Fyre Festival's Billy McFarland Dishes On Social Media Marketing, VC, and Prison

Big Technology Podcast

Alex Kantrowitz

Technology, Religion & Spirituality, Business News, Business, Religion, Science, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Management, Marketing, Politics, News Commentary, Government, Investing, Tech News, Social Sciences, News

4.6 • 395 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Billy McFarland is the founder of Fyre Festival. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss what he learned about social media, investing, and prison during his ordeal at the helm at the world's most infamous music festival. Tune in for McFarland's clear-headed insights on what he did wrong, how social media sells a version of the world that is not there, how inflating his numbers changed investors' approach to his business, and what ten months on solitary confinement does to a man. Tune in for a fascinating, deep discussion covering the making and downfall of an internet phenomenon. ---- --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Billy McFarland, the Man Behind the Fire Festival, joins us to discuss what he learned about the power of social media, his time in prison, and whether there's going to be a fire festival too.
0:10.7	That's coming up right after this.
0:13.6	Hi, I'm Jonathan Fields.
0:15.3	Tune in to my podcast for conversations about the sweet spot between work, meaning, and joy, and also listen to other
0:22.5	people's questions about how to get the most out of that thing we call work. Check out SPART,
0:27.7	wherever you enjoy podcasts. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced
0:35.1	conversation of the tech World and Beyond.
0:42.2	We're midsummer and we have a very fun show for you today because Billy McFarland is here.
0:44.5	He's the man behind the Fire Festival.
0:56.0	And I don't think there are many people in the world with as much experience, generating social media interests, speaking with investors, and really being in the public eye in the way that Billy has has been.
0:58.7	So Billy, it's great to see you. Welcome to the show.
1:02.4	Alex, thank you so much. Great to be here. Very excited chat tonight.
1:09.0	Okay, me too. Let's start for those who don't know about it, talking about what the fire festival was. I basically wrote down that it was a event that generated
1:13.7	a tremendous amount of interest, was supposed to be a lavish festival on a private island and fell
1:19.1	apart, was canceled basically before it got a chance to get going and caused you a lot of trouble.
1:25.7	Is that sort of an accurate description of what happened?
1:28.3	Yeah. So the trouble is obviously the result, but I think let's start with the vision. So
1:32.6	Fire Festival was supposed to be three days where you would escape reality and connect with people
1:39.0	from different industries on a remote island. The idea was this would be the three days
1:44.5	that you would talk about for the rest of your lives.
1:46.2	I think we succeeded in creating three days
1:48.4	people spoke about for the rest of their lives,
	...

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