Tyler Moebius Transcript
Clint Betts
Tyler, thank you so much for joining the show. You are the CEO and chairman of SmartMedia Technologies. Let's just start with how you became the CEO of SmartMedia Technologies and what the company does.
Tyler Moebius
Yeah, sure. Well, I founded it, so that's always an easy way to give yourself the title. But I guess kind of going back; I've been in ad tech for 20-plus years. I started my career by bringing ad-supported web to the world, and so I was part of the founding team that built one of the first ad servers. I really started my journey on technology, Web1, understanding how to drive the economics of an ad-supported web. Then, I kind of went on to... got a crash course in my MBA there, and we went public. We ended up selling that company to Microsoft and then started focusing on Web2 and the application of machine learning.
And then my co-founder, whom I met 20 years ago, we've been co-founding the same companies. In 2015, Reeve Collins co-founded and was CEO of Tether, which is one of the world's largest stablecoins. But we then quickly learned you don't want to be Americans trying to create the world's new currency reserve. So, I sold that and then started SmartMedia Technologies really to focus on the utility of Web3 and how is it that we can give the power back to people, particularly around their data and how they're compensated for that data using Web3 wallets and using tokens.
So our vision is to enable everybody to simply tap to pay with their phone using their loyalty points, so creating an interoperable loyalty point backed on a blockchain, and by doing so, you create real utility, and you reduce the friction, therefore creating more value for both the end loyalty, the member, and then those brands themselves.
Clint Betts
And you did something like this at Paris, the Olympics, right?
Tyler Moebius
Yeah, yeah. So we partnered with the IOC, with the Olympics, and with Paris '24, and we launched the My Olympic Rewards program. This is a program that allows fans to earn loyalty points for everyday fandom. What's unique about the program as well is that it's an interoperable loyalty point. Top Olympic partners such as Visa, Intel, and Samsung were also able to effectively link their loyalty programs to the Olympic loyalty program and be able to give fans points for engagements that are important to that brand. So whether that's Samsung who wanted to give fans points for completing a health challenge in the Samsung Health app, or Visa wanted to give fans points for qualified transactions on their Visa card, or Intel did a really cool program where they wanted to give fans points for creating an AI-generated loyalty badge that was branded Intel. So, every loyalty member had their own unique, one-of-one badge as part of that.
Clint Betts
So tell me about the state of Web3. I'm fascinated by it because it was all the rage during COVID, right? Everyone was all of a sudden a blockchain startup or Web3 company, and we were doing all that type of stuff. Then, unrelated things happened, somewhat related to FTX and these various things that really had nothing to do with blockchain technology. It was more just fraudulent than you'd seen in any industry. It was kind of my sense of it. And we're also talking on the day after Bitcoin, for the first time, hit over 100k. It does feel like it's kind of coming back into the mainstream, not that it ever went away. Do you know what I mean? But it's kind of coming back into the startup and tech community in a way that's not exactly where it was at its height in COVID. Anyways, give me the sense of how you see it [inaudible 00:04:35].
Tyler Moebius
Yeah, yeah. Luckily, as you can see from the gray hair when I started in 1997, I got to ride the dot-com boom and bust, right? So I specifically remember some of my mom's friends at a cocktail party when I was in my 20s telling me that the internet was a fad. And so we know that these Gartner's hype cycle and where Web3 definitely came onto the scene, NFTs, and just like in the dot-com era where everybody's buying stock and toys and pets.com or what have you, yeah, a lot of speculation came into Web3, right? And then that went away. But it doesn't mean that the underlying technology and the protocol aren't legitimate and aren't being used, right? And so you couple that with the fact that ChatGPT launched, and now everybody's attention is all around generative AI and AI and so forth, right?
So, in terms of where Web3 is today, it has definitely found a product market fit, particularly around the use of stablecoins and DeFi. And it's really only because of stablecoins like Tether that it's going to enable new solutions like being able to tokenize every loyalty point to make them interoperable that is really going to unlock these new types of solutions, and we'll just continue to see new applications and new solutions build from Web3.
Clint Betts
Yeah. The loyalty point thing that you're doing is a great use case for Web3 and the blockchain. How did you see that opportunity existing?
Tyler Moebius
Yeah. I think any of us who have joined a loyalty program really don't see... consumer sentiment that there's just not a lot of value. And when you really sit back and look at that, it's really because there's a lack of utility, it's hard. I'm part of Star Alliance; I have a whole lot of United miles. My son is going to university in Switzerland, so I'm now flying Swissair and Lufthansa a lot more. And I'd love to be able to just use my United points to easily upgrade on Lufthansa, which is part of the Star Alliance, but the friction makes it almost impossible, right?
And so we saw a clear use case around, wow, if you had an underlying token backing every loyalty point, you could make every loyalty point interoperable. So, a very clear use case. That's been reinforced recently with the tokenization of real-world assets, so everybody's tokenizing assets. Well, points are liabilities and sit on the balance sheet as a liability. So we're tokenizing that liability, and we're able to reduce the liability for those brands and get consumers to redeem those points simply by just making them interoperable and adding more utility to it.
Clint Betts
And how is AI changing things? Because that was kind of the immediately after Web3, everybody was an AI startup, everybody was a Web3 startup for a second, and then now everyone is an AI startup. But how are you looking at that technology, how is it affecting your company, and what use cases do you see it kind of delivering on in the future?
Tyler Moebius
Yeah. So my heritage has been in adtech and being able to build large scale systems to be able to determine what is the right ad to show to the right user on the right device at the right time, right? And so there's been a handful of companies that have used machine learning, AI for the last 15 years.
So, it's always been part of my DNA to understand how to leverage machine learning models. And now, with generative AI, we're looking at every way that we can leverage it, whether that's being able to create a one-of-a-type NFT that is where the fan was able to put in their prompts in terms of what's their favorite sport at the Olympics, who's their favorite team, what's their favorite country? By taking those prompts, we're able to create a one-of-a-kind degenerative piece of art using AI. We're also using it for determining what loyalty offers we think that you most likely are going to want to use your points to redeem as a recommendation engine. So we wholeheartedly are leaning into it and looking at it from even how do we automate our own internal marketing and so forth or our copywriting and so forth. So yeah, we definitely see it as critical to our success.
Clint Betts
Can you tell people who may not, and I'm probably included in this list, get a sense of the value of NFTs and, in particular, the whole idea behind smart contracts that kind of backs those up? I think NFTs are another one of the reasons why people got a little worried about Web3 or maybe went away because these Bored Ape things were $100,000. Remember that? That was crazy, and maybe there are still 100,000, I don't know. But tell people about the technology behind NFTs and why it's more than the Bored Ape.
Tyler Moebius
Yeah. The underlying premise of Web3 is to have a decentralized, transparent public ledger, such as an Excel spreadsheet that everybody can see what wallets are holding, what tokens, and what smart contracts are part of that. So you have full transparency. You also have what's referred to as a consensus framework that sits on top of that. So that is the ability to transfer value from party A to party B just using math, right? So it used to be in God we trust, and then it was in gold we trust, and then it was in the US greenback promissory note, the GDP of America I trust, and now it's in math I trust. And so hence, why would you hold Bitcoin as a store of value that is not dependent on any one country's GDP?
And so that technology allows you to prove ownership and authenticity. And so, that can create scarcity. So, the ability to say, "Hey, you and I could both have a dollar, and we can trade those dollars," is referred to as being fungible. So there are fungible tokens or fungible dollars, but if my dollar is signed by Tom Brady, my dollar is now a non-fungible dollar. I wouldn't just trade that dollar with you, right? So that's what a smart contract does: it brings that scarcity and that one-of-a-kind element to it. As a result of that, you have people making Bored Apes and saying and trading those. But again, that was all really just fueling based on speculation that if I buy this ape today, I can sell it for three times more than I bought it yesterday. But we've seen that in stocks and land in Florida, and so [inaudible 00:12:17].
Clint Betts
Sports cards. Right, yeah. It's not like a new phenomenon, that's for sure. I think people... Yeah, it was an interesting time when that was going on. I wonder, as CEO, what does a typical day look like for you?
Tyler Moebius
Well, I'm an early riser, so at 4:45 or 5:00 am, I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris and the Waking Up app. So, I do my morning meditation with Sam.
Clint Betts
That's a great app.
Tyler Moebius
Yes, I'm a huge fan. He came at a pivotal point in my life in terms of just the waking up and the conscious movement and mindfulness. So just being able to take those two seconds before the thought comes out your mouth can change the world, but it takes practice every morning, for me at least.
Then, I usually either take the dog for a walk or make my morning espresso, and then I get some time. And then I have four children, so then about 7:00 am, the circus wakes up. And so getting them off to school and out, and then to the office. And then, kind of depending on the day, it's set up as internal meetings. And I spend a lot of my time... Well, particularly these last couple of years, I would say I spend the majority of my time on the product market fit into the now scale-up kind of phase of the company and kind of everything related to that from go-to-market motions to product roadmap, prioritization of features and product roadmap.
Clint Betts
So give me a sense for how you've defined culture within your company, where you've landed on this whole work from home, hybrid, everybody in-person debate that's been going on. How is that? What's it been like being a leader of a company in that kind of where everybody doesn't actually want to go to the office?
Tyler Moebius
Yeah, tough. Yeah, I'm back in the office. I had to force myself to come back into the office. My house became very comfortable. And so I am really seeing that within our company, we're really starting to lean more and more into increasing communication and collaboration. And I think the jury is still out for me personally on remote working versus in-office. We had a super strong in-office culture before COVID, and I've seen the negative effects of that. And I would say that that was probably a mistake that I've made. It was not maybe taking a harder look at that sooner and kind of the impact of that. And I don't know what the solution is, because obviously as you grow a company and so forth and team members join the team, we now we are remote, and it's kind of hard to move that back unless you kind of make some pretty big sweeping decisions as we see with a lot of companies to force that in-office culture back.
Clint Betts
What do you read? What reading recommendations would you have for us?
Tyler Moebius
Oh, right now I'm on a lot of podcasts, and I kind of split those between Making Sense, Sam, kind of more of my sort of philosophical quest of understanding consciousness side has... I love the neuroscience aspect of it, meditation, and so forth. And then on a big SaaStr Podcast hit for the last year.
Clint Betts
SaaStr is great. Jason's great. Jason's good.
Tyler Moebius
He's amazing.
Clint Betts
Yeah, he's awesome.
Tyler Moebius
My team gets a lot of early morning, "Hey, here we go, this is affirmation, we're on the right path." So a lot of SaaStr, a product market fit, and scale up for sales. So I would say recent book I read again was The Hard Thing About Hard Things. And so that's [inaudible 00:17:14].
Clint Betts
Yeah, that's a great book. Yeah, that's a great book.
What is leadership to you, and what defines a good leader?
Tyler Moebius
Leadership: what defines a good leader? Well, a leader that people want to follow. And I think the attributes that are kind of, well, at least I speak to mine, that are important to me in terms of the value of a leader is passion. So, being passionate about the project, right? When times get tough, the team is going to look to the leader. Do they still have the fire and the passion? I think that's first and foremost.
And I think a big piece of that is resilience. So, there are a lot of podcasts about how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. And I can tell you I, over my career, found myself in the fetal position a lot of times having to make really, really tough decisions. When you have to make those tough decisions, do it with empathy and confidence at the same time. It's not that fine line. I hate the saying it's not personal; it's business. It's like, yeah, it's absolutely personal. We're all humans; it's personal. And then being determined and being solution-oriented. And if the front door is, as my mom always says, if the front door is locked, go find the open window to be able to get there. Yeah. So that is kind of how I would describe leadership.
Clint Betts
How have you dealt with the mental health crisis that we really saw right before our eyes during COVID-19? And I know that in our community, the tech community in Utah, for example, it's still a huge thing. And I know you've personally gone through the Waking Up app and Sam Harris and are going for a walk with your dog. How do you think about it as a leader of people who may be going through similar things?
Tyler Moebius
Yeah, yeah. So we actually have had some pretty significant... but I personally have had, and within the business context as well within the company, had it front and center and went through that. And I would say that by not making it taboo and just fully embracing it and being like, this is life, this is where we're at now, it is a thing, and it is okay, and we just need to be able to talk about it.
And I think that that openness around it and understanding that it happens and it's going to happen to all of us to some degree, we all suffer with tough days or what have you. And so it's being open around that and making sure that team members also understand that there are resources and who they can talk to to provide those tools.
But my personal experience through it, which was pretty intense, was ultimately you just had to understand that it is life and we are here now and we have to embrace it. And I could tell you, as a country, we are not prepared to deal with it. We do not have the means. I mean, go to San Francisco. Right? And so we need our leaders, and we definitely need to lean in more on trying to find the solutions to be able to help everyone for sure, so.
Clint Betts
Something I've been thinking a lot about in this realm, in particular, is how often we define ourselves or attach our entire identity to what we're doing, our company, our careers, or things like that. And if you can just decouple those two things like, "Hey, you are not business success or business failure. That's not who you are as a person." I don't know how to get that message across exactly. I'm not even sure if it's possible, but so often, we're just tying ourselves to what we do for a living or the company we're running.
Tyler Moebius
Yeah. And if you were to even take that a step further in terms of mindfulness practice, you're not even... The true you is the silent observer of all of those thoughts and all of that ego, right? Even all of that, even though just those thoughts and that identity aren't actually you. And so it's like the true you is just the silent observer who's watching all of those, watching your brain just go, that's the true you. And if you're able to create that space and actually step back and go, "Wow, I need to try to quiet my mind a lot more." And I think that's a huge unlock and a tool for mental health and awareness is meditation, and that's why I'm a huge fan of it.
Clint Betts
Yeah. From an economic perspective, 2024 was a weird year, right? There were some sectors that were doing really well, some doing almost recession-type level things, and everything in between. And there was uncertainty around elections in the United States and elections in other places around the world. We've gotten through all of that. Now, here we are looking at 2025. How are you thinking about it? Do you think there's more certainty now, or do you think the economic environment is like?
Tyler Moebius
Yeah. I have no idea, so [inaudible 00:23:22].
Clint Betts
That's a great answer.
Tyler Moebius
I'm kind of just still looking at what we need to be doing in terms of our company and making... And I would say we're moving to cautiously optimistic, I would say. But even if the economy does... Even if everything is great again, then we're right back into inflation, and so we're just going to repeat it. So I don't know how we're going to find that right balance just from a macroeconomic standpoint where and when we look at some of the decisions that are being made around tariffs and so forth, and I don't think we fully understand the magnitude of the secondary effects, right? And so I just kind of waiting for those shockwaves to come, and when they come, we'll just ride them out like we do.
And so, being in Web3 and a crypto environment, I would say that we have shifted from a headwind to a tailwind with the new administration and the view on that, right? Now, Elon is in charge of the DOJ. And so yeah, so there's some silver linings, I think, in 2025, but [inaudible 00:24:46].
Clint Betts
Yeah. The tariff thing is wild, which I don't know. I mean, it could just be this negotiating tactic, which is kind of the way he always talked about it anyway, and never will be implemented, but there are some serious side effects if you implement those types of things that I'm not sure that people have fully grappled with or even if we'll need to grapple with them, right? Who knows? It could just be a negotiating thing.
Tyler Moebius
Yeah. Well, I think if you're a CEO of companies, as an entrepreneur, you'll definitely know if it's going to impact you or not because your cost of goods to assemble your widget just went up by 40% or 60% of parts come from China. And so yeah.
So, I think that from a business standpoint, understanding how tariffs are going to impact your business is definitely important. In terms of everyday consumers, yeah, I think they're just going to be like, "Well, why are things still more expensive? Inflation hasn't gone down." And it's like, "Well, because we're now charging more for those products to come into the country that you buy every single day, so only buy domestic." And it's like, okay, great, but even those domestic products that you're buying are still relying on pieces outside of the United States. So yeah, that's how I would summarize it from a high level.
Clint Betts
I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Finally, at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Tyler Moebius
That is great. Yeah. I would say that it started with my brother-in-law giving me a chance straight out of college to come and work for his startup. And so being fresh out, being number five, to be able to come into a dot-com and taking that bet and risk on me, which has really just launched my entire career and life as I know it as part of that. So I'm super thankful for that.
And then my last chairman, I would also say. I started a company and raised $89 million in venture funding in my 20s. And in that stewardship and that mentorship, I'm forever grateful for being able to have that council for that. And that then launched the ability to build bigger, more sustainable things as a result.
Clint Betts
Tyler, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on everything you built. Good luck in 2025. I'm sure we'll talk to you again. Appreciate you coming on the show.
Tyler Moebius
All right. Thanks, Clint, I really appreciate it.
Clint Betts
Thanks, Tyler.
Edited for readability.