The Wild Story of Mike Lynch’s Rise From Janitor to Tech Billionaire

Shaan Puri

Have a different billionaire story that's kind of crazy. I want to tell you about it, so check this out. This is a wild story, so just brace yourself. Okay, let's start with this. I'm going to read you a snippet from an article first. So, in July of early 2022, the courts ruled that this person, Mike Lynch, owed **$4,000,000,000** in damages that are still pending. Okay, so the court rules that Mike Lynch owes **$4,000,000,000**. Next line: at the same time, the U.S. tried to extradite Lynch. He was in the UK, and the U.S. said, "No, no, no, we're going to come try you over here." They bring him over, and he arrives in San Francisco in May of 2023. He's released on **$100,000,000** bail and consigned to house arrest in a rental home with cameras installed in every room and two armed guards on duty around the clock. Now, what's interesting about this is that that rental home, with cameras installed in every room and armed guards on duty around the clock, is my dad's house. I don't know if you know this, but that guy stayed at my dad's Airbnb when he was on trial.

Sam Parr

Your dad owns a home in...

Shaan Puri

My dad's actual house, he'll Airbnb it out for periods of time. If he gets a booking that's at the right price, he'll go stay at a motel or hotel in Fremont or something like that for the night. Then he'll be so happy that he made some money. But my dad didn't know this. He gets a booking, and this guy just booked for three months. By the way, three months is the max you can do when you're Airbnb-ing your own house in San Francisco. You have 90 days, so he's like, "Wow, I got the whole year from one guy! This is great!" Now he's figuring out where he's going to go for three months. He thinks, "I'll go travel," whatever. Then he texts me and says, "Hey, can you check the Ring camera real quick?" I checked the Ring, and there are these bodyguards standing outside the house. I'm like, "What's going on?" So he texts the guy and says, "Hey Mike, hope you got into the house okay from the lockbox. I'm curious, what are these guards doing outside the house?" The guy replies, "Oh, I'm actually on house arrest. I'm awaiting my trial, and for the duration of this, I can't leave the house. That's why I wanted your Airbnb. You have this nice backyard; it's hard to get a nice backyard in San Francisco." My dad's like, "What the hell?" So he starts Googling the case, and we all start Googling the case. This guy's story is fascinating.

Sam Parr

And is this for autonomy? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

So, I'll give you the end of the story, which is kind of interesting, right? I don't know if you've heard the latest update on this.

Sam Parr

No, but not the latest. I know that it's weird; there's a lot of weird stuff going on.

Shaan Puri

So, I'll start with the end, then we'll go back to the beginning. The end of the story is that at some point, my dad's like, "Hey, I gotta go back to live in my house. Your trial's not over." The guy's like, "Okay, okay, I'll ask the judge if I can move to Airbnb." So, he moves to Airbnb. He finishes the trial and is acquitted on all charges. He's a free man. To celebrate him, his family, and his lawyers, they all get on a yacht. He owns this $30,000,000 yacht. This person that he used to work with, the guy who was his character witness, his lawyer, and the lawyer's wife, they all get on this boat and start sailing. Mysteriously, two months after being acquitted of all charges, there's a freak yacht accident, and he dies. He's killed on this boat. At the same time, 48 hours later, the other guy in the case, his co-founder, who was also acquitted on the same day of all the charges, is going for a run and gets hit by a car and also dies. It's kind of strange that this guy, who was in this multibillion-dollar fraud suit, and his co-founder, both killed in freak accidents just 48 hours apart, a couple of months after being acquitted.

Sam Parr

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so now let's go back to the beginning. I googled this guy, and his story is actually pretty fascinating. He is called the "British Bill Gates," and the reason he's called that is because this guy was brilliant. He grew up super poor. Basically, he was so poor, but he was a hard worker and smart. He ended up getting a scholarship to go to school. He said this: "There was a guy, like a lord in the 1600s, who when he died, left his wealth specifically for the education of poor boys." He thought, "I was a poor boy, and I got to have the scholarship, which let me go to a school." When he was 11, he got into a private school and started working really hard. At 16, he became a janitor at a hospital, mopping the floors. During the trial, he talked about his childhood, saying, "At 16, I used to work in this hospital mopping the floors. I was—and actually, I still am—a demon mopper." The lawyer responded, "Your credibility is on the line here, Doctor Lynch," to which he replied, "Throw me a mop; I'll show you right now." The whole audience in the courthouse started laughing. He tells a story about working at the hospital. He went from janitor mopping the floors to porter, wheeling people from room to room and moving beds around. Finally, he got the prestigious job of serving tea and sandwiches. He said, "The most important thing that happened in my life was at age 16. I spent a lot of time with people who were 95 years old—basically, people on the way out. I used to sit with them and serve them tea and sandwiches. These people had nobody to talk to at the end of their lives, and they opened up to me about their lives and things they had never told anybody." He reflected, "At 16, I thought that life was indestructible, and life seems like it's forever when you're 16." He realized, "Every day, I was reminded that life is really short. I want to really make something of my life." Then he got into Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in neural networks and artificial intelligence. This was way before AI and neural networks were a thing.

Sam Parr

Let's fast forward.

Shaan Puri

He starts this company called **Autonomy**. Autonomy was basically one of those machine learning, big data companies that takes a bunch of data to find patterns that the human eye is not going to be able to see. They sell this to both companies as well as governments and agencies, sort of like a **Palantir**-esque company. So, he starts this company and ends up selling it to **HP** for **$11 billion**. Wow! Hewlett Packard, which is primarily a hardware company, wants to move into software. They get really hot and heavy about it. The company was already public, but they offered a **60% premium**. They said, "We'll give you 60% more than your stock price to take this deal." He says, "Alright." You know, he's like, "If I had not taken that deal, my shareholders would have been... it would have sounded like a herd of elephants stampeding towards me. Why didn't you take this deal?" So, of course, he took the deal. He takes the deal, and a couple of years later, HP ends up writing off **$8.8 billion** of that acquisition. They say, "You guys cooked the books. You inflated your revenues, your profits, your balance sheet." So, they sue him. In the suit, a couple of things happen: the CFO pleads guilty for wire fraud, so he's in jail for, I don't know, **5 to 7 years**, something like that. The co-founder volunteers to work with them, and he gets a pretty light sentence. This guy, Mike, tries to avoid being in court with these guys. He's trying to avoid extradition and all this stuff for like a...

Shaan Puri

Of time, finally, they get him.

Sam Parr

And what's the "he says, she says"? Like, so HP says your revenue wasn't what it really was, or you billed people wrong. What’s... what’s the situation?

Shaan Puri

It's a very complicated thing. They said that, "Hey, you misrepresented your revenues and the profitability profile of this business, and there's something on the balance sheet." But he said, she said. So during the court case, they asked him about this, and he says, "If you take a microscope into any kitchen, even the cleanest ones, you will find bacteria."

Sam Parr

Okay, which is a great analogy, but look...

Shaan Puri

The most guilty shit I've ever heard, to be honest. That sounds horrible. I don't know all the details, but during the court case, they had 15,000,000 financial documents that they submitted as exhibits. It was so complicated that during this case, one juror kept falling asleep. The lawyer looks over at him and says, "I know this is not fascinating, but you gotta tell me, can you stay awake for the next 8 weeks of this trial?" The juror responds, "That's a negative. I can't. I think it's her place." So he ends up getting acquitted, which is amazing. By the way, him testifying and telling that story about him and the janitor, they think it helped him. It was very rare; most people do not testify for their own defense. They tell you, "Don't go on the stand."

Sam Parr

So basically, he has charisma.

Shaan Puri

He has some charisma. Exactly. So, he gets on the stage. Anyways, he gets acquitted. Now, this death has all these weird circumstances. At first, when I heard this, it just sounded like some real Epstein stuff. I was like, "Wait, these two people get acquitted on the fraud case and then both die within, you know, 48 hours of each other in these quote-unquote freak accidents?"

Sam Parr

Yeah, and like the accident that they described, it was basically, if I remember correctly, like a water tornado. They said he was sailing and there was like a tornado that tipped over this huge sailboat. Well...

Shaan Puri

The crazy thing is, yeah, so then you read about it. This is me last night, just swaying as I've read the details of this case. On one hand, okay, it sounded like he got killed. No, he didn't get killed; the boat sank. The boat sank due to this natural disaster. Okay, that sounds pretty... what are you gonna say? Somebody caused a water tornado and a bunch of people survived it? And people survived it, exactly. So he could have just survived. On the other hand, there's stuff that came out that was like they didn't secure the ship in the right way as you would when you have that forecast. So, like, why didn't they do that? That's a little bit strange. Also, the guy who got hit by the car—the other guy running for it to happen in that time span—and the lady who hit him, she's this 49-year-old woman who hit him with the car. She was like, "I couldn't see," and it was like, wow, okay, she's cooperating with authorities. She doesn't look like a hitman. Then, if you go in the subreddit, or you know, the conspiracy subreddit, it's like, of course they made it look like that. That's exactly how this works. They make it a little... they look for a weather pattern that could be believed, and then they'll sink the boat. And then it seems like the boat sank due to natural disasters, or they find these people who don't look like hitmen, but they're hitmen. It's like, alright, I don't know what to believe in all this.

Sam Parr

Alright, so when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like 2,000,000 subscribers. We made money through advertising, but we didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising, in general, is kind of a crappy business model. I remember sitting down and thinking, "What are all the different ways that I can make money off The Hustle that aren't advertising?" To make sure that you don't make this mistake, Sean, me and the HubSpot team went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. We put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research. We call it, very appropriately, "The Business Monetization Playbook." Go to the description of this episode, and you're going to see a link to that Business Monetization Playbook. It's completely free! You just click the link, and you can see it. Now, back to the episode.

Shaan Puri

Conspiracy aside, it's an incredibly wild story how this all played out. By the way, during this time, he sells Autonomy in 2011. Something like that. In 2013, he starts a new company, Darktrace. Darktrace is this cybersecurity company that...

Sam Parr

The name does not help this whole conspiracy.

Shaan Puri

That's what I'm saying. There's more to it. If you look up what Darktrace does, Darktrace was started back when WikiLeaks happened. The idea was, "We're going to go to government agencies, and when Snowden and the WikiLeaks stuff just started happening, it was basically, 'I'll make sure WikiLeaks and the Snowden leaks never happen to you.'" So they were working with all kinds of secret agencies to try to prevent that from being possible. That's what Darktrace is. Darktrace was also a $5 billion company that was acquired for $5 billion. The guy was really prolific as an entrepreneur at the same time. This incredible tragedy, conspiracy, or freak accident—it's hard to say. But isn't that wild that this guy was just living in my dad's house?

Sam Parr

How much is your debt? Okay, I don't know the answer to this. I don't want to give too much information to my father, but let's just presume that this guy, Mike Lynch, is worth $1,000,000,000. How much do you think he was paying per month?

Shaan Puri

For so, that's actually a funny thing. My dad's normal rate, I think, on his Airbnb is like $750 a night, something like that. It's a house with multiple rooms, so it's cheaper than it would be if you were a group. By the way, my dad's super desperate, so he'll put it up for $750. If someone comes in for $500, he's like, "It's still $500! $500 is great!" You know, that's...

Sam Parr

A lot of money. I gotta say, yes.

Shaan Puri

To this, we're always telling him, "Dude, you're old now. Don't inconvenience your life like this." And he'll do it, whatever. So when this happened, of course, my first instinct is, "Hey, maybe you don't want whatever's going on. This seems like a pretty tense situation. We don't have a lot of information here. There's somebody who's on trial; there's a criminal living in your house. What's going on? Maybe you should ask him to leave." My dad's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, gotta do that." He calls the guy and then calls me back. I'm like, "So what happened? Does he agree to leave? Are you going to have to refund him or what?" He's like, "No, he's paying triple now." I was like, "What?" He was like, "Yeah, I was going to ask him to leave, and then I just told him, 'This is really stressing me out. I don't know what to do. Can you just make this cost more?' And he's like, 'Sure, what do you want?' So I said, 'How about triple?' And he said, 'Okay, no problem.'" So my dad was over the moon about this whole situation. Dude, that's the most Indian thing I've ever heard.

Sam Parr

That's, first of all, that's insane. By the way, I have a friend who just rented out their home for a Netflix show. The home was worth like $5,000,000, and the Netflix crew to be there and all this, they were spending, I believe, $200,000 a month. That was the rental price for 3 months. That's right, which is like freaking insane. And so your dad was almost getting...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's getting that reality TV money. There's just one guy sitting in the house all day. It's kind of amazing.

Sam Parr

Wow! First of all, there are so many weird things about the story. When you looked into it, what do you think happened?

Shaan Puri

Well, I was... I'm telling you, I was really thinking conspiracy. Then I go into the subreddit, and the top comment was so funny. He goes, "I'm sorry, but if Hewlett Packard arranged the hit, they'd still be waiting for the correct driver to be installed." I was like, "No, that's true. This HP is not ordering a hit." So, I don't believe that's the case.

Sam Parr

I have studied history for a long time. I'm into all this stuff. Conspiracy theories are always fun to read about. Here's my takeaway with conspiracies: 1. They do exist sometimes. For example, do you remember the O.J. Simpson trial? There was Mark Fuhrman, one of the police officers who planted the glove there. Yeah, that's an example of a conspiracy that I believe was true. The problem with conspiracies is that there are two main issues: 1. **Secrets are really hard to keep.** You know what I mean? If 50 people know that they had to work together to do X, Y, and Z, it's really hard—particularly over decades—to keep that a secret. That's a huge challenge. 2. **When you have to hire people to do these things, they're typically lower income.** For example, someone who works as a security guard in a corrections facility probably doesn't have that many options. They don't make a lot of money, and convincing this person to shut up for 50 years? That's really hard. Logistically, to pull off a conspiracy like that effectively is really, really challenging. Or, let's say you're doing it with a bunch of military people. If you have 100 infantry soldiers, do you think they're going to be able to keep their mouths shut? It's just challenging.

Shaan Puri

But it does happen. And also, with like, for example, the Epstein thing, it's like, "Oh, and then the cameras stopped working that day." It's like, "Alright, this seems extremely suspect." It's like the guards happened to leave, and the cameras shut off, and he got his hands on a rope or whatever. I don't know the details, but like some of these, they make you... they make you do this, the goatee pinch. Uh-huh, what's going on here?

Sam Parr

Well, and then, but there's a lot of times... Have you heard of the Kennedy curse? About how they all die?

Shaan Puri

no

Sam Parr

You know, there's Joe Kennedy with the patriarchy. He had 9 kids, and roughly 6 of them died. Then, like, the grandkids, they all died.

Shaan Puri

Like, died early? You mean died early?

Sam Parr

Yeah, for example, assassinations, deaths in plane crashes... and then you look at the story of each one. You're like, "Oh, this isn't a curse. You guys are just risk takers." Like, this guy was flying a plane when he just got his pilot's license. He was flying a jet when he should have been flying a much slower plane. Or this person got assassinated because he was president, and like 10% of all presidents have been assassinated. You know what I mean? Oftentimes, there's a story where each one individually can kind of make sense, but when you add them up together, it may seem too good to be true. However, they actually make sense when you look down. So anyway, that's my opinion on conspiracies. But this story is so fascinating. I remember reading about Mike Lynch, and this is a crazy state at your dad's house. I also kind of don't know how I feel about the story. I don't know what happened.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, neither do I, by the way, when it comes to conspiracies. It's like for most things in life, you either choose to believe or you choose not to believe, right? It's a choice whether you believe in something. Some things, when you choose to believe them, may influence your actions. For example, luck. I'm a lucky person; I believe that. Because I believe that, I'm going to do different things than someone who believes they're an unlucky person will do. So, it's actually less important to figure out what's true and what's not. It's more important to determine what's useful to believe and what's not useful to believe in life. Some things, like conspiracy theories, are useful to believe only for their entertainment value, more so than anything else. It’s also a way to say, "I'm not going to take everything at face value." I understand that there isn't just an error rate in every prediction or poll, just like there's an error rate in every scientific process. There is a conspiracy rate in every series of historical events, where some number, between 0.15% of all things that have a conspiracy, are actually true. So, choosing to believe for entertainment value is kind of where I land on it.

Sam Parr

Single-engine airplanes, helicopters, and boats like huge yachts are two things I don't touch. I think those things are so... I'm so afraid of them. Have you ever been on a cruise, like a big ship? It's frightening. Do you know how many people die on cruises every year? It's a huge amount because they jump off... you know what I mean? They get lost at sea.

Shaan Puri

They jump off... oh, like they're just going for a swim.

Sam Parr

Yeah, or they're drunk and they fall over the side. There's this website called "Missing at Sea"—I forget what it was exactly—but it lists all the people who go missing from cruise ships every year. It's a huge number.

Shaan Puri

The dead version of Facebook... it's like this.

Sam Parr

It's like...

Shaan Puri

People that are missing at sea.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like a pretty disgusting thing. I'm not doing that. I can't stay on cruises. But this story is pretty wild. This is a wild story. That's why he stayed at your dad's place.

Shaan Puri

Alright, where do I go from here?

Sam Parr

Alright, so for the last 15 years, you and I have studied making money. Would you agree that that's been like 90% of our waking time? I have agreed.

Shaan Puri

I would agree with that.

Sam Parr

That's cool, that's great and everything, but I think that I kind of have... I've learned how to do it. Would you agree that you kind of understand, like, intellectually how it's done?

Shaan Puri

I understand intellectually, yes.

Sam Parr

It's hard, but...

Shaan Puri

Well, there are like three phases. There's understanding intellectually, realizing you thought you understood it intellectually, and then now you actually know intellectually. Then there's doing it. I think I finally got past the third stage. Now, I'm thinking the fourth stage is either being done with it, getting over it, or being less interested in it as you go.

Sam Parr

Yeah, for sure. By the way, I actually think that that's a great arc. It's something that I've always loved about studying making money: the idea of going from nothing to something. It just so happens that capitalism and making money is a very practical way of achieving that. It's a very straightforward method. We've studied that, and a new thing that I'm becoming a little bit obsessed with is how someone goes from nothing to something in politics. Not that I actually care; I don't ever want to become political. I don't want to become the president.

Shaan Puri

We're pivoting to the All In podcast.

Sam Parr

No, I don't want to do any of that. It doesn't actually interest me. But when Trump became president, I was like, "Ain't that insane?" In his head, I think he was like, "This is just like a bit," but it kind of came to fruition that he became powerful. I'm like, that's insane how that happens—how someone goes from nothing to something, particularly in the political arena. So, I moved to this small town, and I thought, "You know, it's only a 30,000-person town. I'm going to email the mayor and I just want to become friends with her and learn about how she became mayor." I emailed her and I just said, "Hey, my name is Sam. I have this podcast and I have this internet company that I started, and I'm basically just saying this to impress you, but can I come in and just introduce myself?" She did. She said yes, and so I went to meet with her. I thought it'd be funny to do a little recap of this meeting, but I said a few things that I look back on and I'm like, "What the hell? Why would I ever say that?"

Shaan Puri

Set the scene. You go to her office, you guys go out to lunch, and then you go for a stroll. What are you doing?

Sam Parr

She's like, "You know, come over. We go out to lunch." I'm like, "No, I don't want to go for lunch. I want to come to your office. I want to see where the sausage is made, my friend. I want to see it." So I get there at about 8:45, and she's walking in right around then for our 9 o'clock meeting. We just start talking. We sit down; she's nice. Her name's Jennifer Tooker, but she introduced herself as Jen, so I guess I'll call her that. We're friends now. I just started talking to her, and I kind of got nervous. You know, like, did you ever have to do a thing where you get married and you have to meet with the priest in advance?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, you're like, "Wait, can this guy cancel our marriage right now if I say the wrong thing?"

Sam Parr

I... it was the exact same thing. The guy's like, "Do you guys go to church?" and I'm like, "Dude, I go to church like every day. Easily, every day."

Shaan Puri

You know.

Sam Parr

What I mean is, I had that same energy.

Shaan Puri

**Favorite part of the Bible?** There are so many to choose from. All of them... it's hard, yeah.

Sam Parr

It was like the same thing where I'm like, "Dude, I just want to impress her." But I've said, she was like, "How do you like the town?"

Shaan Puri

And I

Sam Parr

Warren Buffett says this amazing thing where he's like, "You gotta build a business so good that a dummy can run it because eventually a dummy will." I kind of feel like this town is like that. It's so perfect; there's nothing more planned, and like any idiot can run it. I was like, "Shit, not that you're an idiot." It's just, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Wait, you said that? Or...?

Sam Parr

She said that I said that. No, you said the Buffet quote about an idiot.

Shaan Puri

The way.

Sam Parr

Or yes, I was like, "Wait, I'm sorry, I didn't..." I was like, "I bet this in a nice way. The town is perfect; there's nothing to complain about." So I put my foot in my mouth there. Then she was like, "Oh, you know, that's funny. I used to work for Warren Buffett." I was like, "Oh, tell me about that. Was he awesome? I heard he's a real cheap ass."

Shaan Puri

like

Sam Parr

Sorry, I don't know why I'm talking like this. I don't mean to. So, she starts telling stories about that, and I'm like, "It seems like if you worked for Warren Buffett as an executive, you must have been pretty rich. Why would you quit that and take this crappy job?" She kind of laughed, but I was saying things 10 seconds after I thought of them. I'm like, "What am I doing right now?" She laughed at all of them, and it was really kind of funny to see that my first interaction went just horribly, but she was into it.

Shaan Puri

Do you remind me before you finish your story? So, my daughter, she just turned 5. She just started going to school for the first time; she's going to transitional kindergarten (TK). As a parent, you're like helpless because you don't know what your kid's like. You kind of give her advice, but then she crosses the gate, she goes into the class, and you're like, "Remember, big friends ask people questions. They like that." I'm trying to give her a way to socialize because she's smart; she's fine with the school part. But at the beginning, she was super uncomfortable with kids. She started to do... But yeah, I didn't know. As a parent, you never really know how they're behaving. We would run into these scenarios. We'd be at a coffee shop, and then there's a kid who would be like, "Hi!" and say her name. I'm like, "Oh, do you know him? Is that a kid from your school?" I get really excited, and then she would do what you just did, which is she would suddenly start saying and doing the funniest things. We'll be standing there, and I'll be like... she won't say anything first. I'm like, "Say something! Is he in your class?" "Yeah." "Okay, like, who's this kid?" Then I'll be like, "Hey, I like your watch! I like your shoes, man! Spider-Man, cool!" And then she's not saying anything, and then she'll just go, "Why am I so tired?" It's like, "What?" And then she goes, "I need to go to sleep," and then she laid down on the sidewalk and pretended to go to sleep in front of me. Now I'm just talking to this kid, and this happened three different times with three kids. "Why am I so tired?" She just said this thing out of nowhere, just like a panic response. I feel like you just had your panic response in front of the mayor where you're like, "Warren Buffett says..." and you just parroted some quote.

Sam Parr

I'm like, "I don't even like Buffett. Why am I breaking this up?" And I just called her an idiot.

Shaan Puri

So, you take an exit off the highway and you're like, "This is not my destination," but now I'm stuck here.

Sam Parr

And then she was like, she told me what her politics were. I guess she's like, "I'm a Republican, but I'm just barely right of center." Most of our town is Democrat. I was like, "Yeah, but that doesn't really matter. All you do is fill potholes and make sure the beach is clean. Why do your politics matter?"

Shaan Puri

What do your beliefs have to do with this?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm like... and then, one of those things where just 10 seconds after I said that, I was like, "Shit, I'm blowing this." I just am insulting you constantly, and I'm not meaning to.

Shaan Puri

You're like, how long have I been on Twitter? I've just been on the internet for too long. I can't function in society anymore.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so anyway, I just thought it was like a horrible meeting that I blew. But she handled it well. By the way, the last time I met with the mayor, it was in San Francisco. I met with London Breed when she was just a council person. I don't even know what district it was called. Literally, 8 hours later, I met with her at like 5 PM that night, and Ed Lee died. She became mayor. So I told this woman as I was leaving, "Hey, last time I met with the mayor, this woman in London became mayor because the real mayor died." I was like, "Shit, which means you're either gonna die..." and I was like, "Forget I said that." So anyway, I just...

Shaan Puri

Blew it like the Men in Black pen at the end to just flash her memory and erase the entire conversation.

Sam Parr

Oh man, it was horrible. But anyway, I thought it was fun. Have you been interested in politics at all, or are you just totally on the sideline?

Shaan Puri

I'm only interested in politics from a marketing point of view. Meaning, it's like something you watch in a movie. It's like when you watch *The Hunger Games* and you're like, "That's ridiculous!" It's so great. This concept is so ridiculous—people just sort of fighting to the death for the amusement of others. Then I watch UFC 306 the next day and I'm like, "Oh, I guess that's kind of similar." Or there'll be a politician who's kind of catering to the rich but just trying to keep the poor, like the masses, subdued enough so that they don't revolt. It's interesting to me that this is real life, that this is actually how things go. I watched a full Trump rally the other day, end to end. I don't know if you've ever seen all these, but I started before anyone was on stage. I was like, "What's the set list? Who's the DJ of this?" Because it goes, "Macho Man." So it's like, "Macho, macho man." This is like nobody on the stage and the whole crowd is sitting there, they're all enjoying it. I was like, "There's like 30 minutes of just a set." That whole musical set, that playlist should be on Spotify.

Sam Parr

But it was like "Macho Man." That was the song that he came out to.

Shaan Puri

No, that was the one, like the warm-up the crowd one before he comes out.

Sam Parr

And which is funny because "Macho Man" is by the Village People, which is like a gay band. Yeah, but they played.

Shaan Puri

They put all the hits in the YMCA, actually.

Sam Parr

Another village, yeah.

Shaan Puri

And then you see the sun come out, the daughter comes out, whatever. Anyways, there's a whole... so I am interested only in the theater of the whole thing. Alright, let me tell you one other quick story. I met Ed Lee one time. The guy I was working for, Michael Birch, got invited to this thing and he was like, "I don't want to go to this political thing. You should go as my proxy."

Sam Parr

Ed Lee was the mayor of San Francisco up until around 2018 or 2020 or something.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so this was when he was the mayor. In the room was Ron Conway, who is like a big shot, super, super angel investor. He invested in pretty much every hit Silicon Valley startup and is probably the most respected angel investor in Silicon Valley. Also present were Mark Pincus, the guy who created Zynga, and Jeremy Stoppelman, who created Yelp. It was basically like eight of those people and then me. They just assumed I was like, you know, the scribe who's there to write meeting notes, and that's kind of what I actually was. How old are you? I'm 25 years old, maybe 26 years old at the time. But it was pretty fascinating to see what happens to these big shots. I thought it was just going to be a luncheon with some sandwiches and small talk, but a couple of things stood out. One, Ron Conway is famous for taking notes. I don't know if you've heard this before, but he carries with him a giant yellow legal pad. Basically, everywhere he goes, he's just like furiously taking notes. He's very quick with people. If you say, "Hey Ron, I just wanted to introduce myself," he's like, "What can I do for you, man?" Then you might say, "I just need an introduction to this person," and he responds, "Tell me about your business real quick." You tell him, and he's like, "Cool, I'll make the intro," and then he just moves on. He's very quick because a lot of people want his time, but he's just furiously taking notes at all times. That was the first thing that stood out. The second thing was that Pincus and Jeremy Stoppelman basically just ripped Ed Lee a new one to his face, which I thought was pretty amazing.

Sam Parr

What did they say?

Shaan Puri

They were like, "How do you expect us to run a business here?" They said, "It's so expensive. None of my employees can live in the city. On top of that, if they did live in the city, there's this incredible homelessness and, you know, drugs and open-air drug markets in the middle of the city. What are you doing? What is this like?" They were not as hostile as that, but they were very pointed. Then I got to watch, you know, a politician do what a politician does, where they say a lot of words that don't mean a whole lot.

Sam Parr

And is that what he did?

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Okay, cool." So I see that even in the private, off-air, supposed-to-be-productive meeting, like, what is he gonna do? This guy's not gonna actually say anything of substance, nor is he gonna do anything of substance. That was kind of my takeaway from the meeting.

Sam Parr

Horrible takeaway. I mean, like that, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I don't mean it like I don't think he had any malintentions. It was just that these are hard problems to solve in the first place. Figuring out the solution and then actually being able to do anything about it would take so much effort. It's how I felt when I was in a big company. You would see something and think, "We should not do that. We should do something about it. We should do this better." You might even try a little bit, but then the forces of bureaucracy are just weighing down on you at all times. It's just a lot easier to say, "Forget it," and move on, you know?

Sam Parr

You're like, "Well, my computer battery is just on low battery, and that email might take longer than this computer battery has, so we'll just forget about it." You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Do you remember when we did the episode really early on in the podcast? Back when we used to record in your office, in that tiny room with a table and one microphone in between the two of us? We had Daniel Gross come by, and it became the "Three Stooges" on three stools sitting around one table. One thing he said was that his company got acquired by Apple when he was really young—around 22 years old or something like that. He received advice from someone; I forgot who it was, but it was a super legit Silicon Valley person. He said, "Hey, we just got acquired by Apple. What's your advice for me when I'm there?" The guy told him, "Don't give yourself brain damage." Daniel was confused and asked, "What?" The guy explained, "You're going to be in this company, and you're going to see so many things that could be so much better. You're going to try to do them, and for the first year, you're actually going to make a little bit of headway, but you're not going to get the results that you want. It's still going to be so..." He continued, "Basically, you're going to keep ramming your head against the wall trying to change this giant, enormous company. Don't give yourself brain damage. Find a way to enjoy your time there. Meet cool people, learn from them, pick up the technologies, but don't try to change it. Don't try to turn the direction of the ship." Then Daniel said, "And then I did exactly that. I made that exact mistake. I went and tried to turn it around and change the way that we did things." He concluded, "That person was right. I shouldn't have given myself brain damage."

Sam Parr

And that he was a kid when we talked to him. I think he was 25 or 26 or something. He's amazing, by the way. That was...

Shaan Puri

He was amazing then too.

Sam Parr

Yeah, he was one of those good finds early on. Can I tell you about something that I read this week? I read about this in, I think, *The Atlantic*. Have you ever heard of this podcast called *Philosophies*? This is what it's called.

Shaan Puri

You texted it just before this, and I checked it out, but I had never heard of it.

Sam Parr

Alright, so let me tell you this story. This is pretty amazing, and there's a takeaway in this article that is a little bit different. His name's Steven West, and he's the host of this podcast. The podcast talks about different philosophies and things like that. The thing about philosophy is that, even if it's interesting, it's pretty academic. It's not exactly applicable to real life, and it can also be snooty. A lot of people talk about ideas that don't really change my day-to-day life. However, he has this podcast that does the opposite. It's fairly applicable and fun to listen to. Now, the interesting thing about this guy is that he was actually taken away from his parents at the age of 9. He was homeless off and on for a little while and then left high school at the age of 16. Starting in 2013, he began stocking shelves inside a grocery store. It was a pretty crappy job, but he was able to find meaning in the books he listened to. He said he would listen to audiobooks for 7 hours a day. He goes, "I would listen to audiobooks on philosophy for 7 hours a day, and in the last hour of the day, I would do just a silly podcast." It was manual physical labor, but he loved it because he was able to listen to these books all the time. A few years passed, and he had listened to so many of these audiobooks that he felt like he had devoured Western philosophy. He read Tim Ferriss's book, "The 4-Hour Workweek," about life design. Do you remember the concept of life design? It's the idea that you can build any life you want, but you have to map out what your day looks like and how much money you think you need. He got really inspired by that, which is kind of funny since this deep philosophy nerd got into Tim Ferriss. So, he launched this podcast called "Philosophize This!" It kind of took off. This podcast now has about 2 to 3 million monthly downloads, and the YouTube channel has 150,000 subscribers. However, there's not too much information out there on Steven West. I think he has a Twitter, but he basically just tweets out when there's a new episode. What interested me a ton is that the article was written about this author whose father was into philosophy but was kind of unsuccessful. He just studied all day. The idea of podcasting being possible right now allows someone like Steven West to make a full-time living doing this based on just a hobby. There's a quote that says, "Steven doesn't preen or preach or teach; he just talks to you like a smart, curious adult." I read that line, and it reminded me of something. Do you remember what the old pitch was for The Hustle?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you're smart. No bullshit, friend, right? It's something like that.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you're smart. No, no bullshit. I'm your friend, telling you what you need to know about the world of tech and business news.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Sam Parr

And that was also the line for the Milk Road. It was like your smart, no-nonsense friend telling you about all the news that's going on in the crypto world.

Shaan Puri

No coincidence. Yes, no coincidence. Heavily inspired by the hustles.

Sam Parr

Heavily inspired, but there's like... now that line is used a ton, and I'm sure I stole that from someone else as well. I read this biography about Gideon Gardner. He's the guy who started Gartner, which is a research firm that is publicly traded and worth $40 billion, generating $1 billion in revenue. His whole shtick early on was, "I want to treat my customers like they're adults, and I'm just going to talk to them in a fun way, but in a professional way." We're going to keep things short, and the idea is we're going to treat you just like a smart adult, and we're your friend. That's kind of an interesting takeaway because in business, you can come up with new technology or whatever that takes off. You can create a better product, but one way I think to stand out is through branding. Branding is kind of a nebulous thing where it's challenging to define what a good brand is. This whole idea of treating our customers like smart adults and being casual with them is a shtick that I have seen work in so many different industries, and it has worked consistently. He does that wonderfully. You and I do that wonderfully. That podcast, Founders, which I love, does that wonderfully. There are so many different content niches that do that wonderfully, and there are so many different brands that do that wonderfully. But this idea of being cool—not like actual cool, but more like casual, like we're going to be your friend. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Right. When I went to Austin to record all those podcasts, I had a list of the people I was supposed to be excited about. It was like, "I'm gonna do a podcast with Tim Ferriss, Manish Pabrai, and Joe Lonsdale." Then there were all these meetings in between. There was one meeting that came up at the last second that I got super excited about, and that was to meet Tim Urban. Tim Urban's the guy who writes "Wait But Why." He has written a bunch of books now, and he has this blog that I love. So we go and meet with Tim Urban, and I'm like, "Dude, isn't it insane that you have this little blog on the internet? You used to just write whatever was interesting to you, and then one day, the richest, greatest entrepreneur in the world slid into your DMs and was like, 'Yo, I like your stuff. Do you wanna hang out?'"

Sam Parr

You're referring to Elon Musk, who is a huge fan of...

Shaan Puri

Tim Urban, like, "Hey, this is awesome! You're awesome! This is awesome! I'd love to meet."

Sam Parr

And the background being, Tim Urban runs a blog called *Wait But Why*, which when you and I were in our twenties, it was the hottest thing going. It's still popular, but it's like an intellectual blog that's also silly.

Shaan Puri

It's kind of the same description of what you said, right? Yeah, it's a guy who's smart. He's writing about the stuff that's on his mind, and he's honest in the way he writes it. He treats you well, whatever. So he was like, "Yeah, it was crazy." Then Elon meets him, and Elon basically says, "I would love for you to write. A bunch of people want to interview me. They want me on 60 Minutes, they want me on this, they want me on that. But I actually want you to write about what we're doing with AI, with Neuralink, with Tesla, with SpaceX. All of these things, I would love. You could write whatever you want. I'm not saying write something positive, but I like your writing. I'd like you to write." So then he wrote these series with Elon. Basically, he wrote a Neuralink series, he wrote an AI series, he wrote all these things. They were super popular. I was like, "How crazy is that? Could you have imagined that when you started just writing on your random blog, that one day the richest, most powerful entrepreneur in the world will just slide into your DMs and say that to you?" He's like, "No, I obviously couldn't have imagined that." But he goes, "I did always have a rule, which is my rule when I write: write for equals." I said, "Write for equals? That's... I immediately was like, 'Ah, I love that! What is that?'" He goes, "It's a big temptation on the internet, which is to create content that you think is for the masses. Let me tell you about how this all works. I know you don't know. I'll dumb this down, I'll sort of water this down, I'll shave off some of the edges. I won't tell you about anything of the unknown. I'll tell you all the known stuff because that's what you want. You need a Lunchable. You want your cracker, your cheese, and then your ham. You're going to put those three together, and that's what you're going to get for lunch." And he goes, "I also don't want to go the other way, which is I'm trying to impress all these people. Therefore, I'm going to act out of character, trying to write to impress people who I think are more advanced than me. I'm going to fluff up my language, use all this jargon, and try to make it sound smarter than it really is. Instead, I just sit down, and I just try to write for equals." He goes, "The beautiful thing—he didn't say all this, but the beautiful thing of that is when you actually put yourself out there, you will attract, by definition, like-minded people. The people who like what you do will be the people who like you. Then you can just keep being you, which is a lot easier than trying to guess what other people might like." So there's like this flywheel that starts. I would say this is probably the most common mistake that I've made, and every content creator makes: this feeling that maybe I should bend my content to the masses, or maybe I should bend it to impress these folks, rather than just the simple "write for equals." Three words. I thought it was wonderful.

Sam Parr

But my... and my? In bringing this up, is that this goes beyond content. This is about running your company a certain way. Tillman Fertitta, you know, he's this guy who... what does he own? He owns Landry's and...

Shaan Puri

A bunch of restaurant chains that are popular.

Sam Parr

A ton of restaurant chains.

Shaan Puri

Steak houses and stuff.

Sam Parr

I read his biography, and he told a story. He said, "Let me explain a little bit about my philosophy." Apparently, it was around 11:30 at one of his restaurants, and someone ordered an omelet. The rule was that breakfast ended at 11:00 or 10:30 or something like that. They turned the customer down, and he heard about this. He said, "Dude, the eggs are right there! Just say, 'I'm gonna go scramble you some eggs. I got you. Let me take care of it.'" It's this idea of following rules versus treating someone like a human. It's a huge deal, and it's real. What I'm saying is so simple, but it's actually hard. At Hampton, we only have 20 employees, but I still have to remind people, "Just act like we're a mom-and-pop business. Treat people a certain way, like you own a corner bodega and see the same people every day. 'Oh, you want the usual? I got you.'" That's actually really hard to do. It's hard to teach people how to do that because they want to act a certain way. Here's another good example: Anand, our friend who runs a company called CB Insights. I don't know how big they are, but they're around the idea of, let's say, $100 million a year in revenue. CB Insights makes a very professional, enterprise-level business that costs $100,000 a year. Their website, up until recently, had a homepage that said, "Without data, you're just an idiot with an opinion." They have a newsletter that he sends once a week to all their customers as well as potential clients. At the end of the email, he signs it with "I love you" or something like that. They would say things like, "Please buy a subscription because I owe people money."

Shaan Puri

A lot of money.

Sam Parr

Yeah, he would use these funny things, and I would see that. I'm like, not everyone's shtick is to be funny, but everyone's shtick should be to not change necessarily from just treating people like humans. So when I saw this line about philosophy, which is like a very lame thing—I've tried to learn about it, and it's like they don't want you to approach this topic because it's very guarded. I love that this guy is doing this, and it reminded me that we should be doing this with a lot of different things.

Shaan Puri

There's also another angle to this. A lot of people, when they go into a business, will start thinking about what industry they like or what product they like. When you're told to kind of follow what you like, you typically think, "Oh, I'm interested in healthcare," or "I really like media." You just pick it at a 9,000-foot level. A different way to approach it is to work backwards from your customers. Ask yourself: Which customers do you respect? Which customers do you love? Which customers do you want to understand? And which customers would you want to hang out with? So, pick your customer and then work backwards from that. Instead of picking an industry and trying to find a business, you could pick a customer and try to find a pain point that could become your business. I think with Hampton, you did a good job of this. You want to hang out with all of your customers; they're cool people. Those are the types of people you like to hang out with—business owners and people who are somewhat successful and trying to do interesting things in their lives. So, you picked a business where you understand and are attracted to that customer, and therefore, you'll always sort of stay in love with that business. Another version of that, which I found for myself, is that most of the time, for any business, you're not just building a product. Most of the time, as an entrepreneur, when you sign up to start a business, you're actually signing up to try to grow a thing.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you're selling most of the time.

Shaan Puri

You're selling most of the time. Paul Graham wrote a blog post titled "Startups Equals Growth." What is the differentiator between a small business and a startup? It's that a startup is designed to grow fast, while a small business might be like a barbershop or a nail salon that doesn't have to grow quickly. If you're going to be focused on growth, 90% of your brain—and therefore selling—then it actually makes sense to work backwards from what type of sale you will need to make this successful. For example, I've had ideas where I'm like, "Oh, that would be a great product! I would love to make that product, and companies would benefit from it." But the problem is, to make that product grow, I would need to do enterprise sales—something I do not know anything about, nor would I want to know anything about. I'm not curious about that, right? So actually, that business is not about that product; it's about enterprise sales. Do I want to do enterprise sales every day for the next seven years? Do I want to build a team that's really good at doing enterprise sales for the next seven years? I found, for example, that I love running ads. The first time I started doing an e-commerce business, I was like, "Wow, I can just set up this one ad, and this ad will be like..."

Sam Parr

**Shit machine, it's a money machine.**

Shaan Puri

He works all night. I don't even have to think about this business. My calendar doesn't need to be booked with calls. I don't need to send cold emails every day. This ad will just keep hustling out there. I'm sending out these armies to the corners, and they're selling for me. Right? And all I need to...

Sam Parr

Do you like talking to the ad? Like, "Hey sweetheart, how are you? Nice to see you this morning, ads." I'm like, "Thank you."

Shaan Puri

You take this tiny commission, this small CPM fee, and in exchange, you can sell 24/7 around the clock to every single city and every single country all around the world. You are an amazing employee to add. So, I work backwards from ad companies or content. I love creating content, so if the main way to grow this business is through content, then don't I want to do that? Picking your business based on what the sales method is a far better way to build a business that you love and that will actually succeed than to pick the product or the industry that you think you like.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I completely agree. You said something earlier: you start studying how you make money, and then you realize you don't know anything. Then you kind of learn it, and then you're certain, like, "Alright, I know it. I just gotta give myself 10 years." And then you care less about it than you thought. Are you in that stage?

Shaan Puri

In and out, so I think everything goes to that stage. I want to know it; I know it. Oh shit, I thought I'd do it. I didn't know it at all. Then you finally get to the point where you actually know it, but you only know it in your head. You don't know how to actually do it, right? It's that example I gave one time on the podcast of watching this guy make this amazing scrambled egg. It was fluffy, perfect, and had chives. It just looked so good. Watching that, I was like, "I know step by step what he did," because he showed me step by step with the camera, the audio, and the instructions on the screen. But if I went and tried to make that egg right now, I'd make a horrible mess everywhere. So first, you go from intellectually knowing the blueprint and having it in your head, then you know it in your hands. At a certain point, you still enjoy maybe the craftsmanship of doing it, but the novelty of figuring out how to do it, of solving the puzzle, that goes away because...

Sam Parr

You kind of...

Shaan Puri

Solve the puzzle more and more. I think a good thing in life is to sort of seek new puzzles. Right now, for example, the puzzles I'm seeking, the things I'm more fascinated about, rather than "How did this business get to $5,000,000 ARR with 60% EBITDA margins?" is the creative process. How do the most creative people in the world, who create dope shit, live their lives? What do they do? How do they think? What is the conversation they have in their heads? This is the same thing I used to ask about entrepreneurs. I just find myself gravitating more towards creative people who are living maybe a unique life or an artist-based life. Then, what are they doing? That's where my current fascination is.

Sam Parr

You're drifting towards these beatnik artists. I'm wondering how the politicians gain all this power. Golly, we are sellouts, aren't we?

Shaan Puri

No, we're not sellouts. We're grown-ups. Alright, where do we go from here?

Sam Parr

That's it. That's the pod.