Elizabeth Holmes’ Pre-Prison PR Campaign (#453)

Shaan Puri

There are dudes in prison for two decades for selling a little bit of weed, and she's just walking out of here... She basically took maternity leave from prison. Like, wait, what's happening? I don't understand it. Alright, what's up? We're here. Sam, incredible shirt, I mean...

Sam Parr

enough said

Shaan Puri

just one man to another I'd like to hitch issue a quick compliment and I'd like to move on

Sam Parr

Someone in the comments said, "Oh wow, Saab's dressed like a grown-up." All I was wearing was a coat, and so I'm sorry.

Shaan Puri

it's definitely on top of his shirt so I

Sam Parr

I had to bring it back down. I had to let people know, you know, I could play both sides here. Yeah, so, Austin 316, baby!

Shaan Puri

Still got that dog in you, which I think is gonna be the next shirt we make: "Still got that dog in them." Okay, where do you wanna start? First of all, did you do anything crazy this weekend? Because I feel like your weekends are a lot more interesting than mine.

Sam Parr

this weekend I watched cops on sunday because that's what I do

Shaan Puri

a solid session of cops

Sam Parr

But then, so I'm... I did this combine thing. I wanted to set a new fitness goal every quarter. This year, for this quarter, I wanted to score average for a wide receiver in the NFL combine. If you Google "NFL combine averages," you can find them. This Sunday, I had to do my bench press test, which is 225 pounds, and I had to do it about 15 times. I just about hit 15. So, my results for my combine test: I almost scored average. I just missed it a little bit, but mostly, I was there.

Shaan Puri

wow

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I had... but the big discrepancy is when they do the combine, they use an electrical timer for the 40, and I did it by hand. So my hand time was the same as the electric time. Typically, electric is slower, meaning you have to add a little bit on the hand time, but I kind of did it.

Shaan Puri

This was one of my favorite business ideas that, still, I don't... I'm not aware of anyone who has done it. It's not my favorite in that I don't think this is going to be the best business; I just think it's a product I wish existed. It's a traveling combine for your town. Basically, the way I was thinking about it was for youth sports. You know, the market of like 30- to 33-year-old guys who really want to test themselves before they leave their athletic prime—that's a small market. But a big market is parents who really think their kid is a "special snowflake." So, I was like, why don't they have a version of the combine where you get measured: height, weight, arm length, wingspan, speed, agility, strength, vertical leap, all that? Just do it for all kids who are in competitive sports. Because, like, you've seen that for travel soccer or travel baseball. Parents spend thousands of dollars and uproot their whole lives just to kind of pursue their kids' athletic dreams, which is maybe actually the parents' athletic dream. They love being able to say, "Yeah, oh, he's really good. He's playing with kids two years older than him right now." They love that. They love saying that their kid's playing with kids... you know, there are only 14-year-olds in that league. So, I think that product is great because it's basically the Tough Mudder for little kids. You would be able to charge, I don't know, $150 per kid to get tested, plus another $20 a year to keep it all on file. You know, another $20 to get the photo or the video montage that you're going to get to post to social media. Then, every year, you'll come back and get retested to see how did you do? Are you getting better? Are you getting worse? What are your gains? So, I think this could be a viable business, and I would love if this existed because I would love to go. I'd love to get my kids tested or my niece tested, and even myself, I would love to enroll.

Sam Parr

So, I'm taking this a step further. First of all, I knew I was going to marry my wife because when I met her father, he had the ideal calves. He had the balled macaws.

Shaan Puri

wait what

Sam Parr

you know how like

Shaan Puri

I I think I got a ball calf

Sam Parr

Well, usually people who are explosive have like a ball, like a little tennis ball, in their calf. I saw his skinny ankle with the ball in the calf, and I was like, "Alright."

Shaan Puri

alright it's just skinny skinny ankle has to go with it right that's a thing

Sam Parr

oh yeah

Shaan Puri

pretty sure that's a thing skinny ankle

Sam Parr

You need a skinny ankle. You need a skinny... I remember I used to date a girl, and she did not have a skinny ankle. I was like, "I don't know if we could do this. I don't know if it's gonna work."

Shaan Puri

It's not you, it's me judging you. Yeah, that's it.

Sam Parr

A great way to put it. I remember Malcolm Gladwell had a book where he says that if you're the eldest in your class, you're more likely...

Shaan Puri

To grow in like September so that you miss the August cutoff. This way, you get a full year to go dominate those... [context needed for "hoes"].

Sam Parr

And so I was like, as I'm thinking about family planning, I'm considering where we’re going to live. What's the school year cutoff? Can we fit it in right before that? Then this weekend, I got out a piece of paper and I realized that my life plan is to rent until I buy a home that I want to live in forever because moving sucks.

Shaan Puri

moving sucks

Sam Parr

And like the house that I bought now, it was just like, "Oh, this is good enough." Now I'm like, "I don't want good enough; I want perfect." So I'm just plotting. I'm thinking about what that right home is going to be, and I realized it has to have a 5,000 to 10,000 square foot warehouse. Whichever sport they're in, we're going to build that. We're going to build that thing. So if it's hockey, gymnastics, no matter what it is, we're building that there, and that kid is going to get awesome at that. So I'm planning all that out now.

Shaan Puri

There's not a lot of houses with a 5,000 to 10,000 square foot warehouse attached to it. Just going to let you know, you may not have a hand selection of houses.

Sam Parr

I'm gonna build it. I've already looked it up... I've already looked it up. I'm building this thing. Also, I have a theory that because my wife and I were from different... very, very different ethnic backgrounds...

Shaan Puri

don't get canceled

Sam Parr

I think our kid... Well, I think what I'm saying is, I think if we mix all of these genes into one child, hopefully they're going to be a super baby. You know, they won't get sick, they'll have strong calves. We'll see. I don't know, but...

Shaan Puri

When you say it like that, you know, it's strange but acceptable socially. If you had just said the opposite, you're like, "You know, my wife and I, we have the same background; we're pure." Then all of a sudden, you stepped out of bounds.

Sam Parr

No, I want a diverse kid. They're going to be a super baby because my wife is mixed race. I'm telling you, she doesn't get sick. There are all these things about her that I like. Whenever she takes medicine, she never has the side effects, you know what I'm saying? Right.

Shaan Puri

so

Sam Parr

I'm just saying she's a super baby, so we'll see what's going to happen with that. I will keep everyone updated, though.

Shaan Puri

we're we're we're waiting eagerly

Sam Parr

I've got a few interesting topics you wanna talk about this elizabeth holmes thing first really really quickly

Shaan Puri

So funny! Explain what you saw. I don't have a New York Times subscription, by the way, so I only saw the headline and the photo. Did I assume you pay for the New York Times? Could you tell me what was in this story and explain this whole thing?

Sam Parr

I will... So basically, on Sunday (yesterday), today's Monday. Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos, you know, the fraudster—whatever. The story is that she was convicted of defrauding investors upwards of $100 million. She got sentenced to 12 years in prison. She pulled a wild move where she had a baby. Baby 1 is 2 or 3 years old, and baby 2 is now like 6 months old. She's making her plea to the government saying, "Actually, I have a newborn. You can't put me in prison." And they bought it. They delayed her prison sentence. I'm not sure how it's going to end up. The New York Times did a big exposé on her.

Shaan Puri

expose or like positive feature it seemed like a positive feature

Sam Parr

does expose mean negative because this was not negative this

Shaan Puri

was yeah

Sam Parr

expose is fine positive

Shaan Puri

exposed it's like just like a guy with an accent saying exposed

Sam Parr

They exposed her as being a wonderful human, is what they did. They made her sound heavenly. I read the headline: "Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth." The whole story is about how Elizabeth was this persona and how her new persona is Liz. She's a normal mom; she speaks like a normal woman. You know, Elizabeth Holmes was known for talking like this and wearing a black turtleneck and whatever. Then she admits, "I did that because I was a woman. I'm blonde; I want to be taken seriously, so I had a low voice." But listen to this. The pictures of her now show her with long hair, wearing blue jeans, and she looks like a mom. Honestly, if I'm a woman and you look at this picture, we look alike. But listen to this one. She does! You see? I mean, she looks just like me. It's like...

Shaan Puri

Elizabeth, it says Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth. The black turtlenecks are gone, so is the deep voice, and she wants you to meet her new persona: a mom. Honestly, this is embarrassing. For The New York Times to do this is pretty... it is pretty embarrassing. People get mad at us for bringing some people on the podcast to do interviews, but no, no, no. The New York Times is posting this photo of Sampar with a wig, saying, and then doing this rebrand from Elizabeth Holmes to Liz Holmes. Liz Holmes? Are you kidding me? And saying her new persona? I mean, this is absurd.

Sam Parr

Listen to this story. So, here's an expert I can't shake off. Mr. Evans is her husband, I think Billy Evans. In the waning days of Theranos, Miss Holmes got a dog, a Siberian Husky named Balto. Last year, when a mountain lion carried Balto away from the front porch, Miss Holmes spent 16 hours searching in the woods, digging through the brambles and poison oak, hoping to find him alive. Everyone knew that he was dead, but Miss Holmes kept searching. She was relentless. The certainty, the fanaticism—it's the same way Miss Holmes kept hanging on at Theranos. Miss Holmes eventually found her beloved Husky Balto in the woods, but by then, the dog had been torn apart by a mountain lion. It's this whole story about how her seeking her dog is just her getting caught up in the fanaticism. She's really well-intentioned, but she just got caught up in it. It's pretty wild. I have to remind people that I wrote an article—I actually posted it on here. I wrote this in 2016, but I want to call myself out; I wrote this in 2015. The headline of my article is "The Coverage of Theranos is Utter Bullshit." The first sentence is, "Elizabeth Holmes has been thrust into the spotlight as a scapegoat for all things wrong with Silicon Valley." But I find the media coverage around the Theranos drama to be utter bullshit. I explained why I think she didn't do anything wrong and how she's being hated on. I left the article up because I'm like, "You can't take down a mistake; you gotta leave it up." But I fell for this, and when I read this article about the New York Times, I just realized I think I'm just a little sissy. I fall for all this stuff. I read this, and I'm like, "Oh, you're right. She's just like you and me. Let's not send her to prison." I fall for all this stuff.

Shaan Puri

I mean, look at this. This is like... there's a picture of her and this guy and their two babies sitting on a bunch of rocks by the beach, barefoot. Do you see this? I don't know if you see this photo.

Sam Parr

yes yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Sweet, it out. First of all, it looks... you know, you're using Midjourney. What is this? If I use this, it looks so fake. Secondly, like this whole idea that you can't just get a new haircut and drop half your name. If I got a buzz cut and came on here and said, "I'm Shah Puri," you can't be like, "Oh, that's Shah. Shah's a great dude. He doesn't care about money. Shah doesn't tweet controversial things. He's a different kind now. He's a dad." And then I take my kid to a place with some rocks to take a photo? That doesn't work. You know, this... it just doesn't work.

Sam Parr

is working though it is working though

Shaan Puri

this is the greatest rebrand do you know who james todd smith the third is

Sam Parr

no who's that

Shaan Puri

ll cool j baby

Sam Parr

at least god

Shaan Puri

At least James Todd Smith had the decency to fully change it up and try to get a whole new persona. This is crazy that they are just trying to make this happen. I mean, I don't understand what's going on.

Sam Parr

it's working though she's not she's not in jail she was supposed to report to prison like 3 weeks 3 weeks ago

Shaan Puri

There's like dudes in prison for like two decades for selling a little bit of weed, and she's just walking out of here with two... She basically took maternity leave from prison. Like, wait, what's happening? I don't understand.

Sam Parr

That's exactly what happened. You know what? And you know what's another thing that's kind of crazy? Do you ever follow Ross Ulbricht on Twitter? So, Ross Ulbricht is the guy who ran Silk Road. Silk Road was like a drug marketplace, and at the time, in like three years, it did about $2,000,000,000 in sales. He is also accused of hiring someone to commit murder for three or four people. None of the people died, but the police took pictures of the people pretending to be dead and sent them to Ross. He then hired the fake killer, who was actually the police, again and again. So anyway, he got life in prison, and he tweets about it. I'm not one of those guys that thinks he shouldn't go to prison, but dude, life is a long time for that. You know what?

Shaan Puri

I mean that's all

Sam Parr

The time, and he's tweeting in prison. I feel so sorry for these guys. I fall for all this stuff. I'm, you know, I'm just... I'm soft, I think.

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah sounds like it okay so this is you

Sam Parr

think ross is you think ross deserves life I thought like 25 years is is a nice well

Shaan Puri

it's not actually worth it life sentences isn't a life sentence actually only like 22 years or something

Sam Parr

no he got life without parole like he's he's in there forever

Shaan Puri

and they did multiple life sentences right

Sam Parr

And it went all the way up to the Supreme Court. So, basically, the only way I believe he's going to get out of prison is if a president grants him a **pardon**. That's like the only way that he's ever going to get out.

Shaan Puri

I don't need to get him confused by... pardon, nephew Ross. No, yeah, a telemarketer needs to call him there.

Sam Parr

Yeah, a telemarketer needs to call Biden pretend to be... "Oh, we have your cousin." Yeah, someone from India needs to act like they work at Apple or the IRS and they're... [expletive] Ross figure out what's going on.

Shaan Puri

got me in no trouble can you help him

Sam Parr

I have a few more topics what do you got what do you got that's interesting

Shaan Puri

So, I want to tell you about a... I have a feature here. I got a "Billy of the Week" for you. A $1,000,000 isn't cool. You know what's cool?

Sam Parr

a $1,000,000,000

Shaan Puri

It's been a little while since I had a good "Billy of the Week." I kind of felt one bubbling up a little bit, and sure enough, I got one. Okay, so here's what I want to tell you about this person's career, and you might know who it is; you may not. This is somebody who has had a very successful business career. They sold a company to Berkshire Hathaway, actually. They sold a company that had done **$5,000,000,000** in a 10-year span of sales.

Sam Parr

wow

Shaan Puri

Impressive! Do I have your interest now? Yeah, yeah, you do. I got one eyebrow up. Alright, let me see if I can get that other eyebrow up. They've won an Emmy. They were the manager of Run DMC, and 50 Cent was their intern at the time. So, music dominated, business dominated. How about that?

Sam Parr

what's an emmy

Shaan Puri

An Emmy is the musical awards, I think. Oh yeah, an Emmy is actually for TV. So this person, they wrote jingles for TV and stuff like that. That's one way they made their bones. But they also managed Run DMC, which was the hottest rap group in the world at the time. And 50 Cent was...

Sam Parr

think I know who you're talking about

Shaan Puri

They also... you're a fit guy. I see a cut or two in those arms. This guy's run over 50 marathons, has run 100 miles in 24 hours, and actually had David Goggins live with him for 30 days and ended up writing a book about it. Sounds pretty interesting. He's a part owner of an NBA team.

Sam Parr

does he have a successful wife

Shaan Puri

That's the best part about it. In his marriage, he's not even the most successful one. He married someone who I think is the youngest female billionaire in the world. So, incredible... incredible pull on his part. Let's see, do I have anything else good about him here?

Sam Parr

Well, I think you've missed something very interesting. The company that did $5,000,000,000, $10,000,000,000, or whatever you said, $1,000,000,000 in sales—wasn't that a jet company?

Shaan Puri

It was a private jet company with fractional ownership of private jets. The person I owe... oh, there are a few more. They also were a key partner in a CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) brand. Everybody wants to start a CPG brand and see it on store shelves one day. Did you ever hear of Zico Coconut Water? It was sold to Coca-Cola and got it everywhere. This is something.

Sam Parr

They also wrote, I think they also wrote the jingle, the official jingle for the New York Knicks.

Shaan Puri

Some time, sure did. Sure did. In addition to that, he sells online courses. Hey, he's like one of us. He's just like us, these billionaires I'm talking about. Would you like to guess who I'm talking about here?

Sam Parr

say it say it

Shaan Puri

I'll be your funner. So, Jesse Itzler is the "Billionaire of the Week." This guy's got a fascinating career, right? I admire different things in people, but the thing I admire the most is those who play the game their way, on their own terms and rules. One of the ways you see that is through people who have multiple chapters in their career, where they're able to turn the page and do something completely different. For somebody who started out in the jingle writing business, to then becoming a manager of a famous rap squad, to starting a private jet company, to living in a monastery with monks, to becoming an endurance athlete, to then becoming an NBA owner, and finally doing coconut water... I love people who have done multiple chapters in their career. Now, can I run you through his timeline of what he's done?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I read the book. It's called *Living with a Seal*. It was basically the book that got David Goggins to be famous. It was awesome; it was a good book.

Shaan Puri

oh was that before david goggins kinda was like super well known

Sam Parr

Yeah, in the book, I don't even think he mentions David's name. Then it came out who this person was. I think Jesse was at a marathon and he saw this guy, David Goggins. You know, everyone knows he's like a 6-foot-6 black dude who's ripped, and that's not typically what an ultra marathon runner looks like. He became friends with him and hired him.

Shaan Puri

So here's what he did. He started back in 1995 with something called **Alphabet City Sports Records**. These guys were basically making music for sports marketing and music production. They did this for three years and then sold it for **$4,000,000** to a small acquisition. That's how he got his first million. He stayed there for a little bit, and then he and the same guy, I think, started **Marquis Jets**. Marquis Jets was basically about how to buy hours on a private jet without actually buying your own private jet. The idea was to give more people access to private jets. You would buy **25 hours** of flight time on a private jet, and it worked like a debit card. You could just go use it and then buy more hours whenever you wanted. If you got a whole bunch of people doing that, you might be able to use these jets a lot more efficiently than when just one person owns it, which often results in the jet sitting on a runway **90%** of the time.

Sam Parr

of the dock was that a big business

Shaan Puri

So, they never really fully released any numbers. The one thing he said is they did **$5,000,000,000** in sales in a **10-year** period, which is a lot of sales. I'm wondering...

Sam Parr

Not sure if I'm clear on the economics of that, though. Because it's like, if you sell jets... they didn't sell jets, but if you sold jets, that doesn't necessarily mean you make a lot of money. A jet costs $20,000,000, but you actually only make $500,000 from it. I don't know, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I don't actually know what he said

Sam Parr

if it's legit

Shaan Puri

Here's what he said in an interview: "I'll put it this way, we were extremely profitable. We did cumulatively $5,000,000,000 in sales over 10 years." So he says, "We were extremely profitable," so we'll take that. I also think that when you sell to Berkshire Hathaway, they're not in the habit of buying unprofitable businesses. They sold to Berkshire Hathaway's company, NetJets, which is one of their companies. So they sold to NetJets. Then, Zico Coconut Water. These guys have been around for 4 years. He partners with them and goes to them and says, "Look, let me invest. Let me help you guys grow this thing." It was kind of small at the time. In the same year he invests, he gets Coca-Cola to invest $15,000,000, and then eventually they sell the whole thing to Coca-Cola. I'm not sure how much; they didn't disclose that. But basically, in a 4 or 5 year period, he helps Zico Coconut Water go from kind of unknown to pretty well known, and they sold in 2013 to Coke. They've done a similar thing; they invested in Kind Bars as well. He's got this brand investor group called the 100 Mile Group, and that's what they do. They also invested in something called Sheets Energy Strips with LeBron James, Serena Williams, and a whole bunch of famous people. That one failed; it was like caffeine—you just put a strip on your tongue.

Sam Parr

tongue yeah

Shaan Puri

And it melts and it gives you like... energy, but that one didn't work out. Pitbull [the rapper] is also an angel investor in that one. He bought a... he was part of the group that bought a piece of the Atlanta Hawks, which is... I think where... I think he lives in Atlanta. I'm not sure.

Sam Parr

Yeah, they have a house in Atlanta, and I follow him on Instagram. He's always in... I think he owns a fat townhouse in New York.

Shaan Puri

He's also RVing. I've seen them in a huge tour bus-looking RV thing.

Sam Parr

dude he I I'm I also think he has like 6 kids too the guy does it all

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I know, quadruple threat, dare I say. So, he also started this thing called **29029 Everesting**. What it is, is basically they rent a mountain and bring together food, music, and it's an endurance event. You can walk, run, climb, crawl—whatever you want to do—up this mountain. Then, you take the gondola back down and keep going up and down until you've done **29,029 feet**, which is the height of Mount Everest. So, it's like a way to hike Everest without actually going to Everest and without the extreme risk of surviving there. He's got his **All Day Running Club**; you probably know about this one. It's a paid membership club for runners, basically $400 for the year. He's written two books, and he was a rapper back in the day. In 1991, he was a rapper called **Jesse James** and wrote the jingle for the New York Knicks theme song, "Go, Go NY Go." I mean, he's done it all—really incredible variety in his career. I think "prolific" is a good word.

Sam Parr

The guy is **prolific**, was he? And then his wife is Sara Blakely, who sold Spanx. I think it was she just created Spanx.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

And Spanx was just acquired for like $2 or $3 billion or something like that. Do you know what the final amount was? It was just bought by Blackstone, or BlackRock, whichever one is the one that buys companies. Yep. And if I remember correctly, that company was entirely bootstrapped.

Shaan Puri

1,200,000,000 1,200,000,000

Sam Parr

I think she owned most of it. Yeah, so like they're killing it. Imagine being Jesse and not being the most successful one financially in the relationship. That's a good catch.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, what's like the best thing? I wanted to make a joke there about, you know, in the house he does the dishes or something like that. But what's like the... what would have been the joke there for him being like the subordinate in the house?

Sam Parr

I think he manages the people who do the dishes at this place. But he's definitely managing people. I've been following them for a while. Jesse has kind of become the self-help guru, and I was turned off by him at first. Then, I actually started following him more and realized, "Oh no, you're actually pretty awesome." He's been at the forefront of a lot of really popular health trends. He was really into sauna use for a long time, and now hot and cold exposure is quite popular. He's been doing that for years. He was also into fasting. I followed him years ago when he would go like five days without eating, trying all these weird health things. Now, a lot of these practices are popular. He has been doing it for a while. In his book, *Living with a Seal*, he basically found David Goggins, who lived with him for 30 days. It's an awesome book; it's really good. He tells all these crazy stories about this guy. So, I'm a big fan of Jesse now. I was turned off when I first heard about him, but I realized he's pretty badass.

Shaan Puri

What do you say? I had the same reaction. I saw him just in a bunch of public speaking ads, being like, "You gotta take my course and do whatever." I was like, you know, usually, typically, people who are pretty self-promotional with that sort of stuff, it's like their main business is actually the talking. Their main business is selling you on how to be successful, not like having been successful themselves. That's just a general rule of thumb. So, I was really surprised when I looked into it. I was like, "Oh wait, actually this guy's pretty prolific. He's pretty legit." I'm surprised I had that opinion of him, though. I kind of bucketed him mentally as like an online business guru guy, you know? But maybe, I don't know, maybe that was a total mischaracterization now that I see all the stuff he's done. I also think one really interesting thing is, have you heard about his pickles thing?

Sam Parr

no what's that

Shaan Puri

So, by the way, I invited him on the podcast. We follow each other on Twitter, so I DM'ed him last night. I was like, "Hey, you should come on. I want to hear about some of the stories and the experiments that didn't work out." Because this is all the wins. I'm sure if you're a guy who's tried this many different things, you had to have a bunch of trial and error along the way. He posted this on Instagram last month. He goes, "Why I'm excited about pickles!" [in all caps]. He said, "Last week, I said I wanted to buy or partner with a pickle company, and boxes of pickles have been showing up at my house all week. It's exciting! I'm doing a live taste test this week. They're all so different." Lots of people are asking me, "Why pickles?" Here's why: He goes, "First of all, can you name five pickle companies?" I hate pickles. I don't know. Can you name any pickle companies?

Sam Parr

there's probably only 2 or 3 that I like to buy I buy a lot of pickles I'm a big pickle guy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, big in the pickle scene. So he says, "Can you name 5 pickle companies?" Exactly! It's a crowded market, but not many dominant players. **Second**, pickles are underrated. Americans eat **20 billion** pickles a year, and there is no buzz in the category. Not much fun for creativity; all the packaging is the same. **Number 3**, the average American eats **9 pounds** of pickles per year. **Number 4**, the average American household buys a new jar every **53 days**. **Number 5**, clearly, pickles are a big deal. Entrepreneurs look to make things better. Often, those new ideas come in the form of products they use daily. They get excited when they see a new lane, and I see a new lane here. So, he created this pickle company called **Hoya Pickles**. He said, "This is the name of our new company. We just need the perfect pickle."

Sam Parr

like a yiddish thing

Shaan Puri

I have no idea

Sam Parr

Well, pickles are quite popular among Jewish people. He's Jewish. Is Hoya... what is that? Maybe it's like a Yiddish name?

Shaan Puri

I don't know, it's a funny name. If you go to their bio, they only have 2,000 followers right now. But I'm going to follow this; I want to hear the story play out. He goes, "We're crowdsourcing our brand while we create the best pickle company. If you have a clean ingredient pickle company, DM us." Then he's basically like, he's got to feed... and it's like, here's a picture of Adam Sandler casually eating a jar of pickles. It's like he's just trying to build this pickle company. He's trying to do the coconut water thing again, but for pickles this time. I find this... I think...

Sam Parr

You could probably pull it off, dude. Pickles are awesome! I like Jesse. We should get him on. If this makes it to you, Jesse, this will make it to you anytime.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and remember when I went to Hustle Con, your conference? There was the guy who created Method soap. He created Ollie vitamins and Welly band-aids. He created three hit consumer packaged goods (CPG) that were sitting in front of us.

Sam Parr

of it something

Shaan Puri

eric ryan I think is his name it's him and his brother ryan yeah

Sam Parr

He's like a flamboyant-looking guy. He wears these bright glasses, and his hair is combed exotically. I like that guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly! He looks like he was born inside of a Warby Parker or something. He was on stage and gave a great talk at your conference. One of the things he said was, "How do you come up with ideas? You did Band-Aids, you did vitamins, you did soap. How do you choose? Where do you see the open space?" He basically said the same thing that Jesse just said. He goes, "I walk down the aisles of a grocery store and I just wait until I see a sea of sameness." So, basically, a sea of sameness is an area where there's a shelf filled with a ton of products that have no differentiation. It's just a bunch of the same thing. He said, "For soap, go look at the soap aisle. It was just green bottles of the same product in the same shape sitting there everywhere." He explained, "So we came out with a different bottle that was blue and had clean ingredients. That was going to be our thing, and that was Method soap." He continued, "Go to the Band-Aid section. Same thing: a sea of sameness. Band-Aids were all trying to be this nude color that matched the same color as your skin. But nobody's skin is actually that color. So it's just like you're trying to hide something." He said, "We believe every cut is a badge of honor. It's a great story to tell. So we want to put a badge on that wound that stands out." That was his approach to that one. The same thing applies to the vitamins aisle. He mentioned that the vitamins aisle was just a bunch of labels that all said things like vitamin D, B12, C, blah, blah, blah. He came in with Ollie, and they have a different look. It will say things like "better sleep" or "better hair and nails." It highlights the benefit of the vitamin, not just the vitamin itself. So, just taking a slightly different approach to these stale categories was the idea. I think if you go down the pickle aisle, that's probably a pretty stale category too. It's probably a sea of sameness, and I think this is going to work.

Sam Parr

well jesse if you're listening come on man come on on

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Well, I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Sam Parr

HubSpot: Grow Better I was one time doing one of these events and we were looking at speakers. We typically had never paid speakers, and for some reason his name popped up. Like his agent sent, or some agent sent, how much his fee is and it was like $100,000 to get him to come and talk. So the guy's telling it in a variety of places, that's right. Alright, I have another interesting person and I'm gonna explain why I found this person. Have you ever heard the phrase "The way you do one thing is the way you do everything"?

Shaan Puri

hate that phrase

Sam Parr

why do you hate that phrase

Shaan Puri

Because I do a bunch of things terribly, I'm like, does that mean I'm going to do everything terribly? I hate it because if it's true, I'm in trouble.

Sam Parr

so I believe that that phrase to be true and I believe it to be true because I've always I've gotten on myself because I'm not entirely like you but I'm a little bit like you where I like to like you know free ball it I free ball lives you know what I'm saying I just I try to figure out as I go but my lack of discipline and my lack of process sometimes really hurts me and so I'm trying to make up for that and so I've over the past couple years I've been obsessed with the phrase the way you do one thing is the way you do everything so for example you're late for this pod you are also late for your kids' home depot class so so the way you do that one thing is the way you do everything and it's like one of the that's one of the reasons why the military they make you make your bed in the morning is because they say if you start making your bed in the morning that means you're eat breakfast the correct way that means you're gonna run the right way which inevitably you're gonna fight the right way and so like I believe in that and so I was looking for examples of that and so have you ever heard of this company called rakuten so the company called rakuten it's basically like amazon in japan it started by this guy named what's his name is he goes by mickey so mickey mikitani is his name and he's similar to like jeff bezos in japan where he's like this kinda like pretty hardcore guy but he's lovable and he's he's a titan of industry so rakuten is like amazon in japan it has 32,000 employees 14,000,000,000 in revenue this huge thing and I love reading about japanese entrepreneurs because there's something about the culture that fascinates me and they have this thing where he has like a handbook that he gives every employee and I got a hold of that handbook a few years ago when I read it and one thing that stuck out to me was in chapter 0 the very first thing that they have you do the whole what that chapter is about is it's called the the book is called the basic principles but in chapter 0 it's called they outline how at their offices they don't have any janitors and the reason why they don't have any janitors is every tuesday at 4 o'clock they have an hour of clean time which basically means that so no janitors come by but every week at the same time in the morning everyone at rakuten from the ceo to the lowest level staff cleans their workspace they take out rags and spray bottles they clean off their surfaces they pick up trash they get on their hands and knees and they polish the legs of the chairs and it's part of the company of the culture and it's been like that since the beginning since the company was around and it's the purpose of it is to foster a sense of ownership he says we do this activity to remind ourselves that everything the company does is relevant to each and every one of us to keep a sense of direct involvement top of mind it's also an opportunity to reaffirm that the entire company is a team by having everyone regardless of position work together on the same task and I read this when I was leading the hustle and I tried to make that a thing and it didn't work no one no one got into it no one got into it

Shaan Puri

I'm so glad you said that last part because I've done this so many times. I've just "Michael Scotted" it so many times where I will read something, hear something, or have some kind of crazy idea. Usually, it's that I heard some cool person did some cool thing, and then I'll try it in our office. I just got these looks like, "Okay." Then, within four days, the thing is gone. I'm like, "Oh man, I really needed a different force of will or charisma or some... like a leather jacket." I needed something. I'm missing something to make this thing appear.

Sam Parr

The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Man, you didn't do a good enough job, neither did I. Once I failed at that, I realized I need to do this stuff even more. So, with Hampton, I'm trying to figure out what that thing is, you know, that we can all do. I realized right now it's our Zoom setups. I actually linked it down here in our document. If you scroll all the way down to where it says "Zoom," I have this document called "How to Look Good on Camera." The reason I created that is because when people apply to Hampton, we interview everyone. Then, either I, Joe, or someone else goes and watches the interview to see if that person should be approved. I saw one of our guys, his name's Alex Pattis, who works at Hampton, and he's awesome. But I noticed that his camera setup was horrible. I was like, "Dude, this looks like a ransom video you filmed on a Nokia camera. This looks really bad." So, we're going to have to fix this. You know, first impressions matter. I created this guide on how to make your Zoom camera look good. We also gave everyone a budget to go and buy the proper lighting and things like that. That's like my one thing that I'm trying to implement now: I won't talk to you unless your Zoom camera looks great. It has to look good. It doesn't have to look professional, like you and me with a DSLR camera, but it's got to look pretty good. You can make it look pretty good with like $500. So, we're making everyone have their Zoom camera look great.

Shaan Puri

So, first of all, this doc is hilarious. The video of the picture of the guy who looks like the ransom guy is hilarious. I think you're close, but I don't think you quite got it. I hate to... I hate to.

Sam Parr

do that to you tell me more

Shaan Puri

As a friend, I just want to pop the bubble like that. But I think you got half of it right. Meaning, I think your solution is great, but you picked the wrong area. This is too logical; it's too quantifiable why this is a good idea. You said, "Well, first impressions matter. Everybody agrees with that." And you say, "Well, you're doing sales essentially for the company, so you need to show up the right way." It's almost like you could calculate the ROI. The beauty of polishing the chairs or whatever is that it's unnecessary. It's the same thing with making your bed in the morning, waking up at 4:30 AM just to harden yourself as a person, or taking a cold shower. It's gotta be something you kind of don't want to do or seems unnecessary to do. And it's like, that's the...

Sam Parr

So what's an example

Shaan Puri

This is almost like, you kinda gotta do it. This is almost like, yeah, it makes sense. I agree. I'm not taking a leap of faith here; I'm just doing what... you know, maybe I was held back by money or the tech setup, and I just didn't get around to it. So, I think it's good, but I think you need something that's a little bit more story-worthy. Which is like, "Yeah, at Hampton, we made everybody..." [pause] and I think if you say, "And we made everybody fix their camera setup," it's not gonna have that same showmanship. It's not gonna have the same punchiness as if it's something that was completely unnecessary to do.

Sam Parr

I've gotta figure out what that thing is, though. But I desperately want it. I want a shtick. Oh yeah, I love a good shtick.

Shaan Puri

you need a shtick

Sam Parr

I love a good shtick. I'm a big fan of shtick; I think they add a lot. Right now, my current shtick is that your Zoom camera has to look good. It's gotta look great.

Shaan Puri

You get a... everybody has to get a small tattoo on their ankle of a date 5 years in the future, which is when Hampton will be worth a billion dollars. Right? You have to go... you have to go pledge, baby. You gotta go get Brandon if you're gonna get all this straight.

Sam Parr

I love that stuff, and that's another thing we're thinking about, Hampton. We're like, "What rituals do our members need to have in order to get them bought in?" So I'm trying to research fraternities and sororities. I love this stuff, the same way that Tony Robbins' shtick is... what's it called? The fire walk.

Shaan Puri

yeah walking on coal

Sam Parr

which like isn't even that big of a deal is it have you walked on cole

Shaan Puri

yeah I did it I've done it twice at his events yeah

Sam Parr

it's like a pretty sanitary thing isn't it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's no risk in doing this. Basically, he's like, "You gotta get your mindset right. You gotta get in state, and when you're in state, you can do anything." It's like, I'm pretty sure that they basically just make you stand on this thing that's wet first, so you get moisture on the bottom of your foot. Then you can just walk across these coals, and it's not gonna hurt you. Unless you stood there and stayed there, it won't make it past that layer of water or whatever. There's some science behind it. If you walk across this surface for this much time with this much water on your foot, you're not gonna have any problems.

Sam Parr

A great actor, dude, a great actor needs a good set and good props. I'm reading this book about J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan was this guy in the Gilded Age, a rich guy. One time, he was trying to settle an agreement with five different union heads of various steel companies. He said, "Come out to my boat, and we're going to go for a boat ride to discuss." He gets on the boat and says, "Alright, everyone," and the pilot of the boat goes off in a rowboat. He then declares, "We don't have a captain. We're stranded out here until we settle a deal. We are not leaving until the deal is done." It's that pizzazz, that showmanship. Every great actor needs a good set. He set up that set wonderfully. I'm constantly looking for what's our ritual, what's our set going to be, and how can I add the showmanship?

Shaan Puri

Down this road before, I studied a bunch of different rituals. Basically, anybody that has a really strong community... what is it? Everything from actual cults to European soccer clubs where the fans are just insane. I went to Duke, and we used to live in a tent for three months, which is basically living in a line to try to get into the big game. Really, everybody behaves a certain way. People don't even like basketball but live in a tent for three months just to do this, just because they get swept up in the rituals, the movement. I remember I’ve never been to Burning Man, but I talked to people and I was like, "Dude, there's something about Burning Man that gets people to act totally differently than their normal behavior." What is it? They told me that when you enter Burning Man... I might butcher this because, again, I've never been, but when you get to Burning Man, first you wait in line in your car basically for hours and hours trying to just get to the entrance. When you get to the entrance, apparently you kind of like get out, and they give you a name... they give you your new name, your burner name. Then you like roll around in the sand or some shit like that. Have you heard this?

Sam Parr

yeah like firefox lion boy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and then you roll in the sand, and that's like your **entrance thing** or whatever. I did something at my last company that was kind of like that, which was just rolling around the streets of SOMA. No, no, I'm just joking. Yeah, we had a meeting once. I was... everybody had been at the company for like...

Sam Parr

The hepatitis huddle... everyone's got to go out in the streets of Soma and roll around.

Shaan Puri

It's **Syringe Sunday**, baby! Get on the ground! Yeah, go pick one up. We're cleaning these streets up with our bodies. When I did this thing where, after six months of working, I called a team meeting. I basically gave a presentation to the team about each one of them. I said, "This is Sam. This is Sam's story, and this is Sam's superpower." I gave everybody a superpower. I was like, "This is Derek. Derek was our designer." I said, "Designers are notoriously just artists. They're fickle; they need inspiration. You give them a deadline, and artists are terrible with deadlines." But Derek's superpower is that **Derek is the mailman**. He delivers every day of the week except on Sundays. I said, "Derek, if you give him something at 9 AM, he will have it to you by 5 PM every single day without fail, except Sundays. You message Derek, he's not gonna get back to you." And I was like, "Derek, which..."

Sam Parr

is like it's totally not true but you've just implanted that into him

Shaan Puri

It was like mostly true. Everybody's thing was like believably true, but it's amazing. Then everybody started living up to it. Everybody started referring to him as "the mailman," and sure enough, he would always deliver. He never didn't deliver because he had to live up to people's expectations. With Fircon, I was like, "Fircon, his superpower is that."

Sam Parr

He'll always lend you $5 whenever you ask for it. Just ask him; he's got you. He's always got some change.

Shaan Puri

On him, always, always good for 20. I was like, "He melts bullshit." He is just a bullshit melter. You can't bring bullshit around him; it's like radioactive, it'll just start to melt right away. Otherwise, Furkah was pretty direct, and I think some people were intimidated by him. They felt like he was criticizing them when he would say something. But then I reframed it as he's just using the superpower he has. He's great at identifying and melting bullshit. It's not you; it's the shit that he's melting. So, I tried to do that for everybody, and I really felt that was one of the few management random experiment shticks that actually worked. People really liked that they had a superpower. I named it, reinforced it, and people started using that one in the office. Whereas most things were just me trying to make "fetch" happen, and they were like, "It's not gonna happen."

Sam Parr

Well, I remember early in my career, like, I worked the only job I ever had. This guy had a shtick, and he would try to get everyone to clap, like a slow clap, before...

Shaan Puri

me it

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was like that. I remember thinking, "This is so stupid." Then, after a couple of weeks, I was like, "Alright."

Shaan Puri

low school slow clap

Sam Parr

Now I'm a little bit older, and I'm like, **a good shtick is great**. A lot of that performative stuff... I used to think, "I'm too cool for this. I don't need this." Then you realize, **no man**, humans are not logical. We need emotion; this emotional stuff matters. The difference between a highly motivated person who is using their emotions effectively is significantly better than someone who is not. I mean, if you look at different wars, you could see who is fired up the right way versus who is not, and it really makes a massive difference.

Shaan Puri

I think that leadership, basically, if you want to be a leader, three things are true. The first is that you have a higher standard for yourself than anybody else has for you. So, it doesn't really matter what your job title is. If you hold yourself to a higher standard than your manager holds you to, you are a leader. That's the first definition of a leader. The second is that a leader understands what the emotional state is and what it needs to be, and can transfer it. Basically, anybody who can understand that morale is low and it needs to be high, can shift the mood and energy. Or, if everybody's a little too comfortable, they can create a sense of urgency. They understand the emotional state and know how to shift it. The third is that leaders see things how they actually are—not worse than they are, not better than they are—but how they actually are. Then, they paint a picture of how it's going to be better than it currently is. To me, those are the key elements of leadership.

Sam Parr

reading this are you reading this off something

Shaan Puri

no that's just straight off the dump

Sam Parr

That's a good little... that's a good little thing there. Next tweet! There you go, that's a great one actually.

Shaan Puri

If I wasn't a retired Twitter artist, I would have tweeted that one. I got one other quick one for you.

Sam Parr

I wanna read you justin yeah yeah I've been eager to see what you're gonna say

Shaan Puri

I wanna read you something so this was this you're

Sam Parr

On that Justin Mears tip, we talked about Justin Mears at the last podcast. Justin's a very fantastic entrepreneur. You've clearly been reading his blog; you've been obsessing.

Shaan Puri

I actually... somebody sent this to me afterwards. So, I haven't... I have only read the screenshot that they sent. Somebody sent this to Ben and they go, "I feel like you need to read this."

Sam Parr

Last time you've done this... Last time you read, you said you were reading a book and I was asking about the book. You're like, "I've actually..." You go, "I just read this awesome book," and it turns out you were 5 pages in.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's awesome! See, love at first sight, you know? Alright, so here's what it says. Here's a quote from his blog: "I give the same advice to friends who want to start a company. Startups are momentum plays. That's the key thing. Startups are momentum plays. You choose the idea you are most excited about. You put a date on the calendar for 3 to 6 months. At that date, you're allowed to reflect on your commitment level. Until then, you do not spend any time questioning it. Should I be chasing this idea over there? Should I be doing this over here? No, you put blinders on for a period of time. You allow yourself to dig into the problem space and spend your early time actually working on the thing versus intellectualizing if this is the exact perfect right and obviously huge thing I should be working on. At least that's what I've struggled with when working on something new. I love that! That's awesome! That hit home for me. Startups are momentum plays and how you have to put blinders on for a period of time to just actually do the thing versus intellectually constantly questioning or considering the thing versus ten other things and paralysis by analysis. What do you think of that?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've told you about this. I think I have this thing called **worry time** where I say, "Alright, today of the week, I can worry about these things." Once that hour is up, no more worry time. It's only **do time**. I can go back and reflect, figure out my worries, and determine what's legitimate and what's not at a later date. Sometimes I'll do it six months out. So, when I was searching for a company to start, I said, "Alright, for the next six months, it's plan mode. All I'm going to do is read and consume. I'm not going to decide a thing; I'm just going to consume and read." Then, at the end of six months, I'll make a decision. I love setting clear dates where you can't do anything. I also love momentum. So, when someone talks to me about starting a business, I say, "Try and see if you can get sales in the next 24 hours. What's the least amount of effort you could put in to get a sale in 24 hours?" Because the second you make **$1**, everything feels like it changes. It's as if you had poor eyesight, and now you have glasses on. That little bit of clarity gives you a boost of energy, and you feel significantly better about getting to the second dollar, which makes reaching **$100** and then **$1,000** easier. Once you're at **$1,000**, you can go to **$1,000,000**. You have this really cool line you say: **A to B to Z**. You worry about step A and how to get to B, and then don't worry about anything else. But you can think about Z occasionally, which is like your big motivating factor. Just don't think about... well, you know.

Shaan Puri

all the other

Sam Parr

the other letters are in the yeah

Shaan Puri

This reminds me of something I've seen a bunch, and I have a sensitivity towards it because I did this. A lot of people want to do like a startup studio or an idea lab. They want to do multiple things at once, basically. So, they want to pursue parallel entrepreneurship. I ran an idea lab for about 5 or 6 years, and I loved it because it's the most fun thing you could possibly do. It's like I had a blank check and an awesome team, and I could pursue not just any idea, but many ideas at the same time. I could go from meeting to meeting to meeting and have all this amazing variety of adventures, challenges, and ups and downs. I felt like I got 20 years of experience in 4. But notice that I said "experience" instead of "success" because it was a lot of lessons learned and a lot of skill sharpening. It wasn't a lot of winning. If you...

Sam Parr

Would you have had to stick to one idea? Do you think that would have been better, or if you would have had a smaller budget?

Shaan Puri

Sticking to one idea would have been far better. I'll give you kind of the three options. So there's what I was doing, which is **parallel entrepreneurship**. You basically take multiple ideas and pursue them in parallel. This is an easy trap to fall into once you already have a win under your belt. This is why you've seen, you know, Mark Pincus with Zynga create an idea lab. Kevin Rose created an idea lab. The guy from Uber created an idea lab. There are like ten of these examples out there. That's usually a successful founder who wants to start up still but has too many interests—too many ideas, more ideas than time. So they create a lab or a studio that's going to create multiple hits. The idea is that almost none of them have any hits whatsoever. The average and the median for these studios is zero. It doesn't work for a bunch of reasons I could get into, but this form of parallel entrepreneurship is very sexy but not great for actually winning. So there's parallel, then there's **serial entrepreneurship**. Serial entrepreneurship is like the Jesse Itzler thing, which is like, "I'm gonna do this for this..."

Shaan Puri

Of time, and then I'm going to do a different thing for the next. I'm going to take this one thing, and if it doesn't work, I'll pivot it into something else. Then I'll try that for a few years. I'm going to give each one a several-year chapter, basically, of effort and focus, and full intensity on one thing. But then I'm willing to switch what the one thing is. I'm not trying to run the same company for a decade or stay in the same industry for 25 years of my life. I'm going to switch around; I'm going to hop around. So that's **serial**. Then there's the last one, which is **repeat entrepreneurs**. This is the person who actually does the same company or stays in the same space. It's like, "I created one D2C brand; I'm going to create another D2C brand," or "I run one company, and I'm just going to run it for 15-20 years." Or, "I did a newsletter business; I'm going to do another newsletter business." That's **repeat entrepreneurship**. Personally, I have tried **parallel**; I've tried **serial**. I haven't really tried **repeat**; I've stayed away from that one. I think if you wanted to order them in terms of most likely to succeed, it would be: **repeat** is number 1, **serial** is number 2, and **parallel** is number 3. In terms of fun, **parallel** is number 1, **serial** is number 2, and **repeat** is number 3. So I actually think that the correct decision for me is **serial**. It has enough fun and enough winning, and that's the choice versus going for maximum success probability or maximum fun with the lowest success probability.

Sam Parr

which idea do you think would have been the one that you should have stuck with at monkey inferno

Shaan Puri

I think for the most part, it was ideas about what we should have done versus what we actually did. What we did was try to create hit social apps. Why? Because before that, the main guy who was running it—who hired me—and the main investor had built a social network called Bebo. They had competed with Facebook and MySpace back in the heyday of social networks. They sold it for $850 million. Facebook went on to become worth $850 billion. There was always this sort of "shoulda, woulda, coulda." At the time, people were pretty down on Facebook. It felt like there was going to be something new, but nobody knew what it was. Sure enough, it turned out to be Instagram, then Snapchat, then TikTok eventually. New things did come out; that part was right. But the wrong part was trying to recreate or chase that dream because the chances of success were so low. We built messaging apps and social networking apps, and it was really, really hard to get them to work. What we should have done was build either tools for startups or tools for developers because we knew what the pain points of an early-stage startup were. We had a bunch of developers—about 18 developers—so we could have built products that addressed those needs.

Sam Parr

were what was the total budget what was your budget for the do you know like 3,000,000 4,000,000

Shaan Puri

I think we burned about $3 to $4 million a year in funding, and we had...

Sam Parr

that much money for for 20 people

Shaan Puri

Well, we also had... it wasn't fully 20. 2020 was like where it got to at the peak. But also, I would say the core team was like, let's say, 15 people. So, 15 people... I think you could do the math. Maybe I have it a little bit wrong there. There was... I don't know if that was pre-taking into account the profits from one of our businesses. So, we also revamped one of his early businesses that was his cash cow, Birthday Alarm. Birthday Alarm was making $1,000,000 in profits before it had been declining year over year for 5 years straight. We kind of revamped it, tried to turn it around, and got it back to, you know, slightly growing basically by the time I left. So, that covered a portion of the burn. I don't know if the $3 or $4 million was pre that or post that.

Sam Parr

I don't remember at

Shaan Puri

this. It's been 6 or 7 years since I was doing that

Sam Parr

Was there a developer tool idea that you thought you should pursue but didn't? Did someone else come and take that opportunity?

Shaan Puri

Let me tell you 3 ideas that I think would have worked, that we had... that we literally discussed and had the idea for. The first was user testing. So I used a very early prototype version of user testing and I was like, "Hey, this is a..."

Sam Parr

pain. For a startup like like the the the company user testing

Shaan Puri

The company UserTesting is basically like this: I could pay $100 and get four people to try our app. They would talk through it, find bugs, and tell us if they liked it or didn't like it. They would also share what's confusing about it. I was like, "These videos are amazing! This is saving me so much time versus having to go out in the wild, find people, stand over their shoulder, and watch them do this or just guess." I thought this was a super useful service. I told Michael one day, "Hey, I think we should build this for startups, and I think we could outpace them in terms of marketing because we're here in Silicon Valley. We understand the startup game. We would be good at getting early-stage companies to use this."

Sam Parr

and usertesting.com is like a multi $100,000,000 a year business now

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah exactly it went public at a. Of time it went public I think it went back private now but yeah it was a it turned out to be a big success you know 8 years later like they they took it all the way and took it to ipo and he was like yeah could do seems kinda boring right and I was like too young and weak and I idled I was 24 years old and he was my hero and he was you know my boss at the time kind of thing and I was like yeah yeah you're right you're right you're right dumb sorry sorry sorry I even said that right like I I backed off it right away same thing happened with cryptos 2013 our sysadmin the the guy who's running like our whole server setup was like guys I'm mining bitcoin on this server and we were like mining what and he tells us why bitcoin is going to be the next big thing all of our all of our engineers were like yeah this makes sense we love this and our team loved it and what our cto was like hey normally this guy never had product ideas he was like tell me what to build I can build anything he's like I got an idea and I was like oh shit paul's got an idea fantastic let's hear it he's like bitcoin I think is gonna be a thing and there's like no there's only one exchange there's a startup called coinbase but like they're just getting started and he's like I think we could build either an exchange or one of the other like financial services for this like cryptocurrency industry and he's like they don't he's like you it's hard to take a payment you know you can't take credit card you can't do any of these things that you're gonna want to do to enter like for a human being to use crypto and he's like we should just start building financial services let's start with an exchange and then let's see maybe we could do you know debit cards on ramp off ramp like what what can we do and he he was so motivated and he built like a prototype overnight he got he he he started coordinating with his designer he like shoved the product manager into a corner and was like you know shut up I got this and it was just like a great sign for a startup when the engineers are like I know what needs to be built here I I intuitively understand and then our lawyer our in house counsel called up our investor was like hey the guys are talking about bitcoin I googled it I think it's for drugs and like you know I don't know if this is the right idea and so he came in he was like you know I don't mind losing the you know 3 or $4,000,000 we spend on on whatever like that's okay that's an acceptable burn

Sam Parr

but I'm not going to jail

Shaan Puri

But I'm not trying to go to jail, and I'm not trying to handle money in serious ways like this. I think Bitcoin is like snake oil. I don't know... I kind of convinced him enough that day to buy Bitcoin. I think he was basically like, "I don't know, sounds a little sketchy." He bought some as a hedge, but he was like, "I don't think we should be in the Bitcoin business because you need licenses to do this. You're basically just talking about building a bank. It's a super gray area." I'm not trying to lose my $1,000,000. I can lose the $3,000,000, but I can't lose my $1,000,000,000. And it was like, dude, the message I got...

Sam Parr

cock block michael burt burt she just blocked you guys hard

Shaan Puri

I don't mean to blame him. The mistakes were all on me. I've just recalled two examples where I think we had good ideas that we didn't... what was it?

Sam Parr

the third one

Shaan Puri

See, through the third, we had built Blab into a business that was like a really good video chat product. It had reached 4,000,000 users, so it was kind of a thing. It was basically like if you see Clubhouse today or Zoom today. It was like a Zoom call or Google Hangout where four people could be on the screen talking. There was a live audience, and anybody could request to join and jump in from the audience to start talking. You could do call-in shows and stuff like that, and it got pretty popular. Tony Robbins was using it, famous bands were using it, and the UFC was using it.

Sam Parr

martin scarelli

Shaan Puri

Martin Shkreli was using it. Yeah, exactly. So we had, we got to 4,000,000 users, but it was like, we thought maybe this is that big social product we've been waiting for. But it was pretty clear to me that it was too leaky.

Sam Parr

churn was high

Shaan Puri

Yeah, churn was going to be too high. People weren't going to use this every day, or the people who did use it every day were just there to make friends. Therefore, it wouldn't grow because they didn't bring friends; they were there to make friends. So, you have this problem where if your viral, or sticky users, are people who are there to meet others, they're not going to bring people. You're either not going to grow and you're going to have stickiness, or you're going to grow and you're not going to have stickiness. That was the problem we ran into. By the way, when I wrote that thread that went viral, explaining why Clubhouse was not going to work back when Clubhouse was at its peak, the reason I knew that was because we had built a very similar product and ran into all those same issues. Sure enough, it's all playing out now.

Sam Parr

So, you didn't get rich, but at least you got kind of popular on Twitter. Yeah, so there's that.

Shaan Puri

It's like I just dropped $400 at Chuck E. Cheese and I got this, like, you know, little slinky.

Sam Parr

laser pointer yeah

Shaan Puri

I got a laser pointer that'll sign through me

Sam Parr

Yeah, so that's cute. You have your little Twitter thing. That's nice.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, that was the thing there. The move would have been the shift towards Citrix. Citrix had a thing called Webex, which is like their video chat tool for meetings, press conferences, and webinars. The obvious thing was we had built a way better tool for webinars or large company chats, like all-hands meetings and things like that. If we had pivoted to B2B, we genuinely had a product that was sort of like 5 times better than theirs at the time. I think we could have made it successful. We even had the idea. We were like, "Should we do this?" But then we thought, "Kinda gotta do sales and stuff. I don't know, do we want to do that? Are we a B2B company now?" And I was like, "Nah, we'll just try again to build the next big social app," which was, you know, a giant mistake.

Sam Parr

Hey, you're not flying private and you don't have a vacation home in Tahoe, but at least you learned. At least you learned, you know? If you're not winning, you're learning.

Shaan Puri

that'll be that'll

Sam Parr

be kind of my book

Shaan Puri

it's a memoir called at least I learned

Sam Parr

Dude, I hate when people say "winning or learning." I'd rather win. I don't want to learn. I'd rather be a dumb winner than a smart loser all day of the week. That's easy. I'd rather be waiting on my plane but barely know how to read. This is why I love this pod; you get stories like that. Those are good stories.

Shaan Puri

I think we should should wrap it up there but tell me what thing what's that say on your shirt

Sam Parr

austin 3 16 baby

Shaan Puri

what it says on that shirt

Sam Parr

We gotta start getting back into that stuff. I've been out of the game. But anyway, good pod. That's the episode.