5 Business Ideas With High Demand & Low Supply | Start These In 2022 (#374)

Steph Smith

With the pandemic, a bunch of restaurants have gone online, "quote-unquote." They have the QR codes, right? And something that I think of every single time as an internet marketer is: why are they not A/B testing their menus? So I think someone needs to go and create A/B testing software that restaurants can ingest super easily.

Shaan Puri

What's up, Steph? Steph is back, back in the house! One of the most requested return guests of all time. We should have you on more. What are you doing now, by the way? You left The Hustle/HubSpot, you went to Andreessen... is that where you're at still, or are you doing other things?

Steph Smith

Yeah, exactly. I'm at **a16z** [Andreessen Horowitz]. I'm their new podcast host. They've had a podcast for like 7 or 8 years, and then it went on hiatus. They looked for a new host, and that's me. We haven't gone live yet, but we will be soon.

Shaan Puri

Every time you come on, you bring this document that's basically like... it's sort of what me and Sam do. But when me and Sam do an episode, we have 2 or 3 bullet points each, like 3 words. I have 2 and he has 2, and that's how we prepare. You send this *Encyclopedia Britannica* of topics and ideas, like half-baked things in your head. So, I'm looking at this, and it's like 7 or 8 pages or something like that... oh no, twelve pages long! So, we have a lot to choose from. Where do you want to start?

Steph Smith

I wanted to share this one idea I think I've actually talked about it on another couple pods but with the pandemic a bunch of restaurants have gone online quote unquote they have the qr codes right and you pull up the menu some restaurants have reverted back to the physical menu but tons of restaurants are still using these qr codes and something that I think of every single time as an internet marketer is why they are not ab testing their menus and so I think someone needs to go and create ab testing software that restaurants can ingest super easily and the basis of this is well a if you think about what has made so many internet companies successful it is the fact that they have these alternate worlds that they can ab test right Google homepage are we using this font or this font or using this color or this color netflix you know amazon every all of these large internet companies have used this but also there's the restaurant equivalent so the hustle did a story on this woman michelle benesh and you can just look up design restaurant menus to the hustle or something like that to get the article but we wrote about this woman who her job was literally to go redesign menus physical menus and based on her understanding of human psychology orientation there's like this zed or z effect on the menu and the way people scroll she was able to figure out how to get one restaurant just as an example to bring in $9 more per customer by redesigning their menu same products but just the orientation the order of the menu the design of it and I was thinking why aren't restaurants not using this as in now we have the qr code which allows us to direct someone to any unique link right we have the digitization of this and so you could hire someone like michelle and she could probably figure out how to do this for you or someone should be just create a software that allows restaurants to do this they don't need to change their menu at all but they can mess around with the menu design the same way you mess around with landing page design and get higher conversion and of course the average restaurant owner is not gonna know how to do this and that's why I think there needs to be just some sort of software that says hey we can increase your conversions

Shaan Puri

right

Steph Smith

By 50%, we can increase your average customer value by $3, whatever it is. I haven't seen it anywhere.

Shaan Puri

this is amazing this is great I remember so I I started a restaurant back in the day my very first startup was a restaurant and we were but when we finally got to launch long story short we were like do we wanna launch a physical restaurant we gotta sign this 10 year lease with a personal guarantee that sounds scary and our mentor kind of was like could you test your concept by doing delivery only and basically it was like a cloud what a cloud kitchen is today but this was back you know more than 10 years ago now where there was no doordash there was no uber eats at the time but it was like what if people could just order online what if you just had a kitchen nearby downtown there was no physical seating there's no there's no storefront you just deliver and we were like okay listen and so we tried it and when you do that you're really conscious of well our whole menu's online so that means we could run a test to just see like what makes people order more or not and so we did the most basic of ab tests the first thing we did was we were trying to lower prices and we talked to this guy dan ariely who was he wrote this book predictably irrational and we were like dan hey we're you know 3 dudes trying to build this sushi restaurant startup you know do you know anything about the restaurant industry like I know a lot about the restaurant industry he goes I get paid by companies to come in and help them with either the menu or like he he told us about some experiment I think panda express had paid him a bunch of money to do to basically say could we get people we have healthy items on the menu and people tell us the reason they don't eat here is because it's unhealthy but nobody orders the healthy items so like what gives and he's like oh humans are predictably irrational they'll tell you one thing and then they won't do it and he the the one test he had made was when you walk into a panda express instead of putting both items on the menu and just having you choose it was right when you walk through the door it would sit there was like a little angel path it's like if you're gonna eat healthy go this way and there was like the devil if you're gonna eat indulgently you know like if you want full flavor go this way and when people make that choice upon walking in and then they only see a menu of those items like they were happier with their choice and they ordered more of those items and so he like figured out that was the only way he could design this restaurant to do that one thing and so similarly he was like oh he he goes oh yeah I can help your business your prices are too low and we go what do you mean like everybody says sushi's too expensive we're trying to make it more affordable like how is that a bad thing what you know like what are you talking about man we're trying to do the people's work here he's like he's like sushi people like do you ever wanna eat if I told you you can eat cheap sushi would you want that and he's like no and he's like you know he's like so just like the you know wine industry people buy expensive things because it makes them feel good that they bought a higher quality thing so he goes just test the price so we did it we basically upped the price 50% on one menu versus the other we just ab tested it and we had like higher conversion rate on the higher price which is crazy like not even just it netted more money it was higher conversion rate on the higher price so that was like the first time I saw this like menu ab testing I mean think about how big of a lift that is like if you can convert every customer at a higher rate at a higher dollar amount that's like you know meaningful in an industry that's like 10% margins and so we did that then we tested other things like instead of just saying you know this is whatever this is like the philadelphia roll we use salmon it's like alaskan salmon hand caught alaskan salmon farm caught hand hand you know handled alaskan salmon or whatever we just started adding all these extra words that were like meant nothing changed nothing they were all true but it's like always fresh never frozen alaskan salmon hand caught by a farmer near you and it's like oh people like love that and then they would buy more and so you you can see these little menu tricks now what I didn't think of which is your your genius idea is how do you actually turn that into a business where you could become an agency that does this for companies you could become a piece of software that does this as ab testing of qr codes you could do this with physical menus also by the way like you could just give out 2 different versions of the physical menu and say and just track the tickets and be like cool we know what the what the checkout is for both for how much they spend on both sides and we could just prove to you that menu design a is better than b and like you know your current menu was designed by like your niece who knows photoshop so like you know I think we can do better than that and if we do bet if we beat your current menu then you pay us you know $50 a month and we'll keep running tests for you yeah I think this is actually a really really great idea

Steph Smith

Yeah, I think the key difference... I mean, you always look for inflection points, I think you guys say, or changes. So, yeah, before, you're right, you could do this with physical menus, but you know the data is so much harder to get. You have to match up the physical menu with the POS software you're using. But now, I don't know what the percentage is, but we all know a ton of restaurants are using these QR codes. They've already taken the major step of digitizing the experience. So now, what you need to do is just apply those analytics. Some company needs to create the software that ideally integrates into the POS, so you can literally pop out a report at the end. But even if you don't have it integrating with the POS, I think you can still look at how long someone spends on this menu versus that menu. How are they scrolling? What items are being sold more?

Shaan Puri

You wouldn't even need to because you're basically... so basically they'll scan the QR code and it's like, you know, Google Optimize or Optimize to do one of those. You don't enter an A/B test.

Steph Smith

test

Shaan Puri

And then you're going to pass the final value. Here's the final cart that they're checking out with to the, you know, to the thing. When it's in person, like in a restaurant, they check out with everything. They don't walk away; they actually do order food. So you can kind of bet pretty heavily on that. I wonder if people would also do this with DoorDash or Uber Eats. Like, yes, could I be a service that just optimizes your DoorDash listing with photos, menus, and copy? If you're a national chain that's in, you know, one of a thousand cities, and I can get you an extra half a conversion or an extra $2 in cart size, that's pretty meaningful for these restaurants that are on these delivery platforms.

Steph Smith

Yeah, I was thinking about that too because Uber Eats menus are always so long. You know, there's that thing called "choice overload" where you have too many options.

Shaan Puri

paralysis by analysis or whatever

Steph Smith

Like this is usually exactly... yeah. Also, Uber Eats will have three or so items at the top labeled "Our Most Popular Items." I don't know if Uber actually selects that for the restaurant, but if you had the option... and actually, if you're an engineer at Uber working on this, create a platform where people can A/B test right on Uber Eats. This way, they feel like that's a platform where they're making more money versus DoorDash or their own. That's a value add. If someone created their own online menu that people ordered from, it would obviously make it more sticky for people to stay there.

Shaan Puri

Well, I looked at the startup that was doing exactly this. What they were doing was going to a local mom-and-pop restaurant, like a Chinese food place, and saying, "Great! You know, Mister Han's Chinese? Everybody loves you locally, and now you're on DoorDash. But your photos are kind of crap, your descriptions are all off, and you're not saying what foods are vegan, even though they are vegan. You're just not optimized." So, what he would do is partner with the restaurant and create a shadow, like a clone of the brand, but he would call it something catchy, like "Chuchu Chinese." All the photos would be super bright, set against a backdrop of orange or red, or whatever, with really good-looking photos. He would trim the menu down, saying, "Look, people come in here for fried chicken, dumplings, and this and that." So, he would just focus on those items, write better copy, and take better photos. When an order gets placed on those restaurants, that same restaurant just gets a ticket. They don't even know it's from this other brand, basically. Later, they would send them packaging that said, "Hey, if it comes in through this ticket printer, put it in the Chuchu Chinese box. Don't put it in Mister Han's local box." So, they just created separate packaging. He said, "Yeah, we have 200 restaurants, we do like $17 million in GMV, and we operate none of these restaurants. They were already restaurants that existed. All we did was rebrand them for Postmates, Uber Eats, and DoorDash." I was like, "Oh my God, this is a mind-blowing idea!"

Steph Smith

actually works

Shaan Puri

He's like, "Yeah, they love it because they get like 30% extra revenue just because we're better at marketing on those platforms than they are." I wonder how they're doing now. I actually haven't caught up with them. I didn't end up investing because I was like, "I don't know where this goes." I feel like this could just get banned or blocked in one second, but it was a fascinating idea and that guy who was doing it was really talented.

Steph Smith

Yeah, one more thing on the idea of food. Have you seen the... I think it's the FDA's food pyramid? Or at least in Canada, that's what we called it: the food pyramid. And you have like all these grains, and they're like, "Eat this much bread," and... they're rethinking that. Have you seen that? They're rethinking it.

Shaan Puri

well they share my

Steph Smith

business like

Shaan Puri

Carbs are the foundation of your diet. Yeah, like fruit and vegetables were in this tightly shared little section. They had bunk beds at the top of the pyramid. It was crazy.

Steph Smith

Yeah, they were... you know, people got upset because, I mean, a simple example is they'd be like, "Nuts? No nuts! Too much fat!" And then they'd be like, "But white bread? Okay." You know, foundational. So they're coming out with a new food pyramid of sorts, and that impacts... I didn't know this, but foods can apply the word "healthy" to their products. Like, you know, brands could actually have the word "healthy" on their cereal box, as an example, based on this food pyramid or some sort of requisites. They're changing that, and I just thought, I don't know if there's a business idea here, but I feel like there's going to be a ton of content, a ton of changes coming out because of this. I mean, the food pyramid was pretty foundational. So, right, I don't know what the business idea here is, but it's just like one of those... there's gotta be something here.

Shaan Puri

Well, that's a good inflection. I'll give you another inflection that I was thinking about recently over the weekend. So, you know, like the law change that allows college athletes to monetize their brand, their face, called NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness). Mhmm. That came into effect this year, and now college athletes can get paid. For example, when we did our MFM camp, we paid Puff Johnson, this basketball player at North Carolina, to come drop in and play pickup with us. It was just a cool moment. It's like, "Oh yeah, here's this guy who's going to be in the NBA in a couple of years." He's just playing with us, and we paid him, I don't even know what, like $200 or something like that to show up for an hour. He's like, "Cool, I've got nothing else going on on a Saturday. I'll go pick up $200." And by the way, he was an awesome guy. So that's a little market that's been created. I was asking Ben, "How did you book him? What'd you use?" And he's like, "I just DM'd him on Instagram." I was like, "Oh, interesting." There's not really a great marketplace yet that's connecting college athletes to the people who want to pay them for, you know, just to do an appearance or a sponsorship or whatever. There are some people trying, but nobody's really done it. There's going to be one company that just owns this. Here's the liquidity: we've got all the athletes, and then because of that, we've got all the brands. We take care of all the transactions, and you don't need to use Instagram DMs and like Venmo. It just all happens through a platform, and we have all the reporting that we hand over to the universities. So I think that's a big idea: create an AngelList for the NIL marketplace. The second thing is, what opportunities does this open up? Dave Portnoy, who runs Barstool, they jumped on this pretty early. They're like, "Oh great, we'll have a Barstool Athlete program where you can sign up to be a Barstool athlete, which will help you get these deals." They came out and said, "We're taking 0% cut on these deals." I don't know how or why, but they just decided to say that. And he's like, "We have 200,000 college athletes as part of this now," some huge number like that.

Steph Smith

that's insane

Shaan Puri

So, I was thinking... I was like, "Man, so many different products and brands have been built off influencer marketing." Everything from, you know, MVMT watches, which were early to Instagram influencer marketing, and built a $100,000,000 watch brand. You know, Sugar Bear Hair? They got the Kardashians to take pictures with this gummy, you know, biting this little blue gummy, and that became like this iconic look. Then that became, again, a $100,000,000 supplements brand. Now, I'm thinking, well, all of a sudden, overnight, you can tap into the influencer marketing of college athletes across the country. Probably very few brands are doing this just yet. You could almost create a company just working backwards from, "Alright, if I could get every influential college athlete to post something, what product should I make that's going to work best with their audience and their trust?" It's kind of an unsaturated marketing channel right now. An unsaturated marketing channel can be worth like $100,000,000 if you can be the first to figure it out on that platform. So, you could think about what products their audience would buy because now I can reach them for a very low cost. This literally couldn't happen before. You have this inflection change. I think that's another brainstorm that somebody could do: figure out what product would fit that category and just work backwards from the distribution.

Steph Smith

What would you do? Do you have any thoughts on if you were to choose that as your channel? People talk about channel market fit. What product would you create?

Shaan Puri

Well, so, thinking on the e-commerce side just for a second, I was like, "Alright, you can..." and I don't know if e-commerce is the best. I think probably like some credit card or debit card or something like that is probably the best. If you can basically get, you know, a million college students to start using your credit card because you got, you know, a hundred athletes to just say, "Oh, I'm using this," and sign up for this bonus program, and you get a, you know, whatever, $500 credit for spring break or what... I don't know. You should come up with some offer. But you distribute it through these athletes and you basically say, "Cool, if I get at age 18 to 21 somebody to pick my credit card, what's that worth to me?" I think that's probably, like, one of the best categories you could be in. But if it's not that, let's just take e-commerce for a second. I think that you want to find the... I would first go to the class of the best e-commerce products. So, like, high repeat purchase rate, high lock-in, basically high margin, you know, low shipping. This is why, like, Native Deodorant was such a great product. It weighed less than a pound, so you could ship it in a normal envelope. Shipping was low cost. It's repurchase because you wear deodorant every day and you run out of it every, whatever, 2 to 3 months. So you're going to keep buying it. It's high margin, like it only cost this much to make and they could charge, whatever, $20 to sell a two-pack. So, like, it had a lot of the traits that make for a great product. I would try to figure out, like, whether it's protein powder or athletic greens or, you know, some sparkling water brand or, you know, some seltzer.

Steph Smith

smelly water

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, smelly water. I try to figure out some product like that, something with mass appeal, high margin, and a high review purchase rate. Then I would just work backwards from that. I wouldn't do products that are big one-off purchases with low repeat purchase rates; I just try to stay away from those. So, I would look at the winners of current e-commerce and then I would try to retrofit those. I would ask myself, "Would that particularly hit with a college crowd?" I think an energy drink would be amazing. If you could create something like Red Bull or Rockstar, that would be great. If you could just make the next vitamin water or energy drink, I think that's probably the strongest option. But if it's not that, then some kind of subscription product, like maybe deodorant or something like that, is probably where I'd go for.

Steph Smith

Deodorant would work. It could be like "Don't smell on the court" or some, you know, cheesy thing like that. But yeah, I think deodorant would actually be...

Shaan Puri

Well, you could also, like, if you're just riffing on that, you could take the deodorant brands and make them specific. You could make the scents specific to the campus. So, like, I don't know, whatever the name is, like, you have "Longhorn" for UT, and then you have the names of the scents that kind of fit that market. It's the same scent; you're just labeling it differently depending on where it's at. But you're now pulling into that kind of brand affinity they already have with their campus or whatever else. It makes sense for the athlete to be promoting that because, again, they're a college athlete for that school. Maybe you could do some things like that to juice how attractive it is.

Steph Smith

I kind of love that because... you know, my marketing hat is on and there are so many taglines you could use. You could be like "Sniff out your competitors" or... you know, you could imagine these internet wars: "Oh man, that university's scent sucks!" "That high school... have you smelled that? That stuff's nasty!" Or like, you know, people actually competing on which college has the [best scent].

Shaan Puri

Best scent for every... Every stick that's bought here, we, you know, drop one stink bomb at your rival school. That's like some way to, you know, compete with the other schools.

Steph Smith

nice

Shaan Puri

I can't find this client info

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform that shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned—no out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: Grow better. Okay, let's do a quick one. I actually saw this in the Trends newsletter a while ago. I didn't write this, but it was this stat: the average person spends **$1,500** after a breakup. I have no idea where the stat came from, but it definitely got the wheels spinning. They came up with a bunch of different ideas, which I think are actually gaining some traction. **Divorce party ideas** is something that gets search volume. Breakup cake—people throwing their own breakup parties. I was just like, I don't know if there are specific brands that are taking this on, but I was like, that stat of **$1,500**—I don't know where it came from, but there's something there.

Shaan Puri

That's like if I'm F Jerry, you know that Instagram account? They have built a kind of little media empire. They have a bunch of other accounts, but they also have products. They made that card game, and I think they make some products now. If I were one of those accounts, I would be jumping on this. I would basically say, "Alright, it's already viral, it's meme-worthy, it's remarkable. People are going to talk about this." So how do I make, you know, like the best breakup cake delivery service? Or like, you know, the revenge body kit? It's like, we send you this 7-day detox where we just send you a healing crystal, a juice cleanse, and whatever else to, you know, get that person out of your life so you can get the bad juju away. I'd be like, "You know, this is called Bad Juju," or whatever. I would just try to create a viral product through that because I think it's on brand. I think it has enough demand where you could see this doing, you know, $2 to $10 million a year, all organic, just because the product is so viral. You know, it's probably not going to be enormous, but there's enough of a niche there, especially if you're one of these accounts. Because you already have distribution, or you're somebody who goes to those accounts and partners with them and says, "Hey, I got the right product for you guys. Let's do, you know, some kind of profit share, and I'll run this business. You guys just help me promote this." Like, you know, whatever, like the breakup vodka. It's like, "This is the breakup vodka kit," or whatever, you know, whatever the thing is.

Steph Smith

Yeah, I mean, I'm imagining all the tropes of someone getting broken up with and they: - Become super fit - Get a Ph.D. - Just become like the best version of themselves after the breakup It doesn't always happen, but you could imagine something like that.

Shaan Puri

Or something that's even less work. It's like... what are those voodoo dolls where you poke it and you're sending ill will towards them? You could just upload a photo of your person and we print you a doll that looks close enough like them, and you could do that.

Steph Smith

That reminds me of... did you see that startup, Empti? It was fake. Did you hear about this? I think it had a silly spelling too; it was like "Empti" or something. It was a fake startup that people thought was real. Basically, they sent people these empty boxes, and the whole idea was like, "Look, we send you these empty boxes, and there's some motivational quote from Buddha in it." It's like, "You know, rid yourself of all the things you don't need in your life." The idea was that people were supposed to take all their junk, put it in these boxes, and send it to this company for free. But they paid this company to send them these boxes! It was a fake startup, and all these people were writing about it, saying, "Oh, this is so smart! What a cool company!"

Shaan Puri

and it was

Steph Smith

just yeah exactly it was a joke but

Shaan Puri

Yeah, actually you could do that with this too. You could send them the "breakup box." It's like: 1. Put all their crap in this box 2. All their crap they've left in your house that reminds you of them 3. Put it in this [box], send it to us 4. We will send you a video of us burning this box in this epic way And like, you get to have that at the end. You know, those are the types of ideas you could do with this.

Steph Smith

nice

Shaan Puri

So, you were right. Before we started recording, you were beginning to tell me, "Here's my theory of why people like this podcast." So, what is your theory?

Steph Smith

Okay, so there are many reasons to love *My First Million*. I think there's something that you guys have done, especially recently, when you and Sam just go back and forth. You tell a really funny joke, and then Sam just starts laughing hysterically in a contagious way that most people would hold back on a podcast. It's literally, as people say, like you're in the room with him. It reminded me of this subreddit I found recently called r/ContagiousLaughter. It has 4,500,000 people subscribed to it, and it's one of, I think, the top 100 subreddits out there. It's literally just a feed of people laughing, and there are dozens of posts every day. As I went down it, I was like, "There's gotta be a post of Sam and Sean here."

Shaan Puri

well okay let me tell you a couple interesting things about this first I think this must I think the subreddit must be kind of like almost like new or growing faster recently right because I hadn't heard of this subreddit before and I kinda keep an eye on on the top ones maybe I just missed it but I've also seen this trend on tiktok I don't know if you've seen it somebody will be like I'm a clinical psychologist and I can make you happier in the next 10 seconds repeat after me and there's like a duet so that guy's like and she's like and you're just like okay I see where this is going and then she just gets to like and like by the end both people are just cracking up like because it's like 10 deep and you can't help yourself like the body will just start like genuinely laughing just from making the sound like it goes both ways it's not like something funny happens therefore I break out laughing it's like if you break out laughing intentionally you could just like it could it's like something funny just happened basically and and so I've thought about this like contagious laughter thing in 2 ways 1 is as a I was thinking about the podcast and I was like was watching I was watching the all in pod and I love that podcast but they do something that really bothers me which is one of them will crack a joke and the other guys don't what I call sell the joke like they don't laugh and I don't know if they don't laugh because they're trying to they're a they don't think it's funny b it's not that they're trying to keep it serious or c they might just edit it where they just don't use the audio track from someone because it kind of makes it a little choppy because you're using one on top of the other but mhmm it totally changes the vibe of something when in a podcast especially when the other person actually sells your joke like if you if you try to crack something and I go with it or and this works for other things on my first million too I call it the homie move where sam will be like do you know how many people buy this thing and I know it's probably a high number if he's telling me like that but I'll be like I don't know what like a 100 and just to give him the like no dude a million and like I give them that like assist basically and so there are several things like that where you gotta kinda sell the other person's thing and it's not fake it's just like be expressive like laugh hard react big that stuff works when it comes to content and people are very shelled up about that sort of thing I don't know if that that is in line with what you're talking about

Steph Smith

Totally! One of the funniest moments on *My First Million* was your Orlando Bloom story. I think if I just heard you telling it by yourself, I'd be like, "Yeah, that's pretty funny." But Sam's laughter layered onto that, where he was just dying as you were telling that story, made it honestly one of the top five moments in *My First Million* history for me. That's why I think this subreddit is so great. Even in their rules or community guidelines, you know how someone posts something and there's typically a bot that says, "Hey, report this if X, Y, and Z." On that subreddit, it's like, "Report this if you're laughing at a joke or some sort of incident and not the laughter specifically." They're like, "We only want you to be on here to hear other people laughing." So, I don't know, I just thought that was a fun thing and it reminded me of why I think some people love *My First Million*—it's just so authentic.

Shaan Puri

Well, you're about to do podcasting. Do you remember what I told you? My advice to you when it came to doing a podcast? I don't know if you remember this; this was a couple of years ago now.

Steph Smith

I actually don't you should tell

Shaan Puri

Me though, I was like, "Don't be too normal," or I was like, "You're too normal." I was like, "You need to be..." Yeah, like to me, the ideal podcast guest is like half insane. What that means is there are things that they're not even aware of that are insane. Like Sam has a ton of these where he's like, "Dude, I was thinking that, you know how you think about what happens if someone broke in right behind me right now and tried to kill me?" I'm like, "No, I don't think that." The fact that you think that means you're kinda insane. You're not even aware that that's a weird thing you're doing. You think that other people do that too. Then the second is being willing to say something crazy, stuff like that. The third is they don't hedge and try to downplay. Most people are basically taking their own little volume knob and turning it down all the time because they want to fit in. So the best thing you could do if you want to be a personality on the internet is you can't have that "I'm trying to fit in, turn the volume down" thing. You gotta like turn it up, if anything. So that was my theory on it. Now, I do think I might be wrong because there are people like Lex Fridman or whoever who are successful with their podcast. You know, it's like Lex is not... you know, his volume is like down to 2 basically. He's a very monotone, calm, normal person, and people do end up loving it. So I don't think my theory was entirely correct, but I do think it helps to have like, you know, a bit of a screw loose. And like, you know, you're a very stable, smart person. You don't have that much of a screw loose, so I think you're almost playing from behind when it comes to internet content.

Steph Smith

No, I think you're right. So, in preparing for every episode that I do, I go and listen to that person on other podcasts. It's crazy how they get asked the exact same questions everywhere they go. There's just kind of a template, like, "Okay, so tell me about your life. Tell me why you went this direction in your career." I think you've even talked about this on "My First Million." You're like, "We don't do that. We ignore all the questions that we know everyone's gonna ask." I guess maybe some people want to hear them, but we ask you the real stuff. Like, "How much do you make? What keeps you up at night? When have you failed?" Or, even more than that, you actually just ask the questions that people probably want to hear.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's this great thing that happens if you always ask questions like that. It's like a "get out of jail free" card. It's like, "Well, that's just what he does." Versus if you just try to spring that on one person, it's a bit like, "Whoa, that's a little intrusive." But it's like, "Oh, that's his shtick. That's the show's shtick. That's what they do." Then you can get away with being a little more blunt. So, you know, cultivating an image of being a "don't give an f" or blunt personality has all these advantages. Because people just create new rules for you. They're like, "Ah, you know, if a normal person did this, yeah, I would feel wrong, but that's just Sean being Sean. That's just Sam being Sam." And you're like, "Whoa, okay, I just get to be that. That's awesome."

Steph Smith

that is awesome

Shaan Puri

wow okay that's good let's keep going what else you got

Steph Smith

Cheating scandals... everyone's talking about it. Chess, poker, fishing... I even saw Irish dance in a newsletter recently. So, you know, cheating's everywhere. But...

Shaan Puri

wolf if people are out of the loop frame it frame it for them about what what are what are the controversies

Steph Smith

Okay, so I don't know all of them in-depth, but I've been following the chess one pretty closely. Magnus Carlsen, the World Chess Champion, played Hans Niemann several weeks ago. Niemann beat him, but then there was all this controversy afterward where Magnus was acting sketchy. Eventually, he came out with a statement saying, "Hey, I believe Hans cheated. I can't speak to exactly why." There has been a history of Hans cheating in the past as well. So, there are all of these people on the internet who are taking sides. Some say, "No, Hans has been really good. How could you cheat over the board?" Then there are people who believe in Carlsen and say, "No, he's had a history of cheating; we just don't know how." There has been a similar poker controversy and then a fishing one where they were stuffing fish with lead balls. I think a bunch of people have just become fascinated with this idea that, "Oh my gosh, people are cheating," even though they have been for a long time. I have a couple of ideas around the concept of cheating, but I first want to hear your take. What do you think about these cheating scandals?

Shaan Puri

well there's something very seductive about them I don't know about you but like I don't follow chess normally but when it came to this I was like goddamn it if I don't have to get to the bottom of this like I know you know here goes 4 hours of like youtube rabbit holing to figure out and and I don't it's not even like it's a better entry. For me than just this person is great or this was a great match it's like here's the controversy oh what is it right and it goes back to this thing that I remember dana white said once dana white's the president of the ufc and he goes I go they were like you know ufc is kind of this fringe small thing but you're saying it's gonna be huge why do you believe that he goes I believe that because if you go to a park or a playground right now and you got a basketball court people are playing basketball you got a football field people playing football you have soccer over here baseball over there and then somebody screams fight and there's a fight going on guess where everybody's head's turning to the fight and that was his whole thesis of why I think the ufc is gonna be big because fighting is this universal universal thing that just gets you to turn your neck whether you wanted to or not and it's actually kind of played out the ufc's become this global sport you know a $5,000,000,000 + company and and it succeeded in places where you know like football doesn't really translate into europe or asia but fighting does fighting you know like there's chinese the chinese viewership is big in the ufc so is russian and so is you know wherever every little country so I think controversy is kind of the same thing where like I wasn't that into chess until I found out that there might be this like scandal what's the scandal I gotta know and and then you look at the evidence and you're like well there's 2 kind of interesting components 1 is how would somebody cheat that's kind of interesting it's sort of like a ocean's 11 like how did they rob the bank type of thing because you're sitting there at a chess board it's not online so this guy had been caught cheating online admitted to cheating online and many people cheat online they basically have a program running because you know ai can play chess better than a human can but then you have how was he cheating over the board and there was this then somebody threw out this crazy theory which was that

Steph Smith

the anal beads

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's got anal beads, you know, basically up his butt that vibrate and tell him what move to make or whatever. The way Magnus did it kind of added to it. So, first, when he got beat, it was big news because Magnus is the greatest player in the world, maybe the greatest player of all time. He then goes online and tweets out this thing, like he tweeted out a meme or a quote from a soccer coach who was like, "You know, I can't... if I say what I wanna say, I'll get in trouble." People are like, "What is he trying to say?" Then he comes out with a statement saying, "I think he cheated." He plays him again, and one move or two moves into the match, he just resigns. He basically quits and walks away, again sort of like saying, "I'm not gonna play with this cheater." Some people are like, "Is this just sour grapes?" and other people are like, "No, he knows something," but he's not said why he thinks he's cheating yet. Then over time, probably...

Steph Smith

Because he doesn't know, right? Well, now he's not gonna come out. He thinks that Hans cheated, but he doesn't know how. That's probably why he hasn't been descriptive about it, because he's like, "I think this guy's cheated."

Shaan Puri

There are two pieces of evidence. One is that he says, "He didn't look like he was trying." The guy beat me. I'm the greatest player in the world, and I know what it looks like when people try to beat me. They're very focused and concentrated. He barely looked like he was paying attention, yet he played basically a perfect game and beat me. That was the first thing: I didn't feel like he tried, and he beat me. The second piece of evidence is that people went back and looked at all of his past games as he ranked up. He has had this crazy rise from being a normal great player to a grandmaster or whatever top-ranked player. They did this thing where they can put your game history back into a chess solver engine and see how close to perfect, how close to AI, you played. The greatest players of all time have played like 62% or 72% of their moves matched what the AI would do—perfect moves. He has had several games where he achieved 100%. The greatest players ever will have no games at 100% during their rise to the top. So, it's sort of fishy on that front. Really, this guy is making 100% game theory optimal moves, and the greatest players ever, at best, are around 70%. Those are the kinds of pieces of evidence against him, but still, nobody knows how he did it, if he is indeed cheating.

Steph Smith

Yeah, exactly. I used to play chess competitively as a kid, and both of those are very compelling arguments. The first one especially—if you've ever played chess across the board, if you're in a tough situation, certainly if you're playing the World Chess Champion, you are concentrating so hard. I think there are stats that say a full chess match can burn like 1,000 calories or whatever if you're sitting at the board for several hours. So I think that's really compelling. My question is: how do you prove that someone's cheating? I don't know if you can. I think you can prove someone has the intent to cheat if you catch them with, like, some anal beads or something in their shoe. But how do you actually prove that someone has cheated? I'm also curious to know how organizations like the Chess Federation, etc., are going to change the way they operate to catch this cheating in the future. I don't know. I guess they could make people walk through a metal detector, but I don't know. There's always a game of whack-a-mole.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, you can always do the next thing. It's like, you know, I'm not gonna get caught once. In the Olympics, you have USADA or WADA, which are basically the agencies that are supposed to catch you for doping. But what happens is, guys go to the Olympics, they test clean, they break all the records, and oh, they're a natural athlete. Then, six years later, WADA updates their tests so they can test for new substances that are new to them. But the athlete had it all along. Then they go back to test the samples and they're like, "Oh, turns out they were doping." This has happened a few times in the Olympics and in high-level sports. So there's this problem of a cat-and-mouse game between cheaters and the anti-cheat organizations. Anti-cheat is actually a really interesting business category. I didn't really know much about this until we started building a startup in the gaming space. This was the company that ended up getting acquired by Twitch. When we were building in this space, we would play games in the office just for fun. We'd play Fortnite, Overwatch, and a bunch of different games like that. You sort of see two things: 1. The importance of hand-eye coordination and aim. Basically, being able to aim and shoot in these games is critical. 2. You'll play against someone and you're like, "Oh my god, as soon as I peek around the corner, boom! I get headshot immediately, perfectly, one time every time by the same guy." It's like, "Oh, it's an aimbot." It's basically someone using a piece of software that will automatically aim for your head every single time, more accurately than a human can do. So then the games have all these anti-cheat mechanisms built in to prevent that because it ruins the game when you have...

Steph Smith

when

Shaan Puri

You have cheaters, and at the highest levels, these games now have a really big competitive scene. Esports has to figure out how to catch this. So, you have a software game and then you have software anti-cheat, which is different from something like the Olympics or the chess metal detector thing, where it's an offline game. Now, you did offline anti-cheat. I think that the offline world needs to learn more from the gaming world about anti-cheat. There are companies that are quite big and are anti-cheat providers for all games. Each game individually can't build a security system that’s going to stop every potential form of cheating. So, there are individual companies that say, "We are anti-cheat software." Every game becomes our customer, and we can use them. I think that's what's going to have to happen: you're going to have to have anti-cheat companies that are security systems for the competitive integrity of the games. I think chess, poker, fishing, and others are going to have to ramp up in this area. But the irony is, this is the best thing that's ever happened. It's the best thing since "Queen's Gambit." I’ve paid more attention than ever to these things.

Steph Smith

Yeah, I mean, there are conspiracy theories suggesting that Hans and Magnus are in this together and that they're associated with Chess.com. They're all doing this to hype up chess, which I don't think is true. But I mean, it's kind of crazy when you think about fishing, for example. How was the fact that there were lead balls in a fish not caught earlier? I think you're right that some of these in-person sports are just way behind on the concept of cheating, which is ancient. I'm interested to see how that progresses. One idea, like you said, is that there's going to be this wave of measures that need to be put in place. I just thought of something I saw. You guys have had Peter Lovells on the podcast before, and he had Nomad List as one of his companies. For ages, people kept trying to copy Nomad List. There were all these companies saying, "We're going to hire 10 engineers and just smash you," because you're one engineer, and we're just going to take all your data. He would just, for fun, put in fake data. There was this country or city he put in called Dorobo, and he would do that to see who copied his dataset, which I kind of loved. I was trying to think through how that maybe could be applied elsewhere. I don't know if it could be applied to chess, but you could imagine, like, what if Stockfish had just a couple of incorrect moves that would catch the cheater? It's like, "Oh, you played g4. You were not supposed to play g4. If you were a great player, you would know otherwise." I just wonder what other kinds of spoofs or tricks you could put in as anti-cheating measures.

Shaan Puri

Well, there... I don't know if you saw this, but I was looking at Twitter this morning and I saw that Elon had tweeted about this story. I thought it was pretty interesting. Somebody tweeted at Elon, saying, "Hey Elon, back in the day, in 2008, there was somebody who was leaking internal company data. They kept leaking it to news outlets, and it was bad for business. I'm curious, how did you find them when it happened?" He responded, "Actually, it's an interesting story." Normally, Elon's tweets are just memes, but he continued, "We sent everybody in the company the same email, but with one slightly different space somewhere in the email. So, like, we would either do two spaces or one space. It was a long email, so we were able to create a unique fingerprint for everybody in the company. We sent them all a slightly unique email that was sort of like binary proof that this was your email that got out." He explained that they found the person that way and caught them sort of immediately. It was the fastest path to catching them versus going through all the email servers and patting people down as they left the factory. He said, "How are we gonna find this person?" That was the best way to do it: to put out something juicy that was false, space out the thing differently, and then they caught the person immediately. He added, "You know, we asked them to pursue a career in another company. We let them go."

Steph Smith

Saying it... Yeah, that's so clever. Yeah, so I'm interested to see how this progresses because I do wonder: Who wins? Do the cheaters win? Do the anti-cheating measures win? Historically, I mean, in gaming, what was the case? Could the anti-cheating measures keep up with the cheaters?

Shaan Puri

No, like, the best cheater is always one step ahead. Because, you know, there's always a... the bigger the... the more money involved, the bigger the incentive to cheat.

Steph Smith

mhmm

Shaan Puri

And so, anytime you have a big pot of money, you're going to find that people are going to cheat. This is why, you know, PayPal, Facebook, and others have so much staff every day dedicated just to catching cheaters. There's a huge amount of money involved in it. This is why people love Bitcoin. They're like, "Wow, if somebody could have hacked this, or spoofed this, or done a double spend, there is literally like half a trillion dollars for the taking." And because it hasn't happened, that just shows you how secure this is. So, it's like the absence of a hack shows the security. With anywhere there's a lot of money, there's going to be an incentive to cheat. The hardest part is that it's usually not sophisticated. For example, have you followed the poker scandal that's been going on?

Steph Smith

mhmm

Shaan Puri

it's like this high stakes game in la that they stream the game and so they have like a twitch channel or whatever where they're streaming the game so it's like kinda like the world series of poker but it's just going on all the time people are playing for like each person has like a 100 or $300,000 on the table so you get these pots of like half a $1,000,000 pots and this girl makes this this woman's playing this hand and she plays it in a way that kinda makes no sense she has jack 4 off suit it doesn't make any sense why you would even be in the hand the board has no jacks no fours and it has a flush draw has a straight draw the other guy has both and he bets he bets she you know she calls an all in when she has nothing and she wins the hand and people are like there is no way you can make that call like there's no you're holding those cards there's no the only explanation is you looked at your cards wrong and you you thought you had something else but she kind of like if you read the audio was there too where she's like no I don't have it right she was basically saying I don't have they're like do you have a 3 she's like no I don't have a 3 and so she's basically she's like oh you know I just did this as a bluff catcher and literally the guy's face when she calls at first he's like oh you got me I didn't have it you caught my bluff but then she turns over her cards and he's like okay you caught my bluff but you caught my bluff with that that makes zero sense that you would ever try to even catch a bluff with that and he's literally stone faced for like a minute and a half he doesn't say anything he's just looking and his eyes are just moving between the table and her and he's like you could tell the computer in his brain is like breaking it's like there's no way this could have happened he has detected basically an anomaly an anomalous move that has to be something like cheating like there's no other explanation as to how somebody could make you know a $200,000 bet on with those cards unless you knew what my cards were and what's coming out and so and so they like launched this investigation and like I think reddit and youtube are great at that where they like crowdsource the investigation they're like finding old clips and they're like more than any police officer could do you know put reddit on the case it's like when they found the the boston bomber or whatever I don't know if that ended up being true or not but like it's the same idea and so they're showing basically what it looks like happened was just there's a human in in the production team who was probably feeding her the information and she had like a vibrator device on her like in her pocket or in her pants or something like that that was like signaling her just like if it vibrates that means you're good like call the bet if it doesn't vibrate that means you don't you're not winning full and that's what people think is the like sort of most likely explanation for this at this.

Shaan Puri

But that's hard because it's human engineering. There's this conference that happens every year - I forgot the name of it, but you might know it. It's in Vegas, it's like the hacker conference. I don't know if you've heard of it... it's like DEF CON or something like that.

Steph Smith

oh that's familiar yeah

Shaan Puri

It's basically the number one hacker convention. I don't know why anybody would go to this; it's like walking into a shark den, basically. One thing that I found interesting is how much of hacking is not about brilliant computer engineering. It's often just someone calling you and saying, "Hey, I'm just verifying some information with the bank here. Could you tell me your mother's maiden name, your date of birth, and the last four digits of your Social Security number?" Then they say, "Alright, thank you. You're confirmed. Nothing else to worry about." They take that information and call the bank, saying, "Hey, I need to change my password. Can you change it for me? I forgot what my old one is, but my security questions? Yeah, my mother's maiden name is this, and here are the last four digits." Then they get the password changed and can take all your money. They didn't hack into the system; they just literally catfished you. It's human engineering. They trick you into giving up information, and that's how a lot of the big hacks happen. They just trick a human into giving them their password, and then they don't need to break in. It's like you gave me the keys; I can just walk right in.

Steph Smith

Exactly. That's why sim swapping is, unfortunately, one of the super common ways of hacking people. People will just go into like an AT&T store and say, "Hey, I'm this person. This is my phone number. I lost my sim. Could you give me a new one?" And they just get that. So yeah, it definitely... humans are the faulty piece in the equation. There's a [vulnerability in the human element of security systems].

Shaan Puri

Great business that came out of this insight, which was... there are many of them now. But when I heard this, I remember thinking, "Oh my God, that is genius!" It's basically a business that goes to companies and they say, "Hey, the number... you know that 90% of these hacks happen just because your employee is going to type their password on the wrong page?" And they're like, "Ah, I guess that's true." So they go on to explain, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to send false phishing emails to your employees. But don't worry, when they type it in, we're just going to give you a report every month because you're paying for our contract. This report will say, 'This employee clicked this link and this would have been a breach, but thankfully we caught it.' You can now educate the employees better." This is a way to ensure that your employees are not going to fall for these scams. Those companies do extremely well because it's way cheaper to prevent the hack that way, just by having somebody kind of stress test your employees in that way. They try to break through the system and say, "Hey, here is where we found a vulnerability." I thought that was just a genius business category to be in.

Steph Smith

Yeah, I have a coworker who fell for one of those recently. She's like, "Oh man, I gotta do this training." But I was like, "Really? That's all we have to do? We just gotta do a little bit of training?" This seems pretty faulty if all these employees are clicking on this. I kind of love the idea of ethical hacking. Have you seen there's been someone recently? I think their code name or hacker name is like "Bjorgska" or something. They've hacked into three of Indonesia's large government databases. At first, people were like, "Oh man, this is just Indonesia. It's a huge country, right, in terms of population?" They were like, "Oh, they've got like hundreds of millions of records." The first time it happened, people were shocked. The second time, they were like, "Oh my gosh, this happened again! This person has way too much data." But by the third time, they were like, "This person is just exposing how fragile all of our systems are." They haven't sent the data anywhere; they're just like, "You guys, you have to fix this." They're using proof to show it instead of just going to people and tweeting, "Our systems are really insecure," or whatever. Instead, they're just like, "Let me just show you." I think it's interesting. Have you heard of Wiz? I think that's some sort of enterprise security software. Wiz was the fastest, or at least one of the fastest, to hit $100 million ARR recently—faster than Deel and faster than a lot of the companies that we're familiar with.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, just W-I-Z, right? I think that's the name of it. Yes, Wiz Cloud Security. Exactly. They came out with some... I've never heard of this company. It's like, "Hey, we're the fastest growing company in the world." It's like, "What's that? What exactly do they do?" Is this what they do? They do the sort of like bug bounty stuff? Yeah, $100 million ARR [Annual Recurring Revenue] in 18 months.

Steph Smith

I don't know exactly what they do, but I just know they're some sort of enterprise security software. They're quietly the fastest growing company in a while.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's insane. Alright, enough with the hacking, cheating, and stealing. Although, I do... I just love that stuff. I can't get enough.

Steph Smith

I love a controversy I know same

Shaan Puri

Let's do these internet portfolios. I think these are pretty cool. I believe they provide good inspiration for people, and you've curated a group of them. Let me just kind of set it up. Basically, people have these personal websites or portfolios. I think you wrote something on this document that I want you to explain. You wrote, "evidence > confidence." What does that mean, and why do these interest you?

Steph Smith

Yeah, so I think in the age of social media, especially, it's really easy for you to be seen as an expert in something. You know, someone who's done no marketing can look up a bunch of Wikipedia articles and start putting threads on it. A bunch of people who don't know any better can just say, "Oh wow, this person has a lot of confidence."

Shaan Puri

right

Steph Smith

And you know, that's fine. But what I think is important, especially in this era where everyone can seem like an expert, is **evidence**. So, evidence over confidence. What do I mean by evidence? It's like, don't tell me you're this business expert; show me the businesses that you've built, how successful they are, and how you built them. Or let me see how you built them instead of you just telling me how you built them. I think one version of this for individuals is these personal portfolio sites. You know, you can have a site which, again, it's like, "I've written for Fortune," and "I have this many followers on Twitter," or you know, all of these things that you've made up that tell people you're confident. Instead, how about you just show me your skills? Some of these portfolios, which we'll hopefully pull up here, are just really fascinating. Because as soon as I go to them, I'm like, "This person is a badass! I want to hire them," just based on what I see here, based on the evidence that they are a killer creator. So, we should pull some of them up. For example, pull up this one from Bruno Simon and tell me what you see.

Shaan Puri

So basically, it's bruno-hyphensimon.com. You land on the site, and it's literally a Jeep that's on the screen. You click "Start," and there's a Jeep that says, "Use your keys to move around." It's just like, vroom! You can go forward and drive into stuff. It's like a 3D game; it's basically a game, and it's like his resume almost. You can drive around, crash into things, and clearly, this person is a super talented artist and creative web developer. It's like, "Alright, I'm going to drive to the project section." Okay, I'm in the project section, and I can see there are different things. If I park my car in the parking spot, it'll open that link to go see the website that they built. This is amazing! This is one of the best portfolios I've ever seen. It's stunning!

Steph Smith

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Pull up another one, which is just another example. Click the one that says "Interactive Resume" from Robbie Leonardi.

Shaan Puri

Robbie, okay, oh my god! It's like basically a game of Mario. So there's a character, and I'm scrolling. All of a sudden, I'm like, "Okay, level 1." It says about, "Oh wow, this is cool! This is sick!" It's basically like a chart of, "Oh, I'm good at design, illustration, whatever." But it's like I'm running through the level and I'm learning these different things about the person, about what they're into. Okay, NBA fan! Oh my god, now I'm underwater doing the underwater level. Yeah, so this is crazy! They basically just took a resume, designed it beautifully, and made it play like a Mario game. At the end of the level, it's like, "Contact me here if you want to work with me," or whatever. You know, here's my contact form. You've won! You've made it to the end of the level.

Steph Smith

You've won! The thing I love about this is... I assume these people are not applying for jobs, but can you imagine if you had a job opening and you had like 100 typical resumes of people being like: > "Yeah, I've worked here for 3 years. I've done this. I have this degree." And then one of them was *this*. How could you not hire this person? How could you?

Shaan Puri

so I made a crappy version of this when I applied for so when I moved to silicon valley I did this so basically I I applied to 2 jobs when I wanted to move to silicon valley I I applied to stripe and I applied to a place called monkey inferno stripe everybody knows turned into like you know whatever $100,000,000,000 company I would have been like employee I don't know like 35 40 at the time so it would have been great it would have probably made like 10 $30,000,000 stuff like that just as like a mid level sales biz dev type guy that I was gonna join as unfortunately I crashed and burned in the interview when he was like sell me this pen and I was like and I just fumbled it slightly but the the other job I applied to is monkey inferno monkey inferno is a really cool company and one thing that's interesting is the more the company shows that they're unique the more you sort of get the vibe and you're like okay I can read the room you're cool and unique and you appreciate like you know creativity and a sense of humor so that's how I'm gonna apply so I didn't send in a resume I just made a website and I you know I can't code I'm not like you're way more technically talented let alone these people who are like you know freaking you know they're creating like you know fake mario game as their resume but I made a basic website that was basically and I just sent an email I tried to copyright it while I was like you know my first line of the email was like you know hey michael I'm applying for the yeah I saw your role for product manager and even though you know I have none of the qualifications you're looking for let me explain to you why I'm the man for the job and like you know what I think that was like gonna get his attention to read the next thing just to be like is this guy you know a complete clown or like is there something here and and so I wrote this email and I said you know I rather than add a you know resume to the stack of resumes like I made a website for you and so I my my website wasn't about me it was like why I should work at monkey inferna so it was like more tailored to him and I had these same things I had this like skills chart but I included stuff that I wasn't good at I was like hard work I was like 40% like you know that was like one of my lowest skills I was like yeah I'm kinda lazy actually you know I'm kinda lazy I can't force myself to do things that I don't love to do but I gave him like things and then in the interview like I remember one of the guys was like why would you apply for a job and write your hard work is not high and I was like well I'm glad you asked I can explain here's here's what I think about that and and so I had this whole thing and I kind of wrote a resume exactly for them I was like you know here's some of the my mottos here's like I looked at your companies here's some of the things I think I could do for them and so I kinda tailored it to that and I remember he later told me he was like you know if you hadn't done that website like there's no way we would have hired you because on paper you had like literally none of the qualifications we were looking for like the entire job description was like just not you but that website was really cool it was really unique nobody else had done something like that and so it just made me feel like we gotta talk to this guy and so that was like the the in that got me got me the job in the in the end in the end

Steph Smith

Yeah, I mean, I think I've hired a decent amount now, and there's so many people who mass apply to jobs. They're like, "Yeah, I'm interested in this job and I have the qualifications." But the times I've been really impressed is when you can tell someone really wants to work there and has done their research. You know, the second they get in, you almost don't have to train them on the company. You probably have to train them on other things, but you know they understand exactly what you're trying to do because they've been following your company, or your team, or your people for a while. So I think that's... that's spot on.

Shaan Puri

right let's do a couple of a couple of these other ones so yeah

Steph Smith

let's rapid fire through some

Shaan Puri

Of this, Neil... the Neil.fun one. I think I've talked about it before on here. This one's awesome! So, Neil... it's Neil.fun. Ben, I don't know if you could pull it up, but basically, it's just like the headline is a tiny website on the internet. Then he's basically got a bunch of little interactive projects that he's made that you can do. I remember I went through the **Absurd Trolley Problems** one, which is basically like if you remember in school where it's like, you know, there's a train on the tracks that's going to kill 5 people, but you can pull the switch and just kill this one. Would you do it? And you're like, "Yeah, I guess I'd rather kill 1 than 5. I think I would do it." Then it basically changes it to like, "But the one is a baby. Would you do it?" And you're like, "No, I wouldn't kill the baby." Then it's like, "Okay, but the other one is 5 cats. Would you do 5 cats?" It just takes you through 30 absurd variations of that question. Each time you say yes or no, it says, "74% of people agree with you, 26% disagree. There have been 2,100,000 votes." And you're like, "Wow, that's cool! You can see where you differ from the masses when it comes to these things." So that's the one I did. Are there any other cool ones that he's got here?

Steph Smith

Well, I mean, he has so many... I'll call it a couple so it feels like he just took all of his curiosities, which are the same curiosities that many people have, and turned them into these internet games of sorts. One of them is like "Explore the Scale of Space" or "See Who Was Alive in X Year." You're like, "I wonder who was alive in 1870?" and you can kind of see what famous or influential people were alive at the same time. Another one that's fun is "The Internet's Greatest Debates." So it's all these questions like, you know, "Is it GIF or JIF?" or I can't remember what some of the other ones are, but he gets the internet to vote on them, right? So you actually get the answer to the internet's greatest questions. But as you can see, if people are watching on screen, there's just so many that he's built.

Shaan Puri

This one where it's like "Design the next iPhone," it just lets you drag and drop. Like, you can put a camera on it... I put it like off to the side, halfway off the camera. You could put an Android logo on it. That's good. This guy's good. What does this guy do for a living? Is this what he does, or he's like... I don't know.

Steph Smith

know let's pull him I'm pulling up his twitter his name is neil agarwal I think

Shaan Puri

that's the

Steph Smith

other one so he says creative coder

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this guy's cool. I like this personal portfolio. You had a pretty good portfolio website that you built. Do you maintain it, or what did you do with it?

Steph Smith

I haven't updated it in a while, but I will say the page that gets the most traffic, or really gets the most people who contact me, is my open page. A lot of... well, not a lot, but some startups have an open page that states, "We make this much revenue, we have this many page views," and normally they don't go much past that. I created an equivalent. I haven't updated it in a while, but it was basically like, "Okay, this is how much I make from my personal projects," but it's also my goals. For example, if my goal is to exercise 50% of the days in a year, I track it. I hooked it up to my spreadsheet, and it publicly tracks it daily. So you can see exactly how much I'm doing. It also shows what books I'm reading or, I don't know, silly things like that. But people seem to love that for some reason.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, people do love that. They wish they were as organized, on top, and clear about their goals as you. That's why they love it. But you only put your side project revenue on here, right?

Steph Smith

Yeah, I've actually... You know what? I have debated... I've been wanting to write an article which is about my, you could say, monetary ascent through life. As in...

Shaan Puri

Wow, that's a new... that's like post-economic, my monetary ascent. No, no, no, that's amazing.

Steph Smith

I'll say, the reason it's an ascent is not because I make so much now, but because I just made so little starting out. I've been wanting to write about that because I feel like I've learned some things. Also, I think it'd be interesting to actually publicly say, "In this year, I made X." I've seen some celebrities do this, but you know, 20 years later, they're like, "Look at my tax returns."

Shaan Puri

right

Steph Smith

But I kind of want to do it now and say, "Look, five years ago I was making X, and then I made X." I want to really publicly share how much I made, what jobs they were, etcetera, and what I learned along the way. But I know I'm just going to get trashed, you know what I mean? Because saying you make a bunch of money now is not something people love. So I've stayed away from it, but I kind of want to anyway.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I've thought about those same things, and I'm just like, "Why do I want to invite this in?" I don't need this. Once you make a bunch of money, you're like, "I don't need to kind of whore myself out there for the attention anymore." So there's kind of this counterproductive thing where it's like, well, the reason I would... For me, I'm very simple. When people do that stuff, they're like, "I just want to increase transparency in the world," or "I just want other people like me to know." You know, I think we should openly share strategies. I think we should openly share tactics. I think you should privately, with a group of trusted people, share your numbers. But to publicly share how much you make, I think only is in your interest when you're not making that much but it's growing. Then, once you're making a bunch, the kind of risk-reward flips, I think at least. So, you know, I'm not that into that. But this goal... I noticed there's no 2022 goals. What happened? We're almost at the end of the year.

Steph Smith

I know I gotta post it, but I will say I'm way behind on them. So maybe that's why they haven't been updated.

Shaan Puri

are you are you like a goal hitter like do you hit like most of these goals

Steph Smith

No, I mean, I'm one of those people who... I hit some of them, but that's how I think it should be, right? If you're hitting 100%, you're not setting ambitious goals. If you're hitting nothing, then you're just lost in the world, probably. But I hit maybe 50% every year.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think at Amazon they had said... somebody had said like, "75% - if you're hitting more than 75% of your goals, you weren't sufficiently ambitious. If you're hitting less than 75% of your goals..." Or maybe it was a little bit less than that, I don't know. But it was like, "You're not executing well enough, you didn't do a good enough job." Yep, okay. Alright, what else we got? You got a bunch of ideas on here. You wanna give us a little...? Let's go, let's go, let's go!

Steph Smith

Some quick ones. Okay, so business ideas. I don't know if there's one new business idea here, but I thought this was interesting. I'm calling it **salty bowls** and **smelly water**. Basically, there are two examples of something everyone wants: to eat healthier. I think that's a pretty universal human want, at least. Two companies are doing something interesting here. First, **Kirin** (K-I-R-I-N), a company in Japan, has partnered with a university. They found a way to use a super weak electrical current in both bowls and chopsticks. When you're eating something, the ionization or the electric current makes it taste saltier. You can imagine that when you eat something, your taste buds are reacting chemically on your tongue. They've found a way to somewhat reproduce this effect. So, you can actually eat foods that have less sodium, but they taste salty. Now, I'm just going to quickly tack on the other one, which is similar. I'm calling it **smelly water** because there's a company called **Air Up** that has found a way to create a scented ring around a bottle's lip. Similarly, they found a way to make something taste better through scent instead of electrical current. They raised $68 million. I think it's just this interesting phenomenon of how to make something taste good without actually changing the caloric intake of the food.

Shaan Puri

And hang on, your note here says it's making $100,000,000+ a year. Put as like an estimate according to Glimpse. Air Up is this... like flavored ring of the bottle? So you basically bring a bottle up to your lips, the water itself is not flavored, the ring is scented or flavored in some way. So that when you drink the water, you get that, you know, whatever hint of citrus or whatever you're looking for. Is that it?

Steph Smith

Yes, and I put "according to Glimpse" because I wasn't able to reproduce or find that number online. I don't know where they got it. They definitely raised a bunch of money, I just don't know if that revenue number is correct.

Shaan Puri

that is crazy wow have you tried either of these

Steph Smith

No, I want to... I saw the chopstick bowl one very recently, so I kind of want to order one. And then I haven't tried air.

Shaan Puri

Wow, these are... this is fascinating! I had not... I didn't know you had said the "salty bowl smelly water" thing. I didn't understand what it was until you said that, but that's crazy. I mean, the sort of like salt taste without extra salt, that's kind of... I mean, that's kind of genius if you could do that.

Steph Smith

alright you wanna close things off

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we can wrap it up. Where should people kind of find you, follow you? Where do they get your next podcast that's coming out? Tell the people what they want.

Steph Smith

Yeah, so you can find me at **stepsmith.io** or on Twitter @stepsmith. We're going to be hopefully launching the podcast soon - the A16Z podcast. You can find it anywhere that you find your podcasts.

Shaan Puri

do you have a name yet or or not yet

Steph Smith

it's called the a 16 z podcast

Shaan Puri

okay

Steph Smith

yeah sorry

Shaan Puri

This should be easy to find. Yeah, alright. Thanks for coming on, Steph, and best of luck with the pod. Thanks!