We also spent an entire episode with alex mozed talking about the business model that ladter is pursuing. This is what alex calls the platform business model, and what my favorite technology writer, ben thompson, calls the aggregator modell. Alex wrote book modern monopolies about this model, which describes how companies like uber, arby and b and others serve their clients. Platform companies sit at the intersection between consumers and producers in a given category, helping make life easier, cheaper and ore better for consumers and more profitable and flexible for producers. But the value creation itself is about facilitating exchange more efficiently than it is about actually creating the underlying product. Arb and b, for example, doesn't own real estate, the value in this case, but they unlock the potential of real estate owned by others. Same for uber, which so far doesn't own any cars. As alex explained to me in our discussion, a key sign of a market which might benefit from a platform company is some form of latent, untapped supply. That brings me back to latter. The company is being built to unlock latent potential in fitness, potentially other types of coaching. Personal trainers work 11 hours a day, but have four hours of down time. That is the untapped supply. In this case, latter will allow two key things, much cheaper access to a real fitness coach for consumers who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars a month in the current formet, and away for trainers with lots of free time to both get new customers and to better engage with their existing customers. Think of it almost like open table, which started as a way for restaurants to better manage their reservations, but turned into a liquid market for consumers to make reservations themselves. The reason this is so interesting, i think, is the enormous size of the commercial fitness industry and the fact that it hasn't changed in a long time. I love people who have an almost bizarre level of knowledge in a nich field, and brett certainly fits that bill. He grew up with the industry. His mentors and relatives have literally built commercial fitness industry, what we think of as gims and personal training as we know it. He knows how this legacy model works and ticks the flaws and benefits of different business models, and why the future might be different with a much larger percent of the population using a fitness coach, and maybe other types of coaches in categories like nutrition and health. To see the ap in action and get paired with a coach brett kindly set up a promo coate of sorts, like you often hear on other pod casts. If you search for ladter coach in the ap store down lod the ap and then use the promo code i l t b as in invest like the best, you'll get 50 % off the service forever. I don't get any cut of that at all. In fact, you could think about it like a subsidy that i'm in part paying for as an investor. Brett and his team are data heads, and their main goal, early in this company's life, is to generate data on the relationships between consumers and their new coaches, to

figure out what works best for both s and

to constantly improve the service. So the early adoptors among you get a permanent discount. Now this will be obvious, but nothing about what i do personally is investment advice that you should mimic. Like my investment in bit coin. This investment represents a very small part of my portfolio, and as always, i think the majority of any one's portfolio should be balanced and well priced. I do not expect that i have any skill in selecting start ups, as probably very people do. But i know that having some skin in the game means that you learn differently, more efficiently and faster. I hope you enjoy this collective experiment, which is largely the result of what i've learned from past guests and from all your support, which helps me meet those great people in the first place. Let's dive into my conversation with the founder of ladder, bret mallole, who starts by describing how he got his start in the fitness world. Grew

up in the fitness industry. My dad was a part owner of some health clubs and then started a company that sold fitness equipment. So growing up, it was always there. For me, it was baseball and the fitness industry. And boys have a very close relationship with their fathers. And for me and my dad, it was baseball and fitness. And my whole life i thought i would play professional baseball, and that's what i would do forever. And when i realized that that wasn't in the cards, i got into the fitness industry. And in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense why. Cause that was the last thing that we had in common. And it was an easy segay. So i moved out to santa barbara, after i stopped playing baseball, and i lived with one of my dad's best ans, his business partner, and a guy that i had always, you know, heard a lot about and i had met a couple of times, but i didn't really know him. So here i am in santa barbara, living with a older gentleman that i didn't really know in a trailer on his property. And he owned a company that sold flooring to jim so turf, suspension wood floors. And him and my dad work together. And i always say that summer was when i uncovered my passion for the fitness industry.