0:00:01 So you’re not afraid to share ideas?
0:00:03 No, I’m super afraid to share ideas.
0:00:07 But that’s, I mean, one of my ideas that I’m actively exploring.
0:00:09 And here I am sharing it with everyone here.
0:00:21 We should address the elephant in the room.
0:00:22 Why are we on a plane?
0:00:25 We’re just flexing on everybody now.
0:00:27 This is my Tai Lopez.
0:00:28 Hey guys, I’m just on my jet.
0:00:31 So it’s not that.
0:00:36 Yeah, so this plane, it’s a Cetacean CJ3 Plus.
0:00:38 And I fly planes for fun.
0:00:40 So it’s been my passion and my hobby.
0:00:44 I think since even elementary school, I was obsessed with airplanes.
0:00:49 And it was always my goal to be able to afford to fly one.
0:00:54 And then I learned, I interviewed a bunch of very wealthy people.
0:00:56 And I said, how do you afford an airplane?
0:00:57 Like how successful do you have to be?
0:01:01 And the secret was, you don’t have to be that successful.
0:01:04 You just have to have a big tax bill and good cash flow.
0:01:07 Which takes success to get to that point.
0:01:08 It takes some success.
0:01:09 Less than you think.
0:01:11 A lot less than you think, actually.
0:01:13 Because it’s like a house.
0:01:16 You could finance it, get, you know, put 20% down.
0:01:18 And then, you know, the rest is…
0:01:18 We’ll walk through that in a second.
0:01:22 So the funny thing was we did an episode, a normal episode where we’re on Zoom.
0:01:23 And it was great.
0:01:24 You can go see it.
0:01:28 It’s called like Jess Ma, like high school dropout, you know, blah, blah.
0:01:31 We YouTubed it to make the title good.
0:01:35 But like, you know, I don’t know, 300, 400,000 people have listened to that interview across
0:01:36 all the platforms.
0:01:38 And I wanted to do a second one.
0:01:39 And you were like, hey, I’m in town.
0:01:40 If you can kind of meet me here.
0:01:41 I was like, all right, let’s go.
0:01:42 I’ll meet you there.
0:01:45 And the second thing is you’re actually great with tax hacks.
0:01:48 And you’re better than my accountant who I pay.
0:01:52 I pay this guy to be like, hey, come up with ideas that I can lower my tax bill legally.
0:01:53 But how can I do it?
0:01:54 What are the ideas?
0:01:56 And he’s idea poor.
0:01:57 You’re very idea rich.
0:01:58 And so I thought, okay, it’s kind of fitting.
0:02:02 Because one of the things we’ll talk about at the end is you’ve talked to a lot of rich
0:02:06 people and tried to learn what are the options, what are the possibilities as far as taxes
0:02:06 goes.
0:02:08 And that’s, I want to learn that from you.
0:02:08 Yeah.
0:02:11 I mean, we’ll talk about that as it relates to business ideas.
0:02:15 But as it relates to tax ideas, it’s actually a pretty similar process.
0:02:18 Like, I’ll just talk to as many people as possible.
0:02:22 And I think the mistake people make with taxes is they have their one tax person.
0:02:25 And that person worked with their parents.
0:02:27 And they’ve been loyal.
0:02:30 But actually, this is a very bad place to have loyalty.
0:02:33 It’s really good to talk to, like, I’ve talked to dozens of tax.
0:02:33 Promiscuous.
0:02:35 You want to be very promiscuous here.
0:02:39 I’ve talked to dozens of tax attorneys and tax accountants about their ideas.
0:02:41 And I just keep track of all their ideas.
0:02:44 And then I talk to all my friends, ask them for their tax ideas and consolidate it.
0:02:45 That’s so true.
0:02:46 There’s like this weird loyalty.
0:02:48 It’s like, yeah, he’s been doing my taxes for four years.
0:02:49 Like, yeah, but nothing has changed.
0:02:51 And you want to get ideas from everybody.
0:02:53 So let’s do this plan real quick.
0:02:57 So a plane like this, what does it cost roughly?
0:02:58 What do you have to put down?
0:03:00 And what is the tax savings or something?
0:03:01 There’s just a mini tax lesson for this plane.
0:03:02 Yeah, mini tax lesson.
0:03:06 And then we go into more detail on this on the last episode I did with you guys.
0:03:08 But this is a $12 million plus airplane.
0:03:12 And you could put 20% down on the airplane.
0:03:15 I got this pre-owned, so I saved a few million bucks.
0:03:17 And it’s just as good as new.
0:03:18 So you put down roughly two million bucks.
0:03:23 Yeah, you put down about a few million bucks and then you just pay monthly financing on it.
0:03:27 But then you get to write off up to the whole thing.
0:03:29 Last year it was 60% up front.
0:03:34 But now with the new administration, it looks like accelerated depreciation is back.
0:03:42 So if you bought a $12 million airplane, financed it, you can write off the whole $12 million off your tax bill, even though you only put in $3 million.
0:03:45 So you’re going to pay the government or you could buy an airplane.
0:03:47 So it looks ridiculous.
0:03:49 Either way, $3 million is going out of your bank account.
0:03:51 Either way, the money’s leaving your bank account.
0:03:53 So it looks lavish.
0:03:54 It looks ridiculous.
0:03:57 But this is why rich people do these things.
0:03:57 Right.
0:03:59 And I just wanted to debunk that.
0:04:01 A lot of people are scared to admit that.
0:04:04 They don’t want to share that because they want to flex more.
0:04:05 They want to show off.
0:04:08 But it’s just a practical matter.
0:04:08 Right.
0:04:15 And you use it to like literally be more efficient and go meet people where otherwise you might not have taken that day trip to go do it.
0:04:15 Like you came up.
0:04:17 You’re like, I want to have lunch with you.
0:04:18 And so you flew up.
0:04:18 We had lunch.
0:04:19 And you flew out.
0:04:20 And I was like, wow.
0:04:21 First, I felt honored.
0:04:28 But secondly, man, there’s probably a lot of people that I think I would have kind of amazing opportunities or build a relationship with.
0:04:31 But I don’t do it because the logistics are actually like in the way.
0:04:33 Of course, this is not accessible to most people.
0:04:38 But like if you’re in that successful entrepreneur bucket, it kind of makes sense logistically as well.
0:04:39 It does.
0:04:39 Yeah.
0:04:41 And, you know, we’ve got Starlink on board.
0:04:48 So flying out here, I was able to make five phone calls and be on Zoom and, you know, do FaceTime video where I’m like, yo, what’s up?
0:04:49 Right.
0:04:54 And like it’s a practical matter of saving money, but it looks really bad.
0:05:01 If you’re an operating CEO of a company, you’re going to get shat on by your employees, your customers, your investors.
0:05:05 And I realized that that would be a problem for me a few years ago.
0:05:08 So that’s why I stopped being an operating CEO.
0:05:14 Actually, it was really I had this conflict of like, can I do everything I want to do?
0:05:16 And I know it’s the right thing to do.
0:05:16 I know I will.
0:05:18 I know I will.
0:05:19 Well, I know I’ll create more abundance.
0:05:19 Right.
0:05:21 You know, I’ll create more value for my companies.
0:05:24 But at the same time, I know I’m going to get more flack.
0:05:27 I’m going to have more people who want to rip on me, unfortunately.
0:05:29 And I’m sure this video will not help with that at all.
0:05:31 But like I defend it.
0:05:32 It’s like a practical matter.
0:05:32 Right.
0:05:33 I love that.
0:05:34 Unapologetic.
0:05:36 So, yeah, enough about the private jet.
0:05:37 It’s cool.
0:05:38 It’s going to make for a great, great job.
0:05:39 First time for the podcast.
0:05:45 What I want to talk to you about is what you’re great at, which is ideas and coming up with new ideas for businesses.
0:05:50 So the track record here is you’ve been an operating CEO.
0:05:52 You started this company called Intanero when you were really young.
0:05:52 Right.
0:05:53 How old were you when you started that?
0:05:55 I was 19 when I started.
0:05:56 I knew absolutely nothing.
0:05:57 Yeah.
0:06:01 And then I built that company up and then started a bunch of other companies.
0:06:04 Several of them are nine-figure valuation businesses.
0:06:06 I have no unicorns under my belt.
0:06:07 So that’s a big insecurity of mine right now.
0:06:09 I’m going to be super honest about it.
0:06:09 That’s interesting.
0:06:10 I don’t have a single unicorn.
0:06:13 But if you add them all up, I’ve got, you know, multiple unicorns.
0:06:13 Right.
0:06:15 So that became my strategy.
0:06:21 I decided I’m really not good at building unicorns, but I’m really good at coming up with smaller businesses.
0:06:22 A barn full of horses.
0:06:25 Yeah, a barn full of horses where I create more.
0:06:26 I think we just coined something there, by the way.
0:06:28 That was all you.
0:06:29 Good work.
0:06:35 But yeah, if I could just raise less VC money for these companies and just create more of them
0:06:42 and not be directly operating them, then that could add up to being just as valuable, if not more valuable,
0:06:47 than if I created one unicorn, not to mention all my friends who are CEOs of unicorns.
0:06:48 Miserable.
0:06:50 So miserable and so stressed out.
0:06:56 And also they don’t have the ability to live an amazing lifestyle because of all the stuff we talked about.
0:07:02 They’re scared of the optics and they own a much smaller percentage of these businesses.
0:07:09 A lot of my unicorn CEO friends, they own like 5% of a billion-dollar company, which is a remarkable amount of money.
0:07:10 That’s a lot, but, you know.
0:07:12 Yeah, totally.
0:07:14 I’m in it for the lifestyle, not the…
0:07:15 You just have to decide what you’re in it for.
0:07:16 Just be honest about that.
0:07:17 And there’s other people who are in it for the impact.
0:07:18 That’s dope.
0:07:19 They should do that.
0:07:20 They should save the world.
0:07:20 I’m on the world.
0:07:22 I’m glad that they’re saving it.
0:07:22 Yeah.
0:07:24 I personally don’t want to do that with my time.
0:07:29 I want to indulge my curiosities, have fun conversations, and just enjoy my life with my kids.
0:07:30 That’s totally unusual.
0:07:31 That’s what I like to do.
0:07:32 That’s my gold standard.
0:07:32 Yeah.
0:07:35 So, your story is basically 19 years old.
0:07:36 You start in DeNero.
0:07:37 You run that company.
0:07:38 You grow that company.
0:07:47 And then, like you said, you transitioned from starting and running companies yourself to now you have this, like, your own holdco where you’re incubating or creating companies.
0:07:53 And you said that in the last four years, you’ve started four companies, each worth over $100 million.
0:07:54 I’ve co-founded companies.
0:07:57 And when I say co-found, sometimes I didn’t do a whole lot.
0:07:58 Maybe I helped with the idea.
0:08:01 I got the early team on board.
0:08:02 I got some early funding.
0:08:05 And then, on some of them, I’m still really active.
0:08:07 And on some of them, I’m not active.
0:08:09 And I’m just, like, a significant shareholder.
0:08:09 Right.
0:08:11 All right.
0:08:11 Hey, real quick.
0:08:14 If you’re liking this episode with Jess, then we got something cool for you.
0:08:16 So, when the episode ended, we asked her.
0:08:20 We were like, hey, you were talking about how you have this playbook, this recruiting guide.
0:08:21 You have this, like, content guide.
0:08:23 You have these things.
0:08:25 Would you mind sharing one of those with us?
0:08:27 And she actually just sent us, like, all of them.
0:08:30 So, she wanted the listeners to be able to have them for free.
0:08:31 So, they’re in the show notes below.
0:08:32 It’s her talent playbook.
0:08:33 It’s her recruiting guide.
0:08:36 I think it’s an operations guide for how she runs her companies.
0:08:38 These are straight from her.
0:08:39 They’re available in the show notes below.
0:08:40 Check them out.
0:08:42 I mean, somebody’s giving you free gold.
0:08:45 All you got to do is take out your hands and just accept the gold.
0:08:45 All right.
0:08:46 Back to this episode.
0:08:50 I want to ask you about your idea process because that’s amazing to be able to do that.
0:08:51 I want to be able to do that.
0:08:53 So, let’s talk about that.
0:08:54 Let’s talk about ideas.
0:08:56 How do you get ideas to start these companies?
0:08:59 And then what are some ideas right now that you’re excited about?
0:09:00 Yeah, let’s talk about process first.
0:09:06 So, I love Y Combinator ideas, the request for startups.
0:09:14 And when I was coming up with my first ideas for businesses, like in DeNero, that was inspired by that list.
0:09:20 And it’s a list of 100 business ideas where they say, if you build this, we are more likely to fund you.
0:09:22 And I really wanted to get into Y Combinator.
0:09:26 And then I put together this spreadsheet.
0:09:28 So, I had this matrix of criteria.
0:09:35 And one of my top criteria was complicated enough that other people won’t copy me too fast.
0:09:38 I think that’s really important.
0:09:42 If I’m a first-time founder, I need to have more legroom.
0:09:47 And then another criteria was I can pseudo-bootstrap this.
0:09:51 Like, I can raise some angel money, but I don’t need to raise like $100 million.
0:09:54 So, like, I’m not going to build Tesla or SpaceX.
0:09:58 I want to build something that $2 million could get me very far.
0:10:01 My other criteria was I wanted recurring revenue.
0:10:04 I wanted something that was sticky, like a must-have.
0:10:09 And so, I literally went through every single one of those ideas on the Y Combinator list.
0:10:12 And I rank-ordered them based on these three criteria.
0:10:19 And business accounting and tax management seemed to be the better one for my criteria.
0:10:24 And so, my process is I, you know, go online and I scrape these ideas.
0:10:26 I’ve even gone to Reddit to look for ideas.
0:10:30 I have one-on-one lunches and dinners with people like you.
0:10:32 And I just say, hey, like, what are ideas you’re exploring?
0:10:34 And then we’ll just have a brainstorm.
0:10:42 But none of the ideas I’ve actually worked on came from me sitting in a room with a whiteboard
0:10:43 and just, like, coming up with stuff.
0:10:44 Yourself.
0:10:45 Yeah, that’s never worked out.
0:10:48 I’ve tried it, by the way, with no success.
0:10:49 Okay.
0:10:51 So, you had this thing on your phone.
0:10:52 You had, like, this idea database.
0:10:52 Yeah.
0:10:54 There’s, like, 300 ideas.
0:10:54 Uh-huh.
0:10:57 And you promised, you said, I’ll show some of them today.
0:10:58 Yeah.
0:11:00 Even though these are things you might still go do, I think.
0:11:01 I might still do some of these.
0:11:03 So, do you want to give us a couple of them?
0:11:03 Absolutely.
0:11:05 It’s called the Idea Hopper.
0:11:07 So, actually, let me pull it up on my phone real quick.
0:11:08 Okay, great.
0:11:10 Should we start with the ones we talked about before?
0:11:14 Yeah, she gave me a teaser of, like, two or three of them that I was like, don’t tell
0:11:15 me more, but yes.
0:11:17 Like, should we start with the Doge as a Service idea?
0:11:17 Okay, yeah, yeah.
0:11:18 I like this one.
0:11:18 Yeah.
0:11:20 It’s very trendy right now.
0:11:22 Doge as a Service for companies.
0:11:22 Explain.
0:11:25 Yeah, I mean, most companies have so much waste.
0:11:29 You have people who barely show up or they’re phoning it in.
0:11:35 And I have friends who say, oh, yeah, like, you know, my husband Quiet quit his job.
0:11:38 He’s, like, working two hours a day and no one’s tracking it.
0:11:40 So, he’s available to hang out.
0:11:42 Those are the people you want to get rid of.
0:11:46 So, what if you could create a software platform that goes through and tracks who is actually
0:11:49 on Slack, who is actually emailing, who is, like, using their computer?
0:11:53 And if not, then they’re fired.
0:11:55 So, Doge is a Service for companies.
0:11:58 And so, it would be a team of consultants.
0:11:59 It’d be a consultants plus AI.
0:12:00 How would you do it?
0:12:02 I think AI could do a lot of it.
0:12:06 I also thought that if you’re an enterprise, then it’s, you could sell this to consulting
0:12:11 firms like McKinsey or BCC or whoever and say, hey, you guys can offer this to the CFO.
0:12:13 Oh, they’re already doing, they’re already in there.
0:12:14 They’re already in there.
0:12:18 And that makes you seem more valuable as a consultant.
0:12:21 Because you could say, hey, we could demonstrate that we’ll save you hundreds of millions of
0:12:22 dollars.
0:12:23 You’ll pay us only $20 million.
0:12:25 And this AI did all the work.
0:12:26 Yeah, that’s actually pretty interesting.
0:12:32 I don’t think enough tech teams build tools for the consultants who have already done
0:12:32 the sale.
0:12:36 Because what McKinsey’s amazing at is they got this relationship with a Fortune 100 company.
0:12:37 They’re on retainer.
0:12:39 They’re getting paid millions of dollars a year.
0:12:45 And if you can sell them a tool that either helps them land and expand that contract or just
0:12:49 save overhead and actually, like, executing that contract, that’s going to be pretty valuable.
0:12:53 Like, if I was, like, building AI right now, I would not be trying to make something that,
0:12:58 like, I’m going to not only build the tool, but also figure out all of the go-to-market.
0:13:02 Maybe you could actually just sell this to consultants who already have the go-to-market
0:13:02 done.
0:13:03 Exactly.
0:13:07 That’s, I mean, one of my ideas that I’m actively exploring.
0:13:09 And here I am sharing it with everyone here.
0:13:12 So you’re not afraid to share ideas?
0:13:13 Or what’s your philosophy around that?
0:13:15 No, I’m super afraid to share ideas.
0:13:17 Put you on the spot.
0:13:18 You just got me really comfortable.
0:13:20 So here I am.
0:13:22 This is an idea I’ve been playing around with for a few months.
0:13:23 And I really like it a lot.
0:13:23 Okay.
0:13:24 I like it.
0:13:28 I didn’t want to be one of those people who said, okay, here are my shittiest ideas.
0:13:29 Now you go do them.
0:13:31 Like, I think that’d be just really lame.
0:13:32 Totally.
0:13:33 All right.
0:13:34 What else you got?
0:13:34 So go-to-as-a-service.
0:13:35 That’s one.
0:13:35 I like it.
0:13:37 So again, this is the trendy category.
0:13:37 Okay.
0:13:37 Okay.
0:13:43 Another idea is, you know, everyone says SaaS is dead.
0:13:45 Agents are the new thing.
0:13:52 Well, what if you could build vertical agent as a service for an industry?
0:13:58 So for example, build a library of agents for dental offices or for auto mechanics.
0:13:58 Right.
0:14:04 Or for, you know, clothing designers or manufacturers or whatever, or distributors.
0:14:10 So there are all these industries, but where they need their own very unique library of agents to automate their tasks.
0:14:12 And you can go really deep there.
0:14:19 So this is more of a thematic business area, which will be, I think we’re going to see thousands of businesses doing this.
0:14:20 Right.
0:14:20 So, okay.
0:14:21 So somebody’s building a tool.
0:14:23 And so you’re saying you don’t even have to build the agent.
0:14:30 You’re like, there’s going to be somebody who builds an agent that’s about picking up a call and booking an appointment.
0:14:31 Let’s say appointment booking agent.
0:14:34 So what you used to have to have pay a receptionist to do.
0:14:36 Now AI is pretty damn good.
0:14:37 It’s going to be able to do that fully.
0:14:38 Right.
0:14:42 So you have horizontal companies right now that sell the voice agent for any industry.
0:14:48 The problem is you still have to do a lot of fine tuning and work for if you’re a dentist.
0:14:48 Right.
0:14:56 So what if you’re a company and you look for all these off-the-shelf tools and make your own agents and plug them all in and tune it just for dentists.
0:14:57 Right.
0:14:58 And so it’s plug and play.
0:14:59 I’m a dental office.
0:15:00 I can use your company.
0:15:04 And it has like a hundred different pieces of AI already baked into my workflow.
0:15:05 Gotcha.
0:15:06 That’s the idea in a nutshell.
0:15:07 Okay.
0:15:07 I like that.
0:15:09 I should do this for an industry you know about.
0:15:13 Like if you’re passionate about, you know, dental offices, then do it in dental offices.
0:15:14 So that’s…
0:15:16 Shout out to anyone who’s passionate about dental offices.
0:15:18 You are…
0:15:19 This was your day.
0:15:20 You got to…
0:15:20 I know, but the more…
0:15:21 We recognize you.
0:15:22 The more boring, the better.
0:15:23 Yeah.
0:15:25 That’s the Constellation software model, right?
0:15:25 Which…
0:15:30 So we invested in this company that’s vertical SaaS, which was called Shop Genie.
0:15:31 They just…
0:15:32 So we invested in it.
0:15:35 And I think within a year or two, they sold for mid-eight figures.
0:15:39 And what they did was they went to auto repair shops and they were like, hey, guess what?
0:15:40 Auto repair shops need to CRM.
0:15:44 So there was always CRMs like HubSpot and others that they work for any type of business.
0:15:50 And he’s like, well, but auto repair shops have specific things that are, you know, for them.
0:15:51 So they built a tool that was just for them.
0:15:56 And then they went and they got like 3,000, 4,000 auto repair shops in like a year to use them.
0:15:57 And by the way…
0:15:58 Very sexy business.
0:15:58 Yeah.
0:16:01 I was like, dude, how did you get so many shops to use you?
0:16:03 And he’s like, there’s this guy who’s like the auto repair influencer.
0:16:06 He’s like the Kardashian of auto repair shops.
0:16:07 And he vouched for us.
0:16:09 And then all these people, you know, followed on board.
0:16:15 And he’s like, that guy makes like 20 million a year as the like biggest influencer to other auto repair shop owners.
0:16:16 It’s like really insane.
0:16:17 Oh, wow.
0:16:18 Such a great business idea.
0:16:19 Yeah.
0:16:25 So what they did was they give him this tool and it was like for booking your appointment and the text message follow-ups or whatever.
0:16:28 And what you’re saying is like, and vertical SaaS has been a thing.
0:16:30 Constellation Software did it.
0:16:33 What you’re saying is instead of vertical SaaS, it’s going to be like…
0:16:33 Vertical ass.
0:16:35 Agents as a service.
0:16:36 Vertical ass.
0:16:41 But seriously, and then the more like random, the better.
0:16:53 Like if you could apply this to like, you know, marine shipping or to like resource mining, you know, then Constellation will be acquiring and ruling up these vertical ass companies in the next few years.
0:16:55 Like that’s the future.
0:16:59 What was the marine shipping cargo ship idea you were telling me about?
0:17:01 Yeah, that was another idea I had on my Idea Hopper.
0:17:04 The idea was in a nutshell, could we…
0:17:09 Oh yeah, it was coating for these cargo ships.
0:17:10 Coating like the paint coating.
0:17:14 But to make it more efficient so that these ships could go even a few knots faster.
0:17:17 And that saves you a ton of money on fuel.
0:17:22 And then you don’t need to like take these ships out of the water as often to recode them.
0:17:28 So this could be like millions, if not tens of millions of dollars over a decade for your entire fleet of cargo ships.
0:17:30 Totally random idea.
0:17:38 I got this from having dinner with someone who was playing around with this idea or looking at funding something like this like many years ago.
0:17:41 And the other person just didn’t have the money to proceed with it.
0:17:41 Right.
0:17:45 So my, like I learned about that just from having dinner with someone.
0:17:46 Yeah, that’s crazy.
0:17:48 And so you, let’s say you have an idea like that.
0:17:48 Uh-huh.
0:17:52 So first it’s like who the heck even thinks about cargo ship coatings.
0:17:53 Definitely not me.
0:17:57 I mean, mostly these ideas, the common theme is I didn’t come up with any of these ideas.
0:17:57 Right.
0:17:59 So you’re a good spotter, would you say?
0:17:59 Or what are you good at?
0:18:06 I’m good at initiating conversations with people who are likely to have ideas or have access to ideas.
0:18:08 Like you have good access to ideas.
0:18:11 And actually, I’ve sent you an idea before.
0:18:15 And now that I think about it, like my buddy James Currier has this great phrase.
0:18:17 He goes, you want to turn yourself into an API.
0:18:23 And what he means by that, he goes, you know, like a website has an API, which basically says, here’s what I can offer you.
0:18:24 I can give you location data.
0:18:27 So you ping me, I give you location data.
0:18:27 That’s what I’m good at.
0:18:30 And by the way, here’s what I want to get from your API, right?
0:18:31 Here’s the things I’m interested in.
0:18:33 I’m interested in acquiring geospatial data.
0:18:40 So you kind of have made your API like, hey, I’m always interested in hearing interesting, kind of weird, off-the-beaten-path ideas.
0:18:43 So when I hear one, I think, oh, Jess would like this.
0:18:43 Yeah.
0:18:54 So you’ve put yourself in my mind and associated yourself with, she likes to hear weird, cool, off-the-beaten-path, you know, ideas that, you know, she’s good at making them happen.
0:18:57 And then in return, you know, you’re like, what are you good at?
0:18:59 It’s like, what do you offer as your API?
0:19:02 It’s like, I have a business and I’m trying to recruit a CEO.
0:19:04 And I know you’ve done that a bunch of times.
0:19:11 I’m like, oh, if I go to Jess, she’s going to, you know, reduce my error rate and make me go faster at this because she’s really going to be helpful in doing that.
0:19:18 Or if I have a new idea, she’s really good at fleshing it out over a lunch, like riffing on it and then being like super motivated to be like, all right, what are we going to do to make this happen?
0:19:20 Like, let’s push the ball forward.
0:19:23 So I think you’ve kind of done that in the idea space, which is powerful.
0:19:23 That’s really well articulated.
0:19:28 Yeah, like I get people calling me all the time saying, hey, Jess, you have like five minutes to chat.
0:19:32 I have this random idea I want to get your thoughts on.
0:19:34 And would you build this with me?
0:19:35 Or if I did it, would you fund it?
0:19:38 I get those calls all the time, multiple times a week.
0:19:42 And it’s like, all right, like, yeah, I’ll find time to call you back.
0:19:45 But it’s like what Warren Buffett did.
0:19:46 He just got the word out there.
0:19:47 Hey, I’m buying businesses.
0:19:49 Call me if you’re ready to sell.
0:19:51 And it’s a fast, easy process.
0:19:53 I’m doing the same thing with ideas.
0:19:54 Yeah, that’s great.
0:20:00 My business partner, Ben, I was just thinking while you were talking, like his API is so funny is two things.
0:20:02 One, Ben always knows a guy.
0:20:03 So you’re like, do you know anybody?
0:20:05 He’s like, I know a guy who knows a guy.
0:20:06 That’s always Ben’s thing.
0:20:07 Like he always knows a guy who knows a guy.
0:20:10 And the second thing is a lot of people will go to Ben.
0:20:12 They’ll just text him when something good happens in their life.
0:20:14 And I always am like, why did they, did you ask?
0:20:16 He’s like, no, no, they just told me.
0:20:20 And like, we just closed this big deal or we just did this thing and they haven’t announced it.
0:20:22 And he’s not that close to them.
0:20:28 But what I realized is I do the same thing with him because he’s somebody that makes you feel good when you win.
0:20:32 You don’t feel like there’s any envy or he’s not going to try to take anything from you.
0:20:33 He’s like genuinely pumped for you.
0:20:34 That’s awesome.
0:20:41 And because of that, he just gets this wealth of inbound of people who are winning, which is also great for us for investing because we’re like, oh, wow, these guys are doing really well.
0:20:42 Do they need more capital?
0:20:43 Do they need something?
0:20:44 Like maybe we could help them.
0:20:45 And that’s a superpower.
0:20:48 So I think people, there’s like these underrated superpowers.
0:20:56 Like the thing you’re describing about, I’m good at, you know, maybe having interesting conversations, getting good ideas and making people feel like they should come to me with interesting ideas.
0:21:01 That’s not even a skill you could learn in school or nobody would even tell you that that’s a thing.
0:21:01 Yeah.
0:21:04 But you’re going to build generational wealth off that.
0:21:05 Yeah, that’s well said.
0:21:08 I think it’s equally as important to know what we’re bad at.
0:21:13 You know, like for me, I realized that I’m not the best operating CEO.
0:21:14 Like that’s just not my forte.
0:21:23 And after I realized that and came to peace with that, then I was able to say, okay, well, I’m going to come up with ideas and recruit great teams and then empower them.
0:21:28 And that’s what I’m going to figure out how to do for the worry on and be great at.
0:21:28 Exactly.
0:21:30 So let’s do more.
0:21:31 I want more ideas.
0:21:31 Yeah.
0:21:31 Okay.
0:21:34 So I have this other idea.
0:21:37 The code name is Holy Health.
0:21:49 And I came up with this idea because I heard of another business that was minting like tens of millions of dollars in EBITDA within 36 months.
0:21:55 And all they did was help one niche of like medical provider get access to insurance.
0:21:57 And then I did some research.
0:22:06 I plugged this into GPT and I realized there’s so many of these other types of people like chiropractors or physical therapists where they can get insurance reimbursement.
0:22:14 But they’re so small, they don’t have the scale to negotiate with an insurance company on getting reimbursed.
0:22:15 So they just charge a lot of cash.
0:22:16 So technically they could.
0:22:17 Technically they could.
0:22:21 But is it that they don’t have the time or the skill or like you need to band them together?
0:22:21 Both.
0:22:32 So if you band them together, then they can get some reimbursement and then you could create, you know, agents as a service to support them, to create more lock-in, and then you could help them with their customer acquisition.
0:22:34 So it’s got to be the full stack.
0:22:37 And this other company did that for one of these different verticals.
0:22:41 And I heard about that through a friend who heard about the company.
0:22:43 And I’m like, oh, man, that’s a great idea.
0:22:45 Could I do something adjacent to that?
0:22:48 That’s not copying them, but similar in some ways.
0:22:50 A similar blueprint, but in a different space that needs it.
0:22:51 Exactly.
0:22:52 So you would go, what would you do for that?
0:22:54 So you would, let’s just walk through this.
0:22:56 I want to hear, so you have that idea.
0:22:57 I heard about this.
0:22:58 This actually starts with a clue.
0:23:03 I got a clue because I was having lunch with a friend and he’s like, these guys are making like 30 million in EBITDA.
0:23:04 I’m like, all right.
0:23:05 What question are you asking that friend?
0:23:09 Because we were just talking before and I was like, how the hell do you get this?
0:23:15 I go, what is your info diet that you are getting these ideas that I don’t get to hear about?
0:23:16 You’re doing something different.
0:23:19 You’re not just consuming the same stuff I am because you’re getting different ideas.
0:23:21 So can we talk about that real quick?
0:23:22 The info diet?
0:23:23 Yeah.
0:23:29 I mean, none of these come from reading a blog post or watching a podcast.
0:23:31 All these are from in-person conversations.
0:23:33 I think a lot of people are lazy.
0:23:35 They just want to come up with stuff by staring at their computer.
0:23:37 Nothing good comes out of doing that.
0:23:39 If I’m being candid, you have to get out of the building.
0:23:42 You have to like just talk to people.
0:23:43 And when you’re talking to them, what are you asking?
0:23:44 Like, hey, what’s interesting?
0:23:46 What have you seen that’s cool?
0:23:46 Yeah.
0:23:47 What’s the coolest?
0:23:52 What’s the most interesting, exotic business idea that’s minting cash that you’ve seen recently?
0:23:55 And so I’m not asking them for a business idea.
0:23:57 I’m asking them for what’s an existing thing you’ve seen.
0:24:01 It’s like, what’s the key to their success?
0:24:03 And why does no one know about this?
0:24:03 Right.
0:24:07 And like, why hasn’t anyone copied them yet?
0:24:11 And, you know, why is now the right time for this?
0:24:14 So you’re filtering as they give you the exotic business that’s minting cash.
0:24:18 Like, was there some secret sauce that’s not replicable?
0:24:20 You know, maybe they’re super influential in a community.
0:24:21 Okay.
0:24:22 That would take forever to build.
0:24:24 Could this be done in another space?
0:24:26 Does this take a hundred million dollars of venture capital?
0:24:26 Yeah.
0:24:27 How much did they start?
0:24:28 And then they’re like, oh yeah.
0:24:29 Like these guys just bootstrapped it.
0:24:30 Right.
0:24:33 I’m like, oh my gosh, now my math is really watering.
0:24:33 Right.
0:24:34 Like, okay.
0:24:36 And what are the other risks here?
0:24:38 Like, can AI just replace this in 36 months?
0:24:43 That’s like the new risk factor in my like criteria that y’all have to ask.
0:24:47 So you get the clue, you get the clue from the conversation, key question.
0:24:48 Yeah.
0:24:49 And then you get the clue.
0:24:52 Then you run it through your filter mentally, just there.
0:24:55 Let’s say now you’re excited about the idea because you’re like, holy health.
0:24:57 And you give it a code name.
0:24:57 Is there?
0:24:59 Everything has to have a code name.
0:25:00 Why is that?
0:25:00 It makes it real?
0:25:06 It makes it feel more psychologically real and like, okay, then I have something to remind
0:25:07 me of the rest of the substance of the idea.
0:25:08 Cool.
0:25:10 And so I’ll just like throw the idea into ChatGVT.
0:25:14 Before you even tell your coworkers, you’re like, I think with AI first.
0:25:15 Ah, yeah, exactly.
0:25:18 I tell everyone before you tell me anything, think with AI as well.
0:25:18 Yeah.
0:25:19 And so everyone does that.
0:25:23 And I say, give me like 20 ideas of potential names for this idea.
0:25:25 And then I just pick one and this is the code name.
0:25:26 And then we put it in the idea hopper.
0:25:27 And then.
0:25:30 Did you see the CEO of Microsoft win on a podcast?
0:25:32 He had this great line.
0:25:37 He goes, my new workflow is think with AI and then work with my coworkers.
0:25:42 So he goes, I think people are thinking about like AI is going to replace your coworkers or
0:25:44 your employees are just going to, AI is going to do a task.
0:25:49 He’s like, but right now the best use case is me thinking and sparring with AI to get clarity.
0:25:51 And then I go work with my coworkers after that.
0:25:53 Sounds like you’re kind of doing a similar thing.
0:25:54 Yeah, we definitely do that.
0:25:59 And what we’re trying to do is have all of our meetings be recorded.
0:26:04 So even if it’s in person, we’re just like turning on granola and having, I have a big,
0:26:07 one of those conference speakerphone things and it’s just recording everything.
0:26:10 And we’re going to feed it in to create digital twins of all of us.
0:26:16 Then have like basically thousands of versions of ourselves just brainstorming and sparring
0:26:19 with each other to refine ideas even further.
0:26:22 It’s like those little like chess arenas or whatever, where they train the AIs to just
0:26:25 compete with each other until like, until there’s like a winner, a winning strategy.
0:26:25 Yeah.
0:26:31 And actually, we’re actually doing, we’re actually training one based off of you as well.
0:26:35 So we’re going to have it just watch every single video you’ve been part of.
0:26:40 So it knows how to think like you’d be like, hey, bring Sean into these conversations, bring
0:26:43 Satya, bring, suck, bring, Elon, bring, like whoever.
0:26:49 And I want all of them to like help battle test this, you know, conversation.
0:26:51 That’s amazing.
0:26:52 And so that way I don’t need to pay for you.
0:26:56 You know, that’s useful when, if you just ask a question like, oh, what would Elon do
0:26:57 in this situation?
0:27:04 Or, you know, take your most high agency, badass friend who’s not afraid and seems to have like
0:27:05 clarity in the moment of a fog of war.
0:27:09 If you just have that friend and you’ve hung out with them enough and you literally just
0:27:11 ask the question, it’s like they’re in the room.
0:27:16 And I know if that works, then an AI that’s actually trained on them is going to be insane.
0:27:18 Do you know how you’ll do that?
0:27:22 How will you create, like, what are you going to use to make them be an AI?
0:27:25 There’s so much public content for my team members.
0:27:28 That’s why I’m making sure that they record every single interaction in the company with
0:27:29 each other.
0:27:31 Is there a tool to do that?
0:27:32 Or are you going to make your own tool?
0:27:35 It’s just you know a lot to get the transcripts.
0:27:37 Because once you have the transcripts, then you can just feed that into any of these.
0:27:40 So any LLM will be able to like.
0:27:41 It’s going to do a pretty good job.
0:27:44 Yeah, we should go into more advanced conversation on this.
0:27:45 But that’s interesting.
0:27:47 Yeah, because people will do this so annoying.
0:27:50 People are using my voice in ads all the time now.
0:27:51 And I’m like, this is wild.
0:27:53 I’m like, how do I sue you?
0:27:54 I don’t even know who you are.
0:27:57 Second thing is that, but I’m going to.
0:27:59 Anybody who’s doing it, I’m suing you.
0:28:00 I’m actively working on that.
0:28:03 I’m telling AI to figure out how to find you to sue you.
0:28:08 But then also, what was the other one?
0:28:10 Oh, writing style.
0:28:12 So people will just put in chat to me and be like, write this in the style or whatever.
0:28:14 Because I’ve written a lot of content publicly.
0:28:19 And it’s not me, but it’s definitely kind of close to me.
0:28:21 It’s like, oh, that’s 18 months away from being better than me.
0:28:23 So that’s definitely happening.
0:28:24 You might as well embrace it.
0:28:28 We’re almost going to need a safe word that’s like, is it human, Sean, that I’m talking to?
0:28:30 Or is this AI, Sean, that I’m talking to?
0:28:31 We need a code word.
0:28:33 I know, but it’s like really exciting.
0:28:38 And so, yeah, Satya is on point here.
0:28:39 So where was I?
0:28:42 So you were telling me about, okay, so we’re going through your process.
0:28:43 So you get excited about the idea.
0:28:44 Yeah.
0:28:45 You have the clue.
0:28:46 You have the code name.
0:28:48 And you then have a meeting with your team.
0:28:50 What are you doing in that meeting?
0:28:53 What are you trying to do to advance that idea forward?
0:28:59 Yeah, every week we have a R&D team meeting is what we just call it.
0:29:01 And we talk about the ideas that we’re playing with.
0:29:06 And the problem here with Holy Health, because this was a live idea, and it still is a live idea.
0:29:10 Everything I’ve shared today is still alive, by the way.
0:29:14 And the problem is we just had too many of these ideas.
0:29:19 I mean, we have hundreds of these ideas, and we try to work on too many at the same time.
0:29:27 And the problem is then you don’t really advance any idea forward enough between each week meeting, and then we lose excitement.
0:29:28 Right.
0:29:36 So now the new rule is we’re only going to have two, and we’re going to take them all the way until they’re busted before you replace and bring in another one.
0:29:37 And so what do you do?
0:29:37 So you have the meeting.
0:29:39 You pitch the idea.
0:29:41 Do you have a way of kind of pitching it to your team?
0:29:44 Or what’s happening in that meeting?
0:29:46 In that meeting, anyone can pitch.
0:29:47 So it’s not just me.
0:29:50 Everyone usually has different ideas.
0:29:55 And so, yeah, it’s like, hey, here’s an AI defensible idea.
0:29:56 XYZ.
0:29:57 Here’s why it’s a Maui idea.
0:30:01 So we kind of have a common understanding on what a Maui idea is.
0:30:02 Which is roughly what?
0:30:08 It’s roughly an idea that can cash flow that doesn’t require a lot of outside funding.
0:30:10 We could fund it ourselves.
0:30:18 And where it’s, like, boring and complicated enough where random people are not going to copy us that easily or reverse engineer it that easily.
0:30:23 Those are Maui ideas, and that’s what I’d encourage anyone else to do as well.
0:30:29 Like, if you’re an auto mechanic expert, then that might be your theme of idea.
0:30:31 And we have that for, like, financial services in particular.
0:30:32 Right.
0:30:36 And so you, where do you leave that meeting?
0:30:37 You say, all right, what are we going to do next?
0:30:42 We say, okay, what are we going to get done to advance this between this week and next week?
0:30:44 And we just get very specific.
0:30:47 And it’s like, all right, like, person A, you’re doing these five things.
0:30:48 Person B, you’re doing these five things.
0:30:54 And the next step might be, like, okay, let’s just go call, like, for Holy Health.
0:31:03 The next step was, let’s just call some chiropractors and ask them if they, you know, figure out who accepts insurance and who doesn’t and why.
0:31:09 And then ask them why don’t they plug into these existing companies that should be doing something similar.
0:31:12 So a lot of it’s just, like, what are the questions we’re curious about?
0:31:16 And psychologically, are you trying to disqualify an idea or are you trying to qualify an idea?
0:31:17 Like, what’s the mindset?
0:31:20 Is it, I’m trying to figure out, is this good or bad?
0:31:23 Or is it, like, I’m listing the riskiest assumption, I’m doing it?
0:31:26 What are you trying to do during those next few weeks?
0:31:31 It’s not we’re trying to figure it out or disqualify it, per se.
0:31:33 I think either attitude might be too extreme.
0:31:38 It’s more like there might be a creative angle here that no one else has thought through.
0:31:40 And so we’re not married to this idea.
0:31:41 We’re holding it very loosely.
0:31:48 We just have to figure out, like, okay, you might hear an interesting insight from a chiropractor that says, hey, your idea is okay.
0:31:54 But what would make it really good is if you also added in all these AI agents to automate away my receptionist.
0:31:58 And then, you know, my customer acquisition is terrible because X, Y, Z.
0:32:03 Like, those are the insights we’re looking for to then manufacture an upgraded version of the idea.
0:32:08 So we assume the first idea is terrible, and it’s going to go through, like, 10 pivots.
0:32:08 Right.
0:32:09 Like, yeah.
0:32:12 Which is very useful because that’s almost always the case.
0:32:18 And if you don’t have that attitude, you basically, you hear something really juicy, but you’re so locked in.
0:32:23 It’s like somebody was handing you gold, but you were out there just, you know, searching for bronze.
0:32:25 And it’s like, are you sure?
0:32:26 You sure you want that?
0:32:30 I was going to ask you, you know, you’re talking a lot about ideas.
0:32:36 In Silicon Valley, there’s this idea, there’s this phrase, which is, you know, ideas are worthless.
0:32:37 Execution is everything.
0:32:38 Do you buy that?
0:32:39 I think it’s BS.
0:32:43 I think it’s, I think it’s some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard in Silicon Valley.
0:32:46 So what’s your take?
0:32:50 My take is that ideas are really freaking important.
0:32:53 And if you have the wrong idea, you’d be a great team and you’re screwed.
0:32:59 And actually, I modified my thinking on this because I was a scout for Sequoia Capital for many years.
0:33:06 And they would show us a bunch of these like great ideas with amazing traction, especially in consumer internet.
0:33:10 And then they would ask us, would you invest on this memo?
0:33:11 Yes or no.
0:33:12 And so we would vote.
0:33:14 And then they’d say, well, here’s what happened to that company.
0:33:20 It ended up being, you know, a zero, even though it had the best team, the idea was still garbage.
0:33:22 So it ended up being a zero.
0:33:25 And that was like a common theme I noticed.
0:33:28 So they would train, almost train you on historical memos, basically?
0:33:28 Yeah.
0:33:29 Oh, wow.
0:33:30 Isn’t that incredible?
0:33:37 But if the traction was great, is it usually the traction or just the team and the thesis was great?
0:33:39 I mean, the early traction might have been good and the team looks good.
0:33:45 But then if you really think through the long term, like, is this idea sticky after a year or two?
0:33:46 Will there be copycats?
0:33:51 Like, is it like, is there anything that really holds the consumer in?
0:33:54 You know, that’s where these ideas would then lose steam.
0:33:54 Right.
0:33:55 And die.
0:33:59 And so that kind of helped me think about this a bit differently.
0:34:02 And so you’re saying ideas are super important.
0:34:03 Ideas are really important.
0:34:04 And the team is really important.
0:34:05 They’re both really important.
0:34:08 But to say, oh, yeah, like, ideas are a dime a dozen.
0:34:10 Like, really, it’s not just the idea.
0:34:12 It’s like the whole thinking of the business.
0:34:28 Like, doing the calls to, like, understand or meeting with the chiropractors in person or the auto mechanic and really figuring out these juicy tidbits that you’re not going to find out by sending out a stupid survey or by using ChatGPT to tell me, hey, what are the problems that chiropractors have?
0:34:33 Like, that helps you build an interview script for what you’re going to then talk to them about.
0:34:35 But then, you know, you have to show up.
0:34:45 So, like, when I was building in Enero, I would go to Yelp and I would call these CPAs and I would say, hey, I’m like a 19-year-old college kid.
0:34:46 I know nothing about business.
0:34:48 I want to do something to help accountants.
0:34:53 Could I come to you, buy you lunch and just, like, ask you some questions just for 15 minutes?
0:34:54 And then you show up.
0:34:56 They’re not going to kick you out after 15 minutes.
0:34:57 15 minutes is going to turn into two hours.
0:34:59 And you have your notepad, your scribbling.
0:35:00 Like, they love that.
0:35:02 They want to be helpful.
0:35:02 Right.
0:35:05 And I did a lot of that personally.
0:35:11 Like, I just showed up and asked them my questions and then got all these insights.
0:35:12 And we still do that.
0:35:13 I’m still on these calls.
0:35:14 Okay?
0:35:20 Like, even if it’s not in person, if you could at least do, like, hour-long plus, you know, expert calls.
0:35:22 Like, we use GLG for this.
0:35:25 There’s also, like, alpha sites.
0:35:26 And they charge you a lot.
0:35:34 You know, you might be paying $800 for $1,000 to talk to an expert in a very difficult-to-find area versus, like, accountants and chiropractors.
0:35:36 Like, you could just call someone on the internet.
0:35:41 But if you want to find, like, an expert in titanium mining, how are you going to find that person?
0:35:43 You go to GLG and you pay them $1,000.
0:35:45 So, they’ll find the person for you, set up the phone call for you.
0:35:46 Right.
0:35:47 And we do that all the time.
0:35:53 The way you’re talking about ideas and markets, it reminds me of, there’s a story of this marketer.
0:35:56 And the marketer goes to, I think, a seminar or something like that.
0:35:57 There’s other marketers there.
0:36:02 And he goes, okay, we are going to, let’s pretend we’re opening up a hot dog stand.
0:36:07 And he’s like, so I can get, he’s like, I’m a genie.
0:36:10 I will give you anything you want to make your hot dog stand the most successful you can make.
0:36:12 So, he goes, what do you want?
0:36:13 And so, first person, what do you want?
0:36:16 The guy’s like, I want the best ingredients, best buns.
0:36:17 He’s like, got it, best buns.
0:36:18 You, what do you want?
0:36:20 He’s like, no, no, no, buns, that’s foolish.
0:36:23 In the food business, location is everything.
0:36:26 So, location, all right, I got you this corner spot in a high traffic area.
0:36:27 Cool.
0:36:28 Location, you got it.
0:36:29 What do you want?
0:36:32 And each person had, like, best branding, best, whatever.
0:36:37 And he goes, I have one thing that I think will beat all of you if we all did the same thing.
0:36:39 And we all got our wish granted.
0:36:41 He goes, all I want is a starving crowd.
0:36:47 And if you’re a marketer, like, you’re going to spend a lot of time and energy trying to sell something.
0:36:52 The absolute best decision you can make up front is finding a starving, ravenous crowd.
0:37:05 And it sounds like, you know, when you say ideas, really the idea, you know, what’s underneath an idea is a customer or a set of customers who have, like, a real pain and, like, a desire to solve that pain.
0:37:07 You know, like, they are hungry.
0:37:08 And they’re hungry for something.
0:37:13 And if you just show up with even decent buns and hot dogs, like, they’ll buy it, you know, instantaneously.
0:37:14 It’s okay if it’s a little cold.
0:37:15 It doesn’t matter.
0:37:16 Yeah, that’s a great story.
0:37:19 It’s about, like, how acute is this problem?
0:37:27 And ideally, one hallmark of a Maui idea is the customer doesn’t have to pay anything.
0:37:30 So in Holy Health, you don’t pay to be on our platform.
0:37:34 By being part of our platform, you make more money.
0:37:35 You get more customers.
0:37:39 And we’ll take a cut of that in exchange for helping you grow your business.
0:37:40 So you like that model because there’s no friction.
0:37:41 I love that model.
0:37:44 It’s like, why would you say no to that?
0:37:46 It’s like, you’re just saying no to more business.
0:37:51 Yeah, that’s like those companies that they’ll negotiate with all vendors on your behalf.
0:37:53 And they’re like, whatever we save, we’ll take 20%.
0:37:54 You’re saving nothing today.
0:37:56 If I save you any money, I’ll take 20%.
0:37:58 And it’s like, okay, go have at it.
0:38:00 You were talking about, you had a couple other ideas.
0:38:01 You had, like, a divorce one.
0:38:02 What was that one?
0:38:02 Oh, yeah.
0:38:05 That was like, I had so many friends getting divorced and still do.
0:38:11 And people say they need an advance on their alimony or, like, there’s going to be,
0:38:15 or their money gets tied up and locked up because they’re in divorce proceedings
0:38:16 and they’re really rich.
0:38:20 They’re really successful, but they can’t tap any of their own capital while it’s all tied up.
0:38:22 So what if we could just give them some of their money back?
0:38:24 And so that was just like a funny, random.
0:38:29 Creative financing around either the window of a divorce or the alimony.
0:38:30 We called it divorce.fund.
0:38:33 Didn’t go forward with that one?
0:38:36 No, I mean, people talk about it and we still joke about it,
0:38:40 but there are other ideas that we got more excited about, so.
0:38:42 So let’s talk about failures because one of the things you said to me before this.
0:38:43 Oh, man, so many failures.
0:38:46 You were like, I like your podcast, but, you know, sometimes you listen to people
0:38:51 and it just sounds like it’s, I had this idea, it worked, I’m so great.
0:38:53 You know, like, that’s a podcast problem.
0:38:58 And you were like, I want to be super honest about things we’re trying that are not working
0:38:59 or failures that I’ve had.
0:39:00 Where do you want to start?
0:39:08 Yeah, I mean, I would start by saying when I use YouTube and I have all these entrepreneur
0:39:12 business podcasts, I spend a lot of time flipping through and I think, man, like I’m not doing
0:39:13 enough.
0:39:14 Like, I’m not good enough.
0:39:18 Even when, like, I watch your podcast, I think that.
0:39:22 And I think that a lot of people, you know, probably share that view.
0:39:25 And the people you interview, I know a lot of these people.
0:39:26 These are my friends.
0:39:28 I know what they’re secretly struggling with.
0:39:28 Yeah.
0:39:31 And they’re not necessarily sharing all of that.
0:39:33 And I think that’s just important to know.
0:39:37 So in my case, looks like I am good at coming up with these things and having success.
0:39:40 But most of the time, they’re total duds.
0:39:43 And one example is we had this idea, we called it Cred Boost.
0:39:45 Terrible idea in hindsight.
0:39:47 I’m so embarrassed to share this, but I’m going to share it anyway.
0:39:53 New York City founders, if you’ve listened to My First Million before, you know I’ve got
0:39:54 this company called Hampton.
0:39:57 And Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.
0:40:02 A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people
0:40:03 who I met in Hampton.
0:40:05 We have this big community of 1,000 plus people and it’s amazing.
0:40:10 But the main part is this eight-person core group that becomes your board of advisors for
0:40:12 your life and for your business and it’s life-changing.
0:40:19 Now, to the folks in New York City, I’m building an in-real-life core group in New York City.
0:40:24 And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does $3 million in revenue
0:40:28 or you’ve raised $3 million in funding, or you’ve started and sold a company for at least
0:40:31 $10 million, then you are eligible to apply.
0:40:33 So go to joinhampton.com and apply.
0:40:36 I’m going to be reviewing all of the applications myself.
0:40:40 So put that you heard about this on MFM so I know to give you a little extra love.
0:40:41 Now, back to the show.
0:40:49 And the idea was, we’re going to help you improve your credit.
0:40:56 We had the customer acquisition funnel going and it was high churn, low price point, very
0:40:59 high regulation by the FTC.
0:41:03 It got compared to credit repair businesses too much.
0:41:07 And my idea was, we’re going to boost your credit, not just repair your credit.
0:41:11 And it could have made some money, but we just got bored with that.
0:41:14 And so I burned a few hundred thousand bucks experimenting with that.
0:41:16 And then I put in the wrong team.
0:41:17 So I made so many mistakes on that.
0:41:20 That was an early incubation that went nowhere.
0:41:29 And this other idea was, we’re going to help veterans of the U.S. military find new jobs.
0:41:33 And we’re going to get paid by Vet Tech and the GI Bill to do that.
0:41:35 And we could do this all online.
0:41:38 So it’s virtual, it’s scalable, and we’re helping veterans.
0:41:41 So it felt like it was a really good idea.
0:41:43 And the veteran, all they have to do is say yes.
0:41:46 So we launched all these ads, all these veterans signed up.
0:41:52 They’re like, hell yeah, I could double my salary, make more money, and do this all online from
0:41:53 the comfort of my home.
0:42:00 And our payment mechanism was this thing called Vet Tech, V-E-T-T-E-C.
0:42:05 And it had bipartisan acceptance.
0:42:08 Everyone loved it, but it got stuck.
0:42:11 It got approved by the House and never went up to the Senate.
0:42:13 And the money dried up.
0:42:15 And we were like, all right, we’ll get renewed imminently.
0:42:18 And 18 months after that, still not renewed today, still not renewed.
0:42:22 And we’re like, okay, well, the HEP business died just because of that.
0:42:23 And then I tried to pivot it.
0:42:25 I’m like, oh, can I get the GI Bill to pay for it?
0:42:27 But then the GI Bill requires in person.
0:42:29 And then after that, we lost interest.
0:42:32 Like, I was the only one excited about this still.
0:42:33 I’m like, guys, we’ve got to help the veterans.
0:42:36 My team’s like, we have other ideas that will make more money, Jess.
0:42:37 And we want to make money.
0:42:40 Like, all right, I’ll come back to this when the time’s right.
0:42:41 So swings and misses for sure.
0:42:42 I want to show you this.
0:42:44 I want you to read this.
0:42:46 This is from a talk you gave.
0:42:47 Oh, man.
0:42:48 This is not just…
0:42:52 This is when it hurts, but not just because an idea is wrong.
0:42:52 Uh-huh.
0:42:54 Sometimes it’s even when the idea is right.
0:42:54 Yeah.
0:42:55 And you’re running a company.
0:42:56 Can you read this?
0:42:57 I want you to read that.
0:43:04 I wrote this to my mom and my dad on Saturday, June 4th, 2011 at 5.56 a.m.
0:43:05 So I was up all night.
0:43:06 I couldn’t go to sleep.
0:43:07 I was so upset.
0:43:08 Subject line.
0:43:09 Kind of sad.
0:43:15 I feel like I’m Bernie Madoff, rich on the outside, but completely broken on the inside.
0:43:18 There’s just a lot of pressure right now because the company is running dry on money in the next
0:43:19 nine or so months.
0:43:23 And we really need to produce this summer or else we’re royally screwed.
0:43:30 This was about a year after Y Combinator for me.
0:43:34 Anyway, I want to start seeing a therapist or something because this is just no way to live.
0:43:37 I have no idea how you handle this entrepreneur job, Jess.
0:43:38 Wow.
0:43:39 And my mom, she’s an entrepreneur.
0:43:41 She came here as an immigrant.
0:43:42 Do you remember sending that?
0:43:43 I do.
0:43:44 I absolutely remember that.
0:43:45 I remember the night.
0:43:53 I remember how I was just like very upset because I had all these hoops and expectations on myself.
0:43:56 And, you know, Paul Graham, even he was my mentor.
0:43:59 And he’s like, you’re going to be one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time.
0:44:01 You, Patrick Hollison, and Sam Altman.
0:44:04 And I’m still the least successful today.
0:44:06 And I still think about that often.
0:44:08 And that weight was on your shoulders.
0:44:10 That weight was totally on my shoulders.
0:44:11 It still is on my shoulders.
0:44:17 And, and my mom called me and she said, hey, like, I love you no matter what.
0:44:19 Even if you’re a total business failure, I’ll still love you.
0:44:29 And then I just cut all my expenses, cut my burn, moved into a tiny apartment with my business partner and, and then just slowly crawled out, out of the hole.
0:44:35 And then, yeah, we grew in and out to, you know, it’s a few hundred employees, profitable, good business, not a unicorn.
0:44:45 But it gave me all the training and spiritual training to pursue entrepreneurship and be comfortable with mistakes and failure.
0:44:53 Were you, uh, at that time, I guess, like, what was the conversation with yourself to like, because you’re like, I did these things.
0:44:54 I lowered my burn.
0:44:55 I did this.
0:44:55 I did this.
0:44:57 So those are the actions.
0:44:59 But before the action comes, some, there’s some inner monologue.
0:45:01 There’s some conversation you got to have with yourself.
0:45:08 And I love the inner monologue because your whole life gets dictated by this tiny little voice in your head that nobody hears.
0:45:12 It’s the one telling you how to feel, what to do, where to stand, what to say.
0:45:21 And I think training that and learning how to like, kind of, uh, improve that inner monologue is so important.
0:45:24 And you, it gets better in moments like this, right?
0:45:27 That’s when it gets, that’s the muscle building for that, that inner monologue.
0:45:30 Do you, do you remember kind of what you were telling yourself at that phase?
0:45:31 You wrote this, your mom tells you something.
0:45:32 What’d you tell yourself?
0:45:37 I distinctly remember what the monologue was that whole evening, which is I am destined for greatness.
0:45:40 And I am not producing my best work right now.
0:45:42 I am not showing up at my best.
0:45:43 I’m not playing to win.
0:45:48 And I’m, I’m falling behind and I need to diagnose what went wrong.
0:45:52 And I need to keep on trying and I will not accept or tolerate failure.
0:45:54 That was what was going through my head.
0:45:56 Were you listening to a song at that time?
0:45:56 Where did that come from?
0:45:57 That was fire.
0:45:58 No, it was just.
0:46:02 How’d you get yourself into that state from kind of sad to like, kind of kick ass?
0:46:04 No, that was sad though.
0:46:07 That was not, it was not an empowered attitude.
0:46:12 I was, I was thinking that and, but because I knew that that was my situation,
0:46:16 then it went from like, all right, like I need to do all this or I’m screwed.
0:46:19 And then like, all right, I’m really sad and I got to process my emotions.
0:46:20 Right.
0:46:24 Just get it out of me and, you know, be honest with myself that I’m struggling.
0:46:25 I need to ask for help.
0:46:31 And I didn’t have a great community because back at that time, you, you know, as an entrepreneur,
0:46:36 you want to show off, you want to posture, you want to seem like you’re better than everyone else.
0:46:40 And then after that, I realized I could just be honest and I’ll still have friends.
0:46:46 And I told all my girlfriends and ends up more people were struggling than I realized.
0:46:49 More of my Y Combinator batch mates were also running out of money.
0:46:54 And if we look back today, most of the companies from that batch did not make it.
0:47:00 Most of them went BK and then people took normal jobs or started new companies and then eventually found success.
0:47:02 And so, yeah, I still think about that.
0:47:04 I still have thoughts like that today.
0:47:06 It’s not, it’s a work in progress.
0:47:11 You know, I’ve, I’ve done whatever, 600 of these episodes.
0:47:19 And at a certain point, you know, you’d have to be sort of stupid to not realize like there’s a mindset amongst the common mindset that I think great entrepreneurs have.
0:47:21 And I’ve distilled it down into this.
0:47:26 I think a great entrepreneur’s mindset is they’re ignorant of the past because it’s already done.
0:47:28 If they live there, they’ll die there.
0:47:35 And if you just stay stuck on, well, I’ve been failing for five years, you know, then you will feel like a failure and you won’t be able to win.
0:47:40 So you’re ignorant of the past, realistic about the present, which is kind of what you said.
0:47:41 Like, I’m not showing up at my best.
0:47:43 I’m not putting in all the effort.
0:47:46 I’m not doing the obvious things that I should be doing right now.
0:47:49 But I’m also not, it’s not over.
0:47:50 And so they don’t make it worse than it is.
0:47:51 They don’t make it better than it is.
0:47:53 They see it as it actually is.
0:47:56 So ignorant of the past, realistic about the present and delusional about the future.
0:48:01 You have to have that delusion because if you’re just realistic and practical about the future, you don’t do anything great.
0:48:04 Yeah, that’s really well articulated.
0:48:12 I think also going through moments like that, I remember then talking to my business partner and we did a full postmortem.
0:48:21 We listed out every single strategic and tactical mistake and thing we did wrong and what we would do different if we went back in time.
0:48:25 And I wish I wrote this somewhere because it was a long list.
0:48:30 I mean, it was like I would do everything different if I could go back in time was that attitude.
0:48:50 And even today I was talking to, or yesterday I was talking to one of my colleagues and the number of bad ideas we funded and experimented with and our process flaws, you know, we would also do everything different going three years back if we could.
0:48:52 But we’re talking about this constantly.
0:48:55 And that goes back to what we talked about at first, Kodawari.
0:48:58 So every week, what if we bake this into our workflow?
0:49:05 No matter how good things are, let’s still reflect on all the mistakes we made so that we can improve and not repeat that again.
0:49:10 It doesn’t have to be when times are tough and when you’re about to run out of money that you’re reflecting on like everything.
0:49:11 Yeah, yeah.
0:49:12 No old mistakes.
0:49:14 It’s kind of like the, it’s the no new friends.
0:49:15 It’s the no old mistakes is what you want.
0:49:17 You don’t, you don’t want to keep making those same mistakes again.
0:49:21 You said something when you were talking about like, I’m not, you said, I’m not showing up the way I need to.
0:49:23 You said, I’m not playing to win.
0:49:23 Yeah.
0:49:25 That’s something while I was talking to your boyfriend before this.
0:49:28 And he goes, I asked him, I said, what’s a, what’s a Jess-ism?
0:49:36 Meaning like if you talk to people enough, you sort of see their, the things they repeat, the things that are like their philosophy that they’re like actually operating on.
0:49:41 And he said something like, play to win, don’t play not to lose.
0:49:42 Explain that.
0:49:50 I think that came from this story that I just shared where I, one of my problems was I was playing not to lose.
0:50:02 So I was in a scarcity mindset and when I’m running out of money and I’m in scarcity mindset, I mean, there’s research that talks about how your IQ drops by a lot during those periods.
0:50:09 And so I’m not going to think outside of the box and playing to win means I’m optimistic.
0:50:10 I’m delusional about the future of it.
0:50:11 Right.
0:50:15 So I, I see a lot of my friends who are just like playing it too safe.
0:50:18 They’re not, they’re not trying new things.
0:50:23 And so you can’t do the same thing you’ve been doing and expect a completely different outcome.
0:50:24 Right.
0:50:32 What’s an example, maybe non-business related where in your life you’re playing to, you had the moment where you’re like, ah, I need to play to win here instead of play not to lose.
0:50:42 Like, uh, for example, with the airplane, you know, this is a physical manifestation of that attitude and why it’s really fun to share that with everyone today.
0:50:46 Um, it’s easy to say, ah, I’m going to be frugal.
0:50:47 I’m going to save the money.
0:50:48 I’m going to let it compound.
0:50:53 I’m going to invest it in my other businesses or, you know, screw it.
0:50:54 I’m playing to win here.
0:50:58 This is going to manifest way more abundance for me than if I don’t.
0:51:00 You had told me something that when we were at lunch that inspired me.
0:51:05 You met somebody, I think, who threw a great event and you hired this person.
0:51:09 You were like, hey, here’s a budget and I will pay you whatever you’re making your job.
0:51:11 I’ll pay you that or more, whatever.
0:51:20 You’re like, I want to have four events a year in these four cities with the most like inspiring, fun people in my life that I want to create.
0:51:29 I want to engineer some serendipity, some luck, some fun, some cross pollination of people and ideas four times a year in these, in these places.
0:51:33 And I remember I’ve told probably five people this because you need some resources to do it.
0:51:35 Yes, of course, of course.
0:51:39 Like don’t, if you’re in the YouTube comments, don’t be that guy who’s like, oh, it must be nice to have money.
0:51:39 Great.
0:51:41 There’s a version of this in your life too.
0:51:43 You can take people out to dinner, right?
0:51:44 It doesn’t have to be a grand event.
0:51:49 But I was like, that is an investment that I don’t even have a line item for.
0:51:49 Yeah.
0:51:50 Right.
0:51:52 I kind of know if I did it, probably really good.
0:51:55 I would A, have a lot of fun and B, like, yeah, I do think good things would happen.
0:52:06 But you took an almost like intentional business capital allocation approach to the like luck and fun part of your life, which I think most people leave untouched.
0:52:08 Luck and fun is just something that either happens or doesn’t happen.
0:52:10 It’s not, I don’t use my business brain for that.
0:52:11 I use this other part of my brain.
0:52:14 It seemed like you almost used your, that same brain for both.
0:52:14 Yeah.
0:52:20 Cause I wanted to kill two birds with one stone or three birds with one stone because I want to have fun.
0:52:21 I want to do more business, meet cool people.
0:52:26 But I also had this friend who hated her private equity job and really wanted an excuse to leave.
0:52:28 And so I was able to present that to her.
0:52:34 The vision was four events a year with, you know, the most successful entrepreneurs and investors I know.
0:52:37 And we’re launching the first one literally today.
0:52:40 That’s exactly what I’m flying off to after we’re done.
0:52:46 And then the vision is we’ll do a summer thing, a fall thing, et cetera.
0:52:47 But it was really expensive.
0:52:53 And so what she and I decided to do was we would help her find other work, other events.
0:52:55 So I’d set her up with my other friends throwing events.
0:53:02 She would charge per event and she would get paid based on the revenue coming into the events.
0:53:05 So it’s all variable versus her being on my payroll.
0:53:06 Right.
0:53:09 And so for this event, what I did is I called a bunch of my friends.
0:53:11 I said, hey, you got to pay something because I have hard costs here.
0:53:15 And they paid in and then she only paid herself after there was a profit.
0:53:18 So you could get creative about this.
0:53:23 For the ideas we were talking about earlier and my whole team, a bunch of these people are on contract.
0:53:24 I found them on Upwork.
0:53:25 Yeah.
0:53:25 Okay.
0:53:27 Like you could do this.
0:53:28 What type of person?
0:53:30 Like what skill set do they have that you found out?
0:53:31 You said like Fiverr or Upwork.
0:53:31 Yeah.
0:53:36 Like one’s a product management UI UX thinker.
0:53:40 One is a financial services guy.
0:53:43 One was a intern of mine.
0:53:47 He was at UCLA and he asked me to speak to his entrepreneur club.
0:53:50 And then he said, hey, could I like take you to lunch?
0:53:51 I want to get some advice from you.
0:53:52 What should I do after college?
0:53:55 I’m like, just intern for me and I’ll teach you the ropes.
0:53:58 And then he was so good that now he’s full time with us.
0:54:03 But he’s probably one of my best idea sparring partners.
0:54:08 And then here, this event planning person, I met her from the Burning Man community.
0:54:11 These people are everywhere around you.
0:54:15 They don’t necessarily have a fancy specific resume and they’re fun.
0:54:16 I love them.
0:54:17 We work well together.
0:54:19 That’s more important than the resume.
0:54:19 Right.
0:54:21 I met a friend recently who told me this.
0:54:23 He said something in passing.
0:54:27 He goes, I was at this event and then there was this guy who was, he was dressed differently,
0:54:27 blah, blah.
0:54:30 And me and my friend, we collect eccentric people.
0:54:31 So we went over to him and had a chat.
0:54:32 I kind of paused him.
0:54:35 I was like, that’s kind of a cool thing you just said.
0:54:36 Like I collect eccentric people.
0:54:38 I don’t do that.
0:54:40 And I was like, but what do I, what do I collect?
0:54:43 Like if I just put myself in, if I said, what am I a collector of?
0:54:45 So like for me, I’m a collector of what I call golden nuggets.
0:54:49 It’s like, I can have this conversation with you and I’m just looking for two, three, four
0:54:49 things.
0:54:53 Like I don’t need two hours or 90 minutes of a conversation to be perfect.
0:54:58 I need three ideas that spark something, three golden nuggets that will change my way of thinking
0:54:59 or acting.
0:55:01 So I’m a great collector of those.
0:55:02 I’m also a collector of like young talent.
0:55:07 Like I see somebody who’s young, who’s hustling or is talented in some way.
0:55:12 I will like kind of really help them out because I want to A, stay young myself and
0:55:16 be helpful, but B, I kind of want to be able to connect dots between young people and good
0:55:19 opportunities or young people and funding or whatever it is.
0:55:23 And so I think there’s this interesting idea of like figuring out what is it that you collect?
0:55:25 Like some dudes collect stamps, some dudes collect bugs.
0:55:27 What is it that you collect?
0:55:29 So like for you, what do you, what would you say you collect?
0:55:35 I would say I collect interesting people with outside of the box ideas who also like to have
0:55:35 fun.
0:55:38 That is the key intersection I’m looking for.
0:55:39 That’s your Venn diagram.
0:55:39 Exactly.
0:55:43 Because I think you could find interesting people where they’re not fun.
0:55:44 It’s very transactional.
0:55:46 They’re just in it to make money themselves.
0:55:49 But then the problem with that is then I can’t do any business with them.
0:55:54 So that’s, so then my idea was, okay, how do I bring more of these people together so that
0:55:55 we can have more serendipity?
0:56:00 Oh, I’ll just create my own event and then bring them there and then have a bunch of my people
0:56:03 also, you know, talking to them, getting their ideas and seeing where we could partner
0:56:04 on stuff.
0:56:05 Right, right.
0:56:06 Engineering the serendipity.
0:56:09 Our buddy Nick Gray does a like no cost, low cost version of this.
0:56:12 So he used to do a renegade museum tour.
0:56:13 So he like, he loved museums.
0:56:18 So his Venn diagram was like fun people who are interested in like, you know, going to a
0:56:19 museum on a Friday night.
0:56:22 And he would host his, he wasn’t a part of the museum.
0:56:25 He would just take people on a tour because he knew the museum better than the tour guides.
0:56:27 And he would take them on a fun version of the tour.
0:56:31 They’d like have a drink outside after, uh, beforehand they would go in and they would
0:56:33 like do little fun things at the different stations.
0:56:35 So like that was one thing he did.
0:56:40 Another way he engineered serendipity is he would throw these like singles events where he
0:56:44 himself was looking to date somebody, but he’s like, well, I could just kind of do that.
0:56:45 I can swipe left or right.
0:56:50 Or like, is there something I could do more creative that will not only help me find someone amazing,
0:56:52 but maybe even like a bunch of our friends find somebody amazing.
0:56:53 And he started hosting these singles events.
0:56:56 And again, the, it’s a pizza budget.
0:56:59 It’s not like it’s super fancy, doesn’t have to be fancy, right?
0:57:02 Like, uh, and I feel like I need to say that because we’re sitting on this like jet, but
0:57:05 like, I mean, most of the stuff we do is like very cheap, cost effective and peace for itself
0:57:07 and sometimes makes a profit, you know?
0:57:10 So like just, but just taking that intensity to engineering, some serendipity.
0:57:11 I kind of love that.
0:57:13 Uh, before we leave, what do you just leave me with?
0:57:15 What are you currently nerding out about?
0:57:20 Um, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about like cancer and oncology.
0:57:25 I’ve been thinking a lot about, um, longevity and, you know, we’re still funding a lot of
0:57:28 the research with Mike Levin, who’s my favorite scientist of all time.
0:57:30 He’s the bioelectricity ninja.
0:57:37 And, um, I’ve been nerding out on this a bit more because, um, I was mentioning to you before
0:57:41 we got here, I’ve been in a bit of a sad mood this week.
0:57:48 I had a friend die of cancer a few days ago, um, never smoked a cigarette in her life and had
0:57:49 stage four lung cancer.
0:57:54 And, um, and it’s just more examples of this in my life.
0:57:57 Every year or two, I lose a friend like that.
0:58:01 And, and so it’s not necessarily going to make money.
0:58:05 It’s not going to improve my lifestyle, but I’m just like, I got to nerd out on it.
0:58:06 Right.
0:58:10 Is there exciting progress in the cancer oncology stuff right now?
0:58:14 Like, is there something, is there a new paradigm or a new pathway that’s interesting?
0:58:15 Yeah.
0:58:20 Like with Mike, we, he talks about how he’s been able to use bioelectricity to normalize
0:58:21 cancer cells.
0:58:27 So everyone right now in the field is talking about how do you kill a cancer, right?
0:58:31 You think about chemo, radiation, it’s really painful on the patient, but if you could just
0:58:36 normalize cancer and, um, not have to kill it, that’s going to be a lot more comfortable.
0:58:38 It kind of makes it like a normal non-cancerous cell, basically.
0:58:42 It’s still going to be cancer, but it’s more benign essentially.
0:58:44 So that’s really cool research.
0:58:49 He’s got a lot of great stuff on longevity, making lab, uh, animals live longer.
0:58:52 Um, I don’t think he wants me to talk about it publicly yet, but.
0:58:57 How insane is the AI, uh, AI for medicine and biology?
0:58:59 How is that, how insane is that going to be?
0:59:00 I think it’s going to be amazing.
0:59:03 I think it’s also going to be a lot harder than people think.
0:59:08 Because you have AI that’s coming up with all these ideas, but the bottleneck is still
0:59:10 regulatory, still FDA.
0:59:13 It’s still getting a clinical trial put together.
0:59:17 That’s one area where we’re going to see slower progress than everyone is bragging about.
0:59:21 Whereas, you know, with everything else we discussed with digital twins, if we could have
0:59:23 the two of us brainstorm ideas, there’s no bottleneck there.
0:59:24 Right, right, right.
0:59:28 Like the only bottleneck is like spitting up the computer and then us pulling the trigger
0:59:30 to fund ads or fund whatever.
0:59:34 But in health and bio, it’s people’s lives are at stake.
0:59:36 It’s going to go slow still, I think, unfortunately.
0:59:37 Okay.
0:59:41 Well, where should people find you and what should they send you?
0:59:42 Yeah.
0:59:48 Um, if you have any exotic outside of the box business ideas you want to run by me and,
0:59:52 um, I’d love to discuss that with you, uh, shoot me a note.
0:59:53 And I am on LinkedIn.
0:59:56 LinkedIn, um, just search Jess Ma.
1:00:03 And, um, I post on my blog there almost every week, uh, partially using Chats UBT to come
1:00:06 up with my blog posts, but I still review it.
1:00:10 I’m like, hey, write me a blog post that’s 2950 characters long because the LinkedIn limits
1:00:17 3000 in my voice about X, Y, C, X, Y, C, and insert these anecdotal stories.
1:00:21 And, uh, and then like within two minutes, I have a blog post.
1:00:21 That’s amazing.
1:00:22 Yeah.
1:00:25 But so I post there and these are real live stories in my life.
1:00:27 And, uh, just send me a message on LinkedIn.
1:00:28 Would love to hear from people.
1:00:33 And also the last pod we did, I made a bunch of friends.
1:00:33 Oh, great.
1:00:36 Like people just cold emailed me and I’m like, yeah, I’ll grab lunch with you.
1:00:38 I’ll grab dinner with you.
1:00:42 And two people I met from the pod are coming to my retreat.
1:00:43 That’s a, that’s amazing to hear.
1:00:47 That’s a point of pride for us is like, we want it today.
1:00:51 If somebody comes on the podcast, they, you should get more kind of inbound messages from
1:00:53 this than any other podcast you go on.
1:00:57 And the second would be that the people who message you are people you would actually want
1:00:57 to talk to.
1:00:58 That would be the goal, right?
1:01:01 That if we’re doing that, we’ve kind of built the right tribe here.
1:01:04 So yeah, you’ve done a great job with that real community.
1:01:05 So thanks for having me here.
1:01:05 Awesome.
1:01:06 Well, cheers.
1:01:07 Cheers.
1:01:10 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:01:16 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days off on the road.
1:01:17 Let’s travel.
1:01:18 Never looking back.

0:00:01 Where were you when you were thinking about this?
0:00:04 I have this room in my house where I have the best ideas.
0:00:07 It’s a cool room because if you need a shower, you’re already there.
0:00:08 It’s just the bathroom.
0:00:09 Okay, so I’m in the bathroom.
0:00:11 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:00:13 I know I could be what I want to.
0:00:16 I put my all in it like no day’s off.
0:00:19 On the road, let’s travel, never looking back.
0:00:21 All right, I got a business I can tell you a little bit about that.
0:00:22 It kind of blew my mind.
0:00:26 So I was on TBPN by our good buddy, John Coogan.
0:00:28 I went on there, and they asked me a question.
0:00:36 They go, so you’re a creator, and you’ve got this kind of cool business underneath yourself as a creator.
0:00:39 Are you bullish on investing in creators right now?
0:00:44 And I go, no, but I’m bullish on creators investing in businesses.
0:00:46 And they were like, what do you mean?
0:00:49 I said, well, actually, what I’m doing is it’s not that somebody invested in me.
0:00:51 I’m investing.
0:00:56 I’m buying pieces of businesses that I think should exist or that I can accelerate in some way.
0:00:58 And that’s going really, really well for me.
0:01:00 So I think that’s going to be a model that people do.
0:01:06 And so I started thinking about this and saw an example today that kind of blew my mind.
0:01:08 So do you know who Nick Saban is?
0:01:11 I smell what you’re stepping in.
0:01:12 Great.
0:01:13 Not a friend.
0:01:13 Great.
0:01:13 Yes.
0:01:15 I love where you’re going with this.
0:01:16 Yes, I do know who he is.
0:01:18 You tooting my horn?
0:01:20 Yeah, beep, beep, my friend.
0:01:21 I like Nick Saban.
0:01:21 All right.
0:01:26 So Nick Saban, who is the, he was the coach, football coach at Alabama and LSU.
0:01:31 And he’s like probably the most successful modern day college football coach.
0:01:35 The guy made probably $150 million as a coach.
0:01:36 Amazing money.
0:01:38 Is that real?
0:01:40 $150 million as a college football coach?
0:01:41 Yeah.
0:01:42 He’s like in his 50s.
0:01:43 So he’s been doing it for a long time.
0:01:47 But like his last contract was basically a 10-year, $100 million contract.
0:01:50 He was making $10 to $12 million a year, his last contract.
0:01:51 Wow.
0:01:53 But Nick Saban is actually going to be a billionaire.
0:01:56 And he’s going to be a billionaire because of car dealerships.
0:01:58 And I found this pretty fascinating.
0:01:59 I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
0:02:01 So the story is pretty cool.
0:02:03 Here’s how it goes.
0:02:06 So Nick Saban has partnered up with this guy.
0:02:08 I think his name is John Agresti.
0:02:11 And the headline of the article was,
0:02:13 The Man Who Will Make Nick Saban a Billionaire.
0:02:19 And it talks about how Saban, while he was coaching, was deciding like,
0:02:19 you know what?
0:02:21 I think I might go into car dealerships.
0:02:24 And car dealerships have had like an interesting history with athletes.
0:02:27 I remember growing up in Colorado, John Elway,
0:02:29 all the car dealerships had John Elway’s name on him.
0:02:32 And he was our active quarterback at the Broncos.
0:02:35 And I didn’t really know this because I was just a kid at the time.
0:02:36 But I went back and looked.
0:02:38 I was like, what happened with John Elway’s car dealerships?
0:02:42 And it turns out Elway basically had this insane story where he,
0:02:47 while he was a player, he started this car dealership brand,
0:02:50 selling Toyotas and like Chevys or something like that.
0:02:57 And before he retires, he sells his car dealership group to AutoNation for $87 million,
0:02:58 mostly stock.
0:03:04 And so he gets, he gets paid out $90 million, which is more than he was making as a quarterback for,
0:03:06 you know, professional quarterback in the NFL.
0:03:13 And he then also licensed them his face and his name so that they could continue using his brand all the way for like another 10 years.
0:03:15 And he, but he had a non-compete during that time.
0:03:18 And two crazy things happened.
0:03:26 One, because of that, because of that deal structure, John Elway, both made, he made a bag and he lost a huge bag at the same time.
0:03:27 So he made $87 million.
0:03:34 But then when he retires, it turns out that the owner of the Broncos offered John Elway an incredible deal.
0:03:39 He basically told him, you can buy 10% of the team for $15 million today.
0:03:44 And actually I owe you this like deferred salary because you’re going to retire earlier or something like that.
0:03:46 He owed him $21 million of deferred salary.
0:03:47 He said, you know what?
0:03:51 I’ll let you buy another 10% for that 21 million.
0:03:55 And he’s John Elway is like, I don’t know.
0:03:56 That’s a lot of money.
0:03:59 And the guy goes, I’ll make it even more of a no-brainer for you.
0:04:03 If you want to, if you change your mind, you don’t like it.
0:04:05 You want to sell the team within the next five years.
0:04:11 I will pay you back everything you may, everything you put in plus $5 million and 8% annual interest.
0:04:14 So you, you literally can’t lose money in this deal.
0:04:15 Like you can only make money.
0:04:17 Who owned the Broncos at the time?
0:04:18 Bernie Madoff?
0:04:20 Because this sounds like a deal too good to be true.
0:04:21 Pat Bolin.
0:04:24 And so Pat wanted John Elway to be part of the team.
0:04:27 So he wanted him also to work as an exec with the team.
0:04:27 Got it.
0:04:30 And I guess he was like, I’m going to pay you this money either way.
0:04:32 How about instead I trade you stock for the team?
0:04:33 Okay.
0:04:36 So Elway actually turns the deal down.
0:04:38 He turns it down for two reasons.
0:04:43 One, he’s illiquid because he sold for $87 million, but it’s auto trader stock.
0:04:46 And so he didn’t have liquidity at the time.
0:04:47 Maybe you can sell right away.
0:04:52 He didn’t have the 15 million cash on hand because he had also just made an investment for $15 million.
0:04:57 It’s some guy named Sean Mueller, who was actually just running a Ponzi scheme that ended up failing.
0:05:00 And he lost, you know, half of his money in that.
0:05:00 He got half of it back.
0:05:01 He lost half of it.
0:05:02 So he didn’t have the cash.
0:05:03 So he’s like, ah, I can’t do it.
0:05:05 And then he’s like, you know, also.
0:05:07 Dude, he listened to the wrong, the wrong Ponzi scheme guy.
0:05:08 I thought it was the Bracco guy.
0:05:10 Turns out it was this other guy.
0:05:10 Exactly.
0:05:15 And by the way, that stake, that 20% stake, that’s about a billion dollar stake today in the team.
0:05:16 The team just sold for $5 billion.
0:05:19 So Eloy missed out on that.
0:05:25 And after the non-compete ended, he then went back into the car dealership business and he’s built it back up.
0:05:30 And now that car dealership business does like, you know, again, over a billion dollars in sales.
0:05:34 And he’s worth a few hundred million dollars from his second rodeo on the car dealership side.
0:05:36 So I don’t really, I don’t know.
0:05:38 I didn’t put enough respect on the car dealership name.
0:05:40 Let me tell you about the Nick Saban one now.
0:05:46 What caught my eye is that a story came out saying that they bought two dealers, two dealerships in Miami.
0:05:48 Two, two car dealerships in Miami.
0:05:49 Guess the price.
0:05:51 $20 million.
0:05:52 I don’t know.
0:05:52 Ten.
0:05:55 You’re only off by 680 million.
0:05:56 Wait, what?
0:06:00 They bought two dealerships for a reported $700 million in Miami.
0:06:02 Oh my God.
0:06:03 Oh, and they’re Mercedes.
0:06:04 I’m looking at the article.
0:06:06 They’re high-end Mercedes dealerships.
0:06:07 I think they have like an exclusive.
0:06:12 I think they’re in like the prime ultra rich area of Miami.
0:06:18 But dude, I had no, I actually spent 30 minutes this morning to figure out, is this a typo?
0:06:22 Because I was like, there was no way that individual dealerships could be worth $350 million.
0:06:27 In fact, I’m still like 25% convinced that might be a typo and it might be 70 million.
0:06:30 But I couldn’t, after 30 minutes of digging, I couldn’t find it.
0:06:31 But it’s pretty insane.
0:06:36 Their dealership group, they now own like, I don’t know, 10 to 15 dealers, dealerships
0:06:40 across like Alabama, where he was the coach, to now Miami.
0:06:47 And he says that the guy said that they sell 22,000 cars a year, 22,000 Mercedes a year, which
0:06:50 is, and then he says they do about $2 billion in revenue on that.
0:06:51 That’s insane.
0:06:53 The partner is now worth a billion dollars on paper.
0:06:56 And Saban will probably be worth a billion dollars after these deals.
0:06:57 Isn’t that wild?
0:06:58 It’s crazy.
0:07:01 Did I not bring this up a while ago?
0:07:05 I thought, because I think I read some, I didn’t know that he was a billionaire, but
0:07:07 I read some stat about car dealerships.
0:07:08 It’s crazy.
0:07:10 And you told me you wanted to cover car dealers.
0:07:15 Interestingly, recently, Forbes, they did an article with another beautiful title.
0:07:19 It was called The Car Dealership Billionaire No One Knows.
0:07:26 And it’s about this guy named Terry Taylor, who owns, I think, 120 car dealerships.
0:07:27 And he also lives in Florida.
0:07:32 But they came across him because they’re like, well, this guy doesn’t do any interviews.
0:07:34 We’ve never seen a photo of him.
0:07:35 We don’t know anything about him.
0:07:40 But what we do know is that someone recently bought Tommy Hilfinger.
0:07:44 They bought his $30 million mansion in New York City.
0:07:49 And it turns out the same LLC owns $250 million worth of real estate.
0:07:50 who’s behind this.
0:07:56 And they find out that it’s this auto dealership owner who owns practically the whole thing.
0:07:58 And he owns a bunch of them.
0:08:00 And he’s just making a lot of money.
0:08:01 And they eventually get a hold of him.
0:08:03 And he goes, I heard you’ve talked to all my associates.
0:08:04 Fine.
0:08:06 I will answer just a few questions for you.
0:08:10 And the whole story is how he purposely is trying to be low key and under the radar.
0:08:14 But they uncover that he owns, you know, an $80 million jet.
0:08:15 He owns all this amazing stuff.
0:08:20 And so it turns out car dealerships, shockingly amazing companies.
0:08:21 Shockingly amazing.
0:08:22 Yeah.
0:08:26 Like, I think they get little local monopolies because I think you get like a territory.
0:08:30 You might become the only dealer for that brand in that area.
0:08:36 And then people tend to buy from, you know, a local radius if they’re not buying online.
0:08:40 And I think the way that they work is like the car manufacturers basically do like floor
0:08:41 financing or something like that.
0:08:45 They basically like lend you, they basically finance you to own the inventory.
0:08:48 So I think you’re not out of pocket as much as it would sound like.
0:08:50 It’s very bank friendly.
0:08:56 So in this article, they were talking about how once you’ve proven to Mercedes or whoever
0:09:01 that you’re a decent operator, they, you know, they’re like, yeah, we would love to expand.
0:09:02 You’re trustworthy.
0:09:02 Let’s go.
0:09:07 And then the banks will be like, yeah, like this is a very like predictable business.
0:09:09 Like we’ve seen this for a hundred years.
0:09:11 We will loan you money once you prove it to be successful.
0:09:13 So it’s a very loanable business.
0:09:18 And the way that this happened was Saban was sponsored by Mercedes.
0:09:21 So he had just got done some events, show up, take some pictures, kiss some babies.
0:09:25 And so he goes to these Mercedes events and he’s like, oh, okay.
0:09:27 Like, I think like Mercedes is great.
0:09:29 So he talks to them.
0:09:29 He’s like, yeah, I’m interested.
0:09:32 Actually, like I might, I may be interested in like doing a dealership.
0:09:35 And they go, listen, you’re not going to want to operate these things.
0:09:39 You keep being Nick Saban, God tier football coach.
0:09:40 You go obsessed over that.
0:09:41 Let’s enter.
0:09:45 We’ll introduce you to four or five of our favorite franchisees that we think do kick ass.
0:09:46 We have all the data.
0:09:47 We know who kicks ass.
0:09:49 You might be able to partner with one of them.
0:09:52 So he does a four-hour meeting with the first guy they introduce him to, this guy, John.
0:09:54 And he takes no more meetings.
0:09:57 He agrees after the four hours, I’m going to partner with this guy.
0:09:59 And he goes, it’s like interviewing an offensive coordinator.
0:10:02 When you know, you know, which is so romantic.
0:10:06 Thought he would use like a love analogy, but he’s like offensive coordinator.
0:10:08 And this guy, John, is a hustler.
0:10:13 So in addition to the car dealerships, they had a new bourbon company that they started,
0:10:16 a Kentucky bourbon company, him, Saban again.
0:10:20 And then during COVID, they created a medical supplies business called Dream Medical Group.
0:10:23 So they have Dream Auto Group and they created Dream Medical Group
0:10:27 and sold over $100 million of PPE during COVID-19.
0:10:28 This guy’s doing shit.
0:10:33 That, by the way, whenever I hear that story of someone doing PPE during COVID.
0:10:34 Always a hustler.
0:10:36 Well, it can go one of two ways.
0:10:37 You’re always a hustler.
0:10:40 You’re in that circle, but it’s like you’re either full of it or…
0:10:41 Good hustle or bad hustle.
0:10:43 Yeah, like there’s something about it.
0:10:44 How fascinating.
0:10:46 I did not realize it was that big.
0:10:48 It seems like the key to this is two things.
0:10:50 Partnering with the right dealer before…
0:10:55 Like, you know, I own a Mercedes and it seems like Mercedes has been booming for the last 10 years.
0:10:56 Like they’re cool now.
0:11:00 They were always cool, but now they’re like they have…
0:11:03 It’s like they have some accessible models that many people can buy.
0:11:04 So I imagine they’re selling a lot.
0:11:06 But also he picked the right cities.
0:11:10 So he picked Nashville in like 2016 or something like that.
0:11:11 You know what I mean?
0:11:16 Like picking like the right geos that are growing with richer people to be able to support a dealership.
0:11:20 Even where your name, if you’re an athlete or a coach, carries weight.
0:11:23 Like it’s kind of silly, but like just the…
0:11:25 What is Elway’s one called?
0:11:27 I think it’s called John Elway Chevrolet.
0:11:31 It’s the number one Chevy dealer in the country.
0:11:32 Because guess what?
0:11:34 We like our hometown kid.
0:11:38 We like the local hero, you know, the local quarterback who brought us the Super Bowl, right?
0:11:40 Like that’s a heroic guy.
0:11:44 And John Elway Chevrolet, it does 50 to 100 million dollars a year in revenue.
0:11:46 Just that one dealership.
0:11:49 And, you know, that’s pretty crazy.
0:11:51 And so I think these guys have done a good job.
0:11:53 By the way, here’s a quote from this dude.
0:11:54 Tell me what you think of this.
0:11:56 So it says, they’re talking about this guy, John.
0:11:58 They go, he’s even more obsessed with the financial details.
0:12:03 He’s a former accountant and he compiles his own monthly statement for every single store.
0:12:06 Quote, if you say to me, how’s March going?
0:12:10 I can look and say, Cutler Bay sold 13 cars last night, eight new, five pre-owned.
0:12:12 I can tell you who the salespeople were.
0:12:13 I can tell you that Evelyn bought one.
0:12:16 I know every name, every car we sold, how much money we made.
0:12:20 And I tracked them on parabolic curves to make sure we’re not overcharging or undercharging anybody.
0:12:22 What a beast, man.
0:12:25 The only thing is, what is he talking about parabolic curves for?
0:12:26 What could that even mean?
0:12:28 I tracked them on parabolic curves.
0:12:33 It’s in a parabolic curve, like at the beginning of when exponential growth happens.
0:12:34 Yeah, but what does that mean?
0:12:36 I tracked them on parabolic curves.
0:12:36 What does that even mean?
0:12:42 Patrick Collison tweeted this thing the other day and he used the phrase local maxima.
0:12:43 Did you see that?
0:12:44 Love that.
0:12:46 Love breaking through a local maxima.
0:12:49 I had to go and figure out what all this meant.
0:12:58 He said, I think worry about local maxima comes from imaging the 3D world where it is, in fact, easier to get trapped.
0:13:00 I didn’t know what that meant.
0:13:01 I had to go figure out.
0:13:03 Each word had to be individually looked up.
0:13:06 I did not know what that sentence meant at all.
0:13:10 And then he goes, but company space has many more dimensions.
0:13:14 And so most critical points are, as you say, just saddles.
0:13:16 There’s almost always a positive gradient.
0:13:18 You can trundle along.
0:13:21 I did not know what any of that, any of those sentences.
0:13:22 Did not or do not?
0:13:23 I did not.
0:13:26 And so I had to, I shared, I said, could someone explain to me?
0:13:29 And he explained what it said.
0:13:29 And it’s actually brilliant.
0:13:31 And I totally got into this.
0:13:32 What does it mean?
0:13:38 It means people often worry that they’re going to grow their company a bit and hit a ceiling and get stuck.
0:13:41 Like reaching a small success and thinking that’s as far as it can go.
0:13:47 But the original quote says that business isn’t like climbing a simple hill where you can easily get trapped on a small peak.
0:13:50 Business has many moving parts, product team, market pricing strategy, et cetera.
0:13:53 And that creates lots of directions to explore.
0:13:57 So even if growth stalls or slows, it’s rarely the true limit.
0:14:01 There’s almost always another path forward, something you could tweak, improve, change to unlock more growth.
0:14:06 Most stuck points in business are just temporary plateaus, not dead ends.
0:14:09 And the saddle thing kind of blew my mind.
0:14:12 It’s a mathematical, it’s like a, it’s like a mathematical thing.
0:14:16 But if you Google, like, if you’re, if you look, you could, you could, I could show you this, but.
0:14:18 Oh, I see the picture of us out of shape.
0:14:18 Yeah.
0:14:21 It’s kind of, it’s kind of mind blowing, actually.
0:14:24 When I like saw this photo, it’s hard to explain to the listener.
0:14:30 We’ll put, we’ll put the, uh, the photo up, but it’s basically looking at a normal, like X and Y axis.
0:14:35 But now there’s a third and it’s 3D and it shows that you can go forward or back up or down.
0:14:38 And it actually kind of was mind blowing.
0:14:44 I, I felt like Tom Haverford, uh, in the show Parks and Rec, where he like sees like a piece of art and he’s like, this makes me feel something.
0:14:45 That’s so strange.
0:14:48 And someone actually explained to him, that’s like, yeah, that’s what art does.
0:14:49 Like it makes you feel something.
0:14:55 And I remember seeing this, uh, this weekend and I just sat there and I’m like, I feel, I feel, I feel special after reading this.
0:14:56 Like I’ve just learned.
0:14:57 And, and, and it was kind of cool.
0:15:01 I think you got, you got reality distortion fielded, my friend.
0:15:04 I, I, he just RD’d my ass hard.
0:15:11 Telling somebody they’re at a local Maxima is always one of the like patch on the head.
0:15:13 It’s like, wait, are you patting me?
0:15:14 Or are you like telling me I’m a little boy?
0:15:15 Right.
0:15:19 If you ever use that on somebody, it’s a great backhanded disc.
0:15:24 Just says like, you’re doing great, but you don’t realize you’re still at the kid’s table right now.
0:15:26 And there’s this other game that’s the global Maxima.
0:15:28 You got to throw in a bud there.
0:15:29 You’re like local Maxima, bud.
0:15:30 Local Maxima.
0:15:34 In fact, this article with the car dealership guy says an article on Forbes.
0:15:37 And at the end of it, they go, Joe loves deal making so much.
0:15:40 He, you know, in the middle of our interview, I had to apologize.
0:15:42 Sorry, pal.
0:15:42 Don’t mean to be rude.
0:15:44 I just really got to close this deal.
0:15:46 And I was like, oh damn, he just palled you.
0:15:48 And you put that in, you put that in the article.
0:15:53 Joe, Joe sounds cool, but also like a douche.
0:15:56 He’s got into the whiskey business too.
0:15:59 Check, check, check.
0:16:02 Did you call him Joe?
0:16:03 His name’s John.
0:16:06 Local Maxima, bud.
0:16:07 I don’t remember.
0:16:08 I don’t remember.
0:16:10 I don’t remember names.
0:16:12 That’s hilarious.
0:16:17 That was the virtual version of slapping someone on the ass and say, go get them.
0:16:18 We call them the wrong name.
0:16:20 All right.
0:16:20 What else we got?
0:16:22 I have some other stuff.
0:16:22 All right.
0:16:27 So in AI, there’s been these like waves where four or five of the same company will get started
0:16:30 and they’ll all get like an incredible amount of traction.
0:16:35 So a few years ago, this was when chat, maybe GPT three or 3.5 was out.
0:16:38 It was like a copywriting services.
0:16:43 So Jasper, copy AI, there was a whole bunch of companies that just exploded past 10 million
0:16:48 and revenue very quickly with a, with the same idea, which was like, Hey, we’ll help you
0:16:49 write blog posts and marketing copy, right?
0:16:51 Marketing copy written for you.
0:16:53 That was like one idea.
0:16:59 And that, and then they got kind of wrecked by just chat GPT just became good enough where
0:16:59 you could do all those things.
0:17:02 You didn’t need a separate tool so that they, they ran into trouble.
0:17:06 I shouldn’t say they got wrecked, but they ran into, to some headwinds where the growth,
0:17:08 the explosive growth didn’t last forever.
0:17:13 And then the current batch of AI companies that’s doing this is these website builders.
0:17:16 So lovable is one of them.
0:17:20 Replit is another bolt is another.
0:17:22 And so there’s these website builders, which is very simple.
0:17:28 Like just the way you had Squarespace and Wix, you go drag and drop and make a website without
0:17:29 code.
0:17:30 Now you don’t even have to drag and drop.
0:17:31 You just say what you want.
0:17:33 You’re like, Hey, I want a website for a law firm.
0:17:35 And then just gives you a beautiful website for a law firm.
0:17:37 You’re like, ah, make the hero thing a carousel.
0:17:38 And it makes it a carousel.
0:17:41 Like you don’t have to, you don’t have to code and you make these sites.
0:17:43 And so these businesses have now exploded.
0:17:46 There’s some of the fastest growing companies.
0:17:47 I don’t know the latest revenue numbers.
0:17:48 Is cursor one of them?
0:17:50 No, cursor is a little different.
0:17:58 Cursor is a tool for existing developers, but like, you know, lovable hit 4 million.
0:18:02 It was doing basically a million dollars of, of ARR every week for the first four weeks.
0:18:04 And it’s now at 20 million plus.
0:18:05 That’s insane.
0:18:07 Bolt is at 20 million levels at 20 million.
0:18:09 It’s crazy.
0:18:09 Right.
0:18:11 So like they’re, they’re growing really, really fast.
0:18:16 And so those are there now, but I also kind of predict that that’s going to be a very shaky
0:18:17 space to build on.
0:18:17 I don’t know.
0:18:20 It’s going to be like a Groupon, you know, like.
0:18:21 Could be.
0:18:22 It might be that they’re the next Squarespace.
0:18:25 Squarespace, you know, eventually become a public company, but I don’t, I don’t personally
0:18:25 think so.
0:18:29 I think that that’s going to be just like a feature inside of ChatGPT.
0:18:30 It’s like, make me a website.
0:18:32 And I think they’re going to be able to do that.
0:18:35 Something like Replit’s a little different because it’s got a whole backend or whatever.
0:18:36 Anyways, that’s all nuance.
0:18:42 What I’m saying, what I’m trying to get to is it got me thinking, what would be a more
0:18:43 defensible AI business?
0:18:49 So what’s a simple business that’s about AI, but is not going to get just wrecked by the
0:18:50 next ChatGPT update.
0:18:55 And so I started thinking, I was like, okay, well, some of the most defensible businesses
0:19:00 are marketplaces and nobody’s really built a good AI marketplace yet.
0:19:01 What would that even be?
0:19:03 You know, why, why not?
0:19:06 We all know that marketplaces are super, super valuable when they get built, right?
0:19:08 eBay, Amazon, Airbnb, et cetera.
0:19:11 Uber, these are all marketplaces, supply, demand.
0:19:13 Where were you when you were thinking about this?
0:19:18 Tell me, walk me through, like, when you’re having these, these very strange conversations
0:19:19 with you, where?
0:19:25 I have this, I have this room in my house where I have the best ideas and it’s like, we have
0:19:27 tile on the floor.
0:19:31 It’s a cool room because if you need to poop or pee, you’re already there.
0:19:32 If you need to shower, you’re already there.
0:19:33 It’s just the bathroom.
0:19:41 Hey, Sean here.
0:19:43 I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story.
0:19:44 One of the great ad men.
0:19:46 He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron.
0:19:47 She’s your wife.
0:19:49 You wouldn’t lie to your own wife.
0:19:51 So don’t lie to mine.
0:19:52 And I love that.
0:19:53 You guys, you’re my family.
0:19:55 You’re like my wife and I won’t lie to you either.
0:19:56 So I’ll tell you the truth.
0:20:01 For every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them.
0:20:05 So I’m proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across
0:20:09 my personal account, my business accounts, and anytime I start a new company, this is my
0:20:10 first move.
0:20:11 I go open up a Mercury account.
0:20:13 I’m very confident in recommending it because I actually use it.
0:20:14 I’ve used it for years.
0:20:16 It is the best product on the market.
0:20:22 So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply
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0:20:30 Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust Members, FDIC.
0:20:31 All right, back to the episode.
0:20:39 Okay, so you’re just sitting in the bathroom thinking about defensible AI companies.
0:20:40 Okay, as one does.
0:20:41 As one does.
0:20:45 And so I’m thinking, I’m like, why isn’t there like a high end, like, you know, one of the
0:20:49 hardest things about AI right now is just keeping up with the tools and being able to do something.
0:20:56 And I was thinking somebody should make a Upwork or Fiverr that is just for highly skilled
0:20:57 AI doers.
0:21:02 So a place where I can go and I can just put up a task that I know probably somebody
0:21:06 with AI can either do it, build it for me, or show me how to do this on a recurring basis
0:21:13 and make a very skilled marketplace where people can go earn a ton of money for their own AI
0:21:13 enthusiasm.
0:21:16 Because I know a bunch of people that are like really enthusiastic about this stuff and they
0:21:17 build their own pet projects.
0:21:20 They try every new tool that comes out, but they don’t really have like businesses where
0:21:23 they need to use them because they’re just like AI enthusiasts.
0:21:24 They’re just like kind of bored on Twitter all day.
0:21:30 And I think that you could, if you even just had like 150 people on the supply side for
0:21:35 this, I think every, a lot of businesses know that they could probably benefit from AI.
0:21:39 And I think if you went there and you were able to just like state your problem and then have
0:21:44 people sort of like tell you what they could do with AI to solve your problem and you just pay
0:21:45 them to do that.
0:21:50 I think you could build a marketplace around skilled AI practitioners right now.
0:21:51 I think that, I think that could be built.
0:21:56 It’s like the upscale version, you know, you go, you go to like the, the top kind of like
0:22:02 1% level of quality of job on Upwork or Fiverr or 99 designs.
0:22:06 Dude, I always thought that like somewhere, your company somewhere or something like this should
0:22:12 just make it where I can hire an expert and they could come and I, they could spend three or
0:22:16 four weeks looking at my company and saying, I can make this better, this better, and this
0:22:18 better because that’s what I want.
0:22:23 Because I see online that everyone’s like, you know, I think Shopify made this announcement.
0:22:27 They go, instead of hiring, you first must say, can I hire AI?
0:22:29 And if you can’t, then you can hire a human being.
0:22:35 And I see these things like this and I’m like, oh man, I feel left out.
0:22:36 I don’t know how to do any of this.
0:22:39 Like, I want, I want to automate all this.
0:22:42 Like when you say AI, to me, I’m still on level one.
0:22:44 It’s just me talking to chat GPT.
0:22:48 But then I hear about all these other things and vectors and all this stuff.
0:22:52 And I’m like, I know it’s important, but I don’t know how to do any of it.
0:22:53 Do you know what I mean?
0:22:57 It’s like saying like, Sean, do you want the V6 or the V8 car?
0:22:59 And you’re like, I don’t know what any of that means, but I know that the V8 is better.
0:23:02 I like, that’s how I am with AI.
0:23:05 And I wish I could pay someone to just come and do this.
0:23:07 So I think this is an excellent idea, by the way.
0:23:10 So you can, there’s, there are consultants that will do this.
0:23:11 They’ll shadow your work.
0:23:12 They’ll, they’ll come into your company.
0:23:14 They’ll do a discovery phase.
0:23:18 And I mean, all the way up to Accenture, I think is going to do a billion dollars this
0:23:19 year in AI consulting.
0:23:22 Like big companies are hiring McKinsey and Accenture to do it.
0:23:25 And then small companies can hire these like indie shops to basically say, all right, I’ll
0:23:31 pay five to 10 grand to come do a like six week program where you kind of figure out where
0:23:33 you can optimize and then, and then optimize.
0:23:37 But a lot of that’s so speculative and like, what if, what if you don’t find anything?
0:23:38 That sounds like work on my end.
0:23:40 Here’s kind of how I want it to work.
0:23:42 So what would you call this?
0:23:44 What would I call it?
0:23:50 I’d call it cute name up slice top slice.
0:23:51 I call it top slice.
0:23:51 Do you remember?
0:23:52 That’s not bad.
0:23:52 Do you remember?
0:23:53 That’s actually kind of cool.
0:23:55 Do you remember when we talked about a team?
0:23:57 I thought that name was so good.
0:23:57 A team is fantastic.
0:23:59 It was a fantastic name.
0:24:01 A team, I want that name for everything.
0:24:04 Let me just give out some marketing, some absolute marketing gold here.
0:24:06 Have you ever heard this phrase?
0:24:11 I’m almost scared to say this because I love like the marketing genius of this phrase is
0:24:12 so good.
0:24:13 Nobody ever talks about it.
0:24:17 And I really want to use the same principle on something, but I’ll give it away here.
0:24:20 Have you ever heard of marry me chicken?
0:24:23 No, I don’t know what that is.
0:24:23 Is that a nursery rhyme?
0:24:25 No, it’s a chicken recipe.
0:24:31 And it’s like, you ever, it’s like, oh, if you want to learn how to make my, like this
0:24:33 is, this chicken dish is called marry me chicken.
0:24:36 Cause if you make it for a man, he will be like, marry me right away.
0:24:38 And it’s this thing that women say.
0:24:41 It’s like a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a way to say the recipe.
0:24:44 And it’s like, if you just think about that, there’s a thousand ways they could have described
0:24:46 like this creamy chicken recipe, right?
0:24:47 Creamy chicken.
0:24:48 It could have been like the name of the ingredient.
0:24:50 It could have been the cooking process.
0:24:52 No, marry me chicken.
0:24:53 Love that phrase.
0:24:55 Love the idea of marry me chicken.
0:24:59 And I think for any business, you should come up with like a marry me chicken level
0:25:02 description of like what the person really would want.
0:25:06 Like how good must it be that they say, marry me at the end of it.
0:25:06 Right.
0:25:07 So I love that.
0:25:11 So I would love to come up with something like that for this, but yeah, I think that there’s
0:25:13 an opportunity to create, create something like this.
0:25:14 Here’s what I would want it to work.
0:25:17 So I have a buddy who invests in this e-commerce company.
0:25:18 I was like, why’d you invest in that?
0:25:21 And he goes, he’s doing really interesting stuff with AI.
0:25:25 And honestly, I wanted to invest just so that I could like see what he’s trying.
0:25:28 He’s trying to build the company, the whole company AI first.
0:25:29 So he’s trying not to hire anybody.
0:25:30 He’s trying to do AI for pretty much every job.
0:25:34 It’s e-com in the sense of they make a product and they sell it, or it’s like Amazon.
0:25:35 Like it’s like a, it’s like a platform.
0:25:38 So like they make a product, it’s like a brand, like you buy the supplement and then
0:25:41 you, and then they, they sell it on Shopify.
0:25:44 And I was like, oh, fascinating.
0:25:44 So like, what’s he doing?
0:25:45 I really want to know.
0:25:46 I got an e-com brand.
0:25:51 And I think actually that’s a, that’s a kind of a good hook, which is instead of saying,
0:25:55 let me study your business or you come in and you describe the problem that, you know,
0:25:55 AI can solve.
0:25:59 Cause that already presupposes, you know, quite a bit about what AI could, could or couldn’t
0:25:59 do for you.
0:26:05 But if I just subscribed, I was like, Hey, I want you to tell me once a week what somebody
0:26:11 paid somebody to build for their e-com brand here and show me kind of like how it works.
0:26:16 I then as an e-com store owner would be like, oh, you can just, I don’t have to do product
0:26:17 photography anymore.
0:26:19 I could just use this thing to do all my photography.
0:26:22 It actually works like, wow, that’s great.
0:26:23 I didn’t even realize that.
0:26:28 And then, oh, the next thing, oh, they set up this agent that manages the supply chain.
0:26:33 So it takes every freight forward invoice and it puts it into the sheet and then it checks
0:26:35 that sheet to make sure that there’s no overages.
0:26:38 And then it, and then it posted in Slack.
0:26:39 That’s great.
0:26:40 I have a person doing that today.
0:26:41 That’s awesome.
0:26:44 Well, you know, I’d like to take that task and sell it to AI instead.
0:26:50 And so I think the problem with most businesses adopting AI is a problem of imagination, not
0:26:50 capability.
0:26:54 Like you could sit down and figure it out, or you could hire somebody to do any of these
0:26:54 things.
0:26:56 It’s an imagination problem for most people.
0:26:58 They don’t even really realize where they could be doing things.
0:27:04 So for you with Hampton, for example, you might, maybe it could be as granular as like
0:27:06 memberships or paid communities or something like that.
0:27:08 Or it might just be like somebody who’s doing sales.
0:27:10 It’s like you subscribe to the sales feed.
0:27:11 It’s like, cool.
0:27:16 Anytime somebody comes in and pays for an AI, AI job that improves their sales process.
0:27:17 I want to know what they did.
0:27:21 Like I’ll give you an example in one of my companies, I have a, this company is going
0:27:26 really fast and so fast that we literally can’t get enough proposals out the door.
0:27:30 Like customers want to pay, but the sales guys have too many proposals to create.
0:27:36 And so what he did was he created this, our CTO created this little agent that will listen
0:27:40 to the sales call and it knows what our capabilities are.
0:27:43 And it just, it’s, it’s listened to the sales call and it knows our capabilities.
0:27:48 So it auto generates a draft invoice of what services we should package to this customer.
0:27:52 And there probably wasn’t like a good plugin and he just customized it for you.
0:27:55 Yeah, that didn’t exist.
0:27:58 In fact, I think there’s a whole startup idea somebody should build, but like he built that
0:28:02 internally and our sales guys, as soon as they get off the call, the draft proposal is ready.
0:28:04 They just need to tweak three things.
0:28:05 And I was like, wow, this is genius.
0:28:08 And again, like, I think that should just be a startup idea altogether.
0:28:13 It’s like a, you know, a tool for salespeople that like by the time they get off the call,
0:28:16 the AI agent has already figured out the follow-up email, the draft, the proposal,
0:28:19 the CRM thing that it needs to input, et cetera.
0:28:20 This is kind of a 10 out of 10.
0:28:21 Idea.
0:28:23 Yeah, I think so.
0:28:24 I think this might be a 10 out of 10.
0:28:25 I don’t know if it’s…
0:28:27 Which one, the AI marketplace or the sales thing I just said?
0:28:28 Because they’re both kind of dope.
0:28:30 Well, I don’t know anything about the second one, but yeah, that’s cool.
0:28:36 But the first one, because I’m like thinking, like I, I guess like I would easily give money
0:28:41 to someone right now if they, if like, because a lot of times AI, it feels like I don’t know
0:28:43 what I don’t know, but I know it’s important.
0:28:50 And it’s like, if just give me all the examples of how this is helpful for me and just do it.
0:28:50 Right.
0:28:50 You know what I mean?
0:28:56 Like now the, the, the hard part about a business like this is of course, marketplaces are incredibly
0:28:57 difficult to spin up, right?
0:28:58 It’s a chicken and egg problem.
0:29:00 How do you get supply when there’s no demand?
0:29:02 How do you get demand where there’s no supply?
0:29:03 How do you, how do you increase?
0:29:06 Are you, how do you figure out are you supply constrained or demand constrained?
0:29:09 That initial cranking of the crank is really hard.
0:29:16 So this is not something that like, I would say a B, B minus entrepreneur can do, you know,
0:29:20 like I think, I think you basically have to be an A plus entrepreneur to do marketplaces.
0:29:24 As just like maybe a personal belief, because I think the initial cranking is so difficult
0:29:27 and takes so much kind of skill and hustle to do.
0:29:32 But I think it’s a great opportunity because when you build them, they’re very valuable when
0:29:33 you, when you do build them.
0:29:36 And so if anybody wants to work on this, feel free to email me, shaunashampuri.com or
0:29:37 DM me.
0:29:40 I want to, I want to hear if anybody tries this or is interested in trying it.
0:29:44 Well, how is Fiverr taking advantage of the AI stuff?
0:29:45 Have you seen anything?
0:29:46 Dude, I used to use Fiverr so much.
0:29:47 I don’t use it at all anymore.
0:29:49 We’ll know from the homepage.
0:29:53 It’s still the same old junk.
0:29:58 And I feel like, I bet if I had to imagine a lot of their business was graphic design and
0:30:03 now it’s basically just taking advantage of people who don’t know that ChatGPT exists and
0:30:04 they’re like, yeah.
0:30:07 And they’re like, Hey, can you like, Oh, I can just pay this kind of making an image.
0:30:08 He gets back to me so fast.
0:30:10 It takes a lot of iteration though.
0:30:11 But, but you know what?
0:30:14 One thing I heard people do, I think there’s a, there’s people who are rolling up the top
0:30:15 Fiverr accounts.
0:30:16 Cause they’re like, cool.
0:30:21 You have top, uh, real estate under graphic design on Fiverr.
0:30:25 So you’re just automatically getting, you know, hundreds of jobs a week inputted to you.
0:30:30 So they’re buying them and then they’re just replacing the creator with AI and like an AI
0:30:31 managed service underneath it.
0:30:33 And I thought that was pretty fascinating.
0:30:37 It’s like buying, you know, beachfront property on the world’s shittiest, on the world’s shittiest
0:30:38 island.
0:30:44 But this is, yeah, this sounds like a horrible idea because that’s like, uh, you know, what
0:30:49 happened to the Thrasios property, like right where the hurricanes keep hitting.
0:30:52 And yeah, I mean, this sounds horrible.
0:30:59 So the key with any rollup is like, yes, either you’re going to get extreme durability, in which
0:31:02 case you pay a higher multiple or you get unknown durability.
0:31:06 But if you’re buying it like one X, for example, or you’re buying it like one and a half X or two
0:31:08 X or something like that, you can make it work, right?
0:31:13 Like you can, you can end up looking like a genius if you, if you buy at a low enough multiple.
0:31:17 So in something like this, I bet these people have never been offered anything before.
0:31:22 It’s like, oh, you’ll pay me like a year of earnings or two years of earnings for, for if
0:31:23 I just walk away right now.
0:31:27 And then I know that I can kind of increase the earnings of the cost potential, you know,
0:31:29 the cost savings by, you know, 30%.
0:31:34 And as long as this holds for, you know, two years, as long as Fiverr doesn’t just go under
0:31:37 the next two years, every year after that, it’s a profit, right?
0:31:39 So, you know, you could make it work.
0:31:41 It’s not like, it’s not, there’s not a horrible idea is what I’m saying.
0:31:47 My mother-in-law has this pillow business and it does many, many hundreds, close to seven
0:31:49 figures a year in revenue.
0:31:50 And it’s quite profitable.
0:31:53 Like she’s paying herself a good salary.
0:31:59 And, you know, now that she’s got some, a bunch of grandkids, she’s like, I guess I’m
0:31:59 just going to shut this down.
0:32:03 And I was like, you know, Smithy, I, I don’t know anything about e-commerce, but I’m pretty
0:32:05 sure, you know, you could sell a business.
0:32:06 And she was like, what do you mean?
0:32:11 I was like, well, someone will pay you something like, it could be one times, it could be eight
0:32:11 times.
0:32:17 I’m not sure your, your salary, like they’ll pay you that or your owner’s earnings to buy
0:32:17 your business.
0:32:18 And it blew her mind.
0:32:21 And she was like, someone will buy this.
0:32:26 And it, it, it, it was like amazing to hear this woman who’s like killing it just on Etsy
0:32:31 realize that someone will pay her money, uh, like to own this thing.
0:32:33 And I don’t, I have no idea what it’s worth.
0:32:37 I don’t know if it’s one times, uh, if it’s five times what it’s worth, but it was pretty
0:32:38 cool to see her go through this exercise.
0:32:44 Are you doing, are you actually using AI in a meaningful way in anything, uh, in your company
0:32:45 or I’ll ask differently.
0:32:49 Are your employees using, I’m sure you use it as a thought partner.
0:32:53 Are you using it like, are your staff using it on a daily basis where your company has
0:32:55 gotten significantly more productive?
0:33:02 Well, the example I just gave you on the sales side, that’s probably the most, the most impressive
0:33:11 example, I would say other than that, it’s like more chat GPT plus, you know what I mean?
0:33:13 It’s kind of like, oh, review this email.
0:33:16 It’s like, Hey, we need to write this thing.
0:33:18 We need to like research this thing.
0:33:20 We need to, uh, draft something.
0:33:22 Stuff like that is like the daily stuff.
0:33:26 I don’t, we haven’t like replaced job functions yet with AI.
0:33:31 That’s the, that’s what I’m waiting for is like, basically like, oh, we don’t need to hire
0:33:38 this person because AI, an AI agent or this person with AI is better than this person with
0:33:39 another person.
0:33:43 But that’s where something like this service is, this actually plays like an interesting
0:33:49 part here because you know, it’s important, but you, for a variety of reasons, haven’t
0:33:49 implemented it.
0:33:51 Then there’s all these other people.
0:33:53 So I, I, you know, I’m not the CEO of any of these businesses.
0:33:58 So, you know, they, the people who run these businesses are their heads down in the business.
0:34:01 They’re not as AI curious as I am.
0:34:05 And yeah, but they have the same mindset, which is either, I’m either too busy right now, or
0:34:06 I don’t exactly know how to do this.
0:34:10 Or this sounds like a project that I, I’m, I’m a little bit ignorant on, but I know that
0:34:11 this is interesting.
0:34:16 And then you have all these guys who have like, in the past three years, been like raised on
0:34:16 this stuff.
0:34:18 And they’re like, are you a fool?
0:34:20 Why aren’t you doing it this way, this way, this way?
0:34:20 You know what I mean?
0:34:22 And there, that connection would be very valuable.
0:34:27 New York City founders.
0:34:30 If you’ve listened to my first million before, you know, I’ve got this company called Hampton
0:34:33 and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.
0:34:38 A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people
0:34:39 who I met in Hampton.
0:34:41 We have this big community of a thousand plus people and it’s amazing.
0:34:46 But the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for
0:34:47 your life and for your business.
0:34:48 And it’s life changing.
0:34:55 Now to the folks in New York City, I’m building a in real life core group in New York City.
0:34:59 And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does 3 million in revenue
0:35:04 or you’ve raised 3 million in funding, or you’ve started and sold a company for at least
0:35:06 10 million dollars, then you are eligible to apply.
0:35:09 So go to joinhampton.com and apply.
0:35:12 I’m going to be reviewing all of the applications myself.
0:35:15 So put that you heard about this on MFM.
0:35:16 So I know to give you a little extra love.
0:35:17 Now back to the show.
0:35:26 I remember, so we both did the newsletter business and the workflow for the hustle was
0:35:28 probably similar than the, of the workflow for the-
0:35:29 Dude, it was so janky.
0:35:32 So like, what’s the output?
0:35:34 The output is we got to write an email.
0:35:39 We got to write an email that’s going to go to, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions
0:35:40 of people tomorrow morning.
0:35:45 And it’s got to basically say, here’s the most important stories that you should care about.
0:35:47 Here’s what happened.
0:35:49 Here’s our kind of quick commentary of what it means.
0:35:52 And let’s make you laugh, right?
0:35:54 And let’s entertain you along the way.
0:35:55 And let’s put in the sponsorships and all that.
0:35:57 And there needs to be the right ads.
0:35:58 The right ads need to be in the email.
0:36:01 I had a full-time person whose job was to do that.
0:36:04 And when you say the right ads, what do you mean by the right ads?
0:36:07 Just explain the complexity for somebody who’s like, why do you need a full-time person to
0:36:08 make, what do you mean the right ad?
0:36:08 Just put the ad in.
0:36:13 Because if you’re sending an email to, let’s say, 3 million people, and you make $100,000
0:36:18 every time you hit send, sometimes, like let’s say Target will say, I want to spend $1 million
0:36:20 with you over the course of the next 3 months.
0:36:26 And then Warby Parker will say, well, I want to spend $20,000 with you over the next 3 weeks.
0:36:29 You have to figure out how to mix and match.
0:36:35 So today’s email to 3 million people, 500,000 is going to see the Warby Parker ad.
0:36:38 2.5 million is going to see the Target ad.
0:36:40 And then next week, it’s going to be swapped.
0:36:43 And you have to make sure that not the same people are seeing the same ad.
0:36:46 And no technology, at least when I started, did any of that.
0:36:49 So I had to one person manually do all of this.
0:36:51 And it’s not crazy complicated.
0:36:56 But when the stakes are high, and it’s like my whole business, and you have people giving you-
0:36:58 Ad ops was kind of the name of the job, right?
0:37:01 Like you’re not the salesperson, but you’re the ad ops person in between.
0:37:02 So, okay, great.
0:37:04 So I met a guy who was doing a news business.
0:37:06 And there’s multiple ads per email.
0:37:09 But even if you take the ads out for a second, if you just take the content itself.
0:37:10 Okay, so what do you need to do?
0:37:13 That means every day, somebody’s figuring out what are all the top stories today.
0:37:16 So there’s like a search, and then there’s a curation.
0:37:20 And then you have to like, so you find all the top stories, you make a judgment call on
0:37:22 which ones are worth talking about.
0:37:23 Then you have to research those topics.
0:37:25 And then you have to write about, you have to summarize them.
0:37:28 And then you have to maybe add some commentary, some value add.
0:37:29 Okay, so we had to do that every day.
0:37:31 And, you know, we did it with one or two writers.
0:37:33 I think you did it initially with a few writers.
0:37:39 And so let’s say that the cost of production there was like, you know, let’s just call
0:37:43 it on the lowest end, $250,000 a year.
0:37:47 If both of us weren’t so scrappy, like another person running that business, in fact, when
0:37:52 we sold the business, it became like closer to a million dollars a year of cost to like
0:37:52 do the editorial.
0:37:55 We were definitely spending seven figures.
0:37:59 And so I met a guy who’s doing this entire workflow with AI.
0:38:00 So he just did that thing.
0:38:01 And he was just like, cool, I’m going to do this with AI.
0:38:08 So he’s like, he was using AI to scan specific sources to figure out what stories are hot.
0:38:11 Then he would use AI to summarize those articles.
0:38:19 Then he would use AI to check which influencers were reposting those articles on Twitter as
0:38:24 a signal for like social signal of what’s important, what’s generating buzz.
0:38:29 And then he would take that final thing and then he would send it to a human dude who was
0:38:31 living in Japan who would just like proofread it overnight.
0:38:36 And they’d be like, yep, this all, this is like legitimate fact check, just kind of like
0:38:37 make sure the AI didn’t hallucinate.
0:38:42 He’s paying that guy like whatever, $50 an hour to spend two hours on it, you know, like
0:38:45 a 50 or a hundred bucks a day on this, uh, on the editing.
0:38:50 And then he never wrote, he never wrote it and he never had a writer and it, oh, and then
0:38:52 it auto formatted it for him.
0:38:59 So it created an HTML email for him and it inserted the ad and then it sent it out and then it tracked
0:39:00 the results and it sent him a report.
0:39:05 To take it even a step further, that sounds like I’m going to one up, one up you.
0:39:10 I know a guy who is doing the same thing, but it’s for local newsletters.
0:39:16 And the thing about local newsletters is it’s a fantastic business minus the fact that the
0:39:21 profits are totally destroyed because you have to have local ad sales and local writers for
0:39:21 everyone.
0:39:28 But if you could just have like lots of newsletters, uh, for Raleigh, for Nashville, Louisville,
0:39:30 but not have the writers, it would be a very great business, right?
0:39:34 And he’s doing what you’re describing, but for local news.
0:39:39 And it very quickly spins up a place, uh, a newsletter that says like, Hey, and it makes
0:39:44 an ad and it says, Hey, Danville in California, do you want news just for Danville?
0:39:46 And it goes to a danville.com or whatever.
0:39:50 And he’s built this whole local newsletter empire, all automated.
0:39:52 How’s it doing?
0:39:56 It does six figures right now a month in revenue and it’s just him doing it.
0:40:01 And so it’s him and it’s buying ads on Facebook, targeting local people to get subscribers.
0:40:02 That’s awesome.
0:40:04 That’s great.
0:40:05 Very cool.
0:40:05 Dude.
0:40:07 Our business is like, Oh my God.
0:40:08 Thank God.
0:40:08 Right.
0:40:09 Thank God.
0:40:09 We got out.
0:40:12 But why are you saying that?
0:40:15 You’re saying, thank God, because it’s just way different.
0:40:16 It’s just way more competitive now.
0:40:18 Or what, what are you, what is the underneath?
0:40:19 What is the underneath that feeling?
0:40:21 I have the same feeling, but I think maybe for a different reason.
0:40:23 I think, uh, okay.
0:40:26 So when I started in 2016, people like laughed at us.
0:40:31 And I know you hear that story a lot, but like people were literally like you, you were
0:40:31 that person.
0:40:31 Yeah.
0:40:34 You said, why are you doing this stupid drink?
0:40:35 Yeah.
0:40:37 She said people left.
0:40:41 You were like, why are you doing this silly thing?
0:40:44 And I was like, no, it’s like, if you read the math, that could be big.
0:40:51 Now, like I, like, I, I know these like hips, like hipsters have newsletters.
0:40:57 Like it’s like, it’s, everyone has a newsletter and it’s way more complicated inside of someone’s
0:40:58 inbox to stand out.
0:41:05 And so it was, I think I succeeded because it was a silly business that I took seriously.
0:41:08 And there weren’t that many serious operators in there.
0:41:11 And you could say I wasn’t even that serious of an operator, but I still succeeded.
0:41:16 Now there’s actually really smart people trying to win the game and makes it much harder for
0:41:19 just like, you know, it’s just harder.
0:41:24 Let’s say you were motivated to start the hustle this year.
0:41:28 What do you think would be the outcome four years from now?
0:41:32 So the caveat is you’re committed to doing it.
0:41:33 You’re going to work hard on it.
0:41:36 Does it have to be the same genre of content?
0:41:37 No, it could be different.
0:41:40 I think I could build a significantly larger business.
0:41:44 I think it would look a lot closer to industry dive.
0:41:51 So where it would be lots of different newsletters built for job titles that are kind of forgotten
0:41:52 and ignored.
0:42:01 And then to monetize it, it would be newsletter, it would be advertisements, but then also it would be community peer groups, sort of like Hampton would be on the back end.
0:42:04 And I think it wouldn’t grow as fast and I could own it forever.
0:42:09 I think it would be very, very hard to grow as fast as I grew it, the hustle.
0:42:11 And what if you did the hustle idea again?
0:42:14 I don’t think it would succeed.
0:42:16 I think that it would, I would not succeed.
0:42:21 Dude, I got to like 300,000 subscribers organically in like two years.
0:42:23 Like it was so easy looking back on it.
0:42:24 That would never happen again.
0:42:26 There’s too much noise.
0:42:30 I think that to buy subscribers on Facebook, it’s actually shockingly the same price.
0:42:33 I don’t know if you know anything about the market.
0:42:35 I don’t, but I hear it’s still like $1.50.
0:42:42 But we grew organically because we got popular on Reddit, on Hacker News, places like that.
0:42:46 And it was considered outlandish and silly and remarkable what we were doing.
0:42:47 It was noteworthy rather.
0:42:49 It’s not noteworthy anymore.
0:42:51 So it’s too hard to have something spread virally now.
0:42:53 Do you agree?
0:42:56 Yeah, I think all the things you said are true.
0:43:05 But I do think you could do it again and you, I think you could do it again and win because you’re good at that type of content and that type of business.
0:43:08 So I think you would, I think you would figure it out again.
0:43:16 And I think you’d have other advantages, which is that like, you know, newsletter advertising is a lot more sophisticated and like available than it was back then.
0:43:18 But it’s also cheaper now though.
0:43:24 So we used to charge, I forget what we charged, but I think it was $25 to $40 per 1,000 cents.
0:43:27 I’m hearing now it’s much cheaper because there’s so many options.
0:43:29 Interesting.
0:43:30 I didn’t know that.
0:43:34 When we were doing Milk Road, I think we were charging that or more.
0:43:37 And that was only two, three years ago.
0:43:38 So maybe it’s changed or maybe it was crypto.
0:43:43 So it was like financial, financial newsletters, I think definitely command a premium.
0:43:44 So I’m not sure.
0:43:46 But I would never do it again.
0:43:48 It’s hard.
0:43:50 It’s a way harder business than people realize.
0:43:51 It’s fucking hard.
0:43:54 Can we wrap up with me telling you something funny?
0:43:55 Okay, let’s do it.
0:43:55 Go to this.
0:43:58 Go to spermracing.com.
0:44:00 Have you seen sperm racing?
0:44:02 What do you mean go to it if it’s my homepage?
0:44:04 Yeah.
0:44:06 I mean, you seem like a sperm racing.
0:44:12 They were trying to figure out who just sent the sponsorship deck guy.
0:44:13 They’re like, Sean seems like a sperm guy.
0:44:19 Guys, two words, blank check.
0:44:22 All right.
0:44:28 So the world’s first sperm race and one of the most epic little videos behind it.
0:44:31 Okay, so what is this?
0:44:34 So click manifesto and just read the first couple lines.
0:44:35 All right.
0:44:37 So sperm racing.
0:44:39 When people hear it, they ask me the same thing every time.
0:44:40 Wait, is this really happening?
0:44:42 And the answer is always, hell yeah, it is.
0:44:43 But here’s the thing.
0:44:45 Sperm racing is not just a joke.
0:44:48 It’s not just some viral idea for the internet to laugh at.
0:44:49 It’s something much bigger.
0:44:50 All right.
0:44:51 That’s let’s see.
0:44:53 Let’s see if they can pay off that promise.
0:44:56 Male fertility is declining like a lot.
0:44:58 It’s happening quietly, steadily, and nobody’s talking about it.
0:45:05 And then there’s a diagram of the average sperm count in a man from the 1970s to today.
0:45:07 And it’s basically cut in half.
0:45:11 So we have half as much sperm per milliliter of semen.
0:45:12 Wow.
0:45:13 A metric I didn’t even know.
0:45:15 I didn’t even know you could measure that.
0:45:16 I didn’t even know that existed.
0:45:17 All right.
0:45:18 T-I-L.
0:45:19 All right.
0:45:25 And spermability, which is how fast it moves, which is a massive factor in fertility and getting pregnant,
0:45:29 is a measurable, trackable thing, just like running a race or lifting weight.
0:45:30 It’s something you could actually improve.
0:45:33 And nobody’s cared about it until now.
0:45:35 So we’re turning health into a sport.
0:45:37 And they built a racetrack for sperm.
0:45:41 Two competitors, two samples, one microscopic finish line.
0:45:44 And then they have a MS paint diagram of the track.
0:45:47 Is this a real thing or is it a joke?
0:45:48 It’s 100% real.
0:45:50 Can I watch this live?
0:45:51 Can I pay pay-per-view for this?
0:45:52 So listen to what they’re doing.
0:45:55 So this is from an article, thetimes.com.
0:46:00 So once the samples are taken, which I assume that means they have to go backstage because
0:46:02 it’s got to be ready to roll right away.
0:46:07 It’s going to be placed into the middle of the stadium and a live video feed that’s magnified
0:46:11 40 times to display the sperm will track the samples progress.
0:46:18 And the sperm are going to swim through a, they typically swim five millimeters per minute,
0:46:22 meaning this race is going to take 40 minutes because they’re going to have them swim through
0:46:23 this course.
0:46:29 The event will run over three races in front of a crowd of 4,000 spectators and feature
0:46:34 play-by-play commentary, instant replays, and leaderboards.
0:46:41 And this company, according to this article, is run by like three 17-year-olds and they’ve
0:46:42 raised $1.5 million.
0:46:45 This is incredible.
0:46:52 So everyone else out there who is working on a product that isn’t working, take notes.
0:46:54 All right.
0:46:55 The hype video was amazing.
0:47:02 I genuinely think we should be sponsoring this and, or we should be the presenting sponsor.
0:47:05 Presenting podcast of the-
0:47:06 For us, by us, baby.
0:47:09 So, okay.
0:47:10 So, but what are they really trying to do?
0:47:11 Okay.
0:47:16 So they’re going to sell out this venue, 5,000 attendees, to watch this, which is hilarious.
0:47:21 They’re trying to raise awareness, but is this just an awareness?
0:47:26 Is this an offshoot of a bigger brand or they want to make this a sport?
0:47:27 I don’t know.
0:47:32 It’s hard to, they haven’t like, they’ve done the right thing so far, which is they haven’t
0:47:34 relieved the tension from the joke.
0:47:37 Like, you know, that’s, I think the way to go about it.
0:47:41 But look at the photo that I posted on here where this guy-
0:47:42 Oh, I know this kid.
0:47:42 The photo of him.
0:47:42 Eric.
0:47:45 And he says, the future of technology.
0:47:48 How beautiful is this?
0:47:55 And so I assume that this is all about like content marketing for some type of male fertility
0:47:55 startup.
0:48:00 But they’ve done the best thing ever, which is they’ve not acknowledged that it’s a joke.
0:48:03 And you might, and apparently the founder is Eric Zhu, Z-H-U.
0:48:05 But that’s like a pretty common name.
0:48:06 So you probably know-
0:48:07 No, I know this guy.
0:48:08 I did a phone call with this kid.
0:48:13 He was doing a different startup before this that I didn’t think was that, like, was the
0:48:13 one.
0:48:14 Did you advise him?
0:48:15 Did you advise him?
0:48:17 You’re like, I got an idea.
0:48:17 Hear me out.
0:48:21 I said, just dream about the future you want to build.
0:48:22 And this is what he came up with.
0:48:27 What’s a secret, Eric, that you know that no one else knows?
0:48:33 We wanted flying cars and we instead got sperm racing.
0:48:34 Yeah.
0:48:35 Wow.
0:48:36 This is crazy.
0:48:37 Fun project though.
0:48:42 You know, I’ve talked about this before, actually, but I think that silly projects like this, and
0:48:47 not to be insulting because obviously this is actually greatness, but things that to others
0:48:52 might seem silly are amazing starter businesses.
0:48:59 And I think that one mistake a lot of people make when you’re early on as a founder is you
0:49:02 try to do A, what you think will work.
0:49:07 So you end up doing some like, I don’t know, some, a boring business that you’re not really,
0:49:12 you don’t really understand very well, but it sounds good on paper or you try to, you
0:49:15 know, shoot for the moon where you’re not, you know, you shoot for the moon, but you don’t
0:49:16 have a rocket, right?
0:49:18 You don’t have the skills, the capability, the network, the whatever.
0:49:21 And of course those can work.
0:49:26 And there’s no, I’m not saying don’t do those, but I think another path that I did, which was
0:49:31 like my first business was a sushi restaurant chain, like most outlandish idea.
0:49:36 Yours, you were doing like, I don’t know what your first verse was, but like you did a
0:49:38 hot dog stands, you worked for the American pickers guy, right?
0:49:44 You did like a bunch of random things that the business itself isn’t great.
0:49:49 You know, opportunities of sort of three out of 10, four out of 10, but at the time you don’t
0:49:49 know any better.
0:49:52 But the important thing is that you’re going to build a bunch of like random skills.
0:49:57 And so like, for example, with our sushi restaurant, I learned because we were trying to make stuff.
0:49:59 I learned how to pitch investors.
0:50:01 I learned how to do, I learned Photoshop.
0:50:03 I learned how to use After Effects a little bit.
0:50:04 I learned how to use iMovie.
0:50:06 We created a YouTube channel.
0:50:08 We’d learned how to do, you know, door-to-door sales.
0:50:13 We learned a bunch of random, random experiences that I wouldn’t have got had I just, A, had
0:50:18 a traditional job or B, if I had done a startup that was just like more serious in nature.
0:50:23 I guess because the startup was like a little bit fun, I was willing to do things that, or
0:50:24 it felt normal.
0:50:28 Once the first idea is a little bit fun, you know, then your marketing idea can be a little
0:50:28 fun and out there.
0:50:30 And then your hiring practice can be a little fun and out there.
0:50:35 You could just sort of stack on from there when you kind of have like what feels more
0:50:40 like a sandbox where you could be creative versus when you feel like you have a, you’re on tight,
0:50:42 tight rails of what you’re supposed to do.
0:50:43 I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but.
0:50:44 That makes a lot of sense.
0:50:45 And I agree with it.
0:50:45 And I also think.
0:50:46 Reminds me of me.
0:50:51 We didn’t do something as anywhere near as interesting or cool as this, but like we’ve
0:50:55 talked about Henry and Dylan, those, those guys who were doing a clip, they were making
0:50:55 content.
0:50:58 They have this like little like animation, what’s it called?
0:51:01 Like a service business, like a funny newsletter.
0:51:05 They’ll do like, they came to our house and they built our podcast studios.
0:51:07 They’re just doing a bunch of random shit.
0:51:10 That was like building little skills for them.
0:51:13 They weren’t experts in any of those things, but they became expert level doing them.
0:51:17 And, uh, they started pivoting from one idea to the next until others, it might look like
0:51:20 they’re sort of lost, but I’ve seen it work out very well for myself and my friends who
0:51:21 I was doing it with.
0:51:24 And so I don’t know if you could advise people to do that, but if you’re already doing that,
0:51:26 I would say don’t sweat it.
0:51:28 That can, it can actually pay off.
0:51:32 And Eric zoo is listening to this podcast right now.
0:51:36 And he’s saying, I need to clip this and send this to my Chinese immigrant parents who
0:51:41 are like, it’s like, they still, you know, they’re not on board with sperm racing.
0:51:46 Uh, and imagine being 17 years old and selling out a 4,000 person, uh, uh, uh, stadium.
0:51:48 I mean, that’s pretty, it’s pretty baller.
0:51:49 Yeah.
0:51:50 Although they’re just saying it’s sold out.
0:51:51 Is it actually sold out?
0:51:56 Uh, when you go to the ticket, when you, when you go to ticket master to buy a ticket, there’s
0:51:58 a lot of blue, you know, there’s a lot of open seats.
0:52:04 So I don’t know, uh, you know, I’m not exactly sure, but I could see this being a pretty
0:52:06 fun thing for a bunch of college kids.
0:52:09 It’s like, are you going to go watch the sperm event, the sperm race?
0:52:13 Even the logo is so good.
0:52:15 Everything about the branding is extremely well done.
0:52:16 Oh no.
0:52:17 Event canceled.
0:52:18 What?
0:52:19 Oh no.
0:52:21 All right.
0:52:22 Update from the sperm guy.
0:52:24 He’s I go, is the event canceled?
0:52:25 I don’t see it on ticket master.
0:52:30 He goes, no, we got effed over by the, by the palladium.
0:52:33 I guess the, the, the venue, they weren’t happy with the TMZ interview and some other
0:52:34 stuff.
0:52:39 And then he goes, it’s still the same day, but we moved it to LA center studios.
0:52:40 Tickets will redrop Tuesday.
0:52:41 Oh my God.
0:52:44 What is, what is, what is the other stuff is?
0:52:46 It sounds like a sticky situation.
0:52:47 I don’t think I want to know.
0:52:48 Yeah.
0:52:50 All right.
0:52:51 That’s it.
0:52:51 That’s the pod.
0:52:53 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:52:57 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it.
0:52:59 Like no days off on the road.
0:53:00 Let’s travel.
0:53:01 Never looking back.

0:00:04 We all run into these stats throughout our lives, and most of us are just like, oh, that’s cool.
0:00:09 But I think there are some where it’s like, maybe you should actually examine this a little more
0:00:14 closely. And so I compiled 100 plus of these, and we can talk about some of them today.
0:00:28 Steph Smith, this is your 10th time on MFM, is that right?
0:00:30 Not quite the tenor.
0:00:35 And Steph Smith, the background, if you’re just now listening for the first time, she used
0:00:38 to work with me at The Hustle, where she ran this thing called Trends, Trends.co.
0:00:43 And then she went and joined A16Z, one of the most prominent venture capital firms.
0:00:50 And your whole thing right now is finding up and coming trends, but you do it by looking
0:00:50 at the data.
0:00:51 Is that right?
0:00:52 I try to.
0:00:53 I try to.
0:00:57 But yeah, I guess now after Trends, I run this thing called Internet Pipes.
0:01:02 And that was kind of like trends in the way that you want to surface things that other
0:01:03 people don’t know about.
0:01:08 But it’s also about how do you show people how to catch their own fish, if that makes sense.
0:01:15 And you come on every once in a while, and you just basically have all of this data that
0:01:21 you rattle off a story behind the number, a story behind the data, and you explain why
0:01:22 it’s an interesting trend.
0:01:25 And sometimes you’ll say like how different people are pouncing on this trend.
0:01:25 Is that right?
0:01:27 Yeah.
0:01:27 Yeah.
0:01:32 Lately, I, or recently, I compiled this digits database.
0:01:32 I call it digits.
0:01:34 You guys call them like one chart businesses.
0:01:40 But basically, these generation defining stats, like we’ve all talked or heard about when Bezos
0:01:42 saw the internet was growing at some crazy rate.
0:01:44 And he was like, what does that mean?
0:01:47 Well, it means that people will be buying stuff online in the future.
0:01:49 Let me go create this crazy thing called Amazon.
0:01:54 And so we all run into these stats throughout our lives.
0:01:56 And most of us are just like, oh, that’s cool.
0:02:01 But I think there are some where it’s like, okay, maybe you should actually examine this
0:02:01 a little more closely.
0:02:05 And so I compiled 100 plus of these, and we can talk about some of them today.
0:02:11 And the guy who, one of the two guys who started your firm, Mark Andreessen, he has this famous
0:02:16 quote, or this famous story, where, you know, people are like, you know, Mark, what’s most
0:02:16 important?
0:02:17 Is it having a good team?
0:02:19 Is it having a good product?
0:02:21 Or is it picking the right market?
0:02:23 And he goes, it’s picking the right market.
0:02:25 That’s easily the most important thing.
0:02:28 Because if you pick the right market, you can have a bad team and a bad product.
0:02:32 And you still like the market pulls the success out of you.
0:02:38 So for example, you could have the world’s greatest team who are brilliant, who are smart.
0:02:40 And they come up with this amazing product.
0:02:44 But if it’s in a tiny market that people just don’t want, then you’re going to lose.
0:02:52 But if you are Coinbase in 2014, and crypto is all the rage, which is what happened, Coinbase.com crashed all the time.
0:02:53 It wasn’t that good of a website.
0:02:55 But people were begging for it.
0:03:00 And so they put up with it, and they used it, and they pulled the company into fruition and made it a success.
0:03:03 And so you are going to show us potentially some of these markets.
0:03:05 Yeah, maybe, maybe.
0:03:07 But I mean, I think that’s the perfect setup.
0:03:11 Because if you think about it, a bunch of other people saw that exact same data point.
0:03:14 And he was like, oh, well, I should go create this company called Coinbase.
0:03:17 And a bunch of other people were like, oh, I’m just going to go for a run.
0:03:20 I’m going to, like, you know, go to my 9 to 5 and ignore that same thing.
0:03:25 So let’s start with one that you, I think, know pretty well.
0:03:26 Hearing loss.
0:03:38 So the stat, or the digit, is that nearly 2.5 billion people by 2050 are expected to experience hearing loss with over 700 million requiring rehabilitation.
0:03:48 And then I saw this interesting quote that kind of was just like a frame to take away, which is that some project that hearing aids are about to become as common as reading glasses.
0:03:52 So you think about just, like, how normalized reading glasses are.
0:03:54 People wear them all the time.
0:03:55 You have all these optometrists.
0:04:00 Like, it’s a very normal thing, even if you think about the benefits that companies offer, right?
0:04:02 Vision is often part of that.
0:04:08 And then if you think about where hearing is in that equation, it’s nowhere near that on the same trajectory.
0:04:13 Like, yet, but if it’s true that billions of people are going to require hearing loss.
0:04:22 And you even think about some of the other signals, like the fact that today we have AirPods in our ears, or many people at least in our circle, how many hours a day?
0:04:24 Like eight.
0:04:25 Exactly.
0:04:27 That was not true 10 years ago, right?
0:04:29 Wait, so why?
0:04:31 First of all, I wear a hearing aid.
0:04:34 I’ve had probably 10 or 12 surgeries on my ears.
0:04:35 I was born with the bad ears.
0:04:39 And I fought putting a hearing aid in because I didn’t want to look old.
0:04:42 And a lot of times on this podcast, people see me where I’ll do this.
0:04:46 And I do it instinctively because I’m always leaning in with my good ear.
0:04:49 And so I wear a hearing aid.
0:04:52 And it was, they all suck.
0:04:54 But why are more people needing a hearing aid?
0:04:56 Is it because something’s going on?
0:05:00 Or is this a normal number and there’s just more people?
0:05:08 No, I mean, I think the technologies that we use are influencing a greater number of people who experience hearing loss.
0:05:12 Like if you think about even, as you said, there’s a cultural element to it too.
0:05:17 Like I go to SoulCycle, the first year I went, no one’s putting in the earplugs.
0:05:19 Like it’s so uncool to put in the earplugs.
0:05:22 And then as, you know, I’ve been doing it for a few years.
0:05:26 Now it’s like maybe 10, 20% of the class is putting in the earplugs.
0:05:29 People put earplugs in because the class is too loud?
0:05:30 The class is way too loud.
0:05:35 And by the way, even think about the technologies that we have that now signal to us some of this stuff.
0:05:40 Like your Apple Watch will tell you when you’re in a SoulCycle class, this is damaging your ears.
0:05:45 Like if you do this for more than 10 minutes, you will impair your ears in a permanent way.
0:05:52 And so the point around the cultural side is interesting because I don’t know if you experienced the same thing, but I grew up in the 90s.
0:05:53 Like glasses were not cool.
0:05:59 And then now you see like some people when you’re like, man, you look so much cooler because of the glasses you wear.
0:06:02 Like I wish, I almost wish I needed glasses.
0:06:05 That’s how I used to feel like when I was in third grade about braces.
0:06:08 If you had braces, you were cool.
0:06:09 It’s like I need braces.
0:06:13 I don’t know if I ever felt that way about braces.
0:06:16 Well, that’s probably why I didn’t have a girlfriend until I was 21 years old.
0:06:19 Are there any interesting companies in the hearing aid space that you’ve seen?
0:06:29 Because when I was trying to get a hearing aid, there was all types of like promises of like this will listen to the words that people are saying and it’s going to repeat it in your hearing aid.
0:06:30 And it was stupid.
0:06:33 And honestly, I think I paid two grand for a hearing aid.
0:06:34 They’re really expensive.
0:06:35 And the app is horrible.
0:06:38 Like these are not good products.
0:06:43 One time, in fact, my hearing aid broke and got stuck in my ear and I had to go to the hospital just to get part of it out.
0:06:45 So I’ve had all types of.
0:06:46 Yes, it was horrible.
0:06:46 Oh my God.
0:06:50 You should, you should found a company in this space because you know of all the problems.
0:06:53 But I don’t know the hearing aid space as well.
0:06:58 I have been seeing a lot of people who have been getting, have you heard of Loop, the earplug company?
0:06:59 No.
0:07:12 It’s just these kind of like nifty looking earplugs, which again, you go to something like a workout class and they give you these disposable like bright yellow earplugs that you can’t even get into your ear.
0:07:27 And so I do think there’s going to be like, again, on the cultural side, how do you create products that not only, to your point, are solving the problem, like they have utility, but they also shift in this direction of, oh, I look cool.
0:07:28 I feel cool.
0:07:29 I want to wear this thing.
0:07:32 Dude, this company, Loop, is going to kill it.
0:07:34 They sell $50 earplugs.
0:07:35 Oh my God.
0:07:37 Yeah, and it’s super smart marketing.
0:07:42 Like if you go, if you just search Loop earplugs, like they’ve got a page and they’re like earplugs for events.
0:07:49 Because again, they’re not, they’re not marketing to like, oh, the everyday user necessarily for this stuff.
0:07:52 It’s like, oh, you’re going to a concert.
0:07:53 You’re going to the Super Bowl.
0:07:54 It’s going to be really loud.
0:07:56 And these look really cool.
0:07:57 People don’t even realize their earplugs.
0:08:00 All right, let’s move on from hearing stuff.
0:08:01 But one last fact.
0:08:13 Did you know, this is one of the reasons why I succumbed and got the hearing aid, is if you have a hearing loss and you don’t address it, the increase of getting dementia jumps significantly.
0:08:14 Yes.
0:08:15 Like four or five times.
0:08:18 And I believe there are two reasons.
0:08:22 One, that part of your brain that hears stuff, because it’s not working, it begins to atrophy.
0:08:24 And that’s correlated with dementia.
0:08:32 But also the second reason, and I find myself doing this all the time, is when I’m at a restaurant or something, I cannot hear the difference between someone talking to me and the background noise.
0:08:34 And so I usually just zone out.
0:08:41 And if you zone out all the time, you’re going to be mentally kind of zoned out.
0:08:44 I believe those are the two theories as to why that happens.
0:08:47 But so, yeah, getting your hearing fix is a big deal.
0:08:48 What’s another one you want to do?
0:08:59 Okay, so rounding out the hearing loss thing, by the way, something we didn’t quite touch on there is the fact that they went over the counter in 2022, which means like you don’t need to get a prescription.
0:09:02 And that also, I think, is, you know, opening the aperture.
0:09:09 And you guys often talk about these like policy or legislation related shifts or unlocks.
0:09:11 I call them regulation inflections.
0:09:14 So something changes drastically.
0:09:19 So, for example, one negative inflection is like New York bans Airbnb.
0:09:27 So there’s like an inflection where like short-term rentals are just going to go to zero versus if there would be an inflection where they now say it’s allowed.
0:09:28 There’s a massive change.
0:09:30 Yeah, exactly.
0:09:35 So one of them is the FAA has made a few changes recently, and I want to call out two.
0:09:38 And one of them is around drones.
0:09:43 So consumer drones have existed for quite a while.
0:09:44 I have a DJI drone.
0:09:49 People use them for anything from like just filming your neighborhood.
0:09:53 Real estate agents use them to like capture better imagery of their assets.
0:10:02 But recently, the FAA changed regulation for some companies where they can fly drones beyond line of sight.
0:10:04 And that doesn’t sound like a big change.
0:10:14 But if you can fly a drone beyond your like visual aperture to actually see what it’s doing, while it enables things like drone delivery, there are companies like Zipline.
0:10:16 I’m sure you’ve heard of Amazon playing around in this space.
0:10:18 That changes the game.
0:10:27 Another change that the FAA made recently is they started approving these electric vertical takeoff and landing companies, the EV tool companies.
0:10:30 And again, that was in the news.
0:10:36 But what wasn’t covered as much was the fact that this was the first new category of aircraft in nearly 80 years.
0:10:40 And the one just before this was called Light Sport Aircraft.
0:10:42 You know what Light Sport Aircraft is?
0:10:44 No.
0:10:45 It’s helicopters.
0:10:47 It’s small business jets.
0:10:52 These are things that like each individual is a massive industry.
0:11:02 And if you think about like how, you know, if you take like super wealthy people who take helicopters, who take these business jets, like that’s meaningfully changed their life.
0:11:04 And each one of those is a vertical.
0:11:09 E-VTOL, again, this is the first new category of aircraft in 80 years.
0:11:11 You can only imagine like we’re in the early stages of it.
0:11:12 How do you say that word?
0:11:13 E-VTOL.
0:11:16 So again, it’s like electric vertical takeoff and landing.
0:11:21 So there’s some companies who are playing in this space, obviously, like I think Joby Aviation is one.
0:11:22 Archer’s another one.
0:11:23 Exactly.
0:11:27 We had Brett Adcock on the pod and he started a thing called Archer, which is publicly traded.
0:11:31 And they’ve, I think they have some huge deals with United, things like that.
0:11:32 Yeah.
0:11:47 So, I mean, if you think about, this is like thinking more long term, but these are designed specifically to be, you know, operating within cities, taking people from like one end of New York to the other, airport trips.
0:11:56 And if you think about like what that kind of is a parallel to is not the like mega, you know, Boeing air jets.
0:11:59 It’s actually more like cars, right?
0:12:04 And if you think about how cities have been oriented around cars, what businesses have been drawn up from there.
0:12:14 I think, again, these are two legislative changes that are in the long term going to meaningfully reshape the way that we all engage.
0:12:33 One of our friends, Nikita, who a lot of people know who he is, he was telling us, I have to get it right, but I believe he told me that he invested in a company where if you are in LA and you call 911, the police will take however long to get there.
0:12:38 Let’s say 20 minutes or something because LA is really big, 30 minutes or even just 10 minutes.
0:12:43 But they send out a drone right away to go and see what’s going on.
0:12:44 Have you seen that?
0:12:50 Yeah, we at A16Z is invested in a few of these companies, so they get there more quickly.
0:12:57 But they also have a safety angle from the perspective of, you know, if someone calls 911, they’re telling you something.
0:13:05 Sometimes they’re just reporting like, hey, I think there’s a scary person like on the highway doing X or I think there’s someone in this alley and they have a gun.
0:13:12 And the ability for these drones to not only get there more quickly, but to validate the statement and say, oh, actually, like that’s not a gun.
0:13:16 That’s a poster, you know, in a tube or something like that’s it.
0:13:20 That changes their ability to actually react to the situation more.
0:13:25 Yeah, you just got a guy like wanting to show off like his Lamborghini poster from like the Scholastic Book Fair instead of like a gun.
0:13:27 Yeah, that makes sense.
0:13:28 Happens all the time.
0:13:29 Yeah, no.
0:13:30 Yeah, been there.
0:13:31 Been there.
0:13:34 What are some other ways people could pounce on this?
0:13:45 Well, I think the thing that I’m trying to drive home here is like these are obviously going to take years, if not decades, to influence us in major ways.
0:14:04 But it’s for people to ask questions like, for example, if there is drone delivery at scale, think about even the ways that we package goods and the fact that you package a good to sit in a truck to travel across the country and it needs to have certain levels of padding of, you know, to make it unbreakable.
0:14:11 All of those things potentially change if we’re able to, you know, pick something up and drop it off a mile away, right?
0:14:18 So I think it’s just encouraging people to ask about, you know, if this is true, what are those second, third order effects?
0:14:22 If it’s true that there’s going to be a lot more autonomy, like how quickly does that ramp up?
0:14:27 You take like Waymo, which is a lot of people think of as in like Phoenix or San Francisco.
0:14:34 I just read an article the other day saying that Waymos are already taking up 20% of Uber rides in Austin.
0:14:36 And so this stuff can like move pretty quickly.
0:14:41 I had a, I don’t, I don’t smoke weed anymore or do anything like that.
0:14:46 But I had like this thought the other day because I had to send someone a letter in California.
0:14:50 Isn’t it insane that for, what’s a stamp cost?
0:15:01 40 cents, 50 cents, that I can send a letter 3,500 miles and it will reliably get to pretty much any house I want to in a matter of like four or five days.
0:15:03 I think that is insane.
0:15:06 That is, that is so crazy.
0:15:10 And to think that like, so there’s that type of delivery that I think of all the time.
0:15:16 And I’m like the post office, USPS, UPS, FedEx, these companies are wild.
0:15:19 That’s got the biggest moat ever to build that.
0:15:21 That is so freaking hard.
0:15:26 But then there’s the last mile component and that’s this whole other thing.
0:15:30 And to think that drones, that that’s what’s going to be happening is that drones are going to be flying everywhere.
0:15:35 It’s pretty wild to like imagine like the moat that a company in this space has.
0:15:43 It’s hard to like comprehend because if you think 50 years ago to try to explain to someone, no, you’re not going to go to Walmart anymore.
0:15:44 You’re not going to go anywhere.
0:15:46 Everything’s going to come to your door.
0:15:49 To think how is that going to change in the next 20 or 50 years?
0:15:50 It’s hard to comprehend.
0:15:51 Totally.
0:15:58 And I think to your point, it’s like, are people in this podcast going to go create like the next Waymo or the next ZipLine?
0:16:04 These companies that have been working on these problems for years and years and years, maybe not.
0:16:12 But okay, if all the, or if a significant number of cars on the road are autonomous, who’s cleaning those cars, right?
0:16:17 Who is creating the LIDAR that goes into the cars so that they can actually drive safely?
0:16:26 Who is, you know, actually coordinating the cleaning and the use of these cars, the degradation of them?
0:16:29 Who’s the person that gets called if there’s an issue in a Waymo?
0:16:36 Like, all of these are new businesses the same way that like, when Airbnb was big, the answer wasn’t go create another Airbnb.
0:16:43 It was like, go create the cleaning companies and the operations companies to run an Airbnb, right?
0:16:51 Like, there’s still, I think, a lot of opportunity on, you know, on the edges of these major trends.
0:16:53 All right, let’s do another one.
0:16:54 Let’s go to the psychedelics thing.
0:16:57 So this one is just, is pretty simple.
0:17:12 Like, psilocybin has been illegal for a long time in the United States and elsewhere, and it was decriminalized in the first state, which was Oregon, in 2020, and has subsequently become decriminalized in a host of other states and cities with, you know, lots of legislation pending.
0:17:20 And this is another one where we’re talking, like, what’s going to happen, not in the next year, but several years, if not decades.
0:17:22 But people are already jumping on this.
0:17:24 Some people are doing psychedelic retreats.
0:17:26 You know, again, a policy change that we’re seeing.
0:17:31 I think we have a few Hampton members that have these psychedelic retreats, and I’ve seen some of these.
0:17:33 Did I ever tell you that I tried to go to one?
0:17:36 I think it was in 2018 or something like that.
0:17:39 Like, right when this stuff was getting popular, I knew this person.
0:17:41 It was a friend of a friend.
0:17:45 Jack introduced me to this person, my friend Jack, who was, like, hosting.
0:17:48 He said he said it was a shaman.
0:17:53 And I was thinking it was going to be some brown dude and, like, a sheet.
0:17:56 Like, he’s going to say, like, namaste as I walk into their house and take off my shoes.
0:18:01 And they ask us to go to this meeting in advance to see if it was a good fit.
0:18:08 So I go to the meeting, and it’s just this, like, normal-looking white lady in San Francisco in a condo, a fancy condo building.
0:18:15 And we sit down for dinner so she can get to know us to see if it’s a good fit, if we actually want to go through with this, like, psychedelic experience with her.
0:18:19 And she, like, does a few things, but she’s like, so, where are you from?
0:18:22 And she was like, I was like, oh, Missouri.
0:18:24 And she’s like, oh, flyover country.
0:18:26 And I was like, bitch, what the fuck?
0:18:27 Are you insulting me right now?
0:18:33 And she said, like, three more things, making fun of, like, where I was from and, like, mocking me.
0:18:35 And she was like, what do you do for a living?
0:18:39 And I was like, oh, I, like, kind of work in, like, technology and the internet.
0:18:41 And she’s like, oh, capitalism really bothers me.
0:18:44 And I looked at her LinkedIn in advance.
0:18:45 She worked at Lehman Brothers.
0:18:46 That’s where she worked at.
0:18:48 She worked at Lehman Brothers before she became a shaman.
0:18:51 That is why she’s now doing psychedelic.
0:18:53 I go, lady, you worked at Lehman Brothers.
0:18:54 You were literally a venture capitalist.
0:18:55 What are you talking about?
0:18:59 And then at the end, she was like, by the way, it’s going to be $2,000.
0:19:01 I’m like, lady, you just said you hated capitalism.
0:19:01 All right?
0:19:02 What the hell is going on?
0:19:07 And so I got asked that night not to come back.
0:19:14 And I was disinvited from my psychedelic experience, which probably shows that I need this more than anything.
0:19:15 But, you know.
0:19:19 Well, I was going to say, you definitely, like, those are some pretty bad vibes.
0:19:24 And you definitely do not want to be on psychedelics, you know, with that, with that introduction.
0:19:28 I got kicked out of my psychedelic group.
0:19:29 So that was my early experience.
0:19:32 I wanted to, I forget what it was, like ketamine or MDMA.
0:19:33 I don’t know.
0:19:34 But everyone said it was dope.
0:19:35 And I was like, let’s see what this is about.
0:19:37 I got kicked out of the group.
0:19:40 But I have seen a bunch of these, like, retreats.
0:19:40 I do think it’s cool.
0:19:44 I have friends that are like, I’ve got a couple vet buddies who have done it.
0:19:45 And it’s, like, changed their life.
0:19:46 And we had Scott Galloway on here.
0:19:48 And he says that it’s been really helpful.
0:19:49 So I’m on board with them.
0:19:50 I’m just not on board with it for me.
0:19:55 You know, it’s kind of like, I say, cornrows, you know, it’s cool for other people, but not for me.
0:19:57 Cornrows and face tattoos.
0:20:00 And psychedelic retreats.
0:20:00 Yeah.
0:20:04 Any other interesting opportunities with the psychedelics?
0:20:11 I mean, I think maybe the marketer in me, not that I’m trying to, like, push psychedelics.
0:20:18 But I think a lot of people think of them as either you do it if you’re, like, just a druggie.
0:20:20 And you just, you know, you do these all the time.
0:20:27 Or you do it if you’re in an impaired mental state and you need to, like, get past something.
0:20:29 Like, let’s say you were a vet and you had some terrible experiences.
0:20:33 Like, there’s a lot of ketamine-assisted therapy that’s popping up.
0:20:34 Psilocybin as well.
0:20:41 But, again, it’s often to solve some kind of negative experience in your life and get past that.
0:20:52 If this does become more normalized, I think some of this at, like, a much lower dose, you could imagine being very helpful in smaller life decisions.
0:20:55 Or, for example, you’re starting a new job.
0:20:58 You’re trying to decide if you want to join one company versus another.
0:20:59 You’re trying to decide if you want to quit.
0:21:01 You’re trying to decide if you want to have a child.
0:21:14 Those are not things that have any direct relationship to psychedelics, but are things that people have a really hard time understanding their perspective, understanding how they relate to, you know, let’s say their partner or their family.
0:21:17 And I think that could be a future scenario.
0:21:28 Like, imagine if you had someone guiding you through a psychedelic experience specifically related to your career, specifically related to, again, like, the difficult and very meaningful decision of having kids.
0:21:30 I think there’s something interesting there.
0:21:31 I completely agree.
0:21:43 That’s actually a really cool idea where, like, for example, if you, like, are in a certain social class, like, you don’t have the same problems as someone who’s not in that class.
0:21:49 So, like, when I quit drinking, I went to basically, like, a mental clinic in Soma.
0:21:52 And it was, like, me and, like, everyone else was homeless.
0:21:54 And I was, like, what am I doing here?
0:21:58 But the reason I went was because I didn’t have any income because I had just started my company.
0:21:59 And I was, like, solid on Yelp.
0:22:02 And I went to this place, and I stuck to the same doctor for, like, 10 years.
0:22:03 She was amazing.
0:22:07 And then there was at one point where I remember telling her, like, certain problems that I had.
0:22:13 And this woman had never worked with anyone else that had similar types of problems because she wasn’t used to a client like mine.
0:22:22 And I was desperately seeking, like, a therapist who had, like, people who were at, like, maybe a higher tier on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
0:22:26 And it was so hard to find, like, a person who could serve that need.
0:22:26 You know what I’m saying?
0:22:35 And so that is very interesting to have, like, a different genre of psychedelic guides or whatever the hell they call them.
0:22:35 You know what I’m saying?
0:22:36 Yeah, yeah.
0:22:44 I mean, because to your point, even within therapy, for a long time, people thought therapy was only for when you’re kind of about to divorce, right?
0:22:48 They’re like, we only provide therapy for when there is a clear issue.
0:22:50 And then now therapy has expanded a lot, right?
0:22:52 Like, people do it preventatively.
0:22:56 People do it because they just like their therapist and just need someone to talk to.
0:22:59 Like, there are many different reasons now that people do therapy.
0:23:06 And I think, obviously, in the, you know, people on their own do psychedelics for many different reasons.
0:23:16 But you could imagine that if this is going to be something that is no longer illegal, people are building businesses around, that they can build those businesses for kind of these other needs.
0:23:18 There doesn’t need to be a problem.
0:23:21 Is this going to become, like, a whole therapy session for me?
0:23:28 Hey, I’m telling you about these doctors that I used to go, like, when I was homeless or, like, about my psychedelic getting kicked out and how I’m deaf.
0:23:29 Oh, my gosh.
0:23:30 Every time you come on here, man.
0:23:34 Can you talk about this job stuff?
0:23:35 Sure.
0:23:36 I find this the most interesting.
0:23:38 Okay.
0:23:40 So, a few things.
0:23:46 I think the most, you know, relevant thing to the listeners would be that AI is here.
0:23:48 A bunch of people are freaking out about jobs.
0:23:51 They’re wondering, you know, do I still have a job?
0:23:52 Are my skills still relevant?
0:24:02 And so, I think it’s just interesting to discuss, number one, like, what are the new jobs that are on the horizon?
0:24:05 What are the existing jobs that are going to become more important?
0:24:08 And then I have some other ideas that we can talk about.
0:24:19 But, like, first, did you know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports all the time, every year, or I think more frequently, what the fastest-growing jobs are?
0:24:20 And do you know what they are?
0:24:22 Fastest-growing jobs?
0:24:23 Yeah.
0:24:31 White-collar stuff, so, like, computer engineers, graphic designers, anything involving computers.
0:24:46 Yeah, so, there’s, like, of the top five, there’s data scientists, there’s security analysts, but there’s also wind turbine service technicians, there’s solar panel installers, nurses are also on there.
0:24:54 Further down the list, I think some of the interesting ones are certainly in the, like, again, climate installation operation space.
0:25:01 Like, one interesting thing that I didn’t realize, because I’ve never owned a house with solar panels, is that you don’t only need to install them,
0:25:06 but in order for them to be efficiently used, they need to be cleaned.
0:25:11 And some, you know, if you want to get the max efficiency out of them, they need to be cleaned, like, every 6 to 12 months.
0:25:13 So, it’s like, who’s cleaning those solar panels?
0:25:16 Like, that’s an opportunity on its own.
0:25:18 Other things on the list, I’m just scrolling down it.
0:25:21 Physician assistants, actuaries.
0:25:33 But over the last two decades, some of the fastest-growing jobs were manicurists, HR managers, event planners, massage therapists, and compliance officers, which is also interesting.
0:25:40 I have a, I have a, this small website called Sam’s List, where you can, it’s like Yelp for accountants.
0:25:46 And, you know, we, it’s a tiny website, but I think we have 300 or 400 accountants on the website.
0:25:50 And the woman who runs it, Kimmy, has talked to, like, all 400 of them.
0:26:03 And the common complaint that they all have, and it’s, like, horrible for my business, because Sam’s List, like, the way it makes money is a user who needs an accountant for their business or for their personal life.
0:26:16 They go on, and they can submit their information, and then also we allow other accountants to pay us money to go and, like, basically, like, bid on that client’s, like, you know, this person is looking for this.
0:26:20 Can we also pay money for them, for us to be shown or introduced to them?
0:26:26 And it’s a horrible business for me, because what we’ve noticed, talking to 400 accountants, is that they don’t need more business.
0:26:28 They go, we have enough business.
0:26:30 What we need is more accountants.
0:26:33 They’re like, I can’t hire fast enough.
0:26:35 Like, it’s, no one wants to be an accountant.
0:26:39 And we just simply do not have people who want to work here.
0:26:46 Yeah, and by the way, those are exactly the industries that people should be looking at for building AI products, right?
0:26:56 If you think about even just the selling motion that you need to do for any new product, if you’re going to a company and they have ample demand,
0:27:09 And there’s, like, a very, very liquid market for talent, while that means that they can probably get talent for cheaper, they have to worry about, like, oh, am I going to bring in this AI tool and then fire or lay off a bunch of my existing staff?
0:27:11 Like, those are all considerations.
0:27:19 But in the world of accounting, where, let’s say, like you said, there’s a firm, and that firm is like, I can’t hire fast enough.
0:27:20 I literally don’t have people.
0:27:27 I have clients who want to pay me, and I don’t have, you know, the staff to actually facilitate that project.
0:27:32 Well, then it’s an easy sell, right, to be like, I can support you in this way.
0:27:44 So, I think that’s just, like, AI is obviously being implied to a lot of the obvious areas, but a lot of these industries where there is not enough talent, there is, you know, that is, in my opinion, where folks should be looking.
0:27:55 There was two different members in Hampton who had companies, so, in nursing, there’s a huge shortage of nurses in America, and it’s a great job.
0:27:58 It pays really well, and you get good benefits oftentimes.
0:28:04 I mean, there’s, the downside is, like, you’re obviously working with sick people, and it’s probably, it’s a tragic, it can be tragic sometimes.
0:28:11 But there’s a huge need, and you have relatively secure, you know, you will always be able to work.
0:28:26 They have these things called travel nurses, so a lot of hospitals are lacking nurses, and so they’ll pay, you know, extra money to have someone come and stay there for three months, or to stay there Monday to Friday, or wherever, like, you know, the five-day block or a three-month block.
0:28:39 And there’s a bunch, I think Trusted Health is one of them, where they build these massive businesses all around facilitating getting a travel nurse to the hospital in need.
0:28:48 And I believe, Trusted Health, I have no connection with these guys, I just saw them online, I believe that they are a unicorn.
0:28:51 I think they’ve raised funding in the billion-dollar-plus range.
0:29:06 I mean, I’ve heard that that’s a huge industry, and the fact that, like, again, we talked about it last time, Silver Tsunami, a lot more nurses are needed, and the concentration of that talent is not always where it needs to be, and so it makes sense.
0:29:09 All right, let’s do one or two more. What else? Tell me some other interesting ones.
0:29:18 Well, one note about the, just the world of jobs, I want to get your take on this, is we’ve talked before about pay transparency.
0:29:25 And there are, I think, over a dozen states that have also, you know, put pay transparency law in action.
0:29:32 And that’s why, like, California is one of them. You go to a website, you see a new job posting, and you see how much that job makes.
0:29:42 One super simple opportunity for folks that I haven’t seen, but I’m sure someone’s building this, is basically just the Glassdoor for open salaries.
0:29:53 Like, there’s levels.fyi, kind of a more aggregate level, but if you take what Glassdoor did, Glassdoor basically became the, they had a bunch of other features, but, like, why did people go to Glassdoor?
0:30:02 One, they wanted to see if a company had, like, good or bad reviews, TBD on if that was actually useful, but then they also mostly wanted to see, how much am I going to make at this company?
0:30:04 Like, if I’m negotiating, what should I ask for?
0:30:15 And that relied on people who worked at that company to submit their salary, right, to Glassdoor, and then they built up this database, and that was their moat.
0:30:18 Today, all of that is online, right?
0:30:21 Every time a company is posting a job posting, they are saying how much they pay.
0:30:37 And I have not seen anyone aggregate this information in a meaningful way where if I’m, again, if I’m trying to join a new company or if I’m trying to negotiate, I’m still going to Glassdoor, which is crazy to me because even Glassdoor has really limited data, in my opinion.
0:30:55 And so, someone should just go and, again, like, you would need to build this up over a little bit of time, but someone should be scraping these salaries off of different websites or different companies and building up this database, completely usurping, again, the, like, requirement of people needing to submit their salary themselves.
0:30:58 Is that, like, is the range huge?
0:31:02 Like, so, for example, A16Z, I assume they’re California-based.
0:31:07 So, like, would they list the, let’s see, do they list their salaries there?
0:31:10 They do, and lots of other companies do, too.
0:31:22 And people only notice this when they are in the job process, and so they have a snippet of time and often jobs that are not the same as the one that they’re applying to, right?
0:31:22 Wow, sorry.
0:31:24 So, I just went to Andreessen Horowitz.
0:31:28 I clicked a fund assistant controller.
0:31:32 I assume that that is related to accounting.
0:31:38 They’re going to work closely with assistant controllers and fund, so it’s a finance accounting job.
0:31:50 It says the expected pay for this position is between $216,000 and $252,000, but the actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors, which include experience, skill.
0:31:51 They have to say that.
0:31:52 They always say that.
0:31:52 Yeah.
0:31:54 Interesting.
0:31:55 So, wow.
0:31:56 That is very intriguing.
0:32:11 I did not think, but would it say, like, in order to be, like, a legit partner at A16Z or something, like, will they even list, like, the jobs that are paid potentially millions of dollars?
0:32:20 They have to, but the thing that is worth calling out is that they are only required, as in through law, to my understanding, is to put base pay.
0:32:26 So, obviously, a lot of these jobs, not just at A16Z, have other mechanisms for rewarding people.
0:32:36 And so, this is only one part of the story, but also, if you’ve ever gone to Glassdoor, Glassdoor has been terrible at capturing that other segment in any case.
0:32:43 And so, at the very least, again, a lot of this information is out there, and I think you take this, like, age-old company.
0:32:44 Well, actually, I don’t know.
0:32:45 When was Glassdoor even founded?
0:32:46 Let’s see.
0:32:46 It’s not that old.
0:32:48 It’s not age-old.
0:32:49 Age-old.
0:32:51 I would say it’s internet 1.0.
0:32:52 What does age-old mean?
0:32:53 It’s as old as age?
0:32:58 It’s, in my opinion, you know, it was great for the first version of the internet.
0:33:16 And now, again, like, there are, there’s a change in legislation here, fitting with our theme, but also, it’s like, the technology exists in a way for us, for someone to be able to scrape this really easily and aggregate this information across, you know, not a few companies, but many, many companies.
0:33:18 What else do you want to cover here?
0:33:22 I, uh, I read a book that you suggested because of this whole animal thing.
0:33:25 It was called, like, The Five Senses, or what’s the, the, the animal?
0:33:27 It’s called An Immense World.
0:33:28 An Immense World.
0:33:46 And you have heard me give this spiel so many times, but I, okay, so there’s this book, An Immense World, it’s by this guy called Ed Yong, and whenever I explain it, it sounds really obvious, but, you know, obviously does not do the book justice, but it’s about the fact that we, as humans, are familiar with five senses.
0:33:49 Like, this is how we interpret the world.
0:33:52 Even within those five senses, though, they’re not equal.
0:34:14 We talked about hearing, for example, but sight, for sure, is the, the sense that not only humans tend to use the most to interpret the world, but also, if you benchmark that versus other species, other than birds, we have the most precise vision of, you know, again, the animal kingdom.
0:34:19 We have really strong vision, and again, that drives the way that we see the world.
0:34:31 I say that because this book is about recognizing that, yes, this is how humans see the world, but every animal, again, this is not surprising, is uniquely tuned to their environment, their prey, you know, how they survive.
0:34:43 And for many, you know, sight is not the most important way that they interpret the world, but there are senses that we don’t have that they use, again, to engage.
0:35:02 And then, again, within the five that we’re familiar with, it’s just, it’s worth acknowledging that, for example, the way that, you know, the spectrum of light that we see or the spectrum of temperatures that we’re comfortable in are just simply not the way that, you know, other animals exist.
0:35:13 So, if you take an Arctic squirrel or if you take a camel and you put them on hot plates, they will not move at temperatures that we think are crazy and uncomfortable because they are comfortable, for example.
0:35:21 Or if you take UV light, which we can’t really interpret, other animals or creatures will react to that.
0:35:26 So, that’s my spiel about, like, what the book is about and it obviously does a better job of making that interesting.
0:35:39 But this is my first million, and the reason that I’m bringing this up is because there is this, I think, converging world of nature and technology, which has always existed to an extent.
0:35:55 But at the same time, I think for a long time, people thought that technology was kind of adversarial to nature because it’s like humans were, like, moving forward and we’re progressing and we’re leaving nature behind and sometimes even destroying, you know, that natural world.
0:36:13 But I think there are tons of examples, whether it’s Velcro being, you know, modeled off of burdock burrs, whether it’s bullet trains being inspired by the Kingfisher’s beak, whether it’s NASA learning how to design airplane wings to be more like birds.
0:36:33 Like, we not only learn a lot from nature in the way that we build technology, and I think that’s an interesting thread we can pull, but also there’s a really interesting space of how technology is actually getting us closer to understanding the animal kingdom and communicating with it.
0:36:38 So, we can pull any of those threads, but that’s my nature of technology rant.
0:36:39 Keep going.
0:36:40 I’m fascinated.
0:36:41 Just keep talking.
0:36:47 Now, you on this document, you were talking about a trip you took, but does that weave into this?
0:36:48 Yeah.
0:36:51 So, I just came back from the Galapagos Islands.
0:36:52 Have you ever been there?
0:36:54 No.
0:36:56 And I’m super ignorant.
0:36:58 If I’m being honest, I don’t even know where it is.
0:37:01 But I know it’s related to Darwin.
0:37:04 I mean, I’m incredibly ignorant of Galapagos.
0:37:05 Yeah.
0:37:06 So, okay.
0:37:11 The Galapagos are, I think it’s 600 miles west of Ecuador.
0:37:13 So, they’re in the Pacific.
0:37:15 There’s a set of islands that a lot of people…
0:37:16 So, Central America, right?
0:37:17 I mean, I…
0:37:18 South America, but yeah.
0:37:22 I’m not the biggest South America, Central America expert.
0:37:22 I don’t even know.
0:37:23 I don’t know too much about it.
0:37:27 Ecuador is the north end of South America.
0:37:27 Okay.
0:37:32 So, basically, they’re part of Ecuador, but a lot of people know them, again, because of,
0:37:33 like you said, Darwin.
0:37:40 They are this, at least from my perspective, and I’ve been to 50 or so countries, the most
0:37:47 kind of nature scape trip I’ve ever done, where you actually feel like you’re entering
0:37:48 their world versus the opposite.
0:37:57 And so, the reason it fits into Darwin’s story is when you have a bunch of islands, the way
0:38:02 that these different species evolve across the different islands, especially land creatures
0:38:09 who can’t make their way from one island to another, they end up evolving differently due
0:38:15 due to the unique fauna, due to the unique environment, set of predators, etc., on that particular island.
0:38:25 And so, he was like, wait a minute, why are there, for example, blue-footed boobies, which are a type of birds, and red-footed boobies on two different islands?
0:38:41 And that was him witnessing some of these, he did a lot with finches, like, he noticed these things, and then that was his kind of, like, aha to understanding evolution.
0:38:43 So, that’s why it’s, like, in all the textbooks and stuff.
0:38:45 Like, I knew nothing about Darwin.
0:38:54 This is actually the first time that I’ve ever, like, heard, like, the, I’m sure there’s a lot more to the, you know, the aha moment story, but I have never heard that before.
0:39:02 Yeah, and he did a lot of his research there, and I think, in particular, with the finches, I think there’s, like, 17 kinds of finches.
0:39:07 And the interesting part is, like, when does an animal become a separate species, right?
0:39:11 So, you take these two finches, they exist on different islands, and then, like, they’re evolving.
0:39:14 At what point do they become a new species?
0:39:17 It’s when they no longer mate with each other, right?
0:39:23 So, one interesting thing, fun fact, is just, they had these, you know, one example is lava lizards.
0:39:29 And these lava lizards would do these mating dances, but in the case for them, they’re doing these push-ups.
0:39:33 At least that’s how humans, like, describe this mating dance.
0:39:40 But because they’re different species that have evolved on their unique islands, it’s, like, one lizard might do, like, three push-ups.
0:39:42 Another one might do five.
0:39:46 Another one might do it, like, a little bigger or funkier than the others.
0:39:49 But what’s crazy is that, like, they will not mate with each other.
0:39:59 Like, if you take one lava lizard from one island and the other one’s doing, you know, the male’s doing the push-ups for the females, just slight differences in how it’s being done.
0:40:00 It’s like, nope, sorry.
0:40:01 Like, we no longer mate.
0:40:10 And one interesting takeaway for me, and this is just me, again, like, this has nothing to do with business, it’s just, that’s never happened to humans.
0:40:14 Now, there are some, like, bad historical examples of, like, segregation and stuff.
0:40:20 But for the most part, like, we’ve existed on different continents, evolved, right?
0:40:31 And over long, long, long periods of time, like, you still, like, someone from Australia will still mate with someone from North America, who will still mate with someone from Europe, et cetera, right?
0:40:35 Like, I just thought that was, that was an interesting, like, I wonder why that is.
0:40:43 I’ve heard of a bunch of friends of mine doing push-ups to impress some lot lizards, but never lava lizards.
0:40:46 Steph, do you know what a lot lizard is?
0:40:48 I don’t.
0:40:49 Is that embarrassing?
0:40:50 No.
0:40:53 It means you’re much more sophisticated than me.
0:40:57 A lot lizard is a prostitute that serves truck drivers.
0:40:58 Oh, that makes sense.
0:41:09 I feel like if you know what a lot lizard is, that sort of says what part of the tracks you’re from, you know what I’m saying?
0:41:11 I hear you.
0:41:21 So, you’re talking about Galapagos Islands and Darwin and, you know, the eight senses that animals have.
0:41:32 And if I know a few people that know a few things about lot lizards, if you want to talk about that, just saying, what’s this ass nature thing?
0:41:44 So, if people want to go down the rabbit hole of exploring, not just, like, let me go look at pictures of animals, but understanding, like, how do animals produce color?
0:41:53 What are the examples of technology being inspired by natural design, for example, like a search algorithm that was inspired by ants?
0:41:55 This is so fascinating.
0:41:58 So, Ass Nature has this.
0:41:59 There’s all stuff you can click on.
0:42:02 So, there’s one about the African darter.
0:42:04 Apparently, that’s a type of bird.
0:42:10 And it has a very special feather that is incredibly water-resistant.
0:42:18 And then it tells you, like, different applications that this potential feather or, like, inspiration of this feather could have.
0:42:25 And it talks about, like, the strategy of how it works and, like, the potential for copying this feather.
0:42:26 This is amazing.
0:42:27 How did you find this website?
0:42:28 This is really cool.
0:42:31 So, someone shared it within Internet Pipes.
0:42:35 We have this survey whenever people join, which just asks, like, what’s your favorite tool?
0:42:38 A lot of it ends up being what you expect, ChatGPT, Ahrefs, etc.
0:42:42 But there are a bunch of gems that come through like this.
0:42:48 And so, by the way, is Internet Pipes, it’s literally just tons of different resources for finding these things.
0:42:56 So, what the product started as, it was, I hate the term course, but it was a course that existed to say, okay.
0:42:57 It’s called a book.
0:42:58 It was a book.
0:42:58 It was a book.
0:43:05 It exists in Notion, and there’s videos, and there’s text, and now there’s a community, and now there’s things, databases like the Digis database.
0:43:12 But the origin was, okay, the most common question I get asked is, you find all this cool stuff online, how do you find it?
0:43:19 And so, Internet Pipes was showing people how to find this information through a series of tools.
0:43:21 And that’s why it’s called Pipes, right?
0:43:32 It’s like, use this tool to make sense of all of the purchases that are happening on Amazon, all of the pages that exist on Wikipedia, all of the searches that are happening on Google.
0:43:35 And, you know, you go down the line, this data exists.
0:43:40 And by the way, we’re at a unique period where, like, it didn’t quite exist 15 years ago.
0:43:43 And 15 years from now, probably everyone will know it exists.
0:43:50 And so, it’s like, this Internet Pipes is a course, a book, whatever you want to call it, to learn how to do that.
0:43:53 And you’ve made a lot of money off of it so far, haven’t you?
0:43:54 Yes.
0:43:56 That’s pretty dope.
0:43:59 When you answer just yes, that means I’m not going to ask how much.
0:44:00 It’s six figures.
0:44:02 There’s a pretty wide range of, you know.
0:44:05 Does the six figure include the .00?
0:44:08 So, it could really be like $1,000.00?
0:44:10 It’s eight figures now.
0:44:11 Got it.
0:44:15 This is a really, really cool website.
0:44:17 I could spend hours just looking at this.
0:44:19 There’s an article about, like, camel’s fur.
0:44:20 Yeah.
0:44:26 And how it keeps people cool, or it keeps camels cool in the desert, but also warm at night.
0:44:29 And why that particular type of fur is special for this.
0:44:35 Like, it’s so, and the reason it’s kind of interesting is, like, the two that I’ve named are clothing-related.
0:44:40 But, like, if you had a clothing-related brand, like, some type of, like, it’s stealing the story for you.
0:44:41 Like, it’s, like, or not stealing.
0:44:43 It’s giving you the hook.
0:44:44 Do you know what I mean?
0:44:44 Exactly.
0:44:45 Exactly.
0:44:52 And, by the way, like, people in our world and business tech are always talking about the, like, Lindy-ness of something.
0:44:54 How long has something existed for?
0:44:59 And it’s like, you are learning from millions of years of evolution, right?
0:45:04 Of these animals that have become purely optimized for this purpose.
0:45:11 And to your point, I think, like, the marketer in both of us is like, what could, you know, what products could you make off of this?
0:45:15 Like, there’s one of, like, otters, where it’s like, it keeps heat in and cold water out.
0:45:16 So, otters.
0:45:21 And I’m sure every single wetsuit company has, like, stolen this marketing for their branding or whatever.
0:45:23 But, like, so, it’s, like, really fascinating.
0:45:23 Sorry, go ahead.
0:45:27 Well, did you ever see, you know Mischief, right?
0:45:28 Mischief, the brand?
0:45:32 Mischief is the company that, like, weird projects.
0:45:38 Like, they did, like, a blood shoe with Lil Nas X or something like that.
0:45:42 Yeah. Yeah. So, they’ve done a ton of shoe collabs.
0:45:47 They did one. I think it was, I don’t remember if it was with Jimmy Kimmel or they just announced it.
0:45:49 But it was called the Gobstomper.
0:45:50 Did you ever see this?
0:45:50 No.
0:45:52 I thought they were kind of cool.
0:45:58 They basically, the bottom of the sneaker comes gray at first.
0:46:05 And then as you wear it more, basically, like, as your shoe wears away, it looks like a Gobstopper.
0:46:06 And it was just, like…
0:46:10 Which is the candy that you suck on and each shell, layer of shell, it turns colors.
0:46:10 Okay, cool.
0:46:11 Yeah, exactly.
0:46:15 And so, my, like, you might think this is the silliest idea ever.
0:46:21 But when I went to the Galapagos and I saw these red-footed and these blue-footed boobies.
0:46:28 And by the way, fun fact for the listeners, the reason that these birds have different colored feet is because of what they eat.
0:46:30 Which I just thought was, like, so strange and interesting.
0:46:38 Basically, like, the two different birds on different islands eat different things and that ends up impacting the pigment in their feet.
0:46:45 But imagine a sneaker brand that was, again, stick with me here.
0:46:49 This might be a really awful idea that’s related to health in some way.
0:46:51 So, like, let’s say you’re wearing a CGM.
0:47:02 And on your shoes, your shoes change color in some way based on, like, if you’re in range or some other metric that you care about.
0:47:08 But basically, you’re able to signal something in a way that changes through your feet.
0:47:09 Awful idea.
0:47:14 Well, it could be like if, you know, we could show your fertile or something.
0:47:16 It would help with the whole lot lizard thing.
0:47:19 It’s like those parties, right?
0:47:21 Where you wear, like, what are they called?
0:47:22 The stoplight parties?
0:47:23 Where you wear red.
0:47:24 Yeah, yellow, red, or green.
0:47:26 That’s pretty funny.
0:47:27 So, stoplight shoes.
0:47:29 Maybe that’s a better version of the idea.
0:47:34 We just put all of our blood work on our, you know, like, I don’t have a thyroid issue.
0:47:35 I’m good.
0:47:40 Yeah, your, like, your function health results show up in your, in, like, a pendant around your neck.
0:47:43 Let’s, let’s, let’s end here.
0:47:44 I think we got a ton of stuff.
0:47:46 Steph Smith, thank you very much.
0:47:48 Internet pipes, stephsmith.io.
0:47:49 Is that your website?
0:47:51 Technically, yes.
0:47:52 I haven’t updated it in a while.
0:47:57 But, yeah, if people are interested in internet pipes, I think we dropped a code last time, MFM, if people want to use.
0:48:01 And they can get that, that digits database of 100 stats.
0:48:07 We talk about shipbuilding, disaster insurance, you know, tech literacy, nomad visas, all that good stuff.
0:48:07 All right.
0:48:08 God bless America.
0:48:09 We’re done.
0:48:10 That’s it.
0:48:10 That’s the pod.
0:48:11 Thanks, Sam.

0:00:03 We launched this thing saying, all right, let’s aim for $10,000.
0:00:07 We hit our $10,000 goal in seven minutes.
0:00:10 And in the first 48 hours, we had $2 million.
0:00:14 After that is when the story gets really interesting.
0:00:24 Okay, well, good.
0:00:26 Sam, do you want me to kick it off?
0:00:28 Yeah, well, yeah, I do.
0:00:30 First of all, Sean, how did you guys even come to the same world?
0:00:31 Craig.
0:00:35 So we invited Craig to the event because Craig’s one of my favorite people.
0:00:37 Even though he doesn’t play basketball, we were like, Craig, you got to be there.
0:00:39 You’re the exemption.
0:00:43 You’re not the basketball guy, but we just want you there for sure.
0:00:44 And we told him what it was.
0:00:48 He got excited and he goes, I have somebody who I think should come.
0:00:49 And we were like, okay, great.
0:00:50 Who’s the plus one?
0:00:53 And he was, I guess, how long have you guys been friends?
0:00:55 It’s got to be a decade now.
0:00:58 It’s so funny because he called me up and he’s like,
0:01:00 okay, I have the weirdest invitation ever.
0:01:04 It’s a basketball event, but I’m not going to be playing basketball.
0:01:08 And I was like, okay, that’s as weird as it gets.
0:01:11 And then we started talking and I’m so glad I went.
0:01:11 It was amazing.
0:01:15 Yeah, that’s actually a big leap of faith for you because, you know, we know Craig.
0:01:17 So obviously, you know, there’s a personal connection there.
0:01:19 What did he say that made you get off the couch for that?
0:01:23 I mean, he honestly didn’t give me many details.
0:01:29 But in general, Craig is one of those people on this list I have where if he says to try
0:01:31 something, I just try it and don’t ask questions.
0:01:34 There’s only like four people on that list, but he’s on there.
0:01:35 So I’m so glad I did it.
0:01:36 Exactly.
0:01:41 And ever since we met you at that event, I was like, okay, we have to have you on because
0:01:42 you blew us away.
0:01:44 Just to give people context.
0:01:44 All right.
0:01:45 So there’s a room full of people.
0:01:46 Imagine 25.
0:01:51 We tried to invite the 25 most interesting, ambitious people that we could find who also
0:01:53 love to play basketball in this case.
0:01:57 And the room is like, I mean, it’s basically like 30% billionaire.
0:02:00 And so there’s a lot of successful people in that room.
0:02:02 And I would say you blew us away the most.
0:02:04 You gave this talk that really kind of inspired us.
0:02:06 And I would say you blew us away for three reasons.
0:02:12 Number one, your business is like a giant dragon, but it looks like a playful, cute dragon.
0:02:16 And so, you know, people don’t look at it and think, wow, this is a juggernaut.
0:02:18 You have a board games company.
0:02:22 If anybody’s ever seen the games like Exploding Kittens, that’s your game.
0:02:28 And not only is that your game, you were telling us, we were like, so like of the top games,
0:02:30 like, you know, is yours number one?
0:02:36 And I don’t know if I want to paraphrase you exactly, but you go, we have number one, two,
0:02:39 four, and five of the top five sold games in the world.
0:02:41 And I just thought that was incredible.
0:02:47 So you have this huge business, but you have this artist spirit where you’re the nicest
0:02:49 guy and you’re creatively driven.
0:02:51 It didn’t seem like you got into this for the money.
0:02:53 You got into this to have fun.
0:02:58 And you gave this talk at night, this little presentation, a little 10 minute presentation
0:02:59 that blew us all away.
0:03:01 So that’s why I wanted you to be here.
0:03:02 You can respond to that.
0:03:04 And then Sam, I want to hear your impressions too, before we jump in.
0:03:10 Well, first of all, even before, like, I would just love to say that is so flattering.
0:03:16 Like I showed up to that event, like about as fish out of water as it gets.
0:03:19 And imposter syndrome, like, you know, dripping out my ears.
0:03:24 It was just, this room is filled with incredible people.
0:03:26 And Sean, I think it was you.
0:03:36 I think the very first few minutes, I remember I asked you, like, why are we here?
0:03:37 Like, what is this thing?
0:03:39 And you had the best answer ever.
0:03:43 You said, everyone in this room is smarter than I am.
0:03:46 I’m going to spend the next three days learning as much as I can.
0:03:47 I hope you’re here for the same reasons.
0:03:49 And I was just like, holy crap.
0:03:51 I have found my tribe.
0:03:52 Here’s where I want to be.
0:03:53 This is so great.
0:03:55 There was one moment when I was with you in the sauna.
0:04:01 And you asked me and maybe Austin Reeve or someone like that.
0:04:04 You’re like, can I get your guys’ opinion on something?
0:04:09 And you, like, express, like, you know, opinions on an investor conversation, something.
0:04:10 You’re like, can you just give me your take on this?
0:04:12 And we gave you our opinions.
0:04:17 And you asked the question in a way where I thought I was helping you.
0:04:19 And then I was like, how big is your business?
0:04:20 And then you said the numbers.
0:04:24 And my reply was, why are you asking me this question?
0:04:27 Like, you are, you, it’s so funny.
0:04:32 You win the award for most humble person because you’re acting like you are in this room of big
0:04:35 shots when, like, of all the people there, you were the big shot.
0:04:40 Are you able to give any numbers, whatever you’re comfortable with, to give the audience
0:04:42 a sense of how big Exploding Kittens is?
0:04:45 Like, if it’s valuation, game sold, revenue, anything you want.
0:04:51 I have to be a little careful because we have investors who like to keep it under wraps.
0:04:51 But I’ll tell you this.
0:04:54 We sell, we did this math.
0:04:55 This was so ridiculous.
0:05:01 We sell a game every 6.4 seconds around the clock.
0:05:08 And our first, like, we started our company on Kickstarter in 30 days.
0:05:09 We were trying to raise $10,000.
0:05:11 We raised almost $9 million instead.
0:05:16 Our first, um, our first print run was 700,000 units.
0:05:18 And that was mind-blowing.
0:05:21 Like, how the hell do you print 700,000 games?
0:05:29 And for scale, I’ll tell you, that is today, like, so, such a tiny print order for us.
0:05:33 Like, I wouldn’t even consider printing that many because they’d sell out so fast, it wouldn’t
0:05:34 even be worth our while.
0:05:40 One of the coolest things was when you took us, we went to Target and Walmart and we were
0:05:44 walking around the store and you took us to the games aisle of a Target and you were just
0:05:45 kind of breaking it down.
0:05:50 Like, this shelf, a shelf that I’ve walked by hundreds of times, don’t really pay much.
0:05:51 You know, I don’t even think about it.
0:05:53 I just, I either buy something or I don’t.
0:05:55 I don’t think about the business of the shelf.
0:06:01 And you talked about this sort of like, you know, this sort of six foot, six foot, uh, space.
0:06:07 And it was like, this shelf is like, I mean, I won’t use your numbers, but I’ll just give
0:06:11 a generic idea of like, this shelf is like hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:06:16 And every inch of this shelf for Target, the way they think is like sales per square inch
0:06:17 or something like that.
0:06:18 And you were describing how that works.
0:06:22 And then you were like, yeah, you know, I’m trying to figure out our Walmart sales.
0:06:26 So I’m going to go work as a Walmart associate for the next few weeks, just to get kind of
0:06:28 an on the ground look and not like a marketing stunt.
0:06:30 You were like, no, I genuinely want to know.
0:06:33 So if you said you were going to do that right after our event, did you end up doing it?
0:06:35 Yeah, they postponed it.
0:06:40 This, honestly, this, this tariff thing right now has turned everything into quite turmoil,
0:06:44 but, uh, it looks like it’s going to now be scheduled for September.
0:06:48 So, uh, I’ll be going to Arkansas to work at Walmart for a bit.
0:06:50 Um, but the whole reason it’s, you’re right.
0:06:51 It’s not a stunt.
0:06:55 Like my goal isn’t like, Hey, I want to tell the world about this and, and, and get publicity.
0:07:01 Like in order to sell products at any retail location, you have to understand the customer
0:07:04 and you have to understand when they’re walking into a space, what are they looking for?
0:07:06 And what turns them off and what turns them on?
0:07:09 And if they pick up a game and then put it back, why did they put it back?
0:07:13 And it’s not so much of it is contextual.
0:07:14 It’s not necessarily the game, right?
0:07:17 It’s not necessarily, I looked at this game and it wasn’t for me.
0:07:20 It’s, I looked at this game and then something else caught my eye.
0:07:25 So I put this down and I picked it up and, and those are the stories I need to hear in
0:07:26 order to be as successful as possible.
0:07:31 And I just figured finally, like the only way I’m going to get this is by living there and
0:07:35 spending as long as it takes to talk to people and figure out like, why’d you put that game
0:07:35 down?
0:07:36 Why’d you pick that one up?
0:07:38 Why’d you walk in here to begin with?
0:07:40 And, uh, yeah, I just think I have so much to learn.
0:07:42 I’m really excited to do it.
0:07:45 How big is the company, uh, in terms of employees and how old is it?
0:07:48 Company is, we just had our 10 year anniversary.
0:07:49 So we just turned 10.
0:07:53 We got about a hundred employees, a little less.
0:08:00 Um, and, um, yeah, we’re, we’re based out of Los Angeles, although we’ve got offices, uh,
0:08:04 in Canada and in Europe and kind of all over the place.
0:08:07 Everywhere we have a distribution center, we also have an office.
0:08:09 So give us the origin story.
0:08:11 So how do you, how did you do this?
0:08:13 Why did you, why did you decide to create a board game?
0:08:18 And then how did you do this Kickstarter that blew everybody’s socks off?
0:08:21 You, you set out to raise 10 K and said, you raised 9 million or something like that.
0:08:28 And then now it’s this company that’s making, you know, I don’t know exactly how much
0:08:31 you’re making, but you don’t have to confirm or deny, but I’ll just put it out there.
0:08:33 I think you’ve built a billion dollar games company.
0:08:38 And in a space that I think most people, the cool part is most people think you either are
0:08:39 going to choose something for the money.
0:08:46 I got to go do this sweaty B2B, you know, business, HR tech, whatever, or I’m going to
0:08:46 have fun.
0:08:47 I’m going to build something cool.
0:08:48 That’s fun.
0:08:50 That won’t give people delight and joy.
0:08:51 And you got both.
0:08:52 You did both.
0:08:54 You did the fun thing and you ended up with the money prize too.
0:08:56 That’s why I love about your story.
0:08:58 And so how the heck did this happen?
0:08:59 Can you just tell us the kind of origins?
0:09:00 Sure.
0:09:00 Yeah.
0:09:01 It’s a bizarre story.
0:09:08 So, um, I used to work, I’ve been designing games my whole life, but the most notable place
0:09:09 I worked was at the Xbox.
0:09:14 I was the chief design officer there building games for the Xbox for ever.
0:09:24 Um, and I remember one day, so one day I, uh, my, my brother, he’s got two kids and I love
0:09:24 them.
0:09:28 My niece and nephew, they’re the best and, uh, Zeke and Kiki.
0:09:29 And I, I walked over to their house.
0:09:31 I was so excited to see them.
0:09:37 And, um, they were playing Xbox when I walked in and I was like, Hey, how’s everybody doing?
0:09:41 And they like, didn’t even look up, like didn’t even acknowledge my existence.
0:09:45 And to add insult to injury, they were playing a game that I designed.
0:09:50 And I was like, Oh, I’ve broken something so fundamental here.
0:09:52 Like this just feels wrong.
0:10:01 And within two weeks, I resigned from Xbox and thought, whatever I do next, it has to
0:10:04 capture what I remember in my childhood, right?
0:10:08 Like when I think about playing games, you know, other than the NES, there really weren’t
0:10:09 any consoles at all.
0:10:14 So we were playing around a table and we were cheating and kicking each other under the table
0:10:19 and throwing food and, and making all those like alliances and, and betraying each other
0:10:20 and all this fun stuff.
0:10:21 I don’t even remember what the games were.
0:10:26 I remember the relationships and it’s because we like looked each other in the eye and we,
0:10:32 and we like could lie right to each other’s faces or, you know, secretly conspire to make,
0:10:33 you know, my younger brother lose.
0:10:35 That was a favorite activity.
0:10:40 But I remember all these really fun things that were, I think, very formative for me.
0:10:44 And so when I resigned, I thought I want to return to that.
0:10:46 And certainly the first step is really simple.
0:10:52 I’m just going to design this very simple card game and see, like Kickstarter exists.
0:10:53 I’ll put this thing up on Kickstarter.
0:10:56 I’ll try to raise just a little tiny bit of money.
0:10:58 What’s a little bit like $10,000?
0:11:02 You thought $10,000 and $10,000 wasn’t an arbitrary number.
0:11:06 I like, I called up a printer and I said, look, I want to do this thing.
0:11:07 What’s the minimum print run?
0:11:11 And he said, you got to print out, you know, I think it was like 400 units.
0:11:13 And I was like, okay, well, how much does that cost?
0:11:15 And it came out to just about $10,000.
0:11:16 And I was like, cool, there we go.
0:11:23 And this was really all because of you felt some type of guilt about your family being using screens?
0:11:25 Yeah, I felt like I was on the wrong path.
0:11:28 I felt like I was part of the problem instead of part of the solution.
0:11:29 Was that a big thing?
0:11:31 Like, were you getting wealthy from that?
0:11:34 I mean, chief design officer sounds like you’re, that’s a big deal.
0:11:37 If you had asked me then, the answer would have been yes.
0:11:40 Now my scale is a little bit different.
0:11:44 And so when you, when you do this, you’ve never made a card game before, right?
0:11:46 You’ve never, there’s not something you grew up doing.
0:11:48 You’re a beginner at this stage.
0:11:49 Totally.
0:11:52 Literally my first try, but the stakes are so low, right?
0:11:57 Like if I’m just going to be making a few hundred units, even if the thing is totally broken, that’s okay.
0:11:59 People, you know, they’re going to pay 20 bucks for this thing.
0:12:02 They know this is my first time ever trying this.
0:12:03 Like, this will be easy.
0:12:03 Right.
0:12:07 And I showed the game to a bunch of friends.
0:12:09 And one of those friends was Matthew Itman.
0:12:14 And he is the creator of the Oatmeal, the online comic.
0:12:16 It’s like the funniest guy I know.
0:12:19 And he’s like, he’s the audience whisperer.
0:12:25 Like he knows how to command a crowd and he knows how to get their attention and he knows how to keep them engaged.
0:12:28 And just this incredible, brilliant mind.
0:12:31 And I showed him this game and he said, what’s it called?
0:12:36 And I said, it’s called Bomb Squad because we got a deck of cards and there’s a few bombs in the deck.
0:12:37 And those are the bad ones.
0:12:41 We try to avoid the bombs and all you’re trying to do is get through the deck and not draw a bomb.
0:12:43 And he said a few things.
0:12:46 He said, one, this is the best game I’ve ever played.
0:12:49 I would really, really like to work on this with you.
0:12:50 Will you please let me work on this with you?
0:12:53 And I was like, yes.
0:12:54 Like, hell yes.
0:12:58 If the Oatmeal ever asks you if he can work on a game with you, your answer is yes.
0:12:59 Like, holy crap.
0:13:00 What an opportunity.
0:13:01 And he said, cool.
0:13:07 The second thing is we can’t call it Bomb Squad because it’s too obvious.
0:13:09 Like bombs are bad.
0:13:10 Of course you’re scared of the bomb.
0:13:10 There’s bombs in the deck.
0:13:11 You’re scared of the bombs.
0:13:12 It’s called Bomb Squad.
0:13:12 Who cares?
0:13:14 You’re going to forget that in five seconds.
0:13:22 What if instead the thing that you were most scared of were cute, adorable, fuzzy little kittens and we’ll call the game Exploding Kittens instead?
0:13:26 And that’s really the origin story.
0:13:32 Like that one simple conversation happened to meet the right person at the right time and we decided to collaborate on this thing.
0:13:39 And then we had the discussion with the distributor and he’s like, Matt said, we’re going to make, we’re going to do more than 400 units.
0:13:40 And I was like, I don’t know.
0:13:40 I don’t know.
0:13:42 This is, this is totally risky.
0:13:44 Neither of us have ever made a game before.
0:13:48 And so a friend of mine, a guy named Dan Shapiro, he runs Glowforge.
0:13:50 He gave me this incredible advice.
0:13:58 When I was talking to him about what number to set our Kickstarter campaign, he said, look, when this campaign runs, you have no control.
0:14:04 Like there’s going to be store, hopefully stories written about your campaign, but you don’t control any of them.
0:14:07 They get to set the narrative and you just sort of hold on.
0:14:13 But what you can control are the stories that are like tried to raise X instead raised Y.
0:14:15 Hit their goal in X minutes, right?
0:14:18 All of these statistics, data driven stories.
0:14:25 You control those by setting that one number that you have control over, setting that at the appropriate place.
0:14:26 And he was totally right.
0:14:34 And so we set it at 10,000 knowing this is probably a little low, but it is the truthful minimum that we need for our order minimum.
0:14:36 And now we can control those stories.
0:14:38 Were any of you guys like famous back then?
0:14:44 I know what the oatmeal is, but is that like big enough where you’re like, where he’s like, dude, I’ll blow this up.
0:14:45 Just like tell me when.
0:14:50 It turns out the answer is yes, but none of us really knew it at the time.
0:14:56 So like we launched this thing saying, all right, let’s aim for $10,000 because of Matt.
0:15:01 Matt made a single post saying, hey, oatmeal fans, for the first time ever, I made a game.
0:15:02 I’m really proud of it.
0:15:03 I hope you like it.
0:15:03 Here it is.
0:15:08 And we hit our $10,000 goal in seven minutes.
0:15:11 And it’s because of Matt, 100% of Matt.
0:15:13 He made one post, hit $10,000.
0:15:21 And then within the first 12 hours, maybe it was closer to 24, it’s 10 years ago, we raised a million dollars.
0:15:23 A hundred percent because of Matt.
0:15:26 And in the first 48 hours, we had $2 million.
0:15:28 A hundred percent because of Matt.
0:15:38 After that is when the story gets really interesting because 48 hours in, all the oatmeal fans that are going to back this thing have backed it, right?
0:15:39 They’ve seen his post.
0:15:45 They know they’re interested in this thing or they decide they’re not interested in this thing and they’ve either purchased it or not.
0:15:46 And that’s it.
0:15:48 The sales price on that is $2 million.
0:15:50 Amazing.
0:15:52 Like we are off to the races.
0:15:54 We can do anything now.
0:15:54 We’ve raised $2 million.
0:15:58 And Matt and I sat down and we’re like, okay, we now have a choice.
0:16:02 Either we can say, we have raised $2 million.
0:16:07 That is one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history in the games category.
0:16:11 And we can just kind of ride this thing out knowing that we’re not going to raise much more than that.
0:16:14 Maybe we’ll get to 2.5 and we’ll declare that a huge victory.
0:16:17 Or we can bet it all.
0:16:24 Like what if we just went absolutely crazy and deployed every marketing strategy either of us have ever heard of?
0:16:27 And we shook hands and said, let’s do it.
0:16:32 Like let’s try as big and as bold as this thing can possibly be.
0:16:36 And on Kickstarter, they’ve got these things called stretch goals, right?
0:16:37 We’ve made our game.
0:16:41 But if we get, I don’t know, we’ve raised $10,000.
0:16:44 If instead we raise $20,000, everybody gets a free carrying case.
0:16:48 $50,000, we’re going to add 10 more cards into the game.
0:16:49 Stretch goals, right?
0:16:52 They’re trying to motivate people to back the project.
0:16:58 I sat down and I thought, this whole thing is crowdfunding.
0:17:05 And all of those stretch goals, every strategy I’ve read, every YouTube video I’ve watched, everything is based on funding.
0:17:10 Like they ignore the crowd part and they’re just like laser focus on funding, funding, funding, funding.
0:17:12 And I was like, I think that’s backwards.
0:17:16 I think instead we’re going to ignore the funding because we’ve already got $2 million.
0:17:19 And let’s just focus on the crowd part.
0:17:25 And instead of doing traditional stretch goals, all of our stretch goals were based on the crowd.
0:17:28 So we’re like, look, we don’t care about money anymore.
0:17:29 Don’t give us any more money.
0:17:30 We don’t want any more money.
0:17:34 Nothing we talk about from now on is going to be about money because the funding doesn’t matter.
0:17:36 Let’s have a party and everyone is invited.
0:17:39 So we’re like, look, we’re going to do those same things.
0:17:42 We’re also going to give you a carrying case and 10 extra cards and all that fun stuff.
0:17:44 But it’s not based on how much money you give us.
0:17:46 It’s based on how much fun you have.
0:17:53 So show us a picture of 10 Batmans in a hot tub, whatever the hell that means.
0:18:02 Show us a picture of that or show us a picture of 100 people dressed up as cats or show us the craziest, most interesting things you can come up with.
0:18:05 And every time you do that, we’re going to make the game better and you’re not going to pay us more.
0:18:09 We’re just going to make the game better because this is fun and we’ve already raised enough money.
0:18:10 Let’s have a party.
0:18:16 And we did that for the next 28 days and we watched our numbers just skyrocket.
0:18:19 I’m going to focus on the crowd part here, right?
0:18:23 Like we had, I don’t know, let’s say we had a thousand backers at that point.
0:18:29 By the end of this thing, we had 219,000 backers for this campaign.
0:18:34 That is so far in first place of any Kickstarter campaign in history to date.
0:18:37 It’s been 10 years and no one’s even come close to that record.
0:18:43 And it’s because we said the funding is completely irrelevant.
0:18:44 All that matters is the crowd.
0:18:46 The funding was a really nice side effect though.
0:18:49 But it was eight and a half million dollars that you got, right?
0:18:50 Well, yeah, there was that too.
0:18:52 So wait, give us an example.
0:18:53 So you said 10 Batman in a bathtub.
0:18:56 What were the other things that you did to get the crowd to do?
0:19:01 Yeah, so one of our characters in our game is called Taco Cat, which is my favorite character, right?
0:19:02 Taco Cat is a palindrome.
0:19:04 Spell Taco Cat backwards and you’ve still got Taco Cat.
0:19:08 So we had this adorable character and we said, look, we don’t actually know what Taco Cat is,
0:19:13 but show us 25 pictures of real Taco Cats and we’ll make the game better.
0:19:16 When you say show us, do you mean like post in the comment section?
0:19:17 Post, yeah.
0:19:21 So it was basically just like an online message board that you were using.
0:19:26 Whatever social media platform you wanted, we just said, you know, tag us on it.
0:19:27 And that’s all we care about.
0:19:28 And so that was the virality.
0:19:33 They were posting an image that didn’t make any sense in the feed and they’d tag you guys.
0:19:35 That got people curious to go check you out.
0:19:36 Is that what was working?
0:19:38 Why have you stuffed your cat into a burrito?
0:19:39 What is happening here?
0:19:41 And on and on those pictures went.
0:19:47 One, we had this veterinarian who worked in an animal shelter and she showed us,
0:19:51 all she did was she had a picture of her holding this adorable cat and a piece of paper.
0:19:57 And the piece of paper showed that she had legally changed the cat’s name to Taco Cat for real.
0:20:00 And we’re like, all right, that’s about as real a Taco Cat as it gets.
0:20:01 So we gave credit for that one as well.
0:20:04 And it just, it went on and on and on like that for 30 days.
0:20:08 Every time we thought, here’s a challenge way too hard.
0:20:10 They absolutely smashed them.
0:20:12 And then we would just, our challenge was every day.
0:20:16 How do we come up with five new challenges that’s going to keep everyone entertained?
0:20:21 New York City founders, if you’ve listened to My First Million before,
0:20:23 you know I’ve got this company called Hampton.
0:20:26 And Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.
0:20:29 A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast,
0:20:32 I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton.
0:20:34 We have this big community of 1,000 plus people and it’s amazing.
0:20:39 But the main part is this eight-person core group that becomes your board of advisors
0:20:41 for your life and for your business and it’s life-changing.
0:20:48 Now, to the folks in New York City, I’m building a in-real-life core group in New York City.
0:20:50 And so if you meet one of the following criteria,
0:20:54 your business either does 3 million in revenue or you’ve raised 3 million in funding
0:20:57 or you’ve started and sold a company for at least $10 million,
0:20:59 then you are eligible to apply.
0:21:02 So go to joinhampton.com and apply.
0:21:05 I’m going to be reviewing all of the applications myself.
0:21:09 So put that you heard about this on MFM so I know to give you a little extra love.
0:21:10 Now, back to the show.
0:21:15 You have these little one-liners that are like,
0:21:18 what if instead of the funding, we focused on the crowd?
0:21:21 It’s like this simple idea that then you run with them.
0:21:22 So it’s like that.
0:21:27 If I was going to describe you, I’d say he takes silly ideas very seriously.
0:21:31 Take a simple idea and take it seriously.
0:21:34 I think yours is take a silly idea and take it seriously.
0:21:35 You do that with your games.
0:21:36 You do that with your marketing campaigns.
0:21:39 And you did this when we were at the event.
0:21:41 We do this thing where we put everybody on the hot seat.
0:21:45 And let’s say somebody’s like a real estate mogul.
0:21:48 We’ll just, instead of saying, hey, tell us about your business.
0:21:52 We’ll just say, all right, so how do you make a billion dollars in real estate?
0:21:53 Well, what’s the secret?
0:21:55 And like in your case, it’s like, what’s the secret?
0:21:58 How do you make hit game after hit game after hit game?
0:22:02 In a hits business that normally sounds like something that’s just a game of chance,
0:22:03 but you’re doing it again and again and again.
0:22:04 You must know something.
0:22:06 And you said a great line.
0:22:09 Can you describe your philosophy around games?
0:22:11 Because you said it in a one-liner that just stuck with me.
0:22:11 Yeah.
0:22:13 Oh, I love that you focused on this one.
0:22:16 So the line is, games should not be entertaining.
0:22:19 Games should make the people you’re playing with entertaining.
0:22:26 And that simple line, which is a very silly line, like I remember the first time we pitched
0:22:30 it to our investors, we’re like, we’re not going to make entertaining games.
0:22:31 And they’re like, never say that again.
0:22:34 Like never put that in any piece of writing ever.
0:22:39 And instead we put it as the first line on our webpage because games should not be entertaining.
0:22:44 If you’re making an entertaining game, you’re trying way too hard and it’s you versus the audience,
0:22:47 which means when you’re done entertaining them, they’re going to go away and never come back.
0:22:51 If instead your goal is, I’m just making a tool set.
0:22:56 My tool set is going to make the people that you are playing with the entertainment.
0:22:59 Suddenly you’ve got an engine.
0:23:01 Suddenly, every time they play, it’s different.
0:23:02 Suddenly they constantly want to come back.
0:23:04 They want to play it over and over again.
0:23:05 They want to take it to new friends’ house.
0:23:08 You make a piece of cardboard, right?
0:23:09 A deck of cards.
0:23:12 You’ve turned that into a viral engine.
0:23:14 And that’s the secret to success in the board game industry.
0:23:21 But that sort of is like going to the Met and seeing a Picasso and being like, dude, it’s just like scribbly lines.
0:23:22 Like this is unimpressive.
0:23:33 You dismissing it as just a, it doesn’t explain why your company is potentially worth billions of dollars and makes potentially hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue.
0:23:43 What is actually happening because we’ve had all these rich and successful billionaires on the pod and I’ll meet them and I’m like, oh, you’re really nice.
0:23:45 And then I start thinking like, well, no, this guy’s a shark.
0:23:47 Like you must be a shark to be this successful.
0:23:57 So like, what else are you not, what are you not telling us that has allowed this company to become a potentially, allegedly multi-billion dollar company?
0:23:58 Yeah.
0:24:01 Well, one is you have to do it consistently, which is hard, right?
0:24:06 But how do you tell if your game is a tool set to make people entertaining?
0:24:10 And like, unless you have the, the litmus test, right?
0:24:16 Unless you can quantify the data that you’re putting in those boxes, like then it’s just a theory.
0:24:29 And I remember we started taking submissions from external inventors and I just eventually started rubber stamping them with, here’s why we’re rejecting you because this, you’re trying too hard to be entertaining.
0:24:36 And it was incredible, like hundreds of these submissions and every, every game designer was making the same mistake where they’re like,
0:24:41 I am building an entertaining thing and I kept having to remind them we’re not buying entertaining things.
0:24:45 And eventually we found like one or two inventors we could work with.
0:24:49 And then I had to design all the others, which is totally cool because I know what I’m looking for.
0:24:51 But how do you test it?
0:24:56 Like, how do I know that I’m hitting that mark way before the thing hits the market?
0:24:58 Because by then we could have already screwed it up.
0:25:04 So I figured out one bit of quantifiable data that lets me back up that claim.
0:25:08 When I say a game is not entertaining, it makes the players entertaining, I can back that up.
0:25:18 And the way I can back it up is in our testing procedure, we have this group of 400 families called the Kitty Test Pilots.
0:25:21 And all we do is we send them games all day long and we ask for feedback.
0:25:24 And it used to be we would send them this crazy Google form.
0:25:26 We’re like, how long did you play?
0:25:27 How many players?
0:25:28 How old are they?
0:25:29 What was your favorite part?
0:25:30 What was the part you hated?
0:25:31 What part needs work?
0:25:34 You know, on and on and on, like 30, 40 questions.
0:25:37 And I realized, like, nobody’s reading these.
0:25:40 Like, I don’t even care about what this is.
0:25:47 And by the time I finish reading their answers to this questionnaire, I haven’t actually learned anything about whether or not this game has made the players entertaining.
0:25:53 And so we now send out a questionnaire and it has one question on it.
0:25:54 Just one.
0:25:55 Start to finish.
0:25:55 One question.
0:25:58 And that question is, do you want to play again?
0:26:09 And I have found that that question is the most direct heat-seeking missile to answer the question, have you made the players entertaining?
0:26:15 Because if a game is entertaining, you have extracted almost all the entertainment from it on your first time through.
0:26:18 But if the players are entertaining, you want to play again.
0:26:25 And we only now ship games where 100% of that question’s answer is yes.
0:26:28 We get even a single no, we dive into that person.
0:26:34 And we watch the videos and we figure out what happened there because they should want to play again.
0:26:36 And if they don’t, we’ve got something to fix.
0:26:51 I think the most successful people, Sean, have you ever studied like personality tests and like, oh, and read about disagree, agreeableness and how the people who are most successful rank very low on agreeableness?
0:26:51 Right.
0:26:53 Disagreeable is a positive trait for founders.
0:27:00 Yeah, because like the very simple example is you just are on, you don’t accept how things are done.
0:27:00 You disagree with that.
0:27:01 Therefore, you want to make your own.
0:27:08 Oftentimes, people who rank high on disagreeableness are jerks.
0:27:12 You, Alon, do not, you are not a jerk.
0:27:15 You are objectively a sweet person.
0:27:31 But you seem like you are hiding this disagreeableness because, like, for example, you have incredibly high standards or you just made a survey where a lot of staff might be like, well, we have to ask 10 questions.
0:27:32 We can’t just ask one question.
0:27:33 But you’re like, no, no, no.
0:27:35 You see, this makes sense for this reason.
0:27:38 Do people enjoy working with you?
0:27:44 Because, like, I guess I’m fascinated on how your ability to be disagreeable, but also polite.
0:27:45 And it seems very effective.
0:27:47 It depends on who you ask.
0:27:51 So I think, I think my team likes working with me.
0:27:54 At the very least, very few people ever quit.
0:28:02 But if you were to ask our printers, if you were to ask our distribution partners, I think they hate working with me.
0:28:04 Like, despise it.
0:28:08 And the reason is because I am absolutely a perfectionist.
0:28:11 Like, what I do for a living is make little boxes of joy.
0:28:22 And if you open a box and there’s something obvious wrong with it or the card quality is not where it should be or, like, in Exploding Kittens, you don’t know which card is an Exploding Kitten.
0:28:23 It has to be a surprise, right?
0:28:27 And that means the backs of every card have to be identical.
0:28:38 And if I can detect one degree off in the Pantone registry of this card versus this one, I’m sending the entire, I don’t care how many millions are in that shipment.
0:28:43 I’m sending every single one of them back, and I’m not paying a penny, and you are going to reprint them for me.
0:28:46 So they hate me, and I get it.
0:28:53 But also, I don’t think the company would be where it is today if I said, yeah, we’ll just ship it that way, and the next run will be better.
0:28:54 I love that.
0:29:00 You also have an approach to marketing that I think is very different than most founders.
0:29:03 It was really inspiring to me when I started to hear these stories.
0:29:07 Can you talk about some of the unconventional hustle things?
0:29:10 Because if I’m listening to this right now, I’m like, okay, cool.
0:29:13 So he was like, had a cool, like a sick job at Xbox.
0:29:14 He quit.
0:29:20 First game, first hit Wonder, hit Exploding Kittens, which is like the number one game in the world for I don’t know how many years now.
0:29:24 Oh, his buddy happened to be the oatmeal guy, so he had instant distribution.
0:29:26 Must be nice, right?
0:29:28 I’ll just be YouTube comment guy for a second.
0:29:33 Yo, must be nice to be, you know, to have connected, powerful friends.
0:29:34 That’s why I’m not successful, right?
0:29:36 That’s, I think, where most people land and stuff like that.
0:29:40 What they don’t know is that first there’s all this, that person’s not just your friend.
0:29:45 There’s actually like luck that you create along the way to create those types of opportunities.
0:29:51 So either you could talk about that or you could talk about some of the hustle tactics you guys did,
0:30:00 like the vending machine, like the other stuff you guys have done that where you were not just like handed the keys to the castle,
0:30:02 but you actually like scraped your way there.
0:30:03 Yeah, yeah.
0:30:09 I mean, look, the company you’ve just described is a company that would disappear in eight months, right?
0:30:11 Like there’s no longevity to that at all.
0:30:16 So once you have a hit game, which requires a lot of luck, but also a lot of skill.
0:30:23 Once you’ve gotten that, now the skill really has to kick in because now you have to make sure that thing doesn’t disappear.
0:30:26 Now you have to make sure your next 10 games are also successful.
0:30:29 You need to make sure your profit margin on each game is where it should be.
0:30:31 You need to make sure you build a community on and on and on.
0:30:33 So I’ll give you a few examples.
0:30:36 And they’re all kind of marketing.
0:30:44 Like once you have a company, once you have any degree of success, you have to be able to double down on that and get your audience to care passionately.
0:30:50 So we used to go to this convention in Seattle called PAX, Penny Arcade Expo.
0:30:53 And we’re a tiny company.
0:30:54 We got no money for marketing, right?
0:30:56 We’ve had this one successful Kickstarter campaign.
0:31:02 We spent literally every penny actually producing the product and building the company.
0:31:03 And now our bank account is empty.
0:31:09 And we show up to this thing and we’ve got like no ability to get people’s attention.
0:31:15 And advertising is expensive and they literally rent out like every square inch of the walls in there.
0:31:18 And so anything you want to do costs money, which we don’t have.
0:31:20 So I had this idea.
0:31:24 And this convention is to impress other game makers or vendors to carry your game.
0:31:25 Exactly.
0:31:27 All of the above, right?
0:31:29 So you’re getting, you’re building a fan base.
0:31:31 You’re building other relationships.
0:31:33 You’re trying to get distribution.
0:31:34 You’re trying to get into retail stores.
0:31:38 The only thing we had ever sold is a single product on Kickstarter.
0:31:39 And now we’ve got nothing left.
0:31:41 By the way, people don’t know these exhibits.
0:31:44 If you go to one of these, you become an exhibitor.
0:31:48 Your booth, like the big games, they’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just on the booth.
0:31:56 And you’re like, you also signed up to be a booth, but you’re just a fold-out picnic table in section F over, you know, past the bathrooms.
0:31:57 That’s right.
0:32:00 And you’re just sitting there hoping somebody walks by your shitty table.
0:32:02 And you’re like, how am I supposed to compete with that?
0:32:09 It’s like Michael Scott in the job fair episode where he’s like, you literally just have a table and you’re trying to convince people to do, to come to you.
0:32:15 I got the crappy sign that I printed on my little inkjet printer and that’s in the folding table and that’s it.
0:32:18 And so the very first year, I was very proud of this.
0:32:23 I knew we had to have marketing space and I couldn’t find any that we could afford.
0:32:28 And so I made, I made these little kittens.
0:32:31 I cut them out, little, adorable, cute little kittens with our logo on it.
0:32:35 And the kitten was holding a bomb and it said exploding kittens and there was a fuse.
0:32:41 And I secretly put one of those inside every urinal in the convention center.
0:32:43 So you had to pee on them to extinguish the bomb.
0:32:47 And it like mobbed our booth.
0:32:50 Like everyone wanted to see who made these things.
0:32:55 So much so that the organizers came to us and they said, you can’t do this.
0:33:00 And I was like, well, show me the part of my contract where it says I can’t do this.
0:33:02 I understand you don’t want me to do this, but show me where I can’t.
0:33:09 And they said, all right, well, we’re not going to prohibit you from doing this because you’re right.
0:33:12 You found a space that is just nowhere in our guidelines.
0:33:17 But we’ll tell you this, next year, we’re going to start charging for that space.
0:33:20 So I think, I haven’t checked because we haven’t been back to PAX,
0:33:25 but I think they now charge for urinal advertising space thanks to this little stunt we pull.
0:33:29 Do you want to go get them out of there or are you expecting me to do that?
0:33:30 We did not extract a single one of those.
0:33:31 It’s actually genius.
0:33:33 The second year is when you did the vending machine thing.
0:33:35 The vending machine thing is insane.
0:33:35 Yeah, okay.
0:33:39 So the vending machine was trying to solve the problem on a more permanent basis.
0:33:42 Because like I do this urinal thing and they shut it down.
0:33:44 And honestly, it just wasn’t big enough.
0:33:46 Like that got us a few hundred people every day.
0:33:47 But how do I get thousands?
0:33:49 How do I get tens of thousands of people every day?
0:33:56 So I looked at our little folding table and thought, you know, people come up to this thing
0:33:57 and they give us money.
0:33:58 They give us 20 bucks.
0:33:59 They get a box and they walk away.
0:34:04 And they have no memory of that transaction because all that really is is a vending machine, right?
0:34:09 You go, you put money in the vending machine, you push a button, you get your soft drink and you walk away.
0:34:15 And you have no lasting memory of the interaction you just had because there’s nothing remarkable about it.
0:34:21 So I thought, all right, if we’re going to be a vending machine, what if we were the world’s coolest vending machine?
0:34:24 Like the most spectacular vending machine the world has ever seen.
0:34:28 And so I took an old refrigerator box I had in my garage.
0:34:38 So this big eight foot tall cardboard box and we cut some holes in it and we built, sorry, we covered it with fur and these giant googly eyes.
0:34:39 So it looked like a cat.
0:34:41 We built an eight foot tall fur covered cat.
0:34:50 And it had a, we cut out a hole for a screen where we could like put a display and it had little buttons and it had a little credit card reader.
0:34:52 It had everything a vending machine should have.
0:34:58 And the experience was you walk up to this thing, you put in your money, you push a button and a game comes out.
0:35:00 Very, very simple.
0:35:07 We’re not talking anything crazy expensive or really anything that remarkable yet other than, okay, it’s fur covered.
0:35:08 It looks like a cat.
0:35:08 That’s kind of adorable.
0:35:10 Nobody’s ever seen a vending machine like this before.
0:35:14 And that attracted a crowd, but then we had to push it over the top.
0:35:21 So I put in an extra button and the extra button said, random item, $1, way cheaper than a game.
0:35:22 What the hell does that mean?
0:35:25 And so enough people were willing to try this experiment.
0:35:27 What happens if I put a dollar in this and push random item?
0:35:37 And so they’d put a dollar in and push random and out comes a pineapple from the vending machine or a hot burrito or a bag of rocks or a plumber’s.
0:35:40 And it’s just you behind it, just sticking your hand out with a pineapple or what?
0:35:41 This was the thing.
0:35:42 This is what we didn’t tell anybody.
0:35:49 Everyone assumed this is the world’s most sophisticated vending machine because it can deliver 2000 different objects.
0:35:58 And people literally brought up chairs and they built little bleachers around this thing just to watch it for hour after hour after hour to see what the hell is going to come out of this thing.
0:36:03 And basically for the listener, it looks like just a box, but the box backed up to like a curtain.
0:36:07 And behind the curtain, I would imagine you had a whole team of people like…
0:36:09 So there’s the punchline.
0:36:12 Instead of it being a vending machine, it was just a vending machine costume.
0:36:14 There was no robotics in there.
0:36:15 There’s no computers.
0:36:16 There’s nothing.
0:36:21 There’s eight of us sweating our asses off for 10 hours a day backstage.
0:36:29 And every time someone pushes that random item button, we are literally pulling a random item and throwing it out the front of the machine.
0:36:35 And we had our line got so long that it blocked our aisle.
0:36:39 It blocked all the other super expensive, you know, million dollar booths.
0:36:42 Nobody could walk up to those anymore because our line was so long.
0:36:43 It went out the door.
0:36:45 It went out of the convention center.
0:36:47 It went down the street.
0:36:53 And the line for our silly little fur-covered vending machine was longer than the line to get into the convention itself.
0:37:03 And all of that’s just because, like, we had no money and we had to think creatively about, like, what does it mean to build a community around a transaction?
0:37:05 And that’s what we came up with.
0:37:07 Sean, have you ever read about Dr. Feynman?
0:37:09 Richard Feynman?
0:37:10 Richard Feynman.
0:37:10 Yeah, sorry.
0:37:11 Have you read about him?
0:37:13 Yeah, a little bit.
0:37:13 Why?
0:37:14 What comes to mind here?
0:37:17 He would, like, get super hands-on with a problem.
0:37:19 And question everything.
0:37:26 And he would start at the very foundation of that question and basically not accept any truth before him.
0:37:29 He would have to, like, question each one in order to solve a problem.
0:37:33 And one big example of this is he helped create the atomic bomb.
0:37:37 And so, like, they, like, questioned all these, like, previously thought rules that he broke.
0:37:41 And Alon kind of has that same thing.
0:37:47 And I admire this because I work really hard to have this, but I still don’t have it entirely.
0:37:49 It’s not, this doesn’t come naturally to me, and I don’t excel at it.
0:37:58 But I think that for everyone listening, this skill set is really important, which is how do you, how do you be really creative?
0:38:06 And the framework being you question everything at the very beginning and don’t assume anything that you’ve ever been told is true.
0:38:06 Is that right?
0:38:08 Yeah, I think that’s accurate.
0:38:11 And also, never take no for an answer.
0:38:15 Like, it makes no sense to ever have someone shut you down for any reason.
0:38:18 So, the vending machine is a great example.
0:38:23 It’s one of my favorites of we, so we install this thing in a convention center.
0:38:29 And we’re handing out pineapples and watermelons and ridiculous objects.
0:38:33 And we’re putting googly eyes on them and giving them mohawks and all kinds of fun stuff.
0:38:36 And we got to a convention in Indianapolis.
0:38:48 And they said, you can’t do this because we cannot let you ship the produce backstage to your space on the convention floor.
0:38:49 And I said, why?
0:38:53 And they said, because you’ve exceeded what they called like a casual purchase.
0:38:59 And now you have to, the only way that we can accept that much produce is to a registered grocer.
0:39:03 And you’re not a registered grocer, so you can’t do this anymore.
0:39:08 And I remember thinking, like, my whole team was like, okay, well, here’s a dead end.
0:39:12 We need to think through, like, what objects can we do instead?
0:39:14 And I got so frustrated.
0:39:17 I was like, you’re just accepting a dead end here.
0:39:18 And I don’t think we need to.
0:39:24 And it turns out, it’s easy, trivial to become a registered grocer.
0:39:28 I went to a website, and you fill out a form, and you pay like a hundred bucks.
0:39:31 And today, Exploding Kittens is a registered grocer in Indiana.
0:39:33 You know where else we’re a registered grocer?
0:39:35 14 other states, because it’s that easy as well.
0:39:43 And so every convention we go to, we can now accept the shipments backstage, because Exploding Kittens is also a grocery store.
0:39:45 I love that.
0:39:53 You know, when we were doing our event, Mr. Beast is there, Jimmy Donaldson, and his production document,
0:39:57 so, like, his training document for his team, like an older one, but it had leaked online.
0:40:04 And it’s really fascinating to read this, because here you have a guy who wrote this probably when he was 22, 23, 24 years old, right?
0:40:06 So it’s kind of like he’s an expert at 24.
0:40:09 But he is an expert in YouTube.
0:40:11 He’d actually been doing it for over a decade.
0:40:13 He’s the most successful YouTuber on the planet.
0:40:16 And he’s like, I know how to make videos that people watch.
0:40:19 So one of the things that he talks about in there, he goes, push past the no.
0:40:30 Just because you receive an initial no from somebody absolutely does not mean that it’s a no forever, that it’s a no under any circumstance, that there’s a no without some caveats.
0:40:37 And if you come back and you just say, I asked, you know, they said no, that’s not an acceptable answer in our org, right?
0:40:41 So he’s like, you know, I wanted the pyramids for a video, the Egyptian pyramids.
0:40:44 And they were like, his team told him no.
0:40:45 And he goes, what do you mean?
0:40:46 Like, who told you no?
0:40:47 Egypt told you no?
0:40:47 Who’d you call?
0:40:48 What did they say?
0:40:49 Why’d they say no?
0:40:51 Did you call the other guy?
0:40:52 Who’s the other guy?
0:40:52 Give me the number.
0:40:53 Let’s call them.
0:40:53 Do they have kids?
0:40:54 Let’s FaceTime their kids.
0:40:55 Let’s see if that works.
0:41:00 They’re like, what are the different ways that we could do this just to accept an initial no?
0:41:05 It’s basically out of the, it was a culturally unacceptable at the company.
0:41:06 Yeah.
0:41:12 I think that trait, more than anything, is what I’ve seen in successful business owners.
0:41:14 And I don’t know if it can be taught.
0:41:20 It’s more just that, like, when you hear the word no, there are two possible reactions.
0:41:22 One is, damn it.
0:41:24 And the other is, I didn’t hear that properly.
0:41:25 Let me dig deeper.
0:41:28 And it has to be instinctual.
0:41:32 Like, every time you hear the word no, you have to think, okay, I didn’t hear that properly.
0:41:33 Let me dig deeper.
0:41:34 Over and over and over again.
0:41:34 I love that.
0:41:39 It’s not just being a jerk and saying, you know, just pushing on them, but being curious
0:41:45 or being, like, clever or being playful and trying to figure out, like, if I had a trillion
0:41:46 dollars, maybe you’d say yes.
0:41:50 Okay, so, like, let’s just agree it’s not physically impossible to do this.
0:41:53 Okay, once it’s not physically impossible, that means now there is a way.
0:41:55 Let’s just see what that way might look like.
0:41:56 It’s so good.
0:42:00 Maybe the better way to phrase it is when someone tells you no, instead of assuming that that’s
0:42:02 the answer, assume you ask the wrong question.
0:42:05 Hey, Sean, we did this thing.
0:42:08 I was talking to David, the guy who hosts the podcast Founders the other day.
0:42:12 And we did a show called The Anti-Business Billionaires.
0:42:19 And there’s, like, a handful of people out there who are these billionaires who, they shockingly
0:42:20 don’t care about revenue and profit.
0:42:25 And they’re, like, very passionate about whatever it is they’re making.
0:42:28 The guy who started Patagonia is one of them, where, like, he just doesn’t seem like he cares
0:42:28 about money.
0:42:33 Or the guy who started Dyson, James Dyson, he’s another guy where, oddly, he’s obsessed with
0:42:34 making vacuums.
0:42:37 Do you care at all about revenue and profit?
0:42:42 Or do you just see it as a, like, do you care about business?
0:42:43 I didn’t originally.
0:42:50 Now, once I figured out how to look at business as another game that can be won, I suddenly
0:42:52 started caring passionately about business.
0:42:57 Like, I used to think, all right, I don’t actually want to be CEO of this company.
0:42:58 What I want to be is lead designer.
0:42:59 I’m going to hire a CEO.
0:43:01 And we tried that for a while.
0:43:07 And what I realized is, like, everyone we hired into that spot was playing the game the wrong
0:43:07 way.
0:43:10 And I want to play instead.
0:43:12 And so now, I actually love strategy meetings.
0:43:14 I love business meetings.
0:43:18 I love when we go in and talk about the next 10 years and, or how we’re going to solve this
0:43:22 very particular problem about this convention or this next game launch or this next partnership,
0:43:26 because that is such a fun game.
0:43:31 And I was, like, in high school, I loved physics.
0:43:37 Physics was my favorite topic until I realized I need to switch to computer science.
0:43:40 And the reason I needed to switch was because for physics, everything they were teaching
0:43:42 us, the answer was in the back of the book.
0:43:45 If you had a problem, you could just flip to the back of the book.
0:43:52 And I realized that computer science was very different because computer science was, like,
0:43:53 the cutting edge.
0:43:56 Like, there were no answers in the back of the book at all.
0:43:57 You had to figure everything out as you go.
0:44:00 And that was really exciting for me.
0:44:03 That was, like, a life-changing moment when I was 16.
0:44:05 That’s what business is to me.
0:44:08 There are no answers at the back of the book.
0:44:12 And if you want to win this game, you’ve got to figure out what the rules are, invent your
0:44:15 own where you need to, and get to that finish line before anybody else.
0:44:16 Look at Sean’s hands.
0:44:17 And look at…
0:44:22 I just realized that whenever we do this, you got us.
0:44:22 Yeah.
0:44:24 You got me.
0:44:27 Like, you know, when you’re talking to a girl and she puts her hair behind her ear, there’s
0:44:31 like some indicator of, like, of attraction.
0:44:34 When you’re talking about this, I’m like, ah, this is beautiful.
0:44:37 I mean, just the way you’re describing this, like, there’s no answers in the back of the
0:44:37 book.
0:44:38 Like, dude, that’s inspiring.
0:44:39 I love that.
0:44:40 I love that stuff.
0:44:43 I also think there’s other things we can learn from you.
0:44:46 So, you know, I’ve learned from you on the marketing side.
0:44:51 And maybe we’ll just close the loop on the marketing idea, which is, it’s one thing to
0:44:54 hear the idea of the vending machine and be like, oh, wow, that’s a great idea.
0:44:58 I’m interested in what is the mindset that creates that idea?
0:45:00 What are the questions that you ask?
0:45:01 How do you brainstorm?
0:45:07 What are you doing differently that’s leading you to crazy answers like that that actually
0:45:07 work?
0:45:12 So, like, I don’t know if you can describe it or if this is like asking, you know, Steph
0:45:13 Curry had to shoot a jump shot.
0:45:13 He’s like, I don’t know.
0:45:14 I just kind of flick my wrist.
0:45:18 It just goes in when actually a thousand little things are happening that he’s not even attuned
0:45:18 to.
0:45:22 But like, you know, for example, you said something like, what if?
0:45:28 And like, I know what if questions are just like a great, like a great tool in the tool belt
0:45:29 for a creative thinker.
0:45:31 It’s very different than we should.
0:45:34 It’s just like the language changes everything.
0:45:36 What are some other things you do when you brainstorm?
0:45:39 Like, I love parameters.
0:45:41 I hate blue sky brainstorming.
0:45:46 Like, the idea that like, hey, let’s sit down and create a game is the most terrifying
0:45:48 experience in the world for me.
0:45:51 Or let’s sit down and brainstorm anything and we don’t know what it is.
0:45:54 So what are the parameters for the last handful of meetings that you’ve had?
0:45:55 Yeah, so okay.
0:46:02 Let me back up and say like, you asked about marketing for a convention, right?
0:46:07 I told you the story about the vending machine, but I also told you the parameters are baked
0:46:07 into there.
0:46:11 Like, we didn’t start by saying, what’s the coolest experience we can have at a convention,
0:46:12 right?
0:46:16 We started by saying, this is a vending machine transaction.
0:46:17 There’s our parameters.
0:46:20 What is the coolest vending machine experience we can craft?
0:46:24 But you also said, how do we get tens of thousands of people to come without spending money?
0:46:28 That’s sort of an unreasonable target.
0:46:30 Unreasonable is totally reasonable.
0:46:37 Like, it’s fine to set your goals that high, as long as you understand the parameters of
0:46:37 the problem.
0:46:40 If I were to sit down and say, how do we get 10,000 people to come to our booth?
0:46:42 I’m not going to get anywhere.
0:46:45 Like, I just have no chance of success there.
0:46:50 But if I sit down and say, I am going to build a vending machine that must attract 10,000
0:46:51 people, now I’m running.
0:46:56 Now, I’m busy for the next 10 months building that thing, because I know what that is.
0:47:00 Dude, that’s shockingly a useful tip, because I do the other thing, right?
0:47:02 Just say, how do I get this?
0:47:03 How do I get the 10,000?
0:47:04 How do I get 10,000 people to come?
0:47:05 Yeah.
0:47:05 Yeah.
0:47:09 No, I, there are people who are great at it.
0:47:11 Like, you know, you mentioned Mr. Beast.
0:47:13 Jimmy, he is exceptional at that.
0:47:18 Like, if you were to tell him, just, like, I listened to your interview with him, right?
0:47:22 And you’re spitting out random nouns, and he’s coming up with incredible ideas.
0:47:25 He is exceptionally talented at that thing.
0:47:26 I suck at it.
0:47:29 I need to know exactly the shape of the box.
0:47:32 And I will build you the coolest contents for that box in history.
0:47:39 But unless I understand what that box is capable of holding, I just, I have no chance of success.
0:47:44 So, it sounds like one way to put it is, creativity loves constraints, and you use the constraint.
0:47:49 You start with the constraint rather than starting with the, just the desired outcome, right?
0:47:50 The desired outcome is there.
0:47:52 It’s part of the, it’s part of the, the, the, the goal.
0:47:53 It’s the parameters.
0:47:58 But you, you actually start with a constraint in order to get yourself to think a little bit differently.
0:48:02 Do you have any other examples of kind of like this constraint style of thinking?
0:48:08 We’re asked to build a board game for a few different NFL teams.
0:48:09 And what does that mean?
0:48:13 How do you get an NFL audience to play with a board game?
0:48:19 And if you were to just leave it there, you kind of don’t have a chance.
0:48:21 You’re basically saying, build a good game.
0:48:21 Go.
0:48:26 And me, personally, I’m going to suck at that task.
0:48:29 But what we started to do was-
0:48:30 And you’re like the best in the world at doing this.
0:48:30 Yeah.
0:48:33 So, if you’re going to suck at it, we’re all going to suck at that.
0:48:33 There’s no chance of success.
0:48:34 I promise you.
0:48:35 Zero chance of success.
0:48:39 So, instead, we sat down and we said, okay, what is football?
0:48:41 Like, what are the best moments?
0:48:45 And I started writing this list.
0:48:52 And my list was the magical moment where a player catches the ball against all odds.
0:48:54 Everyone’s covering them.
0:48:55 It’s impossible.
0:48:56 It’s impossible.
0:49:00 Somehow, it was a perfect throw, a perfect catch, and off they went to score.
0:49:04 And I personally really focused on that.
0:49:05 Do you even care about football?
0:49:11 Football matters very little to me, but only because it is very hard for me to watch people
0:49:14 having fun without wanting to do that same thing myself.
0:49:15 Well, that’s pretty funny.
0:49:20 But the reason I’m asking is because this is your perspective as a total outsider, where
0:49:22 you just created the rules.
0:49:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:49:26 It’s watching other people, right?
0:49:27 Like, my family is obsessed with it.
0:49:29 So, I watch them watch football.
0:49:30 And I’m like, oh, that moment there.
0:49:31 Okay, that moment there.
0:49:33 And so, we eventually built this game.
0:49:35 It’s called Catchables.
0:49:42 And all it is, we made these cute little foam figures, and we had an increasing series of challenges defined by the other players,
0:49:48 because the other players have to provide the entertainment, where you have to throw an object, this little character, in the air, and just catch it.
0:49:49 So simple.
0:49:50 Throw it, catch it.
0:49:50 Really easy.
0:49:52 But now players are going to start throwing cards at you.
0:49:54 You have to do a blindfolded.
0:49:55 You have to spin around before you catch it.
0:49:56 You can only use one hand.
0:49:57 You can only use two fingers.
0:50:00 And like, what if I give you 10 of those cards at the same time?
0:50:06 Now that very simple throw and catch has become really, really entertaining for everyone to watch.
0:50:12 You defy the odds, and at the last moment, pull it off, despite everyone’s expectation, and the crowd goes wild.
0:50:13 This sounds so trivial.
0:50:15 This is actually pretty groundbreaking.
0:50:19 So let’s give a specific example that’s not related to you.
0:50:22 So Sean works in the e-commerce industry.
0:50:26 Let’s just say that Sean sells shoes.
0:50:31 Sean owns a shoe company, and let’s say growth has stagnated, and he comes to a meeting, and he goes,
0:50:34 our company needs to improve.
0:50:35 We have to be better.
0:50:42 What would be interesting constraints in order to make Sean’s company better, and make the meeting productive?
0:50:43 Yeah.
0:50:48 What you’d want to do with a shoe company, I’ve never worked in shoes before, so bear with me.
0:50:53 But I will, anything you throw at me, I’m going to try to tie it back to a community.
0:51:01 I’m going to try to tie it back to how do I, by wearing these things, form more lasting, reasonable, exciting connections with other people?
0:51:09 What if you started printing out beautiful, incredible shoes that you’d be proud to wear?
0:51:18 You’d love every single shoe that you make, but everyone has half a secret message on it, and somebody else has the other half of that.
0:51:21 Get your shoe next to them to read it, right?
0:51:29 Like, suddenly, you have a reason to go not only tell your friends to buy some or buy more yourself, but suddenly, you have a reason to go seek them out in the world.
0:51:32 You’re walking through a crowded airport, and you see someone with those shoes.
0:51:33 Walk right over to them.
0:51:34 Put your foot next to theirs.
0:51:36 Let’s check if we’re the match.
0:51:37 Yeah, exactly.
0:51:46 So, now, there’s a very low percentage hit there, and so you’d have to probably redesign it to have a much higher percentage hit, and that’s very achievable.
0:51:58 But, again, the first thing I’m going to do is define a constraint and say, a successful shoe equals a reason to look for more of those shoes out in the world, because then more of those shoes are going to sell.
0:51:59 That’s pretty great.
0:52:09 Just yesterday, I was with my wife, and we’re walking out somewhere, and this woman had a little Trader Joe’s bag, and she goes, hey, sorry to bother you, but is that that bag that everyone’s going crazy about online?
0:52:12 In my mind, I’m like, people are going crazy about Trader Joe’s bags nowadays.
0:52:12 Like, what?
0:52:14 What’s going on?
0:52:20 And I guess there’s a little, I guess there’s a certain design of a Trader Joe’s bag, and it’s not even, like, limited edition or luxury.
0:52:26 I don’t know what the full story is, but it kind of highlighted to me, it’s like, man, you could take any moment.
0:52:39 It’s like the moment in between the moments, and if you do something interesting there, you give people a reason to feel special, a reason to connect, a reason to collect, a reason to do one of those things.
0:52:47 It’s like, damn, how much wasted surface area is there in my businesses where we’re not just by applying creativity, we create magic.
0:52:49 We create, it’s alchemy, right?
0:52:55 We create value for people if we just were a little more intentional versus just going on autopilot.
0:52:58 And I think 99% of the time, I’m just on autopilot in my businesses.
0:53:00 I totally get it.
0:53:02 And I’ve been there as well.
0:53:07 Can I tell you a story about, I’m so proud of a particular solve for that problem.
0:53:07 Okay, go.
0:53:12 So my daughter, Exploding Kittens is not the number one selling game in the world.
0:53:14 It’s number two best selling game in the world.
0:53:16 Number one is a game called Hurry Up, Chicken Butt.
0:53:21 Hurry Up, Chicken Butt, I designed with my daughter.
0:53:27 And she, when she turned four, I was so excited because, you know, most of the games are like ages four and up.
0:53:30 And when she turned four, we went out and we bought all the games, right?
0:53:33 We got Candyland and we got Zingo, all the games.
0:53:40 And we took them home and we started playing and I immediately noticed a problem, which was I am having a miserable time.
0:53:41 She’s happy.
0:53:42 She’s playing with her dad.
0:53:44 She’s getting to see bright, flashy colors.
0:53:46 Like all this stuff is designed for kids.
0:53:49 But I am bored out of my mind.
0:53:55 And what the results in is when we’re done playing the game, one, I’ve let her win because I got to let her win.
0:53:59 Because if I try at all, I’m going to crush this poor four-year-old.
0:54:02 And two is when we’re done, she says, hey, daddy, can we play again?
0:54:04 And all I’m thinking is, oh, God, no.
0:54:06 I am so miserable.
0:54:07 The last, I did it.
0:54:08 I did my time.
0:54:09 We played the game.
0:54:11 I’m going to go do something fun now.
0:54:17 And I remember having that reaction and it must have shown on my face.
0:54:18 And my daughter said, what’s wrong?
0:54:21 And I said, I think this game is broken.
0:54:24 And she said something brilliant.
0:54:26 She said, let’s fix it.
0:54:34 And like fireworks started going off in my head because I was like, yeah, let’s fix it.
0:54:35 Like, why are we not fixing this?
0:54:41 And I spent the next month, we split the work.
0:54:45 My daughter started drawing pictures, like all the fun games, everything fun that she wanted in a game.
0:54:48 And I started writing this list of what success looks like.
0:54:54 And for me, it was, my daughter has to beat me without me letting her win.
0:54:57 And I have to look forward to playing again.
0:54:59 The game cannot be luck-based.
0:55:04 I have to watch my daughter get better at this game every time we play.
0:55:05 I have to feel like she’s learning something.
0:55:07 And there cannot be any losers.
0:55:10 She can win, but nobody can lose.
0:55:11 So those are your constraints.
0:55:12 Those are my five.
0:55:15 And by the way, did you start with just things you hated?
0:55:17 Yeah, for sure.
0:55:17 Yeah, yeah.
0:55:20 I’m saying this like, oh, overnight, I came up with these five things.
0:55:21 But the list was like 25 things long.
0:55:24 And I narrowed it down to those five, which were the most important.
0:55:26 I’m writing this book on creativity right now.
0:55:27 And Jerry Seinfeld has this great quote.
0:55:30 He says, irritation is what causes innovation.
0:55:34 He created comedians in cars getting coffee because he just hated going.
0:55:37 He was so sick of going on late night talk shows and doing the same thing every time.
0:55:40 He’s like, all right, a talk show that has none of those things.
0:55:43 In fact, my irritation is going to be my source of innovation.
0:55:47 It sounds like for you, all of those things you talked about were sources of personal irritation
0:55:47 for you.
0:55:49 Every one of them, for sure.
0:55:49 Every one.
0:55:53 There were the things that everybody was doing wrong and was the industry standard.
0:55:56 Nobody had raised their hand and said, this is broken.
0:56:00 Like, this is not fun for half the players who play this game.
0:56:02 That half being the adults.
0:56:07 Did you present those five things to your daughter or did you, were you the one?
0:56:08 No, she didn’t care about those things.
0:56:10 So you were the one, you were the one.
0:56:15 What I’m trying to get at is, can you present those five things to people at your company
0:56:17 and they be just as creative in effect?
0:56:18 Like, could they make hit games?
0:56:22 Like, is this a, is this a transferable skill, a teachable skill?
0:56:23 Absolutely.
0:56:24 Yes.
0:56:28 As long, again, it’s not, you’re not teaching problem solving.
0:56:34 You’re teaching problem identification and then creative people will be able to solve
0:56:34 those problems.
0:56:39 But if you try to solve, if you try to teach how to be creative, you never get anywhere.
0:56:44 All you’re really teaching is how to identify a problem, how to know what success looks like,
0:56:47 and then you just hire creative people to work within those constraints.
0:56:51 But then do you, as the leader, define if you have a hit?
0:56:52 Yes.
0:56:55 Well, hurry up chicken butt is an easy way.
0:57:00 It’s an easy definition because, again, as soon as it went out to testing party, this was
0:57:04 one of those games where when we sent it out to testing, not only was it 100% yes, I want
0:57:04 to play again.
0:57:06 Nobody sent the games back.
0:57:08 This is a huge problem for us.
0:57:09 Like, we send them out.
0:57:12 We want you to send them back so we can tweak them and then send them back out again.
0:57:14 Nobody would send that game back to us.
0:57:16 It was ridiculous.
0:57:18 We lost so many copies of that game.
0:57:19 So bridge the gap there.
0:57:20 So because I play this game.
0:57:22 I play it literally with my daughter, who’s five.
0:57:24 I bought it after we met and I was like, hurry up chicken butt.
0:57:26 And we play it at home with my son and my daughter.
0:57:27 It’s a great time.
0:57:29 But I’ve seen the end output.
0:57:31 And now you’ve described your initial conditions.
0:57:35 Is there anything else interesting in how you kind of figured out how you bridge that gap?
0:57:38 So we go through tons and tons and tons of versions.
0:57:39 And I sit with my daughter.
0:57:43 I’m like, look, I want, I know we want a game.
0:57:45 And she’s like, I want to run around.
0:57:46 Cool.
0:57:48 That’s going to be part of the game, running around.
0:57:49 I want to act silly.
0:57:50 Cool.
0:57:52 That’s going to be part of the game, acting silly.
0:57:55 And then the back of my mind, I’m like, I need tension, right?
0:58:01 Like a game without any form of tension is a broken game because you need something to push
0:58:01 you forward.
0:58:04 In most games, it’s competition with the other players.
0:58:05 But here, that’s not going to be present.
0:58:09 So I need something else to insert the tension, the pulse of the game.
0:58:12 And we did that with an electric timer, right?
0:58:13 It’s essentially hot.
0:58:15 The way the game works is it’s hot potato.
0:58:18 You’ve got this adorable, cute little chicken that clocks and eventually screams.
0:58:20 And you pass the chicken around.
0:58:25 And if you’re holding the chicken when it screams, you have lost a point and everybody else proceeds.
0:58:30 But the tricky part, it actually works where the person before you wins the whole game.
0:58:32 Again, no losers, only winners.
0:58:37 Are you like Pixar where you have like your five or eight trustworthy people in a room and
0:58:38 you’re just banging this out?
0:58:39 Absolutely, yes.
0:58:44 And how long are the meetings and how many meetings were there between idea to iteration
0:58:46 one to final iteration?
0:58:47 Okay.
0:58:47 So we sit down.
0:58:53 We’ll meet for like two hours and we’ll just discuss parameters, what success looks like.
0:58:54 Let’s brainstorm in that space.
0:58:59 And we’ll usually come up with like, I don’t know, let’s say five or six interesting things
0:59:00 to explore.
0:59:02 Then everybody goes off and does their own thing.
0:59:04 Everyone’s got an assignment.
0:59:05 Play with this one.
0:59:07 And we’re going to come back and we’re going to try all these games.
0:59:13 And in this case, we actually had like, I don’t know, 15 or 16 different ideas that we were
0:59:14 playing around with.
0:59:15 And they all sucked.
0:59:20 Like they all, everything fell apart in one regard or another, except for this one.
0:59:22 That’s not true, except for four games.
0:59:24 Four games made it out the door.
0:59:27 Two were almost immediate failures.
0:59:32 And two of them, one was hurry up chicken butt and the other is called the best worst ice
0:59:35 cream, which is like, I think it’s ranked number eight in the world right now.
0:59:36 So it’s up there.
0:59:41 I only look at the top five because that’s the scoreboard I like to keep, but it’s doing
0:59:41 great.
0:59:45 And could this, could this apply?
0:59:48 Let’s say I owned a B2B SaaS software.
0:59:51 Could, could I use this process in my company?
0:59:53 I’m tempted to say yes.
1:00:00 I look, I don’t know definitively the answer, but I believe that the best ideas come out of
1:00:01 constraint and defining success.
1:00:09 And I can’t imagine there’d be many creative based endeavors that would not benefit from that
1:00:09 approach.
1:00:14 You just did a game with Tim Ferriss and I think he was a part of creating it.
1:00:20 I’m just curious, like, what was that like and what were the main things you taught Tim?
1:00:24 And then did Tim teach you anything or did you sort of modify any of your process?
1:00:27 Because Tim is such an interesting guy that maybe he, he could bring a little bit of a
1:00:29 different, different approach to what you were doing.
1:00:30 Yeah.
1:00:34 So I went on Tim’s podcast, uh, like two years ago.
1:00:38 He just wanted to know what’s the game industry like, what are you, what is it that you would
1:00:39 do for a living?
1:00:43 And so we talked for a while and at the end of it, after we finished recording, he said,
1:00:45 I’ve always wanted to make a game.
1:00:47 Can we talk about making a game?
1:00:48 And I was like, absolutely.
1:00:51 That’s like when Matt asks you if he can be your partner.
1:00:52 The answer is yes, right?
1:00:53 Yes, yes, yes.
1:00:54 Let’s do it.
1:01:00 And so we started talking and he is obsessed with, uh, one of my games called, um, Poetry
1:01:01 for Neanderthals.
1:01:03 And it’s a really simple, really fun game.
1:01:05 It’s in the top five.
1:01:09 Um, and, uh, he just loves, loves, loves that game.
1:01:10 He plays it with all his friends.
1:01:11 He plays it all the time.
1:01:14 He’s constantly sending me pictures of him playing that game with his group of friends.
1:01:18 And he keeps saying like, I need a game at least this good.
1:01:24 And so the first few meetings were me just going over to his place with suitcases full
1:01:28 of games, like all my favorites, but they all tried to scratch that same itch.
1:01:30 Like, I know what’s great about Poetry for Neanderthals.
1:01:32 There’s a creativity component.
1:01:36 It’s heavily players entertaining other players and it’s fast, funny.
1:01:38 Uh, you can learn it in one minute and you play it in 10 minutes, right?
1:01:42 Like I knew, I knew that was his version of what success looks like.
1:01:48 And so, uh, we started playing a bunch of games like that and we started honing in on
1:01:52 what the process, what things he liked the most, what games he liked the most, which ones he
1:01:52 didn’t.
1:01:57 And it fast became clear, okay, none of these are right.
1:01:59 Like not a single, I must’ve shown him a hundred different games.
1:02:01 And the answer was, yeah, none of these.
1:02:06 At one point we were on this walk, we’d been walking for like six hours.
1:02:11 And at one point I was like, okay, let’s start as basic as it gets.
1:02:13 What if we started with rock, paper, scissors?
1:02:15 Tim happens to like rock, paper, scissors.
1:02:20 And I was like, okay, rock, paper, scissors is actually no fun at all until you play it a
1:02:21 bunch of times.
1:02:25 Playing rock, paper, scissors once is stupid, but playing it again, now we’re playing a game
1:02:27 because now I’m thinking, what did he do last time?
1:02:28 What am I going to do this time?
1:02:30 But he knows that I know that he knows that I know, right?
1:02:35 Like all that stuff starts to kick in at game two and it’s not present at all in game
1:02:35 number one.
1:02:39 So I was like, what if we start there really, really basic.
1:02:44 And instead of three activities, rock, paper, scissors, what if we had 25?
1:02:47 And what if there was a hierarchy between all of those things?
1:02:50 And what if we’re all playing at the exact same time?
1:02:53 And we just started with crazy statements like that.
1:02:54 Like, I don’t know what that game is.
1:02:58 I don’t know how those things make sense, but his eyes lit up and my eyes lit up and it was
1:02:59 like something.
1:03:00 Okay.
1:03:04 And what if also we made it rhythm based and we ran to the house and we just started
1:03:06 scribbling on cards fast as we could.
1:03:08 My buddy, uh, Ken Gruhl was there too.
1:03:10 He was an incredibly talented designer.
1:03:15 And between the three of us, we just started crafting cards as fast as we could.
1:03:19 And the first version of the game, of course sucked, but it was at least something.
1:03:24 It was at least like, Hey, we are playing a game where every single person playing this
1:03:26 game has a task.
1:03:28 You have to do this symbol.
1:03:29 You have to do a peace sign.
1:03:34 You have to pretend you’re a ballerina and you have one second to do the right thing.
1:03:38 And we started playing around with, all right, that’s a little too easy.
1:03:39 What if we made that harder?
1:03:41 What if we had to switch roles?
1:03:43 What if every role had a color and now we have to skip all the red ones?
1:03:45 What if we had to go twice as fast?
1:03:46 What if we had to whisper?
1:03:47 What if we had to shout?
1:03:48 What if, what if, what if, what if?
1:03:52 And we started writing all these cards fast and furious until we eventually got to this
1:03:56 thing where we had been playing for like four hours.
1:03:59 And I looked around the room and I was like, okay, anybody want to play?
1:04:01 And both of them were like, hell yes.
1:04:03 And so we kept doing that.
1:04:07 And then we started to invite other friends over and they started playing and we said, do
1:04:08 you want to play again?
1:04:09 And they said, yes.
1:04:14 And so we, we just kept doing this thing, rinse and repeat, remove a card, write a new card.
1:04:18 I use these blank cards where I can create them super fast.
1:04:20 I buy these like, I buy these like by the truckload on Amazon.
1:04:22 Well, you did that when we were at Sean’s event.
1:04:26 You basically, you were literally on your hands and needs like dealing out cards.
1:04:27 That’s right.
1:04:28 And then you were like, you know, I don’t like this one.
1:04:32 And you pulled out like a blank card and you had a pen and you like wrote new rules.
1:04:36 I live and breathe those cards because you know, it’s beautiful about those cards.
1:04:38 They’re not just cards.
1:04:42 Like, obviously you can use them to make any game you want, but like, let’s say you need
1:04:44 a six-sided die, right?
1:04:45 And you don’t have a six-sided die.
1:04:47 You’ve got six cards, right?
1:04:50 One, two, three, four, five, six on the cards and shuffle them up and draw one.
1:04:51 Now you got a six-sided die, right?
1:04:54 Like, if you need a board, you can make it out of a grid of cards.
1:04:56 If you need a spinner, you can make that out of cards.
1:05:01 Like, I walk around, my backpack is so much heavier than it should be because it’s loaded
1:05:04 with blank cards because I never know when the next idea is coming.
1:05:06 You have this great quote.
1:05:08 You said, I took a week-long skydiving course.
1:05:10 And at the end of it, I asked the instructor, do you ever get bored of this?
1:05:13 And the guy said, do you ever get bored of having sex?
1:05:15 And I thought, that’s exactly it.
1:05:17 This is how I feel about games.
1:05:19 That’s how I feel about this job.
1:05:22 It’s not the thing with an expiration.
1:05:24 It’s a little dopamine factory for me.
1:05:28 And the people who get to have these experiences, I don’t know how you can get bored of that.
1:05:29 And it’s just eternal.
1:05:31 So that was a quote that you had.
1:05:32 And I read that.
1:05:35 It’s like, I want to feel that way about just anything in my life.
1:05:36 I know, right?
1:05:36 I know.
1:05:41 You know, like you see kids play with bubbles and you’re like, I wish I felt any way about
1:05:42 this kid, how this feels about bubbles.
1:05:45 And I see this and I’m like, Elon’s the-
1:05:46 He found out bubbles.
1:05:47 He’s got the answer.
1:05:49 This guy has, this is the answer to life.
1:05:50 Go ahead.
1:05:55 I was at an airport and our flight had just been canceled.
1:05:57 It was so terrible because everyone was miserable.
1:06:02 Last flight out, they’re starting to hand out hotels, but they’re like, hey, the flight might
1:06:02 come back.
1:06:05 So everyone’s got to stay in the terminal for hours and hours and hours.
1:06:06 And every hour they delayed us again.
1:06:07 And it was awful.
1:06:08 And everyone is miserable.
1:06:10 Everyone is miserable.
1:06:14 And they’re frowning and they’re grumpy and they’re screaming at the poor gate agent.
1:06:15 And it’s awful.
1:06:20 Except for this group of six kids sitting in the corner, giggling and laughing.
1:06:22 And I could not help myself.
1:06:23 I had to walk up and see what they were doing.
1:06:26 And of course, they’re playing exploding kittens.
1:06:29 And I remember thinking like, this is it.
1:06:34 Like this, all the chemicals going through my body right now, like this is why I have this
1:06:35 job.
1:06:36 This is the greatest feeling in the world.
1:06:40 And I just want to keep delivering this every opportunity I have.
1:06:42 That’s so good.
1:06:48 I was going to say, you know, my, I have these kind of people I admire for different reasons.
1:06:52 So it’s like, you know, you can admire a great athlete for how they, how disciplined they
1:06:55 are, how they train their body, how they just, they just never give up.
1:06:56 Right.
1:07:00 Or you can admire Elon for, you know, thinking big and sort of defying the odds and, and, and
1:07:03 really going all in on his bets and being like, Hey, you know what?
1:07:05 I, I need to have that all in mode.
1:07:12 And you’re to me on this, like on that very short list of people, because you build things
1:07:17 for the joy and from a, like a, from a place of joy, you’re like a more pure artist, I think
1:07:17 as your career.
1:07:21 I see you as, you know, you’re not like a CEO who’s got a ballpoint pen.
1:07:22 You’re an artist with a brush.
1:07:28 And then, and then the second part of it is like the limitless thinking in terms of there’s
1:07:29 kind of nothing out of bounds.
1:07:30 Like, yeah, okay.
1:07:34 I can register myself as a grocer or we can, we can create this vending machine that what
1:07:36 if it distributed any item, right?
1:07:41 Like I would be scared to go there because how, and what if, what if things go wrong?
1:07:42 And I think you just think about things a little bit differently.
1:07:43 That inspires me.
1:07:49 And then the last bit is like the simplicity, like figuring out when you look at something
1:07:50 like, Oh, the game is fun.
1:07:53 Not because the game itself is fun because it makes the players fun.
1:07:59 It’s like, Oh, that explains charades and Pictionary and all the games I grew up playing
1:08:01 thousands of times and not just once or twice.
1:08:06 It’s because of that core insight or, you know, instead of doing focus groups and surveys,
1:08:08 you’re like one question, you want to play the game again.
1:08:09 That, that’s simplicity.
1:08:14 So like, to me, those are the three big things that you do that I’m like, I would, if I can
1:08:20 get, you know, 10% of what you’re doing there, I level up if I do that.
1:08:22 I love to hear that.
1:08:25 And, but I’ll also say it doesn’t just have to apply to games.
1:08:31 Like we, um, I remember during COVID, all of our plants shut down.
1:08:38 And once, once we, once stuff comes in, uh, from China, we have to, it goes into these giant
1:08:43 warehouses and it has to be unboxed and then repackaged with all the correct labeling.
1:08:45 And then off it goes to all the retailers.
1:08:48 And during COVID, no one could go into those facilities.
1:08:51 Like they just wouldn’t allow anybody in.
1:08:53 And that was going to tank our business.
1:09:00 We were, there’s no way for us to survive zero sales for, you know, six or 12 or two years,
1:09:00 right?
1:09:01 Like no way to do it.
1:09:06 And so, uh, most games companies shut down for at least a little while there.
1:09:13 And I remember thinking like there, this is a no, like this absolutely people are telling
1:09:13 me no.
1:09:18 So, you know, to use the earlier quote, like, so I must be asking the wrong question.
1:09:23 And instead of calling these warehouse owners over and over again, saying, when are you opening
1:09:23 your doors?
1:09:24 When are you opening your doors?
1:09:26 I finally asked a different question.
1:09:29 It was, what are you doing with your parking lots?
1:09:33 And the answer was nothing because nobody’s at work.
1:09:34 So our parking lots are empty.
1:09:35 And I was like, cool.
1:09:40 Can I park three 18 wheeler trucks in your parking lot?
1:09:42 And they said, sure, why not?
1:09:48 And so I brought the games over in these 18 wheeler trucks and I had one person per truck
1:09:52 go inside and repackage our games because all I needed was the space.
1:09:54 It occurred to me, I didn’t need the warehouse.
1:09:55 I just need the square footage.
1:09:59 And they’ve got that in their parking lot and there’s no restrictions there.
1:10:01 There’s only restrictions inside the facility.
1:10:06 And the reason I bring that up is because that’s just a game, right?
1:10:08 Like that’s just somebody saying, here’s a roadblock.
1:10:12 Everybody else is saying, ah, a roadblock.
1:10:13 I can’t get through this roadblock.
1:10:15 It’s time to shut down my business.
1:10:18 When the reality is, just ask a different question.
1:10:21 There’s a different way through this roadblock if you’re willing to play the game.
1:10:25 I used to have this high school cross country coach that was like, I’m going to teach you
1:10:29 all about running and everything, but I’m really trying to teach you about this other pastime
1:10:31 that we have called life.
1:10:37 And that’s sort of how I feel about you and this podcast is you came to talk a little bit
1:10:44 about business, a little bit about creativity, but we’re really learning a good way to live.
1:10:46 That makes me so happy.
1:10:54 To be passionate, to be passionate about certain things we’re doing, to look positively in things
1:10:57 that could potentially be negative and to solve problems in creative ways.
1:10:59 You’re awesome.
1:11:00 We appreciate you.
1:11:02 Thank you so much for saying that.
1:11:03 Hey, where should people follow you?
1:11:06 Because I’m following you on TikTok where you’re doing like, it’s amazing.
1:11:07 I don’t understand.
1:11:08 Have you seen his TikToks?
1:11:10 No, I’m not 12, so I don’t use TikTok.
1:11:12 Well, you should.
1:11:17 I need to live more like him and be positive thinking.
1:11:18 Here’s what’s happening.
1:11:23 Basically, the world’s best game designer is on TikTok teaching people how to design games,
1:11:26 little simple tricks and tips in like 30 second nuggets.
1:11:31 And it’ll get like two views because TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t know yet who they’re messing
1:11:31 with.
1:11:36 And I can’t believe it’s like, you couldn’t pay.
1:11:38 I could not pay you for this type of information.
1:11:40 Dude, you only have 177 followers.
1:11:43 I just started doing this.
1:11:44 Here’s what I realized.
1:11:51 Like, I teach these classes at my company once a week and we’ll tackle whatever topic.
1:11:52 Here’s how we write instructions.
1:11:53 Here’s what we put on the front of the box.
1:11:55 Here’s what we put on the back of the box.
1:11:57 Here’s game design, like all over and over and over again.
1:11:59 And we don’t record any of them.
1:12:04 And I kind of realized like, this is all going to just disappear.
1:12:05 Like nobody’s recording it.
1:12:06 I have no motivation to record it.
1:12:12 So I hired a social media team and all they are, it’s like hiring a trainer at a gym.
1:12:21 They come over once a week and they force me to have a camera on me and give the same class that I gave at the company just for free online.
1:12:27 And so we’ve been recording them and posting them and it’s, yeah, like you said, nobody knows they’re there yet.
1:12:38 But if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to make a game or more importantly, how to apply those lessons to anything in the whole wide world, because it’s all applicable, I’m going to just keep posting these things.
1:12:45 Are you going to give your team some constraint like, you know, without any money and only teaching creativity lessons?
1:12:47 Without making me dance on TikTok.
1:12:51 Yeah, like get this to 500,000 views per video.
1:12:52 Yeah, I should absolutely do that.
1:12:54 Is that what the constraints would be?
1:12:56 Basically, that’s what the constraints would be.
1:13:02 It would be, yeah, it would be how to stay like true to what I want to deliver, right, without dancing.
1:13:05 But yeah, how to increase the viewership on this.
1:13:08 And to be fair, nobody has been tasked with that yet.
1:13:15 My goal for the last, like, I don’t know, it’s been probably like two months has just been, let me just create the content, put it in a place.
1:13:21 And then once it’s there, then it’s probably worth promoting, because now there’s enough there to make it worthwhile.
1:13:24 You’re badass.
1:13:24 You’re awesome.
1:13:27 You got the googly eyes from us.
1:13:29 All right, shout out.
1:13:30 Where should people follow you?
1:13:31 Just shout out your handles.
1:13:36 Yeah, if you just search for, the kind of hub of everything is just Ilan Lee on YouTube.
1:13:38 That’s where I’m putting the long form stuff.
1:13:43 And then from there, it links out to all of the TikToks and Instagrams and everything else where you can find it in shorter form.
1:13:44 Awesome.
1:13:45 Thanks for coming on, dude.
1:13:47 It’s such a pleasure.
1:13:48 Thanks for having me.
1:13:49 And yeah, just a huge fan.
1:13:53 I’m so, so grateful that you wanted to chat with me.
1:13:54 What a thrill.
1:13:55 Of course.
1:13:59 By the way, look at how many games are behind them, just within sight right there.
1:14:00 Isn’t that ridiculous?
1:14:02 Yeah, that’s one of two shelves.
1:14:04 There’s another one over there that’s equally packed.
1:14:07 We’ve got 90 games now?
1:14:08 60, sorry.
1:14:13 We have 60 games, but 90 total because there’s like weird expansions and variations and stuff.
1:14:16 Yeah, it’s stupid.
1:14:18 It’s just, it doesn’t make any sense to me anymore.
1:14:20 Love it.
1:14:21 All right.
1:14:21 Thank you, man.
1:14:21 That’s it.
1:14:22 That’s the pod.
1:14:24 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:14:27 I know I could be what I want to.
1:14:30 I put my all in it like no days off.
1:14:32 On the road, let’s travel, never looking back.
1:14:37 Hey, Sean here.
1:14:39 I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story.
1:14:40 One of the great ad men.
1:14:43 He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron.
1:14:44 She’s your wife.
1:14:47 You wouldn’t lie to your own wife, so don’t lie to mine.
1:14:48 And I love that.
1:14:49 You guys, you’re my family.
1:14:51 You’re like my wife and I won’t lie to you either.
1:14:52 So I’ll tell you the truth.
1:14:57 For every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them.
1:15:01 So I’m proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across
1:15:03 my personal account, my business accounts.
1:15:06 And anytime I start a new company, this is my first move.
1:15:07 I go open up a Mercury account.
1:15:09 I’m very confident in recommending it because I actually use it.
1:15:10 I’ve used it for years.
1:15:12 It is the best product on the market.
1:15:18 So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply
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1:15:22 And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank.
1:15:26 Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust Members, FDIC.
1:15:28 All right, back to the episode.