tyger

163 mom pod

i talk with my maker 27 years later

162: Sydney Tall / Yikes! - DIY Fashion, Block Printing, and Polyester Judgment

We talk about why selling online is a nightmare, the existential crisis of pricing your own work, and whether or not tagging clothes with painter’s tape is genius or trash.

Timestamps: 
0:00 – Sydney Tall: Confirmed tall, also makes clothes
2:15 – The Keith Haring exhibit and creative inspiration
5:42 – Block printing vs. screen printing: the pros, cons, and suffering
9:18 – Puff ink disasters and why I judge people who wear Plastisol
13:55 – Polyester should be illegal (but seriously)
18:07 – Hand-carving blocks until your hands go numb
21:45 – The struggle of making screens that don’t suck
25:22 – Bleach is my god now (and how to not disintegrate your clothes)
31:40 – Selling clothes: Online vs. in person and why Depop messages are a headache
36:15 – The emotional rollercoaster of selling pieces you actually like
41:03 – Thrift store gems, vintage finds, and people who staple price tags to fabric (why?)
46:55 – Sydney’s brand “Yikes” and the eternal struggle of naming things
51:28 – The problem with logos and why I don’t want branding on my clothes
57:02 – The great painter’s tape debate: DIY genius or just lazy?
1:02:45 – The art of a good photoshoot (and why I hate studios)
1:08:30 – Thrifting, upcycling, and the insane world of high-end vintage
1:13:10 – Final thoughts, creative struggles, and where to find Sydney’s work

161 griffin

160 Alex Murray ai & uo

In this episode, we sit down with a University of Oregon professor specializing in entrepreneurship and tech innovation. 

Alex Murray is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business, specializing in how entrepreneurs pull resources together and how emerging tech—like crowdfunding, blockchain, and DAOs—is changing the game. 

He’s been published in top academic journals, sits on editorial boards for heavy-hitter publications like the Academy of Management Review, and was a Guest Editor for a special issue on AI in management. Before landing at UO, he was a Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich and earned his PhD from the University of Washington. 

We explore the impact of AI on business and society, the challenges of revitalizing unbanked communities, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing. The conversation takes a deep dive into creativity, commerce, and technology, featuring personal stories of entrepreneurial struggles, investment strategies, and the changing dynamics of content creation in a saturated digital world.

Timestamps & Key Moments

🎙 0:00 - 6:00 | “How do you introduce yourself?”
 • Kicking off the convo with AI, tech, and business
 • Guest intro: UO professor researching entrepreneurship and innovation
 • The challenge of explaining what you do in one sentence

💰 6:00 - 12:00 | “Would you work for a big company?”
 • Why some people thrive in startups but not in corporate life
 • The guest’s two-month stint at a massive accounting firm before quitting
 • Moving to Nairobi, Kenya, and diving into entrepreneurship

📉 12:00 - 18:00 | “We just noticed these towns were completely unbanked.”
 • How entire communities in the Southeast lost access to banking
 • Microfinance for small businesses like bakeries and barbershops
 • The real challenge of getting people to invest in their own communities

💡 18:00 - 24:00 | “The hardest it’s been in a lot of ways.”
 • Why it feels like everything is harder right now
 • The long game of rebuilding small economies
 • How funding struggles post-2008 mirror today’s economic chaos

💰 24:00 - 30:00 | “So I have like to figure it out.”
 • Personal investment, credit risk, and over-leveraging for business
 • The psychology of why selling is harder than making
 • Trying to get out of the loop of learning and actually start moving product

📈 30:00 - 36:00 | “The exodus from LA killed the film community.”
 • The decline of full-time media gigs
 • Why AI and market oversaturation are killing creative work opportunities
 • How we went from getting steady contracts to fighting for scraps

📉 36:00 - 42:00 | “There’s no video arbitrage anymore.”
 • The death of organic video growth and the TikTok gold rush
 • Why viral content doesn’t hit the same anymore
 • Fighting against content fatigue in a world where everyone’s seen it all

🛠 42:00 - 48:00 | “They kept beating me in the head with ‘Can you scale it?’”
 • The reality of handmade clothing and why scaling is impossible
 • Balancing artistic integrity with actual sales
 • The tradeoff between quality and production speed

👕 48:00 - 54:00 | “I’m the most foremost bleach researcher to have ever existed.”
 • Getting obsessed with process: R&D into custom clothing design
 • The differences in fabric quality and why most brands cut corners
 • Why I started investing in high-quality blanks instead of garbage Gildans

🚀 54:00 - End | “I fall in love with every single one.”
 • The emotional attachment to creative work and why it’s hard to sell
 • The challenge of pricing unique pieces
 • Final thoughts on business, AI, and taking the next step

Description & timestamps were created using ai to pull data from a transcription of the episode + information from his UO website: https://business.uoregon.edu/directory/faculty_staff/all/amm16#publications 

 

Audio & Video production by Tyger Gruber

prompt engineering by Tyger

159 Kate Acosta cotton kids clothing

158 jeremy dirtball

157 althea & jurell

156 cat simon & knz

155 thomas

154 grace