Shaan's Backstory (#377)

Coal, Sushi, Stripe, and Bebo to Podcasts - October 20, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 01:14:01

This My First Million episode features a candid conversation between Shaan Puri and Sam Parr, recorded in a San Francisco music studio. The discussion centers around Shaan's career journey, from his unconventional start in Indonesia working for a coal tycoon to his experiences in Silicon Valley. The conversation touches on themes of risk, ambition, and the importance of aligning one's work with personal values.

Early Career and Indonesia: Shaan recounts his time in Indonesia working for Cocos, a second-grade dropout who amassed a fortune through coal arbitrage. Shaan describes Cocos's unique, albeit ethically questionable, business practices and the valuable lessons he learned about deal-making and risk-taking. This experience highlighted the disparity between specialized knowledge and financial success, prompting Shaan to pursue early-stage ventures.
Denver Sushi Venture and Move to Silicon Valley: Shaan discusses his attempt at building a Chipotle-inspired sushi restaurant in Denver. He explains their naive strategy of replicating Chipotle's model, ultimately realizing the venture's limitations. This led him to apply for jobs at Stripe and Monkey Inferno in Silicon Valley, seeking a better fit for his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Monkey Inferno and Michael Birch: Shaan details his experience working at Monkey Inferno, a startup studio run by Bebo founder Michael Birch. He describes the unique office environment and Birch's approach to fostering innovation. Shaan reflects on Birch's contentment and "inner peace" stemming from his prior success, contrasting it with his own drive and ambition.
Blab and the Importance of Focus: Shaan shares the story of Blab, a social audio app that initially showed promise but ultimately failed due to poor user retention. He identifies this experience as a pivotal moment in understanding the importance of focusing on the right metrics and building products with long-term value. He also discusses selling Blab and the subsequent realization that he should have dedicated his energy to other ventures.
E-commerce, the Milk Road, and Future Plans: Shaan briefly mentions his successful e-commerce business and the Milk Road newsletter, highlighting their growth and profitability. He and Sam discuss the ideal amount of wealth and the importance of taking time for reflection and research before committing to new projects. They agree that Shaan's strengths lie in media and that he should prioritize projects that align with his personality and passions. The episode concludes with a rapid-fire question segment and a discussion about the potential of AI.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	I now realize something I already knew, but I didn't have the guts to act on it. At any given time, you're really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. So, why not choose wisely if you're going to do that?
00:21	Sam Parr	We were in San Francisco. We were outside of San Francisco, doing a live podcast for the first time in a while.
00:27	Shaan Puri	we're in the studio what what is this a music studio is that what this is normally music studio
00:31	Sam Parr	Did the instruments give it away? Alright, people were asking online. They said they want us to do a podcast. We already did my story; it's the second episode now. We'll do one on you.
00:42	Shaan Puri	let's do it
00:43	Sam Parr	so how old are you now
00:45	Shaan Puri	good question 34
00:47	Sam Parr	and you're from everywhere everywhere where
00:51	Shaan Puri	I born in oklahoma believe it or not what part tulsa
00:55	Sam Parr	yeah
00:56	Shaan Puri	Denver, Texas, China, Indonesia, Australia, San Francisco... yeah, that's it. And maybe a little bit of London too. Two months.
01:06	Sam Parr	and you're living in australia in pre college or right right college age
01:10	Shaan Puri	I studied abroad there, and then also after college, I started a company with a guy who is a well-known entrepreneur in Australia.
01:20	Sam Parr	and that was pre college
01:21	Shaan Puri	that was after
01:22	Sam Parr	but and and you went to college in duke too so you went from duke to australia
01:26	Shaan Puri	yes
01:27	Sam Parr	and at australia you did the sushi thing
01:30	Shaan Puri	no I did that at just at duke like that's where it started
01:33	Sam Parr	the sushi thing was in australia no
01:35	Shaan Puri	No, no, that was here. Then we moved to Denver because, basically, you know, like people move to Silicon Valley because it's the tech hub. People move to LA when they want to be an actor. If you want to start a restaurant, Denver is the place to go. So, Chipotle started there. The first Chipotle started there. Noodles and Company started there. Quiznos started there. Smashburger started there. There's like 78...
01:57	Sam Parr	amounts of like open minded white people yeah
01:59	Shaan Puri	Yeah, people love lunch. Lunch is a really big deal there. But they like... all the talent, the people who know how to pick locations and roll out restaurant operations, all that stuff, they're all still there. So when it was like, "Where are we gonna start?" it was like...
02:14	Sam Parr	we because denver's kinda like a big suburb
02:15	Shaan Puri	Like, this is how dumb we were. We were like, "We wanna be the next Chipotle. How do you do that?" Well, we're Chipotle, start. So literally, we found the location across the street from the original Chipotle to open our restaurant.
02:26	Sam Parr	great plan
02:27	Shaan Puri	And so we were like, "Yeah, I guess we'll just do the exact same thing." Then we were like, "Who rolled out their real estate?" Oh, these two brokers. Okay, well, we'll go talk to them. And then, "Who did their this?" Okay, we'll go talk to them. That's basically our whole plan for figuring out how to start this restaurant. So we just moved to Denver because... it was funny. My two co-founders, my two best friends at the time, Trevor and Dan.
02:49	Sam Parr	you're not really a cofounder of a of a sushi restaurant yeah co owner maybe
02:54	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's a good point. That should have been the single indication that this was not a great idea. It was like founding something that would go tough with the...
03:03	Sam Parr	Like, my father-in-law owns a moving company. He doesn't call himself the founder or the creator. Yeah, he's just the owner. Yeah, that's fair.
03:15	Shaan Puri	My two friends and I were trying to eat sushi, and we basically started this thing. We were at Duke, so they were just trying to find a location near us. I had actually quit the startup; I didn't really tell people this. When we graduated, I got a really good job offer for $120,000 in Indonesia. My sister was working at the place, and the guy wanted my sister because she was doing good work. So he was like, "Okay, I'll hire you." We need more...
03:39	Sam Parr	the guy who ended up going went to prison went to
03:41	Shaan Puri	I took the job in prison, and I told my friends, "Stupid, I know, but I'm going to go learn a bunch here. When I come back, think about how smart I'll be!" They were just like, "Okay, I guess we'll just keep working on it over here." It was a total jerk move. I just moved and took this job in Indonesia, yeah, in a month.
04:01	Sam Parr	For like a mafia guy who like did like junk bonds or what did he do
04:04	Shaan Puri	No, he just... he basically what he had done was, he's like a dropout of 2nd grade or something like that. So, he basically didn't speak English. My boss never spoke English to me, only like broken words. Crazy guy! You walk into his office and there are four executive assistants, or EAs, or secretaries, or whatever. Each of them has a giant TV screen, and it's just his email because he can't read or type. So, they would say out loud his email. "This person emailed you saying this," and he would just dictate. He would be pacing around and just say, "Tell them we're not doing the deal," and this blah blah blah. One would be typing, and then the next one would be like, "Hey, you got another email from this person." So, there are just four screens like that, and they were just...
04:44	Sam Parr	each is like the brain
04:45	Shaan Puri	yeah he's just the talking out loud he literally can't
04:47	Sam Parr	read or
04:47	Shaan Puri	write anything
04:48	Sam Parr	like his hands
04:48	Shaan Puri	And then, what he was doing was... well, his genius plan was that he recognized this arbitrage opportunity that was illegal, which is why he went to jail. U.S. companies wanted to do business in Indonesia. Indonesia is like, I don't know, maybe the fifth largest population in the world. It's got a ton of natural resources, like coal. So, ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips, they all wanted this coal. But if you go there and you're trying to get the rights, you go to the auction and they're like, "Actually, that guy owns it. My cousin owns it." And you're like, "Where was the process?" They're like, "The process was done in the middle of the night. You don't need to know about it."
05:24	Sam Parr	deal with it
05:24	Shaan Puri	Basically, you gotta bribe somebody to get something. So what he was doing was, "Oh, they want this, so I'll just go and bribe all the local officials, get the leases, and then I'll just sell it." He bought up a huge amount of coal for $2,000,000 total, and then he sold each piece for $20,000,000. He amassed $500,000,000 over the course of about three years just doing that. He was liquid—like, he was uber liquid. If you did something, if you had a good job with the negotiation, a meeting, or a contract, you'd come into work and he'd just hand you keys to a BMW, a Mercedes, or a Rolls Royce. Then he'd be like, "That was your bonus." There was no set amount... but.
06:07	Sam Parr	did he have paperwork who's who's whose name was on the title
06:10	Shaan Puri	Of the car, yeah, everything's his. We lived in this like Four Seasons Resort, but it's his apartment. You get to live there; everything he owned was under 72 shell companies. So you could be like, "Hey, what's this name?" and then there's like this one woman who owns the file cabinet, and she's got all these companies inside. So that's what this guy's gig was. He was basically like, "I don't need to know." He would just talk to engineers and technologists and be like, "What would you do with this call?" He'd say, "Great." Then, when he would get a report, he had like all these geologists on, and he'd be like, "Do a survey or do a report that says this is fit for that purpose." And they're like, "Well, it's kind of fit." He's like, "Make it very fit." He just basically fudged the whole thing. That's the impression I got.
06:52	Sam Parr	think made him special he was just bold
06:54	Shaan Puri	and willing to and willing to cheat
06:55	Sam Parr	and lie to steal
06:56	Shaan Puri	and he wasn't cheating like he was just like
06:59	Sam Parr	playing a
06:59	Shaan Puri	That's how business is done in Indonesia. You don't get... that's how the property process is done. If you don't want to do that, you cannot play.
07:05	Sam Parr	so you think that he was playing by the rules of the game or was he on the
07:08	Shaan Puri	By the unspoken street rules of the game, on that part, and then on top of that, he was smart and ruthless. For example, I met him because he met my dad. My dad worked at BP for like 30 years and was known as an expert in this one technology to get value out of coal. You do this process to turn coal that's not that valuable into something pretty valuable. So, he meets my dad and he's like, "Tell me about this." My dad's talking to him and asks, "Do you understand these things that I'm saying?" He replies, "I understand that BP will want my coal." Basically, he's saying, "I understand that companies will believe this thing you're saying. There's potential here. That's all I need to know." My dad was like, "But should we test it?" And he said, "No, no, no. Why would we test it? Let them test it. They're buying it; they can test it and see for themselves if it works or doesn't work. Why would I add risk into this by doing this?" My dad was just talking to me, and then one day he goes, "I think I've told this story before, but I probably am like a top five expert in this one coal technology in the world. You know pretty much nothing about coal, yet I've worked my whole career and I've been making $100,000, $150,000, $200,000 a year, and you're going to make like $300,000,000 this year. You're going to make more money than me, and I know more about this than you." He goes, "Yeah, of course." And he was just like, "Yes."
08:29	Sam Parr	you idiot
08:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah, like, do you think that that's relevant? Basically, he was just so matter-of-fact about it, and I was like, "Oh wow." So my job, when I worked there, was that a company would come in. He didn't speak English, so he needed an English speaker to do the meeting. Then he would just handle the pleasantries, the food, and the drinks, and all that stuff. You know, just like with a translator, make that work. But he'd rely on us to go over the presentation.
08:51	Sam Parr	like give us that what was his name
08:53	Shaan Puri	cocos
08:54	Sam Parr	You're like, "Alright, gentlemen. Mr. Cocos would like you to feel welcomed here and let you know that he's not here to play any games."
09:00	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it won't be like Mister Coco. These two young women will now go to dinner with you guys, and I hope you have a great night. You know, like, because again, that's how business is done there. It's like you go to karaoke. I don't know if you know about all this, like, Asian cultures. You go to these karaoke rooms, and it's like, "Why are there all these cute girls here?" It's like bottle service at a club.
09:17	Sam Parr	what are they prostitutes or something or
09:18	Shaan Puri	I don't know. I've never really gotten that far into the lion's den, but there's something going on. You know, there's some service, or I don't know if it's just flirtation or if there's more. I don't really know. But all I know is this guy was getting mad deals done using this workflow during the day.
09:33	Sam Parr	loves singing don't stop believing
09:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I'm presenting at night. They're singing songs. That was a wild experience for me.
09:39	Sam Parr	so how long did this guy go to jail for
09:41	Shaan Puri	Well, he died in jail. He's dead. So why do you think I'm sharing all this? Because I'm less afraid now than I’ve ever been. I’ve never really talked about this stuff. How much do you think it's...?
09:50	Sam Parr	status for
09:51	Shaan Puri	I think he got like 20 years or something and he died a few years he got cancer or died
09:55	Sam Parr	oh my god he was
09:56	Shaan Puri	a nice he was a he was really good to us he was really nice to us I mean I
09:59	Sam Parr	so you think he was like a again I I asked this before you like
10:02	Shaan Puri	He was not evil. He wasn't evil for doing business. By the way, the way that game was done, whoever was going to own that land was going to do that. He just decided, "It'll be me," and he got fabulously rich off of it. All the things that seem really crazy to me were also kind of standard practice in India and China regarding how business deals are done. Yeah, you drink a lot, you go out to the bars with the clients, and you know, you have to grease the guy who's doing the deal. Not necessarily so that you can win, but you won't get it if you don't tip everybody basically that's involved in the process.
10:33	Sam Parr	That's actually the first time, of two times, that you've buddied up with a billionaire who says, "Here's my playground, you can run it." So, the sushi thing was only mildly successful; it wasn't a success.
10:45	Shaan Puri	was not a success though
10:46	Sam Parr	but you moved to san francisco and you got a job with michael birch right
10:50	Shaan Puri	that's right
10:50	Sam Parr	and who who who was he at the time
10:53	Shaan Puri	He, by the way, Jonathan, the hot wings are here. Would you mind getting them? So, I told you this when I got here. I was asking people, I was like, "Yeah, me and Sam are in person. We're gonna just hang out, we're gonna have a good conversation. How do we take advantage of the fact that we're in person?" The first two people I asked said, "Go get a bunch of hot wings. It'll make it hilarious. Try to have the same conversation while I eat hot wings." I don't think...
11:15	Sam Parr	there's milk
11:16	Shaan Puri	Yeah, there's no sides. So, I moved to San Francisco pretty quickly. I'm like, "God, this can't be it."
11:25	Sam Parr	no dude it sucks
11:26	Shaan Puri	Every day, I'm waking up at 5 in the morning. I'm driving to the fish market, picking up the fresh tuna for the day. The business was actually working; we did it as a cloud kitchen and it was basically making money. I was like, "This can't be it." Luckily, at that time, my dad had met a guy in Australia who had sold his company. In passing, dude...
11:44	Sam Parr	your dad is like just
11:46	Shaan Puri	hooking it up
11:46	Sam Parr	a king
11:47	Shaan Puri	He met this guy, and in passing, he asked, "What do your kids do?" The guy replied, "Oh, my daughter does this, and my son is doing this sushi startup thing. You should check it out. They write this blog that's really entertaining." We were creating a WordPress blog that was really just for our own amusement. We used to do a lot of stuff to make content that, in our minds, was somehow going to help the sushi thing. It didn't help the sushi thing at all, but what it did do was attract people who found it entertaining. They really got behind us; they started rooting for us, thinking, "These guys are good hustlers. They're entertaining," blah, blah, blah. So, this guy who had just sold his company for $450 million was looking for his next venture. He had a non-compete with his current business, so he knew he needed to do something new but didn't know what. He read our blog and said, "Oh yeah, I want to do business with you guys." He flew us out to Australia, and we interviewed for a job with him. His name is Nathan Mitchell. He's based in Brisbane, and his family had a drilling company. After selling the drilling company, he wanted to do business with my dad and us. He said, "Okay, let's put a team together and let's do this." Like, dude!
12:53	Sam Parr	that's such a cool way of saying that you just I wanna do business with you
12:56	Shaan Puri	Yeah, well, that's what I told myself. I don't know what he wanted; I can't put words in his mouth. But, alright, here we go. So, there are three flavors: there's a sweet spicy, a spicy, and then what they call very, very spicy.
13:12	Sam Parr	which one's a very very spicy one
13:14	Shaan Puri	I think it's this one
13:15	Sam Parr	I'm not touching that one
13:16	Shaan Puri	you think it's that one no I think it's sweet and spicy the 6 and the buffalo
13:21	Sam Parr	alright I'll eat the buffalo in a minute
13:23	Shaan Puri	So basically, if we ever answer a question poorly or something, we gotta eat. I don't know, we'll make up a game.
13:29	Sam Parr	I'm gonna eat them because I'm hungry
13:31	Shaan Puri	So basically, he's like, "Alright, I got a bunch of smart engineers, but this will be so academic unless we get some hustlers. You guys are hustlers, join me and let's make this happen." He gave us a job offer. I was just happy to live in Australia, so I was like, "Great, I'll do this." We started that company together as a biotech company in Australia. As that goes on, it gets to a point that I thought was kind of the transition. It's like, "Oh, we signed this deal. It's ready to change hands or whatever." I was like, "Alright, I'm going to move to Silicon Valley because I don't know about sushi, I don't know about biotech, but I know I like this early stage stuff." So I applied to two jobs: Stripe and then this place nobody ever heard of called Monkey Inferno. Stripe would have been pretty sick; it was probably 30 employees at the time. Oh my god! If I joined, even as just a biz dev manager or something like that, I probably would have made like $10 or $20 million if I just stayed there.
14:24	Sam Parr	you think 20
14:25	Shaan Puri	I think so, yeah. Because I kind of went back one day and I did the math. I was like, I don't know. There are a bunch of assumptions, like will you vest out? Would you get a promotion? You know, a bunch of things like that. But based on when it was, like early 2012 at the time.
14:39	Sam Parr	Which, like a lot of people, I tell people the story about me and they're like, "Oh, you would've gotten fired." I actually think they're probably true. In your case, I think you wouldn't have. I think.
14:46	Shaan Puri	you I would've played that guy I like that I was good at that shit
14:49	Sam Parr	See, because that... that shit was exciting. You seem like you would have gotten... I don't know those guys, but you seem like you would have gotten along great with them.
14:54	Shaan Puri	yeah like you're you're more of a cowboy yeah like
14:57	Sam Parr	but I think you legitimately would have made tens of 1,000,000 of dollars
15:01	Shaan Puri	I think so too, but it all worked in the end. I have less than that, but I was able to get myself into a position where I could do more. So basically, it's either self-development or just getting lucky with those shares. And not entirely lucky; I only applied to Stripe because I thought that was going to be a winner. But it still would have been lucky that it got to be such a huge winner.
15:23	Sam Parr	could you tell early on that it was gonna be a huge winner
15:27	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I don't know why. I think at the time, I was reading a lot of Paul Graham essays. I was looking at Y Combinator companies and those founders. I watched some of their interviews. I'm a big "you bet on the person" type of person, you know? The person is who builds all the value. I talked to the founders, but I never really connected with them. I basically blew it. I had one interview with this guy, Ben, and I blew it. I had the strongest warm introduction; that guy's mentor was also my mentor. The mentor thought so highly of me... he was like, "How..."
15:58	Sam Parr	did you blow it were you just cocky
16:00	Shaan Puri	no they did a a sell me this pen type of question
16:03	Sam Parr	that's a bullshit
16:03	Shaan Puri	but it wasn't a pen he was like he told me he's like I'm not gonna do a sell me this pen type of thing
16:07	Sam Parr	but I am
16:08	Shaan Puri	But I'm gonna do "sell me this software." I was like, "Okay, what's the software?" And he's like, "You pick, you pick." So I'm like, it's my first job interview ever. I've never interviewed for a job before, and I go in, and I'm like basically dating Angelina Jolie. Stripe is my first job interview, and I'm not prepared at all. He's like, "What's a piece of software you like?" I'm like, "I don't know." So I'm trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. I was like, "Basecamp by 37signals." I knew that was popular; those guys were popular, so I thought...
16:35	Sam Parr	didn't even use it though
16:36	Shaan Puri	And I didn't use it, though, so I didn't know what to say. But now I'm pot committed. I didn't want to admit that, "Hey, I just picked a random company that I don't actually use." That didn't make any sense either. So I'm fumbling and stumbling. I know the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would. I'd be like, "You know, so what I would say if I was selling this..."
16:55	Sam Parr	goes no don't
16:56	Shaan Puri	He goes, "No, ring ring, hello. You're selling this thing to me now." And I was like, "Oh God," and I just... yeah.
17:03	Sam Parr	I think that's a bullshit way to interview someone by the way I think that's I think those games are stupid
17:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I don't know. I guess I would agree. I don't want to say it's stupid just because I sucked at it; like that's not a good reason, but doing...
17:14	Sam Parr	Those, when I've interviewed people, the best way I found to interview someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. The only way I'm going to judge if you're qualified is by just looking at your...
17:25	Shaan Puri	history yeah that's that's fair
17:26	Sam Parr	I just want to see what you've done in the past. I'm going to talk to your old coworkers, and then I'm just here to decide if this is a good culture fit.
17:33	Shaan Puri	I heard of somebody, this guy Kyle Cimini. He's like a VC. He put out an interview where he said, "There's only one way to apply to my firm. I don't look at any resumes or references, nothing." He goes, "Just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You could take the same topic or a different topic, just write an amazing blog post." I was actually like, "That's kind of a good test, a good initial filter." I would still want to talk to the person, but that's a really good initial filter. Because when you see someone write, you see how they think. And how good they are at writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. So, I'm kind of into that as a test.
18:16	Sam Parr	Oh my God, he's brought milk! Is that milk, or are those tinted glasses? It almost makes it look like eggnog. Milk, y'all both!
18:24	Shaan Puri	should we should we start with with the medium or you wanna start with the light
18:28	Sam Parr	yeah but do you want buffalo or
18:30	Shaan Puri	sweet well that's the should we go
18:32	Sam Parr	I want buffalo I don't want sweet okay
18:34	Shaan Puri	Here's the buffalo one. We'll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our palate cleanser. Nothing like eating on a microphone, by the way.
18:42	Sam Parr	yeah hot wings are the worst
18:44	Shaan Puri	do you have any paper towels you
18:45	Sam Parr	gotta hear me gnawing
18:47	Shaan Puri	Alright, this is the Hot Ones episode of My First Million. Thank you, dude. I'm doing no milk for what?
18:55	Sam Parr	what brand I mean what what restaurant
18:58	Shaan Puri	shout out to our sponsor wing it for providing these wings today
19:02	Sam Parr	Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The Chinese and Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings... they are the worst at making those hot wings because they put like bread... too crazy. It's too breaded, and they put like sticky stuff on it. You know what I'm saying? You know, I don't know what that sauce is that...
19:19	Shaan Puri	I don't know what you're talking about
19:20	Sam Parr	Dude, have you ever had lunch or dinner at one of the Chinese restaurants in the Inner Sunset? Yes! Their hot wings are like breaded fried chicken, but then dipped in sticky sauces.
19:31	Shaan Puri	yeah yeah yeah that's what those are gonna be I think that's what
19:33	Sam Parr	I hate that sticky stuff at all the Chinese restaurants I go to. I was like, "I don't know what that sticky crap is, but don't give me that, please." I want to know.
19:39	Shaan Puri	also I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing
19:43	Sam Parr	yeah I'm not an idiot
19:45	Shaan Puri	I would’ve done boneless. Dude, that’s such a beef jerky domestic. No, this is... you’re like a feral cat.
19:53	Sam Parr	We know the right way to eat these is... well, it's easier with the other ones. But you gotta stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out.
20:00	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's like... I've seen so many TikToks with that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat.
20:12	Sam Parr	those are how these things are to eat
20:14	Shaan Puri	what wings mhmm this is good this one's not too spicy at all
20:18	Sam Parr	what was monkey inferno when you applied
20:21	Shaan Puri	So, I applied, and it's basically a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, one designer, and then Michael and Xochitl Burch, who were the owners. They were the husband and wife couple that was married.
20:41	Sam Parr	because they were they sold the company for like $850,000,000
20:44	Shaan Puri	they sold bebo for 850,000,000
20:47	Sam Parr	this is how you do it
20:48	Shaan Puri	Do it into the camera. Wow, clean, clean! Yeah, it looks like you're having fun over there. I'm a stick to just nibbling on the outside. It's all good for me.
21:07	Sam Parr	I like my wing bones like I like my women: clean.
21:16	Shaan Puri	I thought you were saying "in your mouth." I was like, where is it going with this? Oh wow, yeah. So, Monkey Alfredo is basically like, this guy's done what I want to do. So, let me just go work with him again. Like, how did Chipotle start? I don't know. Or how should we be successful? Like, the next Chipotle, let's just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing, I was like, this guy has built several tech companies—like maybe three or four companies that have gotten 1,000,000 users, 1,000,000 dollars, and one huge one for $850,000,000.
21:47	Sam Parr	And when he sold that company, it is considered... I read this article where they said, "Here's the top ten worst acquisitions of all time." Number one was Mark Cuban's deal where he sold to Yahoo for $2 or $3 billion.
21:59	Shaan Puri	right
21:59	Sam Parr	Number 2 is Bebo, which sold to AOL for about $850 million or whatever. When he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and thought, "Oh, Facebook's way better." We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing.
22:10	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, "Yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast, and they were just better. They were just better at what they were doing." He said, "We were just getting swamped with all these spam bot problems. Then we had this other problem, and then VCs wanted us to make money." This is our... you know, I heard this president. She wanted to expand and make money doing these deals with, "Oh, Eminem is doing a takeover of the homepage." And like, "Wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that." He's like, "But..."
22:38	Sam Parr	the candy is the rapper
22:40	Shaan Puri	They actually did have other stuff, like they started a reality TV show called... I forgot what it's called, like "Joanna" or something like that.
22:47	Sam Parr	that ain't gonna work
22:49	Shaan Puri	But, like, at the time, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for $400 to $500 million. Bebo was looking at that and was like, "Okay, we could do that," like Hollywood.
22:59	Sam Parr	yeah yeah yeah
22:59	Shaan Puri	At you know, big advertising, big marketing thing, Facebook was like a blue website. No ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. They were just growing like crazy because they had a more controlled growth. They were doing college to college first, so they were able to avoid all this spam and other problems because they were gated by the requirement of having a university email address for a while.
23:23	Sam Parr	and he sells this company and he has all how much do you think he was worth after he sold it
23:26	Shaan Puri	they owned like 70%
23:28	Sam Parr	So, no public math, but you know, 70% of $1,000,000 is 50, and then half for taxes... yeah. So, 100 of $1,000,000... of dollars. 100 of $1,000,000... of dollars.
23:35	Shaan Puri	and he comes to america and he basically
23:37	Sam Parr	hires like but he had just oh he was
23:39	Shaan Puri	already in america the whole time he's he
23:40	Sam Parr	was here
23:41	Shaan Puri	he was in the literally this part of the bay area oh
23:43	Sam Parr	I didn't know that. So, if he was here, he buys a place in San Francisco and hires 10 engineers. Then they're all just working on crazy stuff.
23:51	Shaan Puri	He buys seven condos and smashes down the walls to create one huge office. It was the same office where the Beats by Dre headphones were designed and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office; the rest were just condos. He leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there.
24:07	Sam Parr	stairs
24:08	Shaan Puri	And then he puts a bar in there. He puts in a whole ping pong kitchen entertainment area and a huge office space where we all worked. So, day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight from the airport to the office to interview. I get there a little early, and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory.
24:27	Sam Parr	I remember the
24:28	Shaan Puri	city of
24:28	Sam Parr	the hood
24:29	Shaan Puri	I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I'm just standing there with a suitcase. Yeah, and they're like, "What is this guy doing?"
24:37	Sam Parr	a suit on suitcase but oh a suitcase what were you wearing
24:41	Shaan Puri	I was just wearing like you know tech casual hoodies
24:45	Sam Parr	that like trench coat
24:46	Shaan Puri	it's at
24:46	Sam Parr	burle picot factory just walking around
24:48	Shaan Puri	I'm just standing there for like half an hour. Then I walk across the street and ring the doorbell. I go inside and I'm just like, "Wow!" The walls were mirrors that were one-way. So, if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom. Or something like that, the other way, if you're looking at the restroom, it would look like a mirror.
25:05	Sam Parr	if you're inside you
25:06	Shaan Puri	Could see out... Yeah, the non-weird way it looked like people could see you, but they couldn't. So, they're like, "This guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things." I'm just like, "I don't know, I've never seen anything like this."
25:14	Sam Parr	That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings.
25:19	Shaan Puri	It was crazy. That was a crazy place. Then I interviewed with him, and it was the easiest interview I ever had. It was the most chill interview. It was just like, "Tell me your story." He was kind of amused with my story.
25:31	Sam Parr	and then he's like like a cheeky guy
25:33	Shaan Puri	And he had already decided. That's what he told me later. He said, "You had applied." I applied with this website resume where I was like, "Oh, I am the guy for the job." I wrote this email and then I started sending them ideas for their current products. I was like, "Hey, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here." So I was trying to make an impression. I didn't do a job search; I did a job hunt. I was like, "This is the job I want. I'm going to zone in on it."
25:57	Sam Parr	search versus a hunt
25:57	Shaan Puri	and I'm gonna go like hunt for that and I'm gonna try to capture that job
26:00	Sam Parr	that's exactly what I did too
26:02	Shaan Puri	And so that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already interested, as long as I wasn't a weirdo. I think I wouldn't have blown it. I was chill, and I got the job working under him. Then, like six months later, he was like, "Hey, you should run this thing."
26:17	Sam Parr	you guys started 3 or 2 or 3 products
26:22	Shaan Puri	more than we did like maybe 6 or
26:23	Sam Parr	7 products that were like
26:25	Shaan Puri	it it some would only last a month some would last
26:27	Sam Parr	what was the
26:28	Shaan Puri	2 years
26:28	Sam Parr	what was the mo he said just alright here's $2,000,000 a year how much budget did you have
26:32	Shaan Puri	we had a business that was already making about $2,000,000 a year but it was declining
26:36	Sam Parr	birthday alarm dotcom right
26:38	Shaan Puri	birthday alarm dotcom and then we
26:39	Sam Parr	it was like a business
26:40	Shaan Puri	One project was just to maintain it, and then at one point, it was just declining because we were just fixing bugs. So we decided to turn it around, and then that got back up.
26:49	Sam Parr	And that was a website where my aunt would pay you $10 a year, and you would be reminded when it was someone's birthday.
26:55	Shaan Puri	Yeah, she'll never forget Sammy's birthday. Then, when it's Sammy's birthday, if she's paying, the reminder is free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription, like $14 a year or something like that.
27:08	Sam Parr	and it made between $2,300,000 all profit almost other than hosting
27:11	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. On top of that, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. I think I funded half, and he put in half just in cash. His mandate was like, "We don't do B2B, and we don't do real-world stuff like t-shirts or Uber or things like that. We don't do physical world stuff."
27:33	Sam Parr	that from beepo probably he was
27:34	Shaan Puri	Just like, yeah, whatever. You gotta pick a lane. We're pretty broad; it could be any idea. But of the lanes, let's not... let's do only consumer and let's do only software.
27:42	Sam Parr	how many engineers did you have there
27:44	Shaan Puri	like 16 ish 18
27:46	Sam Parr	When I went there, I was like, "Oh, this is a tech billionaire's country club." That's what it felt like.
27:51	Shaan Puri	not even a country club there's nobody else's there is that like his play it's like his man cave
27:55	Sam Parr	yeah playground
27:56	Shaan Puri	just like yeah man cave
27:57	Sam Parr	Man cave is a better word because you had like old Mac computers as art. Yeah, and he had like really nice, actual real art. It was just like, "Oh, if I'm a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well." So instead of owning old Ferraris, he just hired 16-inch headers.
28:13	Shaan Puri	to do dumb shit yeah yeah those 2 he just didn't keep them in the office
28:16	Sam Parr	oh he had those 2 yeah and so alright so
28:19	Shaan Puri	He has it all. He's got an island, cars, and his own projects. He owns his own hotel and private property.
28:26	Sam Parr	happier than you
28:27	Shaan Puri	did you
28:28	Sam Parr	think he exactly sure
28:29	Shaan Puri	do you
28:29	Sam Parr	I think he was happier back then when he was a billionaire. He was probably in his late thirties at that time, maybe early forties.
28:37	Shaan Puri	forties yeah do you think
28:39	Sam Parr	he was happier than you are now
28:43	Shaan Puri	He's definitely more at peace. I think I'm pretty joyful on a day-to-day basis. I'm kind of bouncing around, and he's more stoic than that. He definitely has a good sense of humor, laughs a bunch, and just doesn't take stuff too seriously. I get more easily excitable, so I'm excited about random stuff—anything I can get excited about. What about you?
29:03	Sam Parr	probably still wanna prove yourself
29:05	Shaan Puri	But I have this inner... not peace. I'm not just at rest. I'm like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something. And he just didn't have that same drive.
29:19	Sam Parr	because of the acquisition
29:20	Shaan Puri	Because of that, I think just wisdom... I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were the who's who of Silicon Valley. So he told me once, because I was like, "How come you don't blog?" At the time, that was like the big thing, and I was like, "Why don't you?" He said, "Well, I just don't feel like I have anything that interesting to say." I thought that was the funniest answer because I could've heard him say, "I should" or "I do," and then he could've said, "No, I don't want to do that because of this... I play the game this way instead." But it was so humble to just say, "I just don't feel like I have something interesting to contribute. Why would I just blog in your face?"
30:04	Sam Parr	dude today
30:05	Shaan Puri	that would be rude
30:06	Sam Parr	Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot, is this billionaire guy. He's, you know, uber successful. He told me, "Yeah, I'm speaking at Masters of Scale, Reid Hoffman's thing, his conference." He was like, "Yeah, it's like, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, the CEO of Uber, whatever. It's kind of the who's who of all these big shots." He's like, "I'm so humbled and honored, and I can't believe they're having me." I said, "Really? Can you really not believe that? It seems pretty believable. Like, that seems like a very believable thing. There's evidence." Yeah, I don't know. From an outside perspective, you're like a billionaire. You're HubSpot. I don't know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but it's definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it's worth $20 to $30 billion, and you made it. I mean, I can believe that you'd be there. He's like, "Well, you know, I'm just honored, and I just... I cannot believe I'm actually going to be there." I was like, "Well, I don't even know what to say. That's just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing." You know what I mean? Totally. But I thought that was weird. So, you're this...
31:17	Shaan Puri	I'll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. We had a product that was launching, and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it, and it was like, "Oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article!" They either sent over the draft or they sent over some bullet points or whatever. No, no, no, it was good, but they had said something that was more than it was. They had said 200,000 users, and actually, it was 20,000 users or whatever. Some number was inflated. I was so happy! I was like, "Yes, this is great! They're just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality." But I was just sort of like, I wasn't going to correct the record. That's on them, right? In my mind, I was like, "This is a good thing. They're over-giving us credit."
32:01	Sam Parr	yeah
32:01	Shaan Puri	They're giving us more credit than we deserve. He was like, "Well, we should just correct it so it's the real number." I was like, "But then it's worse for us, right?" He's like, "Yeah, but we don't need to do that." That was the first one. Then the second one, he was talking about, I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo. We had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab, and he was just sharing some stories. He told me, "Do you think that they'll follow through?" He said, "Oh, they'll follow through like Silicon Valley." He added, "Isaac, I would never not follow through. If I commit..."
32:41	Sam Parr	even there's not a contract
32:42	Shaan Puri	And then I realized that, oh, it's not going to work out because I committed. I'm in. He's like, "This is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people." If you make a move that's self-advantageous now, your reputation is worth more than whatever that is.
32:59	Sam Parr	that was the I did that
33:00	Shaan Puri	That was his approach. Actually, I've seen many examples of people who are like, "Sure, my reputation is bad, but I banked $40,000,000 or $80,000,000 or $100,000,000." There are all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. You know what? They won in their way. But when he was just so high integrity, I realized that I was not as high integrity. The reason why I was not high integrity is not because I'm evil, not because I'm a bad dude, or because I just don't have morals.
33:25	Sam Parr	so it's short term thinking
33:26	Shaan Puri	I was just short-term oriented, and I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, "What can I do to increase my odds of winning?" Whereas he was just more confident. He was like, "We're gonna win, and we don't need to play the game in any way other than the straight way to win." I hadn't really internalized that, but once I saw that, it was really sick to see. I was able to adjust my mindset and be like, "Oh yeah, I'm just never gonna lie. I just don't want to lie." Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or not correct someone if they believed something about me that wasn't true, he was totally comfortable in his own skin. So, is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he's more comfortable in his own skin. He's more at peace with where he's at. He's not in this inner fire or war, or whatever. At the same time, I'm sure he misses the adventure, the thrill of building something, and having it succeed. That success meant something because now, no matter what he does, it's very hard to have it mean something unless it's just intrinsic motivation—like, "I just love the product," or "It's helping impact people." But the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he's already won at such a high level. You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score, and it's so out of reach...
34:44	Sam Parr	Of play
34:45	Shaan Puri	can play and have a good game but like you're still gonna never touch that that that high score again I think he knows that
34:50	Sam Parr	You guys launched 2 or 3 things, but the last thing was Blab, which I remember. That's when we became friends, when you were 1 or 2 years into being the CEO, I think. I was like, "What do you do?" and he was like, "Well, we're launching this thing," and then you kept jumping.
35:06	Shaan Puri	from the
35:06	Sam Parr	thing and I would criticize you I'm like dude you just gotta stick to this one thing right
35:10	Shaan Puri	but you're probably right
35:11	Sam Parr	Well, who knows? I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I've seen some of the things you've done. I've seen some of the ways some of our other friends have done it. There are tons of ways to get things set. What was the final thing that sold?
35:23	Shaan Puri	The final thing that sold was, after pivoting multiple times, we got to a point where we developed an esports app. So basically, esports is this trend where people are playing very competitively. It's just starting out. It was around before, but whatever.
35:40	Sam Parr	was really just starting I mean twitch was like only 6 or 7 years old at the time
35:44	Shaan Puri	No, no, this... yeah, I guess I don't know. Twitch was around; Twitch was big, but that wasn't really the thing. It was basically the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We built an app that allowed high schoolers to sign up for basketball, soccer, or whatever game they wanted to play in a league. You would pay your league dues. There are literally baseball leagues, and then there's AAU sports. Youth leagues and youth sports are a big deal, but there was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. We had a bunch of technology; we had already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming. So, we took all that tech and made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was ripping, and there were more people playing Fortnite in the world than playing basketball. We thought, "That's crazy! This has more players, but there's no organized league." There were only the pros; there were no amateurs. So, we created the High School Fortnite League. We had an app where you would sign up, make your team, invite friends, and then compete against other teams. You would get ranked, play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it turned into a spectator sport.
36:52	Sam Parr	and how big did that get
36:54	Shaan Puri	It was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe 6 or 9 months into that version of it. It had maybe 10,000 to 25,000 active players at the time, which was big because, in theory, those people would pay us. For example, if I take my daughter, who is 3, and put her in a soccer league, I'm going to pay $99 or whatever for her to be in that league. So, the same thing applies here. If we started charging for it, it would have this SaaS business that was going to generate, I thought, $1,000,000 a year. But maybe tens, probably never 100. So that was the problem. I was like, "Oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, it'll get to maybe like $10,000,000 a year, maybe $20,000,000 a year in revenue, but never really beyond that." And dude, isn't that messed up? That's not what we signed up for. It's not.
37:46	Sam Parr	the way that the game
37:47	Shaan Puri	is played
37:48	Sam Parr	It sucks. I mean, it doesn't suck because I agree that... well, that's just the game. That just sucks at that because...
37:53	Shaan Puri	not enough
37:54	Sam Parr	Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a similar amount of wealth as Michael Burch.
38:02	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly you know but it wasn't structured that way
38:04	Sam Parr	I know it sucks
38:05	Shaan Puri	And so, once I kind of got that feeling, and I was 6 or 7 years into the whole monkey and front of experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, "Let's sell this and let's shake things up." You know, I was lucky. A friend, Sully, like, on the outside, everything was amazing. The office was amazing.
38:23	Sam Parr	because when I met you
38:24	Shaan Puri	product was cool
38:25	Sam Parr	You're like, "I'm making $150,000 a year," and I'm like, "Oh my God, you're like the wealthiest person I've ever met!" It's like you have $150,000 a year. That's crazy, and you're only in your twenties. I remember you told me that, and I was shocked. I was like, "Anne, you have this sick office; you're set!"
38:41	Shaan Puri	It felt that way at that time. Then, over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, and you're like, "Oh man, 100? I was making $160. That's nothing! I'm way underpaid." In general, I was just like, I just wanted to get a win.
38:54	Sam Parr	I don't think you're underpaid
38:56	Shaan Puri	Well, for a startup founder, I wasn't underpaid. But if I had just worked at a job, I would have been. So, it's all about the equity. The equity was what mattered. I owned 20% of the business. Anyways, we decided to sell, and that was, you know, a crazy process.
39:13	Sam Parr	it's all life changing yeah for sure financially life changing
39:17	Shaan Puri	yeah because go from no millions to millions is you know that's life changing
39:22	Sam Parr	And you actually stayed there. So, Amazon bought the company, and you stayed there for 2 years, right? Yeah. Are you happy you stayed?
39:30	Shaan Puri	I don't really think about the past. Am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. I'm fine with it in retrospect. If I could advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. I popped out two kids and was able to spend time with them without having to stress about it.
39:49	Sam Parr	my family had like 10 months of paternity leave
39:53	Shaan Puri	what's that
39:53	Sam Parr	I mean you had like 10 months of paternity leave
39:55	Shaan Puri	no actually stupidly I only took 2 weeks with the first kid
39:58	Sam Parr	what were you thinking
40:00	Shaan Puri	I did. I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like, at a big company, it's like, "Oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares." Now is the critical time. Also, being at home, honestly, as a parent, is harder than being at work. So it was actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But I should have taken more time, and I just sort of didn't. I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don't take it. It's like the company has unlimited time off, but you don't take it. You could take this much for paternity and maternity leave, but you feel pressured to cut it short because you want to get back to your team or whatever. It's kind of stupid. But the second year, I was way more chill and basically...
40:36	Sam Parr	when did
40:36	Shaan Puri	did very little work when did
40:37	Sam Parr	you start the ecom thing
40:39	Shaan Puri	somewhere around that time
40:41	Sam Parr	And we don't talk about it on purpose. Yeah, so we won't talk about it much. But do you want to say anything about it? It's a big business.
40:49	Shaan Puri	I think we'll yeah I think we'll start talking about it soon maybe that'll be us do you
40:52	Sam Parr	wanna say how big
40:53	Shaan Puri	It is episode... yeah, it does like $15,000,000 a year. Profitable. Damn, dude! Bootstrapped in 2 years, you told me.
41:00	Sam Parr	Me, you were doing it, and I was like, "Why would you ever do that?" Are you happy that you did that or not?
41:06	Shaan Puri	same thing in retrospect I would've go advise myself don't do this path
41:10	Sam Parr	Because you already had a little bit of clout, during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast. That's when the hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. People ask me how to grow a podcast, and I'm like, "I don't know," because Sean started doing it right away, and it kind of worked from day one. I think the first episode got 60,000 downloads.
41:33	Shaan Puri	the first one was just hey there's a new thing and people will go check it out right
41:36	Sam Parr	yeah but it still was a good start
41:38	Shaan Puri	But it got off to a good start, and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It took off in a better way, and then just... time. Time is basically years. So, the thing I've learned is... why do I say I would go back and do it differently? It's because I now realize something I already knew but didn't have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you're really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. So, why not choose wisely? For example, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn't want to throw my all into that. That wasn't going to be my baby. My future was to be an employee at Twitch. I wanted to earn out the deal, and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So, there was a desperation to secure the bag.
42:30	Sam Parr	which by the way is the right move I think maybe I think selling out is the way to go
42:34	Shaan Puri	I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time, and I was like, "What would you do if you were me?" He's like, "I would quit on day one. I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy, and then I would quit on day one." I go, "Why? It's so much money if I just stay even one year. One year, no big deal." And he's like, "The surface area of opportunity is too wide."
42:52	Sam Parr	who said that
42:53	Shaan Puri	Sully, that's so smart, man. I remember we went for a walk, and we walked for like an hour and a half in the Mission. We just walked back and forth through the Mission on the streets. It was like everything's closing; the Mission's ghetto as hell. We were just pacing furiously, talking through what's next. I said, "I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast." He was like, "Podcast?" I was like, "Yeah! I think if I could just be in a million people's earballs every morning, that would be the most fulfilling thing for me, and it'd be awesome."
43:20	Sam Parr	it was just 20% of the way there maybe
43:22	Shaan Puri	yeah I don't know a million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning it's not
43:27	Sam Parr	that aggressive
43:27	Shaan Puri	But, like, you know, if you just keep going for 5 years, it could happen like that. That's realistic now. I remember thinking, "That's what I want to do," and I couldn't explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it, which, in retrospect, is a really good signal. That's the type of stuff you should go do, and I did that. But then the other thing he was just like, "Yeah, we'll just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide." I looked at it and I was like, "Well, what would I do if it wasn't this?" And he's like, "Again, the surface area is so wide. Anything." I was like, "Give me an example." He goes, "Alright, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I'll co-found this with you."
43:59	Sam Parr	And he totally talked you into it because Sully was all he had. He had just sold an e-commerce business that he had.
44:06	Shaan Puri	Just no, no. There's a different idea, not even the e-commerce business. Oh, this is a different thing. He goes, in e-commerce, there's this company called Klaviyo. They're an email sending company.
44:13	Sam Parr	yeah they're literally really taking off
44:15	Shaan Puri	He goes, "Klaviyo for SMS," and I respond, "Doesn't Klaviyo do SMS?" He replies, "No." I ask, "Won't they?" He says, "Yeah, they probably will. Aren't there these other companies?" I acknowledge, "Yeah, sure." But he's like, "You're focusing on the wrong thing. I'm telling you, I'm in e-commerce, and SMS is like email but better. People open it." And he's like...
44:33	Sam Parr	a 90% rate
44:34	Shaan Puri	You just need a bit... If we just build SMS for e-commerce, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter, and this would be a valuable company. I was like, "Okay, it kind of sounds like... I don't know." It was just like, it's an idea. It was almost boring because it was like, "Here's a ready-made idea." There was like nothing else to think. It was like anything I said was basically a distraction.
44:50	Sam Parr	you think he was right
44:51	Shaan Puri	He was absolutely right. So, we talked about it and went kind of down that rabbit hole for a little bit. We tried to find maybe a different operator to come run it. Then, I see this company in Y Combinator called Postscript. I send it to him and say, "Hey, they're doing Klaviyo for SMS." He goes, "Alright, I'm gonna invest." So, he and his brother invested in it, and Postscript is now like a multi-hundred million dollar company. This is the same timeframe, right? So, that was a path. Sure, maybe it wouldn't have worked out for us, but I don't know... I would guess it probably would have.
45:20	Sam Parr	but like physics has allowed it to happen and like it's impossible
45:23	Shaan Puri	And it played out. Whether it's that one or even just the e-commerce thing, if I had just started it on day one, the e-commerce thing is more valuable than what I earned at Twitch. It will be. Again, the surface of opportunity was very wide. One thing was a guarantee, and it was right in front of me. Everything else was unknown. I've learned now that you should just keep going until you turn down a thing that's known if it's not what you want. If it's not the real thing that you want, only then do you get the opportunity to go find the thing you want. It's like dating, right? You're dating somebody who you don't want to marry. They're okay, they're good, but they're just not the one. You might try to talk yourself into it, but if you're talking yourself into it, you're already losing.
46:09	Sam Parr	and then like
46:10	Shaan Puri	you gotta you gotta break up in order to meet the next person
46:13	Sam Parr	in like 6 or 12 I forget when you started the milk road 8 months ago
46:18	Shaan Puri	we launched in january yeah so
46:20	Sam Parr	So, that's actually going really nicely. You have 150,000 to 250,000 subscribers.
46:26	Shaan Puri	yeah over 200 wow
46:28	Sam Parr	Okay, and maybe you'll run that forever. Maybe you'll sell it. Who knows? Have you ever thought about what you want to do for the rest of your life?
46:34	Shaan Puri	life I think about that all the time I wanna brainstorm that with you
46:36	Sam Parr	well okay well
46:37	Shaan Puri	what what would
46:37	Sam Parr	you like to do
46:39	Shaan Puri	well
46:40	Sam Parr	assuming that milk road's not a thing
46:41	Shaan Puri	Yeah, assuming that Milk Road's not a thing and assuming that the e-commerce thing is not a thing. So let's assume two things right there. Because in the spirit of what I'm talking about, if it's not the one, then you've got to find a different way. So let's just say there's something else that's the one. What would it look like? What would it be like? I think there's one version of it that's like this podcast, just more. But like, what if this podcast was ten times bigger? Would I really care to do anything else?
47:13	Sam Parr	financially 10 times bigger
47:16	Shaan Puri	either way audience I think
47:17	Sam Parr	well is there
47:18	Shaan Puri	translates to to money so
47:19	Sam Parr	Is there an amount of money... like whether money is important or not? It is kind of... you have to work backwards from that. Yeah, is there an amount of money that you'd want per year?
47:32	Shaan Puri	the target currently is 50
47:34	Sam Parr	in net worth
47:35	Shaan Puri	Yeah, total net worth. That's not like tied up in one company that could die next month. It's more about the assets you own, kind of like liquid assets. But it could be a little bit bigger.
47:47	Sam Parr	like loanable against
47:48	Shaan Puri	yeah like not concentrated into one paper valuation of
47:51	Sam Parr	One company, but a podcast would more so be a media company for you. It would be more of an annual income thing, I would imagine, than...
47:58	Shaan Puri	So, it could stack up to $50, or it could just wait and then sell for $50, or net $50 in the end in some way.
48:07	Sam Parr	well I think that you
48:09	Shaan Puri	so and by the way 50 is just a random number
48:12	Sam Parr	you just made it up yeah
48:13	Shaan Puri	so it's
48:13	Sam Parr	a lot
48:13	Shaan Puri	maybe we should start there maybe that's the wrong number
48:16	Sam Parr	No, I mean that's a good number. I know what you like; you like nice things. You like spending a lot of money. I think $50 is a good number for you. Okay, I think the difference between $30 and $50 for you or me is actually not a significant amount, right?
48:28	Shaan Puri	shoot for 50 then land where you land
48:30	Sam Parr	I think that's a good number. The difference between anything above 100 is enough that you would really, really have to work hard. You'd have to purposely be a jackass to go through it. That's mostly true for 50. 10, you can go through, you know? That's just like a big house and a medical emergency, and you can kind of blow through that.
48:49	Shaan Puri	a bad investment yeah
48:51	Sam Parr	I mean it you know
48:52	Shaan Puri	what I mean
48:52	Sam Parr	and you can go and you'd be
48:53	Shaan Puri	a lawsuit yeah you'd be back around
48:54	Sam Parr	To 2 or 3, like, pretty quickly. 30 is in the range of where it's enough that you can't screw it up. A hundred, for sure, like, you would have to have some crooks around you or a... like, your dad's smart enough to be like, "Hey man, can we talk about this? I think you're going too hard. You don't need a Lamborghini yacht, you know what I mean?"
49:16	Shaan Puri	buffalo buffalo time
49:17	Sam Parr	Let's do a hot one. So anyway, hot one... we'll do a hot one. My questions are even harder when you, dude. Yeah, we're talking money now. $50,000 is enough. I think that's a good goal. But I think that I've seen you grow from being this tech person to a media person. You are better at media than you are at tech.
49:35	Shaan Puri	I believe that you are better
49:36	Sam Parr	at investing than you are at running things
49:39	Shaan Puri	I believe that you are
49:40	Sam Parr	You are better at starting things than you are at running things, and you are horrible at managing. I don't theoretically see you managing 50+ people.
49:50	Shaan Puri	yeah I don't even know
49:51	Sam Parr	I think you'd be awesome at leading them but horrible at managing them
49:55	Shaan Puri	just don't want to
49:57	Sam Parr	Yeah, but you're really good at being a leader. I bet you'd actually be a really good CEO too. I think you'd be a horrible...
50:03	Shaan Puri	there's like what like inspirational speeches
50:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, you're naturally like what Jerry Seinfeld said: "Comedy is like a secret weapon that most people don't understand." Comedy is kind of in storytelling—just charisma, the ability to capture someone's imagination and make them believe something, or capture emotion from them, or make them feel a certain emotion. You definitely have that. A lot of people ask me, "Was Sean always good at this?" I'm like, "Yeah, he was actually always good at it," and then he's gotten better. So, I think that you have that. I would say you could be a CEO, but you actually got really lucky. Ben Levy doesn't publicly get enough credit, but that's like your partner in all these things. Yeah, he 100% is your yin to the yang. If I were you, I would go way harder on that partnership with him and potentially launch more things and let him operate.
50:53	Shaan Puri	who's having the most fun like who's got the who's having the most fun with
50:58	Sam Parr	I mean you
50:59	Shaan Puri	with that life stuff
51:00	Sam Parr	you are doing pretty good
51:01	Shaan Puri	okay besides me
51:01	Sam Parr	Who else? Rob Dyrdek was pretty amazing. I think that you're more of a Rob Dyrdek than you are a Mark Zuckerberg, that's for sure. You know what I mean? It's like, just one guy, one company—hardcore tech versus little here, little there, all based around a personality.
51:18	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you know what it's like. Okay, you exited recently. You had to think about what you're going to do next. How did you think about it?
51:28	Sam Parr	What I actually gave this advice to someone. So, what I did was I sold... I sold for enough that I'm...
51:33	Shaan Puri	you don't have to do anything
51:34	Sam Parr	I don't have to do anything. Not enough that I'm going to go and buy a crazy jet, but enough that a fairly luxury level of needs are met forever. When I did that, I realized, okay, for the next 12 months— but it could be longer— all I'm going to do is research and think. I never give anyone that advice because I say, "You just gotta start and do stuff." By the end of this weekend, have something live. But I'm like, no, I already know I can do that. I have that ability. So for the next 12 months, or however long I'm going to feel... this sounds like I'm fucking Oprah... I'm going to be not guilty about it.
52:12	Shaan Puri	yeah this is so oprah
52:14	Sam Parr	there's like some woo
52:14	Shaan Puri	woo shit is that is that actually from oprah
52:16	Sam Parr	no but I just because
52:17	Shaan Puri	it sounds like it
52:18	Sam Parr	I feel guilty about not doing anything. I'm like, "Oh, I'm missing out, I'm missing out." But no, this is like really Oprah. I'm going to forgive myself. Yeah, yeah. Does that sound like I need one of those Coachella hats that chicks wear? I was like, "I'm just not going to feel guilty about doing something." I'm just going to research and read. When the feeling feels right, it's going to feel right, and I'm going to go all in. But until then, I'm not going to say maybe to stuff. I'm not going to say yes to anything. I'm going to say no to everything. I'm just not going to worry about it. Right? I just read and researched, and I actually think you suck.
52:51	Shaan Puri	At sitting still, yeah, that's why I gotta do it and forgive myself. Give myself grace. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to have grace for myself.
52:58	Sam Parr	But you have to... you gotta chill. Because someone like you, you can execute. You already can do stuff, right?
53:06	Shaan Puri	but then okay so you chill you read you do other stuff
53:10	Sam Parr	talk to people you talk to people you you inter I mean do
53:12	Shaan Puri	and then ideas come up or the
53:14	Sam Parr	The business that I'm talking about, the business that I end up doing now, is that I interview them on the podcast. Like, multiple... I was like, "I'm just gonna talk to you." I got that to go and interview people.
53:24	Shaan Puri	So, you do that, but how did you resist the temptation to...? Okay, how many ideas did you have before this one?
53:30	Sam Parr	none
53:31	Shaan Puri	that you were none you weren't tempted to do anything before that
53:34	Sam Parr	no no I no I was not
53:36	Shaan Puri	this was the first idea that you were like I am gonna do it and then you just did it
53:40	Sam Parr	It was the first one that I felt okay about. I did investing, so I did angel investing. I realized that's stupid and I hate it. I hate angel investing. You're good at it and you love it. I think I'm only good at it because I'm popular, but I don't like it. I don't like it, and I hate it. It's so boring. Okay, dude, it's so stupid. So I did that, and we invested $15,000,000 in one year into 70 companies. I kind of went fast on that, and then I realized, "Uh-uh, I'm out. I hate this." So I bailed. I tinkered with that, but that wasn't a full-time thing. We only worked on that 10 hours a week. Yeah, so anyway, I just read like crazy and talked to people. I think you should do that. Why wouldn't you just take like 18 months and just do that?
54:23	Shaan Puri	is my plan not 18 but like just
54:25	Sam Parr	however long it takes
54:26	Shaan Puri	basically it's like let's take 12
54:28	Sam Parr	And it's like, listen here. This analogy or visualization will help. Imagine your life is this line. Alright, you're about a third of the way through, maybe 25% of the way. If we live a long time, this amount of time—this 1 inch on this 15-inch segment—this 1 inch of time can impact the rest of the 10 inches. Do you know what I'm saying?
54:50	Shaan Puri	it changed the color
54:51	Sam Parr	of the rest the entire trajectory so why not spend like a ton of time early on
54:56	Shaan Puri	right
54:56	Sam Parr	Really focusing... Instead of, because there's a chance that had you done that previously, which you didn't have the luxury to, but had you done that previously, or maybe you did have the luxury to.
55:06	Shaan Puri	would have made better decisions you would
55:07	Sam Parr	You would have made better decisions if you had gone all in on one thing. That would have cumulatively made more than all the other stuff combined.
55:13	Shaan Puri	Right, and so the question then is: the fear I have is how do I make sure that's not just a kind of... like, sort of like a "how will I know?" Also, how do I do it in a way that's not just absolutely meandering? Or maybe that's alright; maybe this must be meandering.
55:31	Sam Parr	I think that's alright because that's not your personality. So, just by meandering... it's almost like most people. We have to tell them to hit on the gas harder. With you, you're a car whose back wheels are lifted up, and you're already going as hard as you can. All we're going to be doing is just figuring out which direction we're going to place that car. Then, when we're ready, we're just going to drop it.
55:50	Shaan Puri	that's a good analogy do you know what
55:52	Sam Parr	I mean
55:52	Shaan Puri	yeah
55:52	Sam Parr	most people we gotta
55:53	Shaan Puri	feel cool too because
55:54	Sam Parr	like
55:54	Shaan Puri	a really fast car or something
55:55	Sam Parr	well like most people we have to like fuel that car and like no go hard
55:58	Shaan Puri	you're good good good good
55:59	Sam Parr	Alright, you're already moving a little bit. Now, go leave it. You know what I'm saying? Remember, I made a joke that people made fun of me for, but I actually saw it from The Departed. They're like, "John Lennon, give him a fucking tuba and he's gonna make art." That's what he does, you know what I mean? That's how I feel about whatever our stupid industry is. It's like, I don't know, man. Just give me a computer, get out of the way, and I can figure out how to be cool... not be cool, but like make something at least somewhat intriguing. That's just what I love doing, and I think the same 100% goes for you.
56:40	Shaan Puri	alright I like that that's good
56:42	Sam Parr	right
56:42	Shaan Puri	what yeah I like it
56:43	Sam Parr	Also, your last podcast had me 100% convinced that AI is the thing. So, I would go into AI.
56:51	Shaan Puri	yeah that could be it
56:52	Sam Parr	I just think that that's like a huge pond and you just cast anywhere out in that pond and you're gonna have a winner
56:56	Shaan Puri	yeah that's fair
56:57	Sam Parr	you think so
56:59	Shaan Puri	It seems that way at the moment, but I think it's more like if I was going to meander or wander around. I'm definitely spending some time in that neighborhood to see what's up. I'm trying all the different things.
57:10	Sam Parr	it's still early enough
57:10	Shaan Puri	Asking people where the best tacos are. I'm talking to people and being like, "What was here before this?" That's what I would do in that space before I just do... do.
57:19	Sam Parr	Something... it's still early enough that you could take your time. You could take 6 to 12 months off and just relax. I talked to someone the other day who works at OpenAI. This guy is a little bit of a natural pessimist; he doesn't just believe in hype. I asked him, "Is this legit?" and he said, "Yeah, it's legit." I then asked, "Should I be worried that it's going to take over the world?" He replied, "I don't know when that will happen or even if it will happen because we are a bit away. But in terms of just replacing developers' jobs or making life easier, and for art—making new types of art—it's 100% legit and it's almost here. It's basically here."
58:01	Shaan Puri	right
58:02	Sam Parr	and so I think that's like that stuff's pretty amazing
58:04	Shaan Puri	should we do a hot one
58:06	Sam Parr	yeah I guess alright
58:07	Shaan Puri	let's try it
58:08	Sam Parr	how hot is it I don't know
58:09	Shaan Puri	I've never tried these before
58:10	Sam Parr	I don't wanna get like a panic attack where's this place
58:14	Shaan Puri	that'll that'll make a good thumbnail though
58:16	Sam Parr	where's this place from
58:17	Shaan Puri	I don't know I I doordash it boom is it hot
58:21	Sam Parr	no is
58:22	Shaan Puri	that hot maybe this is not the hot one let's see
58:24	Sam Parr	no I don't think so
58:26	Shaan Puri	I think this is supposed to be the hot one but not that hot
58:30	Sam Parr	that's not hot right
58:31	Shaan Puri	no this one's hotter out of it
58:32	Sam Parr	I don't wanna eat like a a ton of it and for it to like
58:35	Shaan Puri	kick in yeah yeah yeah yeah like it's not hot
58:40	Sam Parr	I don't think it's bad at all yeah I think you got caught
58:44	Shaan Puri	yeah it's alright taste good though
58:46	Sam Parr	rick ross probably owns this wing place
58:49	Shaan Puri	does he have a wing place
58:50	Sam Parr	Yeah, he owns like 30 Wing Stops. You know, he's like the rap version of Shaq. You know what I'm saying? Like, he owns Five Guys and stuff.
58:57	Shaan Puri	should we just do that on like 30 wing stops
59:00	Sam Parr	No, dude. So, I've been in the Airbnb and real estate game. I thought that was dope, but it's whack. It just takes too long; it's just too slow. I come up with an idea and want to do something, but you don't get results if you're building something for 18 months or 24 months.
59:15	Shaan Puri	right
59:15	Sam Parr	Or with like a rental of like, "Let's do this, this, and this." I don't know if it's any cool for 3 months or if it's actually a good idea. No, I think real estate's stupid. I think it's really cool to invest in, but as a creative person, it's whack.
59:30	Shaan Puri	yeah I yeah there's
59:31	Sam Parr	like no dopamine rush either
59:32	Shaan Puri	yeah but people are like oh buy boring businesses and invest in boring businesses I'm like I
59:37	Sam Parr	want a little boring in
59:38	Shaan Puri	the name it's in the name yeah like I also in the name guys
59:42	Sam Parr	Yeah, okay. Like, where are the exciting businesses at? They're talking about boring businesses, like, bro.
59:49	Shaan Puri	What you want is something that's boring to other people but not boring to you. If it's also boring to you, like come on, you wasted your talent.
59:55	Sam Parr	I don't want boring life
59:57	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly
59:58	Sam Parr	I see that stuff too. I'm like, "Man, I don't want to work with a guy who runs a dry cleaning company." I just like to be... you know, I'll be sitting outside on the corner, like "King of the Hill," like, "Yep, I don't want to have that conversation." You know what I mean?
01:00:13	Shaan Puri	I don't wanna talk about it
01:00:14	Sam Parr	yeah I wanna like do stuff yeah these are alright that's not hot though is it
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01:00:38	Sam Parr	where do you wanna go with this episode
01:00:41	Shaan Puri	I don't know what would make it interesting
01:00:43	Sam Parr	it's looking spelt by the way
01:00:44	Shaan Puri	oh thank you you wanna finish with like a a rapid fire hot seat questions
01:00:49	Sam Parr	yeah that I think that's the hot one
01:00:52	Shaan Puri	this one right this one's hotter
01:00:55	Sam Parr	that one's hotter that one actually is hot
01:00:59	Shaan Puri	For me, there we go. The milk is coming into play. That was hot. Alright, let me dip this one out.
01:01:05	Sam Parr	Oh, this is almond milk, by the way. Alright, what's the rapid fire?
01:01:13	Shaan Puri	Alright, let me think of some questions. Hot seat question: Here's number 1: Would you rather be three times as famous and half as rich as you are today, or stay as you are?
01:01:27	Sam Parr	Stay as I am. Why? I'm married. Being famous isn't that cool.
01:01:34	Shaan Puri	I mean what's the. Like for single people yeah what what
01:01:37	Sam Parr	what advantage does fame have at this.
01:01:39	Shaan Puri	I mean I pulled
01:01:40	Sam Parr	my ego but like I
01:01:42	Shaan Puri	Some people just feel good. You could also argue that if you were three times more famous, you could actually earn a bunch more too. So, you know, it could make other things easier.
01:01:51	Sam Parr	I'd rather be 2 times as rich
01:01:55	Shaan Puri	twice as funny and half as ripped or twice as ripped and half as funny
01:01:59	Sam Parr	Being funnier is better for, like, picking up girls and having guy friends. Probably so funny. Boy, you said you're married.
01:02:07	Shaan Puri	why are you trying to pick up girls
01:02:08	Sam Parr	I said meet guys too didn't I say that
01:02:14	Shaan Puri	I know being ripped seems to do it too but no being
01:02:17	Sam Parr	Dude, being funny is better. Being funny is way better. What would you rather be? Funny?
01:02:22	Shaan Puri	I'm all in on funny
01:02:23	Sam Parr	about the fame or wealth
01:02:25	Shaan Puri	Being half as funny would be really sad. You could be half as fit and kind of recover, but if you're half as funny, there's just no recovering from that. That's like the end of the game for you.
01:02:38	Sam Parr	and you are you were half as fit 3 years ago and you were doing fine
01:02:41	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly
01:02:42	Sam Parr	I've been there before
01:02:44	Shaan Puri	yeah hello my old friend nice to see you again
01:02:49	Sam Parr	what what about the other one
01:02:52	Shaan Puri	tell me the okay what's the highest stakes negotiation you've ever been in
01:02:56	Sam Parr	selling the company what about you
01:02:58	Shaan Puri	well when did it feel high stakes for you was there
01:03:00	Sam Parr	A moment... I'm almost positive that every single day there's a chance I can kill the deal. The HubSpot CEO, did I tell you this? No? You know, he got into a...
01:03:10	Shaan Puri	oh the car the skiing incident the day after right
01:03:13	Sam Parr	It was even worse. Brian was on the pod; he told you about it. He and his son were snowmobiling in Vermont or wherever people snowmobile. I don't know. His son hit the gas instead of the brake, and they ran into his dad, Brian. They fell over a cliff, and it was either 12 or 24 hours that he just sat there. He said goodbye to his son, and he's like, "You know, might..."
01:03:37	Shaan Puri	be it
01:03:38	Sam Parr	This is it. Suddenly, they get cell phone service, and someone comes and finds them. Then, afterwards, he comes back and quits.
01:03:44	Shaan Puri	and close the deal
01:03:49	Sam Parr	did you tax sam today yeah
01:03:52	Shaan Puri	One more thing, that's so funny. Well, dude.
01:04:00	Sam Parr	That happened two weeks after the deal closed. I think that company is big enough that him, frankly, dying...
01:04:07	Shaan Puri	put a pause on it
01:04:08	Sam Parr	yeah like would I don't know if that would've like I don't know if that would happen
01:04:11	Shaan Puri	Hey guys, not to be insensitive, I just wanted to check in if we're still on for the whole thing.
01:04:18	Sam Parr	yeah acquisition rip brian but
01:04:22	Shaan Puri	so sending out the docusign in case you guys still ready
01:04:28	Sam Parr	yet so that I mean
01:04:29	Shaan Puri	totally understand if you need a day
01:04:30	Sam Parr	Yeah, so anything could've killed it. No pun intended. All due respect, Brian, I love Brian, so I'm only joking. But anything could've like destroyed that deal.
01:04:44	Shaan Puri	and I think that is stressful
01:04:45	Sam Parr	so that was the highest one what was yours
01:04:47	Shaan Puri	Well, I have two. One was, I think I've... did I tell the auction story when we bought the Bebo brand back? Did I tell this story before? So, Michael tells me at one point, he goes, "Hey, we have an opportunity to buy Bebo back."
01:05:00	Sam Parr	oh yeah and you had to go like looking like a schmuck so no one knew who you were
01:05:04	Shaan Puri	No, no, no. This is how I look. Thanks though. But we go to a courthouse, basically. So he tells me, "We're gonna buy it back." In my mind, I'm like, "Awesome! What are we gonna do with it?" And he's like, "I don't know. We gotta figure something out." He's like, "Well, it's a good domain. You get the email list, you get the domain, you get the hardware, and you get the legal ownership of that."
01:05:28	Sam Parr	what hardware
01:05:28	Shaan Puri	Wait, whatever servers or whatever they had. So, we were like, "Okay, what is this worth?" We came up with a figure. We sat in this room trying to speculate, and then Michael just put down the hammer at one point. He said, "I don't think we're going to be able to buy it for less than $1,000,000, and I don't think I really want to pay much more than $1,000,000. So let's do it with $1,000,000. That's your bid." We fly to LA. It's me, our lawyer, and our COO. We get to a courthouse, and I'm like, "Is that a courthouse? What are we going to do, stand in front of a judge?" The judge goes, "Okay, are there multiple parties here to buy it out of bankruptcy?" We don't know who else is going to be there; we don't know if anyone else is going to be there. Then, two other groups raise their hands, and she says, "Alright, go to that room, and you're going to auction against each other to see who wins." I was like, "What?" We go to this tiny room.
01:06:16	Sam Parr	just gonna fight
01:06:17	Shaan Puri	yeah basically and 1 person
01:06:19	Sam Parr	from each boot boot it's
01:06:20	Shaan Puri	Like a round roll, one person from each team got to sit at the table. Everybody else is behind them, like, "Oh." And so then it's us, and then it's Match.com, and it's some other [team or company name].
01:06:32	Sam Parr	social dot com
01:06:33	Shaan Puri	well like iac they own a bunch of internet properties so they wanted to buy
01:06:36	Sam Parr	kinda like vulturing
01:06:37	Shaan Puri	Yeah, they were like, "We're gonna harvest the profiles and use them for dating." It's like, what? Like the SEO... we need that SEO juice. It's like, damn, I hope you guys don't win. That sounds awful.
01:06:47	Sam Parr	what what were the people kind of one another or were they like pulling out
01:06:50	Shaan Puri	You just sit down and it's like, "Bid!" And we're like, "Oh, here, I'm the representative from this, this, and this." Alright, so it starts, and it's like, "We'll start the bidding at $100,000." Then it'll go up by $50,000 increments up to $500,000. After that, it'll just be free form. We'll be here as long as it takes to finish the bid. You get like a minute, or maybe two minutes, in between bids to decide if you're going to bid. So if it goes $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, $250,000, and so on, it goes up to $700,000. Then one guy drops out, so it's just us. The match caller then says, "Time out! We need to go make a phone call," right before 7.
01:07:27	Sam Parr	dude that's like getting in a fight with someone and being like time out you don't have bullshit you can't do that
01:07:31	Shaan Puri	It's exactly what happened. He got punched in the nose and he was like, "Time out." So we're at $750,000 and they go outside. They had to make a phone call to their boss, and I was like, "Oh, my son having a boss?"
01:07:44	Sam Parr	you like tattled on him you're like sir is that
01:07:46	Shaan Puri	So, I try to eavesdrop. I walk outside, and they immediately stop talking. I go to the restroom twice just to see if I can pick up anything. Then I come back in and I talk to our lawyer. I say, "Okay, they're calling at $750,000. They're probably getting authorization to go up. That was probably their max. They're probably getting authorization; the highest they can go is $1,000,000." I told the auctioneer person, "No more timeouts. We can't do that again." So, they come back in, and she says, "There's no more timeouts." I'm like, "Okay, cool. The pressure is on them now." Then the bidding goes: $800,000, $850,000, $900,000, $950,000...
01:08:18	Sam Parr	are going when you make your bid for 900 do you say like
01:08:22	Shaan Puri	ugh that's a thing so we had been acting like that to be like
01:08:25	Sam Parr	are you kidding me guys
01:08:26	Shaan Puri	and then I then I told the floor between
01:08:28	Sam Parr	built this thing I know it's not worth that
01:08:30	Shaan Puri	I go, we gotta just act like we have an infinite bankroll so that they feel like they can't win this auction. As soon as they say a number, just top it immediately. Top it with no hesitation, just like, "We're here all day." I could go on and on and on. So that's what she did. She changed up her demeanor and started doing that. Basically, we got to a million, and at a million, she pulls a great move. She doesn't say a million; she goes, "$1,025,000" to just up it. Did you know?
01:08:58	Sam Parr	that they were all were stopped at a million
01:08:59	Shaan Puri	We knew they had gotten authorization for a round number. I think it was actually $1,010. I think she had $10,000 above, and they just said, "You guys can have it. You guys can take it." They were like, "Yeah, our max was a million."
01:09:10	Sam Parr	you just smacked them
01:09:11	Shaan Puri	The face... I was like, "Yeah!" And so we got it. Then we came back. But that was like the most high-stakes hand of poker I've ever been involved in, basically.
01:09:23	Sam Parr	Alright, we'll do one more. I can't read it from back here. What were the questions that you told me?
01:09:30	Shaan Puri	Another one was like, "What is the... I don't know, like what's the...?"
01:09:36	Sam Parr	oh so something that you thought you were onto something but it turned out to be totally wrong
01:09:40	Shaan Puri	yeah you thought you were onto something you turned out to
01:09:42	Sam Parr	what's yours
01:09:43	Shaan Puri	We had one when building Blab. Basically, when we built Blab, it looked like it was taking off. This is now about four years in. Imagine you're four years in and you feel like you might have just made the next big thing—basically what Clubhouse ended up becoming. That's what Blab was. We started seeing this rapid growth. People loved it, and everybody felt it was new and fresh. Everything else we had made, people were like, "Oh, this is just like Snapchat." No matter what we did, they were like, "This is kinda like Snapchat." And we were like, "Goddamn it! The next thing we build is not gonna be like Snapchat." No matter what, that was Blab. It took off to 200,000 users pretty quickly, then it got to a million users. VC, you know, Founders Fund wanted to invest and all this stuff. It felt like we did it! This was gonna be the next social thing, and we owned it. We were actually gonna own one of those things. Then it got to about four million users, and we started to realize, "Why isn't the number going up as much?" It's like, "Well, I don't know. Sign-ups are still up." It's like, "Oh, it's super leaky." The retention had been getting worse and worse. It started out okay, and now it's just pretty bad. This was all in the span of like...
01:10:45	Sam Parr	10% of the impossible problem to solve too. It's not like you did it. Even if you operate at an A+ level, it's just like a... you just.
01:10:52	Shaan Puri	Retention is like... retention is the thing that's worth anything in business. Retention is also the thing that's the hardest to solve because, like, it's like dating. If you wanted to pick up somebody, that's like just getting users. You could change the way you look, you could teach yourself two pickup lines, and like, you know... if...
01:11:08	Sam Parr	I find the keeper
01:11:09	Shaan Puri	that yeah
01:11:10	Sam Parr	wants you as
01:11:10	Shaan Puri	As far as getting you a shirt that fits you a little bit better, and you know, whatever, pick the booger out of your nose. You can get their number, but you can't make them date you. You can't make them marry you. And like, that's what retention is. It's like, are they going to marry your product or not? Once I knew that was a problem, I was like, "Oh God." We tried so many things to try to fix it, and it was just not moving because it's more fundamental. It's like, is this something people want to do all the time or not? It's very hard to spam them with notifications to try to get that number up.
01:11:37	Sam Parr	So, the year we sold The Hustle, you know, we sold in February. We set a whole year ahead of us, but I think we probably would have done around $20,000,000 in sales. I started the company wanting to hit $100,000,000 in revenue before year 10, and we sold it between year 4 and 5. So, we were kind of on track.
01:11:57	Shaan Puri	you woulda got there yeah probably
01:11:58	Sam Parr	We could have maybe gotten there. I knew I could. I started the company with just an email, even though people said it was stupid because I was like...
01:12:05	Shaan Puri	I remember telling you it was stupid I was like do video dude do facebook video snapchat instagram
01:12:10	Sam Parr	The math is such that I'm pretty sure people are kind of dismissing this as a hobby. But look, if you just change a 10,000-person email list to like 5,000,000, the numbers add up to $100,000,000. No one's real... I don't know anyone who's ever done that, but I'm pretty sure that could happen. I understand the math. Each seller of advertising would sell $1,500,000 of ads, and there are already people that do that. So if I just hire, you know, 100 of them, things add up. This could all work out fine, actually. But I didn't truly believe my own prediction, even though I knew this list lines up.
01:12:46	Shaan Puri	you could tell everybody else but yeah telling yourself in your head is different
01:12:49	Sam Parr	I was like, "This works, actually. This works." I didn't entirely believe it, and so I sold right when I got a pretty decent offer because I wanted to secure the bag. But in reality, I made a mistake. I didn't make a mistake because I actually would have done the same thing again, but I could have achieved my goal.
01:13:06	Shaan Puri	right
01:13:06	Sam Parr	now looking back at it I know the
01:13:08	Shaan Puri	morning brew's kinda doing that right they're like 75 100,000,000 something like that
01:13:11	Sam Parr	well they're at they're probably 80,000,000 in sales
01:13:14	Shaan Puri	yeah so they're close
01:13:15	Sam Parr	So, they're getting close, and I knew that Austin and I are good friends now. We both talked, and I'm like, "Yeah, you guys actually would have been there." They're a year older than us in terms of the company. So, like, you guys actually would have been there even better because you had subscription revenue. He was like, "You're... and he's... he was like, I'm actually amazing at operating things, but you guys are always way better at inventing new stuff." We would just copy you, or you know, he said something like that. He is really good at operating, though, and I think that was my biggest mistake.

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Shaan's Backstory (#377)

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