123 - Investing in the Chainsmokers | Drew Taggart & Alex Pall

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. This is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. This is Ryan Sean Adams. I'm here with my partner, David Hoffman, and we're here to help you become more bankless. Guys, we have the chain smokers on the podcast. And let's do it.

Super chill.

They're awesome. Yeah, like I was blown away by this episode, David. It's just so cool. I mean, we cover so many things from like the history of them starting up and they see themselves as kind of creative founders to how they got into investing towards the depth of knowledge and skill that they apply to investing. And the business savvy, the finance savvy, the economic savvy, that like the investor savvy there was present. And then we talked about NFTs in the music industry. And I saw the same things there. These guys are super cool. And I knew I'd like this episode, but like I'm coming away from it actually blown away. Like you have to listen to this episode, Bankless Listeners.

Yeah. And Drew said the line that when anyone says this line, I'm like, okay, we're friends now, which is you play long-term games with long-term people. And it doesn't matter what industry you're in. And I mean, Drew and Alex for the Chainsmokers, they're, you know, they're musicians, right? They're DJs. But that's just only one of the things that they do. They got their fingers in a little bit of everything in this world right now. And it seems that they take that ethos of playing long-term games and they apply it to their fans, their audience, but also their investments and what they're doing in web three. And so I just feel like very aligned with like the shenanigans that they get up to because it sounds like a fun time. And I'm just definitely going to keep a closer eye on what they're up to in the world of Web3 now.

Yeah, I connected with these guys very well. I think they're definitely crypto natives and they're going to be leaning the vanguard and kind of the artists and creator space when it comes to taking some of the things that the crypto industry is building and actually applying them. I'm super excited, enthusiastic, and just their ethos of like you gotta deliver value to your community.

They exude their own ethos. Yeah.

Yeah, it's awesome. Anyway, you guys will enjoy this episode. It is absolutely fantastic. We're gonna get right to the episode with Drew and Alex from the Chain Smokers. What's up, guys? Really excited to introduce you to our next guest. We have Alex and Drew from the Chain Smokers. What's going on? You probably know them as one of the most successful artists of this freaking decade. But did you also know these guys are talented investors, including crypto investors? They actually have an NFT out where they released a portion of their album royalties to their fans as an NFT. That's pretty awesome. We got creators, turned investors, turned crypto entrepreneurs. Alex and Drew, welcome to Bankless, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you guys. Very excited to be here.

That's incredible to me, Alex. It's awesome to have you, man. And of course, the uh does the chain and chain smokers does that uh stand for blockchain? Is that

Yes. We started 10 years ago, trying to get into the world.

Guys, we're gonna talk about a few things, but a few of the parts we want to get to is obviously here in your journey on the artist side of things, because that's a huge part, right? It's like artist slash entrepreneur, and then how you've parlayed that, transitioned that into an investment career, which is pretty awesome to see, and then what your thoughts on crypto are. So why don't we start with like the rise of chain smokers? How'd you guys even meet? How'd you get started?

You wanna take that one, Dre?

Yeah, I mean, we both have different perspectives on this that end at the same place. But

I was finishing school.

I was an aspiring producer. I really was obsessed with dance music. And this is

kind of before dance music had really taken off in the US, especially.

And I I just fell in love with it in my high school years. And then it was my secret passion. I would just every

Second of free time, I was sitting in Ableton Live, the program that we still use today, and

trying to figure out how to make these sounds that I'd heard in this music. And,

you know, like I never thought I could really make it a career. And then really luckily, right after I graduated, you know, I met Alex, who

had started the Chain Smokers in in New York City, and they were,

you know, DJing around. They had a, you know, a good brand that they had built, and they were they were playing. It was him and another kid named Rhett.

And they were uh they were playing parties all over the place and uh the other kid decided he wanted to go do his own thing and Alex wanted to find uh

I guess a replacement.

He always saw the Chain Smokers as a duo and I was coming out of college really passionate about, you know, this is basically the same vision that Alex was going after.

We grew up on a lot of the same music and we were introduced by a friend of a friend and

I became the the new chain smoker and uh

that was probably twenty twelve and we just started from there, woke up every day, tried to

figure out how to make a songs that people would care about, find a unique sound that sounded like us and

Took some time, but we got there.

Alex, what was the story from your perspective? You alluded to how you had a a different version of the story. Can you tell us from the Alex side of things? And also when did it become obvious that you guys were good at making music? When did that happen?

Sure. Uh so from my perspective, uh or my side of the equation, I had graduated from NYU and I was working as a receptionist at an art gallery in Chelsea, New York. Thought I was gonna be, you know, work in art, the art business

for my life. I kind of always thought that that would be what I was doing. And I think that was probably just a

result of like that was the only thing I was exposed to. My dad was an art dealer, my mom kind of was a stay at home mom, and like that was like really the only functioning, like adult like career path that I kind of had a good perspective on. And I enjoyed, you know, studying on history and business in school and

On a trip to Europe to visit my sister at Bristol where she was going to school.

I like really fell in love with like dance electronic music in a different way. Like I was definitely,

you know, familiar with it, enjoyed some songs, but I wasn't really there was like this electro scene that was taking over the like boys' noise, Mastercraft, Justice

kind of era of music. And I just like loved the kind of egalitarianism that like I experienced in England. Like it was like everyone was equal, everyone was having fun on this dance floor. There was no like bells or whistles. It was just like

A ripper of a time, and I was like, I have to bring this party energy and feeling back to New York City.

Luckily for me, I had been like promoted all throughout college, as you know, any smart college kid who's trying to drink for free does. So I kind of had like an understanding of like how to throw events and successfully. And so I threw a party at this place called Les Royales with like a twister theme where I covered the entire club with twister mats.

And it was pretty cool. And it was like a really fun, successful party. And that's when I kind of was like, wait, I kind of want to like keep doing this. And so, you know, over the course of the next five years, this guy read, you know, we like DJ'd at night at basically from like

11 p.m. to 4 a.m. And then I went to work from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. And over the course of like those five years, I kind of just began to feel a little bit more and more disenchanted with the art world. There's just like a level of nepotism in it that like

Became very obvious. And, you know, it just was kind of like, I love art, but is this really where my

my soul and passion belongs? And,

you know, Drew kind of talked about when the guy I was working with wanted to break off. And I was just like, you know, I gotta,

I gotta see this through and I gotta see what this becomes. But I also recognized that, you know, the wall we were hitting was because we weren't making any music, you know, and that was like the key. You know, we could play in New York at clubs forever, but in order to grow beyond those borders, it was, you know, about building a brand and you know, with your music and identity that way.

And so, you know, was really fortunate to meet Drew through a mutual friend. And I bought

my ex partner out for like $8,000, which might as well have been like,

you know, $40 million at the time to make.

Obviously a great invest return on my investment. And uh yeah, we just kind of I quit my job and we just got to work the next day. And it was like a really crazy.

You know, thing, but I think the main point is that like sometimes you kind of have to just throw yourself all the way in. You know, you can kinda always like hedge your bets and have interests and things and dabble. And, you know, it's really hard to, you know, when you put yourself in a situation where it's like, if I don't succeed,

like I no longer can live in the city, I can no longer afford my apartment, I can no longer eat, like I have to do, all these things happen net bad things happen. It kind of really motivate to go the distance. And yeah, and that was crazy. And that was like 2012. I mean, that was a really, you know, wild time to be doing that too.

I'm hearing a story of two dudes who just put in the blood, sweat, and tears into a passion that they loved. Is this like an underdog story? Or in your guys' like mind, were you guys always eventually gonna figure it out and you guys are always gonna like become famous artists? Like what was your own opinion of your own trajectory? Or was it just not clear and you were just like going day by day trying to just make good music? What was that trajectory like?

First of all, it's never clear.

But

uh one thing that we did do in the beginning is put ourselves in kind of

a do or die situation, which was, you know, Alex was like I said, he was working at a art gallery.

As soon as we met, he quit his job, which I'm sure they were all like, What are you doing? You know, you've been here for a long time. You have a clear path to being a having a successful career. And,

you know, I had just graduated from Syracuse with