The AI App Doing $6M With 1 Employee

Shaan Puri

And I'm like, "Yeah, I can see how this would work if this is working on secure, married, you know, 2 kids with a third on the way, 36-year-old me." Dude, 17-year-old me would be like, "This app is now my life." And I think that's what's happening. So the general trend here is basically that... Sam, notice anything different about me today?

Sam Parr

You're wearing a collared shirt.

Shaan Puri

Do you know what that's called nowadays, Sam? No, it's called "look maxing." Have you ever heard this term?

Sam Parr

I've seen a genius CEO use the phrase "look maxing." Yes.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I want to talk to you about look maxing because I saw this app called Umax. I downloaded it, and it asked, "Are you male or female?" I said, "Okay, male." Then it said, "1,000,000 people have done this on Umax. Are you ready?" I replied, "Yeah, I'm ready." So then it instructed me to take a picture of my face right now, and it would score me on how ugly I am. Your boy took a bad selfie. Then it said, "Hey, do you want your score? Pay $3.99." I thought, "Gladly, sir, take my money." Apple paid $3.99, and I found out that I'm a 69 overall. Sam, I just discovered this this morning. It's something I've been wondering my whole life: where do I stand? I am a 69 overall, which means I am better looking than 49% of the people. This indicates that the majority of people are better looking than me. And then what's interesting about this...

Sam Parr

Wait, that math doesn't work out. You're not better. 49%? Was there 110% of people?

Shaan Puri

No, I'm better than 49. 51 are better than me.

Sam Parr

Well, why are you a 69 then? Shouldn't you be a 51%?

Shaan Puri

No, I don't know. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. I got a 69 overall, okay? So I got a 69, but my potential is an 83. Hmm, I'm intrigued. Tell me more about the app. The app basically rates me on my jawline, masculinity, grooming, skin quality, and hair.

Sam Parr

That one selfie of you in bed.

Shaan Puri

It's AI. It's a 2. So, do you take a side profile and then you take a front profile? What do you do?

Sam Parr

They say about your jawline, "You got a good jawline." Oh!

Shaan Puri

**Jawline:** 69 **Skin Quality:** 68 **Masculinity:** 82

Sam Parr

Nice.

Shaan Puri

Your boy's a man. Yeah, you know you're a man when you have...

Sam Parr

To use an app to tell you, "You are a man."

Shaan Puri

So, what's amazing about this app? I saw it on Twitter; somebody tweeted out an interview with the founder, and he's hanging out on the subreddits. I don't know if you've seen, but on Reddit, in the beauty and grooming category, there can be a bunch of subreddits. For example, number 3 is "Look Maxing Advice," and number 5 is "Male Grooming," which has 744,000 members. So, those are 3 of the top 5 subreddits. He's hanging out in these, and basically, what people do is they would go...

Sam Parr

Post, what's the male grooming? Just pictures of pubes?

Shaan Puri

No, it's your hair, your beard, your face. It's your... your... your... your...

Sam Parr

Ah, the name of grooming.

Shaan Puri

All that got it, okay. So, you would post a photo of yourself, and he would say, "Hey, give me some advice. How can I look better?" Strangers of Reddit, you know? My family, they all just tell me, "Oh, you're beautiful, honey. Don't worry." At school, I'm too embarrassed to ask. I don't want to look like a loser, but on Reddit, we're all losers here. It's all good. So, they post a photo and they say, "What can I do better?" People give advice. So, what this guy did was he turned that into an app. He's like, "Let me sprinkle a little AI on this and turn this into an app." The app has 3.5 million downloads. He's making $6,000,000 in ARR on this app right now, a $6,000,000 ARR run rate. The app costs $3.99 a week when you unlock your thing. So, I think it's like one of these where you pay to unlock because, "Oh my God, I really want to know," and then you forget to unsubscribe. That's probably the reality. But you're supposed to do a daily update as you take the steps they recommend. So, for example, now this part, the first part was me doing it for science. The second part was me being like, "Well, you know, it's got a..."

Shaan Puri

Here, so I click in and it's like, "Hey, you know your first... your glow-up routine." It says the first priority is skin care. How are you going to make your skin care better? So I click it, and it says the easiest way to improve your skin is to limit your processed foods, opt for meats and natural produce, work out five times a week, and wash your face with warm water in the morning and evening. That's the easy mode. It says the best mode is you should clean your face in the shower, moisturize after the shower, exfoliate two or three times a week, and it suggests products for you. Then there's like some... wow, some skin care product. I went and I immediately was like, "Oh, I'm gonna buy this." So I bought this $20 thing, and it's not like their product; it's just a link to Amazon for CeraVe's moisturizer after the shower or something like that. I'm like, "Yeah, I can see how this would work." If this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids with a third on the way, 36-year-old me... dude, 17-year-old me would be like, "This app is now my life." And I think that's what's happening. So the general trend here is basically that guys who are... you know, guys, it's acceptable to be like, "How do I look better?" Normally, the answer was just, "We go to the gym." That was like the societal norm. You could become a gym bro, and you're not seen as doing anything weird or lame or whatever. It's acceptable. Now guys are like, "Cool, but what about from the neck up? What am I gonna do about that?" Honestly, Sam, this is my greatest fear come true. The greatest fear is that for years, decades, centuries, and millennia, men have had a truce. The truce is this: beauty's all relative, and if you don't try, I won't try. While women had to put on makeup, wear heels, and do lip fillers, they started... it became a beauty contest, and they all had to continue to keep up with whatever the norms were. Guys were like, "Look, I'm not doing shit to my face." So, "Yeah, me neither, bro. I'm not doing nothing. It is what it is. I'm take it or leave it as is." Now, as soon as people really start doing this, it's gonna become an arms race. Everybody's gonna have to do it. Do you do anything for your face? Nothing, dude. I've not... no lotion, no moisturizer, no skin care routine. I've never applied a cream in my life. I'm not even really sure what you would do if you put it on. Like, what are you... what are you supposed to do? I have no idea.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've never done it either. But since I married a Black woman, I now have tons of lotions and all this stuff in my house. I'm slowly starting to learn a little bit about it.

Shaan Puri

Dude, you're a muggle. That stuff? Well, that's for wizards. It doesn't work.

Sam Parr

No, I've been... my eyes have been opened to the Korean skincare routine. I'm slowly understanding what all this stuff means. I want to use it, but I've never really gotten into it until recently, where I started seeing some wrinkles. I'm like, "Alright, I think I can learn now." The problem is that when you see issues, you know you should have done something about it like 5 years ago, right? But this is amazing that this guy's doing it. It's one guy. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Shaan Puri

How many other people? But yeah, one guy basically saw the trend on Reddit and decided to productize what he saw people were doing there. I think that's just a great example. You know, one common way to do business is to observe an organic trend and then ask yourself, "Cool, could I use tech to make this more efficient and actually ramp this up?"

Sam Parr

When did you launch it?

Shaan Puri

This thing is pretty new, dude. This is like... yeah, it's not that old. I don't know exactly when you launched it, but it looks pretty fresh. It's also such a simple app. When you download this, you know that this was built by a growth person, not a skincare person or an engineer's engineer. This is built by somebody who was trying to solve a problem and was like, "Cool, big blue buttons, one button per screen, can't get lost." Alright, I'm going to take a picture, I'll give you a number, and then I'm going to tell you how to make the number go high. I mean, I'm also going to give you your potential number, which is higher, and I'm going to sell you a product to fill that gap. They also have a ChatGPT, so it's like your coach. So it's like, you know...

Sam Parr

You can go on here and...

Shaan Puri

Be like, "How do I lose more body fat?" And then you don't even type the question; you just select from one of the preset questions. It then types out some advice for you from there. You can ask it more questions, and it's basically like a custom, you know, ChatGPT-type interface for you. The idea is that this is like an overall trend. I have some more thoughts on it, but I will stop there. Hey, real quick, as you know, we're big on ideas here. We love bringing new ideas—business ideas, brainstorming ideas—for the podcast. A lot of people ask, "What do you do with all those ideas? Can we go find them? Is there a list somewhere?" The great people at HubSpot have put together a business ideas database. It's totally free! If you just click the link in the description below, you can go download a collection of over 50 business ideas that are from the archive, listed out for you, curated. So, what are you waiting for? Go download it! It's free. Check it out; it's in the description below. Alright, back to the show.

Sam Parr

People shared this in my work Slack and they were like, you know, trying to get us to use it. I was like, "This is like asking me to step on the scale a few days after Thanksgiving. It's just not gonna happen." Ignorance is bliss. I don't wanna know the reality, but this is awesome. I guess I'll use it. Are you paying $3.99?

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, I'm paying $3.99. I would have been happy to go to $7.99. I'm just saying that.

Sam Parr

Out loud.

Shaan Puri

So, I asked a friend, and I said, "Under anonymity, I know he knows about this kind of trend, the space. He's younger, he's more into TikTok and stuff like that. Can you give me your honest reaction? What are your thoughts on this?" He said, "Well, to most older guys, this movement just seems completely bewildering. Like, what are young guys doing nowadays?" But it makes sense. He goes, "It's a response to men generally being rejected and cast aside. We can now take ownership and pride in how we look. Can you max out your natural genetics and ultimately become a more desirable person?" You know, societally, men caring about their looks has been viewed negatively, narcissistically, seen as lame or even gay. But now, the narrative is shifting. They're just frustrated and they want to be able to be their most attractive self. I can see this trend continue to grow. It's already big in Korea with the Korean beauty trend. Basically, in Korea, I think men's beauty products are on par or close to on par with women's beauty products. He also pointed out an interesting thing. I don't know if you're a big sports guy, but two of the most famous college athletes, not named Caitlin Clark, are Caleb Williams and Jared McCain. Caleb Williams was the quarterback at USC. Imagine the most alpha male position in the country; you are the quarterback of USC in LA. You're the guy, and he's this big athletic guy, but he would paint his nails. He got criticized for it. People were like, "I don't want my team drafting a quarterback who cares about that stuff. I want a tough guy." Other people were like, "What are you talking about? Why are you overreacting? The guy paints his nails; so what?" Then there's Jared McCain, a guard at Duke, probably the number one basketball program in the country. He built a huge following on TikTok by doing goofy TikTok dances, where he's laughing and happy. Even if they would lose a game, a day later, he would still do this, and he paints his nails. The opposing teams would harass him in the crowd every game, calling him all sorts of names. But he was like, "Dude, I'm just doing me. I'm having fun. It's a superstitious thing; I did it once, I had a good game, so I decided to keep doing it. I like it; it's fun. What's the big deal?" At first, he got a lot of negative backlash, but then over time, over the course of the year on TikTok, this guy amassed like 1 or 2 million followers. I think he was one of the highest-paid college athletes because, you know, college athletes can get paid now. He was getting sponsorships from beauty companies, like nail polish companies sponsoring him, paying this guy tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to post a simple 10-second TikTok. In the end, he had the last laugh. For someone like me, I became a huge fan of this guy just because he was so unafraid to be himself. That was obviously a very attractive trait in general.

Sam Parr

Dude, this is amazing! By the way, when I was in my boxing phase, my boxing instructor, who was a tough guy and would kick my ass all the time, wore nail polish all the time. I was like, "Why are you doing that?" He was 25 and he said, "It's a thing. It's cool. It's what people do." I was amazed by that. You know, I remember as a kid when you would paint a fingernail black as a punk rocker, but now it's like it's mainstream. I think it's cool. By the way, I just downloaded Umax and I just took my pictures. I clicked the button that says, "Give me the results."

Shaan Puri

I love it. Yeah, I know.

Sam Parr

I know.

Shaan Puri

I didn't even want to do this.

Sam Parr

It's not real.

Shaan Puri

This isn't real.

Sam Parr

What'd you get? This isn't real. It's not real.

Shaan Puri

Your jawline's fantastic! I can tell you that right now. At 89, oh my god, you are maxed, sir. Wait.

Sam Parr

What my masculinity is? 93. My skin quality—no, it's just good lighting. It gave me a 94. My skin quality is not that good, and I'm frankly, I should be in the... you're.

Shaan Puri

Doing that thing that women do where you're like, "No, no, this little thing I bought... oh no, this was on sale at Target." You know, you're immediately going into that mode. That's hilarious! It's a classic, classic hot guy thing to do.

Sam Parr

I mean, if I'm hot, that's just not the reality. Overall, I have 89 potential, 95 masculinity, 93 jawline, and 90 cheekbones. I have some work to do.

Shaan Puri

What are you gonna do? Shave them?

Sam Parr

Yeah, what do you do with your eyebrows? I guess get them plucked? I don't know. This is a good app. I'm going to have to take pictures without good lighting and actually get a realistic rating. I just paid my $3.99. I'm into it. Kudos to this guy!

Shaan Puri

I have a few spin-off business ideas for this. I think that, I don't know if you've seen, but med spas... you know what med spas are? These things are booming.

Sam Parr

No, what's a med spa?

Shaan Puri

Med spas are absolutely booming. If you don't know about them, we should do a separate segment altogether about them. But basically, it's like microblading. You know, you get your Botox, you get your lip filler. I don't know what else happens there, but it's stuff like that. Basically, it's the optional aesthetic glow-up type of services that you could do, which go beyond a manicure, pedicure, or a hair blowout.

Sam Parr

Has your wife, by the way, Sean, ever said that she wants to get Botox? If she has, what has your reaction been?

Shaan Puri

She has said it. She's like, "Oh yeah, I wanna do it someday." And I'm like, "Are you just floating it out there?" It's like a little trial balloon just to see how it feels. And I'm like, "No, you don't need that." Can I just go into that mode? But like, genuinely, I have always told her I prefer her completely without makeup. I think she looks way better that way. So I've been telling her that for like, you know, a decade. But she's like, "I'm not doing it for you, you idiot. I know you like me like this; it has nothing to do with you."

Sam Parr

Every man has had that same response. My wife will say it too, and I go, "No, just age normally. You look great, just be normal." I think every man has said the exact same thing about women and Botox. It's very funny. They get this Botox, and I think most every man that I've spoken to is like, "I don't give a shit, just age."

Shaan Puri

Also, it goes like, it's not even just, "Oh, you're fine without it." It's like, actually, "Don't get Simon Cowell face." Have you seen Simon Cowell?

Sam Parr

Yes, they all look like cats, like Cheshire cats. It's weird, man. They all look the same.

Shaan Puri

It's like they go to the Madame Tussauds wax factory and then at some point, it's like, "Look, you look fine. You look good. Oh, you look better. Oh my God, you look like a nonhuman." And then they never recover from that. So there's some stuff there that's a little scary to me.

Sam Parr

They all look like the ladies on "Desperate Housewives" or whatever it's called, like the housewife reality shows. I can't... I don't like that look, and I think most men do not like that look. So that's a PSA for the women listening. And what was it? Okay, medspas. That's cool.

Shaan Puri

Okay, I think influencer content in this niche is going to become really big. Anytime you have a new generation, there's a learning curve and a trust gap. It's a new norm that's being established. You need your shepherds to guide you; you need your Sherpas to take you up the mountain. I believe that anyone who goes all in on this, in terms of their social content, will find success. There’s going to be some 21-year-old dude who all the 15 to 19-year-old guys look up to, or even 15 to 24-year-olds, because he’s going to show his before and after. I think there’s going to be room for, and I’m sure this already exists—I just don’t open up Instagram, so I’m probably out of the loop on this—but I think there are going to be some really big influencers who could enter this space. They will hold the keys. Whatever products they recommend, whatever procedures they suggest, whatever brands they endorse, that’s where the masses are going to go. In a low trust environment, when you don’t know anything, you’re going to need that guidance. So, I see this as an opportunity for more AI-driven apps. I think another person could create Umax right now and achieve the same exact result.

Sam Parr

I agree.

Shaan Puri

I think this app can be cloned in 7 days. I believe you could just blitz the marketing on it, and you will also have a $6,000,000 error app. That's the unfortunate side of it. I think that male nail polish and male makeup brands are obviously coming. But even as a gateway, I think that somebody could recreate Old Spice. So, what's the deodorant for guys who care about their appearance? Guys who are into gym culture and maybe now even into hair and grooming culture—who is speaking to them? I don't think Procter and Gamble knows how to speak to them. I don't think they have the right influencer strategy. I don't think they have the right brand and content strategy. I believe somebody could do what Native Deodorant did for the natural movement. Native basically built a product that rode on the wave of natural, chemical-free, aluminum-free products, and that was where Native got built. I think somebody can create the Axe or Old Spice of today right now and get bought by Procter and Gamble or Unilever for, you know, $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 if you just build a great brand.

Sam Parr

This is insane! In Hampton, we have this company called "For Them," and their name is Kylo. They make clothing that is unisex, and they're killing it. If you would have told me that this company was going to take off five years ago, I would have been like, "You're insane!" They are really thriving and are kind of pouncing on this exact same niche of men who are androgynous. You know what I'm saying? Like, this Timothy Chalamet... My wife said she likes Timothy Chalamet, and I'm like, "What? Really? Timothy Chalamet?" That guy! These feminine men are kind of having their moment at the moment, which I guess they always have, right? Like, Mick Jagger is basically that. Prince is that. You know, feminine men have always kind of killed it in the game. But this brand is one of those brands that I didn't think would be a thing, and it is. So, I'm on board with what you're saying.

Shaan Puri

So, I'm look maxing now. Alright, I'm in. I'm on the train, and I'm going to ride this. I'm going to relate to my fellow 17-year-olds and see what happens. This is great!

Sam Parr

Dude, good find! I can't believe this Umax thing is as big as it is. I had coworkers share it with me today. You brought it up; it must be going everywhere then.

Shaan Puri

Well, someone did an interview with the founder and provided a good Twitter summary of it. I think it was just a tweet that a lot of people saw today.

Sam Parr

God bless them. God bless America. God bless capitalism, right? I would have thought that this was like some Chinese app. Because wasn't there a Chinese app recently that was like, "Here's what you would look like if you were better looking?"

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, I thought it when...

Sam Parr

I first downloaded it. I thought...

Shaan Puri

It was gonna be like Facetune. I thought it was going to be, you take a picture and it makes your picture look better. This is like, "No, no, no, the real face. We're gonna try to make your real face look better." By the way, we should shout out the person who did it. A.T. Pi, I think? Is that A.T. Pi? I don't know how you say the name of the person who did the podcast interview, but shout out to them. That was a good, good interview.

Sam Parr

By the way, the tagline for this app is "Become Hot." It just says, "UMAX - Become Hot." These guys are just digging right at every insecurity we have. I love it! Alright, let me tell you about a trend that's happening as well. This will be like the trends episode. UMAX is happening right now. I want to tell you about a trend that's happening as we speak. Before we get to the trend—and this is recent, some news just happened—but before we get to that trend, I need to tell you the background. So, have you heard of this company called DuPont? It's a large chemical company. In the 1940s, they were tasked by the government with coming up with a sealant for atomic bombs. Basically, atomic bombs needed some type of sealant for gaskets. Gaskets are the parts that put two pipes together so nothing leaks.

Shaan Puri

Talk about a job you don't want to mess up.

Sam Parr

Yeah, a job you do not want to mess up, and a job that requires a chemical that is very, very, very strong. The chemical they eventually created is one of the strongest bonds in chemistry. It's a very strong chemical, and this chemical is resistant to heat and is super strong. So, the war ended, and they were like, "We have this great chemical. What do we do with it?" They started testing new things with it and thought, "We got a great idea! Let's make a pan out of this. If we make a pan out of this, nothing will stick to the pan, even if it's burnt food." They ran all these commercials, saying, "We got this new thing called Teflon." They trademarked it, claiming, "You can burn food on this pan, and you can still just wipe it off. It's the easiest to clean thing." They called it Teflon, which is a long chemical name, but it took off. They trademarked it, and it became a huge hit starting in the forties and continues to be popular today. However, they noticed that there was a subset of chemicals created when making Teflon called PFAS. PFAS is basically a broad term that describes around 9,000 different chemicals that are produced during the creation of Teflon. They found that some of their workers on the line were getting sick, so they decided to look into this and test it a little bit. They started giving it to rats, and the rats developed enlarged kidneys, which is a bad sign. Then they thought, "Well, let's give this to monkeys and see what happens." It killed the monkeys. Eventually, after 20 years of making this chemical, we reach the seventies. Some of the women working in the factory were having children born with strange defects. Some kids were born with one nostril or had eye issues. It was a massive problem. They tested these kids and found that they had PFAS in their spines, indicating it was being passed down from mother to child. They thought, "Alright, this is really weird." Now, this is actually becoming a big deal. For some reason, the FDA didn't call them out on it, and they were still able to produce this. Now we know Teflon is incredibly popular, and nonstick pans are incredibly popular, but here's the problem with this chemical: because it was made for atomic bombs, it lasts forever. This chemical doesn't break down, and now we're calling them "forever chemicals" instead of PFAS. A lot of times in the media, they'll just refer to it as a forever chemical. What they're noticing now is that basically 100% of Americans have PFAS in their bodies because it gets into our water. It's in all the water in America. Not only is it in our water, but it's also in everything else. For example, all your cookware, your nonstick pans—that's an easy one. However, it's in a lot of your clothing too. Any clothing that feels like plastic, like a rain jacket or sports pants or workout shirts, has PFAS in them. It gets even worse. It's actually in all of your food packaging. For instance, in order for your pizza box to prevent grease from seeping through the cardboard, it has PFAS in it. This can of soda likely has PFAS in it because it helps make it more resistant to liquids. This has been a big deal. Recently, I think last year, DuPont lost a $1 billion class action lawsuit stating that they basically can't continue what they're doing. They can't put this in people's water anymore because they were just dumping it in water or the environment, and it was getting into our water. The forever chemicals don't go away. Well, last week or two weeks ago, I believe the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) basically said that this is a big deal and that they're banning a lot of these companies—DuPont, Gore, and a few others like 3M—from putting this into water. They're going to demand that local water companies, you know, your city water, start testing for this and find a way to get it out of the water. That was a landmark case. In my opinion, this is a trend that's happening right now. I think that among my hippie friends—do you have any hippie friends who refuse to use nonstick pans?

Shaan Puri

Yes, and I never understood it until now.

Sam Parr

I never understood it either. They just said it's bad. If you look at your nonstick pans, what you're going to notice is that there are chips in it. There are like little chips from where you put your fork or knife on it and chip that little piece of Teflon. It went into your food, so you're basically consuming this stuff. But it's in plastic water bottles; it's in everything. You actually hung out with Joe Gebbia recently, the founder of Airbnb, and he said that he only drinks a certain type of water. I looked up that water company. What was it called?

Shaan Puri

Aquapana

Sam Parr

Aquapana was one of the few water companies that did not detect PFAS in the water, and the implications of this are quite significant. Have you heard about men having really low sperm counts right now? That's impacting fertility. One of the hypotheses is that if your mother consumed this stuff, studies have shown that men are likely to have lower sperm counts later in life. There are all these implications where people are getting cancer at super high rates, and there are rumblings that maybe this is caused by PFAS. The reason I'm bringing this up is that this is obviously a big deal, and it freaked me out as a consumer. By the way, the takeaway from this is basically that you can't avoid it, and you're screwed. That's basically it.

Shaan Puri

Oh God.

Sam Parr

That's kind of the... I mean, it's in everything. It's in floss, it's in everything. And once it's there, it's there. So our generation might just be screwed. But the reason why this interests me is there's a common theme of hippies or like French people being interested in something and it becoming mainstream and popular in the next 10 to 15 years. Hippies are just innovators. They really are innovators. Yeah, like Birkenstocks are cool now. I mean, they start stuff early. My opinion is that right now is a wonderful time to get into this business. I was Googling which products are PFAS-free, but I couldn't find a decent website. There's one website called Momovation.com. This lady's been blogging about this since 2009, and she does crazy tests on different products. So it'll be like, "Which Ziploc bags are PFAS-free?" She basically does all this analysis where she sends these plastic bags to the lab, and then her conclusion is... none. None are PFAS-free. I don't have any good recommendations for this product line.

Shaan Puri

**Shout out to her!**

Sam Parr

How long has she been doing this? Since 2009.

Shaan Puri

This is amazing.

Sam Parr

And she has a **rabid fan base**.

Shaan Puri

Forever chemicals in contact lenses. Damn it!

Sam Parr

It's in everything. It's in everything. She'll do things like bottled water; she'll measure it. She sends it off to a lab and measures all of the bottled water. She'll say, "This is the order of least likely to have PFAS." She'll also do a variety of products like jackets or clothing, things like that. In my opinion, the same way that cold plunges are popular right now, or whatever trends are popular, I think PFAS-free or forever chemical-free products are going to absolutely take off. In a few years, we're going to see something like Thrive Market. Do you remember Thrive Market? It was an online marketplace for organic food. I think we're going to see a Thrive Market for forever chemical-free products. This is going to be a very popular thing because all of the brands that you and I probably use are really heavy in this. For example, have you heard of the brand 10,000? No? It's just like an Instagram brand of workout shorts. That's basically what their product is. It's like this plastic liner that’s in your shorts. They're in everything. They're in everything—not to call out 10,000, but they're in everything. It's in your food packaging, everything. The EPA actually just announced that food packaging, starting next year, can no longer have this. So everything that you order from DoorDash, your Chinese food cartons, everything has that stuff in it. But starting in 2025, it's supposed to not have any of that in it. Of course, there's a huge issue here, which is that the FDA has kind of sat on this for like 50 years, and the damage has been done. There are new chemicals that you can kind of get around this stuff that are probably just as bad for you. But I still think that this is actually a turning point.

Sam Parr

To make this trend mainstream, we've talked about inflections on this podcast. Now is what I call a **regulatory inflection**. Just like when COVID happened, you could do online therapy, and you saw BetterHelp and many other businesses like that take off. This is a thing that's going to actually get quite popular in the next 5 to 10 years.

Shaan Puri

Wow, this is wild, dude! This ringing... not only was this a good segment, you might have saved my life and many people's lives by bringing this up. What a story! I did not... I had heard of PFAS because I tried to buy a kid's bed. I was like, "How come the checkout's not working?" At first, I was like, "Why is this not purchasing?" So I contacted them, and they said, "Oh, you're in California. We can't ship anything that contains PFAS to California." I was like, "Oh God, how annoying! What do you mean we can't ship it to California?" I didn't realize what I was angry at. I should have been happy about it. And why are these in... you know, I guess, why are these in beds? Why do beds need these? Why should I sleep in these forever chemicals?

Sam Parr

Most of the paint you have in your home has it as well. It's like a sealant, is what it is.

Shaan Puri

We need to clip this because I think in 2 to 3 years, it's going to be significant. Look, I'm looking at these categories. For example, she's testing contact lenses, makeup, dental floss, toilet paper, tampons, wrappers, oils, pans, activewear—all these different categories. That's just like a minefield of opportunity to go through and build PFAS-free alternatives and popularize the story. The story that you told at the beginning is the story that needs to be told more. I think it's one thing to say "has PFAS," but it's another thing to ask, "Do you know what that is? Do you know how bad this is? Do you want your kid to be born with one nostril? How many nostrils do you want your kid to have?" Right? Like, that's all somebody needs to say. If you tell that story well, that's going to be incredibly powerful.

Sam Parr

Well, this is why when I read this, I was like, "Obviously, this is bad." But the business side of my brain was like, "This is advertising."

Shaan Puri

Is great.

Sam Parr

Goal! Yeah, I'm like an HVAC guy during a heat wave. I'm like, "This is gold!"

Shaan Puri

Is that our version of a kid in a candy store? Yeah, I'm like an HVAC operator during...

Sam Parr

Yeah, during a heat wave, it was gold when I read this stuff. The reason being is "forever chemicals." Awesome branding! They're already branding it for us. That's a great brand.

Shaan Puri

I feel like that almost sounds like... I don't know, there's like a slight positive twist.

Sam Parr

Is that good?

Shaan Puri

It'll last forever... or forever. Oh great! You know, like, I kinda want it to be a little more dangerous, right? Like, a little more off-putting.

Sam Parr

Well, I just think that there's a lot of research on this topic. However, I noticed that there is quite a bit of debate surrounding it, and I don't understand why there's so much contention. I wasn't able to read all the research, but there seems to be some disagreement about how dangerous these substances are and in which settings. This might sound manipulative, but you can use fear to encourage people to avoid these products. For example, I remember being pretty nervous about this issue, so I started looking for clothing made only from cotton—just plain cotton. But when you look at brands like Lululemon, you find that most of their products contain PFAS. It's been quite challenging. If you Google "PFAS-free products," you'll mostly come across a bunch of subreddits. The information is still quite niche and grassroots; there isn't a good website that directs you to different products. There is a website called Momivation, but it's still a bit messy and confusing. They don't just tell me what to buy and how to live my life; they also delve into the science behind it, which can be overwhelming. I believe there will be many interesting brands that emerge from this trend. I know Patagonia is currently making strides in this area, claiming that 95% of their clothing is PFAS-free. Additionally, IKEA has been addressing this issue since 2009, stating that their furniture is free from these substances. Many companies are committed to eliminating PFAS by 2025. It's a very interesting movement, I think.

Shaan Puri

Alright, I got another trend for you. This is a cool story, and I would say this is an example of "niches and riches," which is a phrase we've said many times. If there's anything more niche than this, I'd love to hear it. So here's the story: there's a guy named Josh Dunning. His wife is a high school teacher, and when he's talking to her—maybe picking her up from school—he notices kids are doing something outrageous in schools. They are coming into schools and just blasting each other with water guns. He's like, "What is going on?" She's like, "Oh my god, I know these kids. They're obsessed with this game." He asks, "What's the game?" The game, I don't know if you ever played this when you were in school, but it's called "Assassins." The way it works is really simple. You can play one-on-one, or in a free-for-all, or teams, or whatever. But basically, one person is the target, and other people have to find them. You have to get the target first. So you want to shoot the target with the water gun first, and then after you've got them, you get points because you were the assassin who got them. Then the target moves, and so on.

Sam Parr

Of all that, that sounds awesome! I wish I could have played that game. That sounds great! I'll be making the game right now.

Shaan Puri

Believe this is allowed, right? Water guns! Can you imagine the mess? This is ridiculous. But somehow, rather than being annoyed, he sees opportunity. So he goes, "How are they playing this game? How do you know who's 'it'?" They're like, "Oh, we have this sheet, this paper, and we have to keep track of this, keep track of the points." He's like, "So he goes home and builds an app." He builds an app called **Splashin**. The Splashin app is just a way to run your assassin's game. He messages—I don't know how Ben found this guy—but he's messaging Ben and starts explaining, "Yeah, I built this app. I just turned the game into something that would keep track of this, like replace pen and paper for this." He's like, "It's good because it keeps track of the points and tells you who's 'it' and all this stuff." But it's a very simple app and super niche. You would not think this is how somebody gets wealthy. So he starts texting Ben his revenue numbers. He's like, "You know, week 1, pretty small. Week 2..." Then he's like, "Week 3, he's like $40K." I was like, "Wow, you made $40,000 on this thing!" Next week, we're like, "How's it going? Did you keep the $40K or did it kind of fizzle out?" He goes, "Yeah, $93K." We're like, "What? $167,000 the next week? This week, $250,000!" It is just like week over week, this thing has gone viral. He's getting 5,000 sign-ups per day right now. In about a 4-week span, they basically went from no revenue to $250,000 a month in revenue on this. It's called **Splashin**. Let me show you, or you can go to their TikTok. Every TikTok they post, they post 3 or 4 times a day. Each one gets, you know, 10,000 views or so. People are posting this, and it's also inherently viral. So not only do they do well with TikTok organic, but this has something that Michael Birch, one of my mentors, taught me, which was **playground virality**. When Bebo went viral, I asked Michael, "How did it grow?" He goes, "It had playground virality." It means, literally, on a school playground, one kid would be talking about it, and all the other kids who were out of the loop had to go home and figure out what the heck this thing was. Similarly, if one group of people is playing Splashin in your school, you're going to have to go get the app to play, or you're left out. So this thing goes super viral on high school and college campuses right now. Their content is really good because they'll start with someone running after somebody. The video starts with the first 3 seconds showing somebody running after someone else, spraying them with water. The other person is like, "Oh no!" and then they're laughing. It's like, "What app is this? What game are they playing?" It's as if you've seen random people running around with water guns splashing each other. There's a compilation of someone splashing someone in a car, someone diving under the bleachers, somebody running and jumping through a window. The trick is to have these videos that, from a marketing perspective, you watch these and in the first three seconds, it shows somebody chasing somebody else and splashing them with water. It says, "What game are they playing?" Then it says, "If you've seen people all over your feed who are spraying each other with water," and it's just a compilation of crazy people diving through windows being sprayed with water. It says, "They're playing a game called Splashin." The way it works is you're assigned a target. You see them on a map; somebody's targeting you and then blah blah blah. So that's the game. It's pretty amazing to see this thing going viral, and this also falls into a category of apps that is not necessarily sustainable.

Sam Parr

But who cares?

Shaan Puri

But who the hell cares? Yeah, it's a summer fling, and it's a great summer fling.

Sam Parr

Dude, you kind of glossed over the fact that this guy just messaged Ben. Ben's just like, "What are your sales? Tell me your revenue." And he tells them every week.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that happens to Ben like 10 times a day.

Sam Parr

It's like in *Parks and Recreation* where they find out that one of the main characters is a nurse. They start sending her dick pics to get diagnosed with an STD. She's just like, "Dude, my inbox is just full of men's penises asking if they have herpes." I guess that's just Ben's inbox; it's just all these guys sending...

Shaan Puri

Because he's useful, dude. Like, you people tell him what's going on, and then he's like, "Oh, you should talk to this person. They will solve that one problem you're having." Then they're like, "Wow, love this guy!" And then he does it again. You know, because I'll be like, "Hey, two people that don't know each other that we know are talking." I'm like, "Oh wow, how'd they meet?" He's like, "Oh yeah, I introduced them." I'm like, "How did you even think to introduce them?" He's like, "Well, every week he tells me how it's going, and then he said he was having this problem. So I told him about this other guy who solves that specific niche problem, and now it's working out great." I was like, "Oh, you're like a router!" He's like a switchboard operator who's able to just, once he knows what you need and he knows what somebody else has to offer, he makes connections. He asks for nothing in return, and that just works out.

Sam Parr

Have you seen *Boardwalk Empire*, the show? No? So, the main character, among other things, is basically a mafia guy. He's in the mob and he connects Al Capone with this one distiller who can make Al Capone's whiskey or whatever. Whenever he does that, he goes, "Alright, where's my cut?" That's how he makes a living and gets rich off that—by just making connections. Or he'll introduce Al Capone to a politician who's going to help hide his... whatever. That's what Ben needs to do. We need to start changing because in Silicon Valley, people make these introductions and they don't ask for anything. Ben should ask for something. He should get, "Where's my points?" He just needs to start asking for points. That's... no.

Shaan Puri

No, that ruins it. That's why guys like you and me don't have what he has. He just spun; he just happened to be useful, and then value just comes back. Dude, there is a business karma. Value does come back. You know, a few of these people will be like, "Hey, let me cut you a check," or "Hey, if there's more like that, I'm happy to incentivize you to give me more like that." He's like, "Okay, sure," didn't ask for it, but people come to him with that because they're like, "Give me more of where that came from." So he's created a lot of value. I think that, in general, you want to be like ultra-free or ultra-premium. So it's basically like don't make money on every transaction. Don't be a gatekeeper who stands in the way of the traffic flowing. It's like, let 99% of the cars go through completely free, but then on the one where you know there's a bigger opportunity or something like that, we get to invest or we get to be a part of it in some way, and it pays off for the 99 free things that he did. I think he's got the right method.

Sam Parr

How old is this guy, Josh Dunning? I just looked him up, and he looks like a really young guy. I mean, that's pretty impressive. These are basically kids coming up with these things that are making very, very meaningful traction as 1 or 2 person operations.

Shaan Puri

Well, it's also the magic of software, right? Software is so different than a services agency or an e-commerce play. We have a physical product. These software things, they build it once and it runs forever. You know, they can have 3.5 million customers using their product. This guy's signing up 5,000 people.

Sam Parr

A day because software scales. Software is magic. That's not the magical part. The magical part, I think, is the psychology behind it. We have a friend, Nikita, who frankly, I don't know what's the reality versus the story. But there are all these people who he claims are coming to him for advice on how to make my app viral. He doesn't say it, but the story that I kind of glean from it is like, "Beep bop boop, you just do this, this, this. You change this thing to this thing. That's what changed this metric to this thing. Get boop done. Where's my money?" I don't know if that's the reality, but he's like, "Hey, look, three of the apps that I advise are now in the top 100 of the most downloaded apps in the Apple Store." It’s just amazing how there's a little bit of a pattern, and I don't entirely understand the pattern because I'm not...

Shaan Puri

Describing expertise, right?

Sam Parr

Yeah, but it just seems like more than ever before, it's becoming like a playbook. It is ridiculous how, like, I do think that you could take some of this knowledge and apply it to 5 or 10 other things, and it works almost as well.

Shaan Puri

Alright, hey! I want to take a quick break to congratulate our friend Tim Ferriss. Tim's podcast has crossed **1,000,000,000 downloads**—that is insane! Especially for a guy who said when he started the pod, "Hey, I'm gonna do 6 episodes, just give this a try, see if I like it. And if I don't, it'll just be 6. But if I do, maybe I'll keep going." And he sure enough kept going. Tim is amazing at the pod; he's a big inspiration for me. In fact, when I started this podcast, I still remember the day I had sold my company. I was walking around San Francisco, doing a 4-hour walk with my buddy. We walked ourselves into a frenzy, and he goes, "Well, what do you want? What do you really want to do next?" I said, "I think I wanna beat him." He said, "I don't wanna beat him; I wanna have the impact Tim first had." I said, "You know, I have listened to so many of his episodes. The Jamie Foxx one I remember was epic. The ones with Naval are all killer. His ones with Arnold Schwarzenegger were really good. You know, he's done so many episodes that really stood out to me and shifted my perspective, changed my lens, and gave me some inspiration. He was there when I was doing just boring commutes, and I want to thank him for doing the show. The world would be a worse place if he did not do the Tim Ferriss podcast." And now, this is his **10-year anniversary**! So, happy birthday, Tim, for the 10-year anniversary of your pod and **1,000,000,000 downloads**—that is incredible! He is still, to this day, I think one of the best question askers on the planet, which you probably didn't even think was a skill, but it is, of course. His quote about questions has always inspired me. He says that "questions are like the pickaxe of the brain." You can use a question to just unlock information. That's what he does; he breaks down world-class performers by asking them amazing questions. So, Tim, congrats on the 10 years! If anybody's out there listening to this podcast, just hit pause and go listen to Tim instead. You know what? I don't mind; it is a great move by you. You can find the Tim Ferriss Show wherever you get your podcasts. He's also got a newsletter called **5 Bullet Friday** with **2,000,000** weekly subscribers. You can find that at tim.blog, and you can find the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, I'm going to tell a story. I don't know if I can use the guy's name just because I didn't ask if I was going to tell a story, but I could tell a version of the story. I met a guy recently—really awesome guy. I became friends with him, and he is like a growth expert. Not like the, you know, Twitter YouTuber, "I'm a growth expert, hire me for $500 an hour, and I'll be your growth guy." This guy actually worked on the big-name Silicon Valley products. He was running the growth team there. In the same way that, you know, Chamath or Javier grew Facebook, he was the lead guy on the Facebook growth team, and they fought those wars. Or Josh Ellman did this at different companies. There's another guy who did this at other companies. He would describe to me, "Yeah, I went for a walk with him in Silicon Valley—the real Silicon Valley." He was walking, saying, "That's Steve Jobs' house, that's Larry Page's house, that's Mark Zuckerberg's house." I don't know if you've ever been here, by the way, in Palo Alto. These are like completely unassuming houses. They're not like mega McMansions; they're just small cottage houses in a cool little neighborhood in Palo Alto. He was like, "Yeah, that..." I was like, "How did you get connected with these people?" He was telling me about somebody he knew, and I asked, "How did you get connected with these people?" He goes, "Well, I had built an expertise around SEO. I just understood SEO. I had done it at two of my companies. I just really felt like I knew SEO better than most people." Somebody introduced me to the guy from Quora, Adam D'Angelo, who was the co-founder of Facebook and now is doing Quora. Quora had an SEO problem; they were heavily dependent on SEO traffic. Then, like, some Google update happened, and their SEO traffic was dying or having trouble for whatever reason. I did a call with him, and on that one call, I told him, "Oh, it's this. You are getting penalized by Google for this; you need to change that, and it'll fix it." He said it fixed it, and the growth went up. Then I told him one other thing after that. We did one more call, and I did one other thing, and basically, the core growth curve was really impressive afterward. Adam called him and was like, "Hey dude, can I hire you as a consultant? I'll pay you any number to hire you as a consultant." He asked, "How did you do that? My team has been working on this for months, and you just pointed at the thing. You're like, 'This is it.'" He said, "Well, it looks like there was just one thing, but actually, the skill is that there are **1,000** needles, **1,000** straws in a haystack, and the trick is just to find the one straw that matters. It looks like, oh man, you only had to move one straw, but it's because I knew the 99 other things—99% of things to ignore. I knew which ones were not the answer, which told me it's got to be one of these two things, and then I pulled that out." He said, "That's what expertise looks like when it's done well. It's not that you come up with more ideas than anyone else; you can quickly eliminate the 99 wastes of time and try to find the 1 or 2 that matter." I love that principle. Then he said another thing. He goes, "So when he offered me that, I was like, so did you go work there or did you take the consulting gig? That'd be awesome; I bet they could have paid you a ton or whatever." He said, "I had a better deal. I told him, 'I'm gonna do this for free for you, but when the time comes, I know you're super connected to Silicon Valley, and I just moved here. I would love for some introductions. If I do come up with something, I'd love for you to make an introduction.'" At the time, Adam was like, "Done, easy. That's the price. Amazing, I got a steal here." He said, "But actually, I got way more value out of that trade. Because then when I cashed in that chip, people would say, 'I could get an intro to anybody,' and the intro would come with extreme vouch of this guy's like the magic man. Adam doesn't make many intros, so as soon as they would intro me, the person would say, 'Not only did Adam vouch for you, Adam never makes any intros. This is the first intro he's ever made because he knows to the intro meet is kind of a high bar, so you must be really something.' And then that was kind of that business karma.

Sam Parr

He's so badass.

Shaan Puri

Know, coming back, and he's like, "I didn't do it in a manipulative way. I just thought that that was a better ask." I was like, "Wow, that's a great, great story."

Sam Parr

That's awesome! That is a really good story.

Shaan Puri

I want to get him on. I think he's got some good growth stories and growth advice. So, I'm going to try to get him on. I'll ask for his permission.

Sam Parr

I think today was a 10 out of 10. I feel hyped! I want to go and learn about some of the stuff. I want to look up "Splashen." I want to play "Splashen." First, I need friends that are immature enough to play a water gun game with me.

Shaan Puri

Adults... we need adults splashing throughout Austin.

Sam Parr

I guess I'm not going to go buy a water gun, but...

Shaan Puri

In Texas, you guys just play with real guns.

Sam Parr

Yeah, we're going to call it "bleeding" instead of "splashing." That's great! Is that the pod?

Shaan Puri

Well, we have one more thing—one more thing about expertise. This is also the thrill of the show. I was watching one of the podcasts that I recorded when I went to Austin, and the guy said something. He goes, "This is a guy who's Joe Lonzil. His claim to fame, I think the title of the podcast is going to be 'The Guy Who's Created More $1,000,000,000 Companies Than Anyone Else.'"

Sam Parr

Great title.

Shaan Puri

Just an incredible claim to fame and an incredible title. So, he goes... he was saying something and he almost paused me while I was saying something. He goes, "Oh, by the way, that's always a good idea." I was like, "What? What is he talking about?" What he was saying was that anytime a company that was successful doing one thing had to build internally their own tool—something that's not their product, but they hired engineers to work on it—that's the tool. It was like some internal homebrew tool that they used. It was part of their secret sauce for their success, but it wasn't their main product. He goes, "That's always a good idea," which is basically what I call the **export framework**. You export something that was built internally and make it a product that's available to all. He was talking about this, for example, with Palantir. He started Palantir, now a $50 billion company. The genesis of it was when he was an intern at PayPal fighting fraud. At the time, PayPal was getting popular. Basically, what he said would happen is that someone—a cashier at a gas station who was having a bad day—would kind of steal your credit card number. They could sell, you know, 50 of these on the black market to the Russians. The Russians would pay $100 a pop for these stolen credit cards, and then they would go charge up this thing. The customer would be like, "I didn't buy any of this stuff," and so they would charge it back. It's like PayPal was left holding the bag of that chargeback to the tune of like a million dollars. It would have put us out of business; it put most of our competitors out of business for this one reason. Fighting fraud was a really important thing, and we had to build a set of tools to do data detection, fraud detection, and fight the bad guys. He said, "When I started Palantir, I was like, what if we took all that 'fight the bad guys' stuff and made it available to the government to fight the bad guys for counterterrorism stuff?" This was after 9/11. He was giving that example of like anytime you see the homebrew tool that spins out and becomes a product, that's a successful business. Well, today's sponsor is exactly that, and that is **Beehive**. So, Beehive was basically great...

Sam Parr

Great plug! Great plug.

Shaan Puri

The thrill of the show! I guarantee you that nobody does ad reads like I do. I'm going to teach you something, tell you a story, and then I'm going to give you the value too.

Sam Parr

That's a great thrill, and I'll give you the shill.

Shaan Puri

Now, the shill part is these guys were inside of Morning Brew, which is probably, would you say, it's probably the most successful newsletter business outside of Agora, right? Like, the most successful mainstream newsletter business.

Sam Parr

Nearly a $100,000,000 a year business.

Shaan Puri

$100,000,000 business grew really fast, you know? Both of us have tried building newsletter businesses, and these guys grew even faster than both of us. We were successful, but they were even more successful. They grew their newsletter to about 5,000,000 subscribers. The secret sauce of how they grew their newsletter, their growth engine, was this internal tool that they built. It allowed them to write a newsletter easily, format it, and get it all ready to go. It was baked in with growth features, like referrals and recommendations at the bottom of an email. For example, it would say, "Hey, send this to a friend and you can get a free sticker, a free mug, a free t-shirt," or whatever. All of those little tools that they built internally, this guy Tyler basically spun out and created Beehive to do that independently. So now, anyone like me, when I built The Milk Road, didn't have to build any of that stuff. Morning Brew has, I don't know how many, hundreds of employees. We didn't need any of that. Literally, it was me, Ben, and one other guy. The three of us built a newsletter that we sold for $1,000,000 because we could just use Beehive off the shelf. If you're looking to build a newsletter, either personally or if you want to start a newsletter business like me and Sam did, Beehive is the way to go. They basically took all the secret sauce that was inside Morning Brew and turned it into a product that you can use off the shelf from day one.

Sam Parr

10 out of 10! I was thrilled. I just imagine Joe Lonsdale holding up his finger to your lips and saying, "Just shut up. Just shut up. Just shut the fuck up, beehive."

Shaan Puri

It's hilarious too because I'm trying to connect with Joe. He's like this billionaire who has created, you know, spy technology for the government. A $50,000,000,000 company. Tools that all the asset wealth managers use, like Adapar, a $3,000,000,000 company. Then there's OpenGov, which sold to governments and basically sold for $1,800,000,000. He's got a weapons company that builds EMP pulses that will, you know, knock drones out of the sky. War tools. And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, me too man! I'm an entrepreneur too, just like you. Me and you, same, same." Yeah, I built a newsletter company. I did it like kind of part-time for a year and then sold it. Not for $1,000,000,000, just a few million. It was great though. Yeah, then what else do we got? I got a podcast. I talk to my buddy Sam a couple of times a week. That's pretty dope. I'm working hard out here, man.

Sam Parr

All while you were wearing camouflage sweatpants. You and I are...

Shaan Puri

The same while we were at a cold plunge together. I was just like, also hyperventilating and thinking, "How long do guys like this stay in the cold plunge?" I think it's longer than I'm used to. But I cannot get out of this plunge until he does. I either die an icicle or I live, you know, with all the glory of this.

Sam Parr

And you're like, "Oh, you did multiple $1,000,000,000 companies. I got a 69 on you, hot." So, what did you get? So, are you...?

Shaan Puri

In lip maxing? No, oh, I didn't think so. I'm just curious if that was a priority for you.

Sam Parr

That's a typical 49 percenter answer, bro. So check it out: Beehive, that's with 2 i's, by the way. It's spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V. They're... H-I... oh yeah, that's weird. That's a way of...

Shaan Puri

They post their revenue. I don't know what... let me see.

Sam Parr

Dude, Tyler, the CEO. For the next time we give the shout-out, we'll focus on Tyler. Tyler's a great CEO. I thought he was a loose cannon, and I think he sort of is.

Shaan Puri

No, he's just good looking. That's what you thought. You were like, "Nobody this good looking and cool is going to be a good operator." He actually is.

Sam Parr

He's just... I thought he was just too loose of a cannon. Then I realized that his aggressiveness is actually awesome. I did not invest in him, and it's one of the things that I'm like, "Oh, I should have done that." It's easy... almost didn't invest.

Shaan Puri

So, I did end up investing. I actually think I passed the first time. What I did was I passed the first time because I was like, "I don't know how big this can get." Then we started reusing it for The Milk Road, and I used it for my personal newsletter. So, I became a customer first. I would just see that anytime we'd have a problem, they were so fast to fix it, and they kept releasing updates. I was like, "Oh, okay." I called him back and said, "I want to invest." He was like, "What? You changed your mind? You think the market's bigger?" I was like, "No, actually, I think the market's the same size, but you guys are like relentlessly shipping. I'd rather just bet on somebody like that than not bet on them." You know, I'm often wrong about market size. Markets can trick you; they can look small and be bigger. But founders or teams that operate like this, that's always a good signal. So, I'm like, "Let me just bet on the known versus not bet because of this hypothetical unknown thing." But I almost didn't invest because, you know, I did the call, and he had a surfboard behind him. I was like, "Ain't no way I'm going to invest in a CEO who surfs regularly enough to have a surfboard behind him in his room."

Sam Parr

But I was wrong. Next time we talk about him, we have like 4 or 5 more stories about Tyler. Tyler's an interesting guy, and I respect the hell out of him. He's a good entrepreneur.

Shaan Puri

I want to see what their revenues are right now. So, he tweeted that first.

Sam Parr

12,000,000, isn't it?

Shaan Puri

Dude, look at this graph. $7,000,000 in ARR was on February 1st, so two months ago. This graph is literally shaped like this; it's pretty crazy. He goes, "This doesn't include some of the revenue from the ad network." Oh no, March 19th is quickly approaching $10,000,000 ARR, so they're probably just under $10,000,000 ARR now.

Sam Parr

Yeah, they're an amazing company. They've taken off. Is it just beehive.com or is it like a beehive.com/?

Shaan Puri

No, it's just **beehive.com**. Go there if you want to start a newsletter.

Sam Parr

Alright, is that the pod?

Shaan Puri

That's the pod.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod.