Learn, Make, Learn

MKBHD, Panels & Pricing

• Ernest Kim, Joachim Groeger • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Ernest:

Hello, and welcome to Learn Make Learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim, and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Groeger. Hey, Joachim, how's it going?

Joachim:

Very good. I guess we're post election, so we don't have to talk about politics, we're in the new, the new regime, so we have to, we have to contend with that, however we all feel about that situation. But that's on our minds, I guess. I don't, I just realized we didn't even think about talking about that, but it's too, it's, everyone's talking about it, so we're all living the, the consequences.

Ernest:

Are we in the acceptance phase yet? in the hierarchy.

Joachim:

Tuesday night, I was very ready for, for the outcome. And I, I was not, I was not surprised. And it didn't take me aback at all. And, uh, it felt, it felt like it was somewhat inevitable in a strange way, but, um, yeah, I don't know. How, how were you? I just,

Ernest:

Yeah, it's funny. I had the same reaction. It was really not a surprise. It just seemed like that's contrary to a lot of the social media chatter. I think it just felt like that's where things were headed.

Joachim:

Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I think that's exactly right. Not a surprise enough dynamics in the internet realm were pointing that there was a very large group of people that felt a certain way. So anyway, here we are.

Ernest:

That's a good segue. Yeah. So this is episode 24

Joachim:

I

Ernest:

and today our topic is MKBHD. his controversial panels app, and pricing, which was really the primary source of the controversy around panels. We'll dive into this in greater detail in just a minute, but let's start with some follow ups. Joachim, do you have any follow ups to our previous episode, Why is Design So Boring? with Nate Grubbs, or to any episodes prior?

Joachim:

think they're very focused around design. So the first, the first follow up is, um. Adjacent to Boring Design, but it's a small article called Are Song Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? First of all, from, just from the perspective of how the article comes across on the screen is very unique. It has interactive elements that have been done in a very, um, mindful way, not just for the bling effect, but for actually transmitting the information accurately. The gist of it is simply, if there is a way to take the lyrics and compress them by a lot, that suggests there's a lot of repetition in the lyrics, and if you can't compress them a lot, Then there isn't that much repetition. the author shows that you can compress the crap out of everything right now and, and back in the day all the lyrics were harder to compress and so then he links this to just a broader trend of kind of the homogenization, I mean if you're all, if the lyrics are really short then you're all probably saying very similar things because there's not much you can transmit in so few words, um, and then, The question is, is there some homogenization happening in popular culture? Is it also being driven by the, uh, Spotify algorithms that are incentivizing short songs and a high volume of short songs to get the maximum monetization out of that? So just a very interesting read and part of the whole conversation that we're having around boring, boring design and samey, sameness and everything being average. And then another bit about design, and I, we didn't really talk about this from the interaction design perspective, but I feel like we might have touched on these topics somewhere, but, um, Gamification for a period gamification was going to fix everything, you know from environmental problems to learning languages So there's a technology review article that is about gamification, but it actually points out something that I think is really true, and I think anyone who's used Duolingo for an extended period of time will recognize, which is it's not actually a game, it's more pointsification. So they try and, use the one mechanic of games that is probably the most irrelevant and boring part, which is XP. And they just lean so hard on XP as the thing that they call that gamification. And like, that's the worst part of it. Games are beautiful narrative structures that can be immersive and you experience and learn at the same time. And there's also social components that can be brought together inside of a game in really, really surprising ways. And none of our products that we consider gamified really lean into that at all. So, um, a really interesting counterpoint to the idea that we live in a totally gamified world when really we live in a pointsified world and that is the worst of gaming, just summarizing one thing, like get, get your XP. So all of these, those things are related to Interaction design, but also sameness of design. So those are my follow ups to Nate's piece. What about you? Did you want to dig deeper into the archives about what to follow up on?

Ernest:

No, those are great ones actually. Um, I, I'm actually looking forward to digging into those myself. Um, yeah, on my end, I, um, did want to actually dig a bit, uh, into our archives. Actually going back to our. It's the second episode, uh, which was titled Apple Vision pros and cons, uh, which we recorded in January of this year. Um, and as the title for that episode suggested, we discussed Apple Vision Pro, which represented Apple's entry into what Tim Cook described as, Quote, the beginning of a new era for computing, unquote. Um, my follow up here is for any listeners with an interest in that space, of spatial computing or augmented reality, if that's you, I highly recommend that you listen to an interview conducted by Ben Thompson from the Stratechery podcast and blog, and it's with Andrew Bosworth, the longtime leader of Meta's Reality Labs division, and since 2022, the company's overarching chief technology officer. The interview actually took place back in late September during Meta's Connect conference, so it's not new. But I only recently had a chance to listen to it and I just found it fascinating. For one, I thought Bosworth's appearance, at least to me, apparent openness and honesty was really refreshing. And then as someone who strongly believes that spatial computing does represent an important next step in the ongoing evolution of personal computing, I found the substance of the conversation really interesting as well. And, um, I should note that this was right after Meta unveiled their Orion augmented reality prototype, which, um, while still very much a prototype, really. It has wowed everyone who's had a chance to experience it. Um, so Bosworth talks a bit about Orion, but he also talks more broadly about Meta's approach to the still nascent spatial computing space and how their approach contrasts with Apple's. And the conversation is only about 40 minutes long. And I think well worth a listen, if you have any interest in AR and VR or are just interested in product strategy in general. So, uh, we'll include a link to that in our, uh, to that interview in our show notes. All right, so, uh, jumping to our episode today, our topic was actually suggested by my brother in law, Michael. Uh, so first, thanks for listening, Michael. Uh, we really appreciate it. Now Michael asked, and I'm going to quote him here, I'm curious what you think of Marques Brownlee and his panels app and how he stumbled with it, unquote. Now, Joachim, I know you're familiar with Marques Brownlee, uh, but are you familiar with this whole kerfuffle around the panels app that he launched in late September?

Joachim:

Yeah, so I've, when I was still using X and I have now come off it and I'm, I'm said, I'm done. Um, but, uh, it was, it turned out to be a trending topic one day and it came on with the hashtag MKBHD panels. I had no idea what that was all about. Usually those trending things are terrible anyway, but given that we had discussed. his reviews for the Humane AI pin and the rabbit as being scathing, honest and, important reviews in the technology domain. And he also receiving a ton of flack for having been honest about the product, which was really interesting. So I was, it piqued my interest and I started reading up on it and it was, just so many people angry and they just kept saying, this is ridiculous. And I was so puzzled. And I thought, what is this panels thing? What's getting everyone so upset? And it turns out it's an app for wallpaper on your phone. and that just, and so I just went down the rabbit hole and started following the thread on that. So I'm, I also thank Michael for asking that question cause it was, it was out there and on my mind for sure, but I didn't have a way of, uh, getting it into the podcast. Well, now Michael's given us the excuse to do that. So that's a great thing.

Ernest:

Yeah, I was glad as well, I thought that was a great question. And just to take a quick step back, just in case anyone's not familiar with Marques Brownlee, as Joachim mentioned, we've talked about him in the past, uh, but for anyone who is unfamiliar, Brownlee is a really, really popular tech YouTuber. He's probably better known by his handle MKBHD, which is also the name of his YouTube channel. as noted on his Wikipedia page, as far back as 2013, Vic Gundotra, who at the time was a senior vice president at Google, described Brownlee as quote, the best technology reviewer on the planet right now, unquote. Now, as to why, his content became so popular. At least for me, I think there are a few reasons. For one, he has this sort of ease and charisma in front of the camera, which comes across from his very first video, which he published in January of 2009 while he was still in high school. And, uh, I think that leads right into the second reason, which is that Brownlee epitomizes the aphorism that it takes 20 years to make an overnight success. You know, he's been a leader in his field for 15 years, and over that span, he's continued to hone his craft. And what really continues to impress me is how effortless he makes it look. You if you know anything about video production and audio production, his content has extremely high production value, but it's all done and delivered in a way that feels remarkably accessible, um, even to non techie people. And then this takes me to what I think is the third and the most important reason for success, and that's his perceived authenticity. Over the past 15 years in each of his videos, you felt like you were still getting the core of what you saw in that very first video. A smart, engaging person with an interest in tech, giving his honest perspective on a piece of technology, with the hope that that perspective might help others decide whether that tech was right for them. And, uh, At least for me, I think it's the sense that the panels that, which, as you mentioned, it's just a wallpaper, but it's the sense that the panels that betrayed that authenticity is what's led to such a surprisingly loud outcry, um, over it. And, but, you know, I was curious, what do you think? Do you, does that kind of comport with your sense of why there's so much, um, seeming anger about this?

Joachim:

Yeah, I think it, it's, it is very interesting that he decided to make an app, Was so poorly thought, thought out, um, Like you said, his reviews Are high production value, Carefully choreographed, Nothing is done by accident, you know, He knows what he's doing, 20 million subscribers, Every video hitting multiple million views, This is all carefully crafted. so then seeing an app fail so miserably on so many fronts is just incredibly surprising. Actually just a little bit of background like we said that the panels app is An app that you download and it gives you access, um, either to some free, lower resolution wallpapers for your phone on an iOS device or an Android device. the free tier is supported by ads, which is part of the outcry that came out. We'll, we can dig into that a little bit. And then there's a premium tier where you get high resolution wallpapers for your phone. And I don't know, where do you even start? He takes his considerable resources. to do something that is so lame. It is such a surprise. It's so boring. one of the things that people pointed out immediately was that the free tier is an ad driven product, which means that the app requires access to various pieces of information on your phone. and you have to grant it all kinds of permissions. Most people said, you're probably just stealing our data at this point. That's what it felt like with very invasive tracking, including GPS. Why would you need location services to be switched on for a wallpaper app? The quickest summary for me is just, what is the problem that you're actually trying to solve here? He explained in a video later on, he says it was something that he, he gets questions all the time about the wallpapers that he has on his phones and how wonderful they are and which artists do that and so on. And this app doesn't seem to answer that problem. Here's, here's a broader point. I think people form very deep parasocial relationships with these hosts and they lean into that because as you said, that's the brand you feel connected to that person and rightly or wrongly, we imbue that distant relationship with a lot more depth than it maybe deserves because they're, they are a person on the screen. So I think parasocial relationships are probably one of the strongest forces right now in our world because they tend to shape our emotional connection with things, topics, subjects, the way we perceive the world. And so I think when someone, to a certain extent, Abuses that relationship and tries to sell something very grifty and, People feel deeply, deeply offended because they have built a deep personal connection with this person. I believe a lot of the YouTubers don't fully understand the Pandora's box that they've opened around that. By being so personable, by inviting people to get closer to them, by having social media connections with those people, it creates a false relationship. And at the end of the day, I think people, when these things happen, they get reminded of themselves. They realize, Oh, wait a minute, you're a product and I'm buying your product you just want my money or my eyeballs. So I think there's a couple of layers to it, not just the product aspect of it, but also the nature of the parasocial relationship that emerges.

Ernest:

Yeah, I think there's a lot to that. And I think the most authentic thing that, uh, Brownlee said in relation to this whole thing was in the kind of follow up. I think he was smart to respond relatively quickly and be very open, um, about the feedback. But he said something along the lines of, I acknowledge now that if I were reviewing this as a product, I would have given it a very bad review,

Joachim:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ernest:

is just like you're saying is what makes it so puzzling that someone who, you know, through 15 years of content has shown that he's really smart and has really good taste. Why would you do this? Thing that goes against so much of what you've kind of shown that you value. But one interesting thing I think is just this underlying dynamic that you see across YouTube is YouTubers recognizing that they need to diversify their revenue sources, you know, recognizing that they just, they can't just rely on whether it's YouTube or Instagram or, um, TikTok as their sole source of revenue. You could see it across the board and very, coming up with different ways to try to generate revenue beyond the revenue that they're generating from the content. And so this would be one example. It's just, you know, to your point though, all the things you could have done. Why would it be this, it does seem really, really puzzling. And I could very much imagine that some of those things he's described, like you mentioned this desire to maybe elevate artists, um, you know, that there were questions about what, you know, his own wallpapers that he shows during his reviews, that, that, that, that would take away, Those are probably true and I could imagine maybe him having some conversations and laying out this very loose brief But then having no involvement from that point on and then publishing this thing. I'd say that would maybe be the kind Scenario for how this came about but I'm just very surprised that someone who is as I think seems to at least be as savvy As he is would allow a product so that's so poor to go out with his name associated with it. Um, that is really, really puzzling. Um, and I wonder if it was kind of to your point of these folks, not necessarily understanding the Pandora's box that they've opened up, that maybe he just had lost sight of that. You know, I guess if you're, if that's your life, I imagine it must be difficult to have perspective on it.

Joachim:

And, and as you know, like his. M-K-B-H-D is his channel. It is a company that is now built around him. He has people that work for him. And I can imagine, you know, even if he's a nice guy, no one's gonna say, Hey Marques, like this is, this is really lame. You know, no one, I don't think anyone wants to be in that situation because it's tough and he's the big boss. But what I was trying to get at is I think Back to the idea the power social relationships of the thing that got got them where they are and that Pandora's Boxes You have to acknowledge. That's what it is that you are. Now. you are. a focal point. You are a big Broadcasting platform and so I That means maybe you're just a channel, in the sense of a conduit, I should say, for things that you think are worth elevating. And maybe that would have been a way to lean into it, because he's talking a lot about, I wanted to elevate some artists. So you go, well, build something that allows that to come out and you lend your voice to drawing people to that form, right? That's always the hardest problem when you're trying to build some sort of platform or any kind of multi sided experiences, getting everyone to show up. You know, if you want to have I mean, YouTube is the perfect example. You need creators and you need the audience. And if I was going to start a YouTube tomorrow, I could bribe all these creators to join my platform. But if no one is there to watch the stuff, there is no platform. It's, it's non existent. So he doesn't have that problem. He's literally both, he could be both sides. It's bringing everyone together as a central node and a network. He can create the public square that where those ideas can flourish and maybe he's the person that is more of a seed investor and those things, as opposed to the person that comes up with every idea, you know? So I can understand that people want to cross over to being, um, a maker. I do think critics are really important. Like they're that outside voice that help you identify whether you're on the right path or not. And it would be great if we could all have strong inner critics, but not everyone does, and we need those voices. All of that to say, he is a central node in the social network that is, vast, and he should have really leaned more into that direction to get so again, like there's so many layers to where you go, just a lack of cares. Disappointing. And I'm, I think it took them years to work on this app. Yeah.

Ernest:

know, one thing you mentioned the importance of having that inner critic, I'd say maybe one, if we were to abstract out one lesson for people who are in the business of making products, one that comes to mind for me is the importance of having that inner critic, because it can be so easy for people. when you're immersed in an industry and making products within an industry to become incredibly myopic about our world and just assume that everyone else shares this, you know, incredible focus on this thing that we do. And that's a mistake that I see so often from people. When they're going out and engaging with people, um, for focus groups, for example, that they just assume that everyone out there is spending as much time thinking about this one little thing that they devote their life to. Um, And, you know, of course, the reality is that's not true, right? We all have very busy lives. We might interact with your product, you know, for a few minutes out of a week. So it's so important to have that humility and have that inner critic that you can tap into to, um, help you kind of check yourself, right? To recognize that, um, I need to. find ways to deliver value. I can't assume that people are spending their lives thinking about my product all the time. How can I, just like you were saying, answer some problem or deliver some value, uh, so that I can earn that time and attention. And I can think of one specific example where I failed to do that. I was leading a focus group. And I actually thought I was being very clever. I intentionally started without introducing myself, uh, because I thought that'd be more scientific. It'd be kind of keeping the participants at a remove. Um, but then fortunately the folks group went very well. You know, the participants felt like, um, we were really listening. And then at the end, one of the participants said, you know, um, can I, Can I talk to you? Can you let the other people leave and just, can we talk for a minute? And we said, oh, of course. And I felt so thankful afterwards that they had the courage to do this, because it does take courage to do this. But, so after everyone left, they said, you know, I really felt, I can't remember the exact words, but essentially disrespected that you didn't share your name. You know, like, it just felt like you were a big company person and, you know, we didn't matter enough to you for you to, you know, even share your name with us. And, you know, certainly that wasn't my intention at all. But once they said that, I absolutely recognized how that could be. They, they knew that I was, there's representative of the big company. And so it just kind of, um, my behavior aligned to kind of what they assumed the big company person would act like. And so that was, it's something that I still, every, every day. I think about it all the time now, as a reminder to, you know, check your assumptions, um, put, you know, it's so simple, but just put yourself in that other person's shoes. Um, and that is going to really help you to get to something more meaningful in terms of, you know, why are you doing focus groups in the first place, right? Just try to uncover some meaningful insight. So, um, Um, being able to put yourself in the place of the other folks in the room is so important and not, I'd say this maybe connects back to the election thing, but not talking down to people because they don't speak your same language, um, I think is, is, is so important as maybe one, one kind of generalized lesson that maybe we could take away from this. But I was curious as well, Joachim, given your background in economics, whether you had any. Thank you. More generalized thoughts about pricing, you know, because that was one of the things that people were so, reacted so strongly to when it came to this panels app.

Joachim:

Yeah, okay. I will definitely talk about pricing, but the last thing that you're talking about, it's interesting, and maybe you're not allowed to shill for your company, but I will do it because I don't work there anymore. But, uh, a reminder to everyone how incredible Sandy Bodecker's strategy was for Nike SB. Sandy Bodecker just going, we cannot. just show up and say we're Nike and expect all these guys to sign up and enjoy what we're doing. We need to listen to what they want and then connect with them on a deeper level. So I found that the whole story of Nike SB is absolutely fascinating. Uh, in fact, there was a YouTube channel that, Just ran a really great little series on it. and we'll put the link in that, but it's, but this guy, James Pumphrey used to do a series called up to speed where you give you like 20 minute lessons on the history of a car history of a brand. And now he's doing it for all brands and he covered like SP. it was pretty interesting to, he does the whole thing and he's neutral. He's, he doesn't work for Nike, but,

Ernest:

oh, that's great. I'd love to see

Joachim:

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a really, really fun with his funky personality. Again, one of those things where you have a personality really helping deliver a message that. could just be a very boring history lesson, uh, a corporate history lesson, but, uh, yeah, definitely worth, worth watching, but then pricing. So, yeah, that's one of those things that I think is so, pricing is just. It's the, it's the central most topic in economics, but it is surprising how crappily it is done. So I'm going to do a mini history lesson that's going to, not too long, but so there was a big conflict between, the socialists, the communists who believe that you could create a planned economy and the free marketeers who said, no, no, no, there's no way it's, it's literally impossible to construct something like that. And so there was a big discussion. Hayek from the Austrian school was one of the. Big voices. And it's one of the voices that to this day kind of won that discussion because he talked about markets being information aggregators, and you can send signals into the market and the market will understand it and prices are part of those signals and it organizes everything seamlessly. And it's great. There's actually a counterpoint, which is a guy called Oscar Lange, Hungarian economist, I believe. And he said, no, no, I don't think we, you need even any of that stuff. What we can do is we can create a fake economy and we modulate the prices. And then we just see. If the market's clear, if they don't clear and we'll use computers to model that process. And then eventually we can do that without having to actually do the experiment where we move the prices around. We can simulate it and then we'll just set prices automatically that way. So he was a big believer in technology in solving the market pricing problem. So the reason I mentioned that is if you go into a technology company today or any like technology driven retailer, when they describe. Pricing, it is very clear that they have no idea what the correct price is. There is no demand curve out there. No one knows what the demand curve is. In fact, the econ academic literature, my subfield has spent the last 40 years. Designing various complicated models to find demand curves. If it was so easy, you wouldn't get tenure at Harvard based on work on demand curve estimation. It's. Impossible to do. And so if you look at kind of the cutting edge of how people do pricing nowadays and technology companies. They basically sit there and they modulate the prices and they see where the sales go up or down or something like that. And they try and map out the demand curve exactly like the socialist Oscar Lange suggested in total contravention of what Hayek suggested, right? When I joined industry, I realized. You guys don't know what prices are. I built models assuming you knew what prices were. You don't even know how much of this thing should be, anything, right? But I think from the perspective of actually being ambitious and clever about pricing, I think it comes down to being very humble and saying, I actually don't know what the price is. And I also know that a price is a very coarse way of partitioning my customer base. So if I just say, set the price at a hundred and people will buy it, then I know that anyone who values my item above a hundred will buy it. And everyone below a hundred won't buy it. And that's it. I just know that there's like 50 people that want to buy it and then no one else. I don't know who those other people are that didn't want to buy it at that price, which is where that experimentation with the pricing comes from. You're trying to. Modulate the prices so you can track who's coming in and who's coming out. Now you can only do that with low price goods. Couldn't do with cars or anything like that. Right? So the way out? Well, you just ask the customers how much they would be willing to pay for something, and then you build a protocol that makes that message to you binding so that they can say, I am willing to pay. This much for this item. And if you charge me this price, I will pay, I'm going to, I'm locking myself into the market that way. Essentially an auction kind of like the eBay structure the cognitive load on the customers high, but that's one very, very clear way that you can elicit that information from the market. So from my perspective, what would have been nice for panels is if they had started experimenting with different pricing models. Now you don't have to go all the way to the fall, build auctions for every single thing. is a middle ground, right? That's the extreme. Everything is a market, but there is another way to kind of on a spectrum design places where people can express their value for something. Um, and that's what you really want. You need people to express that. So pricing in my mind is always a way of opening up a communication path to the customer so they can express. Yeah. This is how much I value that item. So sometimes it doesn't even have to be dollars. It can just be something that's finite and fake, but valuable inside of the ecosystem. And then from that, you can also build more interesting mechanisms that allow people to express. value in the system without having to put money on the spot or Anyway, there's a lot of ways to design these markets that actually starts opening up a pathway of communication if anyone wants to hire me to talk about this stuff, please do. But it's, it is, I think it's a really, really big problem that we haven't tackled very well, because there's been this belief that we figure out what the right price is, you know? And when you look at an MBA class on pricing, they'll just say like, you know, costs plus this. Markup and you go, the markup is everything. How do I know what the right markup is? And how frequently should I be willing to, to move that? And you can basically see when you go in your Amazon basket, right? You can see if you save items, prices are going up and down all the time, based on something who knows what it is. And it's not clear that that is even, you know, tracing out my willingness to pay. What would be even cool is if I say. I have this item in my safe basket, but I, if it hits 50, I'll buy it. Very similar to the way a stock market is, right? You can say, here's a limit order. And when this, I know it might never sell or never buy at that price. But I'm willing to take that risk to get it at that price, because that's how much I value it at. And then you have a piece of information from the customer that you didn't have before. This is a non purchaser telling you something in a binding way, right? So, the communication pathway has to have some skin in the game for it to be meaningful, but ultimately, that's what it is. And Marques Why not bomb doing something different and exciting. That's what, when I was reading all those reviews, that was one of the things that struck me. It's just, why didn't you just go all out, make a creator's platform, create a first platform, pay them, do you know, just go nuts, Show the bounds of what is feasible outside of a standard two tier pricing model, right? There's so many more ways of doing this So that is very disappointing to me in general, but um Yeah, that was a long excursion. Maybe we should do a whole episode about just pricing goods.

Ernest:

I really liked your, because, you know, you mentioned the auctions as being kind of maybe a prime example of this, but your example of, uh, limit order, I think is a really good one that I'm guessing a lot of people have that exposure to, but just that idea that you have some mechanism for the prospective buyer to provide information about how much they value a good, um, that is really, really interesting. Very good. are you aware of any? One that's doing anything interesting in pricing, in terms of like the product space.

Joachim:

Okay. I think to me, this is a very dinky example, but I think it is powerful. there is a service streaming service called canopy um, that a lot of public libraries, you can subscribe to it, but a lot of public libraries set up agreements with this company, so you can access it essentially for free through your public library, canopy gives you credits. That you spend on content that you want to watch. What's interesting about it, I think it's very, it's very, very basic but it's a very powerful tool. There's no real price here. No money is exchanging hands, but a constraint is operating on the customer and therefore they have to think about trade offs. So what do I want to really watch right now? And so a certain degree of mindfulness, active decision making will come in and People will express a true desire, right? And so there's a certain amount of commitment needed. It is high friction, but as a result, I think they can also keep their library very focused because people will be asking, Hey, maybe they have that one film that I've been meaning to watch. And you can see, you'll learn a lot about what a person is. Out for so they haven't fully explored that thing and I don't even know why they chose to do this I think it is a way to just keep their payments for licensing very controlled But that's step zero for what could be possible if you started really Pushing on that model. Now, we live in a subscription heavy world again, and, and that is, I think, really just a mind hack. It is there to get you to sign up, and then to forget about it. So Canopy as a small example of using credits that you have to spend and creating strong choices and trade offs. I think it's a good example. Yeah, but so much more to be done in that domain. Um, and really we have not fully extracted the value of that.

Ernest:

You know, one other example from the watch world, which we're both big fans of, or enthusiasts of, I think is, um, and, and this to me speaks to pricing being really as much art of science as Rolex. or really you could say any of the kind of top tier luxury brands. But during the zero interest rate days, uh, the market sent Rolex a very strong signal that they were willing to pay much more for their products than Rolex was charging. Like for folks who aren't familiar with this, but during the heyday of the zero interest rate phenomenon period, uh, immediately after, uh, Rolex made a watch available for not everyone, but most of their models. Next day, it'd be available on the secondary market for 2x, 3x, 4x, the price, if not even more. So, I think that's really interesting, because that is the market sending a signal to say, you're actually underpricing. But, Rolex didn't change their prices, they've kept their pricing consistent. And I think that was the right decision. I think, maybe an economist might say that's the wrong decision because the market's clearly telling you, you should raise your prices. But to me, from a brand perspective and a kind of tying this back to Marques and the panels up again, just from a, your relationship with your customer perspective, I think that relationship would have been broken if Rolex had taken that as a license to massively increase their prices. And yet. I could certainly argue the other side of it too, right? It's totally logical to say, well, hey, there is this very clear signal that you should be raising your prices. I was just curious what you thought of that. Right,

Joachim:

and short run profit making. We generally have been operating in a short run profit making world where you can cash out quickly. Move to the next job, become the CEO somewhere else. the dynamics of our capitalist system right now are very friction free. And that has always been the argument that was supposed to make everything super efficient. But actually what it does is it means that you have very little skin in the game. And so you can escape quickly before anyone else knows you've screwed up, you've destroyed this company, you've, you've milked everyone dry, And now there's nothing left. employees are stuck. The customers are stuck and you cashed out, bro. No, cool. That's not cool. Right. So there's, that dynamic I think is the, the reason why a lot of companies would go say, yeah, of course the economics speak for themselves. Take them, charge them at a high price. Now the long run value, which is that you want your brand to be here tomorrow. You want customers to be here next month. So long term value would tell you, you don't need to do that. You, you are going to price people out of the market and scare them off. And it's going to create. A degree of discontent. That means that they might never come back. So I, I, there is a rational argument that says, actually, if you look at the thing, there's, there's that, what every business person likes about the total addressable market, right? That mythical beast that no one knows is out there, but that is kind of where you're worrying about if I set prices in the wrong way and I send the wrong signal to the market, that. Potential customer just gets turned off and is done with it, you know, and they're never going to engage with this brand. So the argument I always lean on is if you want your business to survive. The long term value calculation and it's very difficult to do that math, I'm not saying it's trivial, but the long term value math would say don't do that type of stuff, um, but coming back to like pricing and clever system, I think ultimately the real problem was the secondary market, the existence of people that were bad actors, right? The thinking about that short term long run thing, right? Rolex understood that they had Short term players in there that didn't care about Rolex. Bad actors are generally, I'll call them platform agnostic, right? They don't care about the platform. What they care about is currency and currency is highly liquid and can be transferred across any activity. So these people probably were working in Bitcoin, stocks, Rolex, cars. They didn't care what it was. It just had to be fiat that they could transfer everything into. So. They could have made money off Bitcoin and then they could have just gone into the Rolex store, bought everything there, come back out and become Rolex dealers over and I just said, here's F5X. And then Essentially annihilated the market, created this huge bubble, stepped out, cashed out that they don't care. But Rolex has to sit there. It's like they had been chasing that the tails of these operators. They would have been in trouble. They would have really eroded the brand. And that's the interesting thing now as prices collapse. In the secondary market, because this bubble is now done. Rolex doesn't seem like such a bad actor anymore. They're just like, well, we never charge high prices. We didn't tell you to pay for these stupid prices. Doesn't matter that the secondary market has collapsed. So I feel like, it was the smart move. Chasing that explosive price would have just destroyed I think the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster saga is a perfect example of that. If an economist sat there and said, I got to maximize short run profits. Yeah. Run an auction, go crazy with the pricing. Someone like Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift should be thinking, wait a minute. I'm killing my fan base. I need them to be here tomorrow. Like this is. Just extracting everything. And just one quick analogy, like this is part of what our free market capitalist system does is it tries to extract at a maximum rate now with the least amount of effort, there is a reason why we are facing so many environmental problems right now. It's because the system doesn't care about. Slow, sustainable, thoughtful, long run stuff. It's like, today's today, take it out today, don't waste your time. You want to build systems and pricing mechanisms that make it a high friction environment to cash out. And then you have, um, some magic there because then now you have all of the customers that don't mind the friction because they want to be in your ecosystem. And all these other people are like, I need to get out of this damn thing. I just wanted to make a quick buck. I don't want to be exposed to Nike sneakers or Rolex watches. I don't give a flying monkey about that. I need cash, so that dynamic is what you want to get rid of. From your marketplace. So again, related to pricing, but yeah, the secondary market thing, again, the subtleties of these interactions are deep and require a lot of thought and design.

Ernest:

And actually just two things related to this that I think are interesting is, um, I think one of the reasons Rolex was able to approach this with such patients is their unique governance structure. I think we've talked about this in the past. They're not a publicly held company. They're actually a private charitable trust. So they very much operate with a longterm view, just as you were saying, versus this kind of more traditional market driven quarterly, profit driven, approach that it's kind of ascendant, I guess, right now. So I think that's one of the things that enabled them to weather. This bubble. Um, and then the second is the importance of, if not owning at least controlling your distribution. And I think it's really interesting to see, you know, off the back of this experience that Rolex has entered into the secondary market as well. And I think my guess would be that, partly because it's a business opportunity, but also because it's a lever for them to be able to, to. to some degree controlled that pricing in the secondary market as well. So I think there was a recognition that they, they had to do this as a way to try to moderate this speculation that you were talking about. And I think it's just super, super smart on their part to do that because they do take this very long term holistic view of their relationship with the customer and wanting to make sure that's a positive relationship. So I think there are some really interesting lessons there. I'd say one of the counterexamples would be in the automotive space. in the U. S. with the traditional dealer model where The automakers don't own their distribution. The dealers are not owned by the car makers. And so you saw a lot of price gouging at the dealer level, which created, a lot of, brand negativity, which is really difficult because the car makers don't own their dealers. So they can't force them not to go out which maybe they have some levers they can try to pull, but pull. But, um, it's a very challenging situation for them. to deal with that. And, you can see these huge peaks and valleys that are a consequence of that, where they go through, really fat years. And then off the back of that, they go through these really shallow years. So, um, it speaks to the importance of having some mechanism to be able to manage your distribution as well, so that you can have some control on pricing, so that you're not alienating your customers, just like you were talking about.

Joachim:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ernest:

All right, well, this has been a great conversation. I think there's, I can absolutely imagine us revisiting some of these topics. Um, but, um, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you. So please share your thoughts with us at learnmakelearn gmail. com, or on threads at learnmakelearnshow, all one word. All right, now let's move on to our recommendations of the week. Joachim, do you have a recommendation you'd like to share?

Joachim:

Yeah, I'm going to share a platform. So, uh, Mubi. com is a movie streaming platform, highly focused content, small library, things come in and out all the time. But the claim is that they're heavily curated and curated by human beings. So the catalog is, very navigable. But right now is a pretty sweet time to be on MUBI. So, Coralie Fagia is a French director. She is being feted right now for her movie, The Substance, which Demi Moore starred in. Uh, it's a strange body shock, horror ish movie. Um, about taking your personal aesthetic a little bit too far. It gets a little gruesome. There's a little bit of body shop, but it is quite fun to watch and heavy handed, a little bit B movie ish, hitting you over the head with a message type stuff, which I think we need right now. It kind of reminds me of the 80s when John Carpenter's movies were so heavy handed and anti Reaganite. It feels like there's something in the air that we need people to be doing these things. So, Mubi they produced The Substance, and so you can stream that now. It just came out in the cinemas a few weeks ago. Um, but Coralie Faget also has a movie called Revenge, which is a very violent B movie revenge flick. Warning, it does involve, scenes of sexual assault. Um, but then, as the name suggests of the movie, there is revenge afterwards. And it is over the top ridiculous. But also, and again, heavy handed with the imagery, there's a lot of, uh, phoenixes rising from the ashes type imagery. So it's, it's very satisfying. and very good, but again, warning that the content does start off with that. and then there's The Fall, which was a big cult favorite, uh, starring Lee Pace, a very young Lee Pace. And I'm a huge fan, because I think you are as well, because of his work in Halt and Catch Fire, and you watch Foundation, I think, as well, right? Yeah, so he's, he's a fantastic actor, and here at 24, he's, he's brilliant, and The Fall is a really beautifully shot film. It's been restored to 4K, and Mubi has it on stream there, so it is very engrossing. Somewhat sad, but also incredible to see a film from the early 2000s where there's, I mean, very little to no CGI at all. It is all in location, in camera, unbelievable stuff. So, I recommend that as it's also a movie and a documentary that I think is great about Jeff McFetridge drawing a life. And. I think all of us might have had some exposure to his art because he is the artist who made the apple watch face with the faces and the little, um, the numbers that are on there. So that's him. Uh, and this is a documentary about his artistic pursuits. He comes from the skateboarding scene. Um, and started doing, like, graphic design, and he's a very interesting character. I, I think his art is, it's very easy and very accessible to consume, and that's why I think he can move very seamlessly from commercial to the more artistic pursuits. But what's interesting is also how he pursues his art. He tries to live a complete life. He wants to be a dad, he wants to be an athlete, he's a straight edge, hardcore guy, so he's still, lives a clean life, and he wants to pursue art at the same time. And That's, it's just very nice to see an artist who is not trying to screw up their life to achieve something in art, but it's like, I'm going to do art and I'm going to be a good person and I'm going to be a parent and I'm going to do all these lovely things. So, um, a very, um, uplifting story about him. So Mubi, I would just subscribe and just consume all that stuff. Cause it's really great right now.

Ernest:

That's great. And your, your point about maybe we need over the top expressions right now, I think is a really interesting one. I saw a comment, I think it was on threads. I can't recall who said this, but noting that a lot of creative people right now, I think do feel quite defeated, um, and depressed, but they mentioned that the explosion of creativity that we saw coming out of the UK in the eighties. was very much a response to the Thatcher years. And so, you know, that just your exactly to your point that maybe that is what we need is just this willingness to be over the top and bigger in a way that we haven't seen in recent years. So, um, maybe that the substance, even though she's a French director, is that right?

Joachim:

French director, but yeah, Demi Moore, it's, it's an English language film as is

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

Um, but, but she kind of gets it. She's clearly consumed American culture. Like when you see these things, they're

Ernest:

In the, I think, generally positive response to the movie, I think maybe it is a reflection of this hunger for, you know, these bigger, um, expressions of recognition that maybe we need that. So that's a great one. I won't, you know, just like you said, we'll provide links to all this stuff in the show notes too. Um, I have a recommendation that's completely different, uh, it's a physical product. It's actually, um, from, uh, it's basically, it's a company called bedrock and. I think they're maybe even called bedrock sandals. They make sandals. And what I love about them is that they're a great example of going against the grain. I guess, uh, as a, someone who just likes underdogs, I, I love those types of companies that go their own way and are able to find success doing that. So, uh, Bedrock, um, got their start making sandals that I guess would be classified as thong type sandals, meaning that they have a little piece of material that goes between your big toe and your second toe. Um, but unlike your traditional just cheap supermarket thong sandals that you buy just for a day at the beach and throw away, um, Bedrock really focused on hiking. And the opportunity to create sandals that would be very minimal and lightweight, but would still work really well for hiking on, you know, pretty technical terrain. And the way I got exposed to them was, I'm interested in hiking in the outdoors, and I saw that a lot of pretty serious hikers were adopting these sandals. And I have to admit that I also kind of had a Uh, negative perceptions about thong sandals and I, you know, wasn't so keen about the idea of having something between my toes, but based on all this positive, um, feedback I'd been hearing, I gave one of their products a try, I think it was the Cairn Evo, uh, sandal and I really, really liked it. There was, uh, I was so surprised by how well. The shoes stayed on my feet, even on uneven terrain, just based on this very clever design. You know, a big part of it was the thong that goes between your toes. That really helps keep your forefoot on the footbed without having to have all kinds of other overlays and structures around your foot. But they also have this really clever fit system that goes around your ankle and your heel. Um, it's really hard to describe, um, you know, in words, but yeah. What's clever about it is that you just have to adjust it once. And once you've adjusted it to tune it to your own foot shape, then you never have to adjust it again. Then it's just a matter of tightening it. So it's really easy to put them on and take them off. And yet they fit. They give you the sort of one to one fit so that it works even in, you know, pretty rugged terrain. Um, so, uh, that Care and Evo was the first product I bought. Then, um, they introduced a line of foot pads. clogs, which don't have anything between your big toe and your second toe. They call it the mountain clog. It looks a bit like, I think it's the, uh, Birkenstock Boston. It's the one that's really popular. So it looks a bit like that, but, um, it has, it doesn't have that contoured foot, footbed like Birkenstock. And for some people that might be a pro or a con, but I actually am a big fan of that contoured footbed in Birkenstocks. And yet I've also been a really big fan of mountain clog. Has. For me at least, like exactly the right amount of cushioning, just what I want. It's like, it's, it's pretty minimal, but it has this like uniquely like flubbery feel to it. It's not, I think for me, shoes these days are just too soft. Everything's, everyone's trying to make marshmallows. And so I love that I get a little bit of feedback, but it's just enough to take the edge off. And then just recently I got a new product that they introduced called the Cairn Evo C, where the C stands for cushion. So it's basically an addition to the product. So they still make the original shoe, the sandal I bought, the Cairn Evo Pro, but they've added to their line with this Evo C that has just a little bit more cushion to it. It's not like a maximal shoe. It's, it's, you still get a great feel for the ground, but it's just a little bit more cushion. And I took a flyer on it. I wasn't sure what I would think, uh, cause I cut, I, one of the things I liked about my original care, any votes was, um, just how much I could feel the ground. But I actually was thinking about trying to run in the sandals. And so I thought, yeah, I might want just a little bit more cushion. And then I said, wow, they're offering this new product. And I, I've only done one run in them, but I, so far I really liked them and I could imagine just using them as my everyday kind of everything shoe. I wear them with, um, toe socks, uh, from a brand called Creepers. And so maybe two recognitions in one. It's a small, um, brand. I can't see that out of Australia and New Zealand. They'll hate that I got that wrong, but, uh, I, I'm really into wool and they're the only wool based toe sock I've been able to find that actually lasts. All the other ones break down within a handful of wearings, but I've had these creeper socks for over a year and they're still no holes. Great match for these bedrock sandals. So like I mentioned, part of the reason I love them is that they had the curves to go their own way. You know, I'm sure a lot of people told them, Oh, no one's gonna buy it. Long style sandals. No one wants stuff between their toes. But they realized it led to a better solution. It allowed them to make a much more minimal shoe that still worked in pretty hairy trail situations. Um, and then now I think they're doing a great job of building on that success. And in a lot of ways, they kind of remind me of what Hoka's done, where, you know, very similarly, Hoka took this very unorthodox approach to the footwear market, where it was just a couple of guys from France who are really into downhill trail running. And they thought, Hey, you know what? We'd like, you know, at that point, the orthodoxy around the trail was you should, you should be super minimal so that, you know, um, you're as stable as possible and you want to feel the trail. But they said, Hey, for what we're doing, we actually want more cushioning. And. you know, they believed in that, they pushed it, they stuck with it. And, you know, now it's this incredibly, um, popular brand with great momentum. So, you know, for the folks out there making products, just kind of a reminder to, um, have the courage of your convictions, you know, if, if you're, you're, if you've got something that really adds value, um, I'd say, you know, stick to it, it's going to be, it's not going to be easy, but, um, if you stick to it, there's a good chance that you're going to find success. And I think there's a lot of examples where. you know, ideas that maybe, um, might've gone against the grain, still managed to break through because there was real value, uh, to the products.

Joachim:

I think it's like, uh, it reminds me kind of, um, of workwear, you know, that, that workwear that is Carhartt is like workwear practical. Every part of the stuff is there for a reason for the worker. And then, you know, It eventually becomes a fashion item. And then everyone's wondering, I wonder what the little pocket was for. You know, there's, there's always that thing. And I feel like Hoka managed to cross over as well into this other domain. I know they're owned now by a much bigger group, um, but they've leaned into the weirdness of those wedge soles and put bright colors on them. And they're pretty funky and weird and cool. And I I've been looking at them as well, just because I see them around so much and they. They stick out, you know, you just see everyone's wearing them and I love that. Like they're crossing over into being just like the funky weird wedge shoe. And I, we was just talking about like, is that when you said, Oh, these guys are downhill runners. I was like, wait, is that why they got that weird big wedge at the back of every hiking boot and every running shoe? Like that makes sense. But it just, it's just. Kind of looks cool now, you know, it has this, uh, it just looks out of the ordinary. So it's nice that there's a function to it, but then it also becomes pure style, which is also an interesting evolution. I always find that these

Ernest:

And then now the trick is, can they stay true to that core authenticity while expanding. I think that they're kind of right at that, the cusp of that. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. All right. Well, I think that does it for us. Uh, thank you so much for joining us here at learn, make, learn, and a big thank you again to Michael for suggesting today's topic, which led to this great conversation. Um, now I would just want to give folks a heads up with the holidays approaching you. and both Joachim and I having to travel between now and the end of the year. We're not exactly sure when we'll be able to publish our next episode, but we're going to do our best to publish episode 25 before the calendar hits 2025. I'm not sure if we'll get it, but we're going to try our best. So thanks in advance for your patience, and we hope you'll join us for the next Learn Make Learn.

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Ernest Kim

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Joachim Groeger

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