[00:00:00] Finding a great piece of art sometimes relies on serendipity as much as it relies on hard work. The same goes for finding a great podcast guest. If you're paying close attention, you'll notice that today's guest, Craig Follett, Co-Founder of Peggy, shares my last name.
[00:00:17] I haven't dug really deep into the family tree, but as far as I know, we aren't related. But we did get connected because of our last names. It's a little bit of a story, but there's a Bank of Canada site that lists unclaimed bank accounts.
[00:00:32] And in what felt very much like the classic Nigerian Prince email scam, I received a message on Instagram from someone letting me know that there were some Folletts listed on that site.
[00:00:43] The message came in fact from another Follett who was not a Nigerian Prince, but was actually Craig's dad. Like any proud father, he mentioned Craig to me and that Craig was the founder of Peggy. I looked into Peggy and I just had to reach out.
[00:00:58] After a few phone conversations, we set up this episode and I hope you enjoy the result of that serendipity as much as I enjoy talking to Craig. Craig, thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me, Neil. I'm super excited to talk about Peggy.
[00:01:15] I will say that it is an intersection of a whole bunch of things that I really love. Art, entrepreneurialism, a really cool digital platform, some really amazing marketing. But I'm going to put that out almost as a teaser because I want to go back a little bit.
[00:01:29] Looking at your history as an entrepreneur, I feel like we could do an entire season of episodes with you. So before we get to Peggy, maybe situate us a little bit in what you've been up to pre-Peggy because there's some pretty interesting stuff in there too. Yeah, sure.
[00:01:48] Thanks for that. This is my second venture with actually my same co-founder and CTO Adam. So previously we built a company called Universe, which was ultimately acquired by Live Nation Ticketmaster. It processed over our years there were billions of dollars of ticket sales.
[00:02:06] And so we knew we needed to do another together, that one being a great success. All the learnings that we had, all of the challenges as first-time entrepreneurs and things that we do differently, the things that we would do again.
[00:02:19] And so the known quantity was that we would build another venture together, that being of course Peggy. And yeah, so this is our second venture as a co-founder duo, which is I think a little rare and very exciting.
[00:02:31] How long has it been since you were on the other side of the Universe kind of Live Nation acquisition? It's I guess been, that was 2019. So that would be now five years. Took a bit of a sabbatical in between the two and then dove headfirst into Peggy.
[00:02:50] And I guess Adam and I then have been co-founders together since 2011. So that would be 13 years in counting. In that post-Universe phase, you're probably resetting your nervous system after having a startup doing an acquisition.
[00:03:09] I know you spent some time at Live Nation just some tremendous growth and numbers. Obviously taking a breather. What was the genesis for you and your partner to say we want to do something again?
[00:03:24] Was it we don't know what it is or we want to do something again and we really know what it is? How did this all start to take shape before it was fully formed? Totally. I think there were sparks of those concepts a couple times.
[00:03:40] One being immediately upon the acquisition, I guess probably also others even before the acquisition. But right after the acquisition, we started brainstorming ideas immediately. Now the idea wasn't Peggy but we just knew we wanted to do another together.
[00:03:54] We had all these ideas and so we just started brainstorming immediately. Then I guess there was another spark which ended up being Peggy when we both had a nice exit. We bought a couple of nice houses in Toronto and they had these big blank white walls.
[00:04:11] So the first thing that I did was I went to Art Basel in Switzerland, which is where I met our now Vice President of Art Bronwyn and immersed myself in the traditional art world. Just learn about that, the fascination of it,
[00:04:28] the way that the art market works for the billionaires out there, which isn't us yet maybe one day and the things that are exciting about that and realized just the opportunity that could be brought to the whole world. So it's kind of that immersion in the art world
[00:04:45] which also kind of collided with research that my co-founder Adam was doing in the field of cryptography where he identified the opportunity to use AI and machine learning and computer vision to generate what we now call a digital fingerprint, which in this case we've applied to art.
[00:05:02] So it was a whole bunch of different forces kind of observing the behaviors of the blue chip art world, the lack of market dynamics beyond the blue chip and then the kind of enabling technology that this is only possible today with the cryptography research that Adam was doing.
[00:05:22] So those are kind of like the things that kind of came together. That's a perfect segue into what is Peggy? Yeah, so Peggy is a community marketplace that connects artists and galleries and collectors alike and it makes possible for everyone in the world to collect art
[00:05:41] in an entirely new way that historically has only been available to the ultra high net worth who they have the ability to take lots of money, go to an auction house, participate in buying the art at the auction house
[00:05:56] and if they ever need to sell it and re-home it in the future then they could go back to the auction house and potentially transact those works that they bought, artworks like Picasso's and Basquiat's and that's a very healthy and thriving economy
[00:06:10] but sadly for the rest of us, that dynamic of collecting art really never scaled down. Most of us don't have the opportunity to go to an auction house and spend $200,000 in art and then later sell it. Instead we might support local artists
[00:06:25] but there isn't really that kind of collector community marketplace that also lets you re-home the art as well let alone paying resale royalties to the artist. So Peggy enables people to collect art in the future to potentially re-home it.
[00:06:42] We escrow payments, we facilitate shipping point to point from one collector to the next and in the event of that resale we pay a resale royalty to the artist because historically they have been cut out and that is something that we want to rectify.
[00:06:59] And I will say as someone who loves art has never sold anything that I've purchased wondering if I can ever sell anything that I've purchased in any meaningful way and not even without a profit but wondering if I could ever sell that
[00:07:14] if my tastes or whatever changed over time that's a huge unserved kind of part of the market but when you describe Peggy it feels like there's just a whole bunch of check marks everywhere because when I think about businesses like this
[00:07:29] you've got a supply issue and a demand issue at its very basic. So on the demand side you need enough customers who want to buy the art but on the supply side you need enough artists that want to be a part of the platform
[00:07:43] so that those customers can actually have a meaningful selection of inventory I imagine this ability to compensate the artist on resale and sort of track some of those purchases that must help you attract artists to the platform, no? Yeah absolutely, the artists are really loving Peggy
[00:08:04] and we now have artists in galleries on six continents and lots of growth of those artists. The platform is designed with the business model that my co-founder Adam would describe as zero downside to all participants
[00:08:17] and so it really is super appealing to artists and to collectors and to galleries alike. And I'm fascinated by the fact that it's an art marketplace with such a strong kind of technology foundation, right? You've been talking about the work that Adam was doing
[00:08:36] on the digital fingerprint side of things that is really key to all of this when you were thinking about starting up the business what were the big jobs to be done? Did it feel more like we need to get the technology right?
[00:08:51] Did it feel more like is there a product market fit for consumers? Did it feel more we need to figure out how to get artists? Was it all of the above even saying that feels overwhelming? How did you guys break down those really big jobs to be done?
[00:09:08] I guess the first thing that we did is made sure that we could achieve that digital fingerprinting AI so we built that out, tested that heavily and then from there we started to build out the guts of the app and the marketplace
[00:09:23] and on board just an initial set of artists to build out the marketplace we started with what we call a hot center approach so we went first to the galleries and artists thereof of kind of a really special bracket of the art market
[00:09:40] which is one that I observed in immersing myself it's kind of the feeder into the blue chip art world so if the blue chip art world is represented by art Basel and Fries and these sort of mega art fairs
[00:09:54] there's all these really cool art fairs that are the feeder art fairs into those larger blue chip art fairs examples would be Nada or Listay, 154 or Material all over the world and the galleries and the artists in these brackets
[00:10:11] you know sometimes end up climbing up into the blue chip so this is a really exciting spot to start because the galleries are smaller teams the price point is a bit more accessible but meanwhile it's still really respected by the
[00:10:27] you know Gagosian and Hauser and Werth kind of level galleries plus is aspirational for all artists so we started rather than boiling the ocean by focusing on a bracket of the market that allows us to move up market, allows us to move
[00:10:43] every which way and create a concentration in kind of one area so it was very deliberate and then since then we've continued to broaden out but that is kind of how we approached building up the supply side of the marketplace marketplaces of course have a demand side
[00:11:01] and a supply side and so kind of following what worked in our previous venture Universe we first started with supply and then from there we've been building up demand and also building mechanisms so that the supply can bring the demand as well
[00:11:15] so yeah we're really excited to see the community blossoming and growing into where it is today and when you went to those galleries I imagine those galleries in that really unique spot in the market are still attractive targets to other businesses that want to partner and represent
[00:11:36] was there an immediate willingness? Was there a skepticism? What was their reaction when you brought them the concept? I think it of course varies from gallerist to gallerist but I would say the stat when we initially started pitching galleries was in the first call maybe 60, 70% would say yes
[00:11:54] those are pretty good numbers Super high, yeah in contrast to our previous experiences like wow this something is really resonating here and I think that it's a mixture of different forces that make that possible so one is the new business model
[00:12:11] that relies on the fingerprint that enables royalties which we pay to artists and also to the primary gallery that has never been possible before I think also there are societal and kind of market shifts that are happening as well
[00:12:25] so in the past the art market has been very very opaque that's been starting to shift in recent years where there's been a recognition that having transparency of just even price points of artworks guess what it makes it easier for people to wrap their head around
[00:12:40] buying artwork and discovering and exploring and so kind of the there's a matter of timing in any business in any market and things have started to become more transparent meanwhile we kind of launched this thing in the depths of the pandemic
[00:13:00] and so galleries are looking for ways to still transact artwork when people aren't able to come in person art fairs have been shuttered and so there are some timing elements that actually really helped us get a kickstart there so that created some momentum as well
[00:13:17] that we then had an initial cohort and from there we were able to keep going even once the pandemic has subsided Well, I also have to imagine the market force of certain demographic people being at home during the pandemic starting to spend money on things like art
[00:13:35] in a way that they might not have otherwise done because they're one they're stuck at home they're not spending on some of the vacations to travel and so on and so forth so was there also just a bit of an uptick in interest in the category as well?
[00:13:51] Absolutely, yeah, there was fear amongst people that the artwork sales might slow but the art market actually expanded in that time and yeah I think it's because people craved experiences, they craved community and they weren't able to have that outlet be it travel or going to art fairs
[00:14:11] and instead they kind of invested in the experiences in the immediate vicinity around them So that's the supply side let's talk a little bit about the demand side You mentioned that you're on six continents which is also I have a hard time even wrapping my head around how
[00:14:29] you can manage a business at that scale so quickly but there must be some regionality I imagine to uptake, what's the uptake like? Are you seeing moments of surprise and delight where oh jeez I didn't imagine Brazil would take off
[00:14:42] the way it has but yet Tokyo is a bit slower What does it feel like and are there trend lines globally that you're seeing? Yeah, I mean geographically I'd say our biggest markets are the US and the UK and then Europe of course Canada is special to us
[00:14:59] being that that's where we're from but yeah I think the surprise and delight that we've seen there's maybe a couple stories or examples that come to mind so we've kind of found our way into auctions We did an auction with the gallery in New York called Pablo's Birthday
[00:15:16] which is a gallery that's been around for 21 years and so they wanted to celebrate their 21st birthday with an auction and they reached out to their roster of artists from the decades past and brought them all together to create this special Pablo's Birthday auction
[00:15:34] the proceeds of which went to a charity and they actually came to us they said hey you know we like what you guys are doing it looks like you could power this auction that we have in mind what do you think should we do that
[00:15:49] and I said yeah that's super interesting let's try that It was reminiscent of some inflection point moments that we had in our first venture and so we dove into that power that auction and then from there we've been seeing more and more growth in that category
[00:16:05] so I'm not sure when this episode will be aired but we're about to be powering an auction in London UK and it is 700 artists so the Pablo's Birthday auction was 70 artists this is 700 And I noticed that you recently just wrapped one up with Soho House
[00:16:25] That's right, yeah we also wrapped one up with Soho House as well so we're seeing this as kind of an interesting category that fuses both demand and supply and the classic marketplace of Peggy is three participants the gallery, the artist and the collector
[00:16:41] that starts to bring in other stakeholders as well such as brands like Soho House or the auction in London is with an initiative called Secret 7 which has been around for over a decade in the past they've used eBay
[00:16:55] but now they're using Peggy which is very exciting to us and it's called Secret 7 because it combines seven musicians with the 700 artists so musicians include Paul McCartney which is a pretty wonderful big name I think I've heard of him pretty great artist so each of the seven musicians
[00:17:15] are releasing a track on Divinal and Divinal comes with a vinyl sleeve which is a canvas which is created into an artwork by really really phenomenal painters and classic artists and so we actually had some overlap with those artists
[00:17:31] which is one of the ways that they discovered us and it's going to be super exciting the auction is also a secret so each of the artworks you don't know whether it's Paul McCartney or Aurora or the Chemical Brothers that's revealed only after the auction
[00:17:47] so too is the artist name and so because of that a problem that they faced in past years is that they saw a lot of resale happen and the resale never supported the charity the charity in this case is War Child so they always try to discourage
[00:18:04] resale and try to move as much of the volume into the primary sale as possible but they love with Peggy that the charity will receive royalties on future resale so kind of capitalizes even more and the secret reveal dynamic of that auction and had you considered auctions before
[00:18:24] or was the Pablo's birthday was that the genesis to hey we can stand up auctions as well I mean yes and no so yes in the sense that even before Pablo's birthday every single sale on Peggy has been an auction so if you buy any one-off artwork
[00:18:44] it's not a traditional e-commerce model instead there's an asking price and you can put in an offer and if the offer meets or matches the ask then kicks off a 24-hour auction of one or if you put an offer below ask then the seller could lower their ask
[00:19:01] or accept your offer and again it would kick off this auction of one for 24 hours so that's actually why Pablo's birthday I think realized oh this is really interesting we could use this for a 70-year artwork auction so in a sense yes to your question
[00:19:18] we have been thinking about auctions but in a different format not in this 70 or 700 artwork format and as I'm reflecting on it right now it's kind of interesting because it's a little bit reminiscent of Universe the first venture which you know we ultimately
[00:19:33] sold it to Live Nation Ticketmaster it was a ticketing company in the event space but it actually began as a sharing economy business which was a one-to-one sort of peer-to-peer sharing economy model that morphed into one-to-many kind of model of events and ticketing and here we go again
[00:19:51] we're seeing that happen with the artwork auctions as well which is so interesting because even just listening to you I always think about entrepreneurs who are in this stage of scaling a business like this and I know you've done this before at really significant scale
[00:20:05] but I start to get the how do you possibly sleep thoughts by mind because powering auctions could be a huge business model in and of itself complementary but also somewhat separate to your initial primary model of you know individual artworks and individual consumers totally yeah there
[00:20:27] there are different models I think the the auctions help us sleep at night more you know seeing more and more attractions so that's super exciting I think I think it just really staying plugged in and attuned to what the customers are asking for is something
[00:20:43] that worked really well for us in our first venture and yeah we need to stay grounded and plugged into that so you know you launch something with one vision and then you learn from feedback and you know ideas as you go and weave that in and modulate
[00:20:59] your your initial thing that you've launched playing playing editor as you go you know listening to all the different inputs and then weaving them in to meld with the vision so probably thinking about that a lot is I'm dreaming and sleeping at night but yeah the auctions
[00:21:15] are exciting and more growth which creates more work but ultimately that's part of the fun of it and it keeps us sleeping at night And a good lesson not to be too set in your vision as to what your product is because the market will help shape it
[00:21:33] and having some degree of curiosity and flexibility will allow opportunities to arise that you maybe didn't even plan for to begin with Exactly. So appreciating that this is still early-ish days in the grand scheme of a business and the resale side of things I imagine is going to
[00:21:55] come online slower because people need to have enjoyed their art for long enough that they want to resell it are you seeing activity on the resale side? How's that piece of the puzzle starting to fit for you guys? Yeah, that's a great question
[00:22:09] We have been seeing some action there so I guess like the first bit of action was an inaugural transaction that frankly happened between Adam and I so you know I bought the first artwork and then maybe like Alexander Graham Bell and Watson
[00:22:25] he says you know Watson they need you and they make the first ever phone call on the telephone we had the first ever resale transaction happened through Peggy and so that was you know between myself and Adam but since then we've actually started to see kind of
[00:22:39] right before this episode some early signs of resale and organically so someone just coming in we had to investigate where did this person come from and you know how did they decide to make this purchase that resale transaction actually happened for one where the
[00:22:55] collector who owns the artwork didn't even have an asking price so he wasn't looking to sell it necessarily he was enjoying it in his home and then out of the blue this resale offer came about and he decided to accept that and to re-home it to someone new
[00:23:09] who's going to love the artwork and the artist earns a royalty so that was a really beautiful moment I think we will see more with this secret seven auction with the reveal dynamic but also you know ever since we launched this platform we also have been receiving
[00:23:23] back to the theme of customer feedback just request from people saying you know I'd love to use this platform for an artwork that I purchased pre-peggy and so with that in mind we actually have recently just built and soft launched a feature that we call your vault
[00:23:39] and your vault is a home for all your artwork so you can go to your profile in Peggy and click add artwork to your collection and experience the AI and the computer vision on board artwork that you already own you purchased maybe in 2018 2019
[00:23:57] or any era and start to onboard it it still loops in the artist so the artist still needs to attest and to verify and say indeed yes that is an artwork that I created I sold that to Neil in whatever year thus registering the artist for royalties
[00:24:15] and basically fast forwarding past the primary sale and right to the secondary because we did notice that that's part of the magic of Peggy so I'm really excited with that that's going to be another network effect flywheel loop that will have collectors bringing in artists
[00:24:31] artists bringing in collectors artists bringing in galleries gallery springing in artists and now collectors bringing in artists and that's so fascinating so in that in your vault example if that artist is not currently represented by Peggy what is the mechanism to notify
[00:24:49] artists that they have an opportunity to come in and verify a piece of artwork obviously that then gets them exposed to the platform totally there are two flows there one is the artist is Ori on Peggy you onboard an artwork of an existing
[00:25:03] Peggy artist and it notifies that artist the artist isn't on Peggy our team will reach out to that artist and then they have the opportunity to join until then the artwork is not transactable it's not verified everything is transparent on the app so you can see
[00:25:21] whether it's been verified by the artist or not and who is the one who created the digital fingerprint was it the collector was it the artist and so forth it's yet to receive its blue verification check mark exactly yeah that's a great analogy there's also the example of
[00:25:37] maybe someone comes along and onwards an artwork from a deceased artist it's a Picasso or it's a Keith Herring in those examples the artist isn't around to verify so we need another trusted third party to do so so an example could be the Keith
[00:25:55] Herring Foundation they could be the ones to come in and verify indeed that's part of what the art world calls the catalog Resonade the compendium all the artworks of Keith Herring thumbs up blue check mark with transparency that that particular blue check mark was attested or verified by
[00:26:15] in that example the artist's foundation well and those are good problems to have when you've got a bunch of Keith Herrings that you need to verify because they're in the vault and they're on the platform that's right so you mentioned a couple of sentences ago
[00:26:29] you said in that situation our team would reach out and contact the artist or the foundation what does the team look like appreciating that in 2024 a team can take many different shapes from full time to part time to local to global but what does a team look like
[00:26:49] for you guys? we're global we're fully remote so kind of modeling or mirroring our user base which is on six continents Peggy team members are on four which is a really interesting business to be building and different than the first venture that we did which was fully
[00:27:07] in person this one's fully remote which means that we can bring in top tier talent from all over the world bring in diverse perspectives from all over the world so we find that really exciting we're about 20 people today and yeah it's a really wonderful team really great people
[00:27:25] this is maybe a silly question but are you loving this? I think about there's lots of people who start up businesses that they're passionate about the product or they're passionate about the technology or they're passionate about just starting up a business but it feels like this has
[00:27:41] so many really quite amazing and you know probably exhausting and overwhelming and a whole bunch of other components but it's got so many really interesting pieces you're starting up a business again with a founder that you've worked with I imagine the two of you
[00:27:55] probably have a pretty good rhythm about who does what you're doing something really unique that the market is really connecting with that's evolving organically but you're also meeting big new artists and connecting people with amazing art and are getting immersed in a world that it sounds like pre
[00:28:15] your last exit and pre that trip to Art Basel that you might have been notionally connected to but that's also a pretty amazing dimension of all of this is this as fun as it sounds or am I just being naive because running a business
[00:28:29] and starting a business is a lot of work I mean it's certainly a lot of work but no right it is definitely a lot of fun particularly you know being able to build another thing just creating with my co-founder again that's a beautiful thing
[00:28:41] and then yeah I mean immersing into the world of art which is it's super special you know getting to meet artists and artists often about storytelling artists are some of the you know the best observers of the world around them and it's very very special
[00:28:59] to be immersing in that and providing them a platform that adds value in a really unique way with the fingerprint and the ability for them to see what's happening with their art and benefit from resale and for collectors to benefit from potentially
[00:29:17] sort of rising value in the art market it's a really interesting intersection because it's not just about giving them another venue for a transaction which is important for an artist in a gallery but it's giving them more of an ecosystem than just another storefront. Yeah totally totally and
[00:29:37] when Adam and I set out to found another company truly one of our decision criteria in choosing what to do was does it have a social impact and we really are proud to be supporting artists and we find it strange that the art market is so exclusionary
[00:29:57] we believe that art shouldn't exclude out of all places all things in the world the art market, art itself is exclusionary that's so weird and we really want to fix that because everyone wants to have a sense of belonging to be part of a community, of a tribe
[00:30:13] no one wants to feel excluded and it's so weird that people feel excluded from art. But it is this very hard thing to break into as a consumer there's a often a bit embarrassed to go into a gallery if you're not a regular consumer you
[00:30:33] don't quite know if something is priced right again when you think about resale you wonder if you're ever going to be able to sell it again often there's not necessarily prices at certain fairs they're just so many dynamics that create friction for the everyday
[00:30:51] consumer who would like to buy something that's a bit unique and a bit special and I also think that one of the interesting components to Peggy is the onboarding experience where you are presented with a whole different suite of styles of artwork and you choose
[00:31:11] the things that are most interesting and you're then served up art that sort of suits your tastes a little bit which is also I think a wonderful add-on because if you tap a general consumer on the shoulder and say what kind of art do you like it's
[00:31:27] a hard thing to articulate so you've got this combination of it's sort of hard to articulate your tastes and then there's so much friction in the process to go find and purchase art there's a bit of a democratization that's happening on the Peggy platform
[00:31:43] that is really quite unique in the art buying experience. Yeah absolutely I think the art market and the art world is intimidating for what we call collectors but anyone can be a collector it's intimidating to walk into a gallery or show an art fair and
[00:32:01] that means that there's just less people participating in the art world and because there's less people participating in the art world that means that it's even harder to be an artist so it's really kind of those both sides. It's one of the reasons that
[00:32:15] we built into the app kind of a social dynamic where you can follow other collectors and artists and they can follow you back and you can discover what people are interested in and that kind of is by design because it mirrors kind of the in-person experience
[00:32:33] of going to an art fair and seeing what your friends are interested in and it's this social experience and so we felt that that was really important to bring in to the product as well and then make it not just about a transaction so certainly Peggy has
[00:32:49] a really exciting piece that's around the transaction and as growing of payment and shipment from person to person artist to collector and then the verification but on top of that you know you can just come in and you can do what we call
[00:33:05] peg boardings, you can pegboard artworks you can listen to peg casts and this is all really around making it less intimidating than going into a gallery and maybe asking a question or asking about the price instead you can from the comfort of your home
[00:33:19] open up the app, browse the artwork listen to interviews with artists, start to create virtual collections through pegboards and start to build that comfort and then move towards collecting the artwork in its physical manifestation as well. You mentioned we've talked a bunch about Adam and your partner
[00:33:41] how do you to split up duties, where are your two different areas of focus? I imagine on venture number two over this many years you probably have a bit of a shorthand as to who's best at doing what who's best at doing what between you and Adam?
[00:33:59] Yeah it's a good question. I think if Adam were here he would say that we've got this sort of yin yang dynamic where yin yang has the two swooshes with the dots in the middle and so I bring kind of the business side of things but I study
[00:34:17] software engineering and so I have the dots of software engineering and kind of understand and think of things from a systems perspective and empathize and relate understand what's possible or how long something will take or just so called rubber ducky just be someone there as a sounding board
[00:34:33] as Adam or someone in the tech team is thinking through things and Adam, he's the CTO brilliant engineer but credit to him he's got excellent strategy mind, excellent business mind so that's the dot in the middle of his side of the yin yang
[00:34:49] so it's kind of a complimentary thing where there's it's not purely dividing conquer it's certainly there's clear ownership but there's just a lot of trust and empathy and compatibility and kind of immersion in each other's as well. It sounds like there's a combination of you both
[00:35:09] have some pretty clear lanes yet can also speak each other's language exactly and so where to from here I know that lots of products have scale barriers where we're great until X number of users or X number of transactions it may be that the platform is
[00:35:29] stable for years and it's really about growing the demand side of the business. What are the challenges as you look forward? What are the big jobs to be done in the next couple of years for example? Yeah, I mean there's a lot
[00:35:41] of work to do on all different dimensions certainly growing both sides of the marketplace it's something that we'll continue to do bringing in more and more auctions I think also just listening to the customers and their wants and desires and pain points and then building things
[00:35:59] accordingly so the your vault being one example but another being you know we hear from people that when they're buying art they want to talk to someone about their purchase they want to talk to someone who knows a little bit more about the art market
[00:36:13] someone that they can trust and kind of bounce ideas off or questions and not everyone out there has someone who's steeped in art that they can go to and so lo and behold another exciting thing that we recently launched into the app is an LLM so an AI
[00:36:35] that's your trusted art friend in your pocket so you can ask this large language model about art or a particular artwork or really anything and it's really delightful and helps bring that comfort and accessibility in a conversational interface to the experience so that's a
[00:36:55] I think the answer to your question is interesting because this is such a huge inflection point for the world in terms of technology with AI and the answer to that question hinges a little bit on where is the world at it but
[00:37:09] I think you'll find that when you open up Peggy that it's really the most modern thing out there within the art world so excited for people to try that out well that's an excellent segue to where can people find Peggy yeah people can find Peggy at peggy.com
[00:37:25] and also at Peggy on Instagram and also at Peggy on Twitter now known as X so yeah check us out Peggy.com Amazing and I encourage everybody to listen to check it out Craig thank you so much I'm always amazed at what I'm amazed at serial
[00:37:43] entrepreneurs but I'm always amazed at entrepreneurs who can bring together so many pieces that when they are brought together make so much sense and Peggy feels like that combination of components that when they come together the light goes off and it's not hard to
[00:38:01] understand and it serves a really amazing need and it's really for those of you who are listening who go and check it out there's a real levity and personality of the brand that's really quite amazing so I really appreciate you sharing your story today that means a lot
[00:38:17] thanks so much Neil and thanks for having me before we close off this episode I want to give you an update on a past guest JC De Hoop from The Gist since being on the show amazing things have been happening with The Gist and if you don't know
[00:38:33] The Gist is a fan first sports media brand that's really shaking up the male dominated sports industry they've reinvented the dialogue around sports by providing equal coverage to both men and women and audiences and brands alike are embracing that dialogue their newsletter subscribers top 900,000
[00:38:51] their podcast is top 10 for sports in Canada a recent episode featured our Prime Minister so there's that they've been featured in USA Today Forbes, Business Insider, the CBC their brand partners include Nike, Medello, New Balance, Morgan Stanley State Farm and like so many more
[00:39:08] I really encourage you to check out TheGistSports.com and to give the episode a listen it aired all the way back on May of 2021 so you'll need to scroll way down on the list to give it a listen but it's worth the work.