Jason Lee, Chief Technology Officer of Asset Entities, was recently interviewed by Benzinga. Asset Entities is a technology company that provides social media marketing, management and content delivery across social media platforms, with a focus on the underutilized Discord. Asset Entities is believed to be the first publicly traded company based on the Discord platform, where it reports hosting some of Discord's largest social community-based education and entertainment servers. Mr. Lee spoke about the unique technical challenges presented by Discord that he and his team work on.
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00:00Hey Zingers, it's Dan Leach, and I have a fantastic guest for you today.
00:05It's the CTO of Asset Entities Management, Jason Li.
00:09Jason, so great to be with you today.
00:10Nice to be here.
00:12Thank you for having me on the show.
00:13Well, we're really excited to talk to you.
00:15I wanted you to give us an overview of Asset Entities.
00:17Sure.
00:17So Asset Entities is essentially an entity of assets.
00:21We focus on both the creative economy as well as enterprise businesses
00:24looking to create a larger digital presence.
00:27Our various business segments range from everything from designing content
00:31and doing marketing such as Auction Swing,
00:34which is one of our businesses that has 430,000 followers
00:37with 22 million plus views in the last 30 days
00:40to developing technology platforms like Ternary CRM
00:44where we helped businesses process 13 million plus in revenue
00:48in the last few years,
00:49as well as even managing Discord communities
00:51ranging from Hall of Famer Michael Irvin
00:53to enterprise customers like Live Nation with Rolling Loud.
00:58No, it's fantastic.
00:59Jason, let's talk about the creator economy.
01:01What is special about the creator economy and why this space right now?
01:05Sure.
01:06So as I'm sure you've seen recently,
01:08audiences are consuming more content on social media
01:11rather than traditional media due to its accessibility and personalization.
01:15So social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube
01:19provide on-demand, bite-sized, and algorithmic-driven content
01:23really tailored to individual interests,
01:26unlike traditional media, which is really fixated on programming schedules.
01:30So as content creators grow across various audiences-based platforms
01:34like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
01:36they begin to look for better ways to engage their loyal followers
01:40so that they can shift to more community-based platforms
01:43such as Discord to funnel their audiences into a single place.
01:46So having a mass amount of people joining these private Discord servers
01:50creates unique challenges,
01:51which is why we continue to innovate and build in the space.
01:54I love it.
01:55And as CTO, what kind of challenges do you face on the technical side of things?
01:59Sure, a lot.
02:02But, you know, as CTO, one of the biggest challenges
02:04is balancing really innovation with stability.
02:08On one hand, we want to stay ahead by constantly adding in new features
02:11and building out new products.
02:12But on the other hand, we have to ensure that our existing systems
02:15that we have in place are stable, that can scale, and are secure.
02:19So another challenge is also managing things like technical debt
02:22and prioritizing when to optimize
02:25versus maybe when to push forward with building new features.
02:29Another large part of what makes a company successful
02:32is really the strength of our product.
02:34So behind our product is people
02:36and both building and retaining high-performing engineers.
02:38And the team as a whole is really important.
02:41So making sure that we create an environment
02:43where people are aligned with company goals,
02:45they feel ownership on what they're working on,
02:48and from there, they can actually grow their skills
02:49is really important to foster.
02:52That's the best way to be.
02:53Listen, you know, there are challenges with Discord servers.
02:55Can you walk us through what some of those are
02:58and how you're solving them?
02:59Yes, absolutely.
03:00So taking a look back, Discord was built back in 2015
03:05and it focused on anonymity,
03:07which is why everyone you see in Discord
03:09is behind a customizable username, a profile picture,
03:13really no personal information is ever shared.
03:15So you don't really know who's who.
03:17So as creators and businesses begin to focus
03:19on engaging their customers
03:20through a community-based platform like Discord,
03:23they have lots of people joining
03:25and these server sizes range from tens of people
03:28all the way up to I think the largest currently
03:30is like 21 million people in MidJourney's Discord server.
03:35So with that said, you know,
03:36one of the solutions that we created
03:38was a simple three-step sign-up process
03:40that allows you to not only connect your Discord information,
03:45then be able to check out
03:46and provide things like your name or email
03:47and your phone number
03:48and then from there be sent directly into a Discord server.
03:51But on the admin side,
03:52you have the ability to see all that information
03:54and better utilize that customer data
03:56for things like marketing and personalization.
03:58And it also helps that we are Stripe verified as a partner.
04:02So it does add to the secure checkouts that we provide.
04:05Well, let's make it personal.
04:06How can businesses like Benzinga benefit from using Discord?
04:09Yeah, of course.
04:10Benzinga, you know, obviously has millions of followers
04:13across different audience-based platforms
04:15like Instagram, X, and YouTube.
04:17So channeling them into a single place
04:19like a private Discord server
04:20could be really great for you guys
04:22to build more of a many-to-many type of relationships
04:26between kind of your audience members.
04:27So since you all have a great trader-focused platform
04:31like Benzinga Pro,
04:32you could use Discord to better communicate things
04:35like maybe your roadmap, product features,
04:38maybe promotions that you guys are having,
04:40that you have going on,
04:42as well as maybe things like demos,
04:43you know, of what the product looks like
04:45just to help not only the existing customers,
04:48but also maybe allowing yourselves
04:50to engage with prospective customers
04:52to help answer any questions from them,
04:54you know, converting them over.
04:55I also saw from one of my friends
04:57that you all had some of these really awesome
04:59Benzinga anime edition T-shirts
05:01from like several years ago.
05:03And I thought that was super awesome.
05:04And I know for sure those are really unique.
05:07Those are probably limited edition
05:09and being able to provide something like that
05:10in terms of experience and a giveaway to your community
05:13really helps foster a lot of that brand love
05:16for you all, too.
05:17Of course, I know it's really amazing
05:18to see how all that's grown and how Discord has grown.
05:20And, you know, I know the future, Jason,
05:22is very bright for the creator economy.
05:23How do you see things progressing?
05:26Yeah, so the future is definitely bright
05:28as people continue to engage
05:30across these different social media platforms
05:31year over year.
05:33There will always be a need for both content creators
05:35as well as businesses to better service their audiences.
05:38And Discord is a phenomenal place
05:40to build that new revenue channel.
05:41So one of the biggest challenges for the creator economy
05:44is probably that there are too many point solutions
05:46or different tools that you can use.
05:48And thus it kind of creates different silos
05:51of customer data and information.
05:54An example of this could be storing,
05:55you know, customer tracking inside of Excel sheet,
05:58using Gmail and tracking emails
06:00inside of, you know, customer service there,
06:02you know, using PayPal for invoicing and so forth.
06:04But with all these different point solutions
06:06that you have to integrate together
06:08and have kind of speak together,
06:09it creates a huge technology challenge for businesses.
06:13So a great example of, you know,
06:14a company today that's fixing this is Salesforce,
06:17where they're a $340 billion company
06:19and they're offering an all-in-one platform
06:21that handles sales, service, marketing, analytics,
06:24and so forth, you know.
06:25But where is that for the creator economy?
06:27So ultimately that is what we're aiming to solve
06:30in a similar way.
06:31And so far on the technology side,
06:32we really are just scratching the surface.
06:34And that really is an exciting time.
06:36So the future is so bright
06:37and you have an incredible story yourself.
06:39What was the journey for you like
06:41from working at Salesforce
06:42to then building your own startups
06:44to then getting acquired by a public NASDAQ company?
06:46Pretty good in a day's work.
06:48Yeah, it's definitely been quite a journey.
06:51Definitely a long way to go as well.
06:52But just kind of reflecting back,
06:55I worked as a solution engineer
06:56at Salesforce for seven years
06:58before deciding to start my own business.
07:00I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
07:02So I feel like one of the biggest advantages
07:04I had was my experience at Salesforce
07:07and being able to understand the different challenges
07:09ranging from small businesses
07:10all the way up to large enterprise companies
07:12like Chick-fil-A.
07:13In 2019, when building my first business,
07:17Option Swing, an educational trading community
07:19based out of Discord,
07:21I was building a fast following on Instagram
07:23with my daily content that I was posting
07:25and I wanted a better way to engage all of my followers.
07:28So I decided that Discord would be the best place
07:31since I can text, audio, video, live stream,
07:35and essentially educate through that private community.
07:38But then came the question,
07:39how do you actually go about getting someone
07:41from your website to a checkout screen
07:44to collecting, authenticating that payment
07:46to then sending them into Discord
07:48while automatically applying the correct roles to them?
07:51More importantly is,
07:53how do you offer a self-service portal
07:54so that they can log in, manage their own membership,
07:57cancel on their own at any time, and so forth
07:59without opening all these different support cases
08:01and creating larger overhead for these communities?
08:04So right time, right place,
08:06I met Roberto, who's still with me today.
08:08We built a platform together
08:10that could do essentially all of that.
08:12When we scaled from zero to a million dollars
08:14in our first 10 months of business,
08:16we knew that not only were we building
08:17a significant educational business on the side,
08:20but this entire technology platform
08:21that's running and managing and scaling everything
08:24that was built in-house by us
08:26could probably be used by tens of thousands
08:28of other businesses out there.
08:29So we decided to spin up a second company
08:31called Ternary Developments,
08:32where we offer kind of the B2B SaaS solution
08:35to others through there.
08:37So fast forward, you know,
08:38a lot of different ups and downs as an entrepreneur,
08:40but over the five years,
08:42I'm very thankful, you know, for everything that happened.
08:44And last November in 2023,
08:48we were acquired by Acid Envy's,
08:50you know, a publicly traded NASDAQ company.
08:51And so, yeah, we continue to build and scale further
08:55with more resources and, you know, great people.
08:59Just love it.
08:59And it just shows you anything is possible
09:01as long as you believe and never give up.
09:03Jason Lee, the CTO of Asset Entities Management.
09:06That was an absolutely fascinating conversation.
09:08Thank you so much for joining me today, Jason.
09:10Thanks so much for having me, Dan.
09:11I really appreciate it.