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LearningTranscript
00:00so hello everybody uh i have a very interesting guest today uh founder of the most ambitious
00:23project in the last few years in european union christos can you please introduce yourself
00:29thank you thank you so much michael um i don't know if we're the most ambitious project in europe out
00:35of the last one of the most ambitious for sure yeah we're certainly trying to do something big
00:40um we're trying to compete with big tech in creating a social media platform that could
00:46actually support uh a new generation of connecting with each other online um obviously the project
00:55started much like many projects that have started to spring up these days um from a sovereignty
01:03perspective and from a recognition of how democracy is shaped and how our societies are shaped in
01:10social digital spaces but um you know once once you start going into this process and i'm sure
01:17we'll talk about it later um you learn that in order to find the financing uh to be able to
01:24structure the organizing of that effort you need to make a more compelling case unfortunately than
01:30simply the defense of our societies and defense of our democracies business case uh and you need to
01:37prove that you can create a consumer product that people can embrace um through habit even if the
01:44ultimate goal is to encourage people and enable them to have better social connections online
01:50so tell me about the idea how it did emerge i imagine it didn't jump you know like choose
01:58a tina out of your head like fully fully mastered and here i come so it it was kind of boiling in
02:05you for some time so tell us a little bit how it happened where it started you know where you're coming
02:11from and i know that you are an architect so not you know immediately someone who's associated with it
02:18yeah you're you're right i mean from a very young age i i grew up uh i grew up believing maybe naively
02:26that all of us had as a responsibility and as a privilege to to contribute to the world around us
02:33and to society around us who did instill this you know way of seeing yourself was it your parents or
02:41someone in your family or teachers or it just happened because it's your genes i think it was
02:47the environment that i grew up in i grew up in in a very international environment where in and where
02:54the uh very foundations of uh the vision for the european union uh were being set and back then
03:02um the so-called european eurocrats uh were less bureaucrats and more people who were really convinced of
03:11this idea of united europe um who were coming here to to build it and so in parallel that like the the
03:20this ecosystem then um everything that was happening in the world in the 90s i think we both remember
03:25the 90s there was an there was a spirit of hope um i'm not going to get into the politics of
03:31neoliberalism that was also uh rising in the 80s and the 90s but the whole the whole uh environment was
03:40one of of hope and and contributing to to a world that was promised to be more peaceful unlike the
03:47environment that we see today um so that's kind of the background and then i grew up always having
03:54that question in my head of what can i do to contribute which is actually the very reason
03:59why i became an architect as you mentioned i saw my city expand during my youth and i wanted to be able
04:06to be uh informed and be able to contribute to that expansion um then unfortunately alluding to the
04:13previous conversation we had before we started recording i realized that in order to to to grow
04:20messages and to get people behind ideas you need to be very visible and i always liked performing and
04:29acting so i went down that route and i went to entertainment marketing and i ended up working
04:33in social media analytics and tech while also being involved in politics and i guess at some point
04:40um i realized that the the best way to contribute is not to wait for um for the world to to to give you
04:53a sign uh the sign is already the one you have seen and you need to find your way much like you're doing
05:00to contribute and um i was touring the united states i was actually touring american military bases
05:07in 2024 in 2024 in late 2024 as part of the native program and all of the american personnel kept telling
05:16us how important um information resilience is and communication channels during warfare they were
05:22placing the ability of a society to communicate with each other as um the number one way of of uh describing
05:30whether the country is resilient or not to to an attack uh in this day and age and um
05:37um we were all agreeing all these young politically active europeans that had been invited to to do
05:42this tour we were all agreeing that europe needs its own uh social media networks obviously you know
05:49with kind of a decade now behind us having seen everything from cambridge analytica to brexit to trump
05:54and seen how these social media that originally um you know kind of made viral the best of ourselves
06:05have ended up making viral the worst of ourselves so we went from media that used to
06:11to reward us with what we were supporting to social media algorithms that reward us for whatever
06:20polarizes the most because that's what keeps us hooked and engaged um and we're talking about how
06:25we need european social media in europe and i said okay i'll build it so i have the the privilege and
06:30the burden so nato made it happen really it's a good story honestly it's a it's a quote unquote
06:39further uh way than that it was actually the americans i mean the state department brought us
06:44together right it was the the international visitor leadership program that i attended with this
06:49incredible cohort um and then we saw the election of donald trump happen and we we saw elon musk
06:56very publicly touting that he had bought this election for donald trump he was giving away
07:03money on twitter like hey vote for trump and uh i'll give you away money i mean it was incredible
07:07what's happening um so in in early january 2025 i i made that commitment that i was going to try and
07:14make that happen i was working for two years for a social media analytics company so i was
07:19acutely aware of of um social media usage and and the priorities of of of of so-called users and social
07:28media um but you know the last the last year has been um an effort and a learning curve in in
07:37understanding the market and understanding that hey unfortunately um you know organizing uh society
07:46is is much more challenging as i think the left is acutely aware of right uh organizing is is very
07:53very difficult so you need to work with the tools that you have and these tools right now are the
07:57market um and so how do you present to the market uh a business model uh that it feels comfortable
08:07backing while at the same time having a business operation that wants to support um society democracy and
08:15and have a um a positive impact um on on who we are so yeah it's been it's been a it's been a big big challenge
08:25to to to to to try and structure a company to try and find the right people who you know most of us are
08:30working for nothing even a year later to try and build this up building from scratch um but it's also been an
08:37amazing learning curve i mean you know getting the opportunity to meet other builders like the founders of
08:42mastodom the founders of eurosky uh the founders of matrix uh now the founder of w social and outsider
08:49um it's it's been a beautiful experience a lot of learnings a lot of sacrifices as well
08:56uh but at this point we we need to learn how to to work with each other all of us uh to ensure that
09:03the mission remains more important than any individual success okay so tell me a little bit about
09:11the media alarms came in european union basically or primarily because that's it looks like primarily
09:18it should be for the europeans this platform that you are building with your colleagues
09:22so you know how were the other media partners or co-partners or how to put it reacting to a new
09:32christos new someone new is it is it supportive or or rather you know the other way around so what are
09:41you experienced i've only felt support i mean we're a small team with limited resources so i haven't been
09:47able to to reach or haven't really tried to reach all the media organizations in europe because your
09:52question is is is very broad right now that it's two layers no it's like how you see it and then
09:58how you experience it that that are different kind of ways how it's done i i think i think to talk
10:05about a media landscape in europe is already misleading because there's no media landscape in
10:09europe in reality uh we have a little bit it's not totally american slash chinese but no no what i mean
10:19is no no i don't mean that what i mean is that in europe we have multiple media but they're not i
10:26wouldn't consider them european i would say there is okay yeah arian media and romanian media and
10:32german media and french media etc in europe um there's very few european media uh and those that
10:38do exist are not really uh broadly uh broadly consumed which also means they don't actually
10:44uh reach um you know the average european ergo it doesn't actually contribute to a european media
10:51landscape um you could argue that alex springer's uh political is you know a european obviously a
10:58european outlet but does the average person in romania greece or france read political.eu no
11:05does the average person read euronews no um but the the entire the entire environment has been very
11:12supportive in terms of the social media environment um market of a stagger has started an initiative called
11:19rebuild uh we're all meeting in copenhagen in a month from now less than a month from now
11:23uh to and it the attempt is to bring as many founders of social media platforms um which goes
11:30from anything from marketplaces to micro blogging platforms um to see what we can learn from each
11:36other um but the the ultimate thing that i've learned really is just this that you need to create a
11:42a great consumer platform um i'm a i'm a i want to say i'm a huge fan of an outsider who's uh who's
11:50starting w because uh perhaps i'm biased but we see the world in a very similar way and we
11:58we see that we need to win we need to win market share in order for this thing to work but i really
12:04love what she's trying to do which is to build a a twitter alternative um out of europe um
12:12where you can trust who else is on the platform which is very much aligned with what we're trying
12:17to do uh even though we're building a platform that's uh closer closer um to to instagram in terms
12:23of the field uh but we've had the luck of you know starting and falling faster um so we started a bit
12:31earlier so we've also learned that that people won't just migrate to something simply because
12:37um the experience is better we need to identify what experiences people need and i think that's
12:43what we've done well and then uh there was a there was a third part to to your question
12:50that i'm trying to to get back to which you answered it wow i have another question in my head and
12:57that is okay when you're talking about getting to the consumers or your users so how big is the
13:04platform now and and how was the growth and what are your plans well it's what february 26 so till the
13:12end of the year and you know the optimistic version as well the not so optimistic version so how is it going
13:20right yes i mean it actually goes back to that third part of your question before which is you ask you
13:25know is the platform just for europeans and the thing is you cannot build a platform just for
13:30europeans because um because that's not how our networks our personal networks work we all have
13:37friends or family in the united states or in canada or in australia or in south africa or in lebanon
13:43that we want to connect with so gatekeeping that the network is not something that we're planning
13:50okay um so to answer the question now we are uh in in early february we're the 10th of february as
13:56of this recording and uh we've just surpassed 50 000 registration on the platform which is incredible
14:04you launched in november when i remember it correctly yeah we launched uh in late uh mid to late october
14:11so okay okay okay android on the 15th of october and uh ios a few days later
14:17um we obviously launched uh as you know an unstable and uh buggy version of uh of our app so we launched
14:26an open alpha even microsoft bingos is buggy and unstable so don't be too hard on yourself
14:35it was very important for us to to to learn from that experience and we've learned so much i mean we
14:41ended up re-engineering the entire app to make sure that we prepare for scale
14:45uh we saw the priorities of people um and mostly being interested in sharing uh life moments on this
14:52app so now we are redirecting all of our effort to supporting um daily life sharing and we're really
14:59focused on on ensuring that we become the the go-to place uh for people to share daily life moments and i
15:07think in that respect in terms of also answering the question about consumer um fit um the most
15:16successful social media platform out of europe of the last few years has not been any platform that
15:21ever claimed european sovereignty as a goal it was be real right be real was by far the most successful
15:28european um social media startup i think part of the reason why be real didn't work is because
15:36um i think the product was very sticky but it didn't actually solve the problem that it
15:41wanted to solve um but it was which is the problem that they wanted to solve but didn't solve it
15:49they wanted to be the anti-instagram they wanted people not to have to perform uh in in sharing they
15:55thought that people only shared the the most you know the polished version of themselves on the
16:00instagram feed uh however i think their solution didn't necessarily um
16:09their solution did not necessarily solve that because if you're prompted to post once a day
16:16uh a very specific type of post then you end up wanting to prepare and be ready for that and
16:22wanting to perform as well in that um but we you know we learned from all of that and i think
16:28the product vision is um is correct uh now for for us or at least aligned with what we're trying to
16:34after half a year 50 000 people that's huge no i i i'm not an expert but i think when the other
16:40platforms from us were starting they were not much bigger in the beginning no yeah i mean i mean we're
16:48very we're very happy with with uh people's embrace of that obviously you know there is there is churn
16:54especially in the later cohorts um but i can't wait i can't wait to to show you what um the better
17:03version will look like uh by spring and uh to show you the the full version of what we hope to offer by
17:09summer time um i think we've really nailed it down um and for us the big question will be our ability to
17:15to raise capital um unfortunately for me i'm very value driven and very um convinced of what we're
17:24doing but i'm not as aggressive in raising capital and i'm also very cautious about where capital comes
17:29from like from the one side we need money to be able to sustain operations uh we need money to be
17:34able to feed the people that work on this project we need money to be able to pay for all this
17:38incredibly expensive infrastructure uh that we have gotten so used to being for free because uh
17:44american big tech companies really see us as users and they offer us a drug and we have all gotten
17:50hooked to that drug but it's a very expensive drug it's like um i don't know if we're allowed to name
17:56drugs in this recording or podcast you know go with the flow imagine imagine a drug dealer uh
18:04uh going about the streets and being like hey guys hey kids want to try these drugs don't worry it's
18:10free and they've been giving them to us for free all that all that dopamine that that this drug has
18:16been giving us for free every day and they get paid oh very well because we take that drug and that drug
18:22keeps us gets us so addicted that we can't look away we can't look away and we're just sitting there in
18:28our little chairs in our beds wherever we are watching their advertising but let's not mistake it
18:35they've been giving us a drug they've been giving us a drug they've been drugging us opening our eyes
18:42and guaranteeing our eyeballs are giving attention to whatever they want us to give uh their our attention
18:49to it is absolutely criminal it is criminal that this has been a so-called business
18:58business model and and that's what we're trying to change um and i really really hope that some
19:04europeans will want to put uh money behind us because it's yeah it's absolutely criminal that social media
19:11have been no it is and it isn't this is how capitalism worked from the day they go now they they they at least
19:19a half a century or half a century or half a century since uh days of uh what was the nephew of freud uh
19:27it's name i forget always but uh yeah so it's it's it's when you i'm from post-communistic country so i
19:36remember from my childhood the propaganda of communism yeah and when you when you look at the propaganda of
19:43capitalism and of communism and you compare it and and use throw it as a basis then communists were
19:51focusing on the super ego you know lofty ideals and the capitalists are focusing on the id when you
19:59know it from from there is super ego ego and it so the animal urges yeah and obviously it's working
20:08dopamine is great so this is this is something you should be aware of that when you have two lofty
20:14ideals most people will not follow because dopamine is you know and the id is is in every one of us
20:22some some can resist it better than the others but in the end you know when we have a shitty day
20:29eat the rules um but you know i i i i think the i i think there's there's a lot to be said about our
20:40economic systems and i think there is a a a huge difference a huge difference between um uh you know
20:52capitalism and this insane late-stage capitalism that we find ourselves in today
20:59because i i i i think uh and i and i see the the the the benefits the massive benefits that
21:09were um that were sustained and and and grew out of europe by being able to both leverage capitalism and
21:19protecting um social democracies and and and and building our social welfare state right so there's the
21:27there's this incredible um model that i think many countries in europe can be proud of of being able
21:35to exist in in the global market and also being able to provide their citizens a high quality of life
21:42and a high quality of of education and high quality of health care and many other things the problem
21:48that i see today is that this extreme late-stage capitalism has essentially created
21:54or brought back whatever you want to call it um uh feudalism and and and that is you know what what is
22:04being described as techno feudalism essentially these roligarchs that i know janus varofakt as well
22:10and you obviously too yeah so so yeah of course i mean and you know i think jan is popular as the term
22:17and i think i um i've learned a lot from him um i i i i don't claim to to to to be uh an expert
22:26but from what i understand um now is now is uh now is uh um let me put it that way now is the winter of our
22:40discontent dot there is no continuation to that quote from written third on this statement
22:47now it's all in my in my eyes it's only natural this i'm not so surprised to be honest when i look
22:55back then it was more polished but it was more polished because that's that's another thing that
23:01the communists messed up the capitalists embraced psychology and and human nature and the real id you
23:08know who we not who we really are but the how how they can shape us yeah and they shape us from the
23:17cradle literally you know the the arts when you look at the amount of arts that we are perceiving
23:25nowadays compared with 100 years ago it grew like that's the dopamine you are saying now it's it grew
23:31like 36 000 so in a day we see as many ads as we used to see in a year a hundred years
23:38ago so we are just brainwashed by well this thing and people are so unaware that they are actually
23:47fighting for their oppressor so they want to be oppressed yeah it really depends i think you know
23:57i think people are um aware and they make informed choices and at the end of the day
24:03no they are not that's the whole point they don't do they don't make informed choices or better to say
24:11the information is so skewed that it's not information at all that's what the id is about
24:17you know at the end of the day the oranges are not really an information like sex drive is nice and and
24:25and and i don't know what you want to bear and fear and how you want to feel but you know feelings are
24:30not information it's just facts are information and this is not facts facts based society this is
24:39emotions based society that they created
24:44what i'm trying to convey is that we still have an opportunity to make informed decisions maybe
24:51phrasing it like that is um is more accurate to what i'm attempting to convey we we still know
24:58where the facts are at the moment and we can make some of us do but most most people don't no
25:05unfortunately i can't disagree what i'm trying to say is the information the facts as you describe
25:10are out there right we know the facts it's not like they have disappeared we we each thank
25:16thankfully have books i hope uh still in our homes with facts yeah but not each no it's it's a small
25:26portion it's a sliver of society who lives in reality what i'm trying to say is that what's really really
25:32scary is that five to ten years from now facts will just be grok right we we already see even the
25:42european commission which i thought was the stupidest thing ever i think it was one of the european
25:45institutions if it was not a commission that said grok can you fact check this no no no no do not
25:52i get that it's cool to to to to to go with a trend and be like oh you see even grok says you're not
25:58right elon uh but no no this is what i'm really scared about this is what i was saying as a candidate
26:04of the european parliament in 2024 i was saying this my biggest fear is that these large language models
26:10uh become uh such a huge dependency for us that we just go like hey rock tell me tell me is this
26:17true tell me grok tell me what i should think because i don't even have time to think grok
26:22and and that's that becomes scary because there we enter we enter a period where we really really
26:29don't have the possibility to get facts anymore it's whether the facts are whatever grok says because
26:33grok is god and grok gives us the the information there is nothing but grok or whatever yeah yeah
26:41yeah but that's based on critical thinking and on on the question mark in your head that you don't
26:47take it for granted what grok or whatever llm is saying to you that's yeah they are a hallucinating a
26:54lot and be be aware that they are they have not your best interest in mind yeah and who's behind them
27:02i i can i can never i could never imagine a world without buses right i know that if i walk down
27:09the street i'm able to to to get a bus and go from one place to another because i grew up in a city that
27:16had buses so in the same way if kids today are growing up with microsoft teams as a way to communicate
27:23and put their homework and with grok or whatever ai is put in to their microsoft computers they will
27:30not be able to imagine a world without it and that's my biggest fear i mean how different we
27:35become on these technologies to think there's a difference and and this is my my big uh this is
27:42where i i really have uh uh contrasting opinions with with many people i also believe that technology is
27:48great technological advancements are great i mean i would rather be able to heat my home than not be
27:53able to heat my home i'm glad that we have electricity but all of these technologies support
27:59uh uh you know uh support our our physical in our physical environment but
28:11if the majority of us rely on technologies to think and take decisions that is that is no longer a
28:17physical layer that is no longer a physical technology and and that is uh that is incredibly
28:24scary but who knows maybe maybe 20 years from now people like us will have been called uh paranoid
28:29and not just by propaganda but just so you remember when these people were scared of ai what would
28:34we do without grok i wouldn't say that i'm scared but i'm cautious no it's not it's not really
28:41fear that i and and that's what i'm telling to everyone people should be cautious people shouldn't be
28:47too you know to how to say to to trusty or trustful or what it's like i don't believe i mean this is the
28:57what i was learned in school the truth it's not like given it it's like a puzzle that you have to piece
29:03together and and when it's too easy then then it's not probably true when it's too when it's not messy
29:10because the world is messy and when when you cannot lose that consciousness that out of this mess
29:19and out of these contradictions comes the truth because there is not only one way how to see world
29:26but there are 8.2 billion ways how to see world and something gets lost now and then it's not true
29:32then it's just manipulation yeah absolutely now anyways what i wanted to discuss with you
29:40because we were talking a few months back uh is the idea that you can't wait back then and i don't know
29:49whether it's still alive about the financing that you actually want monet to become a uh publicly owned
29:57company sort of and that it should be a cooperative and i because this is something i totally embrace
30:06in my life and in what i do and not only me luckily but there are five million people in european union
30:13who work in cooperatives so it's obviously not only me and you who think about this so what is the plan
30:20because in such a scenario maybe you have tried it already and and it's not as easy as i imagine in such a
30:27scenario when people are owners of that platform they have skin in the game as well as you know vision
30:35and mission and this is me now because i own partially own it so how is it looking um exactly this is this
30:44is something that we want to do um i think we had discussed it the reason why we didn't do it from
30:50the very beginning is because we needed to try and test like are we actually even able to do this are
30:54we able to build it are we able to build a brand i think uh in the united states in north america and
30:59canada they have a bigger culture of participating in crowdfunding and pulling together resources and
31:04building things together um to to share a company together uh but in this next round i'm fully
31:11committed to actually having a tranche open so that more people can begin to own parts of monet together
31:21the uh the process of doing it sorry to jump in for me under to understand so it's not like everyone
31:26who will be using it will be partial owner that you you will be paying monthly fee and this monthly fee
31:32is for sustaining the platform but as well it's like an ownership contribution because
31:38when i was discussing i mean the biggest cooperative in europe and in the world actually is mondragon
31:43so we had an interview with them some time back and this is how they are doing it you can work at
31:49mondragon and but you have to get you know 16 000 euros it was but you don't have to have the money
31:55they can borrow it to you but you will kind of pay it back you know as you work and depends no
32:02so isn't that the idea i haven't looked at these these type of structures uh yet uh at the moment
32:09we're really focused on building the product and ensuring that we can scale it and have the ability
32:15to finance it uh that is also interesting i think it's very difficult to imagine this at scale that
32:25everyone would want to pay uh more than uh simply the the the cost of um contribution
32:37um now that depends because you can you can be paying it for a couple of years so you know when
32:41you pay five euro monthly it's 60 euros in 10 years it's 600 euros so it's it's money and when you have
32:49one million users then do the math i don't know i'm just asking because i i thought that this is the
32:54way how you want to structure it that's why i'm asking to so that you can explain how exactly do you
33:00want to do it because from what i understood last time and obviously obviously maybe i was mistaken
33:07this is this is what you had in mind at the moment i have in mind uh allowing uh as many people as
33:15uh as they want to be able to participate in in the next round of fundraising to to become uh co-owners
33:23of this platform there are okay okay many legal structures that i'm currently excited for the the
33:29the main one being uh eu inc uh so i i hope that that happens and we become a european company uh and
33:37then we'll see i i i i would very much love to have as many people as possible own money but i also know
33:44that uh the risk is higher the earlier that someone is attached and we're not going to reinvent
33:52the entire process of the market before actually being able to to deliver a functioning and and
34:00well-used platform uh because obviously the cost of operation right now is much much higher than
34:05you know the the current people that could um
34:08um um uh that could potentially contribute i mean right now this year will cost us
34:17more than 400 000 euro and i don't think that our current community
34:22would be willing to to sustain that maybe maybe i'm wrong but no well not the community but it will be
34:28going this is this is i might be mistaken but this is how i approach it because this is the strategy that
34:34we have in uh in our we spoke about it with the unions that the engagement from people who are inside
34:43the union can be expected to be higher than some random dude from wherever because it's their identity
34:51yeah i am member of a union they are aware that they are a member of the union so seen from that
34:56perspective maybe i'm naive i don't know i i expect them that's that's the approach that they will be willing
35:03to do something to do something because that's their identity and sacrifice something not much yeah but
35:09something so that's that's the way how we are trying to kind of sell it to to unions the media idea that
35:18we have that if they become members of that thing then they will be you know this is our media platform
35:24and and it should be union based primarily because well it's five million people only in uh uni europa in
35:34europe so only when one percent of those embrace the idea that's 50 000 users and well that's 50 000
35:42people who have skin in the game and also when you are when you have skin in the game then you will be
35:48talking about it with with your mother and brother and cousin and whatnot and so it might grow no but
35:57that's me i don't know i i i'm i i didn't i'm saying that i did solve the financing issues of this world
36:04maybe i'm mega naive but i just hope that people want to belong yeah i mean yes people absolutely want to
36:14belong no and and also pay something for it no because this is something we didn't explicitly say
36:20when you were talking about the dopamine and you you did mention the data last time we spoke and and
36:27tell the audience how much are we so so-called paying by uh watching the stream of facebook or whatnot
36:37in a year and how much are the ads worth that uh we are kind of buying with our attention from uh well
36:48meta or or from alphabet or tick tock or whatever is behind it so you had the data so please you know
36:57share it with unconscious masses how much money are they actually kind of contributing and and for free and
37:06and willingly to these behemoths of capitalism billions and billions right now yeah that's the
37:15interesting thing that people think that it's free but no actually you are paying for it with your
37:21attention at the data i've seen is 25 euros for meta for facebook a year but maybe it was a month i don't
37:28know i mean you were you were giving me the data last time we spoke so that's why i thought that you have it
37:34in your head you mean how much then the the ads are worth something yeah and if people were not
37:42watching the ads then then meta wouldn't have the ad revenue so the ad revenue is actually based on the
37:48or the attention and when you when the average user is one hour or whatever it is on on that platform then
37:55he or she consumes i don't know how many ads and so actually this is how the money gets generated so you
38:02are worth as a person as a christos or michael or whoever some sum of money in a month in a year
38:09for the particular company or generated it for them yeah so you are paying it with your attention basically
38:16off the top of my head i remember that in 2024 instagram made 250 dollars per u.s consumer
38:24there you go so this is this is something that people should be aware that there is the way of
38:33paying it like this that you are you get willingly brainwashed yeah 250 euros of brainwashed is going
38:40down the retina and into your brain or you pay something probably you won't be needing 250 euros from
38:48everyone who will be using money to to sustain it and not be brainwashed by whatever ad company wants
38:56to brainwash you no as i was saying a few minutes back now we are literally consuming six to 12 000 ads a day
39:05a day like that that becomes also the bigger problem right the the average consumer in europe spends
39:12between 10 and 30 000 uh euros more uh you know every decade on bullshit no no through through ads that
39:23that they've seen through social media right not directly it doesn't it doesn't mean you click on
39:29there but it's like you've seen something so many times that it will end up uh costing you more uh no yeah
39:35the when you when you look at the the amount of arts that are run in the world it's roughly two
39:41billions uh yearly and the amount of uh additional uh buying power how to put it or the revenue that
39:52is generated it's roughly one to ten so for two billion arts they generate roughly 20 billion trillion of
39:59arts to build trillion of arts and they generated roughly 20 trillion of revenue so that's that's
40:06that's what happening with us that's why the uh well why these companies were set up the way they were
40:13set up because we are hooked on the arts as i said it grew 36 000 percent in last century and that's why we
40:21have in my opinion the biggest uh ecological problems in the history of mankind because roughly half of the
40:28revenue or half of the time that we are working we are working for bullshit yeah we have working
40:33bullshit jobs so we can buy shit we don't need so that they the machine keeps rolling yeah 20 trillion a
40:40year it's needlessly spent on well sneakers oh i don't know what yeah worse i mean on sneakers that no
40:49longer no longer last anymore because no no that's it this is this is this this is it and that's what i'm
40:58trying to do with what i'm doing to break this pattern because it's unsustainable ecologically it doesn't make
41:06any sense physically and mentally because we are not happier than we were 100 years ago actually we are
41:12more unhappy because we are constantly not having enough because of 6 000 to 12 000 arts a day that are
41:21pumped into our heads we are constantly missing something so as as a life happiness goes when you
41:30losing all the time then you will not be a winner so that's and i i guess that this is something that
41:36you are trying to achieve it uh with mona that there will be no arts that the people will be owners of
41:43that platform it depends on it depends on people at the end of the day though no to share yeah but
41:51but yeah this is this is the idea right now yeah the idea right now is to to to to have a maximum
41:57amount of people be members so that we never have to sort ads uh but obviously in order to to say pay
42:05so that you don't ever have ads you need to have some ads so we're trying to figure out how that's going
42:09to work uh the only type of advertising we could imagine is contextual advertising so you cannot
42:14advertise by targeting people we don't collect user data but you can advertise say by saying you
42:20advertise on the word uh football and so hashtag football gets an advertising uh so it's the actual
42:27hashtag that has the ad you know thing so contextual okay uh a few months back i've seen that you want to
42:34launch the paid platform that we were actually asked you were asking the question how much should
42:39people be paying so this this was dropped because i actually thought that it's gonna come that i will
42:45be paying two euros a month or whatever to use my that's what i'm saying that's the main focus
42:50it's just that obviously in order to be able to pay 2.99 a month uh to be able to to not have ads
42:56you need to have some ads so at the start we will start with ads that are from money promoting membership
43:02okay yeah but obviously but but inside the bubble of money you will not have ads outside of the
43:08bubble we will because when 50 000 people pay two euros or three euros or whatever a month or even 10
43:15000 yeah i mean this is this this is what i would do yeah but i will tell them when you are on the other
43:21platforms you are paying as well with your attention and you are worth 250 euros yeah so here you will be
43:28paying 25 euros a year i mean as bargains go it goes back to what you were saying about uh
43:36about how people make decisions and why and yes indeed we really have to see how many people are
43:41willing to pay 50 000 registrations does not mean 50 000 people get to stay on the platform no no no
43:47when we get to a million people it doesn't mean one million subscribers if we have
43:51if we have if we have in if we have one million people registered and we have 50 000 people uh
43:58that have uh signed up for membership that would be already a huge win for us
44:03but it's it all depends on whether people stick around and whether people are willing to pay
44:07and of course when we say 299 which is effectively you know uh three years coffee
44:13yeah but how much do we make so from that immediately you need to reduce 30 for apple
44:20or for google because it's not a european system it's so they take a huge cut i mean people
44:27i thought that you are eu-based you are based in germany that the the it is in germany so you went to
44:34ah okay so i update my software because last time we spoke uh i thought that you you are paying some
44:40licenses or what to those americans okay we're hosted in europe but the apps right the apps
44:47are in in the apps are available to get on your on your phones which are both american technologies
44:54so apple and google android or apple right they take a huge cut that's 30 and all the payments
45:01what are you going to pay with you're going to pay with your visa or your mastercard there's more fees
45:05there uh for uh uh you know software that allows you to put up these subscriptions so essentially
45:13we're hoping to make about one euro a month you know as as a as a as a revenue per person and from
45:20that say it's to the users so they should be aware i mean i wasn't aware now you have to say this
45:25explicitly that what it actually entails yeah from that we need to pay uh servers and infrastructure and we
45:34need to pay salaries and we need to pay offices and you know only at scale can we no yeah no that's um
45:44question now because something that i've read that uh they want to go and and create something visa
45:50like in european union uh or mastercard or whatever uh uh for example but no i don't i don't know how
45:57how it how it was called but finally i mean trump is terrible but he's also good that's finally they
46:04are waking up that this is this is not great yeah that we have everything okay everything most of our
46:10infrastructure is us-based now so they are hopefully doing something about it and you will not have be
46:18paying visa and mastercard in one or two or three years or whatever
46:22i mean there there's bankomat there is um uh there is now the direct payments uh instant payments
46:33across the eu there there are many ways many ways that europeans can pay with each other uh there's
46:38also the eu wallet coming uh supposedly uh i don't know how i feel about all these centralized uh options
46:46it is something you know i mean it's a pleasure it's it's it's it's it's better than what was the
46:55case five years ago when we were naively believing in butterflies and roses and and and peace now now we
47:02have woken up uh okay so i know that you have a hard stop in few seconds so let's wrap it up so thank
47:10you very much christos i would love to uh continue with this conversation in couple of months so how
47:17are you doing how is it going and and and and so on because the ambition is totally something that
47:24europeans should support not only because of what's going on in america but cannot it's ours our continent so
47:32we should build our sheet here yeah that's just totally and not kind of import it from wherever when we can
47:39do it it's also kind of like a maturity test that whether we can build it on our own or whether we
47:44will rely on big brother to send it to us and and we you know take it so totally kudos to you and your
47:53whole team and and and you know hugs and kisses thank you so much and i will i will give the uh i will
48:01i will give the the good words to to the rest of the team thank you man thank you great collect
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