumer owner that's like

18:26

supercharged, super hero customer, right? It's like

18:28

your consumer. cool you have your owner

18:30

and then this is both and I

18:33

to my knowledge kind of hard for

18:35

them to find that information and you

18:37

guys are you guys are collecting it

18:39

what what also is interesting about y'all's

18:42

app and by the way listeners you

18:44

want to go try it out use

18:46

the code invest you get 25 bucks

18:48

to get going is that the design

18:51

intentionally is not focused on buying and

18:53

selling right particularly selling and one of

18:55

the things that we kind of bemoan

18:57

you know most of the apps and

19:00

the transaction based brokerage is is they

19:02

want you to have activity because they

19:04

make money on that and you know

19:07

not only is the buying and selling

19:09

costly bid-ass spreads etc but also it's

19:11

taxable and so this long-term view like

19:13

you look at your app and it's

19:16

almost like you're just stacking shares and

19:18

companies right you know it's like you're

19:20

consistently just adding and the people that

19:22

do want to sell or that you

19:25

know want to get out Make

19:28

any generalizations are they selling the companies one-off

19:30

or is it traditionally they're like you know

19:32

what this is not for me I'm gonna

19:35

close the account I'm gonna move the account

19:37

or I just I ran out of money

19:39

so I got a I got to withdraw

19:41

all this I assume it's all or nothing

19:43

at some point or how is it traditionally

19:46

viewed probably more all or nothing. There are

19:48

definitely people who feel like, hey, I don't

19:50

have the money or the finances right now.

19:52

And at any point in time, they can

19:54

withdraw their money. But we do see a

19:56

lot of people like even pause sometimes and

19:59

then start up again later on. So I

20:01

think that we want people to feel like

20:03

that they have full control and safety over

20:05

what they're doing? You guys are clearly finding,

20:07

you're having a moment, right? You're finding kind

20:09

of this product market fit

20:12

now, which is exciting. You know, when

20:14

it happens, you know, when you see

20:16

it, and it's fun. It's a really

20:18

cool feeling. Talk to us a little

20:20

bit about building this. How difficult

20:22

was it in the early days

20:24

to make this connection between

20:26

the payments? and the companies and then

20:29

talk to a little bit about the

20:31

universe like do you guys go all

20:33

the way down to some of these

20:35

microcaps you cut it off at 10

20:37

billion billion market cap with some of

20:39

these stocks or how do you think about

20:41

it? Yeah so we'll try not to get too

20:44

long of a story because you guys

20:46

got started what year what was the

20:48

what was the origin year? So we

20:50

started this actually at the end of

20:52

2017 and so this was our last

20:54

semester of college it was one of those

20:57

things where We graduated, we both

20:59

had jobs, those were supposed to go work

21:01

with JP Morgan, the co-founder is going to

21:03

go work in the wealth management industry, and

21:05

we had like three months until we had

21:08

to accept our jobs. So there's a, it

21:10

was called the Gerson School Accounting Building, and

21:12

like we were, both of us were in

21:15

accounting, but they had these huge whiteboards. So

21:17

we became friends with security guards, we used

21:19

to go in there and work basically every

21:22

single day. We used to call law firms. You

21:24

know get like just try to ask

21:26

for like different advice even though we

21:28

didn't have money and It took a lot of

21:30

work to work with the SEC and to build

21:32

this out to like actually be an

21:34

investment advisory service So right now

21:37

we are investment advisors the app

21:39

looks and operates like it's a

21:41

brokerage because you're you're buying into

21:43

the stocks that you that you

21:45

spend with But every single company

21:47

on our platform actually has an

21:49

assigned risk tolerance that we update

21:51

consistently. And so how people put

21:54

their information into our app determines whether

21:56

or not we actually allow them to invest

21:58

in certain companies. And so it feels like

22:00

it's a part of your life, but

22:02

we in the background make sure that

22:04

we're always adjusting. And it took a

22:07

very long time for that, but the

22:09

actual technology itself. So I had to

22:11

teach myself, and this is before AI

22:14

or anything else, so I had to

22:16

teach myself regular expressions, so I bought

22:18

these like red sunglasses and I sat

22:21

in a computer and I would just

22:23

like write regular expressions every single day

22:25

for weeks upon end. It was a

22:28

very interesting. experience, but we because we

22:30

wanted to set the intention to think

22:32

of like what's every public brand that

22:34

you've ever spent with, because I think

22:37

you're mentioning it earlier, I've invested like

22:39

137 companies, the amount of places that

22:41

we actually spend with, that's not just

22:44

consumer, like, you know, discretionary, like, it's

22:46

a lot of different things that we

22:48

actually put our money into. And

22:52

so we want every public company, every

22:54

subsidiary underneath it. So if you do

22:56

shop at Whole Foods, the app recognizes

22:58

that it's owned by Amazon and will

23:01

invest you on Amazon, and then even

23:03

down to the like, you know, bottom,

23:05

lower product level, which hopefully one day

23:07

we can get to skew level data

23:10

with brands. And so we've just spent

23:12

a really long time building this out.

23:14

We, at the technology, there's a lot

23:16

of negotiation, both on the brokerage side.

23:19

So we actually had to negotiate the

23:21

first contract ever to. actually do all-in-one

23:23

encompassing trades for like low fractional share

23:25

amounts. So that's been a very long

23:27

time. And then we, you know, we

23:30

use plaid. So basically all the best

23:32

companies in the world use that supports

23:34

millions and millions of users to link

23:36

people's bank account securely and then to

23:39

get the transaction data. And then we

23:41

launched this sort of at the end

23:43

of 2020, early 2021. That's kind of

23:45

when we went viral. We had a

23:48

really amazing moment there. be able to

23:50

bring around our first institutional round of

23:52

funding and then we kind of put

23:54

our heads down and like really focused

23:57

on building sort of this the dream

23:59

app that we wanted to and really

24:01

launch the official version at the

24:03

end of 2023. And then like

24:06

immediately hit product market fit

24:08

with our new designs and

24:10

our new user experience growing

24:13

rapidly, took a hard pivot

24:15

to a subscription model, went

24:18

from a few thousand revenue

24:20

to millions. And now we

24:22

were closing our series A and

24:24

very excited about it. So, yeah.

24:27

What do you guys learned? You know,

24:29

often the journey of the

24:31

entrepreneur and the founder is one

24:34

where as you build and iterate,

24:36

you get feedback from investors

24:38

and users and you're like,

24:41

oh, wow, they're using this

24:43

way or they have found

24:45

some insights that we never

24:47

totally expected or. Everyone hates this

24:50

and banging on this and they think this

24:52

part is stupid. What were some of the

24:54

insights the last couple years that you guys

24:56

kind of hit upon that you either, you know,

24:58

incorporated, got rid of, all that good stuff?

25:00

I would say the biggest thing that we

25:02

learned when it comes from a consumer side

25:05

is don't over-solve. Actually, like it's it.

25:07

So we became very, very data obsessed and

25:09

like actually we've always listened to our customers

25:11

and interviewed them. Like we used to do

25:14

like zoom calls like this just to like

25:16

get as much. advice as possible.

25:18

But basically one of the

25:20

things, for example, was

25:22

that most people really just

25:24

loved the fact of that like,

25:26

it just invests you where you

25:29

spent. That like actually keeping

25:31

it very, very simple, only

25:33

focusing on the brand, those

25:35

sorts of things is like the

25:37

absolute most important to people. So

25:40

it's like we just focus on

25:42

like how do we make that

25:44

experience. the absolute best. And like,

25:47

one of our things that we built, we

25:49

call it our magic moment and it's called

25:51

the time machine, is that actually when you

25:53

get started using Griffin and you go

25:56

through the onboarding process, we actually show

25:58

you where you could have invested in. in

26:00

like the last 30 days. And then

26:02

most people say like, I actually want

26:04

to buy these stocks and then we

26:06

allow them to get jumpstart on their

26:08

account by investing in their past. So

26:10

they feel like that they can like

26:12

already get, so when you open the

26:15

app, you already own 10 plus companies.

26:17

It's like a very cool user experience.

26:19

Talk to us a little bit about

26:21

how you guys find your customers. You

26:23

know, it's a modern world. You mentioned

26:25

a video on Tiktak going viral. and

26:27

listeners I don't keep any of that.

26:29

I'm donating all my my proceeds to

26:32

you guys because I don't I don't

26:34

want you guys to have it but

26:36

other than kind of word of mouth

26:38

how do you guys think about getting

26:40

new customers in this in this new

26:42

2025 world? I think there's multiple ways

26:44

so right now like we built this

26:46

to be a consumer business where like

26:48

our end customer is the individual and

26:51

so that they they feel that way

26:53

so one when we originally started was

26:55

a lot of organic content we've been

26:57

We've been fortunate that we've gone viral

26:59

multiple times. I think actually last month,

27:01

we went viral again. And so it's

27:03

just always creating content. But then we

27:05

take that content, we were purposed into

27:07

ads. And so we've gotten very, very

27:10

good. We are basically head of marketing.

27:12

His background is it's one of those

27:14

dropped out of Harvard-built, built a company,

27:16

scaled up to 9 million users, sold

27:18

it to draft gangs. And now like

27:20

he runs our entire marketing department. the

27:22

focus is on like making sure we

27:24

have strong repeatable content that people connect

27:27

to that's more organic and then we

27:29

can use page channels to scale so

27:31

we've actually built something that's like very

27:33

repeatable and so that's kind of why

27:35

we we went out to raise what

27:37

we actually didn't go out to raise

27:39

a series A we we it was

27:41

preempted which is pretty awesome and so

27:43

we're like gonna use that new capital

27:46

to scale what we built but it's

27:48

it is very cool to see you

27:50

know a lot of users refer to

27:52

their friends A lot of our ads

27:54

are naturally just organically shared, and then

27:56

it's how do you focus building out

27:58

product-led growth, things within the app. that

28:00

actually make it more meaningful for people

28:02

to share with each other. And then on

28:05

top of that, just distribution. So

28:07

actually yesterday, we just got a

28:09

letter of intent from a very

28:11

large publicly traded company where

28:14

we're going to use our technology

28:16

because we serve a unique audience

28:18

that's mostly not touched by the investment

28:20

industry, you know, the head of

28:22

household, and just to help provide

28:25

investment opportunities for

28:27

potentially like 10 million plus

28:29

people. that are part of their company

28:31

and their platform. And so it's

28:33

like distribution goes through business partnerships. And

28:36

I think we can again plan a

28:38

unique space and loyalty. So we don't

28:40

have to just work with the

28:42

wealth management industry, which we are

28:45

having conversations with that now, but also

28:47

we can work with brands. And I

28:49

think that's that's the hope. Well, what

28:51

you guys do your message, it's so easy,

28:53

it lends itself to such a great. video

28:55

messaging. Who came up with stock with your

28:58

shop? Is that you? One of your customers?

29:00

Who came up with that phrase? That was

29:02

us, yeah. Yeah, it's such a good one.

29:04

But you can just picture, like, you know,

29:06

a couple sits down to cheesecake

29:09

factory and the spouse is like...

29:11

You shouldn't order the dessert. Come

29:13

on, we just got so much

29:15

food. And we're like, well, you

29:17

know, actually, this is, we're owners

29:19

and we're buying more if you,

29:21

the more you spend on and

29:24

on. Like it's, it's a very

29:26

video focused sort of messaging that

29:28

I think will resonate and continue

29:30

to resonate. Do you have a most

29:32

memorable investment? And this is

29:35

like, as honest as I

29:37

can be, is helios and Matheson.

29:40

who owned Movie Pass. And

29:42

I was younger and I

29:44

like believed in a lot of

29:46

what the founders were saying

29:49

and that they were going

29:51

to reach profitability. And so

29:54

I put a lot of

29:56

my personal money into it

29:59

because I really like the

30:01

concept and I didn't diversify into

30:03

anything else. And I lost a

30:05

good bit of money on it.

30:07

And it was a really good

30:09

big learning lesson. And, you know,

30:11

so I hope that there's like,

30:13

I think that's kind of where

30:16

our goal is, is more to

30:18

be the antithesis of that into

30:20

more like, invest people in things

30:22

that are validated and that are

30:24

being used consistently and brands and

30:26

more blue chip stock companies. and

30:29

to also like create honesty and transparency

30:31

and an industry that we feel like

30:33

needs it a little bit more. I

30:35

saw movie pass on both the first

30:37

go-round investing and then it just did

30:39

a recap and relaunched. I haven't heard

30:41

anything about it. I'm curious to see

30:43

what the idea is interesting. Yeah, it's

30:45

back up and running. So who knows?

30:47

listeners, you may get a second shot.

30:50

AMC create a list off of it.

30:52

And they've done really really well with

30:54

that sense. So I mean good for

30:56

them, but and I loved I love

30:58

the concept of movie pass I thought

31:00

it was so cool This has been

31:02

a lot of fun. Tell our listeners

31:04

where do they go? They want to

31:06

go sign up for the app make

31:08

sure you use code invest for free

31:10

25 bucks? What's the best place? Yeah,

31:12

so you can just find us on

31:14

the App Store Griffin on just GRIRIFIN

31:16

it says positive daily investing We're actually

31:19

in the top of the charts right

31:21

now, it's been pretty consistent consistent there

31:23

and then also we you could go

31:25

to griffin.com to learn more we actually

31:27

own griffin.com we uh there's a company

31:29

called Interout multi-billion dollar company out in

31:31

the UK I believe that owned griffin.com

31:33

for like 17 years we reached out

31:35

to their customer service we told them

31:37

our story who we are the change

31:39

we want to make in the investment

31:41

industry and they dropped the domain and

31:43

we were able to pick it up.

31:46

Wow dude I well that's not that's

31:48

not as good of a story as

31:50

The conglomerate in Europe that owns faber.com,

31:52

I keep trying to get them to

31:54

give it to me and they're like,

31:56

talk to us when you got six

31:58

figures, we'll drop it then. Yeah, ours

32:00

was a little different. So we

32:02

did have the money at the time.

32:05

So it was a, it really

32:07

worked out well. But yeah, just

32:09

find us anywhere. It's a super

32:11

simple sign-up process. Obviously, you have

32:13

to be a legal age. We hope

32:15

to expand to families soon.

32:17

Awesome. Aaron, thanks so much

32:19

for joining us today. Thank you.

32:21

This was fun. Podcast listeners will

32:23

post show notes to today's conversation.

32:25

If you love the show, if

32:27

you hate it, shoot us feedback

32:29

at the Meb Faber show.com, we

32:31

love to read the reviews. Please

32:34

review us on iTunes and subscribe

32:36

to the show. Anywhere, good podcasts

32:38

are found. Thanks for listening friends

32:40

and good investing. Today at T-Mobile

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