Foreign speaking with the CEO of stock twits Mr Rishi how are you doing today? Well thanks, how are you I'm particularly excited for this conversation. so a little bit of a background on me. I was here in New York Brooklyn and the pandemic had hit and I had nothing to do. Absolutely nothing to do so I decided to start a YouTube channel and I was horrible at it.

like at like the bell curve of how people start and how they like. I was on the left side, it was clearly an underperformer and just because I had nothing else to do in my life I went about 10 11 months with horrible growth and one day I was sitting there and I'm a big consumer of Reddit's Wall Street bets and I was reading about Gme and Warren Kenny and I was like whatever I'll throw in this seems funny and then out of nowhere it started to work. this whole famed mythical short squeeze people were talking about. everyone's like is this the moment so I thought I'm sick for the week from work so I might as well stream it I might as well see how it goes and that week I did it for a week that weekend I called my boss and I was like hey, I need to move on So one week of successful streaming and I was done And obviously this all relates to the power of retail which I would argue because of the fact that we were all inside.

Because of the fact that we are all now interconnected with like digital forums, Retail became a serious Force Like not only did people make a lot of money, you had a lot of hedge funds and Wall Street people losing money I mean hedge funds blew up because of the ordeal and then following that following: GameStop we had Doge found that we had AMC and then Sheba and other things peppered in between you owning and operating stock. Twits, You get a very, very unique look at the power of Retail. What was it like on your side of it? from the start of 21 to the end of it? And then can you also take us from the start of 2022 to where we are now in a little bit of a depressed Market environment? Yeah, so um, congratulations on graduating through that YouTube process. First and foremost, thank you.

Um, yeah. I mean uh. listen, you know the power of retail and I think you know the power of retail manifested via social which allows us to get kind of an ad game, come together and communicate and coordinate. Um is powerful in a lot of spaces and obviously in markets where there's winners and losers to every you know kind of action.

Um, it matters and so you know the beginning of 21 obviously. January you know. end of January when uh, the GameStop uh, you know squeeze happened. You know? Frankly for us, we were mostly just trying to keep the servers up.

Yeah, I mean we the the volume was through the roof like the community was. you know, all in on it right? I mean and as everyone was and then into AMC and into you know, uh, crypto in February whatnot? Um, you know so. but but what I'll say is you know it's about the coordination of Social and Retail and the consumer because the idea still has to be good right? I mean yeah, you can have like silly meme ideas. This was a fundamentally strong idea from a professional investor that you know Unearthed this you know, poor short position that you know a hedge fund had like if retail didn't do it and coordinate get to benefit from it, likely some other hedge funds would have right? So it was.

It was a thing that goes to show like hey, retail should be able to coordinate around this and should get the benefits if you are participating in the markets. and if you're in communities like stock twits or like a Wall Street bets and so you know we saw that in the early part of 21 like I mean there's you know, amazing level of activity level activity I Don't think we'll see again for a very long time because that is just a very specific displacement that was discovered right? Um, now that being said, I think what it did was the entertainment value of that period brought a lot of people in and over 21. you know over the course of 2021 you saw a lot of you know a lot more accounts get open right? We saw all the numbers with Robin hoods of the world and the coin bases on the crypto side as public companies. Their account opening shot up and you know you saw a lot of people come in and create accounts and participate.

Um, and while you know as you went through 21 and now into 22 while we see that you know activity is steeply falling off, the markets are in a different place, you know money isn't free anymore. Um I think just the fact of getting that exposure and being able to now start learning about the markets and you know where you're not just doing it to play and it's a game. And it was entertainment value because there was nothing else to do. Um, you know I think now like I think that's been the the silver lining of you know what might be viewed as like some crazy you know happenings of 2021 and while 2020 2 has been, you know, really tough from a Market's perspective.

Uh, you know people are more exposed to it like they have an account where maybe they didn't before. you know 21 January of 21 February 21. So I think you know what we've seen, you know we we see the perfect activity and you know in 2021 AMC was the number one most active you know? Uh, company on Southwest GameStop was up there. Interestingly enough, in 22.

AMC is still a top five. Uh, company GameStop is like you know in the 50s I think because I did recently look this up. um so you know the communities are still there. In fact, today like GameStop earnings are today AMC is actually I think down 10 today and there's a lot of activities trending on the stock to its profile.

uh, platform and so um, you know people are in so people are paying attention now. Other people are paying attention to retail and and what individual investors are doing on platforms like stock twits on other platforms and so you know I Think the Mayhem and the craziness of 2021 we got to see from our perch all the activity and it persisted and maintained. And then as 2022 became difficult on the market. while people have stepped aside and may not be investing, they are still paying attention and they are still you know, talking about it and standing itself.

Interesting. Yeah Now obviously that same week that I alluded to where my life changed internally for you as a business. were you like calling up AWS and you're like we need every server like you don't understand, like what was going on that week. Were you like? these numbers are like did you call up like your chief of staff and you're like are there too many zeros in the digits that you're giving me right now like what was that like when you're just like holy cow we're not big enough that we get to call AWS um but no I mean we were literally we uh you know with you know in today's era now that we have things like AWS we literally just like 10xed our infrastructure scale scale scale literally and we had to make some changes which ended up being for the better.

Like we actually had to go in and change how our streams like you know kind of work in a way to fundamentally be able to handle that 10x traffic that we experienced. So okay we absolutely like literally 10xed our infrastructure. you know on AWS you can select the database sizes we just like map like whatever like pick the biggest thing we can right? we did that um and then but you know some good did come out of it because we did have to make like code changes and and you know modifications to the platform to be able to handle that and uh so now you know Now we have uh you know a little bit more robust and uh you know what not. Um it was pretty crazy though.

It was definitely you know there were times when you were on the AMC stream or the game shop stream if you had. we have a live play mode where it'll just constantly stream in. you couldn't see it like it was just flying like literally because I mean it was. you know, tens of thousands of Tweets in minutes right? or posts? Yeah for us man.

Oh I I'm sure it was just like truly a like awe-inspiring moment for all of you guys. Like just to see that like just every day because like I saw it on my end with the content. but you guys to see like even more of a breadth of that data like it. Just like you said it was a crazy event.

It might happen again, it might not. The odds are low just because it was a Black Swan So many things came together to give us that uh to wrap this up. so many of the times we're hearing like is retail still a force. Are they going to be trading? Are they not going to be trading? And obviously it's easy to Monday Morning Quarterback on this type of thing.

But from the start of 2021 until now, obviously there was a massive spike in users and then it came down. and that's what I'm curious about. Like are we below the start of 2021? Are we still above it? Are we at the exact same like we're all those new people just now completely lost? Or did it suddenly? did it only come down like 66 and there's still a new good cohort? Have even a rough estimate of those numbers? Yeah I mean I do think you know it matters from a platform perspective I Do think you know all evidence points to. Generally speaking, we've come back from a brokerage account and trading and activity and stuff like that.

Um, you know we're a little bit different because you know you go to Robin Hood to train right? like that's the thing you can do on Robin Hood on Stockton It's like while we now have trading so you can actually trade on stock twits as well. Um, as of literally this, you know the last six months. Congratulations Thank you! Um, you also come to just have the conversation or lurk on the conversations, right? So so for us, whereas industry-wide you've seen probably drops of like 50 to 60 percent. meaning you know where if it grew 100, it's just essentially come back down.

You know, for us, it hasn't been as pronounced. Um, now we've definitively seen. you know, a lot of retail pullback. Um, but because you know you can come and just you know, see what the conversation is happening on AMC today or GameStop or Tesla you know? and Twitter when it was going through, its Fiasco over the last few months, right? Um, so you know we've seen it.

You know, come back. Definitely like. but um, but uh, you know I think those accounts are still there and while people may not be active today, you know they now have exposure and they will know to participate and think about it for their future. Um in a in a way to build wealth hopefully man.

I Appreciate all the insights. Thank you so much for your time today! Thank you and I hope you enjoy the rest of the event. Appreciate it! Yeah.