#279 – Staying Indie vs Raising VC, Getting an MBA, and Disrupting the App Store with Emma Lawler of Velvet

Hey. What's up, Emma? Hey. How's it going? It's been a while since I've seen you. I think I saw you and Philip in London in, like, the 2018. Yes. I was like We went to, like, high tea together. Yeah. What what was that? Like, I have this, like, this memory of it where it's, like, we had, like, tea and crumpets. And we have, like, all these, like, little fancy cake bite things, and I was like, this is, like, the fanciest place I've ever been. Is America? Or No. This was this was in London. Oh, London. I expected the queen to walk in. It was, like, such a fancy event. Yeah. When Philip and I were traveling around a lot, we landed in London for a couple of months, and it was, like, a fun thing that didn't involve alcohol where you could, like, sit for three hours with people and have kind of a deep conversation. So sometimes people loved it. Sometimes they hated it, but it was kind of a fun little thing. Fun. I thought it was fun. Yeah. Philip was texting me, like, a week or two ago, and he's like, yeah. Channing invited Emma on. And she's worried you're not gonna remember who she is. And I'm like, there's no there's no way I'm not gonna remember Emma. We had high tea together. Who else have had high tea with? Literally nobody else. Emo, what you just described, I was literally talking to a friend about almost, like, that value proposition a couple of days ago of, like, I, currently, I'm, like, sort of taking a break from drinking alcohol, and I wanna, like, live long and be really healthy. But I live in New York City, and if I want to go out and meet new people or, like, hang out with friends, like, the only real default past 6PM that's not go to someone's house is, like, go get wasted at a at a bar or go to a club or, like, even, like, maybe go to a show, a music show, but, like, you're drinking. Right? And I'm like, why can't we just do, like, a tea? Like, why can't we have tea? Why can't we have, like This might sound weird, but, like, we went to this, vintage shop in Williamsburg and bought this, like, really old vintage China tea set, and it costs, like, 50¢ per cup. Like, it's not a you can find them in these vintage shops. But it's like an excuse where people will come over and not drink alcohol. And I do I do drink alcoholic. I like drinking. But Yeah. Same. It's, like, nice to have, like, a social thing where you don't have to do that. Yeah. Channing, you should just drink, nonalcoholic cocktails. Like, you you got something in your hand in the bar. You look like you're drinking. It's delicious. You just sip on it. You tried Gaia? …