Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen

There was an article that came out, and I that night saw it and literally looked up how to resign.

For me, it was no option to like come off this wave of painfulness, losing essentially the company that I started and being caught up in this female founder takedown thing.

But I had no choice but to get back on the horse.

It's amazing to be able to start again, and being able to do so a second time with all of this experience under my belt, I'm a much more refined and savvy brand and businesswoman.

I'm Sammy Cohen, and this is Social Currency, a podcast that unpacks the stories that are shaping business, culture, and the intersection of the two.

My very first guest on social currency is the one, the only Ty Haney.

If you know me from Instagram, you probably know my Outdoor Voices video, which was one of the first videos that really went super viral, and it honestly changed the trajectory of my entire platform.

So having her as my first guest on the the podcast is such a full circle moment for me, and I am so grateful for this conversation with Ty and for the opportunity to share this conversation with you.

Anyway, in 2013, Ty founded Outdoor Voices, the athletic apparel brand that took the internet and hot girl walk culture by storm.

At its peak, Outdoor Voices was worth over $110 million and had raised $60 million.

I remember being in the car listening to Ty's episode of how I built this with Guy Raws and thinking that she really had her finger on the pulse of what consumers wanted, unlike any other founder that I'd heard before.

Later on, key leadership at Outdoor Voices would clash with Ty, notably among them was Mickey Drexler, who was the former Gap and J.

Crew CEO and the chair of the board for Outdoor Voices.

Then Ty was forced out of the company and cut to, to no one's surprise, Outdoor Voices is now a shadow of its former self.

If I were Outdoor Voices, I would be begging her to come back in some capacity.

But Ty is now taking on two new industries with her current ventures.

There's There's Joggy, a clean energy drink, and TYB, which is a brand loyalty and engagement platform.

Today we talk about what I think has always been Ty's superpower, which is building community within a brand.

So many companies try to do this, but they should really be taking notes from Ty.

She shares the tactical ways that she created community at Outdoor Voices and how she's doing this now at her current companies.

She also gives some hot takes on the girl boss culture that Outdoor Voices grew up in and the counterintuitive challenges with successfully successfully raising a ton of venture capital.

And advice for anyone who is the face of their brand.

This is Ty Haney Social Currency.

Ty Haney, welcome to social currency.

I'm pumped to be here.

Thank you.

So to start, I want to ground us with this word that comes to mind when I think of your work.

And that word is community.

You are such a skilled founder with a superpower for cultivating the sense of community.

So in your words, what does community mean to you?

Yeah, I love that.

I think it's a group of people rallied around a central mission or reason for being, purpose, and the evidence that comes from that when it's activated appropriately, where there's tangible enthusiasm, engagement, and passion for that reason for being, whether it be a product or a brand, this clear North Star in terms of why we rally around something.

And I think coming with that is the sense of belonging.

But I love community.

I very much believe in it as something that's central to how we build brands and businesses that last.

And making it something that's tangible, measurable, and there's evidence of it is part of what I've really focused on in my new business.

It's very evident that the communities that you build throughout your various companies have that sense of belonging, of connecting to the customer.

And I want to do a little bit of a dive back to the days of Outdoor Voices.

Sure.

You became a very well-known founder thanks to everything that you did at Outdoor Voices.

And Outdoor Voices was a company that really rode the tailwinds of the direct-to-consumer era.

So looking back on that time period, what's one of your fondest memories of building Outdoor Voices in the early days?

It was interesting with Outdoor Voices.

Our mission was to get the world moving.

And so really, the positioning of the brand was all about freeing fitness from performance.

So the Nikes, Andremers, Lulu's of the World, love them.

but they in a lot of ways prioritized being most athletic, strongest, and fastest.

And OV really found success by flipping that positioning and instead prioritizing how do we inspire people to be active for the fun of it with friends?

Do it every day.

Is it with your dog?

Is it with your kids?

Doesn't matter.

It's just about getting out there and connecting the dots from a day-to-day standpoint.

And so as we think about OV and what the magic moments were, it was really almost flipping the playbook of direct-to-consumer at the time, where everybody was going online, spending money to acquire customers through Instagram and Facebook.

And really the playbook that worked for us was, I called it activate IRL and then amplify through digital and social.

And so we really created and set up these rituals for activation through movement, dog walking clubs, bikers clubs, yoga in the park, very much prioritized that activation and connection IRL, like in person where you can high-five somebody.

And then of course people would capture that content and then share it on social.

And it really did become an effective growth mechanism.

But one memory in particular was we had an office on Canal Street in New York, our second office ever.

I think we had 14 people on the team at the time.

And one of our values at the company was it starts with us.

And so every Friday, we would go for lunch to the basketball court down on Canal Street, and the team, made up of good and bad players, would play together, like recess effectively.

And so it kind of merged this activate IRL, Amplify through Digital and Social in terms of a growth strategy with it starting with us, like authentically as the team building a company with this important mission.

And I think back very fondly, it actually is funny because the New York Times, our first New York Times feature ever, was a portrait of us in our Canal Street office, like having just played basketball with 14 of us.

And I think that's such a special and kind of unique souvenir of what really the success came from.

Something that stands out to me about the mid-2010s was this perception of the girl boss and how the connotation of the word girl boss has changed so much over time.

Back then, there was this fascination around the female founder who was building companies specifically for women, but by the end of the decade, things had changed drastically.

So now that you've had some time to think back on that time period, why do you think the girl boss perception changed so much?

At that point in time, when I was starting After Voices, when Emily was starting Glossier, it wasn't all that common to see women in these founder, CEO, leadership positions, especially starting companies from scratch.

Like, of course, in history, there have been those, but it was a a moment in time where barrier to entry to start a company and then funding next to that really allowed for these great visionaries and people who were obsessed with product and could see, you know, by our own personal pain points what was missing in the market for young women in particular.

That caught fire and was accelerated quickly with D2C.

I think at the same time

Whether this was intentional or not, we became stories like connected to these brands and people fell in love with it, but but it ultimately also became an Achilles heel.

And so we had this really beautiful rise of exciting founders and brands and people really emotionally connected to these companies.

And then I think at the end of this, and we felt this similarly, that exposure being the face of the brand became an Achilles heel.

I remember at the end of my chapter at Outdoor Voices, there was a BuzzFeed article that had allegations around.

I think it was someone on my team like having to clean up my dog's poop at some point in time in the office.

And I thought my life was over when that story was about to break with these like crazy allegations.

But for whatever reason, there had been this trend for journalists to go interview ex-employees of a company, potentially people who had been fired or let go.

And that became this sensationalized clickbait story, which really made these journalists and these outlets make money.

And so we had set ourselves up to be these brands that people really cared about, but then it flipped on us.

I think I'm very grateful and I'm curious your thoughts here.

I think people are becoming a little less sensitive.

So like there's potentially less importance in takedowns, particularly with female founders.

And what's been most important to me, having gone through that, and 90% of my time building Outdoor Voices and being a young founder, having started Outdoor Voices at 23, was amazing.

And I can look back at that and tie a bow on a masterclass.

Thank you.

I know much better at how to run a business today and what I will do again and and what I won't do again and who I'll play ball with.

But the most important thing for me is just starting again.

So for me, it was no option to come off this wave of awesomeness and then painfulness losing essentially the company that I started and being caught up in this female founder takedown thing.

But I had no choice but to get back on the horse.

And I think for me, like modeling that behavior has become very much kind of part of what's so important with TYB and Joggy.

We can start again.

It's amazing to be able to start again.

And being able to do so a second time with so many learnings and all of this experience under my belt, like I'm a much more refined and savvy brand and businesswoman.

I think you just hit on so many points that will resonate, especially what you said around the fact that these female founders were really

stories onto themselves.

And there was this lore around not only just themselves, the companies that they were creating, but everything that they stood for.

And number one, that is a tremendous amount of pressure to feel like I am the female founder that's paving the way.

Yeah.

And I think another element that you didn't exactly speak to, but I think you're also alluding to, was from a financial standpoint, things were extremely different.

And there was so much capital that was going into these companies, especially in the female-founded direct-to-consumer space.

And so I think whenever you see someone who has this rocket ship success, as you said, it's an Achilles heel, but it's also a target on your back.

And the second that things turn, people are like hyenas, willing to just jump out and attack.

And I think now that we've had nearly five, ten years from when the hype of this era happened in the first place, I think we can now start to see and almost do a post-mortem on the why and how it even happened in the first place.

Yeah, no, 100%.

I'm appreciative of the current state of the environment because it feels like it's neutralized in a sense.

And I think female founders are just founders in general.

We're here to make money.

And all eyes and the full team and the full force of our efforts are able to say that.

We're almost like 10 years ago and maybe it was just my youth.

I didn't fully understand that as the mission because the brand felt so important.

And so.

When you run a business, when you take the responsibility on of raising capital and taking investor money, like you are fully a hundred percent accountable to seeing that through and ultimately this being a for-profit business.

And not that that wasn't clear to me before, but with my experience, and I think a lot of us as first-time founders, female in particular, were able culturally to show up and commit to that in a way that maybe didn't feel as okay in the past.

Yeah, I definitely think, and I agree with you, that the culture around all startups, not even just female-founded ones,

there has been this collective, perhaps, agreement that the brand, the marketing of a company, that's all important, but ultimately the numbers, what is going to be driving the business, the profitability, your PL.

Whereas before, that was almost like the sideshow.

Like, this is what we're doing.

And it was very hand-wavy.

It speaks to the venture capital environment and the money in the space where it was okay to not be profitable.

Totally.

Yes, we had stories and products and fandom that were very investable, but in a lot of ways, as young founders, we were able to raise too much money too quickly and then the stakes got so high, like growth at all costs and like massively compounding quarters quarter after quarter.

And when you're selling things in a physical, like physical widget, so leggings in our case, things can go very wrong when it's an inventory business.

And so those variables compressed and then this mandate to grow at all costs in a lot of ways made the wheels come off in situations that probably didn't, it didn't have to go that way.

So D to C is cool.

I think many of us found ourselves in that equation where we were able to raise a lot of capital, the stakes got very high, and then maybe didn't have the infrastructure or certainly the experience to know how to navigate that in a way that, you know, the outcome and kind of the sustainability of the business would be in the best interest of all the stakeholders.

And there was also no one that was telling you otherwise, right?

It was all of these potential investors, your stakeholders, everyone who had something to say about the money that you took into the business.

No one was probably saying, pump the brakes, let's get you to profitability, and then you can take on more money.

It was just here, here's more capital, here's more capital, keep growing, open all these retail stores, continue to grow and expand.

Yeah.

And I think now it's so easy to play armchair expert and say, oh, well, all of these companies just raised too much money when it was just

a state of the times, really.

100%.

I want to talk about an article from the cut that came out in 2023.

And this was a few years after you left Outdoor Voices, where you were actually very open about how you felt the brand had changed since your departure.

And it seems like people were almost surprised that you were still thinking about the company that you had worked at and created.

And I'm curious why you think people were even surprised by that.

That cut article, blessed them.

That was quite funny.

I just remembered sex and bananas is like my two favorite interests.

So that was nice.

Nice of them.

Marked in time forever.

Anyway, yeah.

I think if you haven't been a founder yourself, you

can certainly have a perspective, but you don't really know.

You don't really get it.

Like, I don't know why people would be feeling that way.

I think for me, OB, you know, it's deeply rooted in me.

It's in my DNA.

It's from how I grew up.

And so obsession is what comes up for me.

Like, when you're a founder, when you truly commit to taking something from zero to something, it requires an insane obsession.

And so it took a number of years for me

from when I resigned at After Voices and the resignation details are kind of funny.

I'll tell you about those.

It took a number of years to understand or work through like, why did this happen?

Like I was so focused on growing this thing and purely intentioned.

How the hell did this happen?

And so I still don't, haven't fully reconciled that, but I've been able to like emotionally grow past it in a way that I can be grateful for.

But OV will always be part of my story and part of my DNA.

And it's something I wake up and am driven to do personally and then help other people tap into, which is find a way to move because it maximizes happiness.

So, it's an important mission, and there will be for sure upcoming ways to kind of like thread that back in, joggy being a different vehicle for that same mission.

But it's something that's never going to leave me.

But, yeah, I think I'm actually curious your thoughts on that question with the cut.

The cut, just yeah, yeah, I'll pause there.

Yeah, I read that article last night.

Oh, beautiful.

Yeah, just to get mentally prepared for the episode, of course.

And

it was shockingly unflattering for no reason.

And I think clearly, and I actually don't even remember the name of the journalist, but I felt like it was an incredibly unfair depiction of your time and experience at OV.

So

I could understand from your perspective why you would read that.

And perhaps.

If it were me, I'd be infuriated

because you've already gone through what can only be described as a traumatic experience with everything that happened at the end of your tenure at Outdoor Voices.

And then to feel as if you're now not one, but maybe a few years past that time and you're still getting kicked.

It's like, when is this going to stop?

Let's change the narrative finally.

Yeah, I think very much saying it myself and ourselves first is so important nowadays.

And you'll see that kind of over the next months as we have some big announcements upcoming.

But I'm someone who trusts and potentially trusts too much.

When the cut had come to me, they like showed me this content franchise where they're all glowing.

And I'm like, it doesn't need to be glowing, but it's potentially an interesting filter.

And then what came out was so clearly just another takedown, which is unfortunate, but life goes on.

It got me some more followers.

That's nice.

Who cares?

But what would I say?

I don't know.

That's an unfortunate still period in time.

So I've gotten a less, a lot less comfortable, or just like, it's not part of my playbook to go to journalists anymore.

We are the source of truth.

And that becomes more and more important.

And for me personally, knowing how other people want to depict the scenario.

100%.

I think it takes away other people's power when you share your perspective on how everything went down.

Because Truthfully, anyone who's going to write about it, talk about it, they weren't there.

They weren't in the room.

They don't know what it was actually like.

So when you own it from your perspective to the extent that you can and you're able, I think that that's where you actually gain your power back.

Yeah.

I tried to navigate that very thoughtfully as well.

And looking back, I feel quite proud of just like, that was a

cluster, you know what I mean?

There was a lot to unpack there as a young woman who had tried her best to go after this thing.

And you'll see we very much have a commitment to like spinning up our own direct content and formats and hopefully are doing the same thing for other brands builders and founders that are on the TYB platform.

But I know firsthand how important and powerful saying something yourself indirectly is and then let people pick it up from there.

Yeah.

You alluded to the resignation, so I have to ask.

What are those details?

I had never worked somewhere else.

I guess in college I did, but I hadn't left or been fired.

And just kind of the buildup, there was tension between Mickey and I.

We had very different views on how to grow the company.

I had gone to the board and said, We're going to have to make a call here because we definitely have divergent views.

There was an article that came out that had been authored or co-authored by a Mickey and another journalist, and I, that night, saw it come out and literally looked up how to resign.

And so

the message, I kept it because it's kind of funny.

I hereby tender my resignation.

Doing things, Ty, like the most formal ever.

I didn't, I didn't know if legally it needs to say that or not.

So that's marked in time.

Very nice.

Right after I had had Sunny, a lot going on, but I was so

I read that article and was like, I saw this coming.

I had brought the board into, you know, something coming.

We need to make a call here.

And then just felt so betrayed in a sense.

And so I tendered my resignation.

Hereby I tender my resignation, doing things, Ty.

Beautiful.

I'm sure that sending that message, especially everything that was going on in your life at the time, you mentioned you had just had your first child.

I cannot even imagine what all of that must have felt like at the time.

So I'm curious.

Now that we are safely past that time and your experience at Outdoor Voices is thoroughly put to rest,

I am curious to hear from you what the number one

business lesson is that you take.

And it sounds like there are many, but what is one business lesson?

I got it to you.

Yeah.

From that Outdoor Voices chapter.

Yeah.

Full stop ownership matters.

And this ties back to how you fund the company.

But at the end of the day, we had raised a bunch of money.

And as you looked at the cap table, I had deluded myself to a point where I didn't have control.

So I didn't have enough ownership of the company to be able to control whether we move someone out or not.

And so that's a pretty helpless position to be when you're the one who started it and are used to having kind of full agency, autonomy, et cetera.

And so it's really impacted how I think about setting companies up and the cap table and how you fundraise and what amount of capital you're willing to bring in.

Because at the end of the day, ownership matters or you lose control.

I think that is an incredible takeaway for the audience because if you do not have ownership, and I was actually speaking with someone about this the other day, but it's actually pretty crazy when you look at cap tables sometimes where you'll see a founder who has a moderately successful exit, but if they own 100% of the company or even the majority of the company, the amount of money that they have at the time of the exit versus someone who raises hundreds of millions of dollars, but is is diluted.

And then there are potential liquidation preferences or drag-along rights, and the investors end up taking almost all of the money.

It is such a drastic difference.

And you can have truly the first exit where the founder owns the majority of the company, it can be a much smaller exit.

Right.

But much more fruitful, obviously.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

And that's something I wish I had learned before doing it, but I do understand.

I think in my first fundraising go, I had heard investors be like, I only invest in second-time founders.

And that kind of tracks because there's certainly a lot you don't know the first go.

But really, things like secondary and pref stack, at 23, I just dough all the way in and trust it.

And ultimately, a business at the end of the day doesn't work like that.

And now, speaking of companies that you have much more ownership of, I'd love to talk about TYB and Joggy.

So before you even started those companies in the period of time post Outdoor Voices when you were still very much scouring the landscape trying to figure out where you were going to go into,

what was your framework for identifying opportunities that you felt were truly disruptive?

Tapping into kind of what I am obsessed with and that is building this recreation universe.

Again, committed to that mission of movement.

And I still, it's such a wide open lane, it's it's shocking to me and so coming off of ov i started thinking about almost creating kind of these expert brands within the recreation world but with a shared operating team and a shared back end to figure out if there was a way to make it a more efficient model by having kind of a shared team resources ops etc but then very specific and precise experts in shoes energy etc, etc.

Joggy was the first brand in a box and I had started Joggy because I, at my time at Outdoor Voices, drank a lot of Red Bull.

And as I clicked into the ingredients, it was like, this is not a recipe for energy in the long run.

So I tapped a group of scientists in finding the most premium plant-based energy caffeine source.

And so that's what we have built Joggy around.

As I started thinking about going to market with a From Zero brand, I remembered with Outdoor Voices, we had obviously a very strong and evident community and it it became our most productive and profitable growth channel at the end of the day that said at outdoor voices we had over 10 000 ambassadors called doers we would engage them in things like coming upstream and product development processes picking colors from a line sheet like helping us from an insights and preference standpoint be smarter about our buy decisions they'd host local events at their universities etc they'd submit UDC, all of these things as brand builders and business builders that we knew to be very valuable.

We could take that content and then put it on our channels and use it and paid, et etc.

That said,

it was engagement that was valuable, but we didn't have a tool to make it measurable.

And so I remember back at Out Our Voices sitting in a boardroom, a lot of D2C brands had found success spending money on Instagram and Facebook, like 30 to 40% of what they'd raised to acquire customers.

Meanwhile, our community strategy, as we connected the dots from a data perspective, anyone who came through our community strategy and community playbook was four times more valuable over time.

That, however, was really a difficult program to manage across a variety of channels.

So, Slack, Google Docs, DMs, emails.

And then, most importantly, it was hard to measure and essentially sit in that boardroom and be like, this is the ROI on community.

Therefore, we should go put more dollars here versus to Instagram or Facebook, whereas we acquire customers through here, they don't stick with us.

And so, I really became obsessed with proving that community can become a growth channel.

And I had started jogging and started thinking about going to market.

And that's where the idea for TYB and creating this community tool that would allow a brand from Xero to tap into creating and cultivating this community that could essentially become a more efficient way to grow than funneling dollars through discovery optimized ad platforms.

So started Joggy.

TYB came to mind from a platform perspective as something that I wanted to use in this day and age to go to market.

And then it was off to the races from there.

And to double click, because this sounds really interesting and I want to make sure I got it right.

So when you were describing the companies, you said that you initially thought it would be really a great model to have this shared resource team.

Is that what is currently in place for Joggy and TYB?

It's shared resources across the two companies?

It was.

So

it was going to be these brands like Joggy with a shared back end team.

But as we started to go to market, the idea for TYB, the app, the platform, came to fruition.

And so we started working on that in parallel with Joggy.

So we started to raise money for TYB, the platform.

Essentially, TYB is a rewards app.

And it really started to take off.

It was beneficial early innings to have Joggy as an owned brand.

So TYB at the time owned Joggy because we could dog food or use Joggy to understand what was working or not with the platform and the tool.

As we've grown, so a number of years in, we separated the two.

In September, Joggy spun out of TYB into its own company.

It has its own team, its own resources, and TYB similarly.

TYB is a software kind of SaaS company, and so it didn't make sense to have the two together, but there were benefits early on, and that is the walk-up in terms of how both have come to fruition.

Yeah, when I was initially envisioning it, I'm thinking of, because I have a little bit of background in the beverage space, and I'm thinking beverage is such a,

and any industry you can say is niche because every industry is so different.

But I'm just thinking of like supply chain for getting the ingredients.

Totally different.

Totally different.

These people are jacks of all trading.

No, no, they don't.

100%.

Yeah, so we kind of, I put on ice this idea of physical product brands with a shared back end because TYB,

the app became so obviously what I needed to do next.

And one more question on Joggy, because I think it's such a fascinating and really good product.

Guys, I'm drinking this right now.

And this is the cherry lime one, and it's amazing.

It's really good.

I'm curious, because obviously Outdoor Voices was a physical goods product, right?

You had an experience with Outdoor Voices.

And some people would say that it probably would be a good idea to not go into the consumer packaged goods space,

but you decided to jump right right in.

And so I'd love to hear your perspective on why you were excited about Joggy, given your CPG experience.

Energy as a growth category has been on fire lately.

I think we're seeing with a lot of the recent CPG exits with Poppy, Siette Foods, et cetera, there's massive tailwind behind better for you products.

Energy as a feeling is it's a need state.

And so it's not nice to have.

It's need to have for many people and something that they're having or consuming multiple times a day.

At the end of the day, it was really solving for a personal pain point, and then it became so obvious to me that there's no clear winner brand in the clean energy category.

Though it's from a financial standpoint and then just a need state standpoint, such an important category.

And so I kind of joke, but it's been almost like a hobby project that's now gone to market and is turning on.

We just went into 900 targets.

We have an amazing COO and team around it and it's off to the races.

My main focus really is on TYB so I've been fortunate to take my time getting the product right and then have almost set it free with an operating team that does have deep beverage and CPG experience.

And I get to play where it's fun on the product and brand side.

But TYB is my main thing.

You spoke to the acquisitions.

I remember reading, it must have been a few months ago now, but Celsius acquired and it starts with an A.

Alani New.

Yes, yes, but it really supports, I think, your goals with Joggy to provide.

I believe, I'm not actually even fully sure how clean that product is.

It's not, which is crazy.

So, the two things that we're up against, which just feel like no-brainers that we need to replace, are synthetic caffeine.

So, synthetic caffeine gives you that jittery, kind of like rocket ship up and crash.

And then fake sugar.

So, sucralose is in a lany new.

Like, they are still ingredients that are not good for us and things things that market themselves as healthy.

We found essentially the most premium organic caffeine from the Guayasa plant.

It's called Amati Max.

That's what gives you the buzz of joggy.

And then we've rounded it out with real organic juice, L-theanine, lime juice, and water.

It's very simple, but it gives you that spark, that focused, beautiful, kind of buzzy energy.

And as people going after it, like you and I and many of your listeners, it's a nice thing to have in your toolkit.

I'm really excited about this because because I think, number one, as you said, it's solving major pain points where people feel this crash after having a lot of energy.

And I know L-theanine specifically, I believe that's one of the active ingredients in matcha, too, right?

I'm not sure, but L-theanine paired with caffeine is a common situation, and it's a really nice effect.

So, I want to switch gears to TYB.

And you've already given little snippets of what it is, but can you provide a high-level overview overview to the listeners who may not know what it is?

Yeah, of course.

We're re-platforming loyalty.

Loyalty that's actually fun to participate in.

Forever, loyalty

between brands and fans, let's call it, has just been a point system where I, as a loyal fan, earn points based on how much money I've spent.

TYB is very cool in that it's a rewards app.

So you download it.

It stands for try your best.

And it's a new way to play a game with your favorite brands and then earn, not only for purchases, but for completing challenges, things like creating content, referring a friend, submitting reviews for your favorite products.

Like you earn for a whole suite of actions that you take beyond just a transaction.

And so it's a rewards app.

All of the best brands essentially live in your pocket through TYV.

And it really allows for loyalty to become an identity or status thing that works across multi-brands versus just kind of baked into one.

And so, yeah, it's been a really fun thing to work on.

I think from a brand perspective, TYB gives brands an owned channel to own relationships with their most loyal super fans and then directly incentivize them for helping to grow.

And so a lot of what worked at Outdoor Voices, we've now packaged into this platform and made it accessible for brands.

And I like to think of it as a game.

It really is.

On the user side, you play with other super fans who are obsessed with brands like Rare Beauty or Glossier or SetActive or SEI.

You collect essentially badges, coins as you complete these challenges.

And then you can unlock access to things, perks, PR boxes, exclusive access to product, et cetera.

So play, collect, earn on TYB, and it's essentially a new way of creating a loyalty experience that you actually want to be part of.

The fact that it is specifically a channel where brands can now own the relationship to their customers, that is massive.

And I think from the founders that I've spoken to that are especially in the early stages of trying to understand the best way to connect with their most loyal fans, the fact that you can have a direct channel and understand the data around them that that's just so much harder to really assess through these larger mega platforms.

I see that as being one of the strongest differentiators and also value propositions of TYB.

Yeah, I think the the holy grail is making community and your members of that community measurable.

And forever, those relationships have been disintermediated by an Instagram or a TikTok where I, as a brand, go put all this effort into growing my community or following on Instagram, but I don't have any level of depth in terms of what the composition or kind of details around those people who are participants supposedly.

And so that's what owned means is with TYB as people join your community anything that they're giving you in terms of zero-party data, preferences, insights, actions that they've taken,

coins earned and status, all of that on the brand side is viewable in essentially your community CRM.

And then we have really cool integrations with Shopify and Clavio.

And so as you have this rich data, that ports into Clavio and makes essentially all your performance marketing, email, et cetera, like more personalized and sophisticated because of all this rich data that you're able to port from members that engage with you on 2IB into your email service.

And then on the Shopify front, it's quite cool.

We're able to compare the value of a member versus non-member and over time.

And so the holy grail of loyalty is how do we make members more valuable over time.

And it's, I think we have 200 brands on platform now.

And there's two metrics that really matter.

When you look at community members versus non-community members, increased frequency of purchase and then increased lifetime value.

That's essentially what the tool does for for brands.

And really, at the end of the day, it's proving that community can become a growth channel.

And customers, it sounds like they are loving it.

The fact that they get to feel as if they have almost this insider pass.

And sometimes it sounds like

you said that you had 200 brands on the platform.

The brands are using TYB in many different ways, but the common thread is that they are trying to get their customers, whoever's part of their TYB platform, to either help make critical decisions, be part of some kind of process on, hey, we're launching this new product, like help weigh in on what that is.

And I think that there's really something special about giving customers more of a voice.

And it sounds like what I love so much about this, and I'm truly passionate about what you're building, is it's really feeling like a win-win for both sides.

Exactly.

It comes down at the end of the day to brand fan incentivization.

We call it community commerce.

And so that's the crux of it.

And for me, the future of brand building is two-part: it's co-creation.

So almost taking that Reddit thread, let's say glossier Reddit thread where there's clear evidence that people really care and talk about the brand in-house and then rewarding for productive and valuable behavior.

When you were in the early days of TYB, what were those initial pitches like to get brands on the platform before they even knew what it looked like?

Yeah.

I mean, there's such a

standard for what traditional loyalty programs look and feel like.

It's like baked into your site as a brand.

It's points for purchases that you then earn on your birthday.

It's such a

rote, I guess, program.

And so we've kind of exploded that definition to include a lot more of the fun, active participant type behavior where we as brand builders know things like high quality, authentic, user-generated content is something that I'd happily pay for, right?

Generally, brands would want this experience white-labeled.

What we very much believe in at TYB is

users want one portal into rewards and relationships from their favorite brands, and they want essentially their status with one brand to potentially mean something across this universe of brands within the TYB experience.

And so, the early innings was us convincing brands that loyalty just on their site and this traditional points system was ultimately not where the engagement happens.

And rather, fans of the future, the most high-value consumers, are going to be in and out playing games and they want all of their favorite friends and interests and favorite products in one spot.

Brands were resistant to that.

Now we see 50% monthly active users in the TYB app, which is for every brand that signs on by far their most engaged channel.

So where the engagement happens, we're then connecting that and being able to show the frequency of purchase in LTV.

And it's cool because every brand that comes on expands the ecosystem.

And so this becomes very much like a multi-brand loyalty network and it's where people are on a daily basis tuning in completing challenges collecting badges progressively earning status within communities to unlock special perks and i think game at the end of the day says a lot of it because loyalty hasn't felt like a game it hasn't been a fun thing to engage with and loyalty status within one brand hasn't spoken to others and that's what i think becomes quite compelling over time.

And how are the brands themselves promoting the fact that that they're even on TYB?

Yeah, it's quite simple.

So they promote it across their owned channels.

So join our rewards program or membership, whatever, or community.

People can use whatever term they like.

But it's simple.

You're essentially like taking a link, brand.tyb.xyz, across email, across social, linking to it, and then your users unlock a membership collectible.

and then have access to your world where they can share or play with other people that are part of the the community and complete challenges, shop, et cetera.

Has it been easier building, especially in the early days, TYB, as a second-time founder?

This journey from software, like soft W-E-A-R leggings, to software W-A-A-R-E

has been a journey because it's like wildly different, especially not as a technical person.

I haven't learned to code and have been very conscious of bringing exceptional technical talent onto the team.

It's been interesting because again, like similar to Joggy, we've been solving for a pain point that I, in my early innings, felt deeply.

We didn't have that direct access to our super fans or a tool to prove that this engagement ultimately can be quite valuable.

And so solving for a pain point, I think, at any point in time is ultimately a valuable space to play in.

Like I uniquely know the pain points of the customers that we're serving.

serving.

Where will TYB

be in the next five years?

I think of it as like the

next gen, kind of Gen Z Amex, where it becomes where I, as a consumer, have my status.

And so that status means things across all of the brands and ecosystems that I want to engage with.

And it really becomes part of my identity, this idea of proof of fan.

For instance, Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez's brand is on platform.

And when you enter enter the community you start in level one and they have fun names for it and then as you complete challenges, refer friends into the rare community, complete obsessions around products that you love, you're progressively earning your way into higher status.

So level two, level three is called rare BFF and people are sharing when they reach level three rare BFF on social, it becomes like a bragging right.

And what's going to be quite cool is as we continue to build out this ecosystem, for instance, brands can say anyone in rare BFF level three

get access to this new product from, let's say, a Nike.

And so really, this world becomes rich and dynamic in that my status is something that I, as a user, own with NTYB.

It ports across different brands and experiences with me, and it becomes an identity layer that we haven't necessarily seen in the loyalty space before.

It's so exciting.

Just hearing...

even your vision.

I love that one-liner of the Amex rewards rewards for Gen Zen Z.

I think when you say it like that, I would imagine it's going to click for a lot of people.

The same way that people think about rewards in other capacities, that's what TYB will become for your favorite brands.

Yeah, exactly.

And I'd love to hear about your perspective on all things branding.

We've touched a little bit on it just with Joggy and TYB, and of course, Outdoor Voices.

And specifically, the doing things movement was so critical to the larger OV identity.

So what's your approach to developing authentic brand narratives for your current companies today?

There's four part.

So when I think about a brand tapping into the power of community, it starts with a clearly articulated mission or reason for being.

So in OV's world, it was get the world moving.

Like how do we inspire people to move on a daily basis?

The second is building rituals for activation, which could be in the active space.

Our version, again, was standing up these kind of local activities for people to participate in in support of that mission.

In the beauty space, there's built-in ritual in terms of I'm going through that routine multiple times a day in terms of putting lipstick on or blush and recording it, et cetera, or masterclasses, et cetera.

And then the third is around connection.

And so giving this third space for super fans or people obsessed with your brand to connect.

And the fourth is incentivization.

So we're coming from a world in Instagram and social where I, as a fan of something, am pressing, but not getting much for that.

And so the cool thing about TYB and really where we're headed is every action I'm taking, I'm getting a micro reward and earning further status for.

And so that suite of four things to me is ultimately how you activate a brand or a community and find that engagement and enthusiasm around a brand or a product that you might be building.

I think that is such an incredible takeaway.

Of course, it's great hearing how you think about it, but for anyone who's in the early stages of building their own company, their brand for their company, or even just trying to reimagine what their brand for their existing company is, having that framework just as succinctly and clearly as you just laid it out

is really something that I imagine a lot of people should be doing to think about if what they're doing makes sense and will resonate.

Yeah, and that's why I think TYB is so cool.

I think of it as this experiential funnel.

And so, quite simply, what the tool allows you to do is to create automated engagement campaigns.

And they live next to any marketing campaign.

And so the tool lives in parallel with any marketing campaign you might have on your roadmap.

And effectively, it allows you to create a game which drives more engagement around that marketing initiative and have direct access and measurability to all that's happening within your most obsessed super fans.

So it's a pretty fun space to play and proving out to be a very effective tool for brands that want to have and realize the opportunity of community as a growth channel.

With everything that you've built to date, what is the aspect of your career that you are the most proud of?

That's a good question.

What I'm most

strong at or what I love to do is to create movements around things.

And so it's almost like a religion that people have real kind of sense of belonging and emotional connection to.

So we did that well with Outdoor Voices.

I think that opportunity is still alive and well.

for me kind of creating that religion it's around movement and so that's again a very personal thing like i need movement on a daily basis to show up as the tie that i most want to be both in business and kind of personal aspects of life so creating movements around things is is really what excites me and i think we're creating this movement around brands being able to incentivize directly their most valuable fans in a way that sits a bit outside of the influencer world as we know it and the paid acquisition world as we know it.

So again, I think 2YB becomes this movement.

And I'd say creating movements is something that I love the most about what I do.

And you can see the thread, the common thread of movement through everything that you've done.

Although Outdoor Voices quite literally was apparel to support movement, joggy is energy to support movement.

2YB is the movement and the kinetic energy that exists between brands and their most loyal fans.

It's almost this beautiful arc of how you think and also what you build, which is like poetic.

Not to go too deep, but it's really cool to think of it like that.

The movement creation is something that I love to do.

I also,

you'll see this turn on.

I'm very committed to this recreation universe building.

And so I think it's funny because I do have a number of businesses that I'm part of and people are often like, whoa, that seems like a lot.

But to me, they're all quite synergistic in this world building or underneath kind of the recreation umbrella.

All right so last three questions.

These are questions for every guest.

Well the first one is would you be able to share a system that you have that benefits your career or business?

I very much believe the compression of time creates value and so particularly in startups and when you're really trying to go from a zero concept to actually something with traction in a real business, pace matters.

And so the quicker that you can test something, learn, evolve, iterate, I think that's something I've really loved about building in the tech space is you're running sprints, two-week sprints, and here's what we're going to get done in this amount of time.

Like, by when is a really crucial end point from a management standpoint to compress time around getting things done.

And so that's more just of a operating offering.

Okay, next question comes from the social currency corner, where I get your input on a trend or story that's impacting business and culture.

You were the face of outdoor voices in many respects, and it seems like you're now a little bit more behind the scenes with your current companies.

Yet now, building in public with founders as the face for brands is extremely common.

So, since you've been on both sides of the equation, what do you think the best way is to grow a consumer-focused company?

Yeah, I think it's a team sport.

So, there certainly can be a Michael Jordan or kind of the star of the team, a Steph Curry, but then there's a cast of characters that all each have an equally important role.

And I think not just having a single point of failure with one face is the way of the future, though.

Again, there is such power in having people kind of attached at the forefront of these businesses.

It's an emotional business.

It's an entertainment business.

But I think rather than one face, it's a team of people.

It's a team sport.

And that's really where there's strength.

Let's end with some advice.

For this part, I ask listeners to submit questions for you and here is one of my favorites.

What is one piece of advice about building community around a brand that most founders get wrong?

It's all about it starts with us and so it needs to be something that isn't just applied as a marketing tactic but really you need to take the time to understand authentically deep down in the DNA of this brand and yourself and your team, what is it that makes sense for us as a ritual for activation or way to activate people around our mission and theme and purpose?

And so it's really not just

filling a spot on a marketing calendar.

I think it really needs to be an authentically differentiated and unique part of your DNA that you pull on and activate.

And that then becomes that movement that we talked about.

Ty, thank you so much for this conversation.

You can find Ty, TYB, and Joggy on socials.

I'll link the handles in the show notes.

And for anyone who is interested in being part of the new wave of brand loyalty and engagement as either a brand or a customer, you really need to check out TYB.

I know we've been talking about it a lot this episode, but I am fully bought in to the vision of what this company is.

And I think everyone at the very least should check it out.

So Ty, as I said earlier, even before we started filming, this interview is for me a really full circle moment.

And so I really appreciate you coming to have this conversation.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Social Currency.

I've been wanting to launch this show for so long, I can't tell you how excited I am to do this and how thrilled I am that you're actually here listening.

It means the world to me.

If you liked what you heard today, please rate and review the podcast because it massively helps to support the work I do to bring the show to life.

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Social Currency is a production of Social Currency Media and Money News Network.

The podcast is hosted and executive produced by me, Sammy Cohen.

Social currency is produced by the Money News Network team.

See you next time.