Meet Thumzup: Fly exclusive interview with CEO Robert Steele

In an exclusive interview, Thumzup (TZUP) CEO Robert Steele met again with The Fly to discuss what’s new with the company, its products, Thumzup’s expansion, Bitcoin and much more.

NOW TRADING ON NASDAQ: On November 22 of last year, Thumzup Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert Steele rang the Nasdaq opening bell, commencing trading on a major U.S. equity Quite a lot more has happened with the company since the last time The Fly sat down with Steele back in 2023. “Over the last year, we’ve grown advertisers on the Thumbzup platform. We more than tripled the number of advertisers on our platform. We launched in Miami Beach, which is the second city we’re concentrated in. When we’d spoken to you before, we were mostly in Los Angeles,” the executive explained.

STRONG GROWTH: Thumzup’s flagship product, the Thumzup platform, utilizes a programmatic advertiser dashboard coupled with a consumer-facing App to enable individuals to get paid cash for posting about participating advertisers on major social media outlets through the Thumzup App. “We have a target of having 5,000 advertisers by the end of the year,” the CEO added. “For a business like us, the growth metric is what we want investors to track – growing that advertiser base. It’s a huge market. So just like Uber (UBER) solved a big problem in a simple way for a huge market, we are in the process of solving a big problem in a simple way for a huge market, which is, advertising. Businesses are always looking for an edge.”

SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION: Thumzup has recently announced it was now available to post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Now advertisers can pay people to post about their brands on TwitterX, and we expect to add other social media platforms. So don’t be surprised if you see, that Thumbzup supports TikTok in the near future,” CEO Steele noted.

The executive believes “social media is in a phase where it’s kind of becoming different, with different communities posting on different social media networks. I think in the past there was one social media that people largely used. So in order to give our advertisers the power of our vision, we think it makes sense for us to make it easy for the advertiser to choose which social network they want to have people do the digital word-of-mouth with, and it gives our users more opportunities. We think that we’re adjusting to how the social media landscape is changing.”

BITCOIN: The Board of Directors approved the purchase of up to $1M in Bitcoin back in November and, more recently, the allocation of up to 90% of the company’s surplus cash to be held in Bitcoin. “We had the good fortune to do an IPO to the Nasdaq in November., raising $8,200,000. We had a need to administrate the cash in a way that’s wise for our shareholders. We are using the cash to build the company, but we have more than a year’s worth of cash to execute our business model. The idea here is “let’s put the cash somewhere where we’re getting the most,” Thumzup’s chief told The Fly. “Bitcoin is a new phenomenon that many, many people believe will outpace what we could get in terms of bank interest, like a savings account. And then what made us comfortable going ahead and doing this was a couple things. First, there’s a new, presidential administration that has been very, very pro Bitcoin. Also, many U.S. states have started the process of holding Bitcoin. When you have the federal government, the U.S. federal government, and U.S. states using Bitcoin as a savings account essentially, we feel that we have reached a point where it’s a mature phenomenon and a wise use of the money.”

NOT INFLUENCER MARKETING: Back in 2023, Steele told The Fly that, “the challenge that we have when trying to introduce our company to investors is that people quickly want to think that we’re influencer marketing. But we’re not.” The executive now says that progress has been made but it remains a “challenge” seen with “disruptive” companies. “Thumbzup is doing something new and different. It’s the job of our marketing team to continue to introduce people to this new idea that getting the general public to tell their friends about your business on their personal social media is the frontier. It’s the new way to cut through the noise, and it’s better to activate hundreds of your happy customers than just to hire one professional influencer.”

Meet the Company” is The Fly’s recurring series of exclusive short interviews with Executive Officers to offer a deeper look inside the company.