Why Direct-to-Consumer Companies Are Awesome to Own | My First Million #217

Sam Parr

If you

Shaan Puri

I got into Ethereum early on in the crowd sale. You bet on that thing at 30 cents because you're a developer and you really believed in this new programmable blockchain. You deserve your tens of millions of dollars. You deserve your $100,000,000 if you're rich because you bought a picture of a rock, you know, three months ago, or a computer-generated squiggle that's now worth a quarter of a million dollars. Fuck you. I'm looking at my phone; I just got a text message because my three nieces went back to school today. I was talking to one of them this morning, and I asked Ellie, "How are you feeling on your first day ever going to school?" She replied, "My heart is going fast."

Sam Parr

I was like oh I melted I melted your uncle is

Shaan Puri

a puddle on the ground now he cannot function anymore

Sam Parr

so that's awesome shout out to ellie for

Shaan Puri

her first day of school hopefully it's going well

Sam Parr

that's awesome that's a great one

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

Good, can I start by telling you a quick story that I don't think I've ever told you? I think you'll get a kick out of it. So, about three years ago, I talk about this all the time, and I don't want to rub it in or continue talking about this stuff because it gets boring. But basically, I don't do any drugs. I don't drink. I'm pretty straight-laced. Alright? I've been straight-laced for eight years. I don't do anything. I'm fearful of anything. But I was getting really curious about psychedelics, like mushrooms, MDMA therapy, and ketamine therapy. I did what a lot of people did: I read the book *How to Change Your Mind* by Michael Pollan, and I was like, "Oh, this is great! I'm really interested in this." So, I found a person who was going to lead an MDMA therapy session. I went to dinner at her house with my wife, who came with me. There were about three other couples there, and we went to this thing. She wanted to do a session to get to know people in order to determine if this was a good fit. Because basically, what you do is you take a dose of MDMA, and then...

Shaan Puri

talks to you mdma molly

Sam Parr

I think so is it the

Shaan Puri

same thing

Sam Parr

Yeah, I believe so. It's all or similar, at least. I really, frankly, don't know, but I think it's like the same thing, and we smoke it.

Shaan Puri

you eat it you drink it

Sam Parr

you sniff up a beer it's like a pill I guess it's a pill you swallow it

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

And we go to this group, and I'm in this... the idea of psychedelics for therapy, like for veterans but also for people who just want breakthroughs or who have depression, I'm on board with. I've got friends who do it; I love it. I don't really do drugs because I just don't feel comfortable doing it, but I really wanted to explore it, get to know these people, and try this out. I went to this group, and they were crazy, hippie-dippy... like super hippie-dippy. But mind you, this is in San Francisco, and she had a really nice place. So, we start talking, and all of a sudden, it gets so hippie-dippy and woo-woo that she's like, "You know, this medicine needs to be free for everyone, and capitalism is just ruining everything. We need to live in a society where we can just barter and trade." And like, this way we can give...

Shaan Puri

them medicine let me just guess sam triggered

Sam Parr

Starts a debate, triggered so hard. Then we start talking. I'm like, in the back of my head, "Well then, why am I paying you like $4,000 for this?" But you're like, "Yeah, refund me, right? So give me my money back." We start talking, and this is just sitting in my head. I'm like, "Oh man, I made it $4."

Shaan Puri

this thing was $4 to do

Sam Parr

It was around $25,100. It was like multiple thousands of dollars. I think it was closer to $3,000 or $4,000 than it was to $2,000. I forget the exact amount because this was... can’t recall.

Shaan Puri

Take a family of four to Disneyland. Get the fast pass, get the turkey leg, go get the Mickey Mouse ears, and still come in under $4. That's a real psychedelic experience if you want.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I look, I agree it was crazy expensive, but I'm trying to be open-minded. I wanted to explore this. I just read the book, and I was all enthused. But in my head, I'm just sitting there at this dinner with this in the back of my mind, and I'm thinking about this. I'm like, "Oh my god, I can't believe these people are so full of it." Then I ask her, "What did you used to do for a living?" She used to work at Lehman Brothers and now has a venture capital firm on the side. When I heard this, I started giggling. I was like, "Well, you do realize that this is just ridiculous what you said earlier, right?" I said this at the dinner. I'm like, "You know, that's just crazy." They were also talking about how this medicine needs to be available for everyone and that they need to help the masses. Then they asked me, "Where are you from?" I said, "I'm from Missouri." They responded, "Oh, flyover country." I was just like, "Oh my god, this is the most smug thing ever." Eventually, I got into an argument with her at the dinner table. She was just like, "You know, I don't think this is a good fit." I was like, "I agree, this is not a good fit. I can't do drugs with you; not a good fit." I can't even do dinner with you. I can't do dinner with you, let alone get high and talk about my feelings with you. It's not going to work; this is a horrible fit. So, I had to leave. I got kicked out; I basically got asked to leave.

Shaan Puri

they're like sarah you're cool but sandy you're

Sam Parr

Cool, yeah. I just wasn't in a good place, and so I got kicked out of the group. I wasn't able to do drugs with them, and that was my experience with psychedelics. That was my only experience with psychedelic therapy. I think that these retreat styles for psychedelic stuff started in like 2015. I had friends that would go do Ayahuasca. You know Ayahuasca, right?

Shaan Puri

oh so I've heard ayahuasca many times

Sam Parr

so I know of it

Shaan Puri

I know kind of what the why people do it. You should explain it anyways. But if you said, "Hey, this is like my Dolly Parton thing," I couldn't pick Dolly Parton out of a lineup. If you said, "Hey, draw ayahuasca."

Sam Parr

I'd be like, "I draw some feathers in a bowl of liquid." I don't know what the hell ayahuasca actually is. I don't think you're far off. Again, I'm a total noob here as well, but my friends do it. I believe it's like a powder that you mix with water, and you put it in a bowl or whatever. Then you pass around this thing, take a drink out of it, and stay up all night doing wild stuff. A lot of times, it makes you throw up, and that's part of the journey and experience. It's freaking weird, but whatever, I'm open to it. I've had friends start doing this in 2015, and now on Instagram, I am seeing so many of my friends go to South America and Mexico, all talking about these journeys. I started listening to this health podcast guy.

Shaan Puri

back backpacking through europe is my oldest self america

Sam Parr

And I like to make fun of it because it's some basic bitch shit. But you want to know what? I'm on board. I'm so, so on board with this. I am totally on board with this. I think that psychedelic retreats—like, I've read a Bloomberg article about them—there's this guy in Jamaica, and they charge like... it ranges from $25,000 to $25,100 to $30,000. They bring you to this nice place, they give you the drugs. It's a variety of substances; sometimes it's ayahuasca, ketamine, or psilocybin with mushrooms.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah

Sam Parr

And they do this therapy stuff. I am so on board with this. Unfortunately, my one experience was horrible, but I'm still on board with this. Are you going to be able to use drugs?

Shaan Puri

It was the people. It was the people. It was the hypocrites that tried to get me to take this drug.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm like, I can't trust you. You're gonna tell me you want to solve the world's problems, and you're gonna make fun of me for being from Missouri? Like, that's a bad fit. You know, just tell me you're full of shit first, dude. I have so many...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. It's like a meeting. It's like, "Hi, I'm Sam and I'm full of shit." Alright, so I have a bunch of thoughts about this. Where would I begin? First, shout out to the guy who came to our live podcast show in Austin, who is apparently a mushroom dealer. I don't remember his name.

Sam Parr

I remember that

Shaan Puri

He showed me some... He loved to take out his phone and just show pictures. He opened up his camera roll, and not a single friend or family member was there—just different exotic mushrooms in his hand.

Sam Parr

and they all look the same they all look the same

Shaan Puri

he kept showing me different

Sam Parr

I was like, "Yeah, cool man, cool." Like a pile of dirt. Never done mushrooms, couldn't tell.

Shaan Puri

It was like showing me different bottles of wine, and I'm sober. I'm like, "Yeah, okay, it looks great. It looks fantastic. That one's dark red. Cool." So that's one thing I just remember about that guy when you were telling the story. Secondly, I've met this guy who's really interesting. Did I tell you about this guy, Robbie Bent? No? Okay, yeah. So this is cool. Alright, so this guy, Robbie Bent, what's his story? So he's a startup founder. He has this idea for... By the way, when I tell stories, I'm pretty sure at least 40% of the details are completely wrong, but I always get the essence of the story right. So I'll say that. So Robbie, if I butcher your story, sorry about that. Alright, so I think he had a startup that was back when cell phone roaming was a big problem. Like, you would travel somewhere, and if you turned your phone on for one minute, you'd spend $1,000. So basically, roaming was a problem. He was trying to build this SIM card company for international roaming—like an international SIM card. He raised, I think, like $25 million or something like that. And you know, pretty soon after that, roaming became free or something. Something happened, and the company became pointless at some point.

Shaan Puri

And he's like oh shit okay what do I do now company kinda fails he's kind of in a funk he's in a depression and so I think he was he was I think he was depressed I think he was using drugs I'm not sure exactly what the story was but he's kind of in a low place in life and his friend is like you know what you need to go backpacking through europe you need to go to south america to do some ayahuasca or he decides he's gonna do it so he goes on this ayahuasca trip and he's like you know same story as everybody who goes to burning man or south america for ayahuasca they're like oh life changing best experience I think if you don't have a good experience they must just kill you because I've never met anybody who didn't have a life changing experience it's all positive so so he's got this all positive experience and he meets this person there also doing the trip and and they're you know ayahuasca hanging out together and this guy's like hey you know so what do you do he's like you know robbie's like I just went through this crazy thing I'm like broke my company failed I'm like in the dumps and this guy's like oh you know I'm I'm actually creating this crypto venture capital fund this is 5 years ago 6 years ago now and he's like you know I'm we're raising one of the first funds for crypto to invest in crypto and you know like a lot of these people we invest in they're like you know great engineers or they're just really into crypto but they're not great at marketing and so like maybe you could just help out some of my portfolio companies like if you got nothing else to do just come hang out with me and let's let's do this and by the way you should check out this thing called ethereum and and so he's like oh ethereum what's that they had just done its crowd sale I think ethereum was like at $6 at the time so ethereum today is like $35100 as of this morning and and so he he starts organizing all these like meetups so he's like I don't know anything about crypto but this guy said get in there's a lot of energy here and he followed his gut after the ayahuasca trip and was like hey look I got nothing to lose so let me do this and he starts organizing like basically hackathons and and then with the hackathons he gets engineers and then he tells the engineers hey you should go work at these like portfolio companies potentially so he's like kind of creating some value he's just helping a bunch of people out and he starts getting really interested in ethereum because he's like that's where the most energy is so he starts organizing like all the ethereum hackathons and people are loving it the ethereum foundation reaches out and is like hey you should come on and be like the first marketing person for ethereum so this guy joins joins the ethereum project and he's the 1st kinda like marketer guy non technical person working on the thing and he's basically building the community and the passion around it he's hosting events and things like that and so he went from like the dumps he gets into ethereum like under $10 ethereum runs up and by the way I was like I asked him I was like did you like how big did you bet on this he's like well I had nothing he's like but I took every dollar I had and I put it into ethereum he's like I didn't have much it's probably like $10 or something like that he's like I think I borrowed money from like my parents and I just put it all into ethereum and it was like amazing for me and so anyways he he makes life changing money and and after a couple years in the crypto scene he's like you know what crypto's great I made a bunch of money doing this now but I'm ready for my next thing and he's like goes back to his roots he's like that psychedelic trip ayahuasca trip was like so meaningful for me so he in the meantime had been getting into all kinds of like different types of like kind of therapies so he was like cold therapy heat therapy breath work all these like kinda like you know kinda like these hippie dippie like sort of alternative ways to like improve your body and so when I called him I I met him for the first time he's on the zoom and his background is like this oasis I'm like oh cool background like cool background image he's like no this is like my garage I built out he basically built this in he's in canada he built this epic like wood cabin looking thing it's got this custom cold plunge he made it's this 20 person sauna that he created because he hosts events there it's got all this greenery it's like a greenhouse it's got this like musical stuff and he created basically this experience where you could come if you wanted to have have one of these experiences you could do hot cold therapy and he would take you through an intense cold + heat like you know you go back and forth between that like a like a banya bath type situation and then the second thing he did was these like kinda facilitated mdma type I don't know what drug it was but facilitated like psychedelic experiences where they have a doctor on-site and then they do this like group experience together and you're guided through it exactly like what you're talking about

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And I was like, "Dude, that's a great idea!" I was like, because, you know, I'm a wuss. I kind of want to have a life-changing experience, but like with no risk. Can you give me that? This is like the closest you're going to get, which is doctor-supervised in a group of people with others who've done this before. It's for beginners, and it's not just about doing drugs in a sketchy place. It's in a nice, beautiful environment with music and control. He's like, "Yeah, dude, I put this up." I think he put it up on Airbnb as an experience, or he put it up on Groupon or some shit. I don't know where he put it, but we put it somewhere. He's just like, "Booked out." His little garage is basically booked out 24/7. Since then, he basically... his next thing, or the way he evolved it, is that he still does the live events, but to scale it up, he created this app called Inward. I invested in this thing; it's basically a breathwork app. So I started doing this every morning now. The app's not even fully out yet, so you just send...

Sam Parr

me like been doing it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, because I'm into breath work. I'd kind of heard about Wim Hof and dabbled with that. I went to this Buddhist thing once, and they do chanting, which is like a form of meditation.

Sam Parr

to breath work too it's great

Shaan Puri

And so, you should... I'm going to send you the SoundCloud link. I had him come into my course when I taught the writing course. I was like, "Dude, this thing's amazing! I use this now for my morning routine to wake me up, basically." Teaching over Zoom can be the most boring thing, so I had him come in and do a 5-minute session for the students at the beginning. By the end of it, everybody was hyped out of their minds! Some people were like, "Yo, I'm lightheaded. I need to go sit down." I was like, "Yeah, yeah, that happens." He has this 5-minute guided session where it's dope music mixed with a guided breathwork session. In just 5 minutes, he was waking everyone up! Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this. I thought his story was pretty awesome, with his little journey to get here, so I wanted to share that with you.

Sam Parr

So, let's just keep going. When I lived in San Francisco, I met these young guys who went to Stanford. Well, they weren't that young, but they were Stanford students. I found this thing on Eventbrite where they were doing an event that was very clear in its purpose. It was two guys testing a startup idea. They either got someone to donate a really big room or they rented it for a very small amount of money. I think someone just donated the room. One of them was an enthusiast of breathwork. We all went there, and they put this Eventbrite link up. We each paid $30, and 30 of us attended. So, what's 30 times 30? Is that $900? Okay, well, we don't do public math... so I take that back. Bleep that out; I don't do public math. I went to this guy's event, and the lights were down. They started playing music. I went with my coworker who said, "Hey, I found this thing on Eventbrite. Let's go check it out." We went to this place, and 30 of us did a breathwork session. Have you been to a SoulCycle studio?

Shaan Puri

I was gonna say yeah it sounds like soul cycle was hot in the air yeah

Sam Parr

It felt exactly like that, and it was the best business ever. I talked to him afterwards, and he said, "Yeah, we're just testing this out, and we might turn it into a business." They didn't do it, and they totally should have because it was way better than SoulCycle. They had nothing; it was just a room with lights and sound. You’re sitting there, and they just hit play. The guy guides you a little bit; he kind of talks to you, and it was awesome. I was like, "I will..."

Shaan Puri

The effect at the end is that you walk out with a high. You've given people an experience. We talked about this a while ago with the Simone Biles thing. We made a prediction that in the next five years, **mental fitness**—not just mental health, but mental fitness, which is training your body and your brain to master your mind a little bit better—will become more in vogue. I think that breath work is going to be the new meditation. The same way that SoulCycle, Barry's Bootcamp, and hot yoga have become these alternatives to the gym, which is this kind of cold, sterile, isolated, solo experience. Then you have SoulCycle come in and say, "No, this is multiplayer with a leader." You just submit to them; they shout and tell you what to do. They look heroic on the stage with their body, voice, and microphone. We're going to program you with music that makes you feel like you just went to the club. We're going to heat you up so you sweat because that feels good. You're going to feel like you got a workout in, and we're going to guide you through a process. Whether that process is cycling, boxing at Rumble, running on a treadmill at Barry's Bootcamp, or trying to touch your toes in hot yoga, this is a model that works. It is an experience that gives somebody a feeling. It is a one-hour guaranteed high that you get without the use of drugs. So, I'm pretty convinced that there's going to be a breath work style version of Barry's Bootcamp or hot yoga that becomes just as popular as some of those other ones, perhaps even more popular. I think that the app he's building is going to be like a Calm-style app if they execute well because I think there's a big market for this. These are sort of like ancient techniques.

Sam Parr

completely agree

Shaan Puri

that can be modernized

Sam Parr

Another thing that stood out for me during your story was that I've actually read about this. There's this recurring theme of people I look up to. For example, Chris Sacca—or is it Saka? Chris Saka. There's also this Israeli guy named Vivi. Have you heard of Vivi?

Shaan Puri

vivi no

Sam Parr

**So, his full name is Aviv Nevo.** This guy, he's an Israeli guy, probably in his sixties now. He kinda looks like Sting—this good-looking, suave dude who's in shape. He came from Israel, and his parents were wealthy. They died when he was young and left him a $10,000,000 inheritance. He used that money to invest in some stuff and ended up becoming the largest shareholder of Time Warner. Now, he's this big shot guy who hangs out with people like Bono and Jay-Z. They all look like they have good energy. **Interesting, yeah?** He's like this spiritual guy. You could Google him; there are a lot of really interesting articles about him. He's kinda like the Great Gatsby. So anyway, there's him, and then there's Chris Sacca. Another person this story applies to is Cowboy Cerrone, also known as Donald Cerrone. He's a famous UFC fighter. They all have locations outside of major cities. Cowboy Cerrone has a place in Denver, and Aviv has a place right outside of LA. Chris Sacca had a place in Tahoe, three hours outside of San Francisco. Their competitive advantage in getting into interesting deals is that they have these unique places that aren't necessarily expensive. Aviv's place is expensive, but Donald Cerrone's at first probably wasn't that expensive, and Chris Sacca's was not that expensive either. He gets these founders to come out to his place and says, "Hey, look, I have this cabin out in the woods. You wanna come chill and hang out?" He shows them around and gives them this amazing experience, and that's how they end up investing in different stuff. I actually think that strategy is amazing. Having a place to live a little bit on the outskirts where everyone comes to you is the best way to get things done. It's on your terms, where you're the boss. They get to know you, and I think that's a competitive advantage. I've thought about doing that in either Texas or New York, where I'm staying now—getting a place that's like two hours outside of the main area.

Shaan Puri

And maybe let's time-share it. My first million-dollar ranch. I'll go in, I'll invest in it with you. We'll get five other cool people that we like, and then whoever wants to retreat to the ranch at any given time can.

Sam Parr

it it would totally work like I I think it's a real like a huge competitive advantage don't you

Shaan Puri

I well I think it's cool I think it's definitely cool I don't know if it's a competitive it's a competitive advantage in that you can go deep so there's this idea of like do you go wide or do you go deep I would say most people go wide I go deep in terms of in terms of your strategy with people so what is wide wide means you have a lot of light connections loose ties you know a lot of acquaintances a lot of a lot of friends but not a lot of friends that you could call when you need something or not a lot of friends who are gonna think of you first when they see something awesome and going deep is the exact opposite it's having a group of you know 10 or less people that you're like okay I would go I would go to war for you and you would go to war for me and I think that both of us have more of this deep strategy than wide where it's like we have a handful of people that we just trust implicitly I could give them my bank account and sleep well at night and and because of that we can share information we can say dude so like how how do you do this how much do you make doing this how do I set this up like what are is this good for me bad for me you know what do you think or a deal happens and like this morning I'm in a deal that's going really well start up deal is going really well and a buddy texted me was just like hey like can get me into that and I was like okay I will I will put as much credibility as I can into this to get you into that deal and and vice versa if they if if they had something then then then the same and so I think that the ranch style escape is a great tool for going deep so chris sacca talks about he would he had the the founder of instagram early on he was like I think working out of dogpatch labs as his like co working space and he invited him up to his tahoe cabin to come like work out of there and I think he like stayed there for like a few weeks if I remember the story correctly like living in the guest house or whatever and then travis kalanick when he was starting uber the story is yeah he came to tahoe we spent 4 nights or 3 days 3 days together he was we were in the hot tub just jamming on what what could happen it's like immersion by the end of 3 days with somebody like you really trust that person you like that person it's so different than a meeting than a zoom call and trying to have 8 back to back zoom calls and we had what's her name bree kimmel on the show and she showed us her calendar and it was like 30 minute zoom then 30 minute zoom then 40 minute email follow-up then 20 minute zoom then and it's like okay that's one strategy I wanna basically say clear the calendar you know let's go road tripping together let's go you know let's spend a day let's go to this mma fight together let's have unique experiences that are longer more in-depth and that build more trust and I'll I'd rather do that with a few people than try to do it try to know everybody

Sam Parr

We’re the exact same. I find it to be exhausting. Do you want to discuss a few topics here?

Shaan Puri

yeah let's do it which one do you wanna do

Sam Parr

you drive

Shaan Puri

Okay, I'll do... let's see, let's do this. I don't know, do you want to tell the story about the consultant one? I think that's probably the most interesting one.

Sam Parr

alright so I I I I have not told you about this guy

Shaan Puri

I don't think so it's a pretty memorable story

Sam Parr

So, I have this friend that I was talking to recently. I'm going to try to be a fair bit vague, but I'll give as many details as I can. Basically, this person had a normal, high-paying job—like a lot of people listening to this. They were a consultant at a large firm and lived very frugally. By the time they were in their lower to mid-thirties, they were able to save **$1,000,000**. This happened around four years ago when Bitcoin was priced around **$2,500** to **$3,000**. This person is eccentric; they're a bit crazy. Even though they have a normal job and you would talk to them and think they're normal, they love to bet. They just love gambling, in the sense of betting it all. It seems like that's just in their DNA. They're not afraid. I think you're a little bit like that—not as extreme, but you definitely have a touch of that. So, he started talking and said, "You know, I don't see any good place to invest this money right now. I'm doing crazy amounts of research, and I'm going to go all in on Bitcoin." This was when it was around **$3,000** to **$2,500**. We thought it was crazy. He cashed out his 401(k), borrowed a little bit of money, and used Kraken or something similar to get massive amounts of leverage—like **5** or **10 times** leverage. He invested all of his money into it.

Sam Parr

Where he had like $4,000 left of his $1,000,000, he put all of it into Bitcoin. Recently, when Bitcoin hit its high...

Shaan Puri

The way this was, this was Bitcoin after it had crashed from about $20,000 down to $3,000. So it's not like it was just all on the up and up.

Sam Parr

No, and recently when it got to $60,000, his sum of $1,000,000 was worth about $95,000,000.

Shaan Puri

you talked to him you caught up with him

Sam Parr

I had a mutual friend who was with him. He called me and said, "Man, this guy you like, we were talking. I was like, 'Hey, whatever happened to this person?'" He goes, "Well, you know, I caught up with him. He's worth almost about $100,000,000 right now." It totally worked, and I was like, "Wait, what?" He goes, "Yeah, he's got $100,000,000 in Bitcoin right now and started with a million."

Shaan Puri

did you know him when he was making the bet like were you there like what the hell are you doing

Sam Parr

Yeah, I went out to dinner with him in 2000. When did that happen? Three years ago? What was that?

Shaan Puri

When was that? I think it was 2017 or 2018. I can't remember which one, but I believe it peaked in December 2017 or something.

Sam Parr

like that

Shaan Puri

and then it crashed back down

Sam Parr

We went out to dinner, and he was telling me about this. I was like, "You're crazy! You're a crazy person. This is a horrible idea. Just invest in the index fund." You know, I'm really conservative, and I'm like, "Just invest in index funds. You're nuts! This is a horrible idea. Do not do it." He was so enthused—so enthused—I couldn't talk him out of it. He thought I was crazy. He was like, "What? Are you crazy? This totally makes sense!" And I'm like, "It doesn't! This is a horrible idea. Do not do this." And he did it. So recently, about four months ago, whenever it was, at like $50 or $60, it was worth close to $100,000,000. I was asking about their lifestyle, and not a lot had changed, and he cashed out.

Shaan Puri

or leaving it letting it run

Sam Parr

I cashed out a little bit, I think like 10 or 20%. I believe, but I'm still letting it ride. So now it's halved, or I guess it's back up again. But yeah, and the story is basically I am so enthused.

Shaan Puri

Of the story is a dude bet $1,000,000 and made $100,000,000

Sam Parr

there is a plural but that's the. Of the story let's be clear the the. Is is that

Shaan Puri

like I love that part of the story

Sam Parr

Crazy people exist. I'm not one of them, and I'm happy that they exist. So, we just did this episode with Ramit, and I align with Ramit. We're both fairly conservative—just like 10% a year, boring stuff. I love that these nutty people are real and exist because that's where progress comes from. I'm happy that they're real. I just wanted to tell that quick story because I caught up with them recently.

Shaan Puri

That's an amazing story. I saw this tweet that was great, and basically what it said was, "Great to be great at investing, just make bets that everybody agrees with later." I thought, "That's so true," which is that there's a lot baked into that, which is that ultimately...

Sam Parr

was that by shane parrish

Shaan Puri

He tweeted something like it, and then somebody replied with a simpler version of it. Shane had the original one. I think Sahil Bloom had the punchier one-liner version of it.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And I thought there's so much baked into that. You have to remember that if you're going to invest, if everybody agrees it's a great investment, then the price is baked in. So ultimately, if you want to have any kind of outsized return, you have to be betting on something that not everybody agrees with you is a good investment. I think that's important to know. When you're doing something, that doesn't mean everybody's disagreeing with you. If everybody agrees with me on this, then this probably isn't going to be a great investment. It might be a good or solid investment, but it's probably just not going to be—it's almost definitely not going to be a great, great investment. So that's how you kind of use that advice.

Sam Parr

yeah I saw that I thought that was good alright what do you wanna do now

Shaan Puri

By the way, on this, because the world's crazy and we're talking about people just making $100,000,000 on random bets, there's this great blog post that I think everybody should go read. I don't know how they'll link to it because it's weird. Maybe put it in...

Sam Parr

the show notes it's a great headline

Shaan Puri

the everything bubble and it's written by ftx which is a crypto cryptocurrency exchange we we talked about the the guy he was our billy of the week once this guy sam bankman fried who had also made a pretty crazy trade to build to get the bankroll to be able to do this to build this exchange I think he's the youngest crypto billionaire or he's the youngest he's he's the wealthiest known crypto billionaire I think he's got a net worth of $10,000,000,000 it's he's I think something like that somehow that's more than vitalik I don't know how that works but I guess so so anyways he is is just packed with data so it basically starts with like bubbles people talk about bubbles and and it's like what is a bubble right bubble is when you get this like sort of enthusiasm delusion greed and everybody sort of thinks that everything can only go up and then you know then there's this pullback or a pop and it talks about like the size of pops and and how when they happen and how that's played out through different bubble times and where we might be in this thing then it talks about like maybe this is a bubble that will never pop right why would that be and it's basically talks about it goes through all the data around stimulus right so it's like $32,000,000,000,000 of stimulus has has happened globally just since covid which is the largest stimulus the world has ever seen in terms of a even in terms of percentage of global gdp you know global banks are printing a 100 $834,000,000 per hour to buy bonds right now and and 25% of those bonds are negative yielding so it's just like he starts to talk about all these different macro indicators and there's all these charts and graphs and and numbers and it's very simple and it basically talks about where are we at where are we at with with stimulus where are we at with commodities like copper aluminum why why are used cars up 45% year over year and then it talks about you know what's happening in in the crypto market and in the equity market and I think there's one great quote which is basically it talks about like risk assets so traditionally you'd have like a risk asset which is let's say bonds and bonds are like the safest thing and so the the quote here I'll just read this out which is because of the amount of printing so the quantitative easing because they call it qe infinity which is basically the central bank and the fed just deciding to print an unstoppable amount of money with no end in sight so it says because of this the your savings account turned into your checking account the bond market turned into your savings account the equity market turned into the bond market the venture market turned into the equity market and the crypto market became the new venture market basically like everything shifted over 1 unit so things that were low risk became everybody seek higher higher risk and higher returns because the safe stuff was this sort of negative yielding and and so everything shifted over one notch and I thought that was a good kind of observation so anyways there's a it's very you find a blog post that's this high density of of like signal to noise I would go read this it's called the everything bubble

Sam Parr

And so, what's your opinion? I know that you're texting with me and a few guys earlier.

Shaan Puri

yeah you

Sam Parr

You have some strong opinions. What's your opinion on what's going on with the NFTs and all the rock... like, I don't even know what to...

Shaan Puri

find out joking around I basically said like look okay if you got into bitcoin early because you you understood the difference between fiat currency and sound money and you're a technologist you understood cryptography like props to you you deserve you deserve your tens of 1,000,000 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars if you got into ethereum early on in the crowd sale and you you bet on that thing at 30¢ because you're a developer and you you really believed in this new programmable blockchain you deserve your tens of 1,000,000 of dollars you deserve your $100,000,000 if you're rich because you bought like a picture of a rock you know 3 months ago or you know a a computer generated squiggle that's now worth a quarter $1,000,000 fuck you that was my that was my. Of view I like my level of respect and like the level of durability I think that comes with these different waves I might regret this later it might be that all these people they just truly understood this intersection of technology financial markets and art in a way that I don't get and you know to basically to get rich with with bitcoin early on you had to understand like the you know the financial you had to had a certain economic understanding of the world and a technical understanding of the world and you had to be sort of a little you know a little libertarian you had to have those 3 to bet on it super early on and for ethereum the same thing you had to have a certain mix of technical + financial like savviness for this it's basically like art + finance + technology if you're gonna get rich during this and I just feel like I don't know if it's my twitter feed or if it's everybody's twitter feed but I feel like half the people I know have lost their mind and and I know I sound like that sometimes with crypto so this is just one of them that I don't get but I really don't see the sustainability of this nft market I think it is comp like it is built on greater fool theory this is people that are not buying things because they like the art they're buying things because they think they're gonna get rich they think that the next person's gonna come in and buy it I think there's a whole lot of like either you know wash trading or painting the tape which is basically when when 2 friends sort of pass something amongst each other in order to drive up the price and then they sell it you know and then you know the next sucker comes in and buys it you know for because they think that's the market price and I think that it could be one person with multiple accounts it could be you know a handful of people that are manipulating these markets I don't believe in the nft craze in the same way that it seems like a lot of people in tech do I think it's really cool technology I think there's a lot of cool stuff that's gonna happen but I think people are just diving into every freaking project and that to me seems misguided in the the crazy returns that they're getting like I'm the hater you know sort of rooting for it to fail because I I don't get it I'm not participating in it and it just doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like a true value creation it just seems like you know delusion

Sam Parr

I completely agree. I'm freaked out by it. We're on the exact same page. It... it... it... like the... the... and...

Shaan Puri

By the way, I was going to say, when I mention that I will still buy a few NFTs, it's because I'm a believer that when I have this strong of an emotion, it's a signal to me that that's where I need to lean in and learn. Now, I don't go crazy with it. I will make small bets, talk to people, and be open-minded because I've felt this way many times before and been wrong. I've felt it and I've been right, but I've also felt it and been wrong. All I know is that this means there's something really interesting going on. I will still play in that field, make small bets, and meet a bunch of smart people. If something changes my mind, I'll go make a big bold bet. But I would say the thing that seems off to me is that it just seems like every third week there's a new crypto project. Like, yes, just yesterday there was this thing called Loot. Did you see this?

Sam Parr

well what is that I don't understand it explain it to me

Shaan Puri

So here's what I know about it. The founder, you know, this guy Dom Hoffman, created Vine. Then he created some other projects since Vine. I don't know if he was with H.U. Maybe he was... yeah, maybe he was. He's one of the early Vine founders. He just released a new project yesterday called Loot. Instead of it being like a Cryptopunk, which is a little 8-bit character, or an ape from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is a picture of a monkey, this is a black square with, like, I don't know, 10 words of white text that make no sense—just gibberish. It's just computer-generated gibberish, and that's the whole NFT. Just yesterday, all you had to do was pay the gas fee, which means just pay the processing fee to mint one. It came out, Ben saw the tweet, Ben minted one, and I think today it's worth 10 ETH, which is about $30,000. This is in one day.

Sam Parr

no way

Shaan Puri

He paid, you know, probably under $100 to mint one of these. Just the processing fee. He paid, you know, $50 or whatever the gas price was. Then today, I think the floor is like 6 or 10 ETH, which is like, you know, $20,000 or $30,000 for this black square that will say like "Lions Mountain," "Spiking Diagonal Line," "Castle," "Valorant." You know, it doesn't mean anything, right? And it's like open IP. You can go, like, you can build games on top of it. There's cool stuff you could do on top of it, but it's so hard to wrap my head around this. It just feels like every third day there's a new one. And this is where I'm like the old guy on the lawn shaking my fist, saying, "You kids don't understand the meaning of hard work." Usually, I'm the one laughing at the old guys who are saying that and just saying, "You don't get it." In this case, I don't get it.

Sam Parr

do we wanna keep hating on stuff and go to whoop

Shaan Puri

yeah okay this is the play what would you call it

Sam Parr

the player haters ball this is the player

Shaan Puri

Haters Ball episode, because I have another one that I can hate on. Let's do Whoop first. Go!

Sam Parr

yeah so well you you go ahead go ahead

Shaan Puri

I'll frame it. Whoop raised $200,000,000 in a Series F funding round. Whoop, if you don't know, is like a wristband—a kind of health tracker or fitness tracker that you wear. I have one, but I lost the charger, so it's dead right now. It's basically like a little Fitbit. It tracks your sleep and your exercise. The word on the street about Whoop is that it has amazing marketing and product appeal. It's not the most accurate, but who gives a shit? They charge you a certain amount for the band and then there's a monthly subscription of $20 to $30 a month or something like that.

Sam Parr

I think the the the

Shaan Puri

band part

Sam Parr

of whoop right now the band is free and it's $30 a month for

Shaan Puri

if you subscribe for the year or something like that

Sam Parr

you have to subscribe in order to use it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so that's Whoop. And then the same thing with 8 Sleep, which is a bed that tracks your sleep. It can kind of... it's thermoregulating, so it can make you cold or hot. I had one, but I returned it because I wasn't super impressed by it. They raised $86,000,000 at a $500,000,000 valuation. So, what do you think? I think I know based on the way you started, but the reason I put it on here is that I wanted to know: are you a believer, or are you... you know, where do you bet that these end up? How much do you believe in these?

Sam Parr

how much was the whoop valuation

Shaan Puri

I don't know I think whoop's over $1,000,000,000 is my guess

Sam Parr

I don't I would have to think I would have to see the

Shaan Puri

Number, apparently, $3.63 billion. Oof! Oh, and also the wonderful kiss of death, SoftBank. Then Kevin Durant and other athletes are investing. You know, that's called the sucker round. It's not called the Series F; it's called the sucker round.

Sam Parr

So, the 8 Sleep thing... I'm well, check this out. Look up right now, what's Casper's market cap? Right now, so Casper is between $1,000,000,000.

Shaan Puri

is my guess let's see oh my god way worse $200,000,000

Sam Parr

Okay, so Casper has a market cap right now of **$200,000,000**. We had the founder of Casper speak at HustleCon. Awesome guy, great story, really great business. When it was just getting started, they made **$1,000,000** in, I think, its first week. They raised, prior to going public, around **$250,000,000**. As of this second, they have a market cap of **$200,000,000**. So, they are worth less than the amount of money that they raised.

Shaan Puri

5 x of revenue.

Sam Parr

5x of revenue. I think that for 8 Sleep, I am on board with that valuation for Casper. It's really hard to do. I think that is what's going to happen to 8 Sleep. Whoop, I think, is a little bit different because it has subscription revenue. You know, I’ll buy by...

Shaan Puri

The way I think, I think 8 Sleep is trying to do the same thing. They don't just sell you the mattress; they sell you the subscription with the mattress. They're like, "The bull case is it's Peloton. It's a piece of hardware. Everybody sleeps. You sleep 8 hours a night. You can optimize your sleep. It has some such good health impacts for you," right? Like, all true. And you know, the mattress industry is big. So what we're going to do is sell the best connected mattress, and then we're going to charge you a multi-subscription on top of that. That's my guess. I think they might already be doing it.

Sam Parr

I know that I think that's a really hard argument to make. But yeah, that's expensive. That's an expensive...

Shaan Puri

tesla of beds says their their ad

Sam Parr

I, the... so when we first... when we were getting the hustle going, this company called Quip advertised with us. I used to write these advertorials. I'm not sure if I made this up or if I stole it from somewhere else.

Shaan Puri

that's the toothbrush right

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I wrote the... when we were getting started, I used to write these articles. I wrote this one article for Hint, and the headline was... I forget what the headline was, but it was great. It got like 10 million views, 5 million views, and they spent so much money driving traffic to it. So if you go to Outbrain and you scroll down, you see these little articles on the bottom of CNN. It says like a headline, and you would see The Hustle's article. I wrote that article, and it was called... like it had the word "sweetie" in it. It was something like, "Sweetie, this is never gonna work," said this one Coke executive or something like that. Or what was it? Do you see?

Shaan Puri

I'm trying trying to find it right now

Sam Parr

And so, I wrote an article like that, and it crushed. Then Quip saw it, and they were like, "That's great! Write one for us." So, I wrote one for them and I called them "the Tesla of toothbrushes," and that crushed as well. They said they spent a ton of money driving traffic to them. Now, I'm not going to take credit for it. I actually think I copied it from someone, but I don't remember now. The "Tesla of" like a bed, the "Tesla of" [expletive], it crushes it. What do you see? The article, what was it called?

Shaan Puri

Did... why didn't you start a DTC brand? I feel like every bone in your body was made to build a brand like this.

Sam Parr

I'll tell you why. Allbirds filed to go public today. I was reading through their S-1. Here's why I didn't start a D2C [Direct-to-Consumer] brand. I think it's fun, but I believe a D2C brand is one of the hardest things you could do in business. It is so challenging. I looked at their Allbirds S-1, and here's why: commerce kind of sucks. The more revenue you make, the less money you have. It's such a pain in the ass. Am I wrong about this?

Shaan Puri

yeah you're wrong about this let me show you something real quick

Sam Parr

That's crazy, dude. I think these D to C companies are such a pain in the ass to run.

Shaan Puri

can you see this number

Sam Parr

aj hang on

Shaan Puri

come on camera focus on that

Sam Parr

there it is

Shaan Puri

what is that that's that's the last 30 days

Sam Parr

so your your business has made sales in the last 30 days

Shaan Puri

That's right! Congratulations! It's hard to build these businesses. It's okay; there's a lot of schlep work involved. For example, I spent hours yesterday trying to find a forklift for the warehouse. The electrical system in the building doesn't support the battery we need. So, I'm thinking, "Where do I get this forklift from?" I'm calling forklift providers. Turns out, by the way, it's a great business to be in—just selling used heavy machinery like forklifts. There's a lot of room for building an aggregator there. But yeah, dude, if you have the marketing chops you have, it's like, where do you plug that in? If you're a plus at that skill—and I think you are—your writing skills, advertorial skills, and marketing skills are so strong. If you had plugged that into a D2C brand... By the way, we are one year and one month into this business.

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

and that's in a month doing basically so okay

Sam Parr

how much how much cash do you have in the business bank account

Shaan Puri

good amount yeah a lot why

Sam Parr

because are you buying a shit ton of stuff for november december

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we have a bunch of inventory. We do spend a lot on inventory, but there's... yes, it took cash. So, when I started the business, I put in a good amount of money. So, I put in...

Sam Parr

So, do you have... wow, you don't have to say these numbers, but do you... or you can... do you have more money in the business bank account than you started with?

Shaan Puri

No, we have a line of credit that we use. Since then, we basically pulled that out and used the line of credit. But what I'm trying to say is, yes, you do have to wait some time to be able to pull profits out. While you're scaling, great, this month is profitable, but you're going to reinvest that into either marketing or inventory for the next month. So yes, you are cash poor for a while, but you do turn the corner. This month is a "turn the corner" type of month where, oh good, there are actually leftovers after you reinvest everything in growth and all that. I think that if you have a good product, if you have a truly great product... do you?

Sam Parr

think that you have a great product

Shaan Puri

We have a great product—like, a truly great product. When you have that, you're not just an arbitrage; you're not just a dropshipper who's taking random items off of AliExpress and sending them to customers to capture your margin. We spend a lot of time on product development to get it right, and we also use the product ourselves. So, it's not like we have to live with any issues related to the product. I would say you can turn the corner, and there are also a bunch of different companies that have popped up that let you float money. Let's take a normal direct-to-consumer (DTC) business. Here's how it can work: you can, let's say, run Facebook ads. You put the Facebook ads on a credit card. Cool! Your Facebook ads should be returning more than 1x, you know, within 7 days.

Sam Parr

how much does that return 30

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it depends on your product and your brand and all that stuff. But let's say you're returning 1.4x or you might be returning 2.5x. Different brands do a different amount. You know, if you're doing 3x, you're amazing; you're laughing. If you're doing 1.5x, you know, you're alright; you're doing okay. So let's say you do that. You're paying back your ad spend in 7 days, but you don't pay your credit card for, let's say, 30 days. All of your marketing spend should be paying itself off. You don't need an external investment to do that. Okay, so now you have to deal with inventory. Well, for inventory, you have supply and terms with your suppliers, so you don't have to pay for it all upfront. As we get bigger, we get better and better terms with our suppliers. In addition to that, there are all these companies that have popped up, like ClearBank, Settle, or Wayflyer. Different companies will basically say, "Cool, for 1% interest, we will front your inventory financing for you. We'll pay all your accounts payable for you." So, 1% per month is not cheap, but that basically replaces the need for external investment. By the time you have to pay your bill for your inventory, you've already received it and sold it. If you do those two things, you can manage cash flow well. Your ads pay themselves back before your credit card bill is due, and your inventory pays itself off before your inventory bill is due. You just pay a small vig on insurance. So, there's a lot out there now to help you scale. I think these businesses sell for about 1x revenue, which is maybe 4 or 5x times EBITDA.

Sam Parr

Do you think that what do you think is going to happen with it? Do you think you'll sell it, or is this something that you want to run and own? Is this like a family business that you want to own forever?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I like running it. I definitely think we can grow it more. So, you know, if we could do this in one year, let's give it four more and see where we can take it.

Sam Parr

I do think that there's something amazing about these companies. If I had to guess, you probably have a skeleton crew, right? I don't know how you quantify it because you have so many projects.

Shaan Puri

Like this doesn't require an office. You know, there are some employees. The biggest thing we have now is we brought the warehouse in-house, but you could also not do that. You could use a 3PL [third-party logistics], you know, pay somebody else basically to do your fulfillment for you. Then you don't have any crew there, so you don't have that headache. You could do this with a pretty small team of people. There are people doing this with, like, I think we did an episode with the founder of Native Deodorant. I think he was the only employee for like the first, I don't remember what it was, maybe $5 million to $10 million in revenue.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And then, you know, he hired a customer service person, which is basically, you know, you could hire somebody for $6 an hour overseas to answer your customer service emails. That's your first hire. Then you might hire another one of those people. After that, you might hire somebody for operations to deal with the supply chain. So, it depends on how complicated your business is. But yeah, like you don't need... this is, I would say, whatever you had with the hustle, this is probably one-fourth the manpower you need for that.

Sam Parr

It is cool. I think there's a lot of... I was down on it, but there are a lot of cons. I think there's a lot of pros as well. The cons depend.

Shaan Puri

What month do you catch somebody? You catch them in a month where the Facebook algorithm is not treating people well, and they're crying. You know, the business doesn't work anymore. It's like it went from great; it was a money printer, and now it's a money suck. There's nothing you can do about it. Facebook just changed something.

Sam Parr

or there's a pandemic and you can't you can't order anything

Shaan Puri

Shipping containers went from $3,000 a container to $20,000 a container. Okay, now how does that mess up your margin?

Sam Parr

and and that where everything's stuck in the port

Shaan Puri

It’s just that all these things have happened, right? We’ve had theft, we’ve had Facebook ad changes, we’ve had container costs go up, and we’ve had our stuff sitting on a boat at the port for three weeks. It’s just floating there, you know? We’ve had to get a line of credit. We’ve had to do a lot of things in this amount of time. So, that’s why I said there’s a lot of schlep work. It’s not clean and easy like doing a podcast and just having a bunch of people listen to it and make money. This is a lot easier and a lot more fun. But those can get bigger. I guess I don’t even remember how I started this, but basically, I was just saying, “Dude, I can’t believe you haven’t built one of these. It’s insane to me, given your skill set.”

Sam Parr

So maybe, maybe I will one day. We'll wrap up in a second, but let me ask you one more question because this is interesting to me. You've done a social app that is like the most poppy, cute thing ever and had some mild success. You also have family that are mega successful in real estate. We have interviewed all types of people. Now, you have an e-commerce thing that appears to be potentially a home run. If you could go back now to 10 years prior, knowing what you know now, what do you think you would like to do?

Shaan Puri

that's a hard question that's a really really hard question okay I'll I'll rank I'll give them it's it's like the oscars I'll give them some awards okay so most likely to succeed goes to real estate congratulations come up and get your prize if I had just said cool I'd like to be worth you know a few $1,000,000 in my twenties I'll by by the time I end my twenties I wanna be worth a few $1,000,000 maybe you know liquid maybe a couple million on paper I could have you know 10 to $20,000,000 net worth I could have done that in real estate with pretty much like no luck required right most likely to succeed is real estate because there's no luck required it's just hard work blocking and tackling doing the things so that's real estate but I wouldn't go do it myself like if I could go back now I wouldn't switch paths to that but I would have told myself hey look here's here's one option and the award for absolute worst idea goes to trying to create the next social media app you know yes I this required maximum difficulty light highest luck factor trying to catch lightning in a bottle and honestly the prize okay it would have been fucking sweet if we had invented twitter or youtube I gotta admit that would be amazing but I can be just as happy not having done it and yeah I can name all 5 guys who've done that so like you know that's that's not the path okay then if I say alright you know sort of like medium return this is the mediocre playbook you know the the sort of mild success playbook pretty good chance of a pretty good outcome but kind of a lot of work and you know would I do that ecommerce is the answer for that one which is like ecommerce is one that I think you can definitely make work if you just keep trying it's kind of a pain in the ass and it's never gonna be the most fun or the most successful right

Sam Parr

However, I think e-commerce of maybe all three of those is the most exciting.

Shaan Puri

the most exciting no way most exciting path would've been

Sam Parr

running ads and seeing cash like that is so exciting

Shaan Puri

Okay, that loop is fun. I give you that. The feedback loop is instantaneous, and it is monetary. It's not...

Sam Parr

Real estate reviews... Real estate's not that very exciting. It can be kind of fun, but I wouldn't call it an adrenaline or dopamine rush.

Shaan Puri

Right, so, okay. If I was going to go back and convince myself of anything, it would have just been to say this: "Look, you could win in all these different ways. Every flavor works. Choose the one with the most fun journey." Corny? Yeah, I know. This is cliché, but choose the one that's going to be fun before the success comes. Basically, in that case, you win-win. You have fun while you're doing it. Because you have fun, you keep doing it. Because you keep doing it, you get good at it. Because you get good at it, you eventually win. And look, all these things, as long as they leverage either physical real estate or the internet, the scale is big enough. You'll have enough money; you don't need to worry about money ever again. So, I would have advised myself to say, "Look, there's some pretty interesting stuff going on in these new waves like genomics, biotechnology, cryptocurrency. Just go dive in, become an expert. There are no experts because the thing's like a year old. Go become an expert, meet all the cool people doing it, take a bunch of risks, invest in stuff, and build in that space. You know, create a podcast talking about that stuff. Just do all the things in that space."

Sam Parr

You know, information... So, you know, podcasting, media, courses, and, you know, crypto, investing. I mean, you have a pretty eclectic background.

Shaan Puri

I think, of all of them, I've had the most fun doing the podcast and the media thing. Really, it's more about doing the thing that doesn't feel like work to you; do the thing that feels like play to you. So, imagine you already had the money, but you were still going to work on some projects. What would you work on? My answer was that I would want to make content based on stuff I'm learning and things I think are cool. I think it'd be really fun to have an audience. I find it energizing. I don't feel like it's work when I have to do the podcast or prepare for it. It keeps me kind of on my toes because I have to come up with new stuff to talk about, so I have to keep learning. That was the most fun path for me. I would have done that, or I would have similarly done this in a domain like crypto. There are these guys that do a podcast called "Bankless." Have you seen them?

Sam Parr

no is it awesome

Shaan Puri

It's like, yeah, it's cool. I mean, I don't listen regularly, but like, okay, DeFi is this new thing. It's this new wave. Crypto is this new wave. There's so much to learn about and so much to talk about. So these guys, they went in and created a podcast called "Bankless," and "Bankless" is basically a great name.

Sam Parr

great name

Shaan Puri

Great name! They just talk every week. They're like, "Oh, here's the new stuff going on in the world of DeFi. Here's the new thing to talk about. Here's the ups, the downs, the prices." Because of that, they're building a good community around them. They can make money off sponsorships. They're seeing a bunch of stuff. If they're smart, they're investing a bunch and getting equity in all those businesses. Eventually, they should launch their own branded business in there. Maybe it's an exchange or an ETF.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Something else with that following... So that's kind of the playbook I would use, given my strengths and what I've seen. But like, yeah, try it all. I've tried a bunch of these different things, and that's what I think.

Sam Parr

This is good. I think maybe we should end here. I believe this is a sick episode. I was thoroughly enjoying hearing the stories. Hopefully, people will enjoy it. What do you think?

Shaan Puri

we got a title of this one this is the

Sam Parr

play a haters ball

Shaan Puri

We will try next time to hate on less stuff, and we will talk about things we like more. But that's alright. This is the episode where we hated on everything.

Sam Parr

well I'll pat ourselves on the back here we don't default to hate most of the time like right

Shaan Puri

like we hate on everything except for ourselves we compliment ourselves

Sam Parr

We typically are not haters. I think I default to optimism, and so do you on most everything. We want it all to work. But yeah, I feel you, and I completely agree with just about everything you said.

Shaan Puri

alright dope okay I'm gonna go eat a steak and a salad and enjoy myself

Sam Parr

alright that's the pod