What Does the Future of The Hobby Hold?
Alexis Ohanian joined Sports Cards Nonsense on Thursday, and one of the topics that came up was entering the hobby now, which evolved into what the hobby will look like in the future and what Alexis hopes it will look like!
Video Transcript
Somebody in the hobby now who's trying to make- Mm-hmm a business out of this.
Mm-hmm.
Any kind of principles or advice you could share for someone just trying to start out as an entrepreneur?
Yes.
So, well, okay, I, here's, there, I think there's two sides to the hobby that are important to consider.
So there's the speculative side, which, like, I think, i- I, I think of my life when I do investing, company building, I think of it like a barbell.
And so much of what I do and where I spend my time is highly illiquid, illiquid, right?
It's, it's long-term holds.
It's starting a company and waiting 10 years before it's gonna go public, at least.
And, and then very, very, very boring, like, index funds, right?
Because I, I wanna live at the two edges of, like, T-bills and index funds, and then incredibly risky, incredibly high reward, but long hold illiquid.
You can't, you can't buy a, a bottle of water with, with the stuff here for a decade, right?
And, and living in that barbell.
And so I think similarly, if you're gonna be an entrepreneur in the hobby, there's that same balance of speculation where, you know, I And, and look, folks are getting more and more sophisticated now that these AI tools are helping them.
I've got friends who model out their, their trades now in ways that are far more sophisticated than I ever could have imagined.
Like, they, it's almost like their own little Bloomberg terminal, right?
And then there's another part of it which is the, like, the steadily building of value.
And I think, look, I like seeing this explosion of hobby shops.
I think, again, these are more entry points to get people into collecting.
but I also can only imagine that it's a pretty taxing business.
And, and you've got breakers, you've got all these different, all these different parts of it.
I would say however you choose to, to go down the entrepreneurial road, the barbell at least has served me well, where you have something that you know is a steady, steady source of income.
It's a steady thing.
It's content, right?
It's recurring revenue that you can basically control.
And then there's a portion that is the, you know, the riskier part.
And, and I think where you weight those two sides of the barbell is, is c- probably based on where you are in life, right?
If you're in your 20s, you don't have a family, you don't have kids- Yeah, risk it go way more risky.
Sure.
Please.
Again, not investment advice, but, like, generally speaking- Yeah, take your shot being, take your shot.
And, and then obviously when you've got mouths to feed and stuff to do, you, you've gotta adjust for that risk.
But every one of these things comes in a cycle.
We saw, I think, I think, you know, we, we saw the froth, a few years ago during COVID and stimmy checks.
It cooled off.
Now we're back in another up cycle.
It will cool off again.
Like, like, do not delude yourself into thinking that it won't.
And 20 years from now, do I think this is still a valuable asset?
Absolutely.
but there will be cool cycles, and so just be prepared.
but I'm, I'm more bullish than ever about sports, and in particular, one of the reasons is, like, th- two or three years ago, once ChatGPT dropped, I started yapping to people about how sports was gonna be the only thing left in entertainment because the, Hollywood would be reimagined thanks to AI.
And when, you know, and so many movies are made with computer-generated images and graphics, like, it was, you know, it, it, it was very clear that business model was gonna have to change.
And music, same way.
I mean, live touring is the one exception, but, like, actually making beats and all this stuff is gonna get changed drastically.
But you could have had a pixel perfect AI-generated version of, I don't know, that OG Tippin, and it would've done nothing for anyone, right?
It, it, it- Sure because it was fake, because it didn't actually happen.
Yeah.
Right, right.
And so sport, sport is fundamentally human.
And, and one of the things that will, five years from now, 10 years from now, no matter how good technology gets, it will not be replaceable.
And in fact, I think it becomes more valuable because everything we see is just, it's, it's some version of AI slop, right?
It's been programmed to be the perfect dopamine hit at the right time, give us what we want when we want it.
And sport will feel even more valuable because it will be so human, and it will disappoint us, but then it will make us happy when we finally see our team win.
And so the assets around sport then I think also will continue to endure and be valuable.
And I also, I'm, I'm a big nostalgia guy, and I do think that there's a genera- generation of us now who have this analog nostalgia who are trying to get our kids into it because so much of their life is digital.
And then you're also seeing Gen Z weirdly nostalgic for a time they didn't even know.
Like, there's a whole trend of Gen Zers fawning over the '90s, and I'm like, "You literally don't even know what it was like back then."
Yeah, you weren't even bor- But- Yeah, you were barely alive.
Right but so it's not even, it can't be nostalgia technically, but there is a, a, a very interesting trend happening there.
And I think as the world moves more digital, which it will, having a dead tree with a picture on it is, is a s- I think, I think even more special.
And that's not to say we wouldn't look at doing clever sort of smart digital stuff in the future, but, like, I'm obsessed with the, this sort of anachronistic thing.
Like, I, I, I very, very, very bullish on people wanting to touch and feel and trade.
And, like, that's, that's another thing I hope could be a big win too.
Like, I get And look, I love chasing, great, great cards.
I love ripping packs.
at the same time, like, there is something really nice about the fact that we all had binders and binders and binders of cards just trying to collect them all.
And I worry that that culture is not the same.
It, like, I don't wanna say it's gone, but it's, it, it's much more about chasing that one, you know, big hit.
Yeah, value has screwed up a lot of stuff these days for sure.
Yeah.
Like, now it's- And- the dollar, the, the amount of money I feel like doesn't mess with that.
Yeah.
And I, and I wanna, I, we have a product that's already positioned in such a way that we can try to bring the energy back to, like, yeah, fill up a binder.
Try to get every one of these cards.
Like, it's, it's- Sure and, and I, and I'm excited to see that.
I, I think, I think we have a shot here to build just a very unique product in a space where, I mean, for all intents and purposes, there's really only one company.
No offense to Panini, but, like, you know, there, there, there's, there's basically one very, very, very large player, and I think we have a space we, we, we, we can carve out that's just really unique and, and true to our vision for how the hobby can be.
And, and actually to their credit, Upper Deck's done a good job talking about this- Absolutely and building product around this too, so I should give them their flowers.
and so we're just focused on college and excited to see that happen.
What a pro answer.
I ask about entrepreneurship, brings it right back to his product in a n- in a casual way though.
Dude, I've been a CEO for a long time.
I didn't, I didn't feel like he was knocking on my door, like, show- You- And just, just go- came right around to it.
You, you think he- Pretty good he's where he is- He's done this before because he doesn't know how to do this?
On a train in Medford to, to telling me his, his plan for the college scene.
I like it.
