 Hello everybody. Hi, I'm James Vincent. Apparently I'm going to tell you about selling the future and I think the best way to do that is to give you some case studies in the last 20 years. I've been lucky enough to be in the room helping explain the future, introduce the future and so I'm going to do some case studies with Apple, Airbnb, Snapchat and also some other brands that we're working on. So first of all, I founder is my company. We don't I have three wonderful partners. We couldn't afford the vowels, so the vowels fell away. That was a big Chinese company. So we called FNDR founder and we work in a sort of peer-to-peer with founders of all nature and I'll give you a bunch of different examples of that. We worked together with over 130 founders one by one and so I'm going to tell you some stories about how we've introduced some pretty interesting things that people have not seen before. So, but I'm going to start with the big three guys. These are three people that I've worked very closely with in the last 20 years. So from 2000 to 2011 I work with Steve Jobs. I ran a meeting with him every Wednesday from one till three. I ran the ad agency and the marketing company for Apple and we introduced iTunes, iPod, iPhone, App Store, iPad, all of those different products. From 2015 to 2018 I work with Brian and help introduce to Airbnb with the bailout, the logo and the belief of in a world where seven, actually now eight billion people can belong. So I'm going to tell you a story about human belonging which is the narrative of Airbnb and I'm going to tell you a story about Snapchat which is about authentic friendship which is almost kind of ironic because it's ephemeral. It goes away and yet it actually builds long-term friendship. So I want to tell you that story too. So we're going to start with the fact that intentional narrative is both the origin and the destination story. So if you're going to introduce, sell the future, being a brand that's trusted is super important that that narrative is understood and that every time a product comes out it reinforces the brand. A brand isn't something that you start doing five years into building the business. You do it immediately. Your products and your brand need to be very, very tightly connected. I think these three pretty good examples of that. So what is a brand? So I would argue it's three things. Firstly, it's a uniting narrative. So it's a story that every time you go in the Apple Store, you just buy one of their products and it works. And it's beautifully designed and then you go in the Apple Store and they speak to you wonderfully and there's a humanity and an elegance to the way that they bring things out. You now trust Apple to do that. So that would argue everybody in this room either has an Apple device or one that was stolen or borrowed from an Apple device. So obviously I spent a lot of time with Apple so I'm a little biased, but I think they came up with the iPhone first. So a uniting narrative and then connected to culture, right? So one of the things and there's Apple 40 years old, how do you carry on being relevant? You carry on being relevant. Airbnb has their hosts so they have a community of people that constantly feed into the brand and make sure it's relevant. And then being trusted, you know, I think last week, of course, was a terrible time for Web3. I was actually at Web Summit the week before talking about how you build iconic brands in Web3. And I presented this slide, which is actually we need to get to a place where there are trusted brands in Web3. And of course, last week was the beginning of understanding that we have a lot of work to do with regard to that. So let me tell you three case studies. I'm going to jump into Apple, probably the most familiar of the three that I'm going to talk to you about. I think the thing to realize is that he didn't set out to change the computer industry. He set out to change the way people think creatively. And so this was an idealistic goal that was incredibly huge and its intention runs through everything they did. So let me tell you about that. The way I look at Apple, and I was involved in the last three ones of these stories, but the story goes way back before me. 1984, which some people think is one of the finest commercials ever made by Ridley Scott, he was already selling the future. Because this, if you know the commercial, it was at Big Blue, IBM was actually sort of the bad guy. And they were describing how the future would be like drone, like everybody would be following and copying and everybody looked the same and the Apple was about self expression. So step one, 1984, Apple defined its enemy. We're not that. 1997, think different. Possibly, certainly one of my favorite campaigns, I'm sure a lot of people have seen this and understood it. People crazy enough to change the world are the ones that do. So this was a company that was almost bankrupt, Steve came back, resuscitated the brand and think different, revitalized its relationship and it gave it permission in culture to introduce the future once again. And that once again began, I think, with iPod. So if you remember when a computer was a room, then it became a thing under your desk and then it became a thing that you could carry around. And of course, now it's the thing that you all have in your pocket and you live on, right? That's just a supercomputer in your pocket, but you can't start there. You started with music. You started with a human behavior shift. We always used to say that if you can perform an Apple product, you know what it is. So that's iPod. Right? So Silhouette's campaign, that was my first campaign. Thousand songs in your pocket was just a very simple way of explaining it. If you remember back then, people were on Lime Wire and Napster stealing music or they were using a CD Walkman with 12 songs that skipped. So neither of those were very good solutions, but iTunes and iPod came along and said, actually, you will pay for music if it's an amazing experience. And that was selling the future. Radically, I don't know how many of you remember this. I know it's 20 years ago, so maybe half the audience doesn't remember this, but those people that are older than 20 will remember the moment when they put their hands on the first iPod. It was really a moment of, wow, and there's a click wheel and they're like, wow, it's because I've got lots of music. I've got lots, yeah, you've got a thousand songs. You've got to click your way through it, right? If you've got 12 songs, you don't need a click wheel. So hardware, software, working together, that was selling the future. And it sold the future that became in 2006 with step five, the phone. And the phone, there's an app for that, was the campaign that we did that explained probably the last 15 years. So many of the companies in the last 15 years have been established on an app store. And there's an app for that was this explanation that a phone, a super computer in your pocket, it's like a Swiss Army knife. So the fascinating thing when the phone first came out, excuse me, the first reaction of people was where are the buttons, right? So anybody used to use a crackberry or a Nokia or probably more Nokia here, but... And most people were like, where's the buttons and why is it just a screen? I really, how am I going to interact with this thing, right? What do I do? You're like, don't worry, it's all good. So actually, there's a keyboard and you press these things, but there's also more importantly, apps. You click on an app and it opens up and it's super simple. You're like three beats and you've done something. And I go back, it's like a Swiss Army, pull out another knife. And so each one of those apps was reinventing a device that had been in culture for 100 years and always had buttons. And even the smartphones, if you remember, weren't that smart. They had 37 buttons and a tiny little screen and the internet looked like a postage stamp. And the iPhone suddenly introduced, it wasn't that quick at the beginning, but it suddenly introduced the real internet where the internet actually looked like the internet. And that took a series of pieces of communication that brought you step by step by step into seeing that the future actually, a device should simply be a screen that buttons completely distract you from that human interaction, that ability to be creative, to express yourself, which is the underlying story of Apple. So I'm going to go quickly to two other quick case studies. So Airbnb, it's not about the way we travel, but the way we live through travel. I don't know about you. If you've been to Airbnb, I'm sure most people have. When you go on an Airbnb, you kind of bring your best human. You know, you send a no. I see your lovely place. I'd like to stay there. I'm just here with my cute little family. Is it free? And they go, oh, they look at your reviews. They say, yeah, at the end, when you're leaving, they ask you to do a review. It's not like a Yelp review or a TripAdvisor review where you say, the coffee was cold. I didn't like the way that she smiled at me. You write a private review. You go, you know, you need to do a little bit of work in the bathroom or there wasn't enough of this. And then you do a public review. So you take the sting out of the public discourse. And so the brand becomes a very positive brand. And also the product gets improved. So Brian, as a designer from RISD, designed for good human behavior. I had him on a stage in New York and I did a podcast with him recently and he talked about why are more companies not led by creative people because creative people can design for good human behavior. And I think there are plenty of bad examples of software designed for not good human behavior. I think Airbnb designs for good human behavior. It's possible. So I worked with him and we came up with Don't Go There Live There. We introduced the TRIPS platform. I worked at Airbnb and created the Experiences product, which became meant that Airbnb became a travel company rather than an accommodation company and could IPO in that way. So and here's the almost the biggest paradox of all was Snapchat. So, you know, Evan had this ephemeral it goes away, right? It goes away. So whatever you write goes away. That sounds like it's going to be of no use whatsoever. But it turns out on social media actually creates better behavior. Why? Because on most social media, you are lying to strangers. You're lying because you didn't have a great day, but you posted a picture of a sunset or a happy family and you're not having a great time. Or rather than lying to strangers, Truth to Friends actually works out when you can be honest and truthful with a small number of people because you're more honest and truthful. It's a small group. So Snapchat is typically 15, 20, 30 people. You're more honest and truthful. You're real friends. You're not showboating. You're not pretending you're cool. You're not pretending you've got 15,000 friends. You're actually behaving honestly and truthfully. So this was a campaign that we did. They did after we worked together about real friends and obviously other social platforms. I'm not sure whether they are real friends. Okay, so these three guys, that's how they have sold the future. They were consistent in the way they built their brand. With Apple it was thinking creatively. With Airbnb it was living through travel and with Snapchat it was lasting friendship. So, the future. I really don't like talking about the future because I don't think you can predict it. But what you can do is model it. So at Founder we have a model that we use with founders that are looking to create a new thing that people haven't seen before, which is the future. What is that model? We think there's three steps. So whether it's Web 3, digital media, the internet, biological revolution, all the millions of other things that are going on today in this very building. So there are three steps and if you rush all the way to the end, which I think sometimes people do, you miss very critical steps in introducing new behaviors, some of which I've just told you in the case studies. So first the shock absorber. So in Web 3 that is physical and digital and the difference between the digital dualism that people feel when they go into digital land. So a lot of the projects we're doing now is with Web 2 companies figuring out how to add Web 3, how to build a digital and a physical connection. The bridge divide, it's something, a product that bridges the divide between physical and digital so that ultimately you can be a springboard. And I think a lot of people think you can run straight to a springboard to introduce the future. I think you need to go through these steps. So here we are, I'll give you the example, which of course is Apple. iPod was the shock absorber. It said digital media is okay. It's a thousand, you plug it in, it just goes in, you click wheel, don't worry, trust the device, it's gonna work. And so it bridged digital media into a physical device with hardware and software fully integrated. The bridging device was the iPhone as soon as the phone came out, everyone after they said, where are the buttons? They said, wow, okay, this is really a supercomputer. It can do all kinds of things. But actually the springboard was the App Store, right? Because of course so many companies have been created on that platform. And so I think, yeah, if you're looking for a model for the future, that's pretty much as good as good as I can give you today. So I'm gonna give you, just to end off, I have a few more minutes. I'm gonna give you five other examples, not the big guys, but these are companies that we work with at Founder and have worked with in the last five years. Some of which you'll know, so Haar Aerospace's electric aeroplane. So hands up, who wants to fly on an electric aeroplane? Okay, for those people that didn't put their hand up, it might be because you're worried that someone didn't plug it in the night before. So I'm gonna tell you that there is a jet engine at the back of this electric aeroplane, just in case someone didn't plug it in and it runs out of power at 30,000 feet. So how many people would like to fly on an aeroplane with its electric powered but also has a jet engine at the back, just in case? Okay, pretty much everybody, thank you. So the lesson here is introducing the new with the familiar. So Steve was always going on about how important it was not to introduce new with new. And again, I think that's something that a lot of people get wrong. They introduced the new with the new and basically I'm not gonna do new on top of new until next year or the year after or the year after. Cause I'll wait till someone else figures it out. If you go and look at some of the keynotes from Apple, iPod, iPhone, iPad, there are lessons in storytelling. They're really worth looking at those keynotes. One of the things is he always uses familiarity to introduce new products. You're using email, this is how you use it. You're looking at photos, this is how you use it. You're in the internet, this is how you use it. So always through the lens of the familiar. And that's why this aeroplane looks like an aeroplane. So a lot of aeroplane, electric aeroplanes don't look like aeroplanes and so I'm a little nervous to get into it. Guess what? Human behavior says I wanna get into an aeroplane that kinda looks like an aeroplane. We called it an iPhone. We had all kinds of names. In the end we were just like let's call it an iPhone. Let's not have that battle. Cause there's too many new things but let's have some familiarity. So we called it iPhone cause we're apparently calling everything I at the time. Bowery is vertical farming. And so they're about feeding people wherever the need is and vertical farming with the unpredictable climate that we have today. And so we work with Irving, the founder and helped him talk to wherever there's food is needed we can grow it. We're working with Jason at Discord. As you probably know from Discord, huge in gaming and it's now being used across all kinds of different product experiences. Product is experience, experience is brand. Make sure that your brand and your product do not get too separated. You don't build brand five years from now. You build it every single time you bring out a product. So rare if people know is a great NFT case study cause it's for those people that collected cards when you were children, when you were kids, I collected Panini football cards and this is the digital version of that in Fantasy League, but there's an NFT behind each one. So it was also familiar. It's a familiar behavior backed by an NFT. So I might argue a beautiful bridge between digital and physical because I've got a physical behavior backed by a digital one. So Soura has been this huge opportunity. We came up with this line, own your game. They're now in all types of sports in pretty much every league in the world. And finally, Meaty is Mycelium, which for those people that don't know is what grows below a mushroom. It's the largest single organism in the world. And the idea we came up with was actually not to talk about mushrooms too much, but just keep it really simple. We came up with this idea, good energy and just keep it super, super simple, which is always super important too. So introduce the new with the familiar. Bring voice to your vision. So use your language, tell a story, make it, have an impact, make sure that people leave with the story that you want them to have. But live that through your product because your product is your experience and your experience is your brand. Be an interaction with the new world and a connection with the old. So NFTs through a case study of real life and keep it simple, always keep it simple. 1,000 songs in your pocket. There's an app for that. Don't be afraid of the inevitable. Inevitable language is good language. The way you deliver it has to be unique, but inevitable language is good language. So my final thought, because I have no seconds left, so I think I have to get off, is try not to be a solution to an old world problem. Think about being an interaction with a new world. And with that, I'm done. Thank you.