Cryptocurrency, Naivety & Bullshit
Welcome to another episode of The Chirp. Last episode we got to talk to a superstar entrepreneur who you'll recognize from her latest feature in People magazine - Rahama Wright. If you missed our conversation with Rahama, definitely go check out - Story 5: In Order To Be Successful, You Have To Work Together.
This week we got a chance to talk about pretty much every topic under the sun. From cryptocurrencies to divorced couples being forced to live with one another, to a group of people trying to buy the constitution of the United States, and even, an analysis on the state of legal tech in the world of creatives - Daniel Narciso came on our show ready to tell some fascinating & entertaining stories. Take some time to listen to Daniel as he guides us through his world; hopefully, you can keep up along the way.
This Episode In A Nutshell
The world of money movement between friends, family, colleagues, business partners, and everything in between is changing every single day. As we become more interconnected we are finding new ways to share value, work towards common goals, and even rewrite the way we think about interpersonal relations. In this episode, we got a chance to talk to Daniel Narciso, a savant in the litigation finance space by day and an encyclopedia of knowledge leading a startup called 1Haus by night. From stories in which long-time lovers are forced to live together even after a shared financial meltdown and subsequent separation to tales of influencers in the creative space being cheated out of their just pay, no matter the adventure, this episode is sure to teach you something new and exciting!
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Have a story to tell and want to be on our podcast? Let us know by sending an email to claird@pigeonloans.io.
Audio Transcript of Story 6: Be Loyal To Those Who Loan You Money
Opening Monologue
Hey everyone, welcome back. Hope all of our American listeners had a lovely Thanksgiving, and all of our European listeners are just doing their best to just stay out of the cold.
Back at it again with another super duper episode. I was blessed with sterling conversation this week as I chatted with Daniel Narciso, Dan is a native of Miami, Florida where he currently has two jobs. One is as a senior associate in litigation, while the other sees him as the co-founder of a company called 1Haus Collective, which is a platform that looks after the legal side of creativity for creators so that they can focus on their art.
One of our more varied conversations this week on the Chirp, topics wise. You know, let it be known, I edit these episodes down as our conversations usually run over the allotted time of 30 mins that you're all so used to hearing, sorry to burst the bubble of illusion, but we managed to chat about you know -many things, his work-life balance, his passions, his unique take on how best to market creatives and find the right work for them and how one of his jobs only got started because he was looking after his little brother's best interests.
So great to see Daniel have so many things going for him and having fun while doing them - we appreciate that. As usual, I had a lot of fun chatting to him and I hope the fun is transferred to you!
So, let’s dive right in, I hope you enjoy. And here is story #6!
Cameron Laird
Dan, it was great to great to hear about you coming on the show. Obviously given a bit of research, you wear a couple of hats. Can you talk me through about what you have going on at the moment in your life?
Daniel Narciso
Yeah, so I worked at a private equity group specifically within a kind of a niche nascent sector of finance called litigation finance where we invest in anything related to litigation. So if there's a good case - we can invest in that. If there's a good loss from that, we can invest in that. If there's any secondaries on that market, we can invest in that. So it's up and coming. It's been around maybe 10 years in the United States. So you really find yourself trying to pull from a lot of different areas, which kind of gives you more exposure to different areas of finance, which is a lot of fun, you know, so I enjoy it a lot.
Cameron Laird
Fantastic. And you are also the co-founder of 1Haus collective as well. What takes up more of your time or what kind of has more of your focus at this stage?
Daniel Narciso
So right now for 1Haus Collective, we're going through a whole rebrand and revamp. So the way that I started is my brother and his partner started this creative studio about six years back. And while I was in law school, I had to help them through all the paperwork, the filings and then got started working with all the contracts and stuff like that.
So it really got me connected to the creative world.
Cameron Laird
Yeah
Daniel Narciso
Which then kind of spiraled into this creative network where I got to know a lot of creatives. We got up to 150 creatives underneath our umbrella.
Cameron Laird
Lovely
Daniel Narciso
But then realize we weren't really providing as much value as you wanted because the value that everyone wanted was jobs!
Everyone wanted to get money, get paid, get gigs.
Cameron Laird
Gigs, yup
Daniel Narciso
And we hadn't built the network nor the infrastructure to be able to provide those on a regular basis. So that's why we kind of shut down a little bit. And now we're in the middle of our process of kind of redoing the entire brand in order to scale up and move forward.
So that one is taking not so much time now, but it's kind of a new developer since I am no code whatsoever. I have no skills in that at all. You know, so right now me and my work is investing on all fronts, right. Making sure we fill our funds, making sure we get good investments servicing our clients at the end of the day.
And no matter what business you're in, you're always in the customer service business. Yeah. So if you're not dealing with your clients in a respectful, respectful, fast, appropriate way, then you're just a product. So there's that, that's kind of my focus.
Cameron Laird
And do you think in your, in your line of work and what you do, is it more common in your personal life or in your working life where you know, relationships can, can go you know - north or south when it comes to, you know, financial transactions or, or money in general?
Daniel Narciso
I think it goes back to making yourself, not taking yourself too seriously. Right. I think a lot of people let their relationships slide. Because they're so focused on a kind of a singular goal or aspect of their life.
And I only want to find somebody that's more vicious or works harder than me or any of the above. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to ruin everyone else's lives just to become who I want to be. Right. If I can't bring anybody else with me then what's really the point? And if you're not loyal to the people that are loyal to you when it's hard to be loyal to you, then there's not really any real point to it.
Cameron Laird
Have you any kind of tales of woe or tales of success when it comes to this? Wherewith friends or family?
Daniel Narciso
Yeah. I mean, I've seen divorces come to it, you know? One funny story, is...this doesn't really go off the work-life balance thing - but someone just kind of being dumb with their money.
I had a buddy of mine, he owned his own house. Got engaged. And then he ended up putting the property - while he owned the property. He put the title in her name as well. And then they went five or six years through the engagement and then she got sick of it and kind of ended that engagement, but she was still entitled to the deed.
Yeah. So they were living together while they were broken up. And he ended up losing half the house after two years because of that mistake, you know? And so he's fine now, but he still lost half his house just because he decided to just put his house in someone else's name for...
Cameron Laird
Yeah, go off a whim.
Daniel Narciso
...yeah for vanity sake. Exactly.
Cameron Laird
Why do you think that is? Obviously, if they had gotten married, would there have been worse implications? Obviously, there would be alimony and things like that, but do you think that he just simply jumped the gun as in, he essentially put his girlfriend on the lease of the house instead of what he thought was his future wife? Wasn't practical?
Daniel Narciso
It wasn't practical, no. I don't think he ever wanted to get married. He got engaged because she kind of said, “Hey, we’ve been dating for 13 years, now we need to get engaged”. And he was like, okay. And then she was living there. So he put her on the deed of the house, but it's one of those things where he bought it beforehand.
So it technically is not marital property once you get married. So he could have technically kept the apartment to himself, even if he got married.
Cameron Laird
Yeah.
Daniel Narciso
But the fact that he went another five years without getting married and then got separated, and then she was living in the house and bringing guys over through the house because she said, “This is our house!” They were just like roommates.
Cameron Laird
Oh god...
Daniel Narciso
Yeah, not a great situation for them.
Cameron Laird
No...And he stayed there as well? He stuck around?
Daniel Narciso
Yeah, he didn't, he didn't move. He was like, “I paid for this house. I'm not going to go anywhere.”
Cameron Laird
Yeah, that's fair.
Daniel Narciso
So then eventually they sold the house.
Cameron Laird
So going back to 1Haus Collective. I guess I'd be a creative mind myself. So I'm kind of keen about how you, you know, fell into that.
Obviously, you grew your network. Are you somewhat of a creator yourself or where do your kind of your hobbies and passions lie in that area?
Daniel Narciso
No, I wish I was a creator. You know, that's a much more fun life, I think than sitting behind phones calls and Excel spreadsheets, you know? No, it was just taking care of my brother, making sure my family was protected.
Cameron Laird
Yeah
Daniel Narciso
Making sure they were cared for. And then their friends came to me and we started kind of talking and we started reaching out the more people building out this network. And turns out the creatives aren't necessarily the most legally literate people in the world in terms of legal terms, financial terms, right?
Because if you're an individual creator, right? Like you have, let's say you're just one-man shop. You go in and you don't even have an LLC, but you get paid a couple of grand by Nike, right. While you may think. Oh, I'm just negotiating with the brand manager across the way, but you're not, you're negotiating with Nike's team of one hundred attorneys who came up with a document that benefits them exclusively.
And so it's about kind of navigating that process and what they do a lot. And I've seen it too many times is they start accepting jobs through, let's say Instagram DMs, but they never have a contract in place. So if there's no contract in place, you're only taking their word for it. They're going to pay you what the word.
And usually, it takes, let's get on a phone and I'll talk about the deal and they say - "Hey, I'm going to pay you five grand for this job to show up on this set. They say, yes. Okay, cool.", but they never document it. And so you do the job, you turn in the project, and you say, "Hey, what's the payment?" and they say, "Oh, sorry, I only have a grand for you today".
And then you're sitting there. It's like, "I was supposed to get five for this"...and then you only get one and that's happened more times than you know.
Cameron Laird
And do you think something like Pigeon obviously, which is, which is a lending platform do you think that it could kind of be flipped on its head and used as a payment platform if needs be like for creatives, whereas you said, instead of it being used for loans, it could be used to actually well... "agree to this - we'll agree to five grand pay. We'll pay you $1,000 now, and $1,000 per month for the next 5 months". Do you think there's kind of a use case for that - for creatives or what do you think?
Daniel Narcisco
I think it's definitely possible. If the speed is there. Yeah. Right. And I, and I think the speed is going to be there.
They're using, not to sound kind of swirly but like cryptocurrency, right? That's where I've seen tremendous speed. So through my different brokerage accounts for me to sell something and get the actual liquid paper in, it's going to take one to two days at the fastest, right. It's got to go through an order system.
I can't do it 24/7. I can't do anything. If I want to transfer, let's say I will transfer five or 10 grand to a different bank. It's going to take three to five days, right? Because it has to be wire transferred. No, but this cryptocurrency, you can do that in a matter of seconds. So I think that's where the real advantages lie, I think Pigeon probably has a faster mover advantage compared to some of the bigger banks, especially if you can transfer cash instantaneously.
I know Venmo does it. But they have a cap as to how many Venmo payments you can send in a month. And I know Zelle through Bank of America has it, but it has a cap as to how much you can send at a time and within a day. So the ability to kind of instantly wire cash is going to be - is going to be major because no one's going to be able to hide behind, oh, give me three to five days while I send this money through here.
So I do think that's gonna be - that has use cases in every single commercial type process.
Cameron Laird
Yeah absolutely. So say 10 years from now, how do you see, you know, not just, not just loans swapping hands, but financial transactions in general. Where do you see, what do you see the norm being in around 10 years from now?
Daniel Narcisco
I don't see it all too different from now. I just see it faster. Right.
Cameron Laird
Yeah, obviously so crypto being a huge part of that.
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah. I see a way faster and a lot more 24-7, I see a lot more risk. People being exposed to a lot more risk, so they need to do a lot more research in that space. So I'm not sure if you've been aware of the ConstitutionDAO. Where they tried to buy the constitution yesterday. So basically, yeah, a group of 10 people had created this crypto DAO. It's like a Decentralized Autonomous Organization and within 72 hours, they raised $40 million from 17,000 people. To buy the constitution at a Sotheby's auction. And they didn't end up buying it, but they were able to raise that much cash kind of instantaneously within 72 hours.
Right. People are starting to do that to invest in companies. Right. So it's, and it's that under new consumer protection laws. No accreditation laws. So right now let's say you're not, let's say you're in the U.S. and you want to invest in a startup. You're technically not allowed to invest in that startup unless you're an accredited investor, an accredited investor means that you made $200,000 over the previous two years, or you have $4 million [$1 million] in net worth.
Right? So that leaves pretty much everybody else not able to invest in a startup. So let's say your best friend invented Facebook and you're just a college kid. You technically, unless you're a founder, you wouldn't be able to invest your own capital into that -into that startup.
Cameron Laird
Okay
Daniel Narcisco
Which is where the DAOs kind of come in, where now you can invest a thousand dollars into a pool of a million dollars and gets spread out over a bunch of different companies. But without there being any kind of consumer protection in place, there's a lot more risk if you don't really trust those people. So I do think there's going to be a lot more scams. Sort of like the Dogecoins, sort of like the Floki coin, that stuff, they're just scams, right? There's nothing behind them.
Cameron Laird
They are going nowhere.
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah. So there's going to be a lot more of those. So people have to be more careful. But I think ultimately it's more freedom than before. So I think to answer your question to kind of circle back, I think in 10 years from now, there's going to be more freedom in the market and kind of less oversight.
From the government from, from different entities and more ability to the scale and grow fast, as opposed to now.
Cameron Laird
You mentioned earlier that you started 1Haus Collective was for your family. Can you just talk briefly kind of through, you know, what your motivations were, obviously your family was the motivation, but what kind of prompted you to, you know, look after your family in that way and how did you do it?
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah. So I'm an older brother, right? So older brothers take care of their younger brothers. And my younger brother is a creative through and through. So all he cares about is managing the camera, editing the film, creating film, but that's all he cares about. So the business side of it sometimes gets lost on them, you know?
And it doesn't matter how many times you drill it into their head - "Make sure you do work with a contract". They end up sometimes not doing it. Right? So if someone at my thoughts, let's just protect them as much as we can, by putting systems in place to make sure they're getting a fair square deal.
Right? And as we talked to more of them, more of them, then it didn't necessarily want to read their contracts for them. They didn't really want someone to help them with kind of different accounting. They didn't really want someone to set them up with an LLC. And shit like that. They wanted gigs, they wanted jobs, right?
That's where the shift came in and now in the next month or so it's going to come out where we're going to start reaching out more to brands and creating a different sort of brand image. Where it's more about connection between brands and creatives and making sure they are on the same page.
And that's how we're the intermediary. That's how we protect the creative. No, by being in the middle of the negotiation, being in the middle of every project so that we can handle the contracts all upfront and they, all they have to do is worry about the product. Right. So that's kind of the basic assumption on everything - protect the creative.
Cameron Laird
If you don't mind me asking, in terms of, you know, monetization for the creative agency, will you work on a kind of subscription model or will you, you know, potentially take a percentage of whatever gig they get?
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah. So we're just gonna take a percentage, it's way easier that way.
Luckily I don't think we have to, luckily I have a day job, so I don't need a subscription model. I mean, I can just eat at it, eat what I hunt type of thing, you know, and that puts, I think that puts less pressure on everybody. I think the major thing is anybody that signed with us can expect that within the first month they're going to get a hundred thousand dollar job.
Right? You know, if we're just starting off, they can't expect that the first month. But if they're paying a certain amount, let's say they're paying $15 a month, $20 a month for jobs. Yep. A hundred dollars a month jobs, then those expectations started creeping up where you need to do that right away. And my whole idea is we need to go fund.
We need to cultivate these relationships with these brands to be able to do this and cultivate this brand image. And without that, and that takes a while, you know, it's taken me multiple years to be able to get the relationships that I have right now in my day job. You know? So it's going to take some time to get these relationships in place in real life.
You know, so that's really, that's really why we decided on the commission structure instead of the other structure because there are agencies, right? So there's two different stuff - like the crew of agencies and then there are agencies.
And agencies kind of have different creatives for them, underneath.
And agencies basically they take 20, 25% of everything, each creative works on, even if they don't source the job. And I just thought that's bullshit. You know, it's sort of like a sports agent where they just take 3% of every single contract.
Cameron Laird
Take, take, take.
Daniel Narcisco
You know, even if they're not playing on the court, they're not doing anything.
They're not filming. They're not editing. They're not doing any of the work. Even if they're not sourcing the work, they still get 20, 25%. And I just thought that's nuts. Does this model kind of flips it on its head, where we say no, we work for you and we're only going to get paid if you get paid.
Cameron Laird
Absolutely, I think that's the way to do it.
Daniel Narcisco
I think that's kind of the new movement in this space. Cause right now it's easier to become a creative than ever before. But that also makes it harder, right? Because you need to find your niche.
Cameron Laird
Saturation
Daniel Narcisco
Exactly. You know, it's very hard to find projects, especially if you don't have an in.
Cameron Laird
I started as a voiceover artist, I think about a year ago now, and thought I was the bee's knees because I was doing Fiverr gigs every other day for $5.
So you can get gigs like that.
But obviously, when you want to be living off these amounts, my God, you have to graft and grind and hustle.
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah, no, I mean, I can't even imagine doing so how many, how many were you doing a day in terms of Fiverr gigs?
Cameron Laird
I was doing, I was doing like, basically, you can go on Fiverr and you can ask for buyer requests, which are. Yeah, people will put out gigs that they need done and they say, oh, I have a budget of $25. And you, you bid - you pitch yourself to them and say, I'll do that. Sometimes you can even charge a bit lower as well.
I would have been doing three, three to five. I think I did my most shameful one was 100, one, a hundred thousand word audiobook for $100.
Daniel Narcisco
Hahaha that's nuts.
Cameron Laird
Now, put that into Euro. That is I think, 80 Euro and then Fiverr takes 20% as well. So I think I came out with about 60 Euro all in for a long grueling weekend, but as I said, It's just the beginning and it's a place to cut your teeth as well.
So I think for creative, starting off something like Fiverr, where you literally need the experience and you'll do it for pebbles, it's a good thing, but I'm one year on and I've, you know, a book of clients and things like that. No, no Fiverr is no bueno. I'll have to you know, if a gig comes in and it's well paid fair enough I'll do it, I'll move on, but I won't be, I won't be perusing through trying to get gigs.
Daniel Narcisco
It is crazy how much these companies charge like 5-20% off work charges a shit ton, TopDAO, which is one for kind of engineers and developers. They charge time. Yeah
Cameron Laird
And these guys, and again, they are a business, you know, as we were saying, banks are businesses.
These, these, these are trying to, to make a profit. I think Upwrok works a little bit. I think you can get higher-paid gigs. All right. Upwork work, but you have to buy tokens. So you'll actually have to. Pay, you know, $20 you'll get 20 or 10 tokens and you have to bid on the jobs you have to pay, you have to pay per pitch - it’s mental. But listen, so whats coming up in the future for you? You got kind of two things going on are looking to in the future? What you hopeful for in your life?
Daniel Narcisco
I mean, I hopping to combine them, right?
Cameron Laird
Yeah
Daniel Narcisco
Because at the end of the day, when you have one sector, that's kind of very niche, one pillar, and litigation's very niche.
And not, a lot of people know about it. Not a lot of people are playing it, but it's very, it's massive. It's multiple billions a year in terms of its size. And no one was looking at it - because they think lawyers, that's stuffy, that's - I'm not going to talk to lawyers all day. Which I totally understand. Right? Understandable. And then you have the entertainment sector, right? And, and if you look at the back end of the entertainment sector, it's really market trends. Right. And consumerism. Ut's, you'll be able to see, okay. Which brands are using, which creatives for which products. And then from there, you can see where the market trends are moving, right.
Based on what exactly is being requested of them. What are they selling? What are they pitching? What's the idea behind each product? What's the idea behind each project? And I think that has a ton of value to it. You know, that is crucial. And a lot of people don't know this but it's sort of similar to a lot of private equity groups buying out Shopify stores, right?
So everyone in the Shopify store where they're selling knick-knacks or whatever, but what they don't know is that a lot of times those are owned at this point by private equity groups who can scale them based on backend distribution. Right. So let's say, let's say you decide, okay. I'm going to sell phone cases, right?
And you have a special drawing in your phone case and you set up a fire account and it's a special thing. And you end up scaling to a certain point. You're going to be approached by someone to buy that from you. And you can be completely hands-off...
Cameron Laird
The business?
Daniel Narcisco
The entire business. Yeah. And I think it's going to be the same with entertainment with these kinds of markets trends.
Because every single greatest studio has certain information on different brands as to what they're thinking, where they're going, and what's the next step, right? So if you have that information, you can kind of anticipate the trends and see where they're going to go and kind of preempt it and prepare for it and make sure that you're never behind the eight ball.
You know, so eventually. I can figure out a way to combine them. That'd be great, you know, but for now, I'm just having fun.
Cameron Laird
Good. I'm glad you're having fun. And it's clear to see as well with kind of the two jobs that you have kudos to you for that. If people want to get in touch with you for whatever, I'm sure you have numerous ways for people to contact you.
What's the best way to feed people to email you or your socials or whatever you want to show to the world?
Daniel Narcisco
I just started on Twitter.
Cameron Laird
Oh, God love you.
Daniel Narcisco
I just started out because I'm part of this thing called the Shrimp Society out of Miami. I think Brian's also part of it.
Cameron Laird
Yeah, I've heard of it yeah.
Daniel Narcisco
And it's a great new group of young and up-and-coming founders out of Miami, which is now kind of a tech startup in of it itself. And I got on there because there's this new NFT project coming out. I think it's being minted at the end of the month. So I got in there to kind of build it up, like do whatever I can, and ended up getting a big dude to being on Twitter.
And I was never a fan of Twitter. My entire Twitter thread is now, NFTs, cryptocurrencies. Just cause I've gotten helped over the past couple of weeks and real estate for some reason. And VCs. How'd I get hooked on this? You know, this is ridiculous.
Cameron Laird
These things that you're tweeting they're not wrong. They're not abusive or evil, at least you're not wrong.
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah, I guess that's a positive. I'll tweet that next.
Cameron Laird
What is your Twitter handle as a matter of interest?
Daniel Narcisco
It's @dan_narciso_. So that's my Twitter handle and then I will give you my 1Haus email, but the thing is we're changing that email now too. Because it used to be...You go through all these iterations because you go "oh well I'm being creative" - so the website is 1ha.us but it's only because I couldn't find, buy 1haus.com so I was like oh, people are going to be able to find this because it's clever.
Cameron Laird
You can use anything now, exactly yeah.
Daniel Narcisco
But it's not clever...
Cameron Laird
Now you're screwed.
Daniel Narcisco
...it's just difficult to find. 1hau? What's what's that?
Cameron Laird
Daniel Narcisco
They say I don't know what that is. And also we're about to change the email anyways to .io or .co, but I'm not sure yet which one, you know?
So we'll update you as soon as I figure that out. But honestly, Twitter is probably just the easiest way to find me and reach out.
Cameron Laird
Get in touch?
Daniel Narcisco
Yeah
Cameron Laird
Fantastic well, listen, Daniel, I knew, I knew it would be fun and that's exactly what it was. Apart from your tweets, any other final words for our audience?
Daniel Narcisco
Be loyal to those who loan you money, I guess that part haha. I guess just treat people nice. You know, it's not hard, everyone’s dealing with their own shit, so make sure you're just kind cause there’s literally no substitute for kindness.
Outro Monologue
Well, well, well. The world gets more and more interesting every single day when you hear of a group of investors trying to bid on the constitution of the United States! One of the many interesting topics that Daniel brought up.
It was clear Daniel Narcisco was exceptionally bright, and very clued in today's financial landscape. And again it was great to be able to ask him questions about what he thought the future of lending looked like and his answer being “speed”.
He’s impressed with the speed in which crypto works compared to banks, and that’s how he sees lending operating in the next 10 years; faster transactions and more transactions. Makes you think about many things like how are we going to be paid by our employers, how many different types of loans will exist. Transactions are lightning-fast and they're getting faster and it's exciting to see where it will lead.
I appreciate Daniel saying that he’d love to blend his two roles into one. That's something that I'm always trying to do in all of my roles, trying to crossover the skills and amalgamate my passions, and my day-to-day seems like one cohesive effort to one end-goal and that is to enjoy myself. And something that Daniel proudly stated is the case for him.
So, another fortnight, another episode. Hope you enjoyed that one. If you're enjoying the podcast and want to get involved, please do reach out and let me know! We love to hear from you, let me know.
Respect to everyone who has reached out and shown us love. We really appreciate it. Best of luck and see you 2 weeks' time for story #7!
