4 A.I. Business Ideas To Start Using Dall-E, GPT3 & Deepfake Technology

Shaan Puri

I think this is one of the multibillion-dollar trends that you could be on right now. I don't say that for hyperbole; literally, this is...

Ben Wilson

the window the tech is just now finally good enough it's not quite there but you need

Shaan Puri

to start now and you could disrupt all of these marketplaces

Sam Parr

Alright, I went out with Hassan last night for dinner. Can I tell you about it really quick?

Shaan Puri

do it

Sam Parr

it was awesome so you he like admires you a lot do you know that

Shaan Puri

I admire him a lot

Sam Parr

so you pronounce his name minhaj or minhaj minhaj right with

Shaan Puri

Ah, I think his name is actually pronounced **Hasan Minhaj**, and everybody calls him Hassan Minhaj because it sounds awesome and it's like Nicki Minaj.

Sam Parr

nicki minhaj

Shaan Puri

and so you know whatever I don't know what the I don't know how how strict he is on that

Sam Parr

Well, we... so basically, the story of this is Sean interviewed him last year. I thought I saw him on the street, and I ran up and said, "Hey!" It actually wasn't him, and I looked like an idiot. I tweeted about it, and he texted me. I guess he got my number from you. We went and hung out. This guy is like this, you know, pretty big deal comedian. He is so smart—so much smarter than I am. That's what I learned. Number two, I was so intimidated to be around him because I didn't know if I could make him laugh. I was like, "Can I make him laugh?" If I can make him laugh, I'm like, "This is weird." I really didn't make him laugh. I failed. I could not make him laugh. He showed me these books that he's reading, and I wanted to Google them. I wanted to tweet this out, but I was too embarrassed. So maybe you could tell me. I Googled "books on how to be funny" because after I hung out with him, I was like, "Dude, this guy's got me in a trance. He could tell me about anything. He's so funny and good at storytelling. I'm so into it." I was like, "I want to figure out how to be funny." I went on Amazon and Googled "how to be funny" or "how to be clever." Do you remember years ago when I wrote that article about this guy who gamed the Amazon Kindle system to rank really high? It's like... shit books, but he buys reviews. Dude, it's like six of the top ten on page one were all him. It's all this guy. I know the author; I know the guy's name. So it's all bullshit. Are there good books that I can read, you think, on how to be funny or how to be clever? I felt like such a nerd. I was gonna tweet this out, but I'm gonna look like the biggest virgin on earth. Just like, how do I be clever in a conversation?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know, dude. I feel like this is a skill that's only passed down, you know, by hand. It's only like trial by fire. You have to learn this when you're 12 and get good at busting people's balls and saying the funny thing in class. Theo Von has this hilarious story. I know you like Theo too. He tells this story where he goes, "Dude, I remember the first time I realized I was funny as a comedian." He says, "It was my freshman year at college, and I was going to school in Louisiana or whatever. My professor said to our class, 'Look to your left, look to your right. Statistics will say that one out of every three of you is going to end up being a child molester or something like that.'" He goes, "And I stood up and I just said, 'Not it!'" Then he adds, "He's gonna get killed." And he's like, "That was the moment." First of all, this is a hilarious story. Secondly, I think there's some truth to it. You have these little moments where you get rewarded for being funny early on in life, and you're like, "Oh, more of that! More of that!" Alright, how do I get more of that laugh? I want more of that, and then you just keep doing it.

Sam Parr

Talent's real, but I think it's... I think just like anything, you know, some people will never be able to dunk, but you definitely can improve. You can learn how to dribble better than before, for sure. Like, there's gotta be a skill there. There is definitely a skill here, you know? I think the best are definitely just born better, but I can be good. I can be good at this.

Shaan Puri

There's a YouTube video that you should watch. I've gone down this rabbit hole, probably also after I met Hudson. I was like, "Shit!" He would tell me a story on the podcast where he'd be talking, and I'm so into the story. I'm like, you know, "What is it?" I'm eating out of the palm of his hand. Then he would ask me a question mid-story, and I'm just nodding, like I'm still listening, like it's a TV show. I didn't realize that he said something to me. He was telling some stories, and he said, "Everybody's got that kid growing up. Who was it for you?" I was so enthralled by the story that I was just like, "Yes!" Then I realized that he asked me for a name, and I thought about who that would be. Because now I said yes, there is a kid, and he's like, "Who is it?" I was like, "I can't remember any names growing up. I'm so into you that I've forgotten who I am and my entire past." So, you know, that was what was happening when he was telling stories. I asked him afterwards, and I think he gave me a YouTube video that was fun. He said, "This is kind of interesting." It's called "Mark Normand: How to Write a Joke," and I think it's like an hour-long podcast. The thing is called "Writing a Joke with Mark Normand," and Mark Normand is a good joke writer. He's a funny comedian.

Sam Parr

yeah he's great

Shaan Puri

And this one-hour thing, he kind of breaks down some of the mechanics of what makes something funny. It's not like, "Follow these three easy steps and you too can be funny," but it is like, "Oh, okay, I can see how if I consistently practice these mechanics, I can take something that's not so funny and make it funnier repeatedly." From there, there's more—there's storytelling, there's setups, and there's tagging jokes. There are other things that you have to learn, obviously, if you want to do well. But I think that video is pretty good.

Sam Parr

I'll watch that like

Shaan Puri

about 80,000 views

Sam Parr

There's these guys who have this YouTube channel called **Charisma on Command**, and it's a beautiful name. They've been doing it forever. Have you seen these guys?

Shaan Puri

yeah I remember for like maybe 5 7 years ago I was like

Sam Parr

Watching those videos, yeah, they're cool. They could be a little lame because it's a bit more focused on "nerdy guys" and how to meet women, which is cool and fine, whatever. But, you know, I was not trying to... I was dating my wife at that time. So I was like, "Well, I just want to learn how to be more charismatic." I remember their name; they taught a course on it and had all this stuff. I was like, "That's a beautiful name: Charisma on Command." I'll watch that Mark Norman joke. But anyway, I hung out with this dude last night. It was dope! He paid for dinner, so it was a good first date. It was awesome.

Shaan Puri

did you try to pay

Sam Parr

did you

Shaan Puri

do the thing no no no

Sam Parr

for sure

Shaan Puri

a lot me

Sam Parr

You know what's funny? When I go to... He liked this... We went to Gramercy Tavern. He likes that place, which I guess is like a fancier kind of fancy place. I was like, "Dude, you come here a lot?" He goes, "Yeah, I love it." I go, "I'm not even gonna look at a menu. Whatever you wanna order for me, just you do it all." That's how I love going to restaurants like that. I do that all the time. I'm like, "I don't care. I eat meat and vegetables. Get whatever."

Shaan Puri

so I

Sam Parr

was I

Shaan Puri

Was eating them after they ordered. Then you complain? You gotta do that too. That's the true "d-bag" move, by the way. You know, one thing people liked from the last pod, or maybe a couple pods ago, I got a bunch of DMs about this. They were like, "Dude, I love the homie move that you said," and I was like...

Sam Parr

I don't

Shaan Puri

I don't even remember what he's talking about. He's like, "Remember the homie move?" That's like one of the top ten things you shared on the pod, which was: You were like, "Dude, guess how many [something]?" And when you say that, obviously it's something impressive, but I kinda guess low so that you can have your punchline where you're like, "100,000,000!" And I'm like, "Oh, I only said 10," because I kinda knew it's more than 10, but let me give you this moment. People love that. That's why it was hilarious.

Sam Parr

yeah I saw the comments people did dig that on youtube

Shaan Puri

Right, so I made a little vow to myself to bring more specific ideas and stories to the pod. Because I personally love the free-flowing, just like... whatever, wherever conversation goes, it goes. But I want to make sure that we have the entrée, not just tapas. It's not just the appetizers; I want to have the entrée. So, let's jump into a couple ideas here.

Sam Parr

I got a few too or I got one big one

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna go 1 and then you go 1. Alright, so we've talked about this a little bit in the past: DALL-E and how much AI is advancing. I don't know if it's just my TikTok feed keeps feeding me these, but every day I see a new incredible thing that AI can do.

Sam Parr

you have to explain what dall

Shaan Puri

e is blown me away what's that

Sam Parr

you have to explain what dall e is

Shaan Puri

Oh, DALL·E is a program. It's an artificial intelligence program; DALL·E 2, I think, is the current name of it. Basically, you just type in any word, and it generates images based on that. For example, you could type "Sampar fishing," and it will generate images that look like they're either hand-drawn or like a stock photo of Sampar fishing, even though no such image exists. It creates the image, so it flips the whole idea of creating art, taking photos, or painting something. Now, computers and robots can do that almost as well, if not in some cases better, than what would be the real thing or human-created art. You also see deep fakes. There are videos where you'll see the Mona Lisa, and then they're like, "Watch this," and they push a button. All of a sudden, the Mona Lisa starts turning her head and rapping like, you know, The Notorious B.I.G. It looks like the mouth is in sync with the lyrics, and the thing looks real. They can take an image and turn it into a video using AI. AI can basically say, "Oh, if I have this image, I know where the eyes, nose, and lips are. I have been trained on what talking looks like, what singing looks like, what looking around and acting natural looks like." I could turn any image into that.

Sam Parr

and it's really good it's really good

Shaan Puri

They could take Barack Obama and... this happened now with the Ukraine thing. They took the Russian president, and the way that people can photoshop an image to make it look real, you could take Barack Obama and make it sound and look like he is saying something, you know, completely racist or whatever.

Sam Parr

so you can

Shaan Puri

get oh man I can't trust videos

Sam Parr

Well, I heard a podcast about that particular topic. I think someone made one of these things to show how amazing it is, and then they also showed the downfall. They made it seem like Obama said the N-word or something crazy like that—not cool. They were like, "He said that! Isn't that amazing?" Obviously, he didn't, but it seems exactly like he said it. This is where it's going to get dangerous.

Shaan Puri

Totally. And let me... so I'll just keep going to some random examples. There's another one where you can draw like a very basic smiley face on your iPad on this app called Procreate. And then you can... it's basically just like eyes, nose, mouth, and you're just like pencil drawing it. Then you change the brush to the AI paintbrush, and you just kind of like shade in, you know, like a kid with...

Sam Parr

I saw the

Shaan Puri

Wind a shape and it colors in as if you painted this in fine detail with the shadows and the colors. All you're doing is literally just moving your hand like a fool, and it's like it knows already what high-quality art looks like. It just turns your crappy art into high-quality art. It's amazing! Every day, there are all these little amazing magic tricks. They're not foolproof yet, but the demo is getting ridiculously impressive. So I...

Sam Parr

used it to come up with a logo for a business I'm thinking about starting I used it to come up with a logo and it was awesome

Shaan Puri

Oh, I do that all the time. Yeah, if you just Google "AI logo generator" or "brand generator," there's like four websites.

Sam Parr

I you know it's

Shaan Puri

A legal startup. The mood is serious but still sophisticated. Go, and it'll spit out an infinite number of logo variations.

Ben Wilson

that you could then and you

Shaan Puri

could be like cool print this on business cards

Ben Wilson

that's like how they make money is like print this on a business card or

Shaan Puri

like give me the high quality photo you actually used

Sam Parr

It right? Like, I used it. I used it. Normally, what I do is I go to 99designs. 99designs is amazing because you can get like 30 graphic designers to create a landing page. You'd be like, "I like details from number 1, number 8, and number 14," and then someone combines all of them and gives me the one that I want. Whereas when you work with just one designer, you have to kind of be nice to them and say, "You know, this is okay, but can you change it like this instead?" I could be like, "No, this sucks. Do this." But also, you can see all the different combinations. With DALL·E, I'm excited to use it in that way.

Shaan Puri

And so, let me give you a couple of ideas that I've had based on what I've seen. Here’s what I think: these can be very big ideas. Now, the problem with these—I'll tell you the problem also—is that I think it's so easy to do that you're going to have a bunch of competition. So, you know, you have to find a way to be defensive. But here, okay, here we go. Four ideas that you can do with AI right now. Okay, so number one... which one do I want to start with? Okay, so number one is going to be **fake speech**. I'm investing in this company called **Unreal Speech**. I don't know if you've heard of this, but check this out. This guy sends me fake deep fake audio of somebody—of Gary Vee and Jordan Peterson—reading **The Milk Road**. So, I'm going to just play one of these. I think you can hear it. Let me just...

Jordan Peterson

This is the Milk Road, the newsletter that brings you so much entertainment, news, and laughs it should be illegal. Y'all know, hypothetically speaking, of course. Here's what's happening around crypto.

Sam Parr

dude it sounds alright so that's like jordan peterson

Shaan Puri

it's just like jordan peterson here's gary v

Gary Vaynerchuk

Is the Milk the newsletter that brings you so much entertainment news and laughs? It should be illegal! Y'all know, hypothetically speaking, of course.

Shaan Puri

you can see it messes up sometimes

Gary Vaynerchuk

happening around crypto the new stable coin on the block

Shaan Puri

so so you

Sam Parr

get that's amazing that is so good this is awful is that available

Shaan Puri

Very little. There's very little training data, and it literally just takes my thing. You could see the place where my written stuff is kind of casual. I'm like, you know, "blah blah blah blah," and it doesn't do that part very well. But the other parts it does pretty dang well for a very small amount of training. Unreal speech.

Sam Parr

is it available to everyone

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so, well, it's like brand new. So he was like, "Hey, Sean, you wanna never do an ad read again?" He's like, "You know, you have hundreds of hours of audio of you and Sam's voice that's on the podcast. All you need to do is just say the word, and I can make it so that you'll never have to do an ad read again."

Sam Parr

did he

Shaan Puri

Do it! I can make it so that the Milk Road will auto-add a companion audio. If somebody wants to listen to the newsletter on the go, it'll do it in your voice. I can just do that now, and I was like, "Wow, this is incredible!" He's like, "Yeah, and the way we're doing it is cheaper, faster, and more accurate than the other models that are out there on Amazon or whatever." So, it's dramatically cheaper to do because this is a little bit expensive whenever you do this, since it's like machine learning. But the cost just keeps falling every year, and then there are techniques to make it even smaller. So think about this: like language translation. For example, there's a world where we do this podcast, and Unreal Speech could translate this into another language in our voices with our tones.

Sam Parr

right

Shaan Puri

But just speaking another language, and so now all of a sudden our podcast is being done in Spanish, French, and all these other languages. We could grow without having to actually do extra work ourselves. Damn, dude, that's crazy! All the ad reads and stuff like that. I think that's a great business. There are also other kinds of use cases for it, but I'll leave it at that. Okay, here's another one: student essays. I told you about that guy who made a thing called WriteLikeSean.com. I mentioned it in my email, and it blew up, causing him to have a $1,000 bill on his servers. He was like, "Oh shit, this side project is now a financial burden for me." But basically, this guy trained AI to write like I do, and it was pretty damn good. I shared an example last time, but this has nothing to do with me. You could take any corpus of text data; in this case, he just used my Twitter feed as the corpus of text. It could train it to write like that. One of the big things that I remember growing up is that you get assigned to write an essay in school. Some people would pay others to do it for them, and some would go online and try to plagiarize it. Well, this is going to basically screw that whole thing up because I'm going to be able to go on there and say, "Hey, write an essay about World War II and Germany's role in it in the sophistication of a 10th grader." It's just going to spit out a full essay or like a thousand versions of an essay. I could just pick the one I like and edit it in maybe five minutes to get rid of any crappy computer mess-ups. Dude, this is...

Sam Parr

this is wild at remember turn it in

Shaan Puri

that's a all be done

Sam Parr

did you have turnitin.com like it would help you like if you submitted

Shaan Puri

you should

Sam Parr

I had to submit an essay in high school. It happened so I used to have this website that would give you free essays, and I would use them all the time. You know, I don't know if most people do it, but a lot of people do.

Shaan Puri

people out there will think this is okay

Sam Parr

A person did it, and it was awesome. I rewrote it a little bit, but then they came up with Turnitin.com, which ended up becoming a huge company and sold for $1,000,000,000, I believe. You would turn in your paper or essay, but then you also had to submit an electronic copy. It did a pretty good job of finding out if it was plagiarized. Frankly, I have no idea how it did it, and I don't actually think it's that sophisticated of technology. They just sold it to schools, and they trusted that it was legitimate. Because, like, if you just Google a phrase in quotations, you could see where... you know what I mean? It's not like that sophisticated of a thing, but it would alert teachers like, "Okay, like 98% of this is copied from somewhere else."

Shaan Puri

right but it would be the teacher doesn't wanna like Google the teacher doesn't wanna Google everybody's thing so yeah that makes that makes total sense and that's that's exactly the case I think you're gonna have the creation of stuff of content on the ai auto generated content and then you're gonna have the fact checking side the detection businesses also both are gonna boom you're gonna have things that's that take a video and say is this a deep fake or is this a real video you're gonna have another one that's like is this a auto generated content or did a human write this like it's like the opposite of captcha you know when you go to a website and it says prove that you're a human it's gonna basically be like prove this isn't a robot it's basically what you're gonna have to do in order to trust that this person actually like did the work that's required for this so I think that that's gonna be like on both sides there's gonna be businesses I'll give you another area that's gonna get totally disrupted print and patterns so people talk about like using ai for stock photos using ai for like auto generated music that's all gonna happen too but here's what I think is like more more low key like when when patrick came on he was talking about quilt businesses so there's a huge market of just pattern making so this is for all like clothing you know blankets you know curtains whatever basically patterns and prints are everywhere you know in apparel and fashion and so if you wanna go and actually like make clothing you will often use like websites that have large libraries of patterns and prints what happens is today somebody hand draws each one of those it's like oh this floral pattern or this you know repeating pattern of you know whatever it could be like fire trucks for like you know some kid thing or whatever and then that person gets paid when you go buy that buy that pattern you buy it for whatever $100 and now they get that as their like royalty stream well this is all gonna go ai in my opinion somebody can compete with these because the sites that do this they're worth 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars these marketplaces that have the creators and they have the searches

Sam Parr

We talked about one of them. I forget what it was called. I think it had gotten acquired by GE for like $400,000,000. Yeah, something about flowers.

Shaan Puri

yeah some some flower

Sam Parr

flower cloud or something

Shaan Puri

They... what that's going to turn into is I'm going to go on there and I'm going to be like, "Cool, I'm making a galaxy. I want a galaxy-themed repeating pattern." So I'm just going to write "galaxy-themed repeating pattern," and it's going to generate galaxy-themed patterns. Then they will be able to charge one-tenth of what the other sites do because there's no human involved, and they'll just keep all of that revenue for themselves. So they will become the supply side of the market. This is like you can build a $1,000,000,000 marketplace because you now don't have to worry about supply. It's what Uber is trying to do with self-driving cars, right? It's like, "Hey, we can make these rides way cheaper, and we can make this whole system more efficient. We just gotta get to self-driving." Tesla's trying to do the same with the robo-taxi. It's like the big idea in transportation is getting rid of the driver. The same thing is going to be the case with artists. It's like we're going to get rid of the artists. We're not going to need somebody to do the photography, the videography, the music, the pattern making, you know, the voice-over work. That's what Unreal Speech is, right? It's voice-over work. The essay writing, the 99 Designs... every single one of those, they're either going to have to release this and kill their own supply side, or someone is going to come and do it and eat their lunch. I think this is one of the multibillion-dollar trends that you could be on right now. And I don't say that for hyperbole; I mean literally this.

Ben Wilson

is the window the tech is just now finally good enough it's not quite there but you need

Shaan Puri

to start now and you could disrupt all of these marketplaces

Sam Parr

do you ever recognize stock image models on different websites

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's this guy who's in *The Bachelor* who's a stock image. He's in a bunch of funny, random kids' Halloween costumes. It's like, there's that guy. Then you see him begin in this hot sauce commercial. Like, there's that guy, and he's just this generic smiling Black guy. It's like they just reuse him everywhere.

Sam Parr

I saw the lady who was on the Google Analytics page. There were two ladies, and I saw one of them in public. I went up and got a picture with her. I recognized her, and then there was this other lady on the Google Analytics page. It's often the same person—like a racially ambiguous woman with curly hair. You know, she could be Italian, she could be Black, she could be Jewish, or White. Who knows? She just represents everyone. I see this woman everywhere on different websites. I've used her a couple of times; I love this lady. However, I get sick of using the same pictures all the time. For some of my projects, I've been using DALL-E and a couple of other services that provide fake people. I have a couple of websites with testimonials, and they're real testimonials, but I don't want to use the people's faces because I didn't exactly ask them for it. It was just an email that they wrote me, you know what I mean? I didn't want to use their faces because they didn't give me permission. But who cares? It's just a sentence. I can use that, and I'll use Google AI sample faces. You can get all types of faces, and you can specify things like, "Make this person this race," or "Make this person happy," or "Make them serious." You can change it and create all types of images. I've been using that for sample images. When we were running The Hustle, every once in a while, we would do it the right way by using an image that was for commercial use. But sometimes it would get categorized wrong, and we would get a... what do they call it? I forget what...

Shaan Puri

via it's a data notice

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's right. They say, like, you know, we have to... multiple times we had to pay $5. You're just like, "Oh, fuck these guys! They're gonna cause an issue." We just gotta pay them $5,000 and they're gonna go away. But this is... we're getting screwed here. But whatever, we gotta do it. So, I've been using them for stock images so I don't have to worry about getting sued or getting one of these cease and desist letters.

Shaan Puri

Totally! It's going to be the case with stock images. You know, designers always use these libraries of icons and illustrations. There are websites like The Noun Project and other things like that. What DALL·E did was basically read all of the text on the internet and then use it to create new stuff. Some people are like, "Dude, that's messed up." GitHub is doing this too. GitHub basically read all of the code that was on GitHub. They had a crawler that indexed all of that. They fed all of that user data into machine learning, and now they have this thing called GitHub Copilot, which I think costs around $100 a month or something like that. Basically, if you're a programmer, GitHub Copilot can help you write your code. You're typing your code, and it'll just autofill, like autocomplete.

Sam Parr

a

Shaan Puri

Line of code, so it's like, "Oh dude, that makes this $250,000 a year software developer more efficient and more effective." There are fewer bugs, fewer mistakes, and less thinking involved. It allows a less talented person to sort of create these functions and write code. It's like a no-brainer. GitHub Copilot is going to generate like $100 million for GitHub. They created this product, flipped the switch, and it's going to be a multi-billion dollar product line just because it's generating so much revenue.

Sam Parr

wow

Shaan Puri

And some people are mad about it because they're like, "Dude, you read my code, you use my code as the training data, and I get nothing from this! That's crazy! You're gonna basically put me out of a job by using my own data as the training data for this." And that's the same thing that's gonna happen with these... like these websites. By the way, Ben found Spoonflower was the name of the [company/website].

Sam Parr

pattern spoonflower

Shaan Puri

So, all you have to do if you're doing this is, like, you're going to go and you're going to scrape and crawl Spoonflower. You're going to ingest all of the patterns with all of the tags. Then, you're going to basically train a dataset so that it says, "Okay, cool, this is what a pattern with X, Y, and Z keyword looks like." Great! Now you give me that keyword again, and I can generate 500 new patterns from scratch. Spoonflower is basically going to create its destroyer in that sense. The data from stuff that's already on the internet is what's going to destroy those services. I say it kind of like, you know, in a violent way—like "destroy" and all that stuff—but it is true. These are going to be very competitive very quickly. It's going to be like the same way that the chess programs got really good really fast, and all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh yeah, a human cannot beat..."

Sam Parr

chess or the game is kind of graphic design

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. This thing is going to enslave and pillage. You know, it's gonna go to your village, it's gonna kill the men, it's gonna marry all the women, and it's gonna put the children to work. That's what's gonna happen with these AI marketplaces. That's my prediction. So, Ben, go to this website. I sent you the chat. Can you share this? Sam, I think you've used this before too, but it's a cool one for people who don't know: **thispersondoesnotexist.com**.

Sam Parr

that's what I used

Shaan Puri

and so like look at this guy

Sam Parr

That looks like you... bed cut up. It just looks like a basic white dude. This guy, this is like a mug shot on Dateline.

Shaan Puri

It takes a quick picture of you from your webcam and it just makes someone like you. This is a dude that designs this; it's an AI composite of a face. You can use this face anywhere on your website copyright-free because nobody's going to be like, "Hey dude, that's me." This is such a useful, funny website. It shows you in the bottom right exactly how the image was created. It's like it was imagined by a GAN, which is a type of machine learning model. Here's how it works: you can use it yourself, you know, blah blah blah. And watch this—you can use it for cats, horses, and even chemicals. It's like this "cat does not exist" feature. You can click a cat, and it'll AI-generate a cat for you.

Sam Parr

yeah this is amazing I usually just take screenshot of those and I use those on like different websites

Shaan Puri

And so, yeah, those are three ideas I think I said: 1. Student essay generation 2. Unreal voices for voiceovers 3. Never having to... you're basically turning your voice into a programmable asset And then patterns and prints. That's not even saying some of the obvious ones that I... the other ones I mentioned like stock [market analysis, perhaps].

Sam Parr

this is great

Gary Vaynerchuk

$1,000,000 isn't cool you know what's cool

Shaan Puri

a $1,000,000,000

Sam Parr

alright I have something for you have you heard of john steinberg

Shaan Puri

is he the guy who did cheddar yeah

Sam Parr

So, let me tell you this story, and there's a reason why I'm going to share it. Basically, John Steinberg was the COO of BuzzFeed for a long time. I think when he joined BuzzFeed, it was like 20 people. So, he wasn't quite a co-founder, but he worked his way up to become COO. He was the ad sales guy, and he became COO while pushing it hard. It was almost like he was a co-founder of BuzzFeed. He's incredibly aggressive—very aggressive. He started this thing years ago, like 8 years ago or maybe 6 years ago, called Cheddar. The whole shtick was that it was going to be a live TV station for Facebook Live. When he launched it, we were just getting started, and he messaged me, saying, "Have we met yet?" It was just such an alpha way to approach things.

Shaan Puri

hey I forgot your name

Sam Parr

It's like, dude, it's written. You just messaged me. Yeah, he was like, "Hey Dave." I was like, "Dude, it says Sam, right? We're on Facebook."

Shaan Puri

you I know who

Sam Parr

You are... I'm really bad with names and faces. Yeah, what he goes, "Have we met yet? We should meet." That's what he said. I go, "Okay, cool." He goes, "I'm in San Francisco. What's your office? I'll come tomorrow." That's what he said, and I was like, "Alright."

Shaan Puri

for your calendar

Sam Parr

Yeah, so he... I hang out with him. Nice, nice guy. Incredibly aggressive. Basically, he told me that like BuzzFeed was great, but he wanted to sell or something. I don't know if he said this or I read about it, but he wanted an exit and it didn't happen. So he was like, "I'm just gonna build this thing and I'm gonna have an exit." He told me, "What's gonna happen is I'm gonna raise a little bit of money, like $30,000,000. It's going to do pretty good, and then a big cable company is going to buy us because it's just going to be cheaper for them to buy us than to go make one of these cable... like a 24-hour news network on their own. They're just going to buy us for like $200,000,000 or $300,000,000." At the time, and even when they got bought, no one watched this thing. You would go onto the Facebook Live and there'd be like 20 people watching it at any given time. It was all on Facebook, and like no one watched it. I remember thinking, "This guy's crazy. This is not gonna work. No one... this is nonsense. This is a bad business. This is a bad company." And two years in, he told me, "In year 2 or 3, we're gonna get acquired for a couple $100,000,000." In year 3, I think he sold the business for $250,000,000. He 100% called his shot. If you Google Cheddar and Wired...

Shaan Puri

cable company also

Sam Parr

to a cable company to like an australian cable company that I'd never heard of I think they're popular in new york I think they have like a thing in new york too and he sold it and he totally pulled it off and he completely disappeared he fell off the map before he was like speaking at all these conferences but he called this shot and he nailed it and I remember talking to other guys who worked in the media industry and they're like yeah he told me the exact same thing and he absolutely called this shot and this guy is so aggressive man he's a shark not in a bad way but like he just bulldozed through this and just put so much intensity and energy and he pulled it off but the reason I'm bringing this up he did it and another woman who we're friends with rebecca did I asked her how she got popular on youtube she was like well I just quit my job and like worked 50 hours a week and I had like I got up at 9 and I like worked till 7 and like I studied the data and I just treated it like a business and it like became popular now I make you know 7 or 8 figures whatever she makes a year and I'm rich and famous and whatever it worked because I was talented and I worked hard and I treated it like a job what I think is gonna happen and we this is a little circle jerky because both you and I like twitter I think that very few people take twitter seriously enough to do that you know like 5 or 8 years ago we'd be like mr beast you're gonna like dedicate your life to youtube that's the stupidest thing ever that won't work like what are you doing this is just a hobby this is a joke now it's not it's not funny like we all know that like that's real you can become a youtuber and you know you can be like mister beast and make 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars a year you can become a tiktoker and become like some of these other famous people and do all this crazy stuff no one takes that seriously about twitter where they think like well you know if you just like quit and like take this seriously and like build a following and like write interesting stuff and I think in the next 2 or 3 years we might see like a few empires be built on top of twitter and it sounds kinda silly now because like oh it's just these like stupid like you know twitter threads of guys talking about x y and z and summarizing wikipedia and they're kinda right but I think that there's gonna be someone on twitter that treats it kinda like cheddar did it's kinda like mister beast and they take it really seriously and I think there's actually a huge opening and a huge gap in the market right now where very few people are taking it seriously and it's incredibly easy to capitalize on this second right now

Shaan Puri

This is one of the more interesting things. I feel like you said this, and I actually don't even think you normally think like this. I feel like this is a... this is not your usual perspective. You say a lot of interesting stuff, but you usually fall into... I found this really interesting diamond in the rough. You're amazing at that. Another thing is, I see what these people are doing, and let me break it down in simple terms. All they're doing is X. Sometimes you're like, "You know, this is a trend or an industry." I see this as different. This is something... something different. So, I like that you're bringing this up. Let's break this down. So every time...

Sam Parr

you agree with me

Shaan Puri

At first, when you tweeted this out, I was like, "I don't really understand what he's talking about." I didn't really understand it. Then you just explained it, and I'm starting to come around on it. I'm like, "Oh wait, he's kind of right." Every big social media platform has native stars. So yes, if you're the president and you go on Twitter, you're going to get a bunch of followers—that's one thing. But basically, if you take every medium, like podcasting, you have Joe Rogan. Then you have people like Joe Rogan, you have the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, and you have other people like Tim Ferriss. They become stars on that platform and use that to build a pretty big empire—tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, that they can make off of YouTube. Obviously, there are YouTubers, TikTok has TikTok stars—people who were not famous on YouTube but got famous on TikTok. Instagram also has Instagram models and influencers who were nobody and became big on Instagram.

Sam Parr

We're talking about multi-billion dollar companies, you know, like the Kardashians and Rihanna. These are huge brands.

Shaan Puri

Well, I think they were Rihanna and the Kardashians. They were big off of Instagram. They were big without it, but Instagram also turbocharged them. There are other people that are, you know, just Instagram. Instagram made them famous. Dan Bilzerian is a good example, right? It's like he's not famous without Instagram. Then, with Instagram, he becomes famous, and now he does multiple platforms. By the end, everybody does multiple platforms, but you're really good at the medium. For example, Dan Bilzerian takes photos of himself blowing up cars with hot girls in bikinis. Guess what? Instagram is a visual platform. You just put one killer image on there, and they're amazing at it. So that worked really well there. You're kind of right. Who is that on Twitter? Who is a Twitter native star? I don't even know what that would be like. Is there...?

Sam Parr

somebody who who comes to mind I mean there's a there's a few like I would say like and

Shaan Puri

I'm on twitter 10 times a day like how do I not know this

Sam Parr

Like you and I are like very miniature versions, but we haven't really... I'm talking like Sahil is a bigger version. So our friend Sahil Bloom Truong, who used to work for me, he is kind of like that. But, you know, we're still talking like 500,000 followers. No one has really pushed it to where it's like, "How do I get 10 or 20 million? How do I become... how do I build a proper empire as opposed to a niche?" Now, the difference is basically between everything you mentioned and Twitter. Twitter is copy-based, text-based, whereas the other ones are visual-based. So I think there's one of two routes that's going to happen: you figure out how to add visuals to your thing, and videos don't usually do that well on Twitter, but pictures do. Or you just get really good at writing. And I was like, "Well, writing's not that important," but I'm like, "Wait, no, I'm an idiot." You know who Danielle Steel or James Patterson is?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah yeah of course not

Sam Parr

I'm not literally... I believe Danielle Steel has sold like **100,000,000+** books. I don't know if you know this, but in San Francisco, she's got like the biggest mansion in San Francisco. **House, yeah.**

Shaan Puri

the big billionaires row her house is like the big fortress

Sam Parr

Yeah, and then you got James Patterson. I bet you he's a billionaire too. James Patterson basically writes like 50 books a year. I don't even know if he writes a lot of them or if he just smacks his logo on it. But, you know, I was thinking it was like...

Shaan Puri

well I won't a year that sounds outrageous but okay

Sam Parr

I forget, but it's maybe a week. It's like once a month. It'll say, you know, what he does is like, it'll be written by James Patterson and Bill Clinton. Then it says, like, and also this other name. It's like a duo about them. It's like a story written about the White House or something like that. He partners with others; it's this weird thing that he does. He writes a ton. He's prolific. A lot of real quote authors, like these artist folks, are like, "Oh, that's just garbage." But he's like, "Dude, I don't care. I'm pumping this out anyway." Authors definitely crush it still, and the power of the written word is powerful enough to get these people to buy all these books. I still think that's possible. But I do think that we're going to see an empire built on top of Twitter. Arguably, you and I have created easily 7 figures of personal income through Twitter. Maybe you could say even 8 figures, but a lot. I think, though, that there are going to be literally billionaires created on Twitter, and it hasn't happened yet, though.

Shaan Puri

Wow, yeah. What's... we can't call ours empires. Like, what's a very, very small... like a Lego... like a convenience store? Yeah, like we create like a Kwik-E-Mart.

Sam Parr

yeah we own like 4 burger kings you know what I mean

Shaan Puri

You're right. Sahil and Trung are good examples of people who actually try. They religiously write content, schedule it, research it, and publish it. They also try to amplify it and have a call to action at the bottom. It works! I've seen them crawl from 0 to, I saw those at like half a million, maybe more. I don't know.

Sam Parr

Trung... a lot of people don't even know that Trung worked at The Hustle. He wrote the daily email. We found him when he was working as a financial analyst, not like it was all internal reports. He signed up for Twitter while he worked at my company, and we all shared each other in this silly circle jerk. Now, he's got 600,000 followers and he's like a personality. People know him; they talk about him and how he's funny and all this stuff. I think it's going to happen. When I tweeted out that event thing, a thousand people signed up, and I'm like, "Oh my god!" Why aren't you actually seeing Instagram? You'll see like the Logan and Jake Pauls. They would say, "We're going to be at this location, come!" and they filmed all these crazy videos with all these people around them. No one's doing that for Twitter. I think someone needs to just take the YouTuber playbook and deploy it here, take it full-time and seriously, and they could create tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth.

Shaan Puri

And so, what would you do? Because, like, I think, well, the guys we talked about—Sahil, basically does kind of like mental model intellectual stuff. It's like, "Oh, you know, either like kind of what I'll call generic life advice, generic business advice, or like, you know, hey, let me tell you about this phenomenon in psychology about cognitive biases." And here's 30 cognitive biases you want to be aware of. I don't know why these do so well; they do incredibly well. That's not my cup of tea, but it's definitely other people's cup of tea for that.

Sam Parr

Here's what they need to do. Here's how you cross the chasm; here's how you cross this threshold. Basically, these guys are popular on this Twitter medium. Twitter feels like a one-to-one interaction, or maybe like a one-to-ten. It's like me and my ten friends consume this and joke about it, but I'm not talking to a guy on the train or telling a family member, "Hey, did you guys see X, Y, and Z?" We're not discussing that. So, what they need to do is two things. **Number one**, they need to meet up with mainstream celebrity people or mainstream figures and take pictures with them. They should show it off. It's like, "Oh man, this guy is bigger than just my little audience. Look at this! Arnold Schwarzenegger likes this person and took a photo with him. That's amazing!" **The second thing** they need to do is get off of Twitter and into real life. For example, in the early 2010s, when the Caspers of the world were coming out, subways in Manhattan were underpriced for billboards. A couple of these companies, like Subway and Oscar, thought, "Let's advertise on these billboards down in the subway, and then we'll actually buy real billboards." People were like, "Why would you do that? We can't internet!" And they responded, "Well, because if we get it off of the internet, it's going to seem more than just an online thing. It's going to feel more like a real, tangible thing." You know, you're going to see an ad next to a Ford ad, and then next to this thing. It's going to feel like this is actually a little bit more legitimate. So, what they need to figure out is how to do that. You do that by having real-life events. You do that by publishing a book. You get that by getting a cameo on a TV show. You get everyone in on the joke. It's like, "Hey everyone, check this out! They asked me to be a background character on Friends. Look, you can see my head! Isn't that hilarious?" You do these things where it's real life and bigger than just this one-to-ten interaction. People start taking you seriously and realize that it creates FOMO (fear of missing out) and social proof. You start becoming culturally relevant, you know what I mean? That's how you should do it. Just take pictures with celebrities and try to get more in-person stuff so you're off of the internet. I think that would work.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's good advice. People will believe about you what you believe about yourself. Also, people will believe about you what they think others believe about you. So, if I see you hanging out... you know, this is why YouTube works, right? People on YouTube or Instagram will have, like, you know, they're taking a picture, but it's actually the background that's the picture. It's like, "I'm just trying to show you that I'm sitting in this car or at this place or with these people." Everything that's said is actually in the background. The foreground is just kind of like your excuse to say it.

Sam Parr

Or when Casey Neistat is walking through New York and he has kids coming up to him. He goes, "Hey, what's up, kid? Say hi to the vlog!" You know what I mean? It's like, "Oh wow!" In New York, Casey gets recognized everywhere. He's more than just what I see on my screen.

Shaan Puri

And like, celebrities do this. They tip off the paparazzi to come and take pictures of them. For a time, they try to not be seen, but then it’s like a deal. They say, "Hey dude, I'm gonna be here. Come show up and take my photo, and then we're gonna use that photo for this." They'll do stuff like that. I had a buddy who created an online e-commerce brand. They opened up their first store. The store's not going to do that many sales, but just showing that, "Hey, we opened our first store in New York," makes it feel like this brand is more trustworthy, more established, and more legit. They had a bunch of friends—like 15 friends—show up, and they were doing a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The friends were all like, "Hey pal, hey, hey, hey, hey, question for you," trying to pretend like they were the media. If you zoomed out, it was just 10 people standing in a small cluster, but from the right angle, it looked like a mob was at the store. Again, this perception creates some version of reality. So, I definitely think that helps. I don't think that's enough to build an empire. I think you gotta do two things: 1. Be in it for the next 7 years. Like Mr. Beast and all these guys, they didn't start as big as they are. It takes about 5 to 7 years to build something truly massive. 2. I would stop trying to jump off Twitter and go to other places, thinking, "This is where the good stuff is." Instead, master this medium and make it work here. 3. I would do some of the stuff that helps build fame in the first place. Having your lane or niche helps because it attracts people who are interested in that. Second, controversy or collaborating with others is going to work, you know?

Sam Parr

And people don't do controversial stuff really on Twitter right now. But it should be like, "Oh my God, I called into this show and I got..." You know how people used to call into Howard Stern and get him to say this crazy stuff? Like, "Check this out, got him!" You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Well, some people do it that way, and it works. There's a guy, Zach Weinberg or something like that. Yeah, he's basically... I love that guy. He built and sold a $2 billion company in the biotech space or something like that. But why does everybody know him? Because he's the guy who will consistently criticize crypto. He just challenges people to fight about crypto and tries to debate them in public to embarrass them. That is his whole shtick, and he's getting so much fame for dunking on people in crypto.

Sam Parr

a

Shaan Puri

A set of audience that likes to watch a fight and is anti-crypto has some anti-crypto feelings. They're like, "He is their champion." You go debate people because I don't know if I'd be able to. And so that's a pretty good Ben Shapiro.

Sam Parr

got famous too by the way

Shaan Puri

And on top of that, then you have like Keith Rabois or whatever. People who are just like a jerk to other people. Like, he'll just respond to somebody in a rude way, and they're like, "Well, explain. I'd love to hear your perspective." And he's like, "I don't share my perspective with fucking losers." You know what I mean? He'll shit on you once, and then even if you try in good faith to come back, he'll be like, "The data is out there. Go read a book." And like, one time he...

Sam Parr

Was like, one time, the best thing goes, "I've forgotten more about startups than you'll ever even know."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. Or he'll be like, "Call me after your sixth unicorn because that's where I am," or whatever. You know, he's obnoxiously just like shitting on people, and it's hilarious. Because of that, the controversy spreads. Some people hate him, some people love him, and he kind of uses that to grow. So anyways, I think controversy is also another underrated thing. There are a bunch of things that people need to do, but I would say the main one is to find your angle, your hook, your niche. Like for Casey Neistat, it's the daily vlog; for other people, it's the explainer videos. It's like whatever you gotta find that for you on Twitter, and then do it for 5 to 7 years. Have faith that, just like it wasn't obvious that being a YouTuber was such a big deal back then, I think it's not that obvious, you know, to your audience that you could do this on Twitter too.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so that's my pitch. I think it could be cool.

Shaan Puri

Alright, can I tell you about something that I kind of knew about but has recently blown my mind?

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

it's the thiel fellowship so you know yeah

Sam Parr

it's amazing

Shaan Puri

What the Thiel Fellowship is, Ben? I'm curious. Do you know what the Thiel Fellowship is? Come off mute for a bit because I think Sam already knows. I want to talk to somebody who's maybe more where the audience is, which may be aware but not familiar.

Ben Wilson

Yeah, so I know what the Thiel Fellowship is. I'll tell you just my impression of someone who doesn't know a ton about it: It's essentially for high schoolers who are super geniuses, and Peter Thiel is going to give you a bunch of money in order to not go to college and do something cool instead.

Shaan Puri

Kind of. You're in... It's actually, I think it's actually four people in college to leave college for a year. So, $100,000 to basically leave college for a year and work on something interesting. And Ben, if I asked you, like, "Hey, is it successful or unsuccessful?" Do you have any idea?

Ben Wilson

No, except for that, I know what's his name did it. The guy who did Ethereum.

Shaan Puri

vitalik yeah exactly

Ben Wilson

vitalik yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

so which by the way I

Ben Wilson

Still haven't told my Vitalik story on air, which is: I was in Amsterdam and I saw him. I couldn't think of what to say. He was walking right past me, and I just turned and went, "You're Vitalik." He didn't look or say anything; he just kept walking. But it was him.

Sam Parr

I really have security with him

Ben Wilson

No, he was walking all alone on the streets of Amsterdam at 8 AM in the morning. It was just us.

Hubspot

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Sam Parr

I think I

Gary Vaynerchuk

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Shaan Puri

Yeah, we need to protect this man. He never has security with him, and he just wanders around to random cafes and goes to events and stuff like this. I'm like, "Dude, I really hope he's got such good security that you just can't see them." That's what I'll tell myself. So, this Thiel Fellowship thing is amazing. The Thiel Fellowship was exactly what you said. Peter Thiel comes out. Peter Thiel is the kind of original founder of PayPal. He was the first investor in Facebook, putting $500,000 into Facebook early on, which became $100,000,000, if not $1,000,000,000. He is also a prolific investor in a bunch of other things, including SpaceX and other businesses. So, Peter Thiel comes out and he basically says, "College education is a bubble." He says college education is sort of a joke. He's like, "You know, it hides under this banner like it's teaching you something, like you're getting information, but really what you're getting is some version of an insurance policy. Like, I got this degree so I'm not gonna fall through the cracks of society." And you're getting, like, you know, some status symbol. Like, "Oh, I got this stamp on my thing." So it's like a luxury product. Like wearing a nice bag, your Harvard degree is like your Louis Vuitton bag. He talks about college and he's like, "The costs just keep going up and up and up, but the value and the salaries that you make don't go up." So it's this overpriced bubble, just like the housing bubble, he says. He says, "I'm going to offer something called the Thiel Fellowship, which is $100,000 if you drop out of college and go work on something interesting." A bunch of people criticized him. They said, "Dude, how dare you? You're telling kids—like the normal phrase is 'kids, stay in school.' You're like, we get it, you're contrarian. You're saying kids don't stay in school and you're trying to get people to drop out. What kind of—you're worse than a vape!" You know, people didn't like what he was doing.

Sam Parr

yeah of course and other people

Shaan Puri

We're just like, "Oh, it's cool, but... you know, who knows if this is gonna work or not?" Like, alright, you're gonna pay this kid $100 to do a summer project. Great. So what? This thing is amazing. It is produced...

Sam Parr

it worked out really well didn't it

Shaan Puri

And nobody talks about it. So let me tell you some of the things that have come out of this. You have, like you said, Ethereum, which is like a $170 billion market cap thing that came from Vitalik. It's probably like this generation's version of Facebook. So that comes out of this where Vitalik does the Thiel Fellowship and continues working on Ethereum during that time, and he launches it. That's one super, super, super successful thing. Also, Figma, which is somewhere between $510 million...

Sam Parr

closer to 10

Shaan Puri

Company that takes on Adobe in the design space. Dylan, who is the founder of Figma, was in the Thiel Fellowship. Another one is Oyo Rooms. This is in India; it's kind of like an Airbnb sort of thing. It's a hospitality website. Oyo Rooms is a multibillion-dollar company.

Sam Parr

tens of 1,000,000,000 I think

Shaan Puri

Luminar Technologies. Most people don't know this, but it's a lidar company that basically provides the technology needed for self-driving cars. This company went public through a SPAC. The founder is like, I don't know, 21, 22, or 23 years old, something like that, and he's worth around $1,000,000,000. He's one of the world's youngest billionaires, if not the youngest billionaire, off of this venture. That alone is crazy. Also, Polkadot is another crypto protocol valued at around $7,000,000,000. Like I just told you, that's basically $200,000,000,000 worth of business value that has come from this program.

Sam Parr

It's just that there's way more there. There are actually dozens that are in the $100,000,000 range. I invested in a company that recently raised another round. I think it was Owner.com. The guy, Adam, he was a Thiel Fellow, and I believe that potentially could be a unicorn, but it's 100 out of 1,000,000 for sure. There are like dozens more like that.

Shaan Puri

The reason I got reminded of this was because I invested in Italic. Jeremy Kai is the founder of Italic, and he was like, "Oh yeah, I was a Thiel Fellow." That's how I was like, "How did we meet?" Eventually, he's like, "Oh yeah, I was a Thiel Fellow. We came to your office, and you gave a talk. I thought it was awesome." So that's why we kept in touch. I was like, "Dude, was there a Vitalik in the room?" He's like, "I don't think he was at that event." But he's like, "Dude, he used to crash on our couch. You know, he was part of the program." I asked him, "What was he like?" He said, "He's genuinely the weirdest person ever. Like, the weirdest person I've ever met." And he's like, "Yeah, in a good way, in a bad way. Nothing like... he's just different. Different sort of cat." I was like, "This is too good."

Sam Parr

I think I think you should

Shaan Puri

keep using

Sam Parr

the word cat by the way

Shaan Puri

you like how I did that I've been yeah something I'm workshopping right now

Sam Parr

yeah it looks good on you

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I take it out for a spin. I take it out of the garage, you know, twice a week. I just see, do people kind of like flinch when I say that, you know?

Ben Wilson

it was good to flinch

Shaan Puri

tried it with lit and that was I had to put that one back in storage

Sam Parr

no you're too old

Shaan Puri

coming back out I put that one on ebay actually got rid of it

Sam Parr

Yeah, no, you're too much of a gray bush for that one. But Kat... yeah, Kat was cool. I would stick with Kat. But it is crazy, man. This Peter Thiel thing, I thought at first it was real. It was kind of stupid. I'm like, "Dude, this is weird. What are these little 18-year-old nerds going to do? They're not going to do anything interesting." Obviously, I was wrong.

Shaan Puri

I

Sam Parr

When I was rethinking my opinion on it, I was like, "Wow, I guess high IQ really matters." These guys... they just have more power than I do. I always say they're just higher functioning than me. You know, that's just the only way I can describe it. They have more horsepower, their oven burns hotter, and it... it truly matters. It makes a difference.

Shaan Puri

Your oven burns hotter. It's so good! Oh God, I love that.

Sam Parr

that was great what I mean they just got that they got that that totally heater furnace

Shaan Puri

that's how I felt when I was at twitch I was like I was like okay let's see what are the like you know I had kinda had opinions from the outside like okay at these big tech companies what are the people like what are the execs like what are the average people like you know how hard do they work how smart are they like you know do they have like all these processes that are way better than the messy stuff I was doing in my startup and like you know for the most part I would say it's kinda like you know I walked out a little cockier than I came in and I came in pretty cocky and that's when I was you know just sorta like oh okay like you know they don't have some magic you know processes or the people aren't that much better except like 2 or 3 people at the company one of which was emmett who's the founder you know we would sit down and he there would be like you know data science would be presenting some report on like you know some trends and I'm just sitting there trying to like it's a 6 page memo I'm trying to like stop yawning because it's like I'm just like why do I keep yawning I'm having this like you know reflex and I'm reading this thing I'm just trying to understand these charts and like you just hear this little click and it's like someone's pen is down and it's like you you know if you're taking a math that's like who's done with the test already and it would be and he'd be like pen's down he'd be playing hearthstone on his phone and you're like no he like he must have already read this or like he he must have skimmed and then then they're like alright yeah we're ready to start the discussion and he would be like so on page 3 you know this chart actually I noticed that the axis is a little wrong because you know if this was true then but then this other chart on page 7 would show this I'm like what the you know what is happening how is your brain processing this much information this quickly and somehow always getting to like like the heart of the issue it's like we all spent our time and energy like trying to parse out what's important like he immediately got to what what was important and had the conclusion and had like the follow-up question and also identified why this piper wasn't very good in the first place and once I saw the brain doing that I was like oh okay there's just some cars you know have more horsepower like or as you said the oven burns a little hotter and like his oven burns way hotter than mine and I was like oh that's good to know like because I have this thing I always say I like to see what level 12 looks like like what is oh that speaker system's a little too loud for me but like I wanna know what volume on 12 even is I wanna feel you know my own chest leader like vibrating with the bass and it's like okay I I don't wanna be somebody who never sees it I wanna see it

Sam Parr

What was he like in real life, outside of work? Have you ever seen some of these people interact in normal life? Like, I told you about one friend who's intense. He literally only owns two T-shirts, one pair of underwear, one pair of socks, and his laptop. That's like the only thing he owns, and he's worth $100 million. I know a bunch of these guys who are like this. For hobbies, they're just all in. If they're into, you know, like working on their bodies or something, they've got every gadget you could ever imagine. They can tell you all about it. Or if they're into dieting, they've got their own thing going on. My friend Jack, for example, is into supplements, and he's got literally $30,000 worth of supplements in a closet. You could ask him, "What's this do? What's this do? What's this do?" and he just tests everything. What was he like? If he was into cars, could he tell you every single thing about a Porsche, what year it was from, and why it was special?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yes. But before I tell you about him, I just read this thing about Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. It's like, "Oh, what is he doing nowadays?" He's in the news because of his wife and Elon and all that stuff. Some people are like, "What is Sergey doing nowadays?" because I don't think he's at Google anymore. It said that over the last year or two, he's become very into personal fitness. In fact, he has been trying to master several Olympic sports. I was like, "What?"

Sam Parr

Dude, I don't know. I looked at this guy and thought, "What Olympic sport? Ping pong? I don't know, like street shooting?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, curling. The other one is, he said he's currently writing a physics textbook. I was like, "Of course he's writing a physics textbook." Like, that's...

Sam Parr

more like come on yeah

Shaan Puri

So, anyways, yeah, these guys are wired like that. When they go in, they go in very deep. Honestly, I don't know him super well because I interacted mostly at work. Anytime it was outside of work, it was really cool, but it was limited. It wasn't like I hung out with them a hundred times; it would maybe be more like five times, you know, something like that over the couple of years that I was there. What I would say is a couple of little things that stood out: one, he's like us; he's an idea machine. In fact, I need to get him on the podcast because...

Sam Parr

you've been saying that for 3 years now

Shaan Puri

I know, I know. And when I was there, I didn't ask him because I was like, you know, already... you know, me doing this podcast is not a... you know.

Sam Parr

yeah you're like hey dude do you wanna bail at noon and go and record

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's not everyone's favorite thing I do. You know, but I think now I can do it. He told me this idea. He's like, "Can I tell you about my gym idea?" No, he's like, "Gyms need to be made like video games. If I was going to leave Twitch, I might start a gym that's structured like a video game." So he's like, "This is how it works. You show up and you're like the beginning character of a game. We give you kind of like your basic uniform, and we have a little wrist strap that tracks your level of fitness and intensity as you work out. You basically level up. Every time you come to the gym, you're earning points. As you earn points, we give you better gear. We'll give you the more fitted clothes that look cooler. You can visibly see people's different levels as they go to the gym. You would be able to go into certain sections of the gym that were previously locked to you. You would be able to get protein shakes and stuff for free." He's like, "I think if you gamified a gym, people would come more." Actually, this is kind of played out with Peloton. Peloton is very much organized like this with leaderboards and stuff like that—gamification. But I was like, "This is a crazy idea." He's like, "Yeah, it'd be like the World of Warcraft of gyms. People would grind years of their life to level up their character to 60, and they would work to do it. I think you could do that with a gym." I was like, "Wow, yeah."

Sam Parr

I mean people do that with like karate and and jujitsu you know black belt brown belt blue belt type of thing

Shaan Puri

exactly and they stick with it and they keep showing

Sam Parr

up because they're 10 players

Shaan Puri

And he's like, "But you know, you don't want the increments to be like a year before you see some progress. Every time you come, you need to be earning a little bit more and getting a little bit more unlocked, you know? And see that the next milestone is just within reach." So I thought that was interesting. The second one, he was like, he was trying to plug in the computer to screen share one time with me. Normally, these meetings are set up by somebody else, but if it's just you two, like, "Hey, you gotta do it. Plug it in." And he's like, "These fucking cables! Honestly, I think I could create the Apple for accessories, for computer accessories." He's like, "Just like the best connecting cables, the best cable management, the best plugs." He's like, "Nobody... look at this! Every office in the world has these, and look at how bad they look, how ugly they are, how poorly they function."

Ben Wilson

an idea

Shaan Puri

How confusing they are! He's like, "I think we could just build a really nicely designed cables and connectors and accessories company for every office in the country, and people would pay for it." I was like, "Why do you think of these things? This is weird." And so that's...

Sam Parr

what people say about you

Shaan Puri

he had a dozen ideas that were like this when I was there alright that's one thing that I noticed

Sam Parr

We'll wrap this up real quick, but there's this famous story about a guy named Chris Sacca. He was a popular investor who invested in Instagram, Uber, and a bunch of other companies. He’s supposed to be one of the best angel investors of all time. He told this story about being in Tahoe or Truckee, where he has a home. He was with his dad and Travis Kalanick, right when he was about to start Uber. Travis came over to spend the weekend for a family vacation. Travis and Chris Sacca's dad, Mr. Sacca, started playing Wii tennis. They were being casual at first, but then Travis said, "Alright, you wanna step it up?" He stepped it up and just crushed Mr. Sacca, beating him really badly. Mr. Sacca was like, "What the hell, man?" Then Travis said, "I've got a surprise to show you." He switched the Wii from his left hand to his right hand and said, "I was playing left-handed the whole time. I'm actually right-handed. Let's really play." Travis then revealed that he was number 2 in the whole world at Wii tennis. Chris Sacca realized right then and there that he never wanted to compete against this guy. His drive and hobby were winning. He proved that even in his free time, while starting a company, he was going to be number 1 in the world at Wii tennis just because he had to. He hustled my dad, thinking he was left-handed, and it worked perfectly. This guy is a winner, and that's why Chris Sacca said he invested in him. He saw his intensity just in the way he walked around.

Shaan Puri

Dude, I 100% agree. Peter Thiel is the same way. He's like a master or grandmaster at chess. In the PayPal Mafia, which is now like the most successful entrepreneur group ever, I think several of them were very high-level chess players who went through that. There's something to the saying, "the oven burns hotter." That's true for some of these people. It's a combination of intensity and capability, and that is definitely true. I have another kind of observation about Emmett that I thought was weird. It doesn't seem normal. So, I guess I have two little ones. One was, I asked him, "What do you do for fun? When you hang out, what are you doing?" He said, "Oh, I love board games. You should come over for a board game night." I was like, "Okay, what are we playing? Monopoly? Twister? What do we got going here?" He just looked at me and said, "We only play deep strategy games." It was like, "We only play Catan on hard mode." Even Catan is the beginner one. He named two other games I don't even know about that are like multi-level, multi-hour strategy games. Basically, it was him, the brothers from Stripe, and the founder of Reddit. They would just get together and play these games on the weekend. That's what they did for fun.

Sam Parr

exactly how I want them to spend their time

Shaan Puri

exactly so I thought that was kinda funny and then the the other one was like we were in a meeting and he we were talking about like I don't know like some policy like these you know whatever yes some girl streaming on twitch and like her nipples showing like is that okay but it's like you know she lives in denmark you know what what are the rules around this should we ban her or like what and and so there was always these policy questions coming up over and over and over again and it felt like you can't win because whatever twitch did it was like oh dude they're trying to control us censor us like they're inconsistent they should have also changed it over here like it was a no win policy and then you know like he would he would have these like he would have these hobbies which is like reading like old books that nobody would read like no normal person's reading these books and then he'd be able to connect the dots on 2 like completely unrelated things it's sort of like ben's podcast stuff where it's like oh actually like you know the rothschilds similarly set this up in a you know set up their will in a weird way because of this maybe you should do this like dude how do you know all this like really specific stuff from history he would be like do you know how the potato farmers govern their like you know farms in the netherlands during the potato drought and then like the head of policy at twitch is like no just tell me what he's like actually they had created this governing council that was blah blah blah and like the cool thing about this rule of law was blah blah maybe we should you know you should read that like tell me what you think about it and they're like alright like where do I find this like out of print book that you read like randomly and you remember what the potato farmers did and so he would always bring these like really unrelated examples in that was one thing and the other one was he would debate you over semantics like to death so you would be like you know like it'd be like an exec off-site he'd be like and some people would be like you know I just feel like we don't have enough like trust on the team and everyone's like nodding like yeah you know like you know he said collaboration is a problem or whatever and he'd be like well is it trust or collaboration because trust means this and collaboration means this they're like well you know just like the general like trust collaboration just like working together better he's like but again define for me what you mean when you say trust I just wanna make sure I have it right and he's not trying to like it's not a gotcha he wants he's like a hyper literal person so he's like when you say it's failing I take that to mean it's failing is it failing or is it this other thing and people are like just getting lost in the sauce of this like semantical debate but like he really wanted to be hyper literal about it and I've never seen anybody do this in a you know there were upside that would be gave a bad example here but like I think you understand the general premise which is that he really cared about words what they mean and why we're using them and if we're using them correctly to describe what's going on and everybody else was kinda hand wavy about stuff especially like the higher you go up in an organization you sort of get paid for being sort of high hand wavy like a politician and he was the opposite of that so these were some of the things I noticed that now when I invest in founders I'm like I can invest in this guy who creates a company called skio and he's like yeah I'm just like I was like what did you do before this he's like oh I was a professional call of duty player like before that I was you know I was like grinding in world of warcraft like it was a waste of time but like yeah I was you know top 3 in the world or whatever it's like what oh you were like a top 3 starcraft player like you know in this on the on the east coast server like okay you're a winner and you're obsessive and you are like you find the rules of the game and then you like optimize to win it and sure enough now like with his thing he's just like a wrecking ball with like acquiring customers because he just find this is the new game and he's like finding rules and he's like maximizing his edge in everything that he can do to the?

Shaan Puri

Where he's kind of like a nut job dude but like you know it works

Sam Parr

At the end of episodes like this, I'm exhausted. I feel like I just exerted so much energy, both listening and speaking. Do you have to take a nap at the end of this? Because you just spoke with incredibly high energy for... we've done this for an hour and 17 minutes. Do you get exhausted? I take naps after.

Shaan Puri

no not at all I I leave these on a high

Sam Parr

so do I but then I need

Shaan Puri

to go to always

Sam Parr

You well? Yeah, you never have water. I usually drink three drinks while I'm doing these, but like, I'm exhausted. I get exhausted just listening.

Shaan Puri

well that's probably my fault so I'm sorry

Sam Parr

I... no, no, no. It's a good exhausted. I'm like, "God, I just learned so much!" I need to get so much better at this, this, and this by hearing this story. I was just so intensely listening and enthralled by this conversation that I need a nap. I've got to go lay down. I gotta go rest.

Shaan Puri

Balaji went on Tim Ferriss' podcast and did like a three-hour episode. I listened to it last night, and literally, while it was happening, I could feel my brain fatiguing just trying to digest what this man was saying. He's so... and by the way, you also hear Tim Ferriss sound... I loved him first. Tim Ferriss sounds like an absolutely defeated man on these podcasts with Balaji because Balaji would be like, "Anarcho... you know, on one hand, you have the woke capitalist, and on the other hand, you have the anarcho-capitalist. Do you know what I mean when I say that?" And Tim's just like, "No, tell me." That happens 40 times in the episode. He's like, "Are you familiar with the concept of the, you know, the Schrödinger window?" Tim's like, "No, but I assume you should tell me." And he just does that over and over again.

Sam Parr

dude one time when he was with us he was like he

Shaan Puri

was like you

Sam Parr

Bitcoin is kind of like the Battle of the Bulge. And you remember how the Germans were doing it? I'm like, "Dude, I needed an analogy for your analogy." Please don't reference the Battle of the Bulge to try to explain a complicated topic. You know, it's like... Bitcoin's kind of like neuroscience. You know how the chemicals of this, this, and this interact this way?

Shaan Puri

think about the think of bitcoin bitcoin as the amygdala of the crypto ecosystem

Sam Parr

it's like

Shaan Puri

Well, what's the amygdala? Dude, I don't know. Yeah, that's what was happening. I guess I did that to you in this case, but...

Sam Parr

no you you're you're well you're way dumber I could totally keep up with that it just was a good story

Shaan Puri

no you just talk more no

Sam Parr

I thought it was good. That was a compliment. I get exhausted because I'm so into it. I love hearing these stories so much.

Shaan Puri

We used to do these mastermind dinners or hangouts where it would be me, Sam, and like three other guys. We'd meet up every two or three weeks, something like that. It would always be like, you know, each person gets 20 minutes to say what's going on in their business, what's working, and what they want help with. The other guys would basically help you think through it. If you just do the math, it's like six people, 20 minutes each, but everybody runs 10 minutes over. And, you know, we start 10 minutes late, so this thing ends up being three hours long. We would always start it at like 7, and it would finish at 10 or 10:30. We skipped dinner, and nobody's gone to the bathroom. There were basically two reactions. Some people were like, "Fucking exhausted by the end of this." They'd say, "This was great, but man, next time let's try to be a little shorter." I get that logically. My reaction, and we used to do some of these at your office, I remember at the Hustle's office. I don't know if you noticed, but I would leave your office at 10 or 10:30 and go straight to my office. I would just work four or five straight hours because I was so inspired. I was a combination of inspired by your guys' awesomeness and panicked, thinking, "Oh my god, I have so much I need to do that I now realize." It was like, "Oh fuck, I need to do all of this." I was just going to try to do as much as I can tonight. It was a combination of enthusiasm and feeling overwhelmed by the amount of potential and ideas and stuff I could be doing to make our stuff grow more.

Sam Parr

I gotta go, like, drink Gatorade and take a power nap. You know what I mean? I need to fill up. I better go eat a Clif Bar. For now, I'm like, my blood sugar is low; I can feel it. I guess that's the episode, right, Ben?