This Year's Best Twitter Accounts to Follow

Sam Parr

Like they used a thumbnail that made me look stupid or a title that made me sound like an idiot. I was like, "Ben, I don't like that." And he goes, "Oh, you thought that selling out to the algorithm was gonna feel good?" Alright, we're live! Let's do this. You wanna get right into Twitter or no?

Shaan Puri

yeah let's get into twitter

Sam Parr

Wait, let me tell you something really quick. I just remembered I was going to tell you about this. I did a body fat scan the other day... yesterday.

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

bad news for all of us man

Shaan Puri

why what happened

Sam Parr

I was 15%

Shaan Puri

why is that for all of us because if you're 15%

Sam Parr

If I'm 15%... like, if I'm 15%, that sucks for everyone else. I felt like I was like 11.

Shaan Puri

That's just because people bullshit. Like, people who are like 6% body fat, and then doctors are like, "No, you are not 6% body fat. You would be, you know, sick if you were 6% body fat." That's just not the case. So I think what people say is 6 to 8% body fat is actually 12 to 15%, or like 12 to 14% or something like that. I think 15% is great. I was 26 the last time I did a DEXA scan—26 or 27, something like that. My goal was actually... I don't even remember what it was. I think maybe my goal was to get under 25%. I was 28 or something like that.

Sam Parr

I was amazed at how high mine was

Shaan Puri

I do it every 3 months

Sam Parr

That's good. I was amazed at how high mine was because I don't feel completely ripped, but I feel fit. I don't have a stomach anymore, and it was still 15. I was shocked.

Shaan Puri

We've all seen the picture. If you go to my Twitter, we've all seen the picture. You're ripped! You're actually the perfect amount of ripped because, you know, there's obnoxiously ripped where you look like, "Oh man, this guy just..." It's like a girl who's got hair extensions, eyelash extensions, nail extensions, and tons of makeup caked on. It's like, "Oh, they're sort of trying too hard." It's like a high-maintenance person that I don't really want to go out to dinner with because you're just going to order broccoli and, you know, raw chicken or whatever. So, you know, you're like the right amount where it's like, "Oh man, he might live an active lifestyle." Like maybe he surfs, and maybe that's why it doesn't look like someone who is, you know, a gym bro who just lives in the gym for four hours a day and everything centers around that in their life.

Sam Parr

Well, the... is that it just shocked me at 15%. But I just wanted to let you know that that happened. You know, let's talk about... Alright, so we're going to talk about.

Shaan Puri

you're officially canceled as a fitness influencer you can't be a fitness influencer at 15%

Sam Parr

I know 12 is okay anything above 12 I I gotta get my shit together let's well you

Shaan Puri

could do it you could just do it as the start of your fitness journey

Sam Parr

is this this am I I'm still a before I feel like

Shaan Puri

now you're a before

Sam Parr

I feel like I've been a before picture for the past 5 years I'm still a before

Shaan Puri

F***, damn! No, we... we already said there's "before before." I'm a "before before," and then there's a "before." You're a "before" now. No, I'm just kidding. You're... you're more like an "after." I'm now a "before," but I was a "before before." You just gotta know your system. You just gotta know the ranking system. It's not about body fat percentage. Alright, let's get into it.

Sam Parr

alright so we're gonna what's the what's the topic of what's the the title of this segment

Shaan Puri

The title of the segment is "Sam and Sean Cross 1,000,000 Downloads a Month for the Podcast." They get intoxicated by the growth. We're on pace for 1.3 million right now, smashing old record highs of 900,000. With this intoxicating growth, they say, "We're gonna whore out, double down, and we're gonna make a list." So, we're going to do list episodes. That's what's actually happening here. Now, what list did we decide to start with? Well, we didn't go with an ultra tantalizing, ultra drama-filled list to begin with. We're going with our favorite Twitter followers. I think we're gonna have like 12... is it 12 total? So, our 12 Twitter follows that we recommend. Now, these are gonna be, I think in most cases, not the obvious people. So, you're not gonna... my goal is even there's a lot of people that aren't even on Twitter. So, if you're not on Twitter, maybe start or not. You know, just subscribe to my "5 Tweet Tuesday" newsletter if you're not doing that. If you're on Twitter, I bet at least half of these are gonna be people you don't already follow. That's my guess, that's my goal. If we do this right, they should be kind of under the radar rising stars. We're gonna talk about why we like these people's feeds and some stuff that we've seen from them that's pretty cool. So, we'll go back and forth. Let's start with candidate number 1. Are we going in order of like... no, best?

Sam Parr

okay so mine are a little bit more popular than yours so okay

Shaan Puri

are you gonna go how many do you have you have 5

Sam Parr

no I only have 3

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

I was like researching well no here's the problem I was

Shaan Puri

bonus from sam

Sam Parr

I was researching. I was trying to find ones that people, the ones I love, are people that everyone knows. But... and so I was...

Shaan Puri

Trying... well, you might have to bring up a few, or I think when I say some, you're gonna think of others just based off that. Okay, so we're just gonna name about 12 of them, and we're gonna go back and forth. Let's trade off until Sam runs out. I'll go first because you're gonna run out faster otherwise. So, the first person on my list of Twitter people I think you should follow is Post Market. Do you follow Post Market? It's @post_market.

Sam Parr

No, do I? By the way, you follow thousands of people. I followed, up until recently, I was following 0 people—literally 0. Now it's like 40.

Shaan Puri

be cool

Sam Parr

I just I was getting addicted

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I have a list, and this person's on my list. It's a post market account; it is an anonymous account, or like a pseudonymous account, I should say. So it's not like this is their real name or whatever. **Post_underscore_market**. We're going to put the full list in the description of this podcast, so if you want to find them, you can do that. Or maybe what we'll do is create a Twitter list that you can just subscribe to. That might be easier. So, who's this person? I don't know what they do by day, but there's something in the financial world—stock, you know, a trader, hedge fund person. I don't know what it says exactly in their bio, but basically what they do is they have hot takes on the market. And it's not like hot takes like CNBC, where it's like, "Oh, you know, the Dow is up 5.6." It's like, basically, they'll take a stock and they'll just rip it to shreds if it doesn't make any sense. For example, one of the stocks they were criticizing right now is something called **Grove Collaborative**. I don't know if you saw this; it was like a D2C brand. It was one of the winning D2C brands, a unicorn. It goes public, and then here's the tweet: > "Please make it stop. Here's a mostly D2C organic cleaning products business. It's doing 6% revenue growth at a $2,000,000,000 valuation, has no plan to make profits anytime soon, and a greater than 5x sales multiple. Grove Collaborative, not gonna make it." Then it basically pulls out things from their investor presentation that show a fairly slow growth, low margin business that is overvalued.

Sam Parr

what does grow collaborative make I've never even heard of that

Shaan Puri

They're kind of like a subscription, almost like a Whole Foods or Costco type of model, where you can go buy products from them, I believe.

Sam Parr

and what in our what valuation are they trying to get

Shaan Puri

I was not trying to get... they're publicly traded at, you know, $22,000,000,000 or whatever.

Sam Parr

yikes okay that's that's what they find

Shaan Puri

And so, this person, because they're pseudonymous, can just kind of talk about whatever they want. They don't really pull any punches. They'll go after people like Chamath. Most people are kind of afraid to poke the bear in a way, but Chamath, in reality, had a bunch of really bad SPACs where he made a lot of money. People who invested in his SPACs, on the whole, just got ripped to shreds this year. This post-market account will call out basically bad stocks and bad behavior across the board in the stock market. I like that. For example, our buddy Moise tweeted something. He said, "Honest Company went public in 2021. It raised $400 million that day. The shares closed at a valuation of $2.7 billion. Since that day, it's lost $2 billion in value and is now worth less than $800 million." Then he says, "Public markets are brutal. Be careful if you IPO." Post-market replied, "Public markets are not brutal; private markets are a facade." I like the hot takes, I like the intelligence, and I like that they don't pull punches.

Sam Parr

Alright, I like this one. Yeah, I'm gonna subscribe. I'm gonna follow. Alright, I'm gonna give you one. Some of mine are popular, but I'm gonna give you three examples of why I like them. Ramit Sethi, do you follow Ramit on Twitter?

Shaan Puri

I don't follow actually I do follow him on twitter yeah so there's came on the pod I was following

Sam Parr

There are two reasons why he's amazing. The first is when people criticize him, he'll sometimes say, "That's a good criticism." Other times, he'll be like, "No, you're an idiot for these following reasons."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And he also... that's reason number one. He's an entertaining fellow. Reason number two is he tweets out loads of personal finance stuff. He'll find an article that's going viral, and if he disagrees with it, which oftentimes he does, he'll explain why it's "bullshit." For example, a lot of people, particularly those who aren't necessarily wealthy, have financial advisors who charge 1%. He'll tweet out a whole thread about why that's total bullshit and why you shouldn't pay a 1% adviser. The second thing everyone talks about is buying a home and how it's a wonderful investment. He'll tweet out this awesome math saying, "No, buying a home is not an investment." Buying a home is like buying a car or something like that, where you should just use it and not do it for financial reasons because, more often than not, it's not a good investment at all. Finally, he's got this really cool tweet on how to automate money. I actually linked to it in that sheet, and I set up my accounts based on that tweet. So, what do...

Shaan Puri

you mean by how to automate money what does that mean

Sam Parr

So, click... I believe it was this one where it says how he... like where the money goes. For example, where do you have your bank account set up? So like a percentage goes here, a percentage goes there? Or like your paycheck? "No, really. So where's your money go to?"

Shaan Puri

well I don't get a paycheck

Sam Parr

But you get paid for the HubSpot podcast. You get paid for your business. So where does your income go? Straight to a checking account?

Shaan Puri

Straight to a checking account, and then your boy moves it into whatever investments I want to make. Really? Yeah.

Sam Parr

I think you need to read some Ruby to set these up. The way it should work is that all your money should go... or not. You could do it however you want. Although, the way oftentimes I think is easier: your money should go to a checking account, and then it takes money out. Let's say that you have a really simple setup. Put this much in Wealthfront, put this much in a mutual fund, and put this much...

Shaan Puri

What do you even use to do that? I don't even know if it's a possibility that you can automate the clawing out of your checking into various other services.

Sam Parr

you could do it with coinbase if you wanted to you could do an automatic thing for coinbase

Shaan Puri

Oh, you go, okay. So what you do is you go into those services. You go into Wealthfront and you say, "I'd like to do an auto saver plan," and you just ACH connect.

Sam Parr

Yeah, exactly. You just set it up so it's automated. It's basically based off of your monthly income. Roughly, you want this much cash in your checking account at all times, and it's automatic. You kind of know the intervals of when you're going to get cash, so you just funnel it into the account.

Shaan Puri

So, one of the reasons I didn't do that was because, when I was at my last job at Twitch, one of the major sources of income was just stock RSUs that were going into Amazon stock automatically. That was already there, and I wasn't selling because my basis for when we got acquired was lower than the amount at the RSU grant. I didn't want to sell and rebalance because it was going to trigger taxes on those gains as the price cap.

Sam Parr

have you sold any of those shares

Shaan Puri

have I sold yeah I sold a small amount maybe 15%

Sam Parr

are you ever gonna sell any of them

Shaan Puri

I hope not. Yeah, I'm on that "big borrow die" shit now. So, you know, that's the new game plan.

Sam Parr

it's awesome right

Shaan Puri

Yes, it's awesome... till it's not awesome. That's probably the right answer, like most things. Okay, I'm just gonna read these Ramit's money rules: 1. Have 1 year of emergency fund cash. Okay, fair enough. I don't, but yeah. 2. You can save 10% and invest 20% of your gross income. Do you do that or do you do a higher [percentage]?

Sam Parr

much higher

Shaan Puri

Yeah, pay cash for large expenses. **20% down minimum on a house.** Okay, fair enough. Yes.

Sam Parr

I do that

Shaan Puri

Never question spending money on books, appetizers, health, or donating to a friend's charity fundraiser. I agree completely. Business class for flights over 4 hours? I agree completely. No limit for spending on health or education? I agree completely. Buy the best and keep it for as long as possible? I disagree with that. I either buy the best or I buy extremely cheap, disposable items where I don't have any stress about it because I didn't invest hoping it was going to be the best.

Sam Parr

like a razor

Shaan Puri

I... it's like a barbell. I'll give you an example. For Black Friday, there's this brand called 32 Degrees. Do you know them?

Sam Parr

no what is it

Shaan Puri

Costco, they're like the Costco brand of Under Armour or Nike, something like that. I'm gonna...

Sam Parr

buy stuff from that now is it awesome they make

Shaan Puri

They make athletic wear, and it's actually pretty good. However, I don't think it lasts as long as Lululemon. It doesn't last as long as...

Sam Parr

gym shark

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like it's just not gonna have that same durability, but I like their stuff. I like it when I wear it, and it fits well for me. So, for Black Friday, they have this insane deal where everything goes down like 85%. They just want to move all their inventory. You'll go buy whatever, like athletic wear, you know, like a hoodie or a fitted long sleeve shirt, and it'll be like $4.99. So, I just load up. I buy almost $1,000 worth of 32 Degrees stuff that day. You could just see on my floor here, there's just a pile. The boxes came, and there's piles coming out, like it's as if I'm a wholesaler for them. I'll buy like 15 of the pants I like, and I'll buy like 25 of the shirts I like. Because of that, I don't worry about losing anything, getting a stain on anything, or something wearing out. It's like, no, I bought this.

Sam Parr

so much laundry you have to do though

Shaan Puri

gotta clean it for the laundry bro

Sam Parr

alright alright you're good alright your turn

Shaan Puri

I know it's bad for the environment. The real argument is that it's terrible for the environment, and like, you know, fair enough. But you know, birds gotta fly. So here we go. Here are his last two, his last three rules: 1. **Earn enough to work only with the people I respect and like.** I think that's a great rule. 2. **Marry the right person.** Okay, fair enough. It doesn't seem like a money rule, but I get it. 3. **Prioritize time outside the spreadsheet.** What does that mean?

Sam Parr

So, like, when you're... I do have a problem with this all the time. I'm constantly optimizing my finances. I have a spreadsheet with all my net worth, and I'll do different scenarios. Like, "Oh, in 5 years, if this happens, we're going to be here. If it goes worst-case scenario, we're going to be here. Therefore, we should do this, this, and this." So I'm like constantly tinkering with it. I'm like, "Oh, if you only spend 3% of your net worth over this many years, but it grows by this, that means by the time we're 50, we're going to have this."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and gotcha that takes like that's it takes up so much time it's so fun though

Shaan Puri

I see. And also, this wealth advisor thing... So, we both have the same adviser, but he doesn't charge us any fee, right? Correct?

Sam Parr

no we he only gets paid if we buy some of the funds that he's gonna sell us right

Shaan Puri

okay fair enough

Sam Parr

it's pretty sick right

Shaan Puri

it's just I think that's kind of a hack I think that's that's a pretty good hack

Sam Parr

I think it's a great deal

Shaan Puri

Okay, so let's do another person. We have Post Market, we have Vermeet. I'm gonna do another one... Let me do... Okay, I'm gonna give you a double dose because they're kinda the same type of account. So, my buddy George Mac, and then there's this account called Marketing Examples. Do you follow these?

Sam Parr

no what is this one marketing examples

Shaan Puri

So, **Marketing Examples**. This guy, I would say, is one of the best content creators on the internet. What's the handle? I think it's just **@MarketingExamples**.

Sam Parr

is it good is it harry's marketing example

Shaan Puri

so there's this guy harry dry

Sam Parr

Harry Dry. He works with us sometimes. I think I discovered him a long time ago, and we tried hiring him, but it didn't work out. However, we love him.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I really, really respect... I don't know this person. I don't know him well. I've DM'd him, just kind of showing respect. I don't think most people know him; he's not widely known. He's young and respected. You know, there's like the circle jerk of like, we all kind of like the same things in the same circles.

Sam Parr

I think he's like 18 or 19

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think he's probably a little older than that, but whatever he is, he's amazing. His content is so good. I find that most people, when I see their content, I'm sort of cocky where I'm like, "I could do better." But when I see his stuff, I say, "Oh, I should be copying the things he's doing." That's a very, very high compliment in my book. I want to copy your work because I think you're doing such a good job. So, I think his account is really great. Then there's George Mack, who is similar. George Mack basically tweets out cool marketing hacks, mental models, and interesting stories. He's really, really good as well. He's also kind of outside the scene, meaning he wasn't a Silicon Valley person. He's not a founder or VC who is super well connected in this area, but I think he has earned a lot of people's Twitter respect. You know, he's probably got, I don't know, like 70,000 followers, maybe 100,000. I don't know what it is. So, George is really good too. They are the ones I would say to follow if you want examples of what good content marketing is, as well as marketing and psychology hacks, which is what I would call them.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this guy Harry Drey has some of the best stuff. He just basically takes landing pages and says, "This is why this is good." He does it very simply.

Shaan Puri

have you seen his his kanye west thing

Sam Parr

what did he do I I remember something like that

Shaan Puri

So, Ben, pull this up. Go to the **kanyeweststory.com**; I think that's what it's called. So basically, this is like a blog post that he just tricked out. It's like Exhibit knocked on the door and was there to pimp his blog. Maybe I got the domain wrong; maybe it's not the right one.

Sam Parr

it's the

Shaan Puri

KanyeStory.com. Yeah, the KanyeStory.com. It's basically this epic website blog post that's just like a scrolling story about the day he got in touch with Kanye West and how it all went down. It starts with this epic photo of Kanye that you scroll through. It's like a slide, from lying in bed with zero ideas to negotiating with the biggest superstar on planet Earth. Then, it has this little outline on the left: the idea going viral, coding it, launching it, reborn, billboards, Yeezy. Those are the chapters of this story. He just tells a great, very simple hustler story. I love the domain and the way he designed this blog. Again, this guy's an artist, and I really respect him. When I come up with ideas, I think I use him as one of my mood boards of inspiration—something that I'll copy or at least steal inspiration from.

Sam Parr

this kid's amazing yeah he's he's 25 years old I was way off I think when we

Shaan Puri

I want to do something. I want to launch something with this guy. I don't know... my new thing is that I find people who are just awesome and I find an excuse to collaborate with them. I would put both George and Harry in that bucket. Alright, your turn.

Sam Parr

Alright, we're going to go with the pessimistic... what's this called? The pessimist... what's the full one? The Pessimist Archive! That's what it's called. The handle is like just "pessimistic" or "pessimist." So basically, what it is, is it's incredibly fascinating because it's a Twitter handle that looks back at history and brings up topics that people complain about today. For example, there's a tweet from November 16, 1918, or a news article that says, "I would rather spend the rest of my life in jail than wear one," and it's talking about a guy who doesn't want to wear a flu mask. Then there's another example of someone saying, "Oh, here's a quote from Martin Luther King saying, you know, there's too many books out there. People are trying to write too much and become famous." It's basically him talking about influencers, and it's kind of funny.

Shaan Puri

this is great

Sam Parr

There will be another one where it's like technology is just going to kill our brains. They're referring to a telephone, and so it's real. If you read just the tweet part, you would think that they're talking about now. But then they show you a different year and a picture of the article, and it's from a newspaper from the 1800s. It's kind of cool because people complain about the same issues all the time. You might think, "Oh, our country is more divided than ever," or "The wealth gap is crazy." It's the same problems, the same narratives. All those things could be true, but oftentimes, people think it's worse than ever before. Maybe that's not the case because people have been complaining about the same issues forever.

Shaan Puri

Okay, there's one with school shooters. It's like, you know, these guys were addicted to books. They were reading these gory books, and that's why they shot up their local town. Instead of video games, they're blaming the novels, the dime novels, whatever those are.

Sam Parr

And it really... my takeaway here is two things. The first thing is that we, as human beings, often react the same way through the centuries. If you study why people react the way they do, you can begin to predict this. So, if I can figure out in history what have been some of the common reactions to actions X, Y, and Z, I can kind of look into the future or at the present time and say, "Okay, I think people are going to react by doing blank, blankety blank," because that's just how we're wired. The second thing it does is it brings you to your senses a little bit, where you're like, "Okay, I need to be calm." People have complained about this literally for 150 years, and we're doing okay. So, that's interesting. I was reading this book, *Human Nature* by Robert Greene. I don't know if you've read this or not, but I'm almost positive that somewhere in this book, it said that one of the very first bits of written language that they found was of people complaining about the younger generation and how they aren't going to keep the cultures or traditions that the older generation has created. You know what I mean? So, this idea of old people complaining about young people being lazy... it's one of the very first pieces of evidence of written language. It was a story of complaining about that. So anyway, I like seeing those patterns. That's mine.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's you know what's what's the phrase history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

And that's like what this account is, you know, in a nutshell. There are some really great ones on this. I have a similar stash in my swipe file that I've been keeping for years. I kind of forgot to update it recently, but it was called "Smart People Saying Dumb Things." That's a good one too. Anytime somebody who is clearly smart and successful says something that is very wrong. For example, you know, Warren Buffett was very, very dismissive of certain technologies, like, you know, Bitcoin today. But before that, he dismissed internet technology stocks because he just didn't understand them. Therefore, he made some disparaging comments.

Sam Parr

like ray dalio predicting like a crisis in the eighties

Shaan Puri

Yeah, or you know, Steve Ballmer laughing and saying, "Nobody will ever buy a $1,000 phone." They just don't get it. Apple, you know, Apple will fail or whatever. So I did that partly because, in the moment, there's like a junk food fun of it, which is like, "Yes, wrong!" There's a joy when somebody successful is pointed out to be very wrong about something. But there's more than that. The real reason I did it was to remind myself that it's very easy to kind of go into hero worship mode and to idolize certain people or put them on a pedestal. Just because you're smart in one thing doesn't mean you're smart in another. Or just because you're right a lot doesn't mean you're right all the time. It's a very important lesson because I made big mistakes. For example, I think I've missed out. I bought Tesla stock very early on. I think I bought it under $100 a share. If you adjust for the splits, I think it's now over $5,000 a share. So I think I would have made about $5,000,000 on a stock buy that I had, really, if I just held. And the reason I didn't hold wasn't because I wanted to take profits. It was because I got spooked by... first, there was like a lot of people at a given time that were called Tesla Q. Do you know about that?

Sam Parr

was that the thing where they said that like the it's fake like the factories are fake

Shaan Puri

It's not that the factories are fake, but that there's sort of fraud and deception. The fundamentals don't make sense, and that Tesla's gonna go to zero. Tesla will change.

Sam Parr

the guy like spreading those yes

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, Josh, there were mostly anonymous accounts on Twitter and Reddit. I would read them and think, "Okay, I always want to learn what the other side is saying." I was so bullish on Tesla. At that time, Tesla wasn't even anywhere near where it is today. So, it was like, "Okay, you know, Tesla's gone from $90 a share, where I bought it, to $380 a share. Great! But I still think it's got a lot of room to run." I always want to know what people who disagree with me say and what their argument is. Do I believe it? As I read, I found some weird stuff. For example, "Wow, they've gone through 25 CFOs. That sounds strange. Why does the CFO keep leaving?" People would have drone footage of parking lots just full of Teslas, and I thought, "Why are they stashing Teslas in these parking garages? Look at this! Every car in this six-story garage is a Tesla. Why is it here? Are they faking deliveries and sales? What is this?" So, there was a lot of speculation, and if there's smoke, there's fire.

Sam Parr

was there any truth in any of this

Shaan Puri

Honestly, oh, here's my honest take. I actually think that there was a lot of truth to what was going on. The reason why I say this is that I don't think it's as bad as they said, but I also don't think it's as good as Tesla portrayed it. Meaning, I think there actually was a period of time where Tesla almost died; it almost went bankrupt. This was due to the combination of the production ramp-up being too slow. The production line was not moving fast enough. The subsidies were there, but they could have gone away, and all this stuff. I think there was a lot of kind of like, you know, "fake it till you make it" going on. Elon has even come out and said in the past, he was talking about when clean tech was big and the government was giving money to this thing called Solyndra or something like that. He came out and said the same thing happened with Enron. He mentioned that five weeks before it went under, they were not just saying everything's going to be okay; they were saying everything's better than ever. He then came out and was sort of like, "What do you want people to say?" He said, "It is in the incentive of the captain of that ship to go down with the ship and the whole time be saying, 'Oh, we're so close to our destination.'" Basically, he was saying they're never going to come out and say, "Yeah, we don't know; we might not make it," because then that will guarantee you don't make it. People will sell the stock, it will put so much negative pressure on the company, and it will hurt the morale inside the company. So, you can't ever come out and say, "I don't know; we might not make it." You always have to say, "Of course we're going to make it; we're thriving," and you just hope it actually comes true. He said something to that effect in an interview once I read, and I was like, I feel like he's describing what actually was going on inside Tesla.

Sam Parr

that's amazing

Shaan Puri

And so, anyway, long story short, I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I was sort of reading it, but I didn't pull the trigger. Then, Josh Wolf—this guy's a very, very smart guy, a successful VC, not an anonymous Twitter egg account who's just shorting the stock and trying to spread fear—he was really criticizing it consistently for the course of a year. At some point, I thought, "You know what? Will I regret more: selling the stock now and taking my profit if I'm wrong, or seeing all these signals and not going with what seems to be a mounting amount of evidence?"

Sam Parr

how much did you buy

Shaan Puri

And guess what? I was wrong. Tesla becomes... Elon becomes the richest man in the world. Tesla becomes a $600 billion company. I bought it at a $6 billion valuation or something crazy like that. So, you know, I missed out on a 50 to 100x return somewhere along the way. And, yeah, I do regret it. I actually turned out to be wrong. I would have regretted more if this scenario hadn't happened, but it seemed improbable.

Sam Parr

wait so you bought a $100 worth of tesla stock

Shaan Puri

I didn't buy $100 worth; I think I bought like... I don't know. I don't even know what it was. It wasn't $100, I don't think. That's not what I was buying back then because I was like 23 years old or something at the time. It was a long time ago. Basically, I think I bought like $30 or $40 of the stock at a certain price. I remember doing the math and thinking, "Okay, they're valued at like $5 or $6 billion now. What are Ford and GM valued at?" Okay, they're valued at $25 billion. On one hand, that seems crazy that they're only five times less when they deliver like 200 times fewer cars. But I was like, "I really think the cars are going to go electric. These old folks are never going to switch." And he's got this vertically integrated model; it's actually a battery and energy company, not even a car company. This was before self-driving technology. It was a good pick. I mean, yeah, but you know, if you get it wrong, you get it wrong. So, egg on my face. By the way, on this note of the Pessimist Archive, I saw this YouTube video that... I don't know if you heard about this. A few years ago, Elon Musk negotiated a very unique compensation package. Do you know about this?

Sam Parr

yeah basically he gets some crazy bonuses if some crazy goals happened

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so he had set up this thing where his entire compensation was tied to the market cap of Tesla. It was at $50,000,000,000, I think, at the time when he had done it. For every $50,000,000,000 increment, he was going to get more. So I was like, "If I get this to $100,000,000,000, then I get X." I think he would get like 1% or 2% more of the company each time. I should've mapped it out, but basically, he was going to get a percentage more of the company for every $50,000,000,000 increase in market cap, as long as they also hit certain revenue and earnings targets at that time. He had no guaranteed income. So basically, if Tesla just went from $50,000,000,000 to $99,000,000,000, he would get $0 during that time. He had 5 years to do it, and the top of the compensation plan was if they became a $600,000,000,000 company, then he was going to get this ridiculous amount unlocked for him. He would essentially be the richest man in the world. There's this clip of Andrew Sorkin, or whatever his name is, the guy on CNBC's Fast Money, outlining the plan. They're laughing at him, saying, "I don't even know why they included these tiers." They thought it was outrageous. They were like, "For Tesla to get there, it would need to become like the 5th or 3rd most valuable company in the world." They were laughing, saying, "That's ridiculous, but I guess aim high."

Andrew Ross Sorkin

Steve has no guaranteed compensation of any kind at all. He gets no salary, cash bonus, or equity. He only receives equity that vests over time, but only if he reaches these hurdle rates, which are, dare I say, crazy. Right now, the company's worth $59 billion. They run at $50 billion increments. So, if he gets the company to a $100 billion market capitalization, you're just talking about market capitalization—not based on revenue or the number of production. There are going to be two metrics at each step. The first step is he has to get the company to a $100 billion and reach these operational and adjusted EBITDA and revenue numbers. If he doesn't achieve either of them, he gets nothing.

Sam Parr

that's kind

Andrew Ross Sorkin

of a weird way to break it down based on market if

Shaan Puri

he gets

Andrew Ross Sorkin

To a $150 billion valuation, he has to hit the operational numbers. I mean, the market can be irrational, so he can't control that. At each $50 billion mark, he collects 1% of the company. If somehow, magically, he could get the company to $650 billion—which is literally what the plan calls for, if you can believe this—he would collect the equivalent of about $55 billion. What if he gets it to $650 billion and then immediately...?

Shaan Puri

Then, sure enough, he's like, "I think he just hit it," or "he's about to hit that last final thing." And sure enough, he's the richest man in the world now.

Sam Parr

that's badass

Shaan Puri

betting on yourself

Sam Parr

I need to go back. Well, if you're him, alright, I'm going to tell you a handle that would have helped you. So, you know who Ryan Holiday is, definitely, right?

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

Ryan Holiday is an author, just kind of like a personality, but mostly an author. He does stoicism stuff, and I included him, but I'm going to actually tell you the one you should follow. I like Ryan Holiday because he's got these things that are not business-related but help me in business and help me in life. He has five lessons from Seneca. Seneca was a... is he Greek? I actually don't know what he was. He's a philosopher, and so they are... what was he?

Shaan Puri

I think he was greek I didn't look it up

Sam Parr

He was Roman. Ben, thank you. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. **Five Stoic Lessons from Seneca:** 1. Associate only with people who improve you. 2. The greatest remedy for anger is delay. 3. Value your time more than your possessions. 4. Death is not in the distant future; we are dying every day. He's got these amazing things that I love. Badass! But he's got this other Twitter handle called "The Daily Stoic." I love The Daily Stoic, and they just tweet out all these interesting Stoicism tidbits.

Shaan Puri

his right it's his brand

Sam Parr

It's his, and it's incredibly useful. This stuff is like... Stoicism is one of the few philosophies that's actively practical and you can use it on a daily basis. So, I like following this account; it reminds me to do certain things.

Shaan Puri

So, correct me if I'm wrong. I had heard about Stoicism from Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, and a bunch of others. So, I go, I buy *Meditations* by Marcus Aurelius. I sit down, I start to read it, and I'm sort of just trying to understand, "What the heck is this philosophy?" There were some things I thought were really cool, like the tweet you just read out—those five principles resonate with me. But there was a part of it which is sort of like, "Feel neither the highs nor the lows." It seemed almost like a... and I think I'm wrong, so I want you to correct me. It seemed like a philosophy which is sort of like, "Feel nothing."

Sam Parr

yeah and I think that your

Shaan Puri

and feel nothing seem very fun why do we why do I wanna feel nothing

Sam Parr

So, that's my big... that's actually a really good criticism, in my opinion, of stoicism. It's my criticism of stoicism, which is a lack of joy. A lot of stoics—this is the steel manning, by the way—will say, "No, like there's joy. If you read it differently, there's room for joy," or "They never say you can't have joy." And they're not wrong. But oftentimes, it's about how to deal with pain and misery. The idea is basically that you accept the fact that you're going to come into contact with a bunch of idiots all day who are going to want to hurt you and steal from you. But that's okay.

Shaan Puri

You do like a negative visualization, right? You imagine things going wrong, which again just feels very... not so fun for me. That's not a formula that has worked for me. In fact, the exact opposite has worked for me.

Sam Parr

That formula has worked for me, actually. So what I do is, like, "Alright, today I've got cancer. I can't get out of bed because..."

Shaan Puri

I'm like harsh you do this every day

Sam Parr

I do it a lot. Or I'll be like, "Look, if I'm feeling sad, I'll be like, 'I just got my leg cut off. I can't walk. I wish I could do it in sports.'" Then I'll be like, "Wait a minute, I have both legs. I don't feel sick. Let's go celebrate and exercise!" Or, you know what I mean? I'm happy my dog is not dead, and I'll go and it makes me appreciate him. Yeah, it's called **negative visualization**. I think it's incredibly useful.

Shaan Puri

There's a... this is, to me, so I will disagree with this. There's a... this, to me, is the argument of, "Well, there are kids starving in Africa." At any given moment, you could just sort of remember, "Oh, there are kids starving in Africa." "Oh, my boyfriend broke up." "Really? Well, at least I'm not a kid starving in Africa." I get the utility of it; I've used it myself. But in my experience, I've learned that it's a bit of a roundabout way to a destination of gratitude. You don't have to go through feeling the stress and the pain and the suffering of bad in order to feel the gratefulness around the good. So, I found it... I guess my personal experience has been that I think it's a roundabout way to gratitude. I might as well just go straight to gratitude. I don't need to think about all the bad things.

Sam Parr

but think about worry

Shaan Puri

about all the bad things that could happen and go there it's it's it's not been useful for me

Sam Parr

I remember when I get a sore throat, I always feel this way. When I get a toothache, I'm like, "I wish I could go back to the days where my tooth didn't hurt." A toothache is like the most pain you could be in sometimes. I don't remember... sometimes it might be all.

Shaan Puri

the women who have given birth are like what is what the fuck is this guy talking about

Sam Parr

yeah but like

Shaan Puri

a toothache is the worst pain you could feel

Sam Parr

Or like, I like it might... whenever I get earaches and toothaches, I'm like, "Yeah, it's like this internal pain." It's like I can't make the pain stop, and I just have to deal with it until I have an appointment in three days. Then you get like two days in, and you're like, "I don't remember what it felt like to not feel this pain." So I got into the habit of being like, "I would be so thankful if my throat didn't hurt today and I could just swallow food. That would make me so happy." On days when I'm not sick, I try to think back. I'm like, "This is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to feel happy that I'm not sick today." So I think about that stuff all the time. So anyway, Ryan Holiday in *The Daily Stoic* is a good follow. You're up.

Shaan Puri

Alright, by the way, I know we didn't do Stoicism justice for people who are die-hards. Sorry... People should look at it [more closely]. I don't think it is "no emotions," I think it's more subtle than that, but...

Sam Parr

but that's a really good I think your criticism's great which is like it's

Shaan Puri

think it's what a lot of people run into

Sam Parr

a lack

Shaan Puri

of joy and then they're like wait but wait is this what I want

Sam Parr

yeah it's like where's the room for fart jokes you know what I mean

Shaan Puri

I'm going to give you two niche experts. They're in different niches, but I like them. Okay, so I should link their accounts here for you. The first guy, I don't know exactly how to say his name, is Aviral Bhatnagar. I'm going to link you his Twitter, which is @AviralBhat. I'm going to put it on the sheet that we have. Okay, you got it? So this guy, Aviral Bhatnagar, is a venture capitalist in India, and his blog is ajuniorvc.com. This guy puts out really high-signal stuff around what's going on in India. For example, he has a tweet that he put out yesterday stating that India now exports more software—$133 billion—than Saudi Arabia exports oil—$113 billion. India is the largest engineering population in the world. What an amazing story that's come out over the last 40 years!

Sam Parr

how'd you find this guy this is the this one's the best one this is the most helpful one on the list

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so, I do a lot of investing in Indian startups. I was like, "Okay, if I'm going to invest in new startups, I'm not on the ground. I'm not the local domain expert." So, what did I do? I invested in a fund. I became an investor in somebody else's fund that's India-focused. I was like, "Okay, cool. I'm going to get insights from him, and I can bounce any deal off him to see if he wants to participate. Maybe he has a local view that I don't understand." Then, there was another guy that I thought was really smart. I wanted to find out who the thought leader in that space was and how I could subscribe to them. His blog, I think, has 50,000 subscribers now, so he's not a no-name, but he's very niche. He talks about the Indian tech scene and what's going on at a macro level or whatever. I found this guy to be doing a really good job of content creation, so I'm going to pick this guy.

Sam Parr

is there one niche is there such a thing as this for china

Shaan Puri

I'm sure there is actually... this is a good idea. I should just find this person for LATAM, for Europe, you know, for different parts of Europe, for India, for China, and for Australia maybe.

Sam Parr

if

Shaan Puri

there is none be this guy this guy is a valuable position to become

Sam Parr

Super valuable. There's this guy named Bill Bishop. I think his name is Bill Bishop. He had a newsletter called "Sinocism." Do you know what I'm talking about? No? "Sinocism," S-I-N-O-C-I-S-M. For a long time, he was the most popular guy on Substack. His entire newsletter is called "Get Smarter About China," and he just tells you about the business of China. You could see...

Shaan Puri

all like

Sam Parr

the latest trends coming out of china it would be really

Shaan Puri

Great arbitrage to do, by the way. Instead of trying to compete in the same pond as everybody else, go provide a really useful bridge into one specific market or one specific geography. I’ve told the story before, I think, but one of the most influential people in my life was this teacher named Lisa Keaster at Duke University. She taught this class called "Getting Rich," and her story was she graduated...

Sam Parr

that was the name of the class

Shaan Puri

it's the name of the class yeah

Sam Parr

did everyone take that

Shaan Puri

it was the it was one of the hardest classes to get into because it was a great name great title right so you already know this person is not just like every other professor like she understands like her customer her market the second thing was it was she was the highest rated professor on like rate my professor dot com and greatest thing I she had a chili pepper number next to her name so she was like hot too it was like oh it was everything so I I wake up at 5 in the morning we go to the library to get on the highest speed internet connection and as soon as the course listings open up we like jumped on it and we got into this class and I go in and she was she tells her story she goes actually I was a student at duke 10 years ago or 11 years ago whatever it was she goes I graduated with a degree in mandarin because that's just what was interesting to me and at the time everybody was making fun of me actually she was older than this now but she had started teaching back when she was like 32 or something now she might be 42 or 52 or something like that but she goes I graduated with this degree all my like friends were like good luck with that you know how's that mandarin degree gonna gonna help you out and get a job here because I'm a I'm a go to med school I'm gonna be a lawyer I'm gonna be a consultant like what are you gonna do with that chinese degree and she's like well I bet I can get a job in china and they're like what and so she bought a one way ticket just goes to china and she just starts waving her hands she's like hey people in china like I know english I know companies in the west and I would love to learn about you and then be a bridge and she became a bridge based between companies in china and companies in america if if an american company wanted to do business in china they would do it through her because she like could translate the not just literally the language but like she knew who to talk to she became like the local expert there she be and this like to me this guy on twitter he's my bridge into know knowing what's going on in the scene in india and so she what her story was she made a killing doing that because it was really valuable companies in china really wanted to do business with the companies in the west then she invested all of it in the tech in the tech stock market she was like oh I can sell tech companies to the ones that are doing well so she and then right before the bubble burst she pulled it all up to be like oh I wanna do real estate now and she like just timed it perfectly accidentally invested all in real estate from 2,000 to 2,008 right before the real estate crash happened she took it out again because she just wanted to do something else with her life and basically by 32 was retired and like you know was like what do I wanna do I wanna go teach and teach kids what I wish I knew back then

Sam Parr

how wealthy did she got

Shaan Puri

I think she made like, you know, a few million dollars at least. Probably around $5 to $7 million. She lives in Durham and she teaches at a school. I mean, I have no idea.

Sam Parr

so what was the class about

Shaan Puri

I'm totally guessing, but the class was basically, you know, like Ramit said. It was about personal finance, which is like, she wanted to teach what she wished she had learned when she was in school. Wow, because she's like, "I wish they taught you about how to manage money." So, she would show us the power of compound interest over time. She explained why you should save early versus saving more money when you're 30, and even saving a little bit of money when you're 20. Then, she covered topics like, "What is a mortgage?" and "How does that work?" In every other class, she would invite someone who made it—someone who's successful financially but doing a completely different thing—just to expose us to the idea that there are like 50 paths to success.

Sam Parr

dude this is it's like this podcast pretty much

Shaan Puri

Yeah, one would be this girl who started a T-shirt company licensing university logos. She would tell her story, then she got Jamie Dimon on the phone. Jamie Dimon is, you know, the head of whatever Morgan Stanley or whatever. Then she had this hedge fund guy from San Francisco come out, and he's like, "Yeah, here's what I..." He surveyed the room and goes, "Do you guys use Microsoft or Apple products?" People were answering. He asked like three questions, and we were like, "Why did you ask that?" He goes, "Because then I'm only gonna make one decision this year, and it's whether to invest like $100 million into Apple or not." He's like, "So all I'm doing is I'm just trying to figure out what is the right decision on that." I was like, "Whoa, that's a job! That's epic!" He had said, when he was in the glass, "By the way, all you guys are gonna just have the same resume. You're all trying to do the same thing. You're all trying to get grades and then these internships." He's like, "So the first three-fourths of your resume, think about it, it's gonna look the same as everybody else in this room. I'm not really gonna be able to tell the difference because the only thing that's gonna differentiate any of you is that bottom section where it's called 'Other Interests.'" He's like, "So at this school, everybody's gonna teach you to work on that top three-fourths of the resume. In reality, you should be working on the bottom one-fourth of that resume because that's what guys like me look at. Everybody's got a degree, everybody's got good grades, everybody went to a good school."

Sam Parr

I've never wait have I told you about the bottom fourth of the resume

Shaan Puri

no what is that

Sam Parr

That's so funny that you even use that fraction. I always tell my team, when I owned the company, I would say, "I just care about the bottom fourth." I'd always say that. One of the greatest questions people would ask me is, "How do you find good writers?" I would say, "Well, here's one really easy way: ask them about the bottom fourth." They would go, "What do you mean?" I would explain, "Well, it doesn't matter what they studied in school. Ask them, 'Okay, so you majored in philosophy. What's your favorite philosophy class or favorite philosophy teacher?' If they can't tell me a story about something they spent four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on, then they're just not going to be a good writer because they're not interesting enough." So, I would always ask about the bottom fourth of the resume for all types of roles. I'm like, "If you can't entertain me for this conversation, then you just don't have any passion, and I don't want to be around you."

Shaan Puri

Right, that's amazing. Okay, so maybe this becomes one of the core frameworks. That's like, you know, one person saying it—that's just a dot. Two people saying it—that's a line.

Sam Parr

I interviewed him. I got that from **Gabe** Brian Goldberg, who founded **Bustle**. He has this amazing article titled "Losers Exist: Stay Away from Them." It's basically about how to only hire winners. It’s from **Pando** from years ago, and he's a brilliant writer, but he doesn't write anymore because he's kind of a loose cannon. The article discusses one of the best ways to ask about the bottom fourth. You're a loser if you can't be passionate about something that you spent four years studying.

Shaan Puri

no dude this article is gone

Sam Parr

it's is it

Shaan Puri

Pando, you know, like, Pando died. Let me see if there's a cash version. There is a cash version. Okay, we're back in luck.

Sam Parr

the timeline is losers exist don't hire them

Shaan Puri

Yeah, awesome! Okay, let's do a couple more. I'm going to give a couple quick ones. This other person who I think is a niche expert is this guy, Willie Woo. Do you follow him?

Sam Parr

No, I'm looking him up now. I'm following all these people. The Indian guy is the best one so far. But let's look at Willy Woo.

Shaan Puri

I don't think you'll like this one because it's very crypto-specific, but this guy, Willy Woo, is I think the leading crypto analyst. You know, in most things like this, people who analyze charts and stuff like that are a little bit like horoscopes. They're like, "Ah, look, the trend is going this way," and if you draw this T-shape, it's going to be the iron cross pattern. So, they say, "Buy, buy, buy!" In crypto, there's one unique thing: all the data is much more transparent. Everything that's happening is on a public blockchain, so you can actually go analyze it. Willy looks at all these metrics. For example, he won't just look at the price. There are things like the actual average buy-in price. It's one thing for the price to go up or for people to not be selling because they bought it in 2013 and their cost basis was like $5, while your cost basis now is $50,000. So, it looks at what the actual price people are buying in at. If the average price people bought in is low compared to the current price, you can say, "Okay, it's mostly just same coins and old hands." Conversely, if it's higher, you realize that people are buying at the current price levels, which is pulling the average up. There are a whole bunch of things like that, such as coin age. Are old coins moving? If OG believers start selling, that's kind of a signal. It's like when a CEO starts selling their stock; you think, "Wait, why are you selling your stock? That doesn't seem quite right. What's the reason?" So, when a bunch of old hands start selling, that's actually a signal that comes before the price changes. It may not even affect the price yet, but it's an indicator of something to come.

Sam Parr

damn alright I just follow them

Shaan Puri

So, this guy's got all kinds of analysis, and he's a lot more reasonable. Crypto, especially Crypto Twitter, is full of propaganda artists. They're good at it. They will make you believe that some random NFT is the hottest thing because it's like one guy controlling 55 bot accounts. They're all replying to every tweet that uses the word "art" with a link to their project. There's so much propaganda, so much noise, and so many believers. If I go out there and say, "My price prediction for 2022 is $66,000,000 a coin," I'll get a bunch of attention because people want to believe that number's going to keep going up. This guy is a lot more reasonable. He's still obviously a big believer; he's super bullish on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, but he grounds it at least in real analysis, and I find that to be quite valuable.

Sam Parr

alright I follow them I think that's cool is he what what what does he like actually make predictions

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he'll make predictions, but it's not like he gets just intoxicated with prediction after prediction. It's more like, "Let me explain the way things are moving." Then, when a move happens, he'll explain what actually happened. Who was involved? Was it a big whale dumping? Was it a lot of old hands selling? What's causing this bear market? He'll say, "Look, there was actually a lot of leverage in China, and those got liquidated, and that's what drove the price down." You can see and get an explanation for what otherwise feels like pretty arbitrary price movements.

Sam Parr

That's badass! Alright, let me give you one. Yeah, Rohin Dhar. I actually don't know how to spell Rohin's last name or say Rohin's last name. It's D-H-A-R. So this guy founded this company called Priceonomics. You remember Priceonomics?

Shaan Puri

yes I've followed this guy this guy's good

Sam Parr

Okay, so he's interesting. Priceonomics was interesting; we actually recruited a bunch of people from there, and I love that company. I don't know if it's really around anymore, but it's just a blog. His new venture started as a side hustle and now it's kind of like a full-time thing. I actually showed you two examples. Even Sully is commenting on it. This guy owns, I think, 8 to 12 single-family homes in New Mexico, California, Hawaii, and wherever. You can go and look, and he'll kind of show you where they are and share pictures of them. He rents them out on Airbnb, and sometimes when his kids are on vacation or not in school, he'll go and stay in his homes. He reveals all of the numbers and updates. For example, on December 6th, he tweeted, "These are my monthly mortgage payments on each of the homes in my small portfolio of vacation rentals." Another time, he'll say something like, "Currently, we're seeing this type of occupancy rate," and he mentioned that they just added a surfboard to their house in Hawaii, which allowed them to charge more. He takes screenshots and shows all of the revenue he's making, as well as how much things have cost him to buy. Recently, he posted a couple of listings and said, "I think I could turn this into an Airbnb," linking to the Redfin house listing. He mentioned, "I think I can get these numbers." It's actually really cool to see him make it all happen in real time.

Shaan Puri

yeah I like this this is awesome I didn't realize that he was doing this this is it's kind of new

Sam Parr

yeah he's been at it for a while he's been at it for now his new shtick

Shaan Puri

he's been doing it for 6 years but yeah I don't think he was I don't think he was as public about it

Sam Parr

He wasn't as public about it. He was not as public about it, but now he's like all in on it, and it's so fun. It's a really fun handle to follow because sometimes his properties are like a quarter of a million dollars, and he puts down 20%. So, he puts down—or sometimes even less—I think he’ll put down like $40,000 or $50,000 on these properties, and that's pretty attainable for a lot of people. It's kind of interesting.

Shaan Puri

Right, okay. I have a... okay, let's do a couple of funny ones. Have you heard of this account, James Friedman? It's @fjamie013.

Sam Parr

was it on this list no so what is it james friedman

Shaan Puri

James Friedman, or I don't know, maybe it's Friedman, but it's F-R-I-D-M-A-N.

Sam Parr

no who who what okay

Shaan Puri

So, he has 2,000,000 followers. He's definitely popular; he's the Photoshop guy. Basically, people will ask him to Photoshop their photos. For example, someone might say, "Hey James, my boyfriend's wearing the same Calvin Klein t-shirt in every photo I take with him. Can you just remove the logo of Calvin Klein?" He does the request, but he doesn't just Photoshop it; he makes it hilarious. It's very visual, so you really need YouTube to see what I'm saying here. He photoshopped this guy wearing a Calvin Klein shirt that says "Calvin Klein Jeans" across the chest. He ripped off that little section, so now you can just see the guy's chest. Instead of the logo on the shirt, it now says "Calvin Klein" tattooed on his chest. People will request things like, "Here's my wedding photo, but we forgot to wear masks during our wedding photos. Can you Photoshop a mask on?" Instead of a COVID mask, he might put the green mask from Jim Carrey's movie "The Mask" on their faces. So, people request these edits, and he fulfills them, but he does it in a way that makes them unhappy. For instance, if someone says, "My arms look too big here," he might make them absurdly tiny. It's just hilarious! Oh, and he has 2,000,000 followers.

Sam Parr

He's like, "I look funny with one arm." And then, you can't see my other arm, so it looks funny with just one arm. So he just deletes the second arm, so the result is armless.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. I mean, I think he has a book or something called "The Joy of Photoshop." It says, "Asking the wrong guy for help."

Sam Parr

This is awesome! This is cool! I've never seen this. Someone follow him. Do you want to do a few more quick funny ones?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let's do another one. We have a friend, Nikita Beer. He's pretty funny in the tech world. What do you think of his account?

Sam Parr

Hilarious! He's a shithead. Yeah, I'm actually amazed that he does some of the stuff that he does, and that's why I like him.

Shaan Puri

Well, it's kind of like the Donald Trump rule, right? Which is, if you say one offensive or weird thing, you know you're canceled. But if you say all offensive and weird things, you get the pass.

Sam Parr

but how did he get away

Shaan Puri

That's the key. It's like, if every post makes fun of something, that's cool. If only one does, then you're an asshole.

Sam Parr

All of his stuff is making fun of something, so I think it's a great follow. His profile picture is hilarious.

Shaan Puri

yeah his profile picture is is good

Sam Parr

alright you wanna do one more

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay. I like this one. I don't know if you know this guy; I don't think you do. I don't know if you'd be interested in him. His name is **Haralabob**. What's he do? So, Haralabob's story is kind of crazy.

Sam Parr

this crypto guy

Shaan Puri

So, he's actually transitioned from being the "one thing" guy to the "next thing" guy. He started off getting famous because he was a big sports bettor. He famously, in the year 2000, absolutely raked it in in Vegas because he found an arbitrage that he could bet on. He just milked it. He realized that he had a few of these phases where he would find inefficiencies in the sports betting market, and that's how he made like a million dollars. So, he found that one year, what they would do is, let's say they would have an over/under total points for a game. Let's say it's 200 points for the game. Now, Vegas is weirdly accurate with over/unders; they will get it so spot on that it will come down to the last possession and flip over or under. They are very good at doing that, so it doesn't seem like there's much inefficiency there. But in basketball, what happens is that the first half of the game is played, and then you go to halftime. At the end of the game, there's often a situation where the losing team will start fouling the winning team to stop the clock, make them shoot free throws, and then try to make threes while the other team can only shoot two free throws at a time. What this led to was that the second half had more points than the first half. But Vegas had this small bet called the first half over/under, which was just dividing the total by two. So, the total was always really accurate, but the first half over/under was underpriced; it was frequently too high. So, he was just betting the under. He'd find these little inefficiencies for how much...

Sam Parr

did he make

Shaan Puri

Certain refs are really foul-prone, and so he would know that, okay, when that ref is reffing this game, that team is going to score more than their normal average. He would analyze the refs; nobody was analyzing the refs. Then he would just bet for a whole season on just the refs. I think he figured out before the NBA uncovered that ref Tim Donaghy was basically cheating because there was always weird stuff happening in that guy's games. I'm paraphrasing because he doesn't totally reveal his whole strategy, but he's talked about it before. For example, the Lakers in one year were undervalued in a way, and so he was able to bet on them. He made a million dollars doing that. I think then he got hired by NBA owner Mark Cuban to be his secret weapon for the Mavericks. Yeah, but he...

Sam Parr

only worked there for a few days right

Shaan Puri

No, he worked there for like a year or two, and then he famously left—or got fired. This year, he left, but an article came out saying everybody in the company hates Harala Bob because he has Mark Cuban's ear. He has too much power for his random position as a special adviser and stuff like that. They made him seem like this master puppeteer. Then, whatever, he left, and now he's big time. He's been really into crypto recently, so he's just at the intersection of all my interests: sports betting, poker, gambling, NBA games, NBA personnel stuff, and franchise management. I just think this guy is like a kind of baller, degenerate gambler type of dude.

Sam Parr

and he kinda looks like a shithead so I like him automatically

Shaan Puri

And he's not afraid to talk shit because he's not employed by, you know, somebody or whatever. So, he basically like, he's kind of like a one-man band, which I think is great. I think those people tend to be the most interesting because they can speak their mind. He's kind of like a shithead degenerate gambler type, so he's got, you know, the sense of humor that you find when you run in those circles. It's part smart aleck because you're actually really smart and clever, and you're finding the edges. But it's also part shithead where you don't mind just making fun of people and calling them dumb.

Sam Parr

This episode turned into like the *Slumdog Millionaire* of Twitter, where we name ten things and then provide a super in-depth story on each one and why it's interesting.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah that's true actually it's more about their backstories than their twitter

Sam Parr

I think it's gonna be cool. Ben, what do you think? Are people gonna dig stuff like this? People are gonna love it! People love lists. Like Sean said, we sold out. But you know what? This is a good thing to sell out for because it's a good episode. We had one title the other day. Either it was the title or the thumbnail. They used the thumbnail that made me look stupid or a title that made me sound like an idiot. I was like, "Ben, I don't like that." And he goes, "Oh, you thought that selling out to the algorithm was gonna feel good?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I had them change the title for the Hasan Minhaj episode. It came out as "Reveals All His Comedy Secrets," and I was like, "Oh, we didn't even talk about that." He didn't even discuss his comedy secrets. You know, I feel like that's a guest I'm trying to look cool with. Man, you're kind of making me look dumb in front of my friend, and I'm trying to look cool with him. So can we change that? You can make me look dumb, but don't make me look dumb in front of somebody I care about.

Sam Parr

are you guys friends now

Shaan Puri

yeah we're buddies that's great

Sam Parr

That's pretty... I feel like that's a big thing, right? Like, you're friends with a guy who's almost a hero.

Shaan Puri

almost a hero what a strange description

Sam Parr

well like I don't know I didn't know how much you looked up to him but I know you looked up to him a lot

Shaan Puri

Okay, there's definitely a part of it which I think is kind of like the embarrassing part of anybody. It's like, you know, I find it really embarrassing when people see a celebrity and then they lose their mind. They go and take a photo with them and ask for an autograph. It's like, "Can you please write your name on this piece of paper?" I mean, it's a real "bitch move" if you think about it. It's very strange. You know, if I had my memory wiped and I came back into society, I'd be like, "Well, you just did what? Why did you make yourself seem like that?"

Sam Parr

Such a loser. That's how I used to think when I would see people with like Trump flags or any other politician's flag, or their like, his face. I'm like, it's kind of weird to have a grown man's face all over your body.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, I fanboy about UFC and stuff like that. I get super excited. So, there are still people that I can fanboy about. There's definitely that part of it, which is like, "Oh, it's kind of cool that someone who's kind of famous is like your friend." But that wears off after, like, I don't know, 10 seconds. At least for me, I'm like, "This is a lame feeling." The thing I like is that he actually is super helpful. He asks really interesting questions. First of all, we have to take his career and my career completely out of it. If you have a conversation with this person, do you like him? Do you get along? Do they say interesting things, or is it just boring, same old commentary that everybody has? No, the dude is super interesting. He has really good questions and cool opinions. Then the second part of it is, are you going to... like I told you this framework: "Good friends consume together; great friends create together." So, I told him, "Dude, a dream of mine is to do a 10-minute comedy set someday." I just think that would be such a thrill, such a challenge. You know, that's one of the few things that can make me nervous or scared.

Sam Parr

gonna help

Shaan Puri

Is the idea of doing that. I didn't even ask him for help. I would never really ask him for help. Like, "Dude, your time is a lot more valuable than helping me with my hobby dream." You know, like, yeah, I'm that kind of out-of-shape guy who wants to wear the jersey and dribble up and down the court in Madison Square Garden. Like, yeah, I want that, but you don't need to help me. But he texts me really interesting stuff, kind of like the things I'm nerdy about, which are frameworks, techniques, and tactics. Like, okay, what's behind the laugh? The laugh doesn't just happen. There's a way to consistently recreate the laugh. How do you do that? So he's been sharing some ideas with me.

Sam Parr

you have to ask him like be like can I share this tweet or can I share this text

Shaan Puri

I did ask him, I was like, "Dude, you should charge for this! This is unbelievable." He's like, "Don't share my stuff." I was like, "Okay, I'll go to the grave with it." So, I haven't told anybody. No, not even my right-hand man. I don't even let him take a peek. Then the second part was, he's like, "You know, there's this feeling in comedy and acting. You could teach it, but if you teach it, that's sort of like a signal of, 'I couldn't do it, so I became that acting teacher in New York' or whatever." I think there's that same thing in tech, which is like, "Are you teaching it because you couldn't make it as the operator?" I think there is that stigma in tech as well, but much less so. In tech, people figured out that if they start blogging about their stuff and tweeting about it, their reputation goes up. They get better deal flow and get to invest in better, more badass companies. It's actually strategic.

Sam Parr

right and it's not like that with kanye

Shaan Puri

versus like a fallback plan

Sam Parr

well I'm very eager sean to hear about your friendship with with this famous comedian

Shaan Puri

fuck you fuck you for doing that

Sam Parr

congratulations on making

Shaan Puri

a new friend

Sam Parr

ask hassan to to send you a text on why that was funny

Shaan Puri

yeah for some of us it's natural

Sam Parr

Yeah, dissect that, buddy. Alright, that's the episode.