Digital Social Hour
Darren Marble: This Show Lets You Invest While You Watch | DSH #1552
03 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: How does Darren Marble raise money for startups?
Here's the reality, like, first of all, people aren't watching CNBC anymore. Those shows are boring.
Chapter 2: What is the unique process behind the show 'Going Public'?
Nobody wants to see Jim Cramer in the studio pitching stocks when he's not even good at it. Platforms like X that have 600 million monthly active users. And the future is equal access to exciting investment opportunities, not just for the rich and the wealthy and the connected, but for everyday Americans.
Okay, guys, Darren Marble here doing something very interesting.
Chapter 3: What factors contributed to achieving 60 million views on 'Going Public'?
What's up, Sean? Thanks for having me on Vegas, my favorite city other than my home city. You're here a lot, huh?
Chapter 4: Why is CNBC declining in viewership?
Yeah, maybe every two months for more than the wife would like.
Chapter 5: What insights can be gained from the 'Going Public' format?
But, you know, here I am. I've got good reasons to be here. I mean, this is where we met.
A lot of business is done here. You're in the right circles. Absolutely. You're raising money nonstop for your show, right?
We're always raising, man.
Chapter 6: How important are marketing and distribution for startups?
I've got a hundred investors, a couple of big investors out here. Ernie Mooney, who invented the software for multi-line video poker. He's a super baller. Phil Helmuth, 18 time world series of poker champ. Our most recent investor and advisor.
Chapter 7: What challenges do entrepreneurs face in today's market?
The GOAT. Yeah.
Chapter 8: What are the odds of success in long-term entrepreneurship?
He's actually in Palo Alto, but spends a lot of time here, of course. Yeah. He's always at the Aria, right? Always at the Aria. When he came on the show. That's where I saw him last night. Yeah. When he came on the show, he pulled up in a full Aria outfit. Yeah. I think Phil wears the same outfit every day of his life.
So he's like the Steve Jobs turtleneck, but he's got the Aria, like Bette Rivers hat, which makes it easy for him in a lot of ways because he doesn't have to think about it. He just wakes up and goes and he has like the go-to outfit day after day after day. Yeah, he learned it from Mark Zuckerberg. Exactly.
A couple of these guys that can swear the same thing always. Well, your mental capacity, a lot of these billionaires are aware of it and they don't want to make decisions all day. It's also a simpler life. Yeah, very simple. Well, talk to me about your show, man. Going public, very unique show. Did you get inspired from Shark Tank?
You know, my partner Todd Goldberg pitched me on this idea years ago in 2017. And he said, Darren, we should create a show like Shark Tank meets Apprentice where the viewers can invest in featured companies while they watch. And that's when we founded the company. It's now obviously 2025. It's been eight years of building the infrastructure for this thing.
And we just released season three of Going Public on X on May 6th. We're in the middle of the season. There's four produced episodes. And the show is really a profile of the founders under pressure. We take the featured founders of which there's three companies in the season out of their element, out of their comfort zone to show the viewers who these people are made of.
And then at the end of the season on Friday, June 13th, the investments for the three featured companies actually open. And at that moment, viewers globally can click to invest and buy shares in any of the featured companies while they watch. Wow, that is so cool. Thanks, man. Yeah, what an idea. And it's interactive, which I like.
Yeah, I think that's the future of media is passive viewing is over. And interestingly, and we talk about this anecdote in our investor pitches when we're raising capital, one of the most successful television franchises ever is American Idol. And when they pioneered text to vote in the early 2000s, that was like a revolution in entertainment.
The idea that the audience could actually do something other than just passively watch and consume content, that they could participate and have a vote that maybe had a small impact in the outcome of that show. That was a game changer.
So whereas American Idol pioneered text to vote, we're bringing click to invest to market where now you, the viewer, can own a small piece of a startup that could be the next Uber, the next Facebook, open AI, et cetera.
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