This Married Couple Stole $4.5 Billion in Bitcoin Heist [Bitfinex]

Shaan Puri

They find a bunch of burner cell phones. They find a bag with about $50,000 in cash. They also discover several hardware wallets that contain bitcoins. Additionally, they found folders on their computer that had fake passport IDs and places to go, places to run away. They found folders that said that on their computers.

Sam Parr

don't even entirely understand what happened but I have a backstory about people

Shaan Puri

today's edition of the milk road you will get the full backstory and 10 bullet points

Sam Parr

yeah you need to go earlier

Shaan Puri

So, we did bullet points. Here’s what happened: In 2016, a crypto exchange called Bitfinex got hacked. At the time, I think around 120,000 Bitcoin was stolen, which was about $70,000,000. It was a significant hack. The price of Bitcoin that week dropped by 40%, causing a huge fear shock in the market. The thing about Bitcoin is that it operates on a public ledger; it's a public blockchain. So, everybody could see the coins. Everyone saw, "Oh, the coins are in this wallet." All the other exchanges were like, "Look, this is bad for the industry. We will try to prevent this. If that wallet tries to cash this out, we won't let them cash out the money." For many years, that money kind of just sat in those wallets or was moving in really small transactions back and forth between a web of wallets. Clearly, somebody was trying to launder the money, essentially.

Sam Parr

but but how how did he how did they even get in the 1st place

Shaan Puri

So, I don't know what the exploit was that let them hack the accounts. They didn't hack all the accounts on Bitfinex; they actually just hacked some of the whale accounts. They were able to take 120,000 Bitcoin from not all the accounts. The funny thing is, Bitfinex didn't have the money to make those users whole. So, what they did was reduce everybody on Bitfinex's balance by 33% or something to balance it out. Imagine if your bank did that! That would be insane. I'd be like, "Oh, they robbed that guy's vault, and you're taking my money away to even it out for everybody? No, thank you!"

Sam Parr

so

Shaan Puri

Anyways, it was bad, and there's a reason why Bitfinex is not, you know, the biggest exchange now. So, the money kind of sat there. Now, fast forward five and a half years. Last week, people started to notice bigger transactions coming from the Bitfinex hack wallets. There were alerts on Twitter like "whale alert, whale alert!" It's like the coins are moving—$100,000, $1,000,000, $10,000,000, whatever. So, the Department of Justice goes and kicks down a door in New York into this husband and wife couple's house. They look like, you know, your complete average Joe, clean-cut. This does not look like, you know, a grimy criminal mastermind operation. I'll explain a little bit more about that in a second—the funny bit about that. Basically, they seize like their computers. They find a bunch of burner cell phones, a bag of like $50,000 in cash, and a bunch of hardware wallets that had the bitcoins in them. They also found folders on their computer that had fake passport IDs and places to go, places to run away. They found folders that said that stuff on their computers. They seized $3.5 billion worth of bitcoin because the price of bitcoin has gone up so much. So, that $70 million has become $3.5 billion. These guys were trying to launder that money. They may have been the hackers; I don't know. That's not proven, but they were trying to launder the money. The DOJ had been like, if you've seen that meme of Charlie from "It's Always Sunny," where he has the cork board and he's trying to solve the crime—that's what they had been doing. They had this web of all these wallets, and finally, they found that, oh, it's trying to cash out in this wallet owned by this guy, Ilya Dutch Liechtenstein or whatever.

Sam Parr

but how how did what what type of idiot would use this thing

Shaan Puri

you need to get

Sam Parr

the money out just a sense

Shaan Puri

The problem is they were trying to get the money out through various means: - Walmart gift cards (buying $500 cards with Bitcoin) - PlayStation games - Other small transactions They were attempting all these small things, but they could never move the bulk of the money. If you want to move money in mass, you've got to do something that lets you move size. Usually, those could... [Note: The sentence trails off, suggesting the speaker was interrupted or changed their train of thought.]

Sam Parr

buy an nft and then sell it no well like eventually

Shaan Puri

You need to get the money out of the wallet. That's the problem. So, in order to do that, there's like an off-ramp. How do you get it into, you know, US dollars, for example, if that's what you wanted to do? He left it there for five and a half years, and they were probably living off and spending in some ways. But if you wanted to actually get a lot of it out and remove the paper trail of the blockchain, you need to find an off-ramp. To get it as an off-ramp, you have, you know, your exchanges. I like these exchanges, but they require you to upload your license. They have laws they have to comply with, called KYC (Know Your Customer). Eventually, they found that somehow the DOJ [Department of Justice] identified that the money was moving towards a wallet owned by a known person. That's how they ended up finding these guys. Now, the funny part is...

Sam Parr

that's awesome

Shaan Puri

go ahead

Sam Parr

So, when I read about this, I was like, "Wait, that name sounds so familiar." Both their names sound familiar. The guy's name is Ilya (I-L-Y-A). I think it was like a very weird name. His last name is Liechtenstein. He spoke at the first HustleCon. I never talked to him, but he had a company called MixRank, which was just a normal startup that went through Y Combinator. He spoke at HustleCon, and then his girlfriend or wife, her name is Heather Morgan, I think. She was a copywriter, and I remember talking a little bit with her because she had a website all about writing sales emails. Totally.

Shaan Puri

Does that ring a bell? Do you remember her for the hack? The red dress? She had a LinkedIn post on like five hacks for your cover letter for your job interview, you know, that sort of thing. So, yeah, she was doing that. The funny thing is, the reason the internet kind of went crazy with it was because here you had two very unlikely characters. We had a bunch of friends text us—or text me—because I was writing this edition of The Milk Road. I was like, "Does anybody know this guy?" You knew him, but some other people knew him too. They were like, "Dude, you would never get vibes that this guy might just go launder a billion dollars." He was smart, like kind of tight, like an engineer type.

Sam Parr

He showed very little emotion. No, I did not think that this guy... yeah.

Shaan Puri

And no, in her, she's like this super strange, Kanye West-level weird, you know? Like, person. She basically had an alter ego that was called Rasel Khan, and Rasel Khan was her rap name. Then she has these super cringey rap songs on YouTube. Like, dude, okay, I have... you know, I think it'd be cool to be a rapper, but if I hear myself, there's no way I'm publishing that because it sounds so bad. And so...

Sam Parr

It's horrible. It's so bad. The top comment was: > "Paris Hilton: I'm gonna prove to everyone that having money means you can rap good." And then it said: > "Heather Morgan: Hold my beer."

Shaan Puri

I didn't even know Paris Hilton has a rap song. So yeah, there's just... she's like one of the strangest characters. I watched... I went deep, dude, for this. I was writing this thing and I was like, "Oh, let me get some examples," and then I couldn't look away because... like, the train wreck, dude. It's weird.

Sam Parr

videos of her running comfortable

Shaan Puri

She forced everybody to... They built like this golden mini Taj Mahal that she sat in, and then her bridesmaids lifted it up on their shoulders and brought her in. But even the audience at her wedding is uncomfortably clapping, like off-beat, because they're thinking, "This is not normal." There's clearly only 14 people in the room, and then she does a rap performance at the wedding that was equally cringey. She's just... humping the air.

Sam Parr

oh my god to the guy iliad iliad goes by

Shaan Puri

both jim so

Sam Parr

Dude, this freaking guy! I'm looking at these pictures, and that's hilarious. This woman is really hard to look at; she is just *cringe city*.

Shaan Puri

That should have been her rap name: **Cringe City**. That would have been like, "Okay, I get it. You're going to be the cringiest." Cool, that's like Henry Cejudo, a young cringiest.

Sam Parr

with a

Shaan Puri

The king of cringe... yeah, that's what she should have done. It is super strange, but basically, they recovered it. So now, what's going to happen? There are a bunch of interesting little bits to it. The DOJ is going to give the money back to Bitfinex. It looks like Bitfinex had, when they launched their own token at one time called the Leo token, which is used in their exchange. If you trade using the Leo token, it'll give you a discount. They had to put in a provision when they launched the Leo token, which was like, "Hey, if we ever recover anything from that hack, we'll use up to 80% of it to buy back and burn our Leo token." This will benefit Leo holders if we ever recover from this. Now, they're going to get like $3.5 billion to buy back, so the price of the Leo token shot up over 60% in 24 hours because people are like, "Oh wow, that's going to be a lot!" But they said, "We're not going to just cause a bunch of sell pressure in the market. We're going to do a controlled sale over multiple years."

Shaan Puri

So that it's like scheduled and doesn't like affect the bitcoin market or whatever

Sam Parr

god this is such a good story this would make this

Shaan Puri

Would be... yeah, exactly! That's what everyone was saying. It's like, "Here comes, you know, incoming Netflix stock." Have you seen this? I saw... I just watched this clip like every day for the past 3 days, and it just absolutely cracks me up. I was hoping Ben could play it in the thing, but I don't think it'll work. I don't think the sound will come through. So, have you seen this clip of this interview with Bill Gates back in the day?

Sam Parr

jumping over a chair

Shaan Puri

yeah have you seen this

Sam Parr

Yeah, wait... like just a normal one of him jumping.

Shaan Puri

Just so, he's doing some interview with some woman about Microsoft. She goes, "Is it true that you can leap over a chair?"

Sam Parr

is that that impressive

Shaan Puri

And he goes, "It's not... Well, first of all, it *is* impressive for Bill Gates to be able to do that. Second of all, I don't know why this is being talked about." Then she goes, "Is it true that you could jump over a chair?" And he goes, "It depends on the size of the chair." ... You know, just like... And then it cuts—it's like a hard cut to a chair and Bill Gates clearing it.

Sam Parr

Is it true that you can leap over a chair from a standing position? It depends on the size of the chair. I'll cheat a little bit. Yeah, that's an old clip. You've just now seen that.

Shaan Puri

I came back into my life because I was thinking about something someone had said, like, "Oh yeah, you know, back in the day" or "in the good old days." In my head, I wondered, "What are they even thinking about when they say that?" I thought, "What's the funniest 'back in the day' thing?" That clip came to mind. So, I decided that anytime someone says "back in the day" or "you know, in the good old days," I'm going to think only of that moment where Bill Gates says, "Depends on how high the chair is."

Sam Parr

I always just think of Uncle Rico, the Uncle Rico clip in *Napoleon Dynamite*. Rico says, "I used to be able to throw a pigskin over them mountains." Alright, so listen. I did something that I did not think I was ever going to do. Last year, in 2021—or no, 2020, whenever COVID happened—I launched this course that I don't even know if I ever talked about. It's called the **Ideation Boot Camp**. I did it with Goggin. I invested in this company just like you did in Maven. You have already done two of them, I think, and you have a third coming up. I decided to launch one. I launched one the other day. I only talked about it on Twitter; I've not talked about it on here yet. So if people want to do it, it's called the **Ideation Boot Camp**, and it's basically my research framework and how I research stuff. You go to maven.com. So, Maven—how do you say it? Maven? It rhymes with like raven. Yeah, there you go, with an "M."

Shaan Puri

but but with the m at the end no no that's right that's right

Sam Parr

Yeah, and you could see my name is on the front page. But what they don't have yet, and this is what I told Goggin, is that Sean and I both invested in this company. As part of investing in it, he made us promise to do courses. Yeah, which was actually a good kick in the ass because now I actually had to do it, and it has been fun. But he needs custom URLs; he doesn't have that yet.

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like maven.com/[blank]/whatever in order to get to your thing. But I just have... they made it for me. They made a PowerWritingCourse.com.

Sam Parr

they're gonna make it for me because they so that

Shaan Puri

that goes there

Sam Parr

but they have to make it for

Shaan Puri

you yeah

Sam Parr

But I'm doing this thing. I think it's going to be pretty badass. I think I'll continue doing it maybe once a year, but maybe I won't ever do it. I don't know.

Shaan Puri

Give an example. So, give a teaser of like, "Okay, so this is about coming up with a great idea." Figuring out how to come up with ideas and then picking the ones that seem like better ideas than worse ideas in a short amount of time. Is that the hook?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'll give one old example. So basically, when Trends launched, I wrote this article about plants. I thought, "Man, someone could build an online nursery or an online plant business." The reason I came up with that idea is that I read the annual report for 1-800-Flowers. They said, "1-800-Flowers is a big company; there's a billion dollars or something in revenue." So they've got a large perspective. They mentioned that their fastest growing segment is millennials buying succulents online. This is growing like crazy. Then I looked at their financials, and it appeared that the majority of the profit came from people buying accessories, like chocolate or fancy pots. I'm like, "Well, there's a great idea! You make succulents and pair them with really cool pots that are artistic." You can figure out what the contribution margin is. Then, what Alex said yesterday in the podcast—what did he say? He phrased it better than I have historically. It was something like "opportunity of value" or "value of opportunity." Basically, you could do a bunch of math; it's really simple arithmetic. You're looking at your repeat purchase rate, the total adjustable market, times your contribution margin. That's how you can come up with a good idea in that space, just off that one insight. So that's an example. I just list out all my frameworks and how I research.

Shaan Puri

And it started with reading the annual report for 1-800-Flowers, which sounds like the most unique starting point. It's not just about finding specific opportunities, but also about training your brain to think about the world in a broader way than you currently do. That's how I would phrase it. I don't think you necessarily find the best ideas by saying, "Okay, I'm going to go read the Harvard Business School's annual report, and in there, I'm going to find a business idea." I think that's a little too hardcore.

Sam Parr

No, what... The way it works is you have this general thing. So this general thing is basically: What's this combination of: 1. Things that I'm interested in 2. Things that I'm good at 3. Things that can make money Alright, I know what that general *thing* is. I'm gonna go to very particular places to find information that's gonna help guide this. And what it's gonna do is help me find a handful of problems that I'm interested in solving. These problems, for sure, have demand for them.

Shaan Puri

I'll give you an example of how this played out in my life. I invested in this company. The guy actually came to our podcast, our live podcast show in San Francisco, which was in your office. It was a very small crew, maybe 50 to 75 people, something like that. I don't know what it was, but it was the very first live thing we ever did. This guy comes up afterwards and he's like, "Hey, that was great!" I'm like, "Yeah, what do you do? What's your story?" And he's like, "Oh, I currently run the perception team on the self-driving cars division of Uber."

Sam Parr

he was a very charming very good looking I was sold to

Shaan Puri

handsome guy very confident so he wasn't like hey sean can I just pitch you my idea I'd really just want to tell like that that's always like sure man you talk while I think of a way to escape it's usually how that conversation goes and so this was different this guy was you know he I was genuinely interested then he started saying things and then I was like oh so he's like yeah but I'm leaving to work on my own startup okay what what is it what is it uber artificial intelligence guy you know like guy who works on the ai team at uber and so he was starting his own self driving car company and he's like you know here's what we're gonna do we're focusing on he's like you know it's funny I I I was you know I was looking at what we were doing at uber and he was like what stood out what jumped out to me and this is kinda like one of your ideation things is like sometimes a stat will come out and at twitch the ceo emmett he used to call the he used to say sometimes you look at data not for a specific answer but just to find something that makes you go or like that's weird that can't be right can it and and so he used to the ceo emmett he used to mention like you don't always go looking do it write a sql query just to get a specific answer sometimes you just browse until something jumps out at you as being like not what you not on trend and so anyways this guy had said 75% of all uber rides are like you know one passenger going less than or it was like 60% 60 something% were go were 1 passenger and 60% were going less than 3 miles so it's like short trips of just 1 person inside of a dense city and and he's like you know so it's kinda crazy right we have this like 4 person maybe 6 person 6 seater car that weighs thousands of tons with with 1 driver driving 1 person 1 mile like that seems inefficient and so he was trying to create a a a new vehicle that was like a 1 person vehicle 1 or 2 person vehicle that was electric and self driving and optimized for very short trips and I was like oh that's really cool anyways I invest $50,000 you fast forward like a year and you know he's like grinding away in this garage in san mateo trying to get a car to drive itself and I would go down to the he was working literally out of a storage unit

Sam Parr

so I would

Shaan Puri

go to the storage container like kind of a what's it called like

Sam Parr

like public storage or something

Shaan Puri

public storage yeah literally yeah and then he'd roll up the garage on like unit 333 or whatever and then he put me in it he'd be like alright let's see if it works and then we drive in a circle around the storage facility storage like parking lot and it was like woah that was bizarre to sit there and just like have the thing drive me yeah so it was working but it you know like that's a closed environment it's pretty easy to get that to work but he was working on okay now let's take it out a mile okay now let's go get a sandwich from the shop and like that's what he was doing for like a year so anyways he at the time the idea the initial idea was like to be kinda like an uber competitor right like somebody will just push a button this ride will show up or roll up to them with no driver inside they hop in they actually drive themselves to the location then they lee they just walk out and the thing will drive to the next passenger by itself I was like wow that's a really cool idea we were trying to figure it out and I felt like we were hitting a wall and this is where something like your course will help because if you're if you're if all your ideas are boxed into your own life experiences and you're like a you know 27 year old engineer who's worked at you know tech companies like your life experiences are pretty narrow and only once we got out of that and started like figuring out these little like you know like these these these unique spots like when you when you read an annual report you go so I was reading annual report we talked to we just took a random meeting we took a random meeting with some transportation lawyer and he mentioned that he does work for this company and I looked up that company and it's basically like this I don't know like $30,000,000,000 company that I've never heard of and what did it do they partner with like 15 cities and they go to the city and they say hey you need buses and scooters and ferries and trains and all that stuff yeah you just commission us we'll we'll bid for your for the right to run transportation in your city and they would get and so this the whole $30,000,000,000 company or whatever was like off of like 15 city contracts and then I thought about it I was like oh of course like san francisco doesn't run their own buses like you know or whatever not every city is gonna wanna be in the transportation business they just contracted out to some vendor and

Sam Parr

I was like man that's an amazing business because

Shaan Puri

That vendor now has lock-in. Like, the city is not going to change, so they're just going to... they just get to eat up. They have a monopoly on city transport. And then that got me thinking about those city bike share programs. If you've seen those city bikes...

Sam Parr

they're awesome

Shaan Puri

And then their annual reports were online, and I went and read about it. City Bike did the same model. They went to New York and built a $100,000,000 revenue business doing city bikes in New York. They were the only ones who had the license to do it. Then they did it in San Francisco and sold to Lyft for, I don't know, some $100,000,000. I thought that's a really cool model. So then we started brainstorming. Dude, could you go to a city that needs this type of transport—like a different type of transport than what they already have with their buses and whatever—and just say, "We'll be the vendor for you"? That's exactly what they did; they went to Las Vegas.

Sam Parr

did it work

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I haven't talked to them recently, but they got a contract basically with Las Vegas. The city was like, "Yeah, we have this thing called a transportation desert. It's a place where our routes don't really go, but a lot of people need to go in this area and they're complaining to us about it." So, you know, [the city said], "We'll pay you guys. We'll pre-buy, like, a quarter million dollars of rides from you." And so it's like, instead of trying to get a quarter million people to download your app like Uber and [other ride-sharing services]...

Sam Parr

do whatever you got

Shaan Puri

One city official said, "I'll buy $250,000 worth of rides, and that'll last us a few months. Let's see how that goes."

Sam Parr

And that's what you and I do to people. Because we just study and break down stuff, I think you and I go through the same discovery and moment. I hope that our audience does as well. Basically, once you know what's possible, or once you see what other people have achieved, your standard of what's possible kind of changes. You're like, "Well, of course I could do that! They did that by doing this, this, and this." I already know exactly how they did it. It's like me telling you, "Well, just go get big muscles." It's like, "I can't get big muscles! I don't know what that means." Versus, "Well, just lift this weight, do it four times a week, and here, I'll remind you every single time." You could do it! When you know a specific routine or understand what's possible, it definitely changes your perspective on what you should be doing. Hopefully, that's what the podcast does, and that's what the course will be doing. But I don't know, I wanted to call it on where...

Shaan Puri

do they go maven.comand maven.com they'll see your face

Sam Parr

they'll see my face

Shaan Puri

and it's called the it's cool

Sam Parr

And then you have one too on the... it's called the **Ideation Boot Camp**. You have one too, the **Power Writing Course**. This is your third time doing it.

Shaan Puri

my 3rd time doing it yeah

Sam Parr

And you did it because you're like, people... I think Geichens said that you have the second highest rated course.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah it's

Sam Parr

I forget who had number 1 but

Shaan Puri

He said, "You know, second place is the best place." It still had some of the reach.

Sam Parr

Is it second place still at the top? I don't remember which one he said. It was either 1 or 2.

Shaan Puri

I think we don't... I don't really care about the highest rated courses because, honestly, people's ratings will be more based on themselves. I see, to use your gym example, most people aren't out of shape because they have the wrong workout program or trainer. It's because, most likely, they're not even going to the gym. Then, if they are going to the gym, they're not going consistently. Even if they are going consistently, they're not working out with intensity. Then comes the program for back, biceps, and shoulders that's going to help you get the most gains. Similarly, like I had... it's like, yeah, we had a high-rated course.

Sam Parr

but then I looked at it

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Man, 15 or 20% of people just never showed up to a single one. They paid and never showed up." Like, damn, that's on them.

Sam Parr

I don't think you could solve that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, you know, I was lucky enough to not have heartache over that because I realized that's actually just a completely common pattern with all online education. If people don't finish or they don't start, even for something that they'll pay a bunch of money for, which is really wild. So, of the people that come, what kind of experience do they have? Then, you know, six months or nine months later, are you still getting emails saying, "Yo, I used your thing, and I got this outcome out of it"? That's like the only real true measure of success. I don't think if a hundred people go into the course, it's not going to be a hundred people who have that outcome. Twenty people aren't even going to show up. You know, 60% of them are going to forget everything within a year or never implement it. Really, it's the 15 to 20 out of a hundred that actually use the material and better themselves.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it sucks. Do you want to talk about this Bitcoin couple? What do you want to talk about?

Shaan Puri

I have... okay, so I have a couple ideas and then I have a couple random topics. But let's do ideas first. So I want to... I want to shout out a couple ideas I saw other people saying that I thought were kind of interesting. So here's the first one: You invested in this thing **Stonks.com**, right?

Sam Parr

I did

Shaan Puri

And explain for people who don't know what Stonks is. Explain what it is because it's actually kind of pretty dope. I had the opportunity to invest. I know the guy super well who started it. He was our biggest competitor when we were doing my startup, so I was watching them. I kind of saw how they operate, so I knew these guys are really good. But I didn't get the idea fully right away, and the valuation was really high because they have a good track record. So I was like, "Ah, okay, I'll just pass. I'll be a user, not an investor." You invested, so explain what it is.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so it's like *Shark Tank* meets AngelList. AngelList is a platform where anyone who starts a company can go on and get investors. They make it easy, so anyone could invest like $1,000 into your company. And you know what *Shark Tank* is. So basically, stocks... It's spelled like a joke. The reason I was like, "Is this gonna work?" is because it's spelled like a joke.

Shaan Puri

like a meme yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, it looks like it's spelled like a meme and their logo is like a silly... it's like the Wall Street Bets guy. But it's... so, once a... How often? What's the cadence now? Is it every day or once a week?

Shaan Puri

no I don't think it's every day I think it's once a week or so

Sam Parr

So, once a week they have regular events, but then they have bigger ones that are once a month. They do some pre-vetting and find interesting startups. All types of investors are on the phone or on the call listening, and they can ping in with a question. The whole audience can watch in real time. I've been a guest, and I've been an investor - or what they call an "investor" - where you're able to ask questions. I've seen people write checks for $15,100,000 live, so they've...

Shaan Puri

Experience is like a live Twitch channel, basically an auction. A startup goes up, they pitch their thing, and investors can ask questions in the chat. Some are asking questions live, and then you just see in the chat: - "So-and-so is investing $10,000" - "So-and-so is putting in $40,000" - "So-and-so is putting $2,000 in" Have you seen one where people... they'll raise like... I think somebody raised over $10,000,000 in 10 minutes. Is that right?

Sam Parr

I think well the company raised 10,000,000 stocks

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

They raised money from guys like me, but then Andreessen Horowitz [invested], just like angel investors. Then they let their users invest, and they raised like $10 or $15 million in a few hours.

Shaan Puri

And so, what's cool is you're a founder. Normally, your fundraising is like this multi-month process that you're almost dreading getting started with. You're like, "Okay, I gotta first get all my ducks in a row." Then, I gotta start reaching out and figure out making a list, a pipeline to reach out to. Then, asking people to go out for coffees or asking for introductions, following up, pitching, and then follow-up meetings. This shrinks that three-month process into like seven minutes on stage. That's what's dope about this for the founder. For the investor, it's also a time saver, right? My job is to look at interesting companies. So, these guys, if they're doing the hard work of curating them and putting them on stage, letting me make a snap decision, they're creating a demo day basically where they pack in a bunch of good startups, in theory, right? The whole thing is either going to work because they curate great startups, or it's not going to work because the great startups don't want to do this. Well, how...

Sam Parr

Did that make sense? When I talked to him, I was like, "Oh, this is a no-brainer." I only invested $10,000, but it was because I would have done more. But this was a...

Shaan Puri

No brainer. Early on, he was like, "You know, it's Twitch for angel investing." I've just seen every other live streaming product fail. I had too many battle scars. I was like, "Bro, why are you going into this? You know that as well as I do. That's so hard to do." I didn't really understand what he was saying as the idea. So, I asked him a couple of questions. He sent me the memo, and I saw the valuation. I was like, "So, I think it's a dope idea." Okay, so now here's the riff on it, right? So, Elaine Zelby, who's been on the pod a couple of times before, she's an idea person just like us. She had this idea that I thought was pretty cool. She goes, "It's Donks.com for other things."

Sam Parr

It's like, can I... I agree. Can I tell you what one of our friends, Moiz Ali, tweeted? Something about "stonks for homes." The cool thing about stonks is you can see what other smart people are asking. With cars, for example, Bring a Trailer, my favorite car website, has a comment section. I can see what smart people are asking, like, "Is this a 1967 or a 1968?" Because the 1967s offered this feature, and the real collector's items are the 1968s. I'm just picking that up, but with houses, it's the same thing. I remember our realtor saying, "Is this made out of stucco or this other material?" And I'm like, "I don't know what any of that is." Then they asked, "Did you guys spray the insulation or is it like a...?" I'm like, "I don't know what that means." I wish I could see what questions I knew smart people were asking.

Shaan Puri

and I

Sam Parr

wish you could do that live

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

I wish I could... I wish. And then you could have an upvote, an upvote. I think I would like it to be for houses.

Shaan Puri

So, I think, okay, that's interesting. The one that she had said that I thought was pretty cool was hiring through Stonks.com for people. Okay, so how does that work? There's general hiring, which is like a large spectrum. From temp staffing, where I just need an hourly employee to show up today, and then tomorrow they may not come back, to Craigslist. Then you get to LinkedIn and Indeed, which is kind of like the mass market. If I'm a junior or mid-level marketing manager, I might get job opportunities on LinkedIn or Indeed. That might be where I go to look. Then you have AngelList, which is a vertical place. If I want a job in startups, I won't go to Indeed; I'll go to AngelList because that's where the startups hire. That's a job board for startups. Then you have this one really interesting thing: headhunters, who do executive placements. Kind of like, how do you find a CMO? You hire a headhunter, you pay them a ton of money, and then they get a huge cut. So, somewhere in there, I think there's an opportunity to let people hire top talent live, like this. If you were able to essentially create a reverse job interview, instead of me going in to interview...

Sam Parr

This kind of reminds me of... I'll say it though, this kind of sounds like a slave auction.

Shaan Puri

yeah I knew you were gonna say I knew you were gonna go there and actually it makes me

Sam Parr

It makes me a little... this makes me very uncomfortable, actually. Like, is that what we're going to call it? A talent auction?

Shaan Puri

now dude dude it's just yes at will bro it's like you get paid you're at will

Sam Parr

you don't have

Shaan Puri

To do it, it's... right. Like that's like saying employment is slavery. It's not. But there was a website, I don't know if you saw it come out, that was called "Developer Auction." It was controversial for this exact reason. This came up maybe 6 years ago or so. It ended up... it got really hot. So what they were doing was they're saying, "Look..."

Sam Parr

how do developers hire this company

Shaan Puri

It was like part of Y Combinator, or they piggybacked on YC in some way. I don't remember if they were a YC company or not, but what they did was they were like, "We're only going to take developers" or "We're only going to let YC companies hire from this place." So it's like if you're a dev who wants to work for a YC company, come on to Developer Auction. You get the highest dollar bid because these guys have money and they want great devs.

Sam Parr

Which was just a little bit of icing on the douche cake. Like, you're doing an auction. Yeah, you're doing an auction now, and you're doing it only for YC. Yeah, that's the cherry on top of the douchebag cake.

Shaan Puri

The "douche de leche" cake... Yeah, so basically, they kind of did that. What was happening was developers were getting way more money for this, and they also didn't have to go through a multi-week job interviewing process. It was like they would say, "Hey, yeah, I was at Reddit early on, one of the first 40 employees. I worked on the fraud system and this and that. I'm interested in companies doing machine learning," and then boom, job offer! A job offer at a 20% premium. It was like a developer auction. All they had to do was just be like Harvard; they just had to be selective. It's like, "No, not any company can just apply here. We're going to pick." And then, "No, not any developer can apply here. We're going to pick." Now, ultimately, I don't think the model worked because they're not like...

Sam Parr

The biggest thing ever. Now, I think they ended up kind of pivoting or softening it. Well, all talent marketplaces are really hard businesses, I think.

Shaan Puri

to scale yeah yeah to scale

Sam Parr

I think there you could have a lot of... You can be just a recruiter and make $1,000,000 a year. You could be just a job board and make $1,000,000 a year. But if you want to be Hired.com, then it's... I don't know if it can... It's really hard to work.

Shaan Puri

So, I think the trick here is to do it with something that's visual. Okay, "stonks" is cool because it's a live video stream. One question is: in what category does having a visual screen that shows you something work way better than a resume attached to an email or a job board? I think, potentially, designers or even something more niche than that, like 3D designers, video editors, graphics, something like that—this could be maybe how the video game industry hires or something like that. I don't know. There's something there to doing this.

Sam Parr

stuff what she said elaine she said I I don't know

Shaan Puri

I didn't see which exact example she had. She had the example of hiring, and I didn't even read on. I was like, "Yeah, great idea! Let me just rip off that."

Sam Parr

that's pretty interesting

Shaan Puri

So, I thought that was cool. I think there are probably some other areas where you could do that. I think the trick is that normally, the reason livestream products fail is because the viewers you're competing with are people who are just doing this for leisure. They have a ton of options; they could just open TikTok, go for a walk, or do anything else. You need the viewers on the buy side for this to be their job. That's why, actually, real estate or real estate investors could be a good fit. Instead of just focusing on buying a home that they're going to live in, maybe it's about multifamily properties that get auctioned off in this way. As multifamily investors, they would be showing up to buy pieces of that action or something like that.

Sam Parr

I think that'd be cool. I think I told you about a hypothesis I had in 2012. I remember when I was in the apartment business, we had an apartment finder thing. I was like, "I'm pretty sure that it's not that far away that people are going to start renting homes and buying homes without ever seeing them in person." This was before Matterport was around, and I think we're there now. I would buy a house. Would you buy a house without seeing it? No, I would maybe not. I wouldn't mind renting; I for sure would rent a place without seeing it.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

You know, that's what I would buy. But I think there's a world where we're going to buy them soon without ever seeing a house, right?

Shaan Puri

The other one that's kind of all out of left field here is, did you ever watch the Zoom Bachelor that some of our friends did? Sheel was the Zoom Bachelor. Do you ever watch it?

Sam Parr

No, I don't watch that stuff though. Was it awesome? Real sports? Well, I just don't watch reality TV, you know? I watch good stuff.

Shaan Puri

it was like it was like just people doing it it wasn't real tv even but it was basically like

Sam Parr

I know I'm joking

Shaan Puri

Beer Shield, he's an investor. He's single and he's a good guy; we think he's great. So, as a joke, as a kind of lark, they created a live stream and curated a bunch of single women. They were like, "Alright," and in the course of an hour, it was like, "Here's six women." They introduced themselves, he cuts two, and it's like, "Alright, of the four women, now he's going to ask you a question." He asks, "What's your ideal Friday night date? What would we do?" One girl responds, "Oh, I think we would..." whatever.

Sam Parr

how many people will watch

Shaan Puri

There was like, I don't know, 500 people live watching it, which is a pretty big livestream channel.

Sam Parr

pretty good

Shaan Puri

And this was, like, again, it was all kind of done as a joke. It was just friends. I don't think that any of them really wanted to date each other, but it was just to do the show. But maybe there's something like that, right? "The Bachelor" is one of the highest-rated shows ever, and then you see stuff...

Sam Parr

like it out

Shaan Puri

There's like a matchmaker show on Netflix that's called "Indian Matchmaker" or something like that. People pay thousands of dollars to matchmakers to find eligible candidates. That's a niche thing that exists in every city.

Sam Parr

You and I have a friend. You and I have a single friend. For a gift, I nearly bought him a $4,000 matchmaker. I didn't end up going through with it because I don't know if they're going to follow through with this, and that's too much money to spend if they don't do it.

Shaan Puri

and I

Sam Parr

I don't know if they're going to find it insulting, but I interviewed this lady three different times. I'm trying to figure out if this would be the right fit for our friend. I think they're interesting, and I believe more people should use them.

Shaan Puri

So, I think if there was a private version of this that was, you know, more expensive...

Sam Parr

well so now we're talking about auctioning off sex

Shaan Puri

Yes, well, we're talking about auctioning off the things people want, right? So, yeah, it just so happens to be talent, sex, things like that.

Sam Parr

that's cool I'm in this box

Shaan Puri

Ev Williams has said this quote. Ev Williams started Twitter and Blogger before that, and now Medium. He goes, "Here's the recipe for a $1,000,000,000 internet company." Have you heard this quote before? He continues, "Here's the recipe for a $1,000,000,000 internet company: take a human desire, preferably one that's been around for hundreds of years, and use technology to remove steps." That was his whole thing. He said, "That's how I built Blogger, Twitter, and everything else." Twitter took out a bunch of steps for a human desire that people had. I think that's just, you know, it sounds stupidly simple, but it's actually true.

Sam Parr

Let me tell you about something that I saw. I did not research this at all for this talk, but I wanted to bring it up because we were talking about something similar. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to manage this. I bought this farm, and I need to get a manager to help run it. There are these property management companies, but they don't really have the right touch. It's a little sterile. To make this work the way I want it to, I want someone that's a bit more close to it. So, in your brain, in your head, when I think of an outsourced person, what's the image that you get? Can you share that with me?

Shaan Puri

just explain

Sam Parr

That to me... no, no. Just tell me, like, what is outsourcing? A virtual assistant? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I don't know, somebody in the Philippines or India who's, you know, sitting at a desk, typing away for...

Sam Parr

in a call center style environment

Shaan Puri

style exactly

Sam Parr

Okay, now when I say "military spouse," what comes to your mind?

Shaan Puri

A patriot. What attribute is a... what? A woman in America, white, blonde hair, speaks great English, sitting in the comfort of her home office, talking to customers.

Sam Parr

what attributes are there any

Shaan Puri

loyal organized trustworthy things like that

Sam Parr

Exactly. So, there's this company called **Squared Away**. So, Google **Squared Away**.

Shaan Puri

talked about them a year before by the way

Sam Parr

Yes, we have, but I didn't get it. We talked about one episode. We did one episode where we discussed a cool way to come up with the type of company that you want. It's about asking yourself: "Who would you want to hire?" What demographic do you want to hire? So, who do you want to serve?

Shaan Puri

right that's another one right

Sam Parr

yeah who do you

Shaan Puri

Wanna serve? Ultimately, you're going to be serving a customer. It helps a lot if you care about them, understand them, and want more of them to be around you every day.

Sam Parr

so mill go what's it called go squared away

Shaan Puri

I

Sam Parr

don't know why why it's called go squared away or maybe it's just called

Shaan Puri

the business is squared away the domain they just couldn't get squared away.com probably

Sam Parr

and it's the most expend the cheapest tier is $200 for the 5 hours

Shaan Puri

great copy on this website look at this so what that's great

Sam Parr

that's great

Shaan Puri

This... so what's another outsourcing company? Like, can we just find something like Upwork? Let me just Google "outsourcing" or "virtual assistant" for a virtual assistant.

Sam Parr

If they show up on the top of Google, they might have good copywriting. But while you're looking for that, the copywriting on this page—so you go to Squared Away—says, "The best company perk is personal assistance for your entire team." Our team of military spouses gives you your time back, and it's a picture of a lady holding up her sign, waiting for her husband to get off the plane from coming home.

Shaan Puri

This screen, so Ben, open up **flexjobs.com**. This is just a perfect example. FlexJobs is not terrible, right? Like, it showed up at the top of Google. It's not a... I don't... I've never used the service. I'm not saying that. I'm saying just the website. It's not horrible, but it's not special, and it doesn't make you feel anything, right? So I...

Sam Parr

can't read it

Shaan Puri

So, just compare the feelings, okay? If you're on, you should be watching on YouTube to be able to see this. If I go to FlexJobs, I see this kind of blue and orange tacky site with stock photos of literally men and women in corporate outfits.

Sam Parr

running away

Shaan Puri

Running away... like doing a ballet leap away from you. Then it says, "The number one job site to find vetted remote work from home and flexible job opportunities since 2007." Just that. Okay, great. And then it's like Good Morning America, CNN, Wall Street Journal, whatever. Okay, so this is... it's okay. The headline is "Find a Better Way to Work." Generic, vague... doesn't make me feel anything. This doesn't do it. Now, go back to GoSquared Away. What do they say? "The best company perk: personal assistance for your entire team." So already, they're selling the benefit. You, who's coming here, is probably looking to hire a personal assistant. They focus on framing it as "this is the best perk you can offer your employees," instead of just saying "find a personal assistant," which assumes you already know or want one. They sell you the benefit of having a personal assistant, that you're providing the best perk for your team. Then they have this black and white photo of a military mom holding a child's hand with a sign, you know, like "I'm thinking of you, Daddy," as he leaves for the plane. She's at an airport hangar, right? It's an emotional scene. She seems like somebody you would want to support. You would love to help this woman out. She seems like someone you would want, not like, you know, this stock photo of a corporate person running away from you.

Sam Parr

How crazy is that? This is beautiful branding. I don't know how many people are in the military, but a military spouse is not that rare. I may hire these people for doing all types of jobs, and they are a military spouse. But as soon as they brand it as "I’m a military spouse," I’m like, "Oh, well, you definitely are a good person." Exactly! Even though that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a great person, for some reason, I think, "Dude, you’re a good person."

Shaan Puri

Bringing this company up... yeah, right. Bonus points! Yeah, you're... you know, you get free virtue for having brought this company up as something cool.

Sam Parr

is this beautiful branding or what like why why did we even why did we talk about this before

Shaan Puri

We talked about it before. The same thing we were discussing regarding the stay-at-home mom workforce and how to tap into that labor market, which is underutilized. There is excess talent that is looking for a job. We talked about what could be done with stay-at-home moms, and then we brought this up. They actually shared the clip because they were like, "Hey, this was cool! We got featured on this thing." That's how I remember that we've talked about it before. But I don't know how we got here. What were you talking about? So, you were talking about the...

Sam Parr

oh I don't I don't remember we are we I think you're talking about like talent

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Like talent marketplaces, I was... and I just, I didn't even... I signed up for what’s it called? Get Squared Away. I entered the information and I'm waiting for them to call me back. But I signed up because when I went to it, I was like, "Oh my God, I'm in love! I want to hire this woman in the picture. I need her to..."

Shaan Puri

I hire... if I use the service, it washes away the fact that I don't do compost and I forgot to recycle that.

Sam Parr

I feel like the woman is just going to have my back so hard. She's just going to show so much loyalty.

Shaan Puri

she's not your spouse dude

Sam Parr

No, but she's my partner. That's how I feel. I just thought they don't... this website, I've never seen. I've never felt this way about a job. Wow.

Shaan Puri

Oh, Jonathan brought it up. "Managing your ranch," you were saying. You might use this instead, or it just kind of reminded you that nobody's doing that in the product management space. It's about making you feel the way that this makes you feel about assistance. Is that right?

Sam Parr

I don't even remember the angle that I had but yes I think I'm gonna use this to manage my ranch but I thought I thought that'd be

Shaan Puri

Cool company and a good example of a landing page. Alright, so let's go to another one. Can I tell you... or I'll do a quick one. I just want to get your take on this. So, I follow this guy, and I don't know if this is his name because it sounds like a fake name. I've been talking to him, and I just sort of realized I don't know if this is his real name. His Twitter handle is "Pure Rich," and I don't know if his name is Pure Rich. His name is Al Capalas. His name is Pierre Richlson. His name is Pierre Richelson. Pierre Richelson, so that's his name. Anyways, he's another guy who tried a talent marketplace and now has pivoted to something sweet. Initially, he had a Y Combinator (YC) company, and it didn't work out. They just needed money, and they were like, "Yo, we just shut down our company. You can hire us. We're a YC duo. You can just hire us to do a project for you as contractors for like 2 weeks." It costs money, but you're getting a YC founder duo. Where can you hire that?

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

And I was like, "Dude, this is fucking amazing!" I would love to hire Y Combinator (YC) founder duos. If you think about it, maybe 20, 30, or 40% of YC companies are going to shut down. Those people might just go get jobs, but actually, it might be cool for them to continue to brand themselves as a YC company and as YC founders. They could be available for hire. So, they did that for a little bit, and I thought that was cool. That's how I got in touch with them. Now, he's doing something called Cal.com. Have you seen this? It's a competitor to Calendly.

Sam Parr

cal.com.com great

Shaan Puri

domain just c a l

Sam Parr

alright alright so scheduling infrastructure for absolutely everyone

Shaan Puri

So basically, what they are is... we've talked about Calendly before. Calendly basically gives you a link that's a calendar where somebody can book you. That's great for a salesperson who's like, "Hey, yeah, we'd love to chat about how we might be able to help you out. Here's a link to my calendar; grab a time that works for you." It lets you pick a time, emails both of you a calendar invite, and takes care of the whole booking process. So, Calendly has become like a **$1,000,000,000+** company.

Sam Parr

recently like

Shaan Puri

$2,000,000,000 company. Aren't they like... weren't they bootstrapped for like a really long time or something crazy? They had like...

Sam Parr

Yeah, the guy was an African immigrant who bootstrapped it for about $20,000,000 in revenue. He raised around $1,000,000,000 and then recently raised another round at about $2,000,000,000 or $3,000,000,000.

Shaan Puri

Or four. So that business is working. I think cal.com is a great competitor, so I'm going to invest in this because I believe in the model they're doing, which is commercial open-source software. So, Calendly is not open source, but cal.com is. What does that mean? It means you can: a) Read the source code, and b) Self-host it. A lot of companies don't want their data and information in the hands of another company. They like to be able to self-host the software they're using and also be able to fork it or remix it in some way that is customizable to them. These guys are growing fast. I switched over from Calendly, and now I use cal.com.

Sam Parr

is it awesome

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's a sick product. You could embed these on your website. So, if you have a website, you're like, "I don't know." You give people... you're a lawyer, and you need people. Instead of saying, "Here's a contact us form, and then one of our humans will reach out to you, and then we'll try to schedule a time," by that time, you already forgot how interested you are. So, what this does is say, "Dude, just embed your booking calendar right here." It reads your existing calendar, so it won't let anybody book a time that's already taken. You could set up rules, like, "Don't do meetings. I need a minimum 10-minute gap in between meetings," or whatever, right? You set some rules, and you just embed that right here. So, in the heat of the moment, when somebody's interested, you can grab that lead right away to get them booked for a meeting.

Sam Parr

do but how do you use it you're not a company you're just

Shaan Puri

A guy uses it for various purposes. If I'm going to invest in a startup or if I'm talking to a founder, I might say, "Hey, yeah, we'd love to chat sometime next week." Alright, you know, here's my calendar. Feel free to grab any time that works for you. Some people find that offensive, whatever. I know people are too sensitive about things like that. I'm just trying to be flexible for the other person to pick whatever time works for them without requiring a back-and-forth email exchange or pawning them off to my assistant, who will take it from there. You'll have to email them four times to find a time that works. So, I use it for that. I'll also use it for random meetings. I'll have a Calendly link, just like backslash Sean, and I'll set up one hour of random meetings once per month that anybody on the internet can book. These are ways that I add a little randomness and serendipity into my life in a controlled fashion regarding when it can happen.

Sam Parr

Dude, this is cool! They did a really funny flex. If you go to the website, you see a thing that says "Claim your username." When you refresh consistently, you see different names in the auto-filled example. It's all people who are well-known and I bet are investors of the company. You see that and you're like, "Oh, well, James Bachero is a naval [officer]."

Shaan Puri

those guys are they are investors it's good

Sam Parr

yeah ain't that funny how they did that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's cool. I think there, if you look, by the way, this is a common model. There's a closed source winner and there's an open source winner for a bunch of different categories in software. So this is just a very simple way to find good deals. If you missed out or you see a great company that's completely closed source, just Google for the commercial open source company. If they have a great team behind them, there's usually a separate segment of the market that's quite large that they can go attack just by going from this open source, self-hosted model.

Sam Parr

these guys have exploded they went from like nothing to a lot of traffic

Shaan Puri

they're they're growing fast yeah you should invest too I'll I can introduce you

Sam Parr

yeah do it I would love I love this stuff can we talk about the bitcoin thing please

Shaan Puri

yeah let's do it by the way I didn't even say his idea

Sam Parr

alright

Shaan Puri

that that whole thing wasn't even a fake

Sam Parr

oh what's the idea

Shaan Puri

Tweeted that he goes, "I wish somebody built this," called the Anywhere School. I think this is just kind of interesting. So he goes, the Anywhere School is for people who want to travel the world but don't want their kids' education to suffer. Here's how it goes: he put out just like a one-page memo of just like, "Here's what it would be if anyone's building this. You know, take this and run with it and let me know." What it was is like you join a classroom, but it's a traveling classroom around the world. So the classroom's going to be like, "We're going to spend three months this year in Paris, three months in Bali, and three months in wherever, you know, like Thailand, and three months in South Africa." The family and the kids go with it. So the kids get a consistent structure. The teacher stays the same, their friends stay the same, but they get to experience a year of world travel. It's for people who want to travel but don't want to wait or don't want to trade off their kids' stability and education. I actually think that's a kind of a cool idea. I don't think this is like a huge, huge business; maybe it's bigger than I think. But I just think that's awesome and that should exist. So, the Anywhere School.

Sam Parr

pretty neat

Shaan Puri

that's a dopamine

Sam Parr

On board. I also think that's a... I was Googling "anywhere school" and there's nothing interesting.

Shaan Puri

great great name right

Sam Parr

I think it's a great name

Shaan Puri

it's a great name okay let's let's do the big one then

Sam Parr

For school, wait really quick. Before we get to that, what were you going to say about Strauss Zelnick?

Shaan Puri

dude you guys love this so you you know

Sam Parr

I know I know

Shaan Puri

so do you do you do explain who

Sam Parr

he is so there's this guy named so there's this guy named strauss

Shaan Puri

how do

Sam Parr

you pronounce that last name

Shaan Puri

I think is right

Sam Parr

Zelnick, I'm just doing this off memory, so correct me if I'm wrong. I think he's the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, which is basically the owner or creator of Grand Theft Auto and like eight other games that are of that caliber. So, it's maybe like a $5 to $10 billion a year company that owns some of the biggest video games in the world. He's probably in his mid to late fifties and he looks like a G.I. Joe. He's this jacked dude who gets up at like 5 AM in New York and works out really hard. A lot of people are invited to go work out with him, but it's all like high-caliber, get-after-it type of boxing.

Shaan Puri

Right, so he created a kind of... I call it the "Breakfast Club," but it's basically a morning workout club. Ben, you can Google this. There's a YouTube video called "Strauss Zelnick's Invitation Only Fitness Club." It's a 2-minute video, so it's really easy to watch. You can see, basically, when you go to it, he says, "I made a decision that I was going to treat fitness as an important part of my schedule." So, like, okay, I'm a CEO. If I had a board meeting, I'm not going to skip it or move it because I'm feeling tired, right? So he's like, "I'm going to treat fitness the same way that I would treat a meeting or family time or whatever. I'm going to put it as first-order importance." Then he's like, "But you know, how do I juice this up?" I'm a big fan of this; it's a big life hack, which is to multiply activities. You know, like, I've done this before too. You want to hang out with cool people or have friends, but you only have maybe one hour of recreation a day. So are you going to choose fitness or friends? Well, even better, let me just find friends who like fitness and let's work out together, right? You do this all the time; I do this too. So what he did was he was like, "Alright, we're going to wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning in New York, and we're going to go somewhere and do a different fitness-related activity." It doesn't matter how fit you are, although the pictures they share show that everybody's got, like, a six-pack.

Sam Parr

everyone's jacked

Shaan Puri

And then it's called "the program." It's basically a mix of networking, friends hanging out, and fitness all at once. But instead of being kind of each of those, that's the wrong way to say it. It's like 100% of each of those because when you work out with somebody...

Sam Parr

it's like the new york banker style of doing this

Shaan Puri

And so, they get up and do something different every day. He would pay for it, saying, "Alright, if we're doing this activity, money is not going to be the object that stops somebody from doing this. I'll just cover it for our whole group, and we'll just go do whatever the heck activity we want to do." The guy is in great shape. He's like, "Oh, I love it because I get to hang out with a bunch of really interesting, motivated people—kind of 20 or 30-year-olds—that are pushing me to be more fit and not be the old man." Also, these are really talented, ambitious people who see the world differently than I do. I thought this was just a fantastic idea. Bev's telling me a friend of a friend of a friend of his was doing it.

Sam Parr

I was invited when I was in New York, but for some reason, the scheduling didn't work out. I couldn't go. Yeah, they came up early.

Shaan Puri

Well, that's the beauty of it, right? So how do you prevent this from being just the moochers who show up and just want the networking and all that? You make it at 6 AM and you make the fitness thing kind of hard. Ugh, that's the filter that will self-select the type of person you want to be around for this kind of thing.

Sam Parr

I just hate working out at 6 am I hate working out

Shaan Puri

I don't know all about it because like you know the harder the better for you

Sam Parr

I, yeah, like I would go, but the problem with my issue with working out at 6 AM means I've got to wake up at like 5:20. This means I've got to go to bed at like 9. If I have to go to bed at 9, I'm in bed at 9, and I'm so anxious, thinking to myself, "If I don't go to sleep now, I'm not going to be able to wake up." I get so anxious about waking up early that it makes it not fun to do.

Shaan Puri

Totally, totally. You know what I mean? I hate that I don't work out early. I work out as a midday break every day. So, I...

Sam Parr

work out like that too

Shaan Puri

3 PM every day, and actually, I pretty much stopped working at that time. Then I come back and start working again at like 11 PM or midnight. I don't have to wake up early, and I have a bunch of energy when I do that. But the takeaway for this, for me, the voice in my head when I heard this was, "Oh yeah, I forgot. Sean, build your cult." I think that's just the takeaway.

Sam Parr

I think

Shaan Puri

That's true. You gotta build your cult. It's like, do the things you want to do. Open them up so that others can do them with you. Do them in a way that's slightly hard, and everybody's making a bit of a stretch in some way because that's the sacrifice and the buy-in, the blood oath that you want in your cult. And like, just build your cult. Be around the type of person you want to be around.

Sam Parr

dude this is this is why an example

Shaan Puri

building your cult that's a great example

Sam Parr

I was doing it

Shaan Puri

then I'm like I was like general assembly guy what did he do daybreaker

Sam Parr

yeah daybreaker it was like a 5 am party with no alcohol

Shaan Puri

I want to start my day and keep all of it in a bunch of energy. Dance, blah blah blah, but I don't want alcohol in music. I don't like nightclubs, so I'm going to build my own cult.

Sam Parr

that's awesome

Shaan Puri

alright did you have anything else you wanted to do or should we wrap it sounds good