Five +$10M Ideas (from a guy who's done it 3 times)
Big opportunities, unconventional ideas, and the power of yes. - January 10, 2025 (3 months ago) • 01:11:54
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Sheel Mohnot | Alright | |
Shaan Puri | we have shield today here who is by my call the most interesting man in tech and that is a big claim and I'm aware of the power of my words but I did not stutter sheila I think I've told you this before but I think of all people I feel like you live in this beautiful blend of you do things that make you successful but then you do a lot of things that just seem like a lot of fun and they're random and you're letting you know life kind of bounce you in whatever direction it's gonna take you and it's kind of inspiring and sam I know it's inspiring for you because sam is a perfect square and he just likes to be a perfect square and he doesn't know what to do with this crazy blob shape like you sam is that right | |
Sam Parr | yeah I mean he's inspiring to me like he just does the silliest stuff but let's just say so shiel here's like I'll brag on your behalf so basically you have what a $320,000,000 vc fund you've built a business called thistle to a 100,000,000 in revenue and you've built another business that sold domains I think you've sold half a $1,000,000,000 in domains you've done all this amazing stuff but then you do like the silliest things like you did like an online version of the bachelor you you're in a justin bieber music video like you do ridiculous stuff | |
Shaan Puri | sponsored by taco bell in the metaverse you had a wedding in the metaverse with taco bell somehow I don't know don't even know what that is | |
Sam Parr | I didn't know about that that's awesome what was that | |
Sheel Mohnot | oh it's a long story but yeah taco bell sponsored my wedding we had a series I figured like if you're gonna have a wedding it's a great excuse to bring your friends together and so I was like and it's it's an excuse for all your friends to come together as as many times you do it they're all gonna come so we had 6 weddings and 9 wedding related events over the course of a year one of which was sponsored by taco bell because we entered a contest and my amazing wife let me do this | |
Sam Parr | yeah makes sense | |
Sheel Mohnot | I I | |
Shaan Puri | don't even know what to make of all this | |
Sam Parr | makes sense | |
Shaan Puri | what up youtube sean here you guys know that I have started a newsletter company and sold it sam has done it too sam built the hustle got it to 1,000,000 of subscribers sold it to hubspot I built a company called the milk road as a crypto newsletter and sold it for 1,000,000 of dollars 1 year later and we both had success with this newsletter business model so the team at hubspot got together and they did a research project called the future of newsletters and they're trying to put together some research around where they see opportunities for the newsletter industry what are some of the you know sort of checklists some things you should pay attention to when it comes to newsletters and a bunch of other data and research that they're packaged together if you wanna check out what the hubspot team has put together go to the link below this video and and download it it's free and you could check it out and you can learn something about newsletters I went back and I listened because you've been on the podcast way back when I first started it because you were a friend of mine in san francisco and I wanted to have interesting people on the podcast so back in 2019 you're probably in the first 20 episodes and I actually went back and listened to it this morning because I forgot all of it I I don't remember any of this so I'm gonna repeat a couple of the stories I actually wanna start you brought some ideas opportunities you see things like that I wanna get to those but I wanna start with maybe the relatable side hustle can you talk about one of the way one of the early ways you made money which was this story about the ipad mini I don't even know if you remember the full full story here but can you tell this ipad mini hustle story | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah I was like a new graduate college graduate I was working a job they gave me an ipad mini which is the ipad had come out it was white and then the mini came out it was smaller and it was available in 4 colors blue yellow pink and green and right after I got it my headphones got stuck in a bike I was riding and broke and apple was not selling those headphones like those iconic headphones that I wanted apple wasn't selling them so I had this idea of like let me make these headphones and I'll make them in in the colors matching the ipod mini and so I went to china for the first time in my life | |
Sam Parr | just to like figure this out and I I like you went for this reason | |
Sheel Mohnot | I went for this reason yeah I I just I was working a full time job I took a 2 week vacation and I was like let me spend those 2 weeks in china and | |
Shaan Puri | I like where in china china's a big place you were just like I'm just gonna go I'll find a guy what what was the plan | |
Sheel Mohnot | okay so I I went to hong kong actually originally like I looked up trade shows and there was this big consumer electronics trade show so I was like I'm just gonna go to this trade show and then I'll figure it out and I hadn't booked anything else so like I went to this trade show there were thousands of boots and so like I just went around having no idea about anything just like went to these boots found ones that made headphones their english was very poor I have my chinese is negligible so it was a lot of like they pull out a calculator and I'm like this is what I want and then like I had some sketch drawing that I had made of what I was looking for and then they're like entering a number into a calculator they're like that's you know $5 and I'm like no no no no no | |
Shaan Puri | that's like | |
Sheel Mohnot | 83¢ and then and then I actually went and visited their factories in like southern china guangzhou and shenzhen and it was awesome like it was a really cool way for me to get into business | |
Sam Parr | how much time passed between your headphone breaking and you're like oh I should sell headphones and I'm in china | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think it was like a couple months | |
Shaan Puri | so you you have a job you decide to go you're you're like I'm just gonna kinda fund this off my savings or did you place the initial was a big initial order how did you do it | |
Sheel Mohnot | the initial or it was cheap it was you know 10,000 headphones and I think yeah I mean for me at the time it was a lot of money like it was my first job but I think it was like a total outlay of $20,000 | |
Shaan Puri | gotcha and so do you you make these headphones which by the way seems like an insane oversight by apple to not sell the headphones | |
Sheel Mohnot | it made it difficult | |
Shaan Puri | were iconic at the time and you have to market these how are you gonna sell like a 1000 or 10000 in pairs of headphones | |
Sheel Mohnot | so there like now there's a very a playbook quantitative marketing all this stuff at that time on the internet there wasn't a playbook to follow so I started out like going after blogs there were a lot of blogs where I was like I'll give you a giveaway for your for your readers that was that was one technique and then one that was pretty awesome is facebook had just come out and at this time facebook was limited to college campuses and the way that they monetize facebook at that time was you could set up a flyer so like I went to carnegie mellon I could pay $10 a day to have the sidebar at carnegie mellon and it was basically for like a flyer like if I was throwing a party I could advertise on facebook and so what I did was I went back to my high school friends who went to the biggest colleges so like university of michigan ohio state like those penn state those kind of colleges where they had like 30 or 40000 students and I said give me your facebook id and they gave me their facebook login I paid them something and I was able to market to those audiences for still $10 a day like we want the biggest audience you can for that $10 a day and so we we we did in michigan we did like the colors of michigan like blue and yellow stuff like that and it was a cool it was a cool little business | |
Shaan Puri | dude that's a that's amazing that facebook used to let you do that just to like market to your whole campus for $10 a day is insane | |
Sam Parr | how much did it end up making | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah so how much money did it make I wanna say net was probably like $80,000 | |
Sam Parr | do you plan anything so like one of the parts of this episode is that like you're pretty spontaneous and but but but you have you know a $300,000,000 fund you have a $100,000,000 a year company who knows what that's worth but at least probably a $100,000,000 like pretty like epic success but you also do the really random things spur the moment type of decision making | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah I just like I I think I've always chosen like the more adventurous path I would say and then I think something I get from my grandfather my my mom's dad was like he was just always bored and always coming up with new ideas he would at the time it was different he would like read about something in the newspaper and be like I should start something so like in india when tvs were coming out like growing up like there's only like one tv station and then expanded from there and he was like oh tvs are gonna be big and he started a tv manufacturing company knowing nothing about anything like he just was like I'll just learn how to make tvs and then he set up a manufacturing company it was hard to get us a a phone in india so he created this like pay phone company that allowed people to just use pay phones and like he would just read about something in the newspaper and like me as a kid he would actually like mail me like clips in the newspaper and he'd be like should we start this company together I'm like 15 years old and he's like giving me an idea and he had some good ones one of the ones I remember like I she's just a piss up recently he passed away many years ago but he had this idea for like he looked up ancestry.com great business and he was like in india people love their ancestry why don't we start one for india and that that was an idea he had for me good idea | |
Shaan Puri | wow did anybody do that by the way is there now an ancestry | |
Sheel Mohnot | I actually don't know | |
Shaan Puri | it's a good question still up for grabs | |
Sheel Mohnot | still probably a good idea for my my grandfather who now passed away many years ago | |
Shaan Puri | yeah that's wild sam on the first episode he did he talked about the domain business it's kind of a longer story so we probably won't do it again but the short version of it is you were selling you were not selling you were the auctioneer for people who wanted to buy new domain like top level domains so like dot photo dot app dot blog whatever and so amazon and Google and rich guys would come and they would try to bid and you guys were the auction to do that you'd take 4% of the auction you sold like I don't know $500,000,000 worth of top level domains but but one of the things he talks about is like yeah so my cofounder was this expert in auction theory and I met him on a train in india he had this he just had these little things he threw out like yeah I was just happened to be on a train in india met this guy ended up starting a company with him | |
Sam Parr | was he an american in india or an indian | |
Sheel Mohnot | he's german in india | |
Sam Parr | that's ridiculous what year was that | |
Sheel Mohnot | I met him in 2006 | |
Shaan Puri | when darmesh came on the podcast darmesh the founder of hubspot he yeah we talked about the steve jobs speech that he gave at stanford that's pretty famous a lot of people know | |
Sheel Mohnot | it now | |
Shaan Puri | he talks about like you can't you can't connect the dots you know looking forward you can only connect the dots of your life looking backwards and the famous example is he's talked about like how he used to love studying calligraphy and fonts and he got really into that he took courses on it and then only later when he started apple computers he made sure that the first set of apple computers had these beautiful fonts and no other computer company cared about that but he did he connected those two dots his passion for x and his passion for y and they both came together and dharmesh pointed out he's like I think a lot of people look at that and they just sort of shrug like well I guess I just can't connect the dots like you know so don't even try he's like no what that means is your job is to be a dot collector and you yeah the dots will connect later but like you gotta be a dot collector and so when I say that like I guess like what are some examples for you of of dot collecting in your life where at the time you didn't really fully realize it but you chose more adventurous path or you followed your curiosity and then good things later ended up happening | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think there's a lot of that and I I love that idea of being a debt collector I think there's a lot of like just saying yes to stuff so one I'll just say I'll say yes to a lot of crazy ideas that people throw at me investing of course you have to be discerning when I'm investing other people's capital and and so for the fund I think we're we're very discerning but for ideas for myself or like people invite me to speak at a conference in some random country lot I've been to like latvia saudi arabia like all these countries that people don't go to just because somebody invited me and I think that I've learned a lot by doing those things one of the crazier things I did is I lived in india on a dollar a day | |
Shaan Puri | it's like a mr beast video yeah | |
Sheel Mohnot | it's funny and I I did it for a year so like I moved to india I was 24 years old and I lived for 1 year on around a dollar a day and what does | |
Sam Parr | that do in india is that like a surprise like is that like a mcdonald's value meal like I don't know the like the or | |
Sheel Mohnot | or yeah maybe like a mcdonald's value meal per day and so I think like what I learned from that I think it was like supremely influential in my life and I learned 1 like I don't need a lot of money to be happy like I was so happy in that time and like I went from I was a management consultant in the united states like making a 6 figure salary and I moved to india on a dollar a day and I I real I like I had a convertible here in india I had like a bicycle and even the bicycle was like a big deal for me to buy and I just had so much fun and there there's this concept in india called jugaad which is a a hindi word it means like there's no perfect word for it but it kinda means like creative problem solving and I think like I really learned a lot of creative problem solving during that year like just reusing things I learned like the importance of community resourcefulness | |
Sam Parr | but you spent $365 in 1 year that was it yeah does that include rent and what type of program is this | |
Sheel Mohnot | it would the program no longer exists it was called indicore and it was like a volunteer program and part of it was like they want I wanted so I was working for kiva a nonprofit microfinance institution and I I wanted to live like my borrowers and so the people that we were lending money to were living on a dollar a day so I was like I'm gonna do it too | |
Shaan Puri | so did you just like have a midlife crisis when you're 25 like why did you do this in the first place what was the why | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah the why is kinda silly in hindsight but actually I watched a movie a hindi movie called rangde basanti where they're like the india isn't just gonna change you have to change it and I was thinking like I grew up in america but I have a lot of affinities to india I wanna change india so I had this like lofty ambition and then I don't think I did anything for india like I did a lot for myself but I don't think I accomplished anything for india | |
Shaan Puri | that's amazing | |
Sheel Mohnot | I I | |
Sam Parr | was trying to convince sean like 3 weeks ago I think we're it was like live like don't spend any money for a week or something like way less significant than what you did and I got like a hard no a hard no | |
Shaan Puri | I didn't watch that movie dude I I wasn't inspired | |
Sheel Mohnot | in hindsight it was stupid like I got I got super sick I got typhoid and I well besides that could've yeah besides that no overall it was an amazing experience and actually like I have so many so many of my close friends today are from that time | |
Shaan Puri | there's there's another good dot collector story I think for you you correct me if I'm wrong but I think you were one of the first investors in flexport is that right | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | and but you didn't just like it wasn't just like a traditional vc move where somebody cold pitches you and then you write this check because you're like yeah I totally see the future of freight forwarding no it wasn't that there was some you did something you just said yes to something before that I don't know the full story but I I I know that it wasn't just a a cold pitch that walked into your office | |
Sam Parr | and by the way just just so we have context what's what's flexport valued ish now and what was it when you invested like how big of a of a deal is this | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah so I actually don't know the most recent but it's in the several 1,000,000,000 of dollars k and when I invested it was a $10,000,000 valuation oh wow | |
Shaan Puri | something like 10,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 let's call it | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah and I sold some of my shares and the ones that I sold it was more than a 100 x return | |
Sam Parr | wow okay alright go ahead sorry | |
Sheel Mohnot | and okay so flexport it's a digital freight forwarding company is one way to think about it if you have a bunch of stuff in china and need to get it here there's a bunch of steps required in between and they'll help you do those steps | |
Shaan Puri | like you wanted your iphone your your ipad mini headphones to get here they gotta get onto a container get onto a boat get from the boat to the port port to the truck truck to your warehouse how does all that happen | |
Sheel Mohnot | customs all those other stuff exactly exactly and so it just made sense to me that this needed to be digital it's a real pain in the ass if you if you don't use flexport or something like it and so I met ryan at a party and we bonded over some really funny things which were he I think he's a really hacky guy like he just figures stuff out he started the company by himself nontechnical like outsourced team originally and then eventually he built he built up a lot of stuff internally but we were buying uber credits in our name so | |
Sam Parr | I did that | |
Sheel Mohnot | you did that too | |
Sam Parr | was it what your guy did to you | |
Sheel Mohnot | no no no we we were like I was advertising Google adwords for my referral code and at times | |
Sam Parr | at that time buy free rides from this guy in india oh | |
Sheel Mohnot | who was probably doing what we're doing | |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah yeah yeah like I would buy like $1,000 of uber credit for like $100 or something like that | |
Sheel Mohnot | okay so we we were effectively doing the same thing like just advertising for our name and we kinda bought it over that and became friends and then when he when he had he had done some previous businesses in the import export space and so I was like dude whatever you would whatever you start I'm gonna be investing in it and and it obviously turned out great | |
Sam Parr | that's amazing what isn't it crazy by the way how like so you know I don't know what ryan's worth but like you know if you have a multibillion dollar company you're in the vicinity of 100 of 1,000,000 or even 1,000,000,000 of dollars of net worth so you're like it's like you're a big shot and just 8 years prior you're selling uber credit like like and that's a pretty common story I think | |
Sheel Mohnot | for sure for sure silicon valley it's like so many people that you meet I I guess like I I've lived in san francisco for 12 years now and I this is like a common story there's a bunch of people I met early on who were just like hustling and then eventually started something that became big | |
Sam Parr | that's so funny sean what | |
Sheel Mohnot | were you looking actually like you talked about the surface area or like all the dot collecting I think part of it is being in san francisco like I moved here in 2012 and there are just a lot of interesting things happening like if you were out meeting people you met people doing interesting things | |
Sam Parr | the way you're saying you live is different than what you probably advise the companies who you invest in to live just like saying yes to a variety of things which like if I wanted to like paint this in a bad way I'd be like well you're add and you can't focus and like you're you're missing out on like year 8 9 10 and year 20 where all like a lot of the compounding like growth comes from how do you balance like those two things of being focused which is like what every vc will ever tell a founder versus saying yes to speaking in latvia or going to china to start a new company totally | |
Sheel Mohnot | it's it's such a good question and I I think the way I think about it is I'm probably more of your 0 to 1 guy than I am your like 1 to a 100 and so like I've started a lot of things and then mostly found other people to actually run them over time and like some of the things I started got to exit and and and were successful but if you wanna have like huge success multibillion dollar companies which is like what we're hopefully investing in you need to be really focused and so I would not invest in most of the companies that I would start like if I if I were running a vc fund these companies aren't vc fund vc type opportunities | |
Shaan Puri | what's the story of thistle because I remember we went out to dinner once many years ago and you were like you started this like you helped start I don't know what your role was but you helped start some local food delivery business and at the time there was just a bunch of them going out of business sprigg was going out of business and it was like looked like a bloodbath and you were like no we're kind of approaching it like not the venture funded way I I started ordering from it I started eating it all the time | |
Sam Parr | I love thistle | |
Shaan Puri | and and sam just said it's now a 100,000,000 a year business what is can you tell what is the origin of this this business | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah so the origin is myself and my roommate in san francisco at the time we were we felt like we were just like making unhealthy choices and like eating the fastest thing possible to get back to work or whatever and the idea was like what if there was healthy food in your fridge already you would just that would be the most healthy thing you could eat and and most convenient thing you could eat and at the time as you said there were these companies sprigg munchery spoonrocket were were the most popular ones in the bay area where you could order and for like 10 or $15 in 20 minutes or even 10 minutes food would show up at your door and we were like should we invest in these companies should we start one of these companies I ended up driving for sprig I was like let me sign up to be a driver | |
Shaan Puri | there he goes again | |
Sam Parr | that is so funny it it yeah for those 2 people who don't know spray gets started by all of our friend geigen and it was one of the innovators before doordash or I think before doordash | |
Shaan Puri | as like due diligence | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah I like signed up to be a driver and to like yeah diligence and I was like okay so there are a bunch of problems with this model I don't know if this is gonna be a massive business and the problems are 1 they're wasting a ton of food like you cannot predict how much food you need on any given day and they were like yeah we have this ai model like we're gonna predict if there's a giants game it's this if this it's actually like kind of impossible to predict so wasting like a third of their food drivers all are driving at the same time it's like lunchtime or dinner time that's when it's all happening and then routes aren't optimized so like you're kinda driving one place then you go and then you have to go somewhere else across the city so we were like can we solve this and so we set out to solve it and the idea was a subscription service and the idea was you have to order by friday your meals for the week and there are people like it doesn't work for me like I'm I might be I don't know what I'm doing tonight for dinner but like somebody might invite me to something and I'll go but a lot of people are more structured in life and the idea was for those people we can give them a meal plan and it's kind of like a pro like a private chef might be and do it in an affordable price. | |
Sheel Mohnot | And it's been great like the business is awesome thistle.co if you're on the east coast or west coast you can check it out | |
Sam Parr | is it bootstrapped or do you guys raise fund raise funding | |
Sheel Mohnot | we did ultimately raise funding and we've raised a few rounds of funding but not that much money over time | |
Sam Parr | but it's gonna be it's a good outcome for you personally | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah it should be you know look I think food businesses are tough low multiple businesses and so I don't know what it's gonna be I haven't like you know I haven't like assigned any value to that equity but hopefully it's gonna turn | |
Shaan Puri | this thing off still just in san francisco I remember at one. You had said it was like doing 20,000,000 a year in just san francisco is it did it branch out to like 200 other cities now or what | |
Sheel Mohnot | so yeah so it's all along the west coast and the northeast as well | |
Sam Parr | yeah I see it out where I live I live out right outside of new york and I and I see do I see billboards | |
Sheel Mohnot | you might see billboards you see a lot of bags one one kind of like fun thing is a lot of celebrities use them and you'll see like videos of celebrities on the internet like carrying the thistle bag which is kinda cool like this mega famous person is carrying something that I helped create | |
Sam Parr | you know you sent us a a list of like 4 5 6 ideas and interestingly sean a few of them are in your wheelhouse involving schools a few of them are in a thing or 2 that I know about and I think it'd be interesting since you see so many ideas with the fund and you've been well connected in silicon valley for I don't know 20 years now if you could list out some of the interesting opportunities that you're kinda seeing | |
Sheel Mohnot | I have some that are like maybe venture scale ideas and then a lot most of my ideas are not venture scale but I could talk about a few of them one is I just got back from florida my parents moved to florida they moved to a indian retirement community and it's called shanti niketan and it's not that well executed but the idea is indians they they like this guy created a huge plot where he put up like a 100 homes and then there's a community center where they have indian food they have like movie nights stuff like that it's really fun for all for indian people for indian retirees do you have to | |
Sam Parr | be indian to go or is it just like | |
Sheel Mohnot | everyone who lives there is indian yeah | |
Sam Parr | but like can I go enjoy or you | |
Sheel Mohnot | can go check it out anytime yeah eat the food and so the idea it's a good idea but it's not that well executed and I've I've just been thinking like there are a lot of retirement communities out there and most of them are aligned to a single affinity which is golf and so like most retirement communities are built around golf which is great for people who love golf but there's so many other affinities out there that should have their own retirement community and you know people are living longer than they did so like people are still retiring at 65 but they have like not only are they living longer they're living longer healthier lives so like my parents are still like relatively healthy I expect them to live another 20 30 years and you can build these communities where people like do whatever their affinity is and so I think there's an opportunity here in building in like building a road map for an affinity and then like stamping it for other affinities over time | |
Sam Parr | sean don't you know someone in the in the in this in | |
Sheel Mohnot | the yeah yeah | |
Shaan Puri | so I've looked at this because I found it fascinating for the same reasons that that sheila sheila was saying well first they're good businesses right because you're basically taking raw land and then you're like you just do the math you're like okay cool we're gonna sell let's call it 50 plots or 75 plots or 100 plots and the numbers get pretty big pretty fast when you're buying these at a raw state and you're able to sell them but they also one of the things that some of them are doing is they blend together the like different health spans so for example you can start there when you're just retired but then you need some assistance and then there's like assisted area and then there's like you need a lot of assistance and then you're at the kind of like the the the full full service model but you don't have to move you don't have to like move very far right you're just like and your community's still there yeah you're you're still in the same community you don't have to like you know do this like big cross country move it's not the scary thing you just sort of as your body you goes down that gradient you just sort of move down a different level of service in the community and so that's super profitable when you do that and the ltv of the customers I mean imagine right you're 20 30 years in one of these communities it's really high and I know it because my parents kinda had the same reaction that scheele's parents had which is yeah I mean that'd be great I don't play golf but if there was a place that had the food we like with people that we get along with that speak the language you know that we have the same cultural values and I was like well that's gonna exist for every every race but also not just race like what are other things that people bond over or is like the central pillar of their life and how do you build communities around that that seem it seems very lucrative to me | |
Sheel Mohnot | totally for the for the one my parents did there was a waiting list so my parents prepaid they put a 100% of the money down and didn't get the home for 5 years | |
Sam Parr | and on these things that you when I think of an old home I think of like like a hospital looking center where but these are like a plot of land where you buy a house | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah they bought a townhouse got it | |
Sam Parr | and you pay like a monthly fee | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah you pay monthly fee you get food which is you know for indian people especially I think a really big deal and then they have like they have a bunch of community events like they they play like cards they've there's a community center they play they have movies indian movies going on they have concerts actually I I talked about our weddings my parents one one of the events that they had was a a showcase of all of our wedding videos and then like I called in like we called in and did q and a | |
Shaan Puri | that's hilarious yeah because I feel like you know this is like the country club model but it's just for what what else is there besides a bougie country club like what are the other ways that people could get together in a clubhouse and have you know that that that would add a lot to their lives because it's pretty lonely exactly if you're older you're living somewhere you don't know other people and the effort it would take to go make new friends or drive to places just for certain events versus having it almost like resort style for you it just makes a lot of sense | |
Sam Parr | and we have a friend who came on the pod craig fuller who did this with airline or flying enthusiasts so basically he bought a plot of land he developed homes on it he presold a bunch of them and basically the center of the property is instead of a golf course it's an airplane hangar so if you're if you own like a cessna or something like that you could keep it there and you could live there so you know it's like I wanna go fly this morning I'm just gonna walk | |
Sheel Mohnot | out of | |
Shaan Puri | the runway in the middle of the neighborhood basically | |
Sheel Mohnot | that's so cool yeah so I think you can do this for a bunch of different affinities like I've talked to my chinese friends and like their parents pay a lot of mahjong and like there's stuff like that that I think you could just build this around every affinity over time so I think there's something there | |
Shaan Puri | and I like these businesses that are high dollar value meaning you're not gonna be able to become a billionaire but you can make tens of 1,000,000 of dollars doing this | |
Sheel Mohnot | definitely | |
Shaan Puri | and very high likelihood of success like you don't need like shield told you the idea you don't need a stroke of genius now and like 50 people could go do this and they would all you know it's just a matter of execution at this? Like if you just do do the basic things | |
Sam Parr | like with all these retire like the what do they call it the the silver tsunami like is there a is there a shortage of of space | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think so I think like the reason my parents pre bought it was they like the other indian communities they couldn't get in like the prices had increased so much or there just were there weren't availability so like they pre bought into a new one so I think | |
Shaan Puri | it has to be a doctor it's actually a status symbol you can't you can't get into the community or you're just barred if your kid's not a doctor | |
Sam Parr | dude how much is a nursing home by the way should I be budgeting for like I was like I'm starting worrying about I'm worried about worse now no I'm worried about it for my parents I was dude listen to this so are | |
Shaan Puri | you gonna put your parents in a nursing home | |
Sam Parr | I don't know but shame on you like I I indians could never do sometimes I think they like that don't they like they want I don't know I thought it was like enjoyable I don't fucking know but so I was I was being with a like a financial advisor like 3 years ago and and it was like 20 years in the future I was like what's that $250,000 a year spend and he was like oh you're gonna have kids right I was like yeah but I'm not gonna have triplets he was like well well you're gonna have one kid and I assume that they're gonna go to like a school that's in like the 85 percentile of cost and so in 20 years if you have have kids in 2 years it's gonna be $250,000 a year and I was like dude don't make up this bullshit he goes I didn't make it up I just took the trailing like 20 years of growth for like harvard or whatever 9 90 percentile cost school is and I just applied that for the next 20 years and that's just how I came up with it and I was like baffled that it's gonna be I think it was maybe a 150,000 years it was 6 figures and now that I'm realizing with old people homes or nursing homes I'm pretty sure that some of them are $10,021,000 a month today | |
Sheel Mohnot | that's right that's how much it costs | |
Sam Parr | which is insane I guess so like what am I gonna have to pay if my parents eventually want to do this you know is that are we talking like half a $1,000,000 a year | |
Shaan Puri | it's not that high but you know you can like there's a range so you can do a $3,000 a month bed you could do a $8,000 a month bed you could do 15,000 20,000 depending on if you wanna go basically the ritz carlton | |
Sam Parr | is 20,000 the fanciest | |
Shaan Puri | I I don't know there's no upper end to anything in life right you can spend an infinite amount of money if you if you decide to but I would say like you like nice places can be at 10 $15,000 a month but also some of these are covered by insurance some of these are not some of these out of pocket right there's a whole bunch of different factors I know that in also different cultures like I said shame on you just kinda joking but in indian culture it kinda is like that like there's an expectation culturally that either the parents move in with you or they're gonna have their own house and you're gonna have in home care for them so there's all these different ways that you can do care for elders it could be that they're in a nursing home or a senior facility or it could be that you're paying for somebody to come to their house every day and help them manage day to day life at their house which is obviously gonna be a different cost you know my grandparents for example they have their own house and they have basically round the clock somebody come like like a kind of a nurse that basically lives in their house that just helps them with everyday things to just function in their own home because that's what was comfortable for them | |
Sam Parr | that's cool when I | |
Sheel Mohnot | think for all those any any of those different types of things like being in the same place with the community makes sense because like your grandparents may not need that one person full time or they might but like other people might want a fractional one and it's so much easier if that person like lives in the community or like comes to the community and can serve many people at once | |
Shaan Puri | and a bunch of people tried this for like young 20 somethings after college it's like an after college yeah community blah blah blah but this is way better because people are gonna be in these for like 30 + years | |
Sheel Mohnot | exactly | |
Shaan Puri | and they have money actually versus that 20 something yeah they might spend 1 or 2 years after after college doing this in a big city but then they're gonna kinda graduate out of it so you're gonna have this crazy churn all the time I like your model better alright well what's another opportunity what's another idea you got | |
Sam Parr | go to this yelp one | |
Sheel Mohnot | okay so the idea is yelp for professional services so and then I I I originally had this idea I think before sam before sam put out sam's list but the idea is why is it so hard to know like which insurance brokers are good which lawyers which financial planners which accountants like how do I know who's good and is gonna serve my needs and like there should be a site for that and it's easily monetizable | |
Sam Parr | so I can give you guys an update so sean 10 or 8 months ago I created this thing called sams list sams list dotco and it was like yelp for accountants and I just did it because I needed an accountant and I found an accountant by the way on the website so it worked so we it's it hasn't like taken off this year it did $99,000 in revenue and a little bit of profit and we have someone who's working on it but what we're changing over is making it we're adding like a financial advisor category but I completely agree with you of like having these review sites for professional services is necessary everyone is begging us by the way if anyone wants to go do this go for it everyone's begging us for sam's list but for agencies I don't know anything about agencies so I don't like I don't know anything about that space but that is one thing that people have been begging us for is to have an agency category but I think that's just because I have a lot of agency owners who follow me on twitter | |
Sheel Mohnot | no but I I think if you look on twitter like people are constantly posting like hey I need help with this can can anyone recommend an agency I I feel like like we have a website designer that I really like and I feel like once every couple weeks I'm recommending him to somebody and like there should be a place where you could just search and find like I'm looking for an agency I'm willing to spend x x to y and you know it should be a site that that does everything and maybe sam's list is that | |
Sam Parr | it's fucking hard to pull these off by the way it's hard | |
Sheel Mohnot | it's hard none of these things are easy | |
Sam Parr | here's why they're hard like what we found was like we had a lot of like mom and pop accountants on the website and like you're basically imagine like so what sean did with milk road and what I did what I did with the hustle was we'd have advertisers but the ideal situation is you have advertisers who are spending tens or 100 of 1,000 or once the hustle got to a certain size sometimes they're spending 1,000,000 of dollars a year but when you're working with like a mom and pop accountant I'm basically selling packages for like $500 yeah and you're like the mob like knocking on the door like taking out my money you know what I mean and it like yeah you know like the client hasn't paid yet so I don't have the money yet but I promise I'll get it to you next week like it becomes a little bit of a game like that and so if you're gonna do it the ideal situation is that you're doing it accountants are basically a lot of them are like mop and pop organizations it's it's a pretty bad group to sell to but like whatever organization or industry you wanna do this for it has to be where they're already spending a lot of money and it's bigger companies who can write bigger checks otherwise you're just gonna end up like yelp have you guys ever known like the joke in san francisco when we lived there was yelp is where you go to learn how to do sales because it's such a hard sales job and all they they would hire anyone with a pulse and they would be like alright here's $40 a year and then you get commission but if you hit your own target earnings you're gonna make $200 a year you're gonna be so rich and they find out that they're having to go like get an ice cream stop shop to give them like $900 | |
Shaan Puri | and wasn't it more like threats than sales even it was like oh this review's really hurting you wouldn't you but don't you just wish that would go away yeah man I might be able to make that go away | |
Sheel Mohnot | I I never found any evidence of that actually happening though like people have been like provide me evidence and I don't think I don't think there's actual evidence of that happening there is with the better business bureau by the way but but not with yelp from what I can tell | |
Shaan Puri | what where did that come from I I came from business owners complaining about it | |
Sam Parr | who who | |
Shaan Puri | else would put that story out there | |
Sheel Mohnot | well so people have said like okay if there's any proof of yelp saying pay me money and you'll get a better review or that review will get knocked out yeah yeah yeah yeah send it to me and then nobody has ever sent it fair enough fair enough | |
Shaan Puri | alright what are the what are the other what's this pearly whites one you got my attention | |
Sheel Mohnot | okay so this is my wife's idea there's something called the dry bar where you could just go get a blow dry of your hair it's like kind of like an in and out thing 20 minutes and you and you get your blow dry my wife feels like she would like to get her teeth cleaned more than the twice a year that you're able to with a dentist on insurance and so the idea is you go to a place and all they do is clean your teeth they don't do any they don't do x rays they don't do anything else you're in and out 20 minutes $100 $120 something like that and she would do that like every couple months and that's the idea | |
Shaan Puri | so she likes getting her teeth cleaned | |
Sheel Mohnot | she likes getting teeth cleaned which I I think is weird like I don't but she does and I I could see people doing it like oh I'm going to an event like I'm gonna get my hair done I'm gonna get my teeth done teeth cleaned | |
Shaan Puri | well I like the unbundling of like the dental checkup right it's like what's the what is the one part that people kind of would want the most or need the most often that if you separate it out of your normal dental kind of cycles there might be just like a market for people who just want this I kinda buy that but I I thought it would be teeth whitening not cleaning | |
Sheel Mohnot | that's part of it also and and actually like you probably make more money in the whitening side but what you could do is actually like you standardize and like have a really nice looking space and dentists would franchise this and they'd be like oh I'm a dentist I can open one of these you need to have dental hygienists and and a dent in some states you need to have a dentist there but it doesn't have to be like they don't have to be doing the work they just have to be there | |
Shaan Puri | right dude I went to my dentist and he had this sign but like it stood out because everything in the dentist office looked like a dentist office it just looked like mom and poppy and then there was one sign that was really nice and this one sign was basically advertising kind of what you're describing it was like a 20 minute teeth whitening for like $85 or whatever it was some some dollar amount and I was like what is this is this yours and he's like oh actually yeah there's like this company that made this service that then we can then sell to our customers and they provide like the marketing and the name of this and they're trying to popularize this but we just get incremental revenue because we're able to upsell this essentially and I was like oh that's smart it's basically like the hunt brothers pizza model what they did for gas stations they're like hey here's a here's a pizza shop inside your gas station somebody's doing this for dental offices where they're putting in this like teeth whitening upsell program and I was like it's kinda work I I get it it it works because otherwise you know the dentist offers like you know 1500 services if you really wanted to you could go and ask them about it | |
Sam Parr | what's it called | |
Shaan Puri | I don't remember the name of this one but I I don't think it was I don't know how popular this is but I remember just thinking oh this makes sense I could see why it's a win for the dentist it's a win for this company and I could see why consumers would be when you're just sitting there trapped in the chair literally like strapped in the chair it's the first thing you see in front of you you stare at that thing for 15 minutes and you're looking at this before and after photo and you're like yeah cool add that on I'll take that | |
Sheel Mohnot | I'll take | |
Shaan Puri | the whites | |
Sheel Mohnot | speaking of hunt brothers another idea and this is one of my best friends is doing this and I I invested but it's called pizza rita luna and the idea is when people go to hotels they most often order pizza like mid range hotels people order pizza constantly domino's is coming in so the idea was what if we gave you the ability to sell a high quality pizza and originally it was like we'll give you the oven and the pizza that's like hand tossed made in italy actually shipped over from italy tastes amazing and and so a lot of hotels use pizzeria luna and then we have the table tents and all that other stuff | |
Shaan Puri | dude this is a great idea it's just hunt hunt brothers but for hotels and italian is it working | |
Sheel Mohnot | it's working yeah it's been pretty successful it's still fairly early but it's it's doing really well | |
Shaan Puri | and what's the hard part about this because like you know the hunt brothers thing I think they started out doing wholesale ingredients so they already had like a ton of infrastructure in place where they were already selling you know doughs and all that stuff to to you know pizza shops all around the the place and that's why they were able to like just take the next logical step and create their own brand and then provide those same ingredients to the to the the gas station owners is this really hard to spin up or was this actually like you know pretty doable | |
Sheel Mohnot | I mean it it's complicated like my friend is on a plane to italy all the time like he wanted to make sure it was like super high quality something the hotels felt really proud to offer | |
Sam Parr | wait but why I don't think I could tell if this pizza's from italy that's it like like would my taste buds know the difference between kentucky and a it | |
Shaan Puri | you're like yeah this is not cheap pizza | |
Sheel Mohnot | it's not cheap pizza | |
Sam Parr | like italy like is that you know how like you know how like florida has like hollywood florida like it's a small town yeah can we can we call it like you know is there like an italy kentucky italy wisconsin yeah | |
Sheel Mohnot | no it turns out like the the ingredients like it just does taste better like they know how to do it there it's actually it so you what you're probably thinking is like is isn't it expensive to bring it over here it's actually not it's kind of worth it and they have the experience and know how it's actually made like near naples which is where pizza comes from | |
Shaan Puri | dude my dad I remember when we were a kid he saw this pizza place and the sign just said hand tossed pizza and there was like a guy in the window tossing and my dad wouldn't shut up about the hand tossed pizza for like you know a year and these things just work I don't know why there's something to it | |
Sam Parr | if it says world's greatest cup of coffee I buy it every single time | |
Sheel Mohnot | oh totally that shit always works on me | |
Shaan Puri | do you guys know the the grey goose story | |
Sheel Mohnot | no with the taller bottles | |
Shaan Puri | the taller bottles but also so the so the guy who started grey goose started it by the way when he was in his like seventies he was like he was like 70 years old and decided to start a startup | |
Sam Parr | was he successful | |
Shaan Puri | so he before that he had created jagermeister not created but he had brought jagermeister to the us and made it popular so like the jagermeister story was he's out 1 night alright he was like part of the family alcohol business his wife's his wife's parents' business and then they get in a fight they kick him out and he's like alright fuck this I gotta do something and he's out one night he sees people he sees a german like group of friends sipping this like weird cough syrup looking thing and it was jagermeister it was like a after dinner type of thing and he's like what is that he inquires about it he figures it out and he decides I'm gonna become the us importer of this thing called jagermeister but to make it popular what he did was he created the jager bomb and got like jaegarettes the girls who would go around bars pouring the stuff down college kids' throats and he made it the party drink so jager becomes this like big drink he's successful now he's in his seventies and he's like alright I'm gonna start a new one I wanna start a vodka company and he basically says I'm gonna do 2 things differently first he goes we need to source the vodka and I go great we're on our next flight out to moscow and he goes no no no we're not doing russian vodka they go what do you mean we're all like that's where vodka comes from he goes go to france and find me vodka they go there's no vodka in france he goes go to france to find me vodka because if I told you this is french vodka it just makes that dirty russian vodka look like crap and so they're like but what if it's not better he goes I said it's french vodka that means it's better and so he sends one group there and he tells the other group he goes go go to the bar right now and buy the most expensive vodka that there is bring all the bottles here and they bring all the bottles and he's basically like he lines them all up and he goes cool whatever the what's the most expensive vodka it was like absolute at the time he's like cool we're gonna be 30% more expensive than whatever the most expensive one is and what that's their bottle okay it's this fat bottle we're gonna be a tall bottle and then he got he commissioned somebody to make it and they did the frosted glass and he's like that's it that looks expensive as hell and he created grey goose off of this very simple concept it was like either italian or french vodka put in this expensive tall frosted glass bottle it's so tall it wouldn't even fit on the shelves so you had to put it on the top shelf because if you put it on the middle shelf it wouldn't fit it was too tall so it had to become top shelf like vodka by by d by default because it was so tall isn't that amazing hilarious | |
Sam Parr | that that's so funny | |
Sheel Mohnot | it's interesting because it's basically like a commodity like it's all it's all pretty much the same it's hard for people to distinguish I have a friend who started a vodka brand and the bottle cost more than the vodka yeah exactly and it was like a premium brand | |
Sam Parr | dude it seems like a it seems like like a horrible business to be in it seems like really challenging | |
Sheel Mohnot | alcohol in particular is tough because of the regulatory environment it's different state by state what you can sell and you have to get licensed and all this stuff it it is challenging | |
Sam Parr | nice do you wanna do another one | |
Shaan Puri | yeah what else yeah what else are you excited about shield that you think somebody could go do | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think something I want in my life is like a school for ai tools so like maybe you could franchise it but for me like right now I would pay a few $100 to go to a class like half a day just to become a better photographer iphone photographer and like show me how to edit things and like make fun funny things on the internet memes or whatever same thing for video and I think the same is true for many other products that you can use like ai or software for so it's like a software school in person | |
Shaan Puri | could more of that just for you like just other 2 other tools that are useful in your life exactly yeah it's for adults or | |
Sam Parr | for kids | |
Sheel Mohnot | it could be for adults I think start for start with adults and then also kids | |
Sam Parr | sean he was telling me before this he was like you know I'm trying to hire this person to teach me how to do like video editing and use ai and I was like 2 things 1 sean actually hired an ai like tutor which is actually pretty amazing and then also you went on this big rant a month ago it's probably the greatest in terms of like ikigai of like what the world wants what sean's good at what he's passionate about and like what the world's willing to pay for like him creating like you know another full sale university it's quite aligned | |
Shaan Puri | oh yeah I had this idea well first I did I did an ai tutor mostly just because I've realized that coaches are just an absolute life hack once you get some money it's like a luxury that doesn't actually cost that much but adds a lot of value to your life and so now anytime I want to do something my first stop is who's a coach I can hire that will speed up my learning curve be a forcing function because they're going to show up and it's going to like force me to actually stick to this hobby and yeah get better faster | |
Sheel Mohnot | how do you find them | |
Shaan Puri | with this I just tweeted it out and I was like hey who could I'm I'm willing to pay $500 an hour for somebody who's gonna you learn all the new stuff that's going on in ai and then I wanna sit with you for 90 minutes every wednesday and I want you to tell me what's going on but also like like teach like I'm hands on keyboard struggling trying to do the thing because that way I'll like actually learn how to do it and it's been kind of amazing to be honest | |
Sam Parr | still doing it | |
Shaan Puri | we're still doing it it kinda shifted a little bit like other friends wanted to join so I invited a couple other friends and so it's kind of a group thing now and yeah it's pretty amazing so so that's that's been great on the ai side but just in general I'm a big like I'm it's like it's iconical now how how my first answer to everything is to get a coach and but whatever I'm gonna keep doing it till it doesn't work and it's it's worked at everything we hired a | |
Sam Parr | we hired an organizational coach to come and teach us how to like organize a closet like I'm so on board | |
Sheel Mohnot | with that oh my god we pay so much to our organizer we don't have a coach we just have an organizer who comes in and she is doing so well she reached she last time she was here which was like 2 weeks ago which is because she's here all the time organizing something she was like oh my client from san francisco is flying me I'm gonna go organize their new place in switzerland so she's like got this thing going we're like it's an incredible business I I mean it's not like a huge business but she's she's got people under her and stuff now | |
Shaan Puri | is it just like magic like is your house just like incredible now | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think it's fine my wife loves it | |
Sam Parr | so we | |
Sheel Mohnot | do it | |
Sam Parr | I have a friend that just bought a home they moved in it's huge house like 8,000 square feet they paid this service $25,000 to be there before like to map out where everything like it was like you know like starting from scratch to like be there to map it all out to buy the storage supplies and then to put the labels and to come up with the strategy it was $25 | |
Sheel Mohnot | that's a lot | |
Sam Parr | it's it's a lot | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think we paid I I don't remember I don't know how much we paid total because I don't see it because if I saw it it would drive me crazy but I do remember the kitchen was a couple $1,000 | |
Shaan Puri | do you do you have the like indian frugality gene or are you like time okay you're not a good spender | |
Sheel Mohnot | I'm not a good spender and it's like my lifestyle hasn't changed that my net worth has increased quite dramatically over the past decade and my my lifestyle hasn't changed I'm always looking for a deal like anything I buy I'm going to slick deals first I've like got the credit card points thing down like all this stuff that shouldn't I shouldn't be doing is like stupid optimization but for me it's kind of a game and I love it | |
Shaan Puri | what are the give us a quick credit card tip what do you what's your credit card stack because I don't wanna do the research but I might just piggyback off you | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah yeah yeah for sure okay so I use the us bank smartly card it's 4% on everything and if you just want a single card that's the card to go off of us bank smartly | |
Shaan Puri | that's what it is | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah yeah it's 4% on everything by the way I use it on my taxes so | |
Sam Parr | wait what | |
Sheel Mohnot | I pay 1.82% to the government to use my credit card and then I get 4% back from us bank it's just like I'm getting 2% back on my taxes | |
Shaan Puri | I could use that for like facebook ad spend I could use it for anything | |
Sheel Mohnot | use a facebook ad spend yeah exactly | |
Shaan Puri | is it like a limit or is it unlimited | |
Sheel Mohnot | just your credit limit wow and now to it's called us bank smartly and you have to have you have to have a $100,000 with us bank but what I did is I just have a brokerage account with a single stock and that's my $100,000 at us bank it's a great deal like they they're losing money on me for sure | |
Sam Parr | dude on one hand I'm like this is sick I gotta do this and then on the other hand I'm like I just like you know I don't know setting it up | |
Shaan Puri | dude 4% is pretty legit I went through a lot of hoops to get 2.6 from bank of america | |
Sheel Mohnot | america yeah | |
Shaan Puri | and so now you're just shitting on that | |
Sheel Mohnot | by the | |
Shaan Puri | way this is this is way better | |
Sheel Mohnot | way better this is way better | |
Sam Parr | also you also tweet all types of stuff like the other day you're like does robinhood give like 4% | |
Sheel Mohnot | interest robinhood robinhood has a card that gives 3% cashback on everything and then right now they have a promo where it's like 4% or 5% it was 5% if you put $25,000 into a robinhood brokerage | |
Sam Parr | dude it's kinda actually interesting because if you are a really big company or you're spending a lot couldn't the difference between 0% and 4% like have a meaningful impact on your margin | |
Sheel Mohnot | absolutely yeah I mean if you're buying facebook ads for like it could be really massive for you yeah but for me even just by taxes getting 2% back on my taxes is you know many 1,000 of dollars pretty sweet that's crazy it's like free money | |
Sam Parr | I know a guy who well I I could say it actually his name's david hauser he did a podcast so it's public but he sold his company grasshopper for I think a $125,000,000 and he he's like you know famously he's he's a friend of mine he's like famously frugal and like you know whatever and he was like convinced american express to let him pay his tax bill which on a $100,000,000 sale I I don't know what that would be 36 to $40,000,000 or something and he was like I now have unlimited basically like unlimited flying like for the he's like for the he's like for the next he's like for the next like 30 years I ball out on on flying and I don't have to pay for a thing and and and he paid with his you know $40,000,000 tax bill on amex | |
Sheel Mohnot | the one thing so speaking of miles so like one thing I don't wanna do is accumulate a lot a lot of miles I already have more miles than I need and like people are like oh well you're getting 4% but I'm actually getting 5% because I get miles and miles are worth 2.3¢ to me because but the and then I look into it and they're like how is it worth that much to you and you're you're like flying on some random time of the day on a business class flight but it's it's not the flight I wanna take just give me cash back and I'll I'll I'll buy my own shit | |
Shaan Puri | right also don't miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate + yeah you don't actually use all your miles so even | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah exactly | |
Shaan Puri | in theory every. Is worth x you're never gonna use a 100% of your points so you have to discount back off that | |
Sheel Mohnot | exactly so for me cash back is king | |
Sam Parr | dude I know a guy in hampton by the way who who is a 2 person company and he spends 10,000,000 a year on facebook ads or something and he's like I get all these miles and so I just I was like hey book a flight for me and I'll just send you the money and I got you know I I bought 4 first class tickets to europe and I got probably a 30% discount because of it it was like significant savings for me | |
Shaan Puri | do you have any other good financial wins or hacks so you got the 4% cashback card is there anything else that like is a needle mover | |
Sheel Mohnot | actually I've started using robinhood for a lot of stuff so robinhood had this thing where and they they continue to have it where | |
Sam Parr | you dangerous | |
Sheel Mohnot | I I don't think it's dangerous robin's a big company they're they're making lots of money I'm I'm I'm a robinhood bull and they had this thing where you could move your assets over and they would match 1% so it's pretty amazing if you have let's say $10,000,000 of assets in stocks somewhere you move it over you get a $100,000 free money | |
Sam Parr | how long does it have to stay there | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think it's 2 years but I've been very happy with the service and and I I I just did the transfer acas transfer from schwab schwab called me like red alert and they were like we'll give you $15,000 right now in your account you don't have to do anything you just we're just gonna give you $15,000 you just don't move your money and I was like yeah but I'm getting a lot of work from schwab from robinhood so I I moved it and I've been very happy and then I I have a lot of other I now use other products on them and they have a great margin rate it's like 5% it's great | |
Shaan Puri | do you are you like a stock picker what do you do with your personal portfolio are you just like boring index funds do you do anything interesting | |
Sheel Mohnot | I want to not be a stock picker I wanna be boring index funds but inevitably like I get excited about an idea and I invest in it and it's been very good for me I've I've like been fortunate to outperform the market pretty significantly | |
Sam Parr | what was your big best pick | |
Sheel Mohnot | I bought like my biggest position was nvidia in 2017 | |
Shaan Puri | no shit and what was that based on what what was the idea there | |
Sheel Mohnot | it was I I did a lot of research got excited and I thought there were 2 theses like I actually it was more based on crypto than it was ai and I was wrong like it we we moved away from gpus and moved into asic for for crypto but it ended up being right anyway and so that's been awesome | |
Sam Parr | yeah so that was in 2017 the stock was rated it's | |
Sheel Mohnot | about 30:30 something x from that | |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah yeah it looks like it's it's a 30 x it's a 150 today back then it was $5 30 x is wild did you just keep it in the whole time | |
Sheel Mohnot | and it was yeah I've kept it the whole time I haven't actually bought anymore or sold any so yeah I I have and it was it was like my biggest position in 2017 | |
Shaan Puri | and you're you're basically like a fintech expert right your fund is fintech you've invested in a bunch of fintech things what's your position on crypto are you like | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah so are | |
Sam Parr | you a | |
Shaan Puri | big bitcoin bull do you believe in all the altcoins like what's your where where do you stand because I haven't heard you talk about it much | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah I don't talk about that much I I bitcoin is so actually looking at my assets it's probably bitcoin number 1 nvidia number 2 and then like the house that I live in number 3 it's probably like really | |
Shaan Puri | yeah and so tell say more well what got you into bitcoin or crypto at the beginning and is it is it just bitcoin or do you also believe in eth and solana and other things | |
Sheel Mohnot | I only have bitcoin and eth I have some of the others but like not a meaningful amount I actually have a tweet where I I was like like anti bitcoin and bitcoin was like 60¢ or something and I was like this is never gonna work here's why governments would never allow it blah blah blah and then I finally bought in around $300 and the idea was I still like what people believe then what people told me was like it's gonna be a fast and efficient way to to move money and that isn't what happened at all | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Sheel Mohnot | and so in some ways I was right it doesn't it doesn't matter that I was right I lost a lot of money by not doing it earlier and I think as a store of value like the more successful it gets the more successful it's gonna get | |
Shaan Puri | right | |
Sheel Mohnot | and so that's it and more and more people are put putting money in so I I've put money in now for me personally for my for me personally that makes sense for my fund I wanna invest in things that like actual people are gonna be able to use and like have real impact on the world and I haven't found that many use cases we have made a couple of investments in stable coins I think there's something there yeah | |
Shaan Puri | I was gonna ask you nerd nerdy question there's a a lot of people are paying attention to stable coins right now I believe | |
Sam Parr | what farcoin is | |
Shaan Puri | that that's an unstable coin for sure | |
Sheel Mohnot | farcoin so butthole | |
Shaan Puri | people who don't know a stable coin is basically it's a digital token so it has the benefits of being like able to be transferred online easily and programmable things like that but it's just pegged to the dollar so you put a dollar in a bank account and then one digital dollar is created and that's the idea in order for the digital dollar to be created an actual us dollar has to be put in a bank account somewhere and so there's companies like circle and others tether who who are are supposedly doing this and I guess it's kind of like a lot of people believe it's like stable coins is taking off now there's some some charts I think the all in podcast has been talking about this recently a a stable coin didn't the stable coin business get bought or a tech business that that was bought | |
Sheel Mohnot | got bought for over a 1,000,000,000 by stripe | |
Shaan Puri | a $1,000,000,000 by stripe so what's is there anything actually going on here or is this just all a lot of hot air | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think there's something real here I think like they're transferring money internationally is challenging and there's something called swift which is how banks do it it's basically like a messaging protocol I I think stablecoins can make things easier think still at the end of the day I think people people people are overhiding stablecoins because at the end of the day in an on ramp and an off ramp to get money and they aren't that like I I had this issue I I had a wedding in india and I needed to pay a lot of vendors in cash there was a lot of cash and I was like hey I tweeted it can somebody help me get a lot of cash in mexico and the reality is there's a reason why it was so difficult and the reason is like money laundering and actually also even what I was doing was illegal because or what what my vendors were doing they wanted cash because they don't wanna pay taxes and so the reason it's hard is because the government doesn't want you to do you wanna skirt taxes and I had this convoluted thing actually you guys might appreciate I convinced my bank to let me normally you can withdraw a certain amount of money per day I convinced my bank schwab to let me do $4,000 per account per day and I opened 6 bank accounts at schwab and I was able to go to an atm and withdraw $4,000 of cash per account per day and I was there for the week prior that basically paid from a lot of my wedding | |
Sam Parr | dude do you know what the takeaway from from this all by the way is it's like that's the second time that you've said something where you went to like a major institution and | |
Shaan Puri | and negotiated | |
Sam Parr | yeah like when I hear about like you you went to schwab I'm like is schwab a person that you can go to like I don't understand you know what I mean it's it's like getting like Google adwords help like it's like it's like if I had a gmail issue it's like just hey Google yeah yeah I need you to fix this like I didn't even realize that you could call schwab or call bank of america and like yeah I know you guys don't offer this but but you know you you got to | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah I think if you explain your situation to them some actually one thing I do is like I know pretty quickly if I've got a good agent or a bad agent and then if I have a bad agent I hang up and call again like you know somebody who's like going like I just told them my story like told them what I needed and and then like somebody walked me through the process and I got it done and so I think you could do that all the time and then speaking of negotiation or like talking through something I think something a lot of people should do is realize like you can negotiate at macy's like I I did this with my wife my wife she bought a wedding dress a a post wedding dress at macy's like it was for for one of our weddings and we were we were at macy's and I was like I wanted to teach you to negotiate I want you to get a better deal on this dress it was like I don't know $400 dress or something and I was like can you get a better deal and she did she got like 20% off just by asking at macy's for like a person at macy's and she saved like a $100 or something | |
Shaan Puri | dude that's can you do that | |
Sam Parr | yeah I mean I'll do things like like I'll be like hey like I don't I won't know if they had a sale recently but I'll be like I think you had a sale recently like can you | |
Sheel Mohnot | see like | |
Sam Parr | you you had like a you know like for example like I went and got something at brooks brothers the other day and I know that one time a year they do like a 40% off sale and I went like 3 months after that sale but I was just like hey can you can you match that and if you I always prefer to go to women like the workers that are women I have way more success because they're just like easier to like get along with and like you know you do like a little fake flirt but that works like way better for me is is for with retailers just like talking to a woman and being like hey how are you doing today you know look I know this is a little obnoxious but can I get that sale discount or what | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah my buddy dan and they always they have | |
Sam Parr | like they have a | |
Sheel Mohnot | bunch of qr codes or like barcodes and they just scan the qr code or barcode and it's like oh here's 20% off and like all you do is ask | |
Shaan Puri | my buddy dan his mom was like the master at this if like when we were in college we would go try to like you know buy stuff for our dorm rooms or our apartment and she would just while we're checking out she would be like and give the boys a discount give these college boys give these boys a discount and then they would be like what for what | |
Sam Parr | and then she's like give them a discount | |
Shaan Puri | yeah she would just be like come on give the give the boys a discount they need it and then she would just tell them like give the boys a discount and then sure enough 20 30 40% off would just happen like that and I would never even think to do it but she would just say it like like it's a done deal like oh it's happening not like do you think it'd be possible is there any way we would really appreciate it she was just like oh and then throw that in put the discount on top of it whatever you got like give give the voice discount | |
Sam Parr | alphas like every clerk | |
Shaan Puri | yeah exactly | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think it's a good I think it's something like I want my kids to learn like if I have kids in the future hopefully I will like I want them to learn these sort of things and it's like it's also like somebody posted like what job do you wish you had I wish I had a sales job growing up and like the people that are selling you like dead sea cosmetics or something like they're just coming up to you or like cell phone accessories they're like hey what phone do you have and then they try to sell you something I feel like those are really useful things that I wish I wish I did | |
Shaan Puri | dead sea guy at the mall oh my god an an unbelievable skill set just an incredible skill set | |
Sam Parr | is that a scent or a lotion | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think it's like a body scrub yeah got it and it's it's gotta be like a 98% profit margin sort of best | |
Shaan Puri | yeah did didn't your dad sell like door to door or something | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Sheel Mohnot | my dad sold him encyclopedia's door to door when he just moved here from india it's actually a great story he like he he was very poor in india he to come to the united states like he he studied at iit in india great university and then like to come to america he needed to raise money so he like raised money from the community to pay for his flight over and you had to have $300 to stay in america like on your passport they stamped that he had $300 he came with exactly $300 in his pocket and so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back and he had this stipend as a master's student and then a phd student and he decided to work as an encyclopedia salesman indian guy thick indian accent at that time he was in louisiana mississippi and alabama door to door selling encyclopedias and he became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country did he really I'm like yeah he really did and he he had to | |
Shaan Puri | him about it like what was the secret what was the pitch | |
Sheel Mohnot | I think it was just like working day and night I think was the pitch and crazy enough so he he made enough money to buy an apartment in like a condo in india like a 1 bedroom condo in india and that's still the condo that like my uncle lived in and still like we still go and stay in that condo that my dad bought with his earnings from working as an encyclopedia salesman | |
Sam Parr | dude you actually have a bunch of good tweets about your dad like I feel like I kinda know about him like apparently | |
Shaan Puri | did that video did you see the video recently first of | |
Sam Parr | all he quoted robert mugabe who is like a dictator in africa like the dad dad like at shiel's wedding he like gave a speech he was eddie cronin and robert mugabe who I think was like the dictator of zimbabwe like he must | |
Shaan Puri | have been like quote | |
Sheel Mohnot | it was about treating everyone well it was a good | |
Sam Parr | quote it was a good quote but like he was clearly on like brainy quotes and he typed in like quote on love it like it was by like a killer dictator | |
Sheel Mohnot | and then and my dad's like robert mugabe very very famous for his quips and I'm like I think robert mugabe was famous for something else but okay | |
Sam Parr | and then he's got this other video of his dad on a cruise like he's like we lost my dad but we found him dancing or something like that he's like dancing with this other couple | |
Sheel Mohnot | and then and then so we we went on a cruise family cruise couple weeks ago it was awesome I I was very skeptical of going on a cruise we went with 8:8 family members it was it was super awesome but anyway we we go to this tasting menu restaurant and my dad shows up with a pizza to the tasting menu rest and then I filmed him like the the people like were like pretty mad at him | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I saw that I loved it he like covered it with a napkin he's like oh yeah no no problem no problem and they're like no sir we can see it it's still there | |
Sam Parr | you treat it like a like a baby you like put something in front of their eyes and it doesn't it just doesn't appear anymore | |
Sheel Mohnot | exactly exactly that's hilarious | |
Sam Parr | dude thank you for doing this | |
Shaan Puri | well this was fun hanging with you as it always is and I recommend if you wanna hear scheele's story go back and listen to the episode I think it's episode 18 I think it's called like the you know the guy who who you know made millions on selling wacky domains because you told your story kind of like in order there and it's a great it's a great episode I went you know for me to go back and relisten to my voice like anybody knows if you're listening to your own voice on a recording that's painful and so for the fact that I went through an hour episode this morning that means the episode's pretty good | |
Sam Parr | and they gave you a follow on | |
Sheel Mohnot | made it so big | |
Shaan Puri | yeah you were there you were the cause | |
Sam Parr | and you gotta give sheel a follow on twitter you are a great follow like you just do the like it's just the small things in life like you just tweeted out apparently do you have a couch that's like a square | |
Sheel Mohnot | yeah I it's a 9 foot by 9 foot couch | |
Sam Parr | I love this thing | |
Sheel Mohnot | my wife hates it by the way but I love it | |
Sam Parr | you just tweeted out a photo of your couch and I was just like who on earth would buy this and then I'm somehow convinced that it's the right decision | |
Shaan Puri | dude I've always been curious they go to the furniture stores and they have the the pit it looks like a pizza because it's like a 9 square thing that's right you have to like hop on like a small child and just like crawl around the couch because your feet aren't gonna touch the ground and you did you bought it | |
Sheel Mohnot | I love it it's it's | |
Sam Parr | so fun | |
Sheel Mohnot | when you have people over here but it's also modular so you can turn it into other things | |
Sam Parr | thanks for doing this man you're the best we appreciate you alright that's the pod |