Daily Missive
“Make the Platforms Indestructible So They Can’t Be Canceled”
June 14, 2024 • 9 minute read
“People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They “trust me.” Dumb f*ucks.”
– Mark Zuckerberg
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June 14, 2024 – Yesterday, we ran the first part of an interview made by Grey Swan Investment Fraternity managing editor Andrew Packer with Devin Nunes.
Nunes is a former member of Congress and now manages Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social.
In this second part, Nunes discusses the challenges of starting up Truth Social and taking the company public.
It may come as no surprise that the process took years longer than similar deals. And that TMTG had to essentially build out its own digital infrastructure to create a new platform that wasn’t dominated by big tech.
It’s a fascinating story, and one that isn’t over yet as election season heats up…
Enjoy ~~ Addison
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Interview With Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group (Part II)
Andrew Packer: In 2020, before Elon Musk bought Twitter, they suppressed that New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop, which was true.
And I feel like that’s a big reason why we’re here today [with Truth Social]…
Devin Nunes:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I always tell people, Donald Trump didn’t need a new company. I didn’t need a job, but we had no social media companies because millions of people were kicked off.
So that’s what Truth Social is, right? That’s why we formed this company.
And it just so happens that you have over 621,000 retail shareholders who believe in this cause, who invested in our company that have given us an opportunity not just to make sure that people never get canceled again off social media, but also give us an opportunity to get into the streaming realm so that for canceled television, movies, documentaries, we all see it.
They’ve gotten more and more crazy.
We have an opportunity to give all of them a home, and then we have a chance to build out this whole ecosystem.
Because the one thing that we do is we don’t rely on any of the big tech companies to build what we build. And we’ve been operational for over two years. Everybody said we couldn’t do it. Oh, you’d have to call up Amazon Web Services. You’d have to use Microsoft. You have to use, well, we didn’t do it.
We built it. We’ve stayed up. We have a great track record. We have a very enthusiastic user base, and then we have a lot of good products that are coming down the pipe.
But you’re exactly right. We are here because of what happened in 2020 and 21.
Andrew Packer:
You’re taking this crack at Big Tech, and you sort of alluded to it, you’ve almost had to rebuild the internet, have your own servers, that Amazon can’t shut you off.
Some big guy that had this monopoly not going to happen anymore. You have to have the video streaming technology that’s not going to be shut down by Google, for instance.
Devin Nunes:
Our ad platform, our own cloud, I mean, all of this stuff we have to build from scratch.
And so it’s a fun company to be a part of. It’s a movement.
There’s never been a company like it , and we’ll continue to do hopefully more and more retail shareholders will invest in their freedom.
And we’re this strange combination of a company that was born out of what people would normally think is unbelievable behavior for America.
Now we’re going to set up for the long run to make sure that the internet is left open so people can practice freedom of speech.
When you really step back and look at it, it’s a big ecosystem that has to be built, either acquired or created. So we’ve got kind of the streaming that we’re working on.
Obviously Truth Social is a great platform. And then we’ll look to fill in behind all of that with new either acquiring companies or acquiring technology.
Andrew Packer:
And with the streaming, you’ll be looking at a monthly billing model for that recurring revenue that will allow the company to grow and finance further opportunities?
Devin Nunes:
It’ll start, most likely we won’t with Pluto because we’re taking Pluto, the technology that underlines Pluto, Netflix, and also Sling, and it’s basically in one streaming platform. So it’s our own delivery network. So that’ll be kind of the key is to have that good technology.
So Pluto runs as a rev share model, so we’ll start with that most likely.
But ultimately, we want to have a way for there to be subscriptions because we want to be able to launch, if somebody has a documentary that they can’t get out or a film, we want to be a player in that.
I’m not saying that we’ll be the only player, but we’d like to be able to have a place that people can launch films and documentaries. And in order to do that, we have to have some type of subscription model.
Andrew Packer:
But that will also allow you to move just beyond being what people might see today as a political platform for people to share their views. S
o you’ve got sort of these beginnings now, but there’s so much of an untapped market.
If you look at the market cap, you’re about $7 billion today. If I look at Meta Platforms, for instance, at $1.2 trillion, if you’re getting just even a fraction of what they’re getting, that seems like there’s some pretty big outside potential.
Devin Nunes:
Yeah, big picture and look, and we’re not trying to be there. We’re doing more than them. I mean, I guess Google does everything right? Amazon does pretty much everything, and I think those we’re looking at everything within those ecosystems that we can acquire or build.
Andrew Packer:
Well, it seems like a fantastic opportunity.
Devin Nunes:
A lot to do.
Andrew Packer:
Definitely. Is there anything else besides streaming that you’re looking at that you think might be new and unique to offer that none of the other social media platforms are even contemplating today?
Devin Nunes:
Well, I think us having linear TV within our app, nobody’s going to have that, right?
So you’ll be able to watch on Truth Social, you’ll be able to watch old school television on there while you’re on Truth Social. I think that’s definitely unique that the other thing, talk about things that we’re looking at.
We just have to be ready for anything that comes our way.
And you look at it in a sense of are there technologies or companies out there that would benefit by either with the Trump brand or with the streaming platform or with Truth Social, the social networking platform? Maybe all three of them.
There’s synergies with all three of them, of anything that we look at. Maybe it’s just one of the three, but I think that’s what we’re looking at first, right?
It’s real revenue with technology that we want that’s within that ecosystem that would benefit. So some type of acquisition would benefit both sides.
Andrew Packer:
Right now, a social media company might look at user growth, but they’ve stepped away from that model. They might be looking at revenue growth like advertisement, clickthroughs, things like that.
What are you looking at as your measure of success? Or are you still juust getting things up?
Devin Nunes:
Right now with the two technologies that we’re building , we’re really focused on making the platforms indestructible so they can’t be canceled, keep them so that they run very efficiently.
So it doesn’t cost us a lot to run them. And I think we’ve proven that out just through our numbers.
If you look at what we actually built Truth Social for, it’s a fraction of what Facebook and everything else was built for. So we have a running headstart because our capital investment that it took to build this platform was so low.
Now look, one can say, well, yeah, they were an early one that had to do it, but there were a lot of early ones that didn’t make it.
And the advantage we have is we were able to look at the best of all these different technologies, put it into one app, and then we had Donald Trump who didn’t have a home or millions of Americans.
So it made it easy to, once it was built to basically test it, right? Test it and make sure that it could stay operational,
Andrew Packer:
Plug in, see how it works.
Devin Nunes:
That’s right. Perfect. And when you have real users and a lot of people using it.
Andrew Packer:
No bots, right?
Devin Nunes:
Right. You test the system, we’re always being tested. We have big events, and then something happens and you watch the user growth. But we try to keep it, we try to keep it clean and we try to keep it easy to use.
And we’re going to do the same thing with streaming and then hopefully look at what we can backfill that makes both sides a winner if we do any acquisitions.
Andrew Packer:
Great. Well, sounds like a bright future ahead. So thank you for the time today. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Devin Nunes:
Appreciate it. Thank you.
So it goes,
Addison Wiggin
Founder, The Wiggin Sessions
P.S.: How did we get here? An alternative view of the financial, economic, and political history of the United States from Demise of the Dollar through Financial Reckoning Day and on to Empire of Debt — all three books are available in their third post-pandemic editions.
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