Jared Isaacman Reveals Shift4’s Next Big Move in Payments

Intro I recently had the honor of speaking with Jared isman the CEO and founder of Shift 4 Jared's leadership has revolutionized the payments industry bringing innovative solutions to some of the largest businesses worldwide his journey from entrepreneur to astronaut embodies the drive and ambition that it takes to continue to shape the future of finance and technology in this conversation we'll explore the evolution of shi 4 the challenges and opportunities in the payments landscape and Jared's unique insight into what it takes to lead and innovate such a dynamic industry a big thank you to Jared and the dedicated team at shift for making this discussion possible but without further Ado please enjoy the conversation with Jared isman you've been running this company for 25 plus How Does Shift4 Win? years how has this company evolved and and tell tell me a little bit about the complex payment space and how you guys win sure um and it has been quite a journey I can tell you when I started this business at 16 it was much more about funding you know Pizza uh on the weekends and uh never could have imagined it would turn into the business it is today but um that actually is kind of you know now part of the DNA the organization of just not getting comfortable at all in the moment um and just keep challenging things until you know you I guess ultimately wind up to where where we are today and and we're not exactly slowing down now either um but I will say that uh very early on to go to your question we we have gravitated towards complexity um and that maybe at some is why we're you know a lot of people haven't really uh heard of shift or been familiar with us because generally the larger more enterpris or complex customers uh you know their software is behind the scenes and uh and you don't necessarily see our brand uh as much as you would say like a square for example or a clover which is very recognizable but I think that in you know generally the world we're in today and it's one that we've been gravitating towards for the last 20 years is all about this convergence of software and payments um like at one point they will in many cases be a single industry and you see that with square as a great example or Shopify or or toast and and we kind of picked our spot in the more kind of complex and demanding verticals customers that have lots of different software like you know Pebble Beach that has Golf software and Salon software and hotel software and restaurant software or half the Las Vegas STP for example or even stadiums now which do a lot more than just a you know a hot dog and a concession stand these are generally all all inv venue experiences with lots and lots of software um you know that that we've kind of helped converge with payments and um and that's how kind of we differentiate and and and win so this I I know that this sort of floats around from some time but uh the idea that payments is a commoditized and crowded space you even named some very big players there uh how do you foresee the future payments in terms of pricing and like I is there room for a new player to come in and and grab a lot of market share at a decent price yeah I think you have lots of examples of that for that matter um yeah people people are really mistaken on that in fact they're just um they're thinking about things from basically 10 years ago it's a it's almost a dated concept now that you can just simply offer a lower price and hope to win um purely on payments um um you know for for when I got in this industry for sure all all we did all the industry did was uh facilitate an approval or decline of a credit card transaction and at some point or another you know lots of pennies per transactions become a penny per transaction and there's nothing um good about that but but all the winners today for the last at least you know 10 15 years are combining software plus payments to deliver a broader Commerce experience in which case if you're doing your job right uh you're you know pennies won't matter in that I I mean the best example I can give like take take a Shopify like um there's nothing that a you know a f serve an FIS or a gpn can do to win a customer away from Shopify solely on price like hey I'll I'll do all your payments for free but you got to hire a Web Master you got to get a Gateway these nobody talks about that stuff anymore that's like 20 years ago well well the same thing is applicable for us I mean you know there's a reason why we're the category leader category leader in sports entertainment and theme parks every one of them is using our mobile solution for uh ordering a you know a burger and a beer to your seats they're using us for ticketing they're using us for concession stands for VIP Suites you know is is uh you know is like the Baltimore Ravens or the Giants or the Yankees going to throw away all that technology to save a penny but give a crappier experience to their patrons not not a chance um so so I think people just um uh generally misunderstand kind of how the winners and losers are playing out if you're a dated dinosaur from you know 30 40 years ago and all you can do is approve a transaction then all you can do is is offer a discount on price um but you know there that only goes so far um everybody who's winning and growing payment volume now have payments plus a broader software ecosystem and they're winning and and honestly they've been a lot of them are taking price yeah whenever you you just brought up stadiums and entertainment I mean whenever I think of the players in Stadium Segment Breakdown that space I think of you guys and no one else uh how whenever getting into that that was an acquisition of venue next and then eventually appetize I think if I'm correct um yeah go ahead yeah so the history there is we had one Stadium at the time of our IPO which was the new uh Raider Stadium in Las Vegas and um you know our second largest office is in Las Vegas we cater to a lot of the Las Vegas Strip as customers and you know we really pushed to win that because we wanted exposure to the vertical and and what we learned is the entire sports and entertainment and theme park industry is divided by four players two dinosaurs in NCR and micros um no modern tech at all uh and then you have this one company that was run like a a frat a frat house like a lifetime cash burner which was appetiz and then this small Scrappy uh you know um you know startup which was called venue next and they were leading with a mobile solution and this is pre you know pandemic um now we later acquired them during the pandemic but pretty early on and um and they were winning and uh and they were doing it without a payments fueled value proposition and we said well if we buy them and combine it with payments like it should be you know a pretty unbeatable offering and then the pandemic accelerated the mobile in seed ordering craze and that became our trojan horse to win it all um you know and eventually the only other kind of sem you know modern player which was appetiz capitulated and sold to us on 19 cents or so on the dollar so it it worked out I mean look we're pretty decent Capital allocators but I'd say that one even exceeded the the best case like um you know things lined up for us to to do really well in that vertical sure um and and you've sort of done this uh you know pull apart the old business CAC Focused M&A and add in payments and software as well I I saw that you guys did this or starting to do this now with Revel um I think veteran systems you guys are also doing that out in Germany can you explain uh how this works and how long it might take to sort of I guess the how long does it take to refuel that growth that you've sort of taken away from the old business yeah I mean this is uh I mean again just to give you some history because sometimes people make the mistake and think we're we're like serial acquirers um we've been in business 25 years um we we didn't do an acquisition our first 15 years in business and we grew wicked fast I mean we were in Inc 50019 then we were Inc 500 number 6 the next year I mean our entire approach for integrated payments which again is software plus payments was an organic strategy with a you know business we we built called Harbor touch to go out and win restaurants it's just we learned what an opportunity there is when you combine software and payments and how so many were over overlooking this opportunity so then it just became clear that you know you could deploy capitals Capital far more efficiently and unlock a lot of value through you know kind of a build by partner approach and um and we wind up you know acquiring a number of you know restaurant isv software companies with tens of thousands of customers within never were monetizing payments many cases couldn't even make the evolution to SAS from onetime you know uh software license sales and such um you know uh you know Perpetual license agreements and and and and as such so we wind up building out A playbook in in 2017 through 2019 that worked extremely well opening up the new verticals like Hospitality I mean for all the things we're known for our fastest growing vertical is hotels and resorts I mean we have right you know massive share in that in that in that sense um but yeah we were able to refine A playbook that allows us to have a very low customer acquisition cost you know especially relative to our peers in in a way it kind of like de-risks the growth profile of the business I mean you know as I was sharing with investors after this past quarter when you know people are concerned about what you know you know what the economic Outlook looks like um and how that could affect our our value proposition our go to market strategy was like well you know we spent you know called approximately h100 million doll and we know where the next 65,000 restaurants in Europe come from you know and uh on top of hundreds of distribution partners that will now take this new value prop and these these these distribution Partners were clearly successful before without a payments Fiel value proposition now what will they be able to do so now that 65,000 number becomes I don't know 150,000 over the next five years so there certainly is a method to our Madness on how we approach these things um I think it's based on how we've evolved as an organization um you know we we never had any VC funding never had any funding rounds at all so we grew out you know entirely out of our cash flow for the first 15 years so I think that's just created an you know an extreme discipline in the organization that if you're putting dollars to work you want a guarantee and that's what plays out in our Capital allocation strategy and so can you tell me a little bit uh about that sort of growth on Organic Growth organic versus inorganic because like you said some people call you serial acquirers but how's the organic side of the business doing yeah I mean it it it's doing fantastically well like we'll have well north of 25% organic growth this year and we're a 25-year-old company I think that's that's pretty good um yeah honestly it's just it's just laziness right one thing I've learned I mean been in business 25 years but only a public company for a little over four and um you know a lot of public investors even the largest institutional investors can be incredibly lazy like they just want a very simple story to understand and if the pieces don't fit then they discard it quickly um you know when you look at the payments landscape and say like you know good companies don't do m&a I can tell you you know as an expert in the payments field and the history of it only one company one has ever reached scale in the payments industry um entirely organically and it's addan yeah even stripe is doing acquisition squares done Acquisitions like it's it's kind of crazy in an industry that's in transition um you know not to uh you know deploy Capital intelligently to you know to set up the business for Success like it it actually you you if you get become too much of that code snob of like one code and and it can only be that well then you you actually can can slow your yourself down and create this boat anchor when clearly the world around you might be changing um companies that had you know uh pure partner uh like organic integration strategies prior to addan uh failed um in in that process I mean one notable lived inside World pay um and worldpay had a I mean like a a record um you know value destruction uh wave over the last like four or five years ultimately leading to its current situation so I mean just to you know break this apart um for example we we gave two um many case studies in our last earning report one was on Focus pause this was a very small deal um like $50 million where the company approached us we had an existing relationship and a lot of respect for them they had 15,000 customers that represent yeah you know call it like um you know 15 billion a year in payment volume and completely overlooking the payment monetization approach the business had like7 million in Revenue um and about 4 million or so of evida after we bought the business it pretty much went to zero um we stopped all one-time software and hardware sales the the the revenue shares they were receiving from some payments companies went away because they weren't going to pay a competitor and then we've rebuilt that to such an extent that you know it's probably like synergized down to sub one time now um so every essentially it's greater than 100% organic Revenue growth from that business because um um it wound up getting reset to zero and and that's the same case um the easiest proof point is that of all the you know uh companies that we've acquired only one which was our European payment platform ever actually had any payment volume and as anyone who looks at our business would know absolute majority of our Revenue comes from payments um so you're you're you you're basically just getting um you know an attractive customer acquisition cost to cross- sell payments and then you delete the parts take out expenses you don't need get rid of products that you know might have Tech debt associated with it and you unlock a lot of value both from a you know Revenue Synergy perspective and cost perspective so you as being an operator of this business now for 25 years now Creating Company Culture you're getting into acquiring some of these businesses how are you handling the team the culture uh you know how how do you keep everyone hungry I mean it's not stock based compensation that has been held so fantastically so how do you do it well I I'm glad you point that out because that extreme discipline goes beyond just how we deploy Capital uh inorganically it's it's there in our expense base it's there in our stock based compensation like we just like a lot of a lot of public companies just abuse um and we don't and maybe that's because I'm the largest shareholder and I I don't want to be abused right right but uh you know how do you bring everyone together I think first it's about just you know like a lot of radical transparency like it's very clear I when we bought Revel I was there you know two days after closing and I said look this is the product's going away um you know and uh iOS is not the I love Apple it's not a good commercial product it's going to go it's going to be Sky tab um you guys that want to stick around and and contribute to that growth I'd love to have you and and take everything that you did great here and apply it to that product but we're we're building on a different product today and we're selling a different product today and we care less about hardware and less about software sales and we care more about payments and you know this is the organizational philosophies we have a great Learning and Development Department um you know our philosophies which we call the shift 4way I honestly borrowed quite a few of them from SpaceX which I think is it's an organization I'm close to and I think probably one of the most impressive companies and Innovative companies I've ever seen and you know you kind of put this in front of people and then deliver some wins and I can't emphasize that enough like you can have like you know all this madness doesn't mean anything if you don't have any any W's and um but when you do have W's that's when you have that's when you have Believers out of it and you know approaching a transaction today like a revel or Vectron you can point to six other deals that were done and hundreds of people from those deals that are still part of the organization that are in management leadership and they're Believers and then your your new team becomes Believers and everybody starts Marching In the you know in the right directions so I think I mean look 70% of our organization is now you know came through one transaction or another and the best rise to the top and they all know that um and they're they all generally had some problem anyway if I mean we're pretty price disciplined right so if we bought them then they probably had something that needed to be fixed in the organization and they appreciate the fact that we can help them fix it no I I appreciate that explanation that's awesome um also Project Phoenix whenever you're acquiring some of these businesses or even uh your own you know or organic growth you said up until the last three up until last three years ago uh you guys were sort of built on a homegrown CRM and just recently have started working on this thing that you guys are calling project Phoenix a mix of both Salesforce and paler to build out your back end uh can you tell me more about that and and how that's going and why you're choosing to potentially maybe pay more to a software provider to get you better prod productivity on the other side yeah um so uh again like I said had a I have a you know pretty close relationship with SpaceX and admire what they do and I tried to bring as much of that into Shift 4 including you know talent that came from that world so our you know CIO uh is an ex uh you know SpaceX um executive and uh you know originally brought him in about you know I guess three and a half years ago in a Consulting capacity and I wanted him to help us become more procedurally driven you know to eliminate you know in you know inaccuracies to go faster like in or most organizations that have a lot of you know that are you know burdened with procedures go very slowly and in fact what I observed at SpaceX is that they use process to go very quickly like they don't waste brain power on things they already figured out um they apply it to the things that haven't been solved before and I'm like man you know the efficiencies we could gain in the organization by just applying some of these principles in any case he spent like two months and came back to me and he's like look anything I this is like shooting a BB gun at a train here like you're you're not going to do any damage the the we have to start by like literally ripping out the entire software Foundation it's old as hell and it may have worked great for you in the basement days but it is I mean it is a boat anchor now um and uh you know we went through an extensive process and I mean he totally right like the cost is um is almost immaterial compared to the um you know the operational efficiencies we've un unlocked and we're just in the beginning of it um and this wasn't like like no I brought it up on our earnings report because we have really awesome margins right now and people ask like what's the ceiling and I'm like you have no idea like we are just getting started here you know no one knew we were even making these Investments over the last couple years but we were I mean you know tens of millions of dollars into these new systems and now now you have way more automation capabilities you can apply AI to things um so yeah it's something I'm excited about like I I I know we can be so much more efficient and productive than we are right now AI Boosting Productivity yeah I'm going to proess a little bit more on this sort of subject because uh AI is the big you know sort of conversation right now obviously payments companies are not new to AI or machine learning but how is it helping you guys on your side what what what is what what doors are being unlocked with the new waves of AI over the last you know two years or so yeah I mean it's super early days for us I mean our we obviously serve a lot of restaurants I mean I guess you know probably should have given a somewhat of an overview in the beginning but you know as you know like you know between our Gateway and our acquiring volume we process over 250 billion a year in volume and it's split basically in thirds between restaurants Hospitality so like hotels and resorts and then the other third would be your stadiums ticketing e-commerce uh and such so point being restaurants is a a very large portion of our business and I'd say in any given year we are probably you know in terms of new customer count growth we're number two next to toast which is you know Pure Play restaurant um player um so anyway uh it's it's actually quite labor intense to they it is without question your most labor intense customer um restaurants call for everything changing prices of buffalo wings and whatnot but when you set up a new restaurant like there is no this is the Italian restaurant template or this is the pizza place like every restaurer wants it programmed uh in a unique way and uh it used to take about four hours per restaurant just in in programming out their system uh we cut that now down to about a half an hour using AI um we also uh created a AI website builder uh so that when somebody does sign up for a restaurant like they can basically go through a very templated process and it creates their website which links to their Point of Sales system uh to their gift and loyalty to their res reservations um not something we charge for um but it's just another kind of point of difference um and this just scratching the surface I mean we have 3,700 employees and like 75% are spent working on the past and not building the future and um and that's means they're doing a lot of manual tasks um things that could be done um you know with a good foundation and applying you know tools like AI for you know productivity sake so it's um it's certainly something I'm very excited about and this is this this is all just the real stuff with AI it's not the um you know when we put it into a point of sales system it's going to make you know the food taste better or any sort of you know um of the more crazy talk that that some Executives have like just simply we can be way more efficient than we are by applying these tools right right um so I mean you've been working on this company for 25 years it blows me away that you know 25 years later you're still expecting to grow end to end payment volume by 50 plus% you know this year I don't know how that feels uh for you but uh you guys broke through a pretty unbelievable International Expansion Milestone which is going internationally with fararo um one I just recently saw that you guys are expanding into South Sudan how do you guys choose where you guys are expanding next in terms of processing different countries yeah so um I mean we've we wanted to expand internationally for so long I mean it was always an organizational ambition and we have a lot of hospitality customers like all the bigname hotels and resorts and obviously they have locations all over the world but it just felt so I mean so foreign to us I mean you know that we understand the US payments Market really well but um different parts of the world have different payment types uh different regulations uh different rules on security and privacy and you know um just you know the go to market could be entire different so you know there was a lot of fear there for a while and we came close once or twice and then ultimately we um you know established a very strategic relationship with again a company I'm very close to um and they are taking payments literally all over the world in almost like almost every country uh so we get the benefit of an extraordinary customer to follow um basically this yellow brick road into all these new countries and at the same time they are teaching us what they need as you you know a blue chip you know top top 100 company in the world type thing which is exactly how addan became a a a dominant Global e-commerce player they followed Facebook and meta it's how dcal uh became a dominant e you know uh Commerce player in Emerging Markets was also following Facebook um there is no like Bank of the world when it comes to payments or um you know whether it's acceptance or or payouts uh it requires connectivity into like hundreds of different banks and alternative payment methods and somehow you have to take all of that spaghetti and make it look really nice for your your customers um and uh and the way you generally do that is having a very patient knowledgeable customer uh kind of informing the process and again that's what created addan it's what created dolo and we benefit from that now um so when you see us announc South Sudan it's like we're probably not going after restaurants or hotels or stadiums there but you you can bet that we are somebody there and usually they put out an announcement you know right around the same time as well um but they have taken us into markets that are very attractive to us for you know restaurants hotels stadiums Europe uh you know Canada Australia New Zealand are very high in our list right now um Brazil is is another so um yeah it's exciting we I mean we you know you've heard me say but you know for 25 years we've grown every kpi double digits even through the downturns and that's in the most competitive market in the world which is the us so you take a little bit of what's worked for us here and bring it into some of these other markets and we're we're pretty excited about that yeah I I know I'm excited about it but uh another thing that I think is very Best Areas Of Growth interesting is this expansion into Europe and other uh areas internationally uh it's very exciting but there's still a lot more work to do just here in the United States so in terms of customer Acquisitions from either m&a or organically where do you see the bulk of your growth over the next five years is it internationally or is it still in the United States I I mean for the next couple of years it's it's going to be hotels and it and the vast majority of that will come from the US I mean it's kind of I I put this in my prepared remarks last quarter that if we just said we were the the toast of hotels and stadiums we'd be probably three times more it's like the the fact that we have one good competitor in the restaurant vertical like you know clouds the rest of the story which I take having one good competitor I I mean I think most you know business owners would if you could um so we have one good competitor in restaurants but reality is there's a lot of other verticals where in where we have no good competitor and um and hotels is is one of them and um so um you know just knowing what our pipeline looks like what's illegal and you know how much share of the market we have today which is a lot but how much more it could be in a couple years I I feel pretty confident that that's going to be what will really move the needle um you know for the next next few years and and a lot of that will be in in the US and Canada um and and Europe too but vast majority in the US gotcha okay um that's not to say by the way that like like you know we we we have a we have clear line of sight on where the next 65,000 restaurants come from in Europe but the reality is like those next 65,000 restaurants might have you know a volume equivalency of the next 1,000 hotels so it's just important to keep that in mind that I I'm actually extremely charged up about what we're doing in Europe and the idea that we're you know we're going to try and get like every beer garden that surrounds Munich I mean we have like a lot of fun projects uh in Works across our European strategy um but we are going to process you know 170 B billion whatever the midpoint of our guide is let's just say hypothetically in in um you know in 2024 well even 65,000 restaurants across Europe is going to be you know billions in volume um but maybe it just speaks to the diversity of us of our of chifor across so many verticals that you know hotels being as high volume as they are per location and how much traction we have in it you know just carries a lot of weight even with a lot of success in the other in the other verticals I think I remember you saying something along the lines in the earnings call that those 65,000 uh customers through vectran might be a sort of a 10-year process can can you help me understand the relationship with that customer veteran because you don't fully own that business um help me understand that a little bit more yeah I mean it it was you know Shi for Playbook at its best it was an overlooked German public company that I mean no one knew about and it's you know there's a very small market cap and there is a process to get control of the business and delist it which will take the balance of the year um but I I think just to clarify my remarks I think the 65,000 customer cross sell is like a three-year story my point about saying why this is going to be a 10year story is that there's these distribution partners are going to serve as the foundation for our entire European strategy for 20 years into the future so the 65,000 is just one part of it that's how you kind of guarantee you can't get hurt on this type of a transaction um the reality is like they have massive infrastructure in Germany it's going to be the deployment Center uh service and support center across all of Europe and the UK for all our our equipment the 300 distribution partners are going to sell you know they're going to cross sell Vectron to payments and then they're going to sell Sky tab to all their new customers for years into the future and then the highest performing ones will inevitably insource and improve our unit economics that way so um it's just a it's a story that we'll just keep playing for a while it's not a one in and and done deal it's just kind of like um you know when we acquired our Hospitality gateways in 2017 in 2019 sure it came with you know 200 billion of volume to to cross sell but we win new you know hotels every day that were never on the Gateway by virtue of those software Integrations you know noou Toronto you know noou Atlanta noou Chicago they they were never an existing customer but we're able to only sell and ser sell process and service and support those customers by virtue of those past deals that'll be the same thing when someone asks us well you know you're signing up 25,000 restaurants a year or 30,000 restaurants a year across Europe how are you able to do that 10 years from now well they're the same distribution Partners we got by virtue of the Vectron Acquisitions I mean I personally like the fact that you guys are not the toast of hotels I love the fact that you guys are going after many different businesses um in fact like there's some segments like gaming or nonprofit that just get me so excited uh what what segments are you interested in past you know just restaurants or is that is that the favorite piece of the business well I I think that generally in venue Commerce is what we do um and it's hard I mean I the um you know uh stripe and and add and for all their greatness um they do Global Commerce in a card not present environment where you don't have physical cards you don't have devices there is an encryption or tokenization there um and and they even talk about it it is it is challenging well now I have to say addan is doing a great job like they're growing their payment volume uh in card present well more of a recent development point being is it's very hard to do that and and that's been our specialty for our entire existence so I love that we have a strong restaurant business and we're now able to do that all over the world I love our strong hotel and Hospitality business that is by far the deepest moat um with the highest walls around it that we have um it's almost impossible to replicate the software Integrations that we have to service you know hotels and resorts so that's a business that's growing super fast in the US and now we're just able to go after in Canada and Europe um stadiums and theme parks are very cool um and and and I think like well you know what else um you know has some excitement to it I think supporting one of the largest global you know e-commerce players that's expanding all over the world is pretty cool because once we lay the tracks there like others can can can use them right so it's we're not doing all this effort for just one customer so you know when this expansion journey is done um you know it's more than possible that we are competing for the Netflix's and the um Spotify of the world so that that's got an excit you know exciting element to it nonprofits is very cool for sure that we are much newer in that vertical it takes a long time to build up software Integrations to serve you know the nonprofit CRM systems and you know AI donation pages and such but we have a you know we have a right to win within that uh vertical um and it's a 450 billion annual donation um opportunity to pursue so Total Addressable Market what would you say is the current total addressable Market of Shift 4 I mean you're you're in the trillions in payment volume uh in terms of actual you know revenue or flowing down to uh your eida yeah I don't um I don't have a number for you on that um I I remember seeing a slide that's why of I I think you guys at one point said it was 120 billion and then there was another one that said 550 billion pretty later on um the 550 billion reference is kind of the uh the cross cell to the software um and Gateway customers that we have connectivity into like that wouldn't be that that to me isn't Tam that's just lwh hanging fruit like that's Shi has a foot in the door with these customers because they're either using our software uh our Gateway or a software integration that we are con you know kind of uniquely connected into that's just meant to tell you that like through you know our Capital allocation strategy over the years we have not only achieved XYZ results which are more than fantastic Returns on their own right but we also have a half a billion or I'm sorry you know 500 plus billion in volume that we we have um you know that we would consider essentially low hang fruit that's not the that's not The Tam of the verticals though that we're in like they restaurant hotels Stadium theme park Global e-commerce like it's you know it's it's going to be you know probably order magnitude greater than that um you brought up giving block uh Opinions on Crypto can I just ask you personal opinions on crypto and what you see advancements in payments like do you look at stable coins as being a potential uh you know large innov here or what do you see for cryptocurrency going forward I I think ultimately um you know if we are doing our job right we are providing uh you know a Commerce enabling solution you know within the verticals we are trying to conquer and you know we will take some sort of a spread or take rate on the payment methods they choose to offer to their customers and their customers choose to to pay on so if the you know world someday migrates to crypto-based payments I'd say we we have a capability to provide that if you're if you're asking me personally like look visa and MasterCard are going to be an ax are going to be enduring payment methods in you know mature markets all over the world for a very very long time and again I've been doing it for 25 years and heard of all sorts of things that'll eventually displace it or replace it including we've been talking about crypto for a very long time um I think if anything has the possibility to become more mainstream it would be stable coins and probably as a form of settlement um as opposed to actually like um you know uh a payment method like I could very much see International um you know kind of e-commerce Giants um simplifying their lives on things where they're dealing with lots of currencies and lots of FX risks to just want everything settled in a particular stable coin that that that makes sense to me but um you know generally speaking like people paying with Bitcoin either you know you believe it's going to a million dollars a coin and you would never want to actually buy a pizza with it or you're a merchant and you think it could go to zero and you just want $10 for your pizza so it's those have some you know challenges I think to becoming a like a mainstream form of currency got you yeah I'm I'm I'm more talking about the uh stable coin side of it like yeah whether you know International companies will want to deal in US denominated coins or something like this um just wrapping up it's some more personal questions for Getting to know Jared you what's your favorite book or movie and you can't pick the inspiration for documentary hunt fored October Tom Clancy favorite movie gotcha a book well I could I could probably fairly answer the same way um okay I don't know um yeah I mean I'm Big John Gish and Tom Clancy fan but yeah hunt for October got me on both both accounts I'd say um in terms of uh well favorite CEO I think you kind of alluded to other companies that have inspired you but who inspires you that's not a part of the Shift 4 ecosystem yeah I mean Steve Jobs for sure um I mean he I think a lot I mean look there's um maybe entrepreneurs aren't as forthright as they should be like luck plays a huge part in in you know a lot of success stories and um there plenty of like BS about making your own luck or whatnot but believe me like it it certainly is helpful if the ball bounces your way a couple times and uh I think that a lot of people can get lucky to get one business right um I think that you know it becomes a heavy game of skill when you can you know create multiple billion dollar type entities um you know Steve Jobs in my mind is um you know one who's done it in relatively unrelated businesses and um and changed the world with his you know product strategy and he's a great marketer great organizer cared about the details like he was a you know um I think he was our greatest um you know the greatest entrepreneur and probably you know the you know last half century I guess um so I would say he he's certainly a um a CEO that I admired a lot Jared I really appreciate you uh joining me today but that's it I do appreciate your time yeah hey thank you and um yeah um I'm on the uh I'm literally on a completely flipped sleep shift schedule right now so this is right even though it's I guess 9:30 in the morning this is right before I go to bed but I hopefully uh some of what I said made made some sense for you and your your listeners so just uh what what are you going off to do next week oh yeah so I'm in uh uh quarantine now for uh the launch of uh on which is um it's a human space flight Mission done in partnership with SpaceX so um yeah very lucky I've kind of had parallel careers most of my life between uh you know shift for is my day job and then various kind of Aerospace and defense interests um which uh you know I guess keep me me sharp from from time to time and in any case this became the latest iteration of it over the last four and a half years so very fortunate um to be part of it but um you know 4 is still uh still my day job and still has a lot of my attention well it's very exciting nonetheless and the world will be watching so um you know have some fun do a space walk all right man thank you so much thanks for your interest take care bye