How a $25 Million a Year Sweepstakes Business Works | My First Million #193

Shaan Puri

And you're like, "Dude, I believe in you. If you were just going to start a new startup, I'm in for $25K, like no questions asked."

Sam Parr

Alright everyone, we have a new episode! This one's pretty good. So, we talked about a couple of things. The first thing we discussed was **Oasis**, which is this interesting new product. It's kind of like a deep fake but for Zoom. That's not the best description, but check it out! Sean says it's one of the biggest ideas that he's ever heard of. Secondly, we break down the **sweepstakes business**. If you want to create a company that makes like **$500,000** a month in profit and you want to launch it within the next two months, then grow it over the next one, two, or three years to that same profit level, I think this is an interesting idea. We break it down. Then, we talk about Sean's predictions. He predicts what’s going to be the next **Apple**, **Facebook**, **Amazon**, **7-Eleven**, **Netflix**, and **Pornhub**. Those are all separate predictions; not one company can do all of them, but that would be cool! It's a great episode, so give it a listen. By the way, have you clicked subscribe yet on **YouTube**? And have you clicked subscribe on **iTunes**? A lot of people say, "Hey, you guys are awesome! Thank you for doing all that work." Then they ask how they can pay me back. I don’t want money, though. All I want is for you to hit subscribe on iTunes, hit follow on Spotify, and subscribe to our YouTube page. That's all I want, and we're going to keep doing it for free. Alright, let's get to the episode! What's going on?

Shaan Puri

I am look at me now I'm in my I'm in a chick palace here

Sam Parr

what's a chick palace

Shaan Puri

I mean, I went from a manly industrial look to everything being glitter and gold now.

Sam Parr

yeah that doesn't look like your style that doesn't even look like it's your wife's style

Shaan Puri

yeah I don't know whose style this is but that's the style we got today

Sam Parr

Have you ever thought about creating a brick-and-mortar business? By the way, oh wait, actually, first, two things... two things before we get into anything.

Shaan Puri

everybody like and subscribe and tell a friend tell 5 friends

Sam Parr

yes but wednesday do we have a guest on wednesday

Shaan Puri

I don't think so

Sam Parr

Okay, yes, we do. Oh, okay, damn it. Not this Wednesday, but on Monday after that, let's do the investor episode.

Shaan Puri

we have another

Sam Parr

guest we have a guest on monday too

Shaan Puri

yeah damn hell this coming out on monday alright we got 2 guests

Sam Parr

Okay, then we're going to find... didn't forget that second thing. I have this episode coming out. You know how I've been doing these Monday things? So what I'm doing is I'm splicing together clips. I'm going to splice together like 5 to 10 clips, and I'm going to talk in between each one. Each clip is going to be from a YouTube video or from a podcast. The topic is... I'm obsessed with time right now because I'm quite impatient, and I'm trying to work on it. The topic is actually patience and how great things that I admire actually took much longer than I thought.

Shaan Puri

Right, and so you... so what is, okay, if I listen to this episode, what am I gonna get? I'm gonna get Sam talking about time.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and you gotta turn your mic down a little bit. So, what you're gonna get is you're gonna get me. Alright, so Travis Kalanick, before he started Uber, he had this thing called Red Swoosh. You know what that was?

Shaan Puri

I don't even know what it did but I've heard the story

Sam Parr

I don't even know what it did either to be honest it was a peer to peer it was like it's not relevant anymore because

Shaan Puri

it was like napster but it

Sam Parr

Was like Napster, but different. He sold it for about $20,000,000, but it took like 8 years or something like that. Crazy! I found this amazing YouTube video of him giving a talk—a 40-minute talk. The first 3 minutes is about Red Swoosh, and he explains how hard it was. I'm like, "Oh my God, that took forever!" I've got about 8 or 9 of those clips saved of people I admire saying it's going to take a long time. I'm putting them together for the podcast. It will be however long the podcast is, with 2 to 3-minute clips, along with me giving you the background of each story.

Shaan Puri

right okay I like it so so

Sam Parr

we'll see what's interesting so if you have

Shaan Puri

Have you seen the Joe Rogan thing where it's like Joe Rogan watches the internet or something like that? Have you ever seen these YouTube videos?

Sam Parr

no but is it good

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they're funny. It's like a compilation of basically Joe watching YouTube videos and just reacting to them. All the videos are really interesting, kind of like random stuff from the internet. His reaction is good; he's not trying to be super over the top. It's his genuine reaction to it. So, I kind of see this as the business version of that, where you're taking one theme and then seeing what a bunch of different interesting people have said about that theme. It's sort of like "Sam serves the internet," where you're going to kind of go in and out of each of those clips and just be talking.

Sam Parr

We'll see if it's any good. So, in the next couple of days, if you have an example of a talk that you've listened to or a story that amazed you, send it to me.

Shaan Puri

Okay, sounds good. By the way, you said something about Travis Kalanick. Have you ever read this blog post he did called "How to Do South by Southwest on a Budget" or something like that? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Sam Parr

yeah so he had this old

Shaan Puri

blog cs maybe

Sam Parr

... which I don't even think you could find in a blog anymore. He basically wrote like, you know, "If you show up at this time, you can get this for free. You can get a discount on a cab if you do X, Y, and Z." Right? Yeah, like he was being pretty scrappy and saving... pinching pennies, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I think it was like CES or South by Southwest. He was basically like, "Yo, if you're going to these things, here's how to do it. Here's how to ball out on a budget." Then he had all those little tips and tricks, like you don't need to get a VIP pass to go here. Just wear an orange vest and then you could walk through it, or you know, that type of thing.

Sam Parr

yeah he was like scrappy

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

Oh, I was just listening to this podcast, Theo Von's podcast. I don't even know what it's called, and he had the founder of Raising Cane's on there. Do you know what Raising Cane's is?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, I've met the founder of Raising Cane's. I was at a table, eating lunch one day, and the founder was right next to me.

Sam Parr

and you just said what's up or I mean

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was like, "Hey, well, you know, this is kind of like this old..." It was a restaurant conference, so it wasn't like super random. But there was just kind of this nice, slightly older Southern guy. I think he was the owner, the CEO.

Sam Parr

Well, there are two guys who started it. One of them is about 50, but he looks quite young. Maybe it's the other guy. I was listening to this podcast with him. He's Southern and lives in Louisiana. They have 100 restaurants and over $1,000,000,000 in sales. The way that he makes it sound is, "I just loved running the fryer. I loved being at the place." It sounds so much more fun than sitting behind a computer. Have you ever thought about doing that?

Shaan Puri

What way? Well, how is that more fun? Have you ever been in a restaurant, back, you know, like the back kitchen of a restaurant next to the fire? I mean...

Sam Parr

I was I was

Shaan Puri

like shitty

Sam Parr

I was a bus boy. I was never old enough to be a waiter, but yeah, I worked in the service industry. It is fun, just being in the action. It just sounded cool. So, would you ever do a brick and mortar, or like a...?

Shaan Puri

I did, and I regretted every second of it. You know, the part that is fun actually is the camaraderie because...

Sam Parr

that's what I'm saying

Shaan Puri

The kitchen crew... the bond is different than just your normal friends or coworkers. If you go to your office today and you have a coworker who sits, you know, three desks down, and both of you have your headphones on while typing on your Mac, you might go to get your free lunch together at the cafeteria. This is the tech industry, right? It's a totally different vibe than being in a restaurant. It's Friday night, the restaurant's rocking, and you're banging out orders as fast as you can. You know it's 1 AM when you're finally done cleaning up, and it's like, "Alright, now let's go eat." Then you go to some restaurant, and the restaurant's closed, but they let you in because you're from the restaurant industry. You get to go eat with them. That's just a different level of camaraderie.

Sam Parr

yeah that's what I'm saying it's exciting it's fun you're in the thick of it I love it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but I would never want to do it again. It's like, you know when people say, "Yeah, going to the army was one of my most formidable times." It's like, would you ever want to go back again through that boot camp, through Hell Week again?

Sam Parr

like just so you know

Shaan Puri

thank you

Sam Parr

I've read this book called *Tribe*, and it's all about what type of neighborhood would be best to live in and what makes you happy when finding a place to live. I don't know this from personal experience, as I've never been in the military, but I understand it from an academic point of view. A lot of guys, a huge amount of them, when they get out of the military, miss it like crazy. They think, "Alright, it was hard, I was risking my life." Yeah, that's true, but they felt like they had a crew of guys. They were always doing something; they had a mission. Life is so lame and boring without it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I could see that. But also, there are a lot of people who, when you talk to them, say, "Man, that was the best and hardest time in my life." Would I go back and do it again? No, I don't want to do it again. But it was an amazing time at that moment. You know, this is sort of like when astronauts come back from space. It's what you're describing. They're kind of like, "Well, now what? I freaking went to the moon. That was my life mission." Now, every day seems quite boring and uneventful, not really having a purpose as I did before. But anyway, I guess like brick and mortar... So, what would you want to do if you were doing brick and mortar?

Sam Parr

I think I could crush it. I think I could operate a hotel or a restaurant really well.

Shaan Puri

hospitality

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think I could crush that. Maybe I will want to do that one day, but I think I can kill it. I'm looking at buying another house and turning it into a rental because I already did it with this one. I'm seeing one later today, but I think I could crush it.

Shaan Puri

and what okay okay so I was gonna say what was theo vonn talking about

Sam Parr

so theo vonn was just you just interviewed the guy

Shaan Puri

This guy, okay, gotcha. Alright, yeah, I wouldn't... I'm more like, even with e-commerce, I'm like, this business is great except for all the physical products. Like, you know, right now there's a situation going on where I think I forgot what the exact tweet is, but it is sort of like, there are boats... you know, everyone saw that one boat that got stuck in the canal.

Sam Parr

yeah you're like feeling you're like feeling the the pain now

Shaan Puri

Well, it's not really that. There's just another situation where the biggest port in China is backed up. They had a COVID outbreak, and for a week, they were operating at 30% capacity. This is like the biggest throughput logistics place in the world. The knock-on effects of that are going to last, I don't know, like months basically. So, what you're seeing now is that boats couldn't get out on time; they were just idling in the water. Ryan Peterson, who we're going to have on the pod because he tweeted this out, said, "You know, it's crazy. The average wait time now, or the average number of boats that's waiting is blah blah blah." I asked him, I tweeted back, "What's the cost per day of that boat just sitting idle, right, with all the cargo on top and just sitting in the water not being unloaded?" He did the math and said, "It's about $1,000,000 a day that the shipping company is losing just by being stuck." Then for all the downstream people, like if I have my goods on a ship that's not here, well now I'm delayed. I'm out of inventory, and because I'm out of inventory, I'm out of sales. There are just one after another sort of knock-on effects of this. So for me, even e-commerce, which is pretty internet-based, the only bad part about it is all these physical goods. Like, oh, you had a product, but then the wheels are broken or the zippers are now...

Sam Parr

Customers' understanding of that at all... Like, when I... I'm so used to Amazon, you know, with 2-day delivery, one-day delivery, whatever it is. But if something comes in 7 or 10 days, I think I'm mostly cool with it, right?

Shaan Puri

Maybe during COVID, people were understanding because it was just like, "Dude, it's COVID." Everything is backed up. If this is not a mission-critical thing, then I understand. But like, people's kind of COVID patience wore off, I think. And also, if not everything is backed up and it's just your stuff, then you look really bad. Even if they understand, you lose sales. Losing like two weeks of sales is pretty devastating for your month's revenue, which is pretty bad for your annual revenue when you're operating on like 10-15% EBITDA. By the way, the tweet was that 5.5% of the world's container fleet is waiting outside of a port. I asked, "What is the cost per day to be waiting idle?" He said, "One round trip from Asia on one of these shipping boats is $50 million in profit." So, every day that they're sitting idle, and it's a 30-day trip, that's about $1 million per day per ship that's idle. I was like, "Holy shit! These ships make $50 million in profit for a single round trip from Asia." Then, you know, people were replying—people who know about the shipping industry—saying, "Yeah, it's crazy. The top ten shipping companies will make like $100 billion in profit this year, but in the last ten years, they've lost $100 billion in profit." It's a very volatile space based on volumes and costs. Right now, we're shipping containers twice as much as it was last year just because supply and demand are so out of whack.

Sam Parr

that's crazy I'm excited to have him on

Shaan Puri

yeah so we'll nerd out with him about that

Sam Parr

so you wanna talk about some ideas we have a bunch here we where where do you wanna start

Shaan Puri

So, some of the ideas that I wrote down... I think I said I have three. One is **Oasis**, which I think is one of the biggest and most interesting startup ideas out there. The second is **Nugs**, which is in the fake chicken nugget market, and I have some thoughts around that. Then, I have a prediction section where I'm going to predict what the next Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Netflix will look like. So, those are my ideas. Actually, I have another one, but maybe we'll save that one for the next pod.

Sam Parr

so those are my 3

Shaan Puri

we could do today

Sam Parr

Let's do an Oasis Car Per Oasis giveaway, business nugs, and predictions.

Shaan Puri

alright sounds good so oasis so you know what this is but I think most almost everybody 99% of people listening to this have no idea what this is so let me explain the the concept I or I'll I'll tell the story of how I bumped into this guy I was on twitter and I saw this guy matt and he was teasing kind of like you know people do this on twitter where they have like my stealth thing is kind of coming or they post a screenshot or like a gif it's kind of ambiguous but it looks interesting it looks provocative or they're just retweeting people I think this is what I saw he retweeted a a mutual friend ceeke who was like dude just got an oasis demo mind blown this is the future and so he retweeted that and I'm like okay hook line and sinker like tell me about like how do I get that demo I also would like my mind blown and he's like alright yeah hop into zoom so I hopped into a zoom and he showed me something that was honestly pretty mind blowing and what it was was he was like okay so I'm talking to you on zoom right now here's my face and but you know the problem with zoom is that you always got to look good and people get you know people get nervous about that and so you know over 60% of people don't actually turn their camera on in north america because they're self conscious of how they look and that kind of sucks and now we're video calling without the video right and he's like so what if instead you could have a representation of you that wasn't like cartoony it's not like an emoji or an animoji or whatever the apple thing is it literally looks like you and we'll show a screenshot of this on the screen if you're watching on our youtube channel which is just youtube.com/hustlecon you'll see the video of this it's kind of amazing so the video the gif that I want to show is it says never worry about how you look on camera again and it's a video of the founder matt he's in the shower holding up his phone and on the left side is what he actually looks like it's a dude in the shower and on the right side is like the digital representation of it it's him but he doesn't look like he's in the shower it looks like him like in front of a perfect backdrop just talking and it's tracking his mouth perfectly and so I thought oh this is kind of amazing like if I could be on video without actually having to be on video if I could kind of like a filter but if I could just automatically have the best looking version of myself on camera god that would save me a lot of time and energy and thought around how I look and and he's like it gets even better so not only does it let you do that you could also show up as a different person so say you're you know a minority you don't want to be discriminated against you could you could show yourself as you know a tall white male and nobody would ever know what you actually look like so this empowers like working pseudonymously which is something we've talked about the last thing is is like here's the best bit this works on like the worst connections worst connection phones in the world I said well how do you do that this seems like pretty high powered he goes there's no video being transferred I said what he goes yeah it's like a video game the screen on my side is tracking my face every pixel of my face how my lips are moving my nose my eyes etcetera and then instead of sending my video across the internet it just sends how those pixels are moving like a video game and so then on the other side it recreates the video just using those pixel coordinates and so the idea here is that even on really shitty internet low bandwidth scenarios you could have awesome looking video and without you having to like you could be rolling out of bed and you look like a $1,000,000 so what do you think of this idea I think it's pretty big

Sam Parr

I was pitched this as well, and I passed. Did you pass or no?

Shaan Puri

I didn't even really get to... I have a call scheduled with the guy. I just saw the demo months ago. It wasn't like it was in an investable spot at that moment, or like they weren't raising or something like that. But I'm looking at it now, you know, it does have a high evaluation and, you know, it's pretty... it's got.

Sam Parr

a very high valuation I don't yes are are we is I don't

Shaan Puri

let's not say okay let's not say

Sam Parr

It's got a high valuation and there are like six guys working on this. It's pretty wild. So here's what I think about this: I believe the way it's set up now is not the way it could be a huge thing.

Shaan Puri

okay tell me what you mean

Sam Parr

So, a lot of times when I either invest in something or I want to get involved in a project, whether I'm starting it or not, I'm very comfortable taking the leap of faith. I say, "This is just how I'm going to start." I'm very comfortable in saying one of two things: I know how it's going to end, or rather, I want to create a massive media company that covers this, this, and this. I'm going to start within the email. I don't know the middle ground, but I'm pretty confident I'm going to figure it out. I'm also okay with not even having an ending, like, "I created something cool; it feels powerful and strong." Yeah, I think I could figure out where to go. This business, I think, was that second one. I saw the technology, I played with it, I got the demo, and he basically was talking to me. I got it. I was like, "Oh, okay." To me, this is like pretty unlimited—unlimited on what the options are. So, the bet I'm having to make is: Is this founder great, and can they figure out exactly how to deploy this technology? I wasn't sure if it was worth trying to figure out if they could get it.

Shaan Puri

yeah well also the price matters right so like

Sam Parr

that's why I'm saying

Shaan Puri

You don't want to pay a "figured it out" price when they haven't figured it out yet, right? You want to pay the "oh, this is cool and promising" price, which should be like 10 times lower. But I get why this has a high valuation. To me, you see something like Zoom. Zoom is a $100 billion company. Zoom lets you do video calls with people all around the internet for business purposes. I think the future of Zoom, like the leapfrog of Zoom, is not just Zoom with slightly better features or improved recording and audio quality. It's a video call where I don't actually have to be on video, but it looks like I'm on video. Everybody looks great, and everyone is presenting their professional self, regardless of how they actually look at home. Secondly, this would work on extremely low bandwidth, poor internet circumstances because it's not even transferring video. It's just transferring pixel coordinates. That, to me, is like a leapfrog. So, if Zoom is a $100 billion company today and somebody built what I believe would be a better Zoom, obviously it doesn't have the network effects, the brand, or many other things you need to get it big. But it has the magic trick. I think when you have a magic trick, you can get a lot of users pretty quickly. And the magic trick here is pretty impressive. We were both pretty impressed with the magic trick.

Sam Parr

but it sounds like we're saying the same thing

Shaan Puri

But I guess my difference would be, I think I know what the end looks like. The end looks like this: this is how business calls are done. You have your...

Sam Parr

Dude, that's not that big. Is that that big of a market? I don't... I disagree with you. I don't know, man. If I was this, I'd be using this for movies or for... you know, I actually don't even know what I would use it for. But I can't imagine business calls would be the number one thing.

Shaan Puri

Dude, Zoom is massive. Zoom is like humongous, right? A $100,000,000,000 company. How much bigger do you want? Right? $1,000,000,000,000? Okay, you can get to a trillion, but...

Sam Parr

this you're not making zoom this is a plug in for zoom

Shaan Puri

I think you could make the new Zoom using this, right? Why would I use Zoom when instead I could use this, where I always look like a **$1,000,000**? Already, it's better than Zoom. The second thing is, it works better under any internet conditions because it's not transferring heavy video across the wire.

Sam Parr

Regardless, I'm into this. I just was unwilling to bet my own money at that high of evaluation.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's totally fair. The reason this stuck out to me was that I had this document I've talked about before, which is called "The Biggest Idea in My Head Right Now." Basically, if I was totally free and could drop everything I was doing, I would work on the biggest startup idea in my head at any given month. What is it? I just keep track month by month. Sometimes it's the same for two months straight, three months straight, and sometimes it changes. This became the biggest startup idea in my head because I think it's basically taking novel technology, going after a really big market, and doing it in a way that is complete. The incumbents would have to sort of re-architect their whole system to be able to do this. I don't think you could just make a plug-in to do this. So, anyways, I thought this was like one of the bigger ideas, and I just wanted to bring it up. I don't really have anything more besides that.

Sam Parr

Alright, let's move on then. You want to talk about something that's way less of a big idea but a surefire way to make a lot of money?

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

Okay, let's talk about the **giveaway business**, also known as the **sweepstake business**. I'm interested in this business because, well, I've used it a lot as...

Shaan Puri

because it seems easy and awesome and you've done it you've dabbled

Sam Parr

Yeah, so with the hustle, one way that we grew—we grew in a bunch of ways—but we did two things that are related to this. The first thing we did was give stuff away. We would give away a Tesla, and we would give away a 3D printer, which we're giving away now. If you share an email or get other people to join using a unique URL, you get more entries. If a car costs us $30,000 and we acquire 30,000 emails, that's a dollar to acquire an email. That's a really good deal for us because we make, let's say, $10 off every email. No brainer. The second thing that we did is we paid some of these companies, and I want to explain how they work. So do me a favor and go to bold.org. Can you do that right now?

Shaan Puri

okay I'm on it what's it say fighting student debt that's it

Sam Parr

yeah and how does it say it does it

Shaan Puri

Let's see. So, scholarships, philanthropy... I don't know, it just looks like donations or something like that, right?

Sam Parr

So, what you do is... because they may get all the scholarships for nursing or something.

Shaan Puri

okay scholarship for nursing students I'm there five great scholarships for future nurses great

Sam Parr

Alright, so Bolt.org, what they do is they either create scholarships or they find people who have scholarships and aggregate them into one area, into one platform. Not that hard to do in itself. Then, what they do is they get loads of people to sign up for the scholarships. They advertise to nurses and nursing Facebook groups on Google, and they get people to sign up and enter all this information. Here's how they make money: when you are a nurse, or let's say you're applying to get your MBA, if you have tens of thousands of people applying for an MBA scholarship, that's a pretty high-qualified lead list, right?

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Same with nurses. I mean, pretty much any of these niches. What they do is, as you sign up for this thing, at the end they go, "Also, do you want to opt in for this, this, or this?" Companies like The Hustle, I would pay them money. I think at one point we were paying them maybe $50 to $100 a month, and that's how many leads they were getting us.

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! So, basically, they go and pay for people to apply for a scholarship. People are like, "Oh, fantastic! Thank you so much!" Then, when they're applying, they're basically like, "Hey, would you like to opt in?" Why does the person want to opt in? Is it like, "Hey, do this and you get some increased odds of the scholarship," or how does it work?

Sam Parr

I believe both. Yeah, so they just show offers that are interesting. Also, I believe that you're automatically in unless you opt out. In the flow, you get a higher likelihood if you opt into stuff.

Shaan Puri

Dude, how did you even find this? How did you think, "Oh, you know what? I'm gonna go..." When you were trying to make the connection between sweepstakes and giveaways, and you're like, "Go to bold.org." This like nonprofit-looking... you know, scholarships for nurses in Africa. I was like, "What does this have to do with...?" How did you even figure out this is how you grow an email list?

Sam Parr

There are a bunch of ways that I know how to do this. The first is this guy named **Dennis Gross**, who we're going to have to get on this podcast. Dennis started **WiseGeek**, which you and I are probably too young to have used, but it was like a Web 1.0 thing. It made a lot of money. Then he started loads of other things, including investing in lots of different startups like **Thumbtack**. He also started **BestReviews.com**. Do you remember that? Or do you know what BestReviews.com is? It sold for **$160 million** to **Tribune** about 3 or 4 years ago. So this guy named Dennis is very, very wealthy. He started loads of companies and stays way below the radar. He created this thing called **Mekanism**, which is like an idea lab, except he's like an SEO guru and a lead generation guru. He's launched all these companies, and the co-founder of Mekanism is **Brendan**, who is the founder of **Toptal**. I'm friends with both of those guys, and I saw what they were getting into. He pitched me and sold me on using **Bold.org**, and it was pretty good.

Shaan Puri

random so that's first I can't find this guy dennis gross is that his name

Sam Parr

Go to **bold.org/about**. He spells his name D-I-N-I-S G-R-O-S-Z.

Shaan Puri

gotcha okay so he's oh he actually did bold okay so that's how you found out

Sam Parr

So here's where I'm getting at. This got me interested in giveaways. Actually, you have to call them sweepstakes. There's a lot of legality around this. What I learned was, when we did sweepstakes, we would have to call it sweepstakes. You have to have rules that are approved by your lawyer, and I got kind of a tick.

Shaan Puri

It's like you could buy entries, or if you just mail us this form, we have to let you apply. We have to give you the equivalent entry, right? So it's like there's...

Sam Parr

all types of technicalities yeah

Shaan Puri

can't make it but pay to play otherwise it's like a lottery or

Sam Parr

And you can't... yeah, it can't be a lottery. You can't... now, I don't... this is just an example. I don't know if this is actually the rule, but you can't use the word "free," or you can't do... like, there's a bunch of technicality stuff that you have to follow. But I got very interested in giveaways, and so I did some research on a bunch of them. There are loads of giveaway businesses. There are three ways that I've seen it work. The first way is you buy entries. I've seen sites like BuyThisHouse.com, I believe it's called, or BuySanFranciscoHome.com, where a company buys a San Francisco house. Then they put ads all over the subway and billboards, and they sell entries for $100. It's a raffle. The second way that this business works is what Bold did. Bold did something where the audience is the product, and you sell their information. You know those cars that are at malls? Yeah, okay, so what happens at those businesses is they pay the mall... a marketing company pays the mall a rental fee to use that real estate.

Shaan Puri

estate right

Sam Parr

Yeah, then loads of people enter their information to join and buy that car. They look at all the leads and names. Now that they have the birth date and things like that, they categorize them. Then, they sell them to different companies. Those companies cold call those people to sell them X, Y, and Z.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Okay, so the third way that you make money off of this is by selling merchandise. When you sell merch, you get additional entries into the giveaway. I found this one company that's doing car giveaways, and I got a hold of their financials. If you're listening to this, the takeaway here is about this business. But the second takeaway is to sign up for a brokerage website that sells amazing products.

Shaan Puri

way to learn

Sam Parr

yeah an amazing way to learn you go to quiet lite brokerage you go to what's the name of this one

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you can go to Flippa, Empire Flippers, or Quiet Light Brokerage. You can choose from many options, like FE International or whatever. There are a whole bunch of places where you can look at internet businesses. The beauty of it is, if you're on the outside and you're like, "Dude, I've never actually been inside of a successful business. I've never run one, owned one, or sold one," you can go on here and it's a great way to get business ideas. You'll see a bunch of businesses you never thought about. For example, there are companies that sell direct-to-consumer (DTC) diabetes products. They sell items for diabetic patients and they're doing $8,000,000 a year in revenue, with $4,000,000 in profit. You can see their top three SKUs, how they grow, and their profit and loss statement (P&L) because they're trying to sell their business. They had to package everything up and make it a book that you can look at as a buyer. The beauty of the online ones is that they don't know if you're a serious buyer or if you're a 21-year-old kid just trying to learn about business. So, I've looked through probably 100 of these at this point.

Shaan Puri

Just to learn, right? So that's like how I feed my business brain. One of the tactics is to go look at businesses that are for sale and read their books.

Sam Parr

So, I was interested in sweepstakes, and it just so happened I saw one for sale. I went and found this one. Here's a sweepstakes, and what they do is if you Google "car sweepstakes," I'm not going to say the name of the company, but they very likely come up in the top ten of Google on the front page. So, I imagine they're one of the big dogs. Did you Google "cardigan"?

Shaan Puri

right now yep I see them

Sam Parr

Okay, and the last 12 months' revenue was **$26,700,000**. The last 12 months' net profit was **$5,800,000**. In this document that I have, there's a Q&A where someone is just asking them questions, and they explain how it works. What it works is they have a warehouse and they have about **30 employees**, mostly warehouse workers. They run ads on, let's just say, this is for a car. They run ads and sponsored videos on YouTube car channels.

Shaan Puri

mhmm

Sam Parr

And before the guy shows off his car, he goes, "By the way, this one is sponsored by [blank company]. They're giving away a car. If you want the car, click the link below." You go to that link, and it says, "Great! You're going to be entered to win this car. By the way, if you buy this sweatshirt for $40, you're going to get 10 more entries. If you buy this hat, you're going to get X amount more entries." So they make a profit off of it. It's just an e-commerce store, basically. Right? And it's amazing. I mean, I don't think it's actually sketchy. I think that it's kind of preying on vulnerable people a bit. Yeah, and they said that in this document that the repeat customer rate is 50%. So, 50% of people who sign up for one eventually do another. They have guys that will spend $8,000 on merch in order to get more entries into these cars.

Shaan Puri

Wow, yeah, this is definitely one of those topics that is pretty polarizing. You know, some people will say this is shady or messed up. I find it fascinating that a business like this even exists—$25,000,000 a year in revenue and $5,000,000 a year in profit. It's a very simple business, you know what I mean? This is what I call understanding how internet plumbing works. They're like, "Oh, okay, I can plug a pipe into YouTube, and that gives me a lead. Then, with the lead, I plug that into an e-commerce store, and that gives me this. Then I'll plug into this sweepstakes law that will allow me to do this legally." I've seen the same thing, by the way, in the gun space. People do this for gun giveaways. There are a lot of people who are really passionate about guns and ammunition. There are also similar models for cars, which is probably the biggest one. When I was going to sell my house, it was right when COVID hit, and it was the worst time to sell a house. So, I looked into whether I could raffle my house off and actually get a better price by doing that. However, there are all these rules against it. Basically, churches can do it, but not a lot of other people are allowed to. So, yeah, there are a lot of these models that you wouldn't otherwise expect. I've seen someone doing this with cars at a pretty big scale.

Sam Parr

and I'm looking at this company now and just I should

Shaan Puri

By the way, I have a friend, or a friend of a friend, who's doing this with cars. There were three months where they were just like, "Oh my God, this is printing money! This is the best business in the world." Then we checked back in six months later, and they were like, "This is such a hard business, dude." So I think that it's not as easy as it sounds. There's also a thin line where, at some point, you could fatigue out your customers. They could become disillusioned, thinking they're not going to win. Or, the ad costs go up, and then the business all of a sudden goes from working beautifully to kind of upside down.

Sam Parr

Yeah, okay. So this business is doing **$6,000,000** nearly in profit, and they're only selling. The asking price was **$24,000,000**.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

So, they're asking for 5 times profit or 1 times revenue, and there's a reason for that. 5 times profit, to me, is actually quite good for this kind of business. I would think they would want to get way less. It looks like the only true asset they have is the website, which anyone could probably copy for maybe $10 or $40. Then, they have a 300,000 person email list and 300,000 SMS subscribers, which is baller. So, is that good?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's huge! I bet that works extremely well for this. Because if it's basically, "Hey, look at this amazing car! Do you want it?" and you're just sitting there on the bus, it's like, "Well, I'm not doing anything else right now," click, and you go enter the giveaway each time. I could see how that hook would work because SMS, you know, gets like an 80% open rate, and email gets like an 8% open rate. So it's like, it's you know, 10 times better.

Sam Parr

So, similar to your thing, I don't really have any ideas for this because I think they're kind of limitless. But I thought it was interesting and I wanted to bring it up because I think this is like a little bit on the dark side of the internet that not a lot of people know about. I thought it was crazy fascinating. I don't think it has to be like **bold.org** - incredibly ethical, straightforward, there's no tricks. I know the guys who run it. It's... I'm a customer, there's... it's...

Shaan Puri

How was the... like, kind of okay? So, somebody's there for a scholarship, right? They're not thinking about the hustle. Maybe the hustle's like auto-checked in something, which is like, "Share your information with our marketing partners who make this possible." You know? And you're like, "Great! Now you got their email on a list." Did you see that they performed?

Sam Parr

Yeah, they were okay. So, let's do the math here. Let's just say that - and all these numbers are hypothetical, I'm making up - let's just say that I acquire a user from Facebook for $22, and they have a 50% open rate. That means I'm spending... $4 for a 50% open rate. Or sorry, for a...

Shaan Puri

what works for a reader yeah

Sam Parr

For a reader, let's just say that the way we used to track it is that we knew right away if they read the first five. The likelihood that they're going to stay for 18 months or whatever it is was very high. Okay, so I paid $4 for that 50% person. We'll call it a "gold" user. Internally, we have a gold, silver, and bronze classification. A gold user just costs us $4. Now, let's just say that on Bold.org, I've got to get 10 people. If I get those 10 people for a dollar each, and one of them becomes a gold reader, then I just paid $1 for a gold reader. So, you get a lot of volume, but you make up for it because it's cheap.

Shaan Puri

Right, right. And you basically just set your rate with them, or they just have a rate and you have to figure it out. Do you say, "Pay this much per lead," or how does it work?

Sam Parr

A lot of these companies, the smart guys, they don't have a set rate. They give you a ballpark figure, but they first want to hear, "What's it worth to you?"

Shaan Puri

yeah of course

Sam Parr

And then they try to sell you. They're like, "Oh, okay, these are worth this to you. Okay, we're gonna set it at this budget." Then what you do is you go out and do it for a month, and then you renegotiate.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think this is a fascinating business. I also think that giveaways and sweepstakes are just a useful marketing tool. So even if this is not your business...

Sam Parr

Oh, by the way, I just went through it. I just went through the funnel while we were talking. Yeah, so by getting halfway through the scholarship flow, I earned **50 Bold Points**. Then, you can get **5 more Bold Points** for signing up for this, and you can get **10 more Bold Points** for doing this.

Shaan Puri

and how big is this bold thing bold.org

Sam Parr

like the the

Shaan Puri

like how big is this business

Sam Parr

Well, I don't know... I mean, they never told me the revenue. Why? I do a pretty baller business. I imagine it's very, very, very... If you told me it made $500,000 to $1,000,000 a month in profit, I wouldn't be surprised.

Shaan Puri

this is like somebody who has a black belt in the internet they're like here's what we'll

Sam Parr

do this guy dennis man this guy dennis feel

Shaan Puri

Good feel-good story on the front end. Dope, lucrative business model on the back end, right? I love this. This is clear. This is an internet black belt.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's amazing. This is an amazing thing, and I wanted to bring this up because this is one that, like, this doesn't sound sexy, right? This doesn't sound like, "Oh, I want to do this when I get older," but it just makes loads and loads of money. Another one is Omaze (O-M-A-Z-E). Have you heard of that?

Shaan Puri

yeah that's like a it's like a platform to do raffles and whatnot right

Sam Parr

Yes, but they act like it's a charity thing. It's like Snoop Dogg's going to give away a car, and all the money, or like some of the money, goes to charity or something like that. In reality, Omaze gets their cut in the same way that I've just outlined the three business models.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's fascinating. I feel like we could do an even deeper dive on this because I feel like you just touched on like ten interesting things that we should probably explore further. I feel like we should do a separate episode all about the deep dive into this sweepstakes and giveaways thing. I bet that would go pretty viral, honestly.

Sam Parr

I'm going through the bold flow. They ask so many questions, like: - What's your estimated current annual income? - What's your dream job? - How much money do you want to make? I mean, they ask so many questions.

Shaan Puri

so ask you for money right now would you say yes yes okay great

Sam Parr

so like basically what they're doing is they're getting like crazy amounts of qual it's all about enriched

Shaan Puri

enriched list basically

Sam Parr

yes and it this is crazy

Shaan Puri

alright I I got another one have you seen this company nugs

Sam Parr

yeah they changed their name though

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they... well, I think they have a parent company, and then the product is called Nuggs. So the parent company is called Simulate, I think, and that's because they're basically simulating real meat. Nuggs fits into this category of alternative meats or fake meats. So you have Beyond Meat, you have the Impossible Burger, and what Nuggs is doing is Nuggs is chicken nuggets.

Sam Parr

by the way they changed the the product's name is different what what's it called now

Shaan Puri

oh really it's it's not called I

Sam Parr

just googled nuggs I can't even find it

Shaan Puri

I think it's still called that. It's "Nuggs" with 2 G's. Do you know what it's called? If you go to Simulate.com, you'll see the product. It basically says "the Tesla of chicken."

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

And so, you could see that if you go to their profile at simulate.com/nugs, it says the original nugs are $45 for a box. There are 50 pieces per box, so basically, it's $45 for 100 nuggets. They have two flavors: original and spicy. Their landing page is kind of cheeky; instead of saying it's good for you, it says "kills you slower." That's pretty good.

Sam Parr

it's higher

Shaan Puri

In protein and lower in fat than animal-based nuggets, you know, you can get this fast. Here you go, blah blah blah. So, they started as kind of like a D to C (direct to consumer) brand type of thing. But I think either during COVID or right before COVID, they switched to basically just selling to retail. I saw them because they raised $50,000,000 recently, like a month ago or something like that. The guy who's behind this is a young guy, Ben Pasternak. This guy is pretty clever. He was really young; I think when he was 18 or 19, he built this app called Monkey. I don't know if you ever saw it, but it hit like... it was kind of Chatroulette but for your iPhone. You would get on there, and it would randomly match you in a video chat with somebody else. Then you could skip to somebody else. I saw this because I was like, "Oh, that's kind of clever." I don't think it's going to work, but I like the branding. I like that this guy was able to kind of game the app store charts, so he was climbing the charts. But you could tell this wasn't a sticky product. So, I've reached out to him, had a chat, and he seemed like a super smart guy. I was like, "Oh, how long..."

Sam Parr

ago was

Shaan Puri

This was maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Wow, so he might be 20. I don't know, he might be 21 or 22 now. He was like 17 at the time, something like that. I don't know, somewhere around that range. He was like 17 or 18, and I remember just thinking, "Wow, this kid's like a superstar" or the "future superstar." I gave him the highest compliment I could give him, which is, I didn't even recruit him. I was like, "You know what? You're better than me. You're ready to just do this on your own. Don't even waste the time coming and working inside my thing. If we work together, we build one company. If we're apart, you're going to build two companies." But I really like the guy, and it reminded me of this question. So I actually don't even really want to talk about the fake chicken nuggets thing, although it's a good market to be in. I would say the part that I think was interesting is that I meet a lot of people like this who are clearly special and going to do big things. It's probably not their first app; like, it's probably not Monkey, but it's probably Nugs. It's probably their second or third attempt that's going to hit. And it got me thinking, like, could you basically, as a founder...

Sam Parr

like buy an option

Shaan Puri

Could you buy options? Could you buy future contracts on founders? And what does this mean? Most people, when they think of this, they think of ISAs, or Income Share Agreements. I'm not even saying that. I'm saying there's a market so juicy for founders like this that you could actually just sell the right to invest in my next thing. Because otherwise, it's hard to even keep tabs on people. You don't know when they're pivoting, you don't know when they have a new idea, and you don't know when they're launching. You're like, "Dude, I believe in you. If you were just going to start a new startup, I'm in for $25,000, no questions asked. Just put me in the pre-seed round." So it's like the lower valuation of the others. I think I would have paid $10 just for the option to invest in this guy's next company over the next five years. I think you could sell to investors just the right of first refusal, basically, to invest in my future company. It's not equity, it's not an Income Share Agreement. I don't even have to start another company. But I think real investors would basically have a budget of maybe single-digit millions of dollars where they're just placing options on high performers they see in the tech industry. They say, "Hey, next time you start your thing, I get the first dibs at investing."

Sam Parr

So, this is something I'm looking up. I think it was either Jerry Seinfeld or Joe Rogan who was talking about the '90s in TV. I believe they were telling a story about *Roseanne* and how basically, they said it was the golden age of TV. Even though the content nowadays is probably better, back then, if you wrote an okay script, pilot, or screenplay, a company would pay you a quarter of a million dollars a year. The only thing you had to do was not actually produce it. They would buy the option, and sometimes they would just buy the option and we would never even do it. So, I was just getting a quarter of a million dollars a year salary for three years, and I didn't have to do anything. All the roles just... don't.

Shaan Puri

It's like a retainer or kind of like an advance on a book deal, in a way.

Sam Parr

I don't actually know... I know nothing about Hollywood, and I don't know if that still exists. Of course, it does, but I think it was more common back then when cable companies were crushing it. I think this is actually a fantastic idea. Basically, it would be like I have the option... Let's see how would it work? Anytime you raise money or anytime you own more than 50% of an entity, I get the first right of refusal. I think it's a really, really great idea.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like I don't know how the math works exactly, but I can sort of see how it turns entrepreneurship into a job. It gives you a floor. So let's say, if I did this: I think if I went and I said, "Hey, you know, I left my job at Twitch. By the way, as of today, I officially am no longer employed. I'm a free man."

Sam Parr

congratulations I wasn't sure when we were gonna bring that up

Shaan Puri

Thank you! So, if I was basically like, "Hey, I don't know when I'm going to start my next company, but if anybody's interested, here's a place where you could go. Here's a website you can visit, and you can basically buy a future option on being in the pre-seed round." Let's say I'm selling slots for, I don't know, $15,000 a pop. So, $15,000 for your right to invest in my next round. I would send that to every VC or seed fund I know. I think I could probably get 10 people to opt into that. They'd say, "Cool, I'll give you $10,000," or "I'll give you $15,000 right now." Easy. In the next 18 months, I'm going to be thinking about a business. When I'm ready, you get the first tips. The round might be like a $3,000,000 round, and you get to invest in this. So, I get a $150,000 floor to go do my search for my next business, and they get the guaranteed locked-in deal flow. I don't know, maybe I'm underpricing it; maybe it could be more, or maybe it's an annual thing. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure out of a fund, they would allocate a few hundred thousand dollars to placing bets on 25 founders that they're like, "Yeah, I'll be in your next round."

Sam Parr

can you also do this so did you pay attention to what happened with the ncaa today

Shaan Puri

no what happened

Sam Parr

I wish that you would have, because I don't actually know the full details, but...

Shaan Puri

yeah me neither

Sam Parr

The Supreme Court basically... well, I know what happened. So, here's the headline: the Supreme Court unanimously sides with former college players in a dispute with the NCAA about compensation. So, basically, I don't know if there were any firm rules, but the door is now open for how NCAA athletes can make money. When I think of options, I definitely think athletes are the best.

Shaan Puri

Yes, definitely. So, basically, here's what I'm reading: it says the court unanimously ruled that the current cap on education-related benefits, such as scholarships, graduate school, musical instruments, and tutoring, violates federal antitrust laws and must be lifted. This means that there were limits on how much you'd be compensated for tuition, room, and board, but those limits are now lifted. However, this does not yet apply to salaries for athletes, but that's coming. They've also passed a rule allowing athletes to monetize their name and likeness. For example, I'm in a college town in North Carolina, and the local car dealership can use my name and face in their ads, allowing me to make money from it. So, I think there's definitely a big opportunity there, just in general. Yeah, so future contracts... I'm excited about that.

Sam Parr

On board contracts? Yeah, I'm on board. I think it's great. Okay, cool. I don't have anything else to say except "great."

Shaan Puri

Last topic. I want to give you some predictions. Alright, so I've been thinking about this and...

Sam Parr

I think you're bold for doing this by the way you're making it very easy to look stupid

Shaan Puri

Well, that's the beauty of predictions. It's like, you know, the best predictions... I think most predictions, when you're wrong, people forget. Unless you're Scott Galloway. You know, when you're small, you should make predictions because the cost of being wrong is very low. But the cost of being right, all of a sudden, you're the guy who called it. It's like my Clubhouse thread. As that gets proven right, then it'll be like, "Oh, he called it." But if I was already big, then if I was wrong, it would be like everybody would be waiting to rub it in my face. Okay, so let me run you through what I think the next...

Sam Parr

when did you come up with these is this like some twitter thread you're gonna do

Shaan Puri

yeah I am gonna do it as a thread but I was just one day so I could see the timestamp on this 11:27 pm so this is the type of shit I think about at midnight and I started typing on my phone I said I said okay what's apple becoming because I see apple apple's shifting into like health in a pretty big way with these like wearable devices and so let's just say apple which today the core benefit is they give you this ultra personal device your little personal supercomputer that's gonna help you with life so I don't think the next apple is a phone company I think the next apple the next apple which is gonna be a $1,000,000,000,000 company that has that gives you kind of like a consumer device I think it's gonna be a healthcare monitor I think it's gonna be something that is gonna be measuring what's going on inside your body and feeding that data back to you and so that's my prediction what the next apple looks like not a phone company healthcare monitoring device next facebook okay facebook today people think facebook is an app it's a social network it's where you go write on a news feed or you post photos I think facebook the core of facebook the guts of facebook is basically cameras it's content sharing so it's basically photo taking or video taking and sharing with people who you care who you want to share that stuff with and that's why instagram is something they own whatsapp etcetera etcetera and so I think the next facebook is not gonna be an app it's not gonna be another social network it's gonna be some kind of hands free always on camera so it's gonna be something you wear either glasses or a lapel or something a fucking drone that's floating above you at all times I don't know what it is probably glasses because it's at your eye level and it's gonna be basically like a super memory so it's gonna let you capture photos and videos of whatever you're looking at hands free and instantaneously and then once you've captured it be able to share that or save that as like a super memory for yourself or with any friends and so I think anybody who's trying to create the next facebook you're not creating an app where you add friends you should be creating a hands free camera that makes it way easier to capture content and you'll bypass facebook altogether because that place where you capture content will just be for sharing similar to the way snapchat attacked facebook snapchat made an app that when you open it the camera's on right away and you take the photo first and then you just share that photo with somebody so they skipped the whole facebook process so I think that's what the next facebook is a hands free always on camera next amazon this one's stolen from mark laurrie next amazon so amazon a place to shop it's not gonna be a website where you where you type in a word and then you get 5,000 images as a result and then you gotta sort through them the next amazon is conversational shopping in your house it's just saying what you need and having something go get it for you so basically it's just saying hey we need more pee pads for the dog and it says you want the same ones as last time I say yes and then it's boom it's ordered right I didn't have to type anything in didn't have to enter a credit card it's all on file and it's just a hands free voice assistant that helps me shop for things and when I don't know what it is it could I could say hey I need you know the best camera for my webcam and it could say something like do you want the ones that most of the youtubers use do you want the ones your friends bought the most or do you want the one that's the best value or the highest price and I'm like what do my friends have sam has this one would you like to ask him how it is yes it asks sam and then sam says it's amazing and then I buy the thing right conversational commerce something like that that's the future that's the next amazon next netflix okay netflix wait you skipped over 711 oh I'm gonna do 711 too okay 711 the next 711 what is 711 it's a corner store that has like it's a little local convenience store this one's easy this one is it's a cloud corner store so you don't need a real location it's just gonna be 500 square feet that's within one mile of you it might be in this back alley place it doesn't need a good location and it's going to deliver to you with small lightweight drones so small little pass small little carrier drone going to bring you something within 15 minutes of ordering no human being involved and the whole the whole 500 square foot place doesn't need good real estate and is gonna be automated so that you know when I push the button to order it there's no human being in the place it just pops out like a vending machine the drone takes it straight to me and it lands on a little landing pad that I have in my front lawn for drone deliveries and as soon as it's there I go outside I pick it up

Sam Parr

Okay, and then keep going. I'm just listening. I think this is fascinating. I'm taking notes. I'm going to tweet this just like as you're talking to them on a digital cloud.

Shaan Puri

You're still my thread. Okay, great. Alright, the next Netflix... I think it's going to be one of two things. One, it's either in VR and it's more like a hybrid. It feels like a game. So, you put the headset on, you enter the world, and you sort of experience a movie. Or, because I'm not sure about that one, it's machine-generated movies, which is basically something personalized to you. Right now, a movie is like a really specific story that gets filmed, edited, produced, and has actors, blah blah blah. I think you might be able to just sit down and say, "I want something that's like Breaking Bad but with casinos," and then it just generates... it just machine generates a movie for you based off of that. Basically, it's like a mashup. You've seen this with music. Google released this thing called Composer or whatever. It's like this AI that basically writes classical music that sounds like it's made by Bach and Mozart. It's just taking all the stuff that exists out there, it studies it, and then it creates remixes and mashups of all those things in a way that's... maybe it could be a one-time movie for me. That could be kind of crazy.

Sam Parr

do you remember that band remember that band girl talk

Shaan Puri

yeah mashups yeah

Sam Parr

yeah exactly I used to love those things man

Shaan Puri

I I still work out to that that's my go to for workouts too

Sam Parr

I love that too it was like feed the animal or something like that

Shaan Puri

that's yeah that's a great track

Sam Parr

yeah I love that shit I'm on board

Shaan Puri

So, similarly, the next Pornhub is not a website where you go to see a bunch of pre-made porn movies. I think it's all deep fakes. You just go in there and you have a fantasy. You put on your VR device and you think of something you want to see. You used to think, "Oh, Mila Kunis, she's my waitress." It basically deep fakes a porno for you with Mila Kunis' face on it. If you don't know what a deep fake is, it's a computer-generated movie where the actor on the screen was never there. For example, it can make Obama look like Obama. You can make Obama go to a baseball game and pee in the crowd, right? Because it could just take...

Sam Parr

any dude which by

Shaan Puri

the way

Sam Parr

like that

Shaan Puri

and put obama's head on it it looks real

Sam Parr

that that's why it's scary it's scary

Shaan Puri

d fakes are scary for many reasons you're not gonna be able to trust video anymore because

Sam Parr

I agree

Shaan Puri

Video can be faked just like any photo can be photoshopped. Any video can be "video shopped" now. Alright, last one: the next domino's. The next pizza company is going to be a fleet of self-driving cars that are just going around with an oven baked in the trunk. So your food is going to be baked fresh. It's going to arrive to you with a driverless car. You're going to hop out, come to the front, and meet the car. It's going to pop up in the trunk, and there’s going to be a pizza that was baked during the drive time for you.

Sam Parr

Basically, like a mobile food truck type, or like a food truck. Which, by the way, when our friend Goggin...

Shaan Puri

food truck

Sam Parr

Our friend Goggin launched this company called Sprig. I think it was only in San Francisco, or maybe San Francisco and Chicago. He raised $60,000,000. All this money, he launched it early though, in 2014. And that was what he said: "I wanna have ovens in the car. That's the future." I actually think he was right; I just think that it was a little early.

Shaan Puri

Totally true. This guy, David Langer, started Zesty. It was like a food catering company that was super fast-growing at the time. I asked him, "Oh yeah, what do you think of food delivery? It seems hot." He just jumped straight to the end and said, "Yeah, the end answer is cars with ovens in the trunk. It's really the only solution that's gonna work at mass that will replace the whole infrastructure that exists today." When you can get the food to be baked in the car and kept hot in the car, ready to come out hot, it also reduces the delivery time. You're not going to a brick-and-mortar place, loading the food into the car, and then driving to a place. You're just constantly circling around an area. As you get an order, you pop the thing into bake, and then when it's ready, you're at the door. So there is zero lag time. Deliveries get faster and fresher. This is my segment of basically "Sean time travels to the future." Because if you think about it, I'm born in 1988. Not that long ago. From '88 to '96 or '97, I remember that time. Michael Jordan was winning championships during that time. For the average person, there was no internet. We were just getting into AOL chat rooms and stuff like that. I was putting AOL CDs into the computer that was in my computer room because the house had one computer.

Sam Parr

yeah we all had computer rooms remember that

Shaan Puri

We had computer rooms, exactly. And then, like, that sort of changed over time. It's like, "Oh, computer rooms become laptops, laptops become phones." Phones have freaking HD video streaming live, you know, basketball games from the internet now to my phone. I'm watching that while I'm in my car. That seemed absurd. I remember actually even the first time I saw someone reading on their phone. I used to have a Nokia, you know, like the old phone that had Snake on it. I was just like, "What? Reading on your phone? Who would want to do that?" The text is so small and so crappy. Like, who would ever watch a video on their phone?

Sam Parr

or who could type who could like because when they just had 9

Shaan Puri

or slow

Sam Parr

10 10 10 buttons and you had to like click 3 times to get their letter

Shaan Puri

yeah what was that thing called or you had to like it's like smarter text or some shit like that yeah

Sam Parr

yeah yeah and it would autofill

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was like, "But that seems so far-fetched." And that was not that long ago. I was just like, "Those are 20 years ago." In 20 years, some amazing things have happened. If I fast forward 20 years, these things that today sound far-fetched are going to happen because the consumer benefit is there. You know, if the delivery is faster and fresher, people are going to do that, right? If shopping gets easier and I don't have to search and read and be at a computer, I just say what I want when I want it, and I get it in less than an hour. That was the part I forgot to say: Prime 2-day delivery is going to seem incredibly slow. Ordering everything from Amazon is going to be just as fast as today ordering DoorDash. It's going to be here in 45 minutes. Oh, you need an HDMI cable? Here, push this button, and it's here in 40 minutes, delivered via drone. So yeah, I think that's what the future looks like. That's my time traveler section. What do you think? Which one did you think I was most on or off about?

Sam Parr

You're... I think you're most on about Apple. I think you're most off on... so.

Shaan Puri

I gave you facebook the hands free camera all was

Sam Parr

On camera now. Yeah, I have all the notes. I think you're on about Apple. I think Amazon... you're not totally right. Facebook... what was Facebook?

Shaan Puri

the hands free always on camera instant capture of anything that's going on in your world you don't need yeah

Sam Parr

I think you're wrong actually about

Shaan Puri

that capture

Sam Parr

I think there's a world where we go in reverse. We get less tech-driven and people want less contact with others. I think it could go the other way, so I think you're wrong about that. I think you're totally right about Apple, 7-Eleven, Netflix, Pornhub, and Domino's. I think you're right.

Shaan Puri

I think I'm right on all of them, bro. I think I got them all right. It's just a question. The great quote is, "Don't confuse a clear view for a short distance." I love that quote. That's like one of my favorites. What's that mean? Like, imagine you're driving and you see something on the horizon. It's like, "Oh, there it is." Just because you see it doesn't mean you're near it, right? Objects in the front view are maybe further than they appear. That's what often happens with the future. You can kind of see what the world's going to do and what it's going to look like, but you overestimate how soon it's going to come. Then you get sort of disillusioned, and eventually, it does show up, you know?

Sam Parr

I think it will be capable of that. The thing is, what I've learned from reading history is that it typically repeats itself. What's old becomes new, and what's new becomes old; it goes back and forth. Now that people our age and a little younger are always connected, I think it's going to go in the opposite direction. They're going to want less connection, right? You know, that's why motels in America are booming right now. It's like nostalgia, and it's interesting again. So, I...

Shaan Puri

Do you think that the pendulum does swing? I don't know. I think both happen at the same time. I think that the world gets more on-demand and more digital, and then people crave physical experiences. Both exist at the same time. It's sort of like the Clearview short distancing. A great example of this is Webvan. You know, in the year 2000, it was like, "Oh, grocery delivery online! What if you could buy your groceries online instead of through a store?" Then it got all this hype, and then it crashed. For like 20 years, nobody really touches this. Nobody really tries this again. And then here we are with Instacart as a multibillion-dollar company, taking that same idea but putting it in a fresh way with new tech tools and technology like mobile phones.

Sam Parr

yeah I I I I'm on board with a lot of that

Shaan Puri

Alright, we should call it here. And yeah, that's the end of the episode. Uh-huh, yeah.