Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Michael Mayer – Pseudonymous Social Capital and Bottomless Coffee - [Invest Like the Best, EP.124]

Mar 12, 2019

Michael Mayer, entrepreneur and founder of Bottomless, shares insights on the intersection of pseudonymity and social capital. He discusses how his online identities have helped him grow personally and professionally. Mayer's innovative coffee subscription model features a smart scale that optimizes coffee orders based on consumption, revolutionizing the coffee experience. He also delves into the challenges of co-founding a business with a spouse and critiques traditional social media, proposing a new model for meaningful engagement.

01:09:26

Creator website

Episode guests

Michael Mayer

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Intro

5min

The Power of Pseudonymity in Personal Growth

21min

Revolutionizing Coffee Subscriptions

6min

Rethinking Grocery Delivery: The Entrepreneurial Mindset

2min

Navigating the Coffee Subscription Revolution

16min

Co-Founding with Your Spouse: Advantages and Insights

7min

Reimagining Social Networks with Spaced Repetition

13min

The Power of Selfless Support and Genuine Encouragement

2min

My guest this week is unique and so requires a short story.

I met our guest Michael Mayer because of twitter. I followed and enjoyed one of several pseudonymous accounts that he maintains to experiment with ideas. His various accounts have wide followings.

I think many of the best accounts on twitter are anonymous or pseudonymous, and I’ve always made a point to get to know the ones I like best. As it turns out, Michael was also an entrepreneur. He’d been building a new company and was raising a small amount of outside capital.

I didn’t invest personally, in part because he raised it so quickly after I spoke with him. Ever since, I’ve gotten to know him better and followed his company, Bottomless, with interest. You know that I am always hyper transparent about any potential conflicts of interest, so it’s worth noting that while I am not an investor in this company, I expect to be at some point in the future.

The topic of our conversation is both his social media activity and his company. I am a coffee fanatic, and the problem he is solving is one I live. I order a weekly bag of coffee beans, but I often have too much coffee or run out. Bottomless solves this by shipping you a simple scale which you keep wherever you store your coffee, connect to your Wi-Fi, and set your bag of coffee on. It automatically orders new coffee for you at the right time. Thus the name: Bottomless. If you like the conversation, check out bottomless.com

With this podcast, all I’m really trying to do is find, meet, and learn from interesting people. Michael certainly qualifies. I hope you enjoy this unique episode.

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Show Notes

2:06 - (First Question) – Why he writes under a pseudonym online

2:58 – Positive impacts of writing this way

3:45 – His background

5:02 – Habits he improved upon

7:03 – Where did his exploration into technology and start-ups come from

7:33 – Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

10:32 – Elements of business that interest him most

13:26 – Building social capital vs the current state of education