E79: Julian Fahrer on Building Apollo, The Price of Information, and the Lightning Network

Julian Fahrer is the co-founder and CEO of Apollo, a platform for discovering and writing reviews of your favorite products, where quality reviews are rewarded with Bitcoin. In our conversation we grappled with the ideas that information should be free but time should not, we explored the issues with review platforms today, and we talked about how Lightning Network payments can help Apollo generate higher quality reviews. → Apollo: https://heyapollo.com/ Sponsors → Voltage: https://voltage.cloud?utm_source=kevinrooke&utm_medium=Youtube&utm_campaign=1mo → Stakwork: https://stakwork.com/ This show is a Lightning podcast. That means instead of asking for likes or shares, I ask for sats. The best way to show your support is to download Fountain from the App Store, load your wallet with some sats, and send them over the Lightning Network to kerooke@fountain.fm. → Fountain: https://www.fountain.fm/ → More Episodes: https://play.fountain.fm/show/P6XXuSPg6f2rj4ECB0fT → Lightning Address: ⚡kerooke@fountain.fm Links → Stack Sats: https://www.stacksats.how/ → Twitter: https://twitter.com/kerooke → Books: https://www.kevinrooke.com/book-recommendations → Blog: https://www.kevinrooke.com/blog Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 02:18 - Julian Fahrer Intro 08:26 - Should Information Be Free? 17:45 - Why Apollo Chose To Build a Reviews Platform 23:20 - Apollo’s Vision 31:12 - The Importance of Negative Feedback Loops 36:14 - What’s Wrong with Review Platforms Today? 41:05 - How Monetary Incentives Affect Reviews 48:50 - The Challenge of Getting a Product to Critical Mass 54:59 - Apollo’s Impact on Advertising 1:05:27 - The Lightning Round