David-Hsiao_interview

[00:00:00] Bryan Pham: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Asian Hustle Network podcast. Today, we have David Hsiao. David is a successful entrepreneur. We’re excited to have you on the show today. David, tell us about yourself a bit. Who are you and what kind of entrepreneur are you? 

[00:00:13] David Hsiao: Great. Hi, everyone. First of all, thanks for having me on Asian Hustle Network. It’s an honor to be on. My name is David. I am originally Taiwanese. I was born in California. Shortly after a few years there, I moved with my family over to Beijing, China, where I proceeded to spend about the next 20 years there. I grew up and was educated in China.

[00:00:36] After finishing high school, I came back to California to get my bachelor’s in economics. Right after graduation, I returned to Beijing again for work. I had spent most of my professional career in Asia, hopping around different cities there. Currently back in the U.S. again.

[00:00:54] My main career is currently in crypto. I do all kinds of things in crypto. To keep it short, in early 2017, we started a cryptocurrency consultancy called Black Diamond. At the same time, we also started a media company called Block Journal, which is a monthly digital magazine covering all things in blockchain, tech, and crypto. We want to keep Block Journal easy to understand, entertaining, and informative for readers. It was just something that was lacking at the time. I can elaborate more on that later. Currently, we’re working on an NFT called Astro Baby Club, which I would love to talk more about too.

[00:01:29] That’s what’s been going on the last five to six years.

[00:01:33] Bryan Pham: All of that sounds cool. Just starting, you spent most of your life in China. I think having you in the podcast today, I couldn’t even tell. That’s the case. Just like your demeanor, the way. Honestly, there’s no accent when you talk. I’m curious too.

[00:01:47] David Hsiao: I get that. I get that a lot. 

[00:01:48] Bryan Pham: I’m curious. I always wanted to live in Asia for a bit and see what’s out there. What was it like growing up in China compared to the misconceptions that we do have in the Western world? What was it like growing up in China naturally, starting your career off in China? Now coming back to the U.S., what are the key differences that you’re seeing? 

[00:02:08] David Hsiao: Great question. I got to Beijing in 1996 and this was shortly only a few years after, then something sort of opened up the country to the west or the global markets.

[00:02:19] Back in 1996, when we first got there, Beijing itself in particular was much like any other city in China. Fast forward to today, it’s a tier 1 city. It’s quite dominant in entertainment and finance globally. China is of course written to become a superpower since then. Back then, it was quite simple. 

[00:02:37] When we were children growing up, I attended an international school there, hence no accent. It was just quite a simple life until I remember vividly around 2003 when these real estate markets started picking up there. You would see multiples of growth, and much faster growth around them, especially leading up to 2008 when the Olympics was first held in Beijing. That was a big change because you started seeing from 2005 to 2008, those three years, the government started building up the country’s infrastructure a lot quicker and you would start seeing high rises pop up much faster.

[00:03:13] That is also when I noticed the city became much more internationalized. You would start seeing a lot more foreigners and ex-pats, all these multinational companies started entering China throughout that decade. When I graduated in 2008, it was a lot different from when we first arrived.

[00:03:29] I think Beijing to me will always be my home. It always has a familiar place in my heart, but it changed a lot in terms of business. I went to school. I went to school in California for college and then after four years, if you’re around the same age, 2008 was like the worst time to be entering school and also 2012 was probably the worst time to be looking for jobs.

[00:03:54] After college, it was a pretty tough time because I had trouble debating what I wanted to do at that time. My first instinct was to go the route of what a lot of my peers and people at that time were doing so I looked into consulting, I looked into banking, finance, and that field. I remember flying over to New York to interview for a bunch of jobs over here and at the end of the day, I realized a couple of things. One, I thought about where the next big moves or the next biggest growth markets would be.

[00:04:20] I still thought China would probably be the best place at that time. Another reason was more personal where I felt as an Asian American, it’s pretty tough to climb the corporate ladder here, especially at the top. I had pretty big ambitions when I was out of college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet, but I knew I wanted to do something big. At that time I thought, since I already have a base and connections in China or Asia in general, I figured it might be best to move back there and give it a shot.

[00:04:44] At 22, I went back to Beijing and started working there again. To answer your question about what sort of the major differences are, I think particularly from learning and from working in crypto, China’s sort of a beast to deal with in terms of business.

[00:04:58] There are a lot of gray areas. That’s the biggest thing, probably the biggest difference I noticed between the U.S. and China in terms of working or business environment. Starting up a business over there is quite a lot tougher. Things in the U.S. are done much more systematically.

[00:05:11] I’d like to describe it as more black and white, where there are rules in place, there’s a system that supports those rules, and they follow those rules. Whereas in China, it’s a lot more to do with maybe interpersonal relationships and I think the system there isn’t as established as it is in the west yet. I think it’s getting there, but it might take a while. I think the large population, public, and culture probably play a role there. 

[00:05:35] Bryan Pham: Yeah. I heard that too from other business friends in China, especially since they kept telling me that innovation in China is fast.

[00:05:43] The rate of growth is fast. The entrepreneurial feel is very cutthroat compared to the U.S. site. You say that the U.S. plays fair, but in China, you don’t play fair. You just try to win at all costs, which is interesting for me to hear. It’s really interesting to hear that perspective too.

[00:05:58] I want to talk about, honestly, I know that you worked in the hotel business right after college and you wanted to get to restaurants. What made you transition from that original dream and get yourself into a FinTech startup? 

[00:06:11] David Hsiao: Good question. When I first got back to China, my first job there was since I didn’t come from a food and beverage background, and I didn’t have a degree in hospitality. I didn’t study that, but my family has always been dabbling in the food beverage business and hospitality. My family was into restaurants. They did bakeries, restaurants, and factories producing food, wholesale, and things like that, and hooked the hotel business.

[00:06:35] When I got back, that was a natural thing I wanted to do, maybe get into a sort of part of the family business. On my first job back, I contacted a friend who worked at The Opposite House hotel, which was at the time, one of the top hotels in Beijing. It was a boutique hotel, a very fancy, artistic type of hotel.

[00:06:51] I started there and I bartended there actually for six months just to get my feet wet in the whole hospitality business. Those were really fun times. I remember we would get to work around 4:00 PM and then close out around 2:00 AM.

[00:07:04] I was all night at that time and then after that, I found six months working in a bar was enough experience hands-on there so I moved over to Park Hyatt Hotel. It was the number one hotel in Beijing at that time.

[00:07:17] I did event coordination in Park Hyatt and that’s where I feel like I learned most of what I know about hospitality. The standards there were extremely high, which is exactly what I wanted to learn. I felt if you could learn from the best, then maybe if you started your own business in hospitality, food, and beverage, it would emanate or have reflected on my experience at Park Hyatt.

[00:07:37] During my time at Park Hyatt, it was very stressful. We were working probably 16 hours a day. The pay was really bad. I have nothing bad to say about Park Hyatt, but it was very stressful at that time. I thought at that point in my career, ” What is the top of this biz? How do I envision the top of this business? What is the ultimate position I can reach?” My next level up would be a manager and then G.M. would be the top of the hotel. After that, you’d probably be in, a greater area, Northern China, G.M., which I thought I envisioned myself in. Even in that position, maybe a decade later, “Is that something I wanted to do?”

[00:08:09] The answer was no. I didn’t want to just work for one company, another company, my whole life, and make money for others. I was working hard hours and I was pulling in a lot of revenue at that time for the hotel, but none of it went to me, anybody around me, or my colleagues who just went to the company.

[00:08:25] There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not something I wanted to do forever. After Park Hyatt, a friend of mine reached out and asked me if I wanted to join his FinTech stuff. Briefly, what this FinTech started doing was they were transferring money overseas. It’s like transfer-wise, this company that does overseas transfers and exchanges.

[00:08:42] The interesting thing about this company was they were doing it with Bitcoin. What they were doing was transferring money overseas and then converting Bitcoin to cover the difference then that’s how they would get money to different countries. I don’t know if that company worked out, but that was my first real exposure to Bitcoin and crypto.

[00:08:58] Bryan Pham: Wow. That’s quite an amazing journey to hear that already. Hearing about all your experiences too and the hospitality business. It is a tough business, right? 

[00:09:05] David Hsiao: It is. It is. 

[00:09:06] Bryan Pham: Yeah. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of smiles everywhere, greetings, getting the stuff done, and the way that you reflect your mentality is very millennial. I think all of us go through that life crisis at one point in our early careers. “Is this all there is to life? Is this all I want to do in life?” I feel like, more so than other generations, millennials are very attracted to entrepreneurship.

[00:09:26] There’s something very sexy about it, right? You want to be your boss, you want to make more money, you want to have an impact on the world, but then when you finally get the entrepreneurship, it’s a lot tougher than the TV shows make it out to seem. The TV shows are like, “You have nice foods, nice cars, you’re flying everywhere.”

[00:09:41] Half of that’s probably true to a certain extent, but the other side is like, entrepreneurship demands almost your entire focus, your life, your dedication to making it successful. When you got to forming the Black Diamond group in 2017, what were the first six months of your life? How has your mentality changed from employee to employer?

[00:10:03] I feel like a lot of people have a very interesting transition, right? It’s, “Oh no, I’m the leader. I feel every single decision. I feel every single consequence that I make.” What were your first six months like?

[00:10:14] David Hsiao: Good question. In terms of what you mentioned about the whole momentum thing, I think it’s something I exactly felt too.

[00:10:19] I think it’s an attitude of, “I’d rather die or burn and crash on my own, doing my own thing, and trying than just living a stable life every day with not much interest.” at least for me. In terms of Black Diamond, after leaving the FinTech startup, I was in that period where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.

[00:10:36] However, I was interested in crypto at that time. I started reading. That was my first time, really just researching more about crypto. I remember Bitcoin at that time, it was probably around $2,000. The whole market was maybe a $10-$20 billion market cap. Today, obviously it’s a lot bigger. At that time, I just found it interesting because I started using it.

[00:10:57] I started using crypto in terms of sending money around and I realized a couple of things about it. One is that it’s anonymous. Two, it’s really fast. Three, it didn’t have regulatory oversight at that time. You could send it to any person in any country within a matter of seconds.

[00:11:11] That’s what I found real. The first thing that sparked my attention towards it. Then I started reading about it every single day. As I was doing that, I started going to different conferences and this was the beginning of the company. I attended a conference in Beijing where I met one of my partners in Singapore.

[00:11:26] He worked at a crypto company at that time and we started talking about just the industry, what we thought of the whole business. We started thinking about where there were voids in the market at that time. In 2017, the whole crypto business wasn’t even close to as established as today. The main focus was on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and maybe a few of the other top coins.

[00:11:46] some exchanges were popping up which supported the trading of coins. I guess the third business would’ve been minors. These were the only few businesses at that time. The only types of businesses in this industry that I thought would be really big business one day.

[00:12:00] We thought about what was missing. We realized that very shortly, it was very possible that this business would get bigger. The first question I asked myself was if I wanted to dive fully into crypto. One is that in five years, would this business be bigger or smaller or gone?

[00:12:16] I was pretty sure at that time that it was going to be bigger. We decided, “Oh, okay. If it’s an industry that’s going to be growing.” So far, there’s not much to it. I think there’s a chance here, an opportunity here to be starting something that could leave an impact and also at least be growing.

[00:12:33] We started a consultancy because we looked at the business, these three categories, and we realized if this business were to get bigger one day, there’s going to be more tokens. There are going to be more exchanges. With that comes a lot of a need for sort of ancillary help.

[00:12:46] For example, if you look at traditional businesses like banks or media businesses, any business needs PR. They need people underwriting when they go public. All these types of things and Bitcoin and crypto, I didn’t see any difference there. We figured that these companies that were popping up wouldn’t need help in all types of ways.

[00:13:04] We started Black Diamond, which is a full-service consultancy. We focused mainly on helping companies with marketing, social media management, and building communities because at that time, if you could conquer sort of social media, then your company would have a much higher chance of success in crypto especially when you’re launching a new token which there was a lot in 2017, probably tens of thousands.

[00:13:26] We started working with exchanges too at that time. I remember there were tens of thousands of exchanges popping up at that time. Now, of course, there are only probably a few hundred that survived in 2017. That was how the Black Diamond started.

[00:13:41] At the same time, we started the media company for the same, very similar reasons. There were no Forbes or Bloomberg media for crypto at that time. We figured that eventually, from a retail standpoint, people needed to read about it. People needed to learn about crypto and follow up with the news.

[00:13:58] That’s why we started Block Journal. The first six months were honestly, it didn’t feel that tough at that time because we were starting a new thing. It was fun. We were learning as we were going.

[00:14:08] It was a lot for all my partners and myself. It was the first venture into entrepreneurship. We were so learning as we were going and we just tried to network as much as we possibly could. We started with Black Diamond, but it turns out that Block Journal, the media company, actually brought in most of our business. It was a monthly magazine.

[00:14:27] We would find people to feature in an interview to put on a cover. What we found was that at that time, it was such a small circle of people in the business of crypto that it was really easy to get access to compared to other industries.

[00:14:42] If I started a traditional finance magazine and tried to interview people like Buffet or people at BlackRock hedge funds, it’d be virtually impossible. But when we started Block Journal, these people who were like titans and crypto-ready, were open to us interviewing them. In turn, after speaking with them, and getting to know them through interviewing them, we gained a lot of connections that way. That helped a lot in our consulting side of the business where we helped, we would eventually end up working with these companies after interviewing them and featuring them.

[00:15:14] Bryan Pham: Yeah. I love that story a lot and essentially, I think there’s a word for that. It’s called “building social capital”. Whenever you’re meeting a lot more people, you’re interviewing them, I think it comes to that philosophy of “give first and take later”, which is important in business. When I have entrepreneurs ask me after the podcast like, “Hey, I’m a new entrepreneur. How do I get started? I have no attraction.” My biggest thing is to interview people and create your podcast or something because you’re building that relationship that’s so valuable. You’re learning a lot too as you’re speaking to more and more entrepreneurs. I like the idea behind Block Journal as well.

[00:15:49] I’m an avid reader of TechCrunch. I read TechCrunch every single day. I read The Wall Street Journal every day and you’re right, there is a missing gap in the crypto market. Crypto news, how do you hear more reliable news? You think back to how crypto is right now as comparable to the internet in like the early 1990s.

[00:16:07] There’s a lot of noise. To be honest, no offense, when you go out to crypto events or crypto conferences, I feel like the information’s not quite mature enough yet. So how to find a reliable source? I thank you for taking the effort to do that and create and vet news for people who want to get crypto and want to learn more.

[00:16:27] I want to talk a little more about NFT, Astro Baby Club. What is this? Why did you start it? What’s the purpose behind it? What do you hope that it will become? 

[00:16:36] David Hsiao: Absolutely. That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s come up for me in business in the last couple of years.

[00:16:42] We started Astro Baby Club. One was because we did want to get into the NFT business. Two, we wanted to create something fun too. After working so many years in crypto, you’re dealing with a lot of numbers. You spend most of your time on your computer, especially with the pandemic over the last couple of years. Most of the time is just dealing with charts and numbers, market caps, and things like that. Even though everyone we work with, we all love the crypto business aside.

[00:17:04] I think we’ll probably be doing it for the rest of our lives, but we wanted to do something fun. With art, it brings a side of passion and creativity that just doesn’t exist with crypto and tech in a lot of ways.

[00:17:16] What we did with Astra Baby Club is we found our friends who were artists. We picked these artists out. We talked to them about starting an NFT together and we wanted to create art that was fun and cute. That was the beginning.

[00:17:28] The main goal in the long term is we want to be pushing limits in Web3, where we could test what could be done because it’s still so early in the whole Web3 and NFT business where it’s like crypto in 2017-2016, where people don’t know where the business is heading. Where the industry is heading.

[00:17:43] I think being a part of it just to get our toes into this whole new business, gives us a chance to play around and see what we can do. Our whole team is all Asians. All the artists are Asians. We wanted to, in terms of the artist side, I wanted to give creators a platform where they could not only showcase their art but also express their creativity and their fun side.

[00:18:01] When we started drawing or creating all this art for Astra Baby Club, I wanted to give each of the artists free rein on what they wanted to do with the art. Our Astra Baby Club is generated from over 200 traits where it’s random. Each 200 of these traits is individually drawn by hand, drawn by various artists.

[00:18:20] When you randomly generate them together, it creates a lot of excitement and fun in terms of what you’re going to get in the final piece of art. That’s something I thought was fun and I wanted to make sure our entire team was having fun. After working in crypto for so long, I think it was about time that we were doing something more creative and fun.

[00:18:35] Later on, we do want to build Astra Baby Club into what they call a “digital brand” where it’s a physical and digital brand. Where you can have metaverse clothing or real-life products. This is something we’re looking to do very much shortly.

[00:18:48] Bryan Pham: I love to hear it. It’s so exciting. I did attend NFT week in New York this year in June. Hope to see that you guys have a booth and you guys have an event next year. I would be there to attend and support you. 

[00:18:59] David Hsiao: Great. I was there too. We hosted our launch party for Astro Baby Club at that time too.

[00:19:03] We found this venue in Double Chicken Please. This great lounge in New York had about a hundred people who came out to enjoy a night of NFTs and talk about everyone’s strengths, drinks, and food. It was good. Next year. 

[00:19:14] Bryan Pham: I’d be there next year for sure to support you, David. As we’re recording this podcast, given the state of the NFT markets right now, are you bullish on NFTs? Are you worried in some ways? This is just my opinion. I just want to put it out there. I feel like a lot of NFT is based upon community, which the community is very strong by the way. But with the community also comes a lot of hype, and a lot of emotion involved.

[00:19:36] As you see, when people lose confidence, the price declines sharply. We see massive layoffs, OpenSea, and all these other crypto platforms. I just want to hear what your take is and it can be a hot take too on the NFT crypto markets in the next, let’s say five to ten years. 

[00:19:51] David Hsiao: The way I feel about NFT today is exactly how I felt about crypto in 2017. I knew that this fever and hype wouldn’t last. From 2017 to 2018, there was probably a four-month period where it was just like NFTs this past year and from 2020 to 2021. Right now, I would say we’re in a bearish trend but these trends are always up and down and that’s something I’ve come to learn from being in crypto all these years where it’s not something I’m concerned about at all.

[00:20:17] I think you have to look into the underlying technology. You have to look at the business as a whole and try to foresee. All we can do is try our best to foresee how it’s going to look in a few years. Again, I’m asking myself the same question, “Will it be bigger, smaller, or gone in a few years?”

[00:20:30] I still think it’ll be bigger. I do think it’s just the beginning. With NFTs, sure, there was like Board Ape, Azuki, all these high-up pieces that got hyped. But I highly doubt that’s the end-all-be-all goal of NFTs. We’re looking at a lot. I think we’re looking at a lot more large companies and traditional companies entering or incorporating NFTs in some way, whether it’s through tokenizing items.

[00:20:54] Right now we’re seeing, for example, Tiffany & Co. just today had NFT with CryptoPunks. I think we’ll start seeing a lot of, for example, we’ll see events companies using NFTs as tickets. We’ll start having maybe sports memorabilia and connected NFTs. I think tokenization and this technology are here to stay. In terms of how it’s so similar to 2017., We saw a rise of thousands of tokens pop up. At that time, most people who had a good head on their shoulders probably knew that most of them wouldn’t last and they didn’t. 

[00:21:22] Probably, I would guess maybe 1% of the companies from 2017 have survived until today in terms of cryptocurrencies. I think NFTs will be the same. I think it’ll depend on the people who’ve not only had a good idea but maybe even more importantly, the people who can, like your background there saying “always hustling”, right?

[00:21:40] The people who can keep hustling and just keep on going no matter what the market trend is, are the ones that will succeed. I predict in a couple of years, probably 99% of these companies will be gone too. Whether it’s large or small, it’ll depend on who’s got the persistence to keep going.

[00:21:56] Bryan Pham: Yeah. Not just in crypto, right? I think it’s in every business. I think I saw a statement by Y Combinator recently and their statement is “Conserve your cash flow, stay alive.” Most importantly, stay alive because as long as you can stay alive, the more you could get in the market share because you’re competitors. 

[00:22:12] We eventually ran on money by bankruptcy or failure. Honestly, the name of the game sometimes of business is just staying alive. Whether that’s through financial or energy. As a founder, sometimes you’re making good money, but then you lose the passion for what you’re working at. That’s also very detrimental to business. 

[00:22:33] David Hsiao: Absolutely. Right now, to me, not only in crypto, but I think cash is king right now. Exactly like you said, staying alive is the most important because as long as you have the cash flow or you have reserves, you can stay alive. You just got to wait it out, especially in crypto and NFTs. It’s just about waiting it out until the next bull run which always comes. People in 2018 to 2019, what we call crypto winter, those two years were tough. No clients were strapped with cash.

[00:22:58] From the consultancy side, we got paid a lot less. It was harder to close leads. What we did at that time, we still kept pulling out the conferences. We flew to different conferences probably every week. We were in Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Beijing, and Shanghai.

[00:23:10] That’s all we did. We just kept networking. There was probably a good period, quite a few months where we didn’t make a single dollar. We were just burning cash, flying around, and meeting people. But hey, from 2018 to 2019, after passing that came 2020, another bull run was pretty much as predicted, these are just market cycles. Staying alive is the most important, same with NFTs and any other businesses. 

[00:23:29] Bryan Pham: Yeah. Definitely 100%, man. I know that feeling too when you’re just flying around, networking, burning cash, and you just getting paranoid. You’re like, “Oh my God, am I even making the right decisions right now? I have no idea.”

[00:23:40] As we’re getting to the end of the podcast, I want to ask a personal question. My question is, David, as an entrepreneur doing this business for five years, how do you take care of your not only physical well-being but your mental well-being as well as an entrepreneur?

[00:23:54] David Hsiao: Great question. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I think exercise is really important. I try to exercise as much as I possibly can. In terms of mental well-being, I think it’s easy to be happy in crypto or this business, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not when things are going well. 2017, I was delighted every single day. Woke up happy, just nothing. I didn’t need to think about not helping or exercising. It was just good because the numbers were there. The money was there.

[00:24:19] But then, 2018 to 2019 was a lot slower so, during that time, we just kept busy. Right now, it’s also reached another slow point where I envision we’ll probably have to wait another year or two before business picks up again but I’m a lot more used to that now.

[00:24:32] I think mental health is incredibly important because when you’re not happy, you’re not making the right decisions or when you’re stressed out or feeling paranoid about things, which I think every entrepreneur goes through sometimes, but that’s the path we chose.

[00:24:44] I think it’s good for me to personally always remember no matter how bad things get, when I look at it holistically, this is still better than working those 16-hour days at the hotels. 

[00:24:54] Bryan Pham: That’s one way to put it. It’s the lesser two evils in some ways. 

[00:24:57] David Hsiao: I think it’s also important to just remember that no matter what you’re doing if you choose to be an entrepreneur, I’m sure it’s because you have. Most people have a passion for what they’re doing, they’re interested, or they feel they can make an impact with what they’re doing.

[00:25:08] That’s something I think we’re still doing as with our companies every single day. Whether it’s a bear market or bull market, at least we’re making an impact. That’s something that also we’re dealing with people that we love working with. That’s something that I think is pretty priceless.

[00:25:23] Bryan Pham: Yeah. Absolutely, man. I appreciate all those insights too. Running a business is tough. Being an entrepreneur is tough. It’s often very lonely. You got to do what you can. You got to do what you can to keep yourself in check because sometimes, there’s no one else to keep yourself in check besides yourself. 

[00:25:38] David Hsiao: Yeah. Exactly. Some days, of course, even I don’t want to be getting back to work, but you just got to keep like I said, always hustling. That’s all we can do and then wait for the good days because they will come if you just keep trying. 

[00:25:49] Bryan Pham: Yeah. Absolutely. One more thing before we end up with that statement, I feel entrepreneurship that there are always more bad days than good days, but for every good that comes by, it makes it for all the bad days you go through.

[00:25:59] David Hsiao: Absolutely. For me, it’s the sense of accomplishment when things finally work out and it takes years of pain and suffering with it. 

[00:26:06] Bryan Pham: Absolutely. David, how can our listeners find out more about you and reach out to you online? 

[00:26:12] David Hsiao: My main contact with Paul would be Twitter.

[00:26:14] So you can follow me @CryptoGodfatha. My handle is @CryptoGodfatha. The handler came over a long time ago. You can also follow Block Journal or Astro Baby Club on Twitter and Instagram. 

[00:26:23] Bryan Pham: Awesome. We’ll include all that on the show notes. David, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was so much fun.

[00:26:29] David Hsiao: Hey, thank you so much for having me. A big fan of what you guys do. Keep up the good work. 

[00:26:32] Bryan Pham: Awesome. Thank you.