{ "episodeId": "SLP347", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab": { "name": "Kyle Murphy of Pleb Lab", "role": "guest", "tag": "KYLE" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.45, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today my guest is Kyle Murphy. He's is involved in the Bitcoin Austin scene and he's also one of the founders of Pleb Lab. So Pleb Lab is a combination of co-working accelerator and community hub for Bitcoin in Austin. So in this show we talk a little bit About the scene in Austin, as well as comparison of Austin, relative to other US cities and states and areas to build up the Bitcoin scene, as well as what it looks like for entrepreneurs who are building in the Austin scene. This show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, the easy way to accumulate Bitcoin and also learn about Bitcoin. Now, if you haven't already, go to swan dot com and check out the front page. You can type in an amount, whether that is twenty dollars a week, a hundred dollars a week, or more, and calculate that That for the last five years and just see what you would have put in and what that would be worth now. I think it'll be a really instructive moment for many people, and even if it's not for yourself, for your friends, I think this is quite an interesting statistic to share. So that website is swan dot com. There are all kinds of resources there for people to learn about Bitcoin and also stack sats. This show also brought to you by Brains. They are a Bitcoin mining company through and through, and they've got various projects that you can use for yourself. So they have Brains OS Plus, this is firmware for your ASIC mining machine. So you can install this firmware, and it will optimize your mining performance, getting you more hash rate for your electricity bill. So this is basically helping you auto-tune for maximum performance and efficiency. Now they've got a range of models, you can check out the website brains dot com to see what's available. Brains are also the operators of Slushpool. The first Bitcoin mining pool, and Jack Dorsey recently said that he is mining on Slashpool, so go and check them out. They've also got a really cool analytics and insights dashboard, which you can find on their website, that's brains dot com with two eyes. Also, for those of you interested in Bitcoin mining, CompuS Mining is the world's first and largest online marketplace for Bitcoin mining hardware, hosting, and ASIC reselling. Bitcoin mining is only getting bigger, and so is CompuS Mining. CompuS is adding over two hundred and eighty megawatts worth of hosting capacity this alone, with more to come. That's over six times Compass's current hosting capacity, meaning more people can mine Bitcoin. With Compass, anyone can mine Bitcoin. Go and start your mining journey by visiting compassmining dot io today. On to the show with Kyle. Kyle, welcome to the show. Thanks, Stefan. Glad to be here. So, Kyle, I know you're working on this whole idea of Pleb Lab and all this stuff, and you're in Austin, obviously Bitcoin is, growing scene, and there are a lot of Bitcoiners coming to Austin. So, let's hear it from you in terms of how you got to Austin and the Bitcoin scene there and how you found all this." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "02:58", "start": 177.85, "text": "yeah, good question. I would say a, a good degree of it is kind of just happenstance, just, The, the kind of lifestyle I had built pre Bitcoin and pre Austin was very nomadic, so I kinda just, and ended up wherever the wind blew me. And post-pandemic, I left San Francisco, my kind of like fan life, community of Army veterans just spread out across the country and ended up wherever they went next. Late 2020, I got into Bitcoin. I mean, I had heard about it in 2016, but 2020 was when I got skin in the game. six or seven months after skin in the game The game I was a hundred percent in, and shortly after that it was just kind of like, where do I go from here? And the two options that presented themselves were leverage and gamble the Bitcoin I worked my ass off for, or try and find a way to add value to the ecosystem somehow. I was visiting some family in Dallas, heard whispers in the wind about this event called BitDev's that was happening once a month down in Austin, so I came down to check that out. I missed the one right when I arrived in Austin. And because of that, I just kind of was like, \"Alright, wasn't really feeling it, didn't get into the Bitcoiner scene. \"Was here for like ten days before I ended up buying a one way ticket to Mexico. Got to Mexico and realized that the travel days were over, I for sure did need to find a way to be in Bitcoin somehow. I made my way back, made it to a BitDev's, saw a hundred and fifty Bitcoiners in a room, no masks, kicking it. I was like, \"Alright, this is, this is my scene. \"So I" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "04:33", "start": 273.43, "text": "Yeah, that's kind of the start of the journey making my way to Austin. So it was just got into Bitcoin, heard there were Bitcoiners in Austin, made my way to Austin, saw the Bitcoiners, met the Bitcoiners, and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:44", "start": 284.4, "text": "never left. Fantastic. And so can you give us, place this in, in the timeline for me? So you got into Bitcoin hardcore in twenty twenty, you went all in, and then at what point did you actually come to Austin? So" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "04:57", "start": 296.79, "text": "I got a skin in the game was July of twenty twenty. I would have landed in Austin sh- Shortly after my thirty-second birthday, so we're talking probably early April of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:08", "start": 308.02, "text": "twenty twenty-one. Fantastic. And how was the Bitcoin scene growing at that point? Because I know the BitDev's community grew very rapidly, and so it, it came from just this small group. I, I think it was Justin Noon maybe who started that, and then obviously the guys, like Buck Purley and Parker and, Ben, Ben Thekamen have been very Proactive in building and growing that scene, and I've been, once or twice myself, I really enjoyed it. And so at that time in April, how big was it then?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "05:39", "start": 339.48, "text": "It was already bigger than the, the kind of onset from what I understand. So I've, I've heard stories about the like fifteen to twenty person kind of start when Justin Moon launched this thing back in, I don't know, years ago. but by the time I arrived here for that April meetup, I think that April meetup probably had at least a hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty people. People would be my, it was somewhere over a hundred people at the first meetup I ever saw." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:05", "start": 364.6, "text": "Yeah, and I can definitely add something there in terms of my own experience of going to Bitcoin meetups around the world. I was very impressed at the level of the knowledge, the technical depth I was seeing in the meetups that I was attending in those one or two times I went, just because of the number of people there and the amount of, high-level discussion that you could find there. So I was really impressed by that personally, and so I, I see it as being a real" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:30", "start": 390.42, "text": "Tell us a little bit about your experience of that and seeing, Austin grow into this real Bitcoin hub. Yeah, sure. So," }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "06:37", "start": 396.92, "text": "I mean, I arrived, I arrived mostly for Bitdevs. That was really kind of the driving thing. Parker Lewis put out the bat signal, \"If you're a Bitcoiner, come to Austin.\" I made my way down here. I saw a hundred and twenty-five people, a hundred and fifty people in a room. I stayed. I think I went to maybe two, maybe three, is probably pushing it. I think it was probably two Bitdevs" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "07:00", "start": 420.44, "text": "I was, I was not getting enough time around Bitcoiners, I wanted so much more. So I, I saw, I mean, listen, w-what you just said, the technical knowledge and the depth of discussion at BitDev's is amazing, but BitDev's was very technical. So for two hours, it's this very technical conversation. Everybody's kind of quiet, it's a little bit of participation from the crowd, but mostly listening and learning, and then it's followed up with Cooper's barbecue, where everybody goes, they socialize, they have- That good time. For me, being non-technical, especially, and, I mean, I've gotten more technical sitting in an office with Ben Karpman, Anthony Ronning, a bunch of wizards, have made me a hell of a lot more technical than I was seven, eight months ago. But I wanted more of the Coopers Barbecue and less of the technical. So the thought process was like, how can I just find a way to just kick it with Bitcoiners? My first thought was like, I'm just gonna send out a tweet and be like, \"I'm under this tree in" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "08:00", "start": 480.42, "text": "Gonzalez, who is now the co-founder of Austin Bitcoin Club and Pleb Lab, through a simple outreach on Twitter, I saw he owned a Bitcoin media company, I had questions about media, that conversation spawned, we realized we both wanted to kick it with Bitcoiners more often. So within three months of being in Austin, we had kind of hit the ground running to launch the Austin Bitcoin Club, which is now the kind of other side of the coin to Bitdevs. The Bitdevs is the very technical, the Austin Bitcoin Club is the very social network org. oriented. We do fifteen to twenty minutes, very generalized conversation, low level stuff. I turn off the microphone and we just eat food, drink beer, and kick it with bitcoiners. So that was kind of the progression of Austin Bitcoin Club. So now we're up to two meetings a month in the city of Austin. Still not sure it's enough. Probably need more at this point, since it's wild. That's excellent. So, but yeah, yeah. It's, it's growing fast. We, we're, we're up to two meetings a month, well over a hundred people apiece" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:00", "start": 540.5, "text": "I've, I can share e-even, even on this, I was one of the co-organizers for Bitcoin Sydney back when I was there, and we were doing basically a similar setup actually. We would do one main meetup where basically there might be some, someone giving a talk, and that would be sort of general, but sometimes more intermediate or advanced level, and then discussion, and then maybe, or sometimes it would be two talks, and that'd be like the main one. There would be a drinks meetup, and then there would be an online Socratic, which was our version" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:31", "start": 571.12, "text": "with, lockdown rules and things, that was more difficult, but, nevertheless, it sounds like you've got a similar thing going there, and, I think the other interesting part is building that community around it, like there might be chat groups going, there might be other ways to keep people connected. So what, what are you doing in the Austin scene?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "09:46", "start": 586.43, "text": "That's correct. I mean, at this point, I think we have two, maybe even three kind of-- There's two Austin Telegram groups. There's the original Austin Bitcoin, developers And then even the Texas Beef initiative, I would say, is, is a relatively, maybe not specifically Austin, but a very Texas-oriented kind of Bitcoin beef byproduct telegram as well. So plenty of conversation going on in the scene. At this point, the way that I stay most connected is through the two meetings. I mean, I go to BitDev every month, we host Austin Bitcoin Club, and then really the, the kind of the big development that spawned for us out of Austin Bitcoin Club is- The development of Pleb Lab, it was probably after our first meetup where the theme from the community continued to be, \"We wanna get devs together, we wanna get devs together, we wanna get devs together.\" So within a few weeks after the launch of the first Austin Bitcoin Club meetup, that was kind of where we started looking at taking things next. There were all kinds of different ideas like mini hackathons, Bitcoiner salons, like I had all these concepts tossed at me, but the theme was they wanted to get developers together. And we just started looking into it, one thing led to another, the place where we host the Austin Bitcoin Club meetups at Capital Factory, kind of saw us looking at houses. We were looking at real estate, we-- in the early days, we're looking at something like a hacker house kind of thought process. we sat down and had a conversation with some of the team here, and they kind of believed in the vision of what we were talking about and what we were looking at building, and we kind of set up a partnership for a ten-person office space, and thus began Pleb Lab." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:32", "start": 692.27, "text": "Fantastic, I love hearing it. And so, can you give us a little bit of an insight there into how you selected the location and then how you were going about? 'Cause obviously, I'm sure many people are thinking, \"How, how are you funding this? How is this gonna work?\" So could you" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "11:48", "start": 708.38, "text": "How we're funding it currently is, strong partnerships through Capital Factory and then just a lot of sweat equity. we didn't start Pleb Lab with a lot of funding, we started Pleb Lab with no funding, the same way we started Austin Bitcoin Club, a couple of bottles of water and some frickin' sandwiches from the grocery store. but yeah, we, we have honestly, the one thing that I would say we've done really well since the very onset is that we just execute small tasks daily. The kind of long term, like, how does this thing- Get funded. How do we create this kind of like large scale picture? Was never something that we, we like spent a lot of time focusing on. I've kind of started to get lost in it a little bit here and there of late, but we're trying to just keep it in this very grassroots pleb driven. It was just an idea. We got an office space, Capital Factory hooked us up with a very fair deal, and my thought process after we kind of came into that deal with Capital Factory was like, \"Look, I, I don't have any capital. I don't really have...\" I have a deep network of connections in the Bitcoin space. I do have an office. I do have a belief that I could help given an opportunity to help, and I believed I'm, I like networking, I like people, I like building community, I believed given enough time I could build that network around what we would start building. And the kind of thought process three ways between me, Kar, and, and, another co-founder, Kion, was the essentially this concept of like, let's essentially try to build an accelerator. So We got the office space. I went back down to the BitDevs meetup, I went on Twitter, and I just made announcements. I was like, \"Look, I have ten desks, they're free. I don't, I don't want money for the desk, I don't want equity in your company if you're one of the startups. I just want to help, because I believed that if we could actually show that the model worked, then I could leverage that success moving forward to actually start building something monetarily around it. So how to keep it going, was show that it works First and foremost, if the, if the model's not going to actually work, if we're not actually going to be able to build it, no amount of money would have helped that. So we had a fair deal. I gave away the value proposition that we were building for free to prove that we could do it, and that's kind of where we are today. So where we sit today in the process is that we brought in, well, we brought in three, it became four, products in the office that are early seed or pre-seed stage Bitcoin companies. the first two completed Their raise was stacked at News. They raised three hundred thousand. We have three left to go. We have Zapright, Oshi, and just recently launched Lightning Escrow. So, Zapright has some news coming down the pipeline very soon on the, the kind of state of their raise. I'm really optimistic that Oshi will be not far behind it, and Lightning Escrow, the like, literally the day they launched, we did their video from the Austin Bitcoin Club meetup last month. Tim Draper's team saw Lightning Escrow, was in his DMs, was in And literally all of Pleb Lab's DMs. So it's looking like, pretty bullish that all four of the projects are likely to get funded based on the kind of money that the, the co-founders or founders are looking to raise. I think round one of Pleb Lab probably produces four companies that have raised somewhere between one point six and two point two million dollars, and yeah, that's kind of been the process. So we're at the point now where I think we've shown that it works. We've put in a lot of proof of work with very little capital behind us The Pleb Lab C Corp and are now getting ready to kind of make a more public announcement about the fact that we are raising ourselves." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:25", "start": 925.35, "text": "That's great to see the community ethos and the building aspect and encouraging people to actually build a business and try to create a product and a service. And so, how long has the Pleb Lab been operating for at this point?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "15:39", "start": 938.82, "text": "Three months. It is super early, super early. crazy how fast things move though. That three months, I feel like we've been doing this forever, Stephan. It's- It's crazy, like, I just last night heard people talking about things we were doing a few, a few months ago, and I was like, \"Dude, I know it feels like that was a few months ago, but that was like, it was a few weeks ago.\" Like, so, I-- This is, this isn't specific to Pleb Lab by any stretch of the imagination. Like, time in Bitcoin is just like crazy. Like, one year in Bitcoin is like five years in, in normie land, right? But it is crazy how fast things have moved. It" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:18", "start": 978.4, "text": "Space-wise, if you've already got four Bitcoin startups operating out of the office and there's ten desks, what does it look like then if you wanted to actually bring in more people, would you then have to try to upgrade the space requirement or space?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "16:29", "start": 989.43, "text": "Yeah, so, yeah, it's a, it's a good question, and we're obviously at three months in, we're constantly kind of developing our plans as well with the relationship we have with Capital Factory and kind of where we started things with the, the original thought process of Pleb Lab was that we bring you in, the first round goes in Until the end of March. I don't think we're going to need that long to get everybody raised, and obviously, with only four companies, as you've pointed out, and ten desks filled, a handful of those desks are guys who are just like working at already established funded companies. You've got the Ben Carman, the Anthony Roning, Paul Miller, guys who just use the space really more as co-working. And in, in my mind, when we kind of first started, the thought process there was that like, yes, we're trying to build an accelerator. I am Far as one guy, and how can we kind of really make it work? My mind was like, if I could get ten startups, I'd probably be overwhelmed, I wouldn't really be able to kind of focus my efforts on a handful of people. So I brought in a handful of startups and a handful of guys who just use the space to sit and do work, but who can occasionally add high level insights from their years of experience in the Bitcoin space to kind of help foster growth of these companies that are, are working to develop new things into their own product. Products. So it's a hive mindset, there's a lot of intelligence backing, passing back and forth around a bunch of different people. The thought process going forward is that obviously once you've kind of raised, the partnership we have with Capital Factory right now is that we have a really good discount, they give us twenty percent off of the kind of membership packages that they host themselves in the co-working space. So the people who are with us now will likely shift into something more co-working oriented and we'll cycle in the The next round, if you will, of people who are building companies. That being said, I think we're kind of shifting away from the idea of a, like, a cohort model where it's like, people start on this date, people end on this date. Feels very fiat, it feels very Silicon Valley. I think what we're trying to do at Pleb Lab is really much more like, we wanna work with cool, fucking people who are building cool, fucking projects, right? We're, we're really trying to kind of be that grassroots, like, build the culture around what's happening on the ground in Bitcoin. So we're abandoning, for the most part, the idea of a cohort. We're just gonna keep the stream coming. If we find somebody that has a cool idea and seems ready to work their ass off, those are the criteria for Pleb Lab, and so far, it's been a good criteria. Interesting project that I think has potential, that you can help me understand as a, as a luddite, and are you going to give your company a hundred and ten percent? 'Cause that's what I'm getting. And that's where we're at. We're Greater experience and go forward, hopefully a successful leader who can take their company to great places." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:24", "start": 1164.39, "text": "So as I'm reading you, then it's a combination of accelerator, co-working space, community hub, networking aspect all rolled into events together." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "19:34", "start": 1173.89, "text": "Correct. And, and we're also actively building into the kind of the curriculum, mentorship, coaching, and outside of our space, kind of actively trying to build around the need for more projects actually Being developed, so we're, we're actively getting involved with education and hackathons. We are looking at doing four hackathons a year moving forward. We'll be throwing our first one during South by Southwest in March. more info coming soon, but, Sats by Southwest is, is officially" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:06", "start": 1206.18, "text": "a go. So- I love the name. It's a great play on the already existing title. Obviously, there's so many things going on with Austin because the broader technology world, even outside of our Bitcoin world, is a lot of them are coming to Austin. And so you can pick from that, that talent and pick from the conferences there and benefit a little bit from that network effect because there may be non-bitcoin developers or non-bitcoin technology workers who are looking for an opportunity. And so that might be an opportunity there. And I, I, I like that idea around the hackathons. That's something we've seen. I know there was, there was a smaller event, I've forgotten the exact name of it, but it was, it was around Plebify. Yes, that's right, that's the one. So there was a little hackathon there, just in the Unchained office, in the old Unchained office. So I think that's correct. I guess that's part of building the Austin scene, right? And actually, I wanted to get your thoughts on this other idea, because in the Bitcoin world, it's actually quite common that there's remote work, that there are some, if not many, Bitcoin companies that are actually remote only" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "21:10", "start": 1270.02, "text": "It's an interesting dichotomy because while the company itself can be remote and often is, I think there's something to be said about community and a, and about that kind of culture of being around Bitcoiners. We have a lot of room on our end at Pleb Lab for growth of the kind of the co-working idea. just from internal inside of Pleb Lab, I know that the, the kind of big challenge we've faced thus far with the, the model of co-working is that it's currently co-working inside- of Capital Factory, which is kind of antithetical to some of the thesis of like what makes a co-working space for Bitcoiners great, because in the kind of broader ecosystem of Capital Factory, it is very oriented towards fiats and kind of alt-coining. So it's a bit challenging. Our office space inside of Capital Factory is limited. We have plans and ideas for growth into a new space where I do believe that those challenges are alleviated. But yeah, I think- I think people really want to be around other people, maybe not all day every day, and maybe they don't necessarily need to be particularly locked down in the city that a company is headquartered. But if you have a city where Bitcoiners are kind of gathering and congregating, if there's a space where you can go to work and hang out around Bitcoiners, I think Bitcoiners want to do it. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:31", "start": 1350.89, "text": "I'm also struck by this idea that maybe historically people were saying things like, \"If you wanted to be in show business, you had to go to Hollywood, or you should go there,\" or \" person, then you need to be in the finance hubs like New York and London and Chicago. And so I, I see it like maybe Austin is going to be one of those hubs from a Bitcoin point of view, and maybe it'll be Austin, and maybe there'll be a little bit of Nashville, Tennessee in there. And, you know, what are your thoughts on that idea?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "22:56", "start": 1376.13, "text": "I don't think it will be, I think it already is. And, yeah, there's a handful of scenes popping up. I think Nashville is a, is a great city. If Austin didn't exist, that's" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "23:10", "start": 1390.06, "text": "And I think the, the scene for building in Bitcoin right now seems to be kind of centrally located in Austin. I do believe that there's going to be and will-- there, there is room for growth and will be growth in other places. I think Nashville's probably the top contender for kind of being the second place where, people go to build and hang around community, but right now, without question, Austin is kind of the epicenter of, more specifically than just Bitcoin community The Bitcoin community with the builders, like the people that are building on Bitcoin are in Austin and seem to be continuing to move to Austin, so it's, it's a really interesting place to be because the kind of monetary revolution that we wanna see happen is, is being built here on a daily basis, and to have the opportunity to kind of be plugged into that is really fascinating." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:01", "start": 1441.35, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Are you interested in Bitcoin DeFi? Lend at HodlHodl is this, it's a peer-to-peer Bitcoin-backed lending platform where you can- You can lend or borrow stablecoins globally and anonymously. You can sign up in just thirty seconds and borrow stablecoins without any verification. You deal directly with other people and together you control collateral throughout the whole deal with all interest paid at the end. Now, if you have stablecoins, you can earn extra by lending them out and you are issuing an overcollateralized loan with the full interest guaranteed. Lend at HodlHodl. Lend and borrow stablecoins on your terms at your desired interest rates, no hidden fees, and the terms and conditions are transparent. Go and check it out, the Lend dot h o d l h o d l dot com. For saving our Bitcoin for the long term, it's important to eliminate single points of failure, and with Unchained Capital, you can use collaborative custody to achieve this. So you aren't no longer reliant on just one exchange or custodian, or potentially even a single hardware wallet, you have multiple, and so this gives you a little bit more peace of mind in knowing that you won't lose your coins with one mistake. So Unchained can help you, you can use a concierge program to onboard to this, they'll ship you The hardware wallets, they'll do a call with you to help you configure and set up the devices, teach you how to recover, as well as provide some ongoing education. So if you're interested, go to Unchained dot com, select the Consierge onboarding package, and use the code Livera to get a discount on your Consierge onboarding program. And finally, if it's Bitcoin hardware security you're looking for, CoinKite dot com is the website for you. CoinKite are focused on Bitcoin hardware security, they create my favorite Bitcoin hardware wallet, the Coldcard, and they've You can check out my recent interview with n v k talking about it. We talk about some of the new features and upgrades coming, such as more RAM, faster CPU, and NFC, which will be really interesting as a new way to interact with our Bitcoin hardware wallets. Now, the Coldcard can be used in all kinds of configurations, single signature, multi-signature, you have a Duress PIN, a BrickMe PIN. You can use the Address Explorer to check your addresses also, so all kinds of features. Go to coinkite dot com and use the code Livera to get a discount on your Back to the show. Yeah, so maybe it's almost, it's maybe it's a cliche to say this, but it's like people are seeing Austin like the new San Francisco, because San Francisco used to be like the whole tech startup place, and obviously with the events of the last two years and all this, we're seeing all this shifting of energy, shifting of ideas, and shifting of people to places that are perhaps more amenable to that. So then, in terms of, you know, someone who's listening and they're thinking, okay, I wanna come to Austin, what's the best Meetups, what, what, what would you suggest? I, yes, that would be" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "26:43", "start": 1603.06, "text": "the easiest way to get started. Obviously, there's two meetups a month. If you're really just trying to get plugged into the scene, show up at BitDev's, show up at Austin Bitcoin Club, and, and then get plugged into the Telegram groups. So I, to be honest, I'm not sure what the, the, like, kind of Austin, maybe it's just Austin Bitcoin. Keep Austin Pleb is one Telegram group, and then I think it's just Austin Bitcoin Before you arrive in Austin, but, I mean, if you just show up, there's first Thursday, third Thursday, you'll run into probably two hundred plus people over the course of two meetups. I don't know how you could get any more networked quickly than that. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:22", "start": 1642.12, "text": "fantastic. And I also note that there are different cities with different flavors, right? So as an example, if you go to Houston, that the Bitcoin meetup there is very mining focused, and that was also a big meetup. I, the one I went to had probably three hundred people there, and it was massive. So How quickly things had grown, but it seems to me like Austin has that more technical and entrepreneurial, focus, or at least the, the company building side of it, whereas the Houston side of it tends to be also entrepreneurial, but more in the mining way." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "27:53", "start": 1672.72, "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Houston is going to also be, it's going to be a Bitcoin city, and it's gonna be a Bitcoin city because it's already been super plugged into the legacy oil and gas, institutions. It is a big energy town, and as we know, Bitcoin is a big energy- Consumers. So the, the, the, the natural progression of the merger of the two makes absolute sense. I, Texas in general, at this point, is going to be a Bitcoin state. I mean, we're seeing it right now in politics play out. We've got three people running for governor in Texas that have Bitcoin kind of heavily focused and, and announced in their campaign. So we're starting to see it all play out, and it's, it's just not going to slow down. I, I do wanna add, it's interesting that you said the The kind of the San Francisco thing going on here in Austin. We've had that conversation before, and it does, in many ways, feel like we're in the kind of pre-Silicon Valley explosion here in Austin. But I've also heard it related to, and agree that it is also similar to, like the pre-1776 boom as well, and maybe even more closely aligned to that. So what we have is definitely very tech-focused here, but with Bitcoin moving to Austin as heavily- As it is, especially with developers, I think what we're seeing is kind of almost more aligned with the revolutionary kind of beginnings of the United States of America than it is just Bitcoin. Like, yes, Bitcoin is great, but, but we all know Bitcoin is kind of bigger than, than Facebook and Amazon. It is literally going to change the way the entire world works. So it feels like we're literally preparing for the Redcoats here in Austin kind of on a daily basis. Fascinating." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:37", "start": 1777.19, "text": "The hopes for, resisting and building the city Citadel, as, I'm sure many Austin, Austinites will be, happy to, tell you about and, tell you that Austin is the hub." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "29:49", "start": 1789.34, "text": "Yes, this will be the first citadel city state. I intend to make that happen. So we will secede from the state of Texas and become our own independent nation state on a Bitcoin standard sooner or later." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:01", "start": 1800.53, "text": "So what would you say then? I'm curious as well because people often mention this idea of, okay, there's like blue cities inside the red state. Do you get much of a push angle that, okay, it's like a blue city and you're gonna have to work with all the other blue city people even if you're in a red state." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "30:16", "start": 1816.32, "text": "Yes, I, I understand the sentiment. Is Austin perfect? No, it's not. Is any city perfect? Not that I've found in my years of traveling. So room for improvements, absolutely. I am really bullish that with a giant bloc of single issue voters, we can actually spread awareness and education to both sides of the political parties. We all know Bitcoin Bitcoin is for everyone. So yeah, I think really, I think the first step, the, the most important kind of fundamental thing for building something like an actual Bitcoin standard in a blue city or a red city, is that you have to kind of grassroots this thing, right? Like, it's great if you start having politicians that are talking about it in their campaigns, yada, yada, yada, yada, right? But like, if people aren't accepting it and using it and understanding it at the community level, then it's really all for naught. So that's one of the on at Austin Bitcoin Club and at Pleb Lab with things like the Block Party, where we got a bunch of businesses onboarded through Oshi and kind of tried to introduce, everyday people in the ecosystem that is our economy right outside to like what this thing is and how it works and to the power and value of doing business, not just in Bitcoin, but with Bitcoiners. And we saw that that really worked, so we had the Block Party, now we have businesses reaching out trying to get onboarded on a daily basis. We've got Rancher We're trying to get more farmers. I've got a diesel mechanic getting ready to get onboarded. That kind of trend of like get the community more and more involved, eventually you need to start working top down as well. You, you get Parker Lewis voted in as mayor and you start kind of building the infrastructure in both directions until it's just done. It's, it's kind of, ubiquitous, if you will. But yeah, we got a lot of things to clean up in Austin. It is definitely a blue city. It's, it trends a little more like people wearing masks Masks and some businesses having mandates or whatever. I, I mean, I almost got arrested at school when I first arrived in Austin for refusing to wear a mask on campus. it's a bit silly that way, but the idea that it's some liberal hellhole, it's like, have you been to San Francisco or literally any city on the west coast of the United States of America? 'Cause those are much closer to liberal hellholes, if you ask me. So, again, super bullish on the idea that we'll kind of fix things by just continuing to increase the voter block that Issue voter, which is what we're doing with Bitcoin. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:43", "start": 1963.06, "text": "great answer, and I, I definitely agree with you that the sentiment there in Austin, while although it is a blue city, it is better than, some of the, the other blue cities I've at least visited. And I'd love to hear a little bit more as you were saying around businesses and businesses accepting Bitcoin. And I, and I know, there's the business Oshi as well that's also quite involved with this. So can you give us any insight there? What does that look like speaking with local businesses to Use Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "33:11", "start": 1990.72, "text": "Yeah, so Michael Atwood, the co-founder of Oshi, is, kind of much more boots on the ground than I am. I am inside of Pleb Lab trying to help Oshi kind of progress forward as a business, but from what I've seen and from what I've heard talking with him, at least here in the city of Austin, the kind of process of onboarding businesses is significantly easier than it was in where he came from, Redding, California. Although, that being said, Red- California is still based on his like work there is the highest per capita of companies accepting Bitcoin in a, in a city anywhere on earth. So that's really kind of fascinating. But yeah, it's, it's, I think it's really growing as far as the awareness of the everyday person and from the experiences he's had here in Austin, it's like, you, you kinda go, you say, \"Hello, have you heard about Bitcoin?\" In Austin, it's an, it's an often yes, and, and even often the- That it's not only have they heard about it, but they kind of already have some, they've kind of started their journey down the Bitcoin rabbit hole. So getting them kind of to accept Bitcoin as a payment system for their small business has not been all that challenging. I think really, like everything else, it just boils down to incentives. It's like, how easy is it to get them onboarded and how easy is it to kind of keep everything running efficiently on that system? And, again, that's what we're hyper focused on here. I think the idea of having Building a Bitcoin Lightning focused accelerator is that in, in my mind, the healthiest Bitcoin ecosystem is a robust Bitcoin ecosystem. There's so many applications for what this thing can do, and we need to continue to pump out as many of these companies, like quality companies. It's obviously quality over quantity, but the more of these like use case scenarios we can actually get out into the ecosystem, I think it, the better it is for the community and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:07", "start": 2107.03, "text": "everyone else involved. And what has it been like for you? In terms of your time commitment and car and, was it Keon as well, in terms of managing the space, managing Pleb Lab, what's that been like?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "35:19", "start": 2119.22, "text": "It has been a lot, man. So as I kind of pointed out earlier, it's, it's built more on sweat equity than, than capital. It was like more hustle than capital, really, is how this whole thing started. For probably the first six weeks of Pleb Lab's existence, I was working like sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I have had to scale that back a little bit It's like, the burnout started to get very real. I've been trying to take like a healthy dose of time to myself on the weekends to just kind of relax, get, get in touch with kind of whatever, that's not work. going back to church, kind of getting into a little bit of meditation, just taking some time for myself. But even, even with that, it's like I'm still in the office Saturday mornings, sometimes Saturday evenings. I, I'm here seven days a week. Carr is often here seven days a week. His schedule is now, kind of all over the place with the kind of split between Pleb Lab and his job over as the producer on, on TFC. And Keon is also the founder of Stacker News, so he's also running his own company. Keon is kind of our like high level developer guy. Like when me and Kar started this whole thing, it was like, we understand that if we're gonna try and build something for devs and for founders, neither one of us had any experience in either one of those places. Keon had already- started and was working with several companies and was, a developer. So having that high level technical insight into like how to build something for that community has, has been, highly valuable. But he kind of, he kind of gives us his like, \"This is, this is how many hours a week you get from me, so use it wisely.\" But, yeah, it's been all in, man. It's been, it's, it's been a nonstop grind, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. That's, that's how we do. The early days of Pleb Lab helps us stand out from something like Y Combinator, Techstars. There's a lot of places you can go and get capital thrown at you, and you kind of get a badge of like, \"Oh, why--\" Even that's kind of diminishing with Y Combinator doing like thousand-person cohorts now or whatever, right? Like, how unique does that feel? But if you're a young startup in the Bitcoin space, pre-seed, have no like, have never like talked to VC, don't know how to talk to VC, don't know how to Idea is build, pitch decks. Where are you gonna go where like somebody's gonna be at the office with you on Saturday morning at like two o'clock in the morning working on your shit? I don't know of anywhere else that's gonna do that other than Pleb Lab, because the way we look at it is it's like our success is built on their success, and it really isn't a numbers game for us. This isn't a thing where we're just like trying to get as rich as possible by like getting you in, getting you out. we're friends, man. Filled with people that I actually care about, that I want to see succeed. So I kind of give it that energy every day. If we're just gonna talk about like how, how much energy's been put into it, it's the kind of energy where it's like, look, you're a good friend of mine, man. I care about you. I want your company to succeed, and that's what we do here. I come in every day and I just try to help my friends" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:29", "start": 2309.37, "text": "succeed. Excellent. And I think the other aspect of it is that because it's a Bitcoin focused Pleb Lab" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:40", "start": 2320.04, "text": "Who are already investing in the Bitcoin space, so they, they'll already have their eyes trained towards you and looking at, hey, who have you got in there? Who's, who's got something interesting?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "38:48", "start": 2328.02, "text": "Right, absolutely. So again, in the early days, we didn't have that network, which is why there was no kind of value proposition. It was like, you guys come in, I think I can help you, I think I can build that network which helps you. So just let me try, and, and we'll develop our thing as we go, and, and that's where we Are interested in getting involved with the people in our facility grows on a daily basis. and, and now it's honestly, it's just getting more organized. It's like, it's taking some of the things that do work from things like TechStars and Y Combinator and kind of trying to build out a, a more well-greased machine. We have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to just kind of stay alive. Again, that's the, the kind of, battle and trade-off, if you will, that We're also a startup trying to grow through startup pains alongside our other startups, it's kind of like double trouble. But as it's come along, it just keeps getting more organized and hopefully more efficient so that by the time we bring in new people, it's like, we now have a mentor network, we have the understanding of like how to get the b-business legally structured, we have a handful of investors that have invested in Pleb Lab, so now we can make those early connections right from day one. We can introduce the new people to the people who have been Invested in Pleb Lab because obviously those people are interested in the things that are coming through here, the projects that are coming through here, and all of that stuff just keeps getting more organized. I think organization is probably one of my strong suits, so we just keep trying daily to get more established and more organized so that when you come in, we kind of have this well-greased machine that just like, \"This is how things go, this is what we can do, this is what you have to do,\" and everybody kind of knows what is required of them and how the collaboration works the day you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:40", "start": 2440.04, "text": "So what companies are already involved in some way in supporting Pleb Lab or any companies or individuals in the space?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "40:46", "start": 2445.98, "text": "Yeah, so we are, I mean, we're in talks with a lot of people right now. We've just, like I said, we just this week, we got the C Corp finalized for Pleb Lab. So we have one confirmed, what's the word I'm looking for? We have one verbal commitment from, I, I don't know if I am supposed to share the information yet, so like I, I probably won't give out specific names. We have I have a handful of really bullish people who are waiting to kind of circle back and have the next level of conversation. as far as kind of just assistance, we've had obviously a whole lot of value kind of given to us and accrued through our connections here at Capital Factory. we do a lot of back and forth with the guys down at Unchained Capital. There's gonna be some kind of new announcements coming there as well. And then, yeah, that's, that's kind of where we're at right now. So it's, it's a handful of kind of angel- OG Bitcoin whales, some VC funds, a couple of family practices, and then just Bitcoin businesses that we have kind of built and established relationships with through Austin and, and, and abroad." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:54", "start": 2514.48, "text": "Fantastic. Well, it's great to hear that, it's coming together because at the same time, this has to be a sustainable model like for yourself and Kyle and for Kion as well, because you guys have to get paid and you guys have to eat as well, so kind of has to all work together, but, It, it sounds to me like you've, you've got, you've got some connections, you've got the right connections being made, and, there's a, a real community growth happening here that you're building, and you're, you're a big part of that. So that's really cool to hear." }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "42:19", "start": 2539.36, "text": "We're, we're a scrappy bunch, so we, we, we have that low time preference. We do believe that what we've built and continue to build daily is producing something of real value. and just personally, I can't speak for" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "42:38", "start": 2558.35, "text": "Something enough, if I have enough passion for it and I put enough time behind that, that belief and that passion, there is a way to figure out how to monetize that somehow. Like, I, again, am I going to get rich building Pleb Lab? I don't know. I don't really care though. I, I want to produce something that produces value for others. As long as I can get to a place where we have enough money to put the roof over our head and eat, as you kind of just alluded to, I, I can't do free forever. I, I more than anyone else can do free for a, a pretty long time. I have built a kind of sovereign lifestyle before I was ever in Bitcoin, so I can go almost indefinitely without ever really kind of making another, another dollar or bringing in another sat. Obviously, I would like to continue to like stack a few- A few sats here and there, that's kind of on my, my roadmap for progress, but I, I am fairly optimistic that we will get it done, because I don't think there's anybody who's going to work harder to get it done. And, and again, I think what we're building is something of value. Again, I don't think a healthy Bitcoin ecosystem thrives without continuing the growth of that Bitcoin ecosystem, and what we're producing is a space where companies can come and hopefully learn how to leave here With a better understanding of how to be a successful company, 'cause there's lots of people building things all over the place, but they don't have any resources, they don't have anybody around them to help them grow their thought processes, their understandings, they, they don't necessarily know how to go about all of the intricacies of going from an idea or a very early stage product to a fully fleshed out, funded, functional company," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:25", "start": 2665.42, "text": "and, that's what we do. So for anyone who's listening and maybe they're thinking about starting a business, are there any- Things you could share for them, what are some common misconceptions or things that people don't know when they, when they're coming in and they're like, \"I wanna start this Bitcoin business or software,\" what are some common things that you're seeing? I think the question is a little broad. Can you" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "44:44", "start": 2683.95, "text": "kind of reframe it?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:45", "start": 2685.41, "text": "Sure. Yeah, well, as an example, are there, things that they might not have thought about, okay, this is how, I need to go about with fundraising or this is how I need to go about," }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "45:01", "start": 2700.98, "text": "And most of who we work with is like really, really early, we're, we're pre-seed. So some of the challenges, if you will, at the, the pre-seed stage are mostly the, the kind of the lack of connections. It's like how to get networked and plugged into the space, because there's a lot out there, but if you don't necessarily know how to go about getting seen or, or getting into somebody's DMs, it's, it's really challenging how to figure that out on your own. So I think the first thing is network. Whether you're in Pleb Lab or not, getting into the space and actually starting to make connections with more people is, is probably, I would say, the backbone of everything we do, which is why none of this would have even existed without having first just started Austin Bitcoin Club. We just created something where we just created a space for people to get together and network, and from that spawned Pleb Lab, and Pleb Lab is still at its roots kind of based on that foundation, and the foundation is community. So I would say first and foremost Work on networking. Just be talking to and meeting with as many people in the space as you possibly can. If you're trying to build something on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Twitter is okay, LinkedIn or whatever is okay, but probably figure out how to make a transition to a place where everybody who's building on Bitcoin is building on Bitcoin. I know it's not an easy thing to say, just like pack up your life and move to somewhere like Austin, but at the end of the day, if you have a deep desire to actually build something on Bitcoin, there's not go- Going to be a better opportunity than to bring what you're working on to Austin because this is where that network and ecosystem already exists. So networking, networking, networking, probably make a move to somewhere where you can do that more efficiently. other than that, I would say, I think, yeah, I think a lot of the challenges are just really exposure, and that's what we've kind of tried to really focus on at Pleb Lab in the early stages is like building out, I touched on it earlier, building out the idea of like creating a thing that kind of creates the culture around Around Bitcoin. We've, Carl's gonna kill me for using this, he doesn't want me to put it out there too much, but the idea of like subpop, right, has kind of been this theme lately where in the early eighties there was a small indie record label called Subpop, they were responsible for Nirvana and like a handful of other bands in that era that really built the culture of music, and they eventually went and they went off to the Sony record labels and the other things, and that's kind of what I think we're doing here, is we're taking these, And we're bringing them in, we're helping them create a look, create an image, get their pitch deck ready, get their presentations ready, understand really at their core what they as human beings are capable of, and then we take that New understanding of like, okay, I can do this. We pump it out into the ecosystem, we get people talking about it, and then they can go from there. We're just really kind of helping foster that, the visibility, I think, if you will. So, I don't know, I guess ultimately the answer is really just networking. You just need to get your thing more visible." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:05", "start": 2884.55, "text": "Well, that's great to hear. It sounds like you're doing great work out there, and I'm keen to, meet you in person, next time. Hopefully I can, wha-what's the best way for them to find you?" }, { "speaker": "kyle_murphy_of_pleb_lab", "time": "48:19", "start": 2898.8, "text": "you can find me on Twitter the underscore bitcoin underscore bum, but probably the easiest place to get a hold of me, especially if you're looking to do anything related to Bitcoin building, Pleb Lab, Austin Bitcoin Club, would be kyle at austinbitcoinclub dot com, and yeah, I'm pretty much always in the emails looking for people who wanna get involved. So if you're out there and you're looking at moving to Austin or you just have a Bitcoin project that you- want to work on but haven't considered Austin, you could do worse. So join us, let us know. Fantastic, thanks for joining me, Kyle. Yeah, thanks, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:52", "start": 2931.7, "text": "Get the show notes at stephanlivera dot com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }