MFM #163: How Chrome Plugins Are Making Millions & How A Studying App is Going Viral

Sam Parr

Dude, a freaking plug-in! Who would have thought? He kind of had a funny, shit-eating grin on, and I was like, "How big are you guys?" He was like, "We do over $100,000,000 a year in sales." I was like, "Would you ever believe it?" He was like, "Yeah, I thought it could be done." Then I go, "You just raised money?" He goes, "Yeah, we raised $100,000,000 the other day." I go, "Why?" He goes, "Because it's a north of $1,000,000,000 valuation."

Shaan Puri

What's up, everybody? We just recorded the pod. We talked about how I was on CNBC today, discussing going on TV and the experience of being on CNBC. We also covered a bunch of business ideas related to Chrome extensions, which is kind of a niche that nobody really talks about, but Sam is super into it. He really brought the fire! At the end, we shot the breeze about a bunch of random things for maybe the last 10 minutes, including some of the topics from the Michael Saylor episode. It's cool stuff we have going on. We just shot the shit at the end, and that might have been the best part. So, stick around for that last 10 minutes of the pod. Alright, enjoy!

Sam Parr

Alright, great! What's going on? Congratulations! Do you want to talk about family stuff or no?

Shaan Puri

yeah sure had a kid 4 5 8 4 days ago I think now

Sam Parr

congratulations what are the details

Shaan Puri

Baby boy is here! His name is Banks. And Banks... why Banks? I don't know. We thought of the name a lot when we were trying to name my first kid, and her name's Blush. So I just thought Banks and Blush go well together. I don't know, I just thought it was a cool name. Wanted to do something new.

Sam Parr

it's a cool name it's a cool name it's just a unique name so I was wondering if there was a reason

Shaan Puri

Yeah, at least this one has a name. The first one, when we named her Blush, we Googled like, "Oh, Blush name meaning," and there's literally like, "That is not a name, bro." So...

Sam Parr

what is banks

Shaan Puri

banks is actually so it's popular last name and because of that some people

Sam Parr

started doing it as

Shaan Puri

A first name... Hillary Duff's kid is named Banks. I know that's pretty much the extent of the popularity of it. I don't really care to pick a popular name; I'd rather pick a unique name. But I could tell, like when we tell our family, they're like, "What? Is there... is there a name? What are we gonna do with this?"

Sam Parr

No banks is good. My nephews are named Aivitt, like the Aivitt brothers, and Jude, like "Hey Jude." Now they have a girl named Billy. So, I'm team odd names.

Shaan Puri

there you go I we can't all be sams right

Sam Parr

or well people call you shen

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there are people that just straight up call me Shane. They just keep calling me that, and I am not correcting them. Now, it's like we're years into the relationship. It's like fingers that I work with. It's like, well...

Sam Parr

Well, congratulations! So you're a year and a half older than me. I'm 31. For the longest time, I was like, "I'm gonna wait to have kids," but then a few things happened. The first... so my wife Sarah is 28. The first is that a few of my friends - one of them's 39 - and I think your wife's older than you, right?

Shaan Puri

yeah by a year

Sam Parr

So, like, early to mid-thirties, and then a few of my friends are in their late thirties. These women are having kids and they're like, "Oh my God, it sucks so bad! I wish I would have done it when I was younger." Right? So I've changed my... I've thought about having children.

Shaan Puri

saying that or the woman no

Sam Parr

The woman... well, the guys are like, "It's definitely harder to parent when you're in your forties than when you're younger." But mainly from the woman, they're like, "It's just harder on the body." Second, I had a friend, and he was like, "Dude, have a kid now." I was like, "Why? I want to have all this freedom." He goes, "It's way different. Once I had a kid, I realized the later that I had it, the less years I'm going to be able to spend with him. Now I'm just going to die sooner, and I wish I would have had 10 more years. I should have done it at 25 instead of 35." I was like, "Oh, that's an interesting perspective." So my opinion has been changing lately. I might have a child soon, but we're still deciding.

Shaan Puri

yeah and

Sam Parr

By the way, before we get to the first idea, congratulations on CNBC! You're on there today. Did anyone reach out to you because they saw you?

Shaan Puri

Not really. Only people who knew me already, you know? Like my mom was probably the most excited. Basically, people who are 30 years older than me were like, "This is amazing!" I was on CNBC for two and a half minutes or three minutes or something like that. But nobody... you know, like if I go tweet something, I'll get a lot more messages than going on TV, which is weird. But it definitely was a cool feeling. I don't know, it's like one of those things that I woke up before my alarm clock because I was like, "Okay, today's a good day. Today's a big day. I got something to do today that I've never done before."

Sam Parr

These broadcast networks... you think they're huge, and they are huge, and they have reach and all that. But like, the average viewers is only like 200,000 people at a time. It's not... it's not like crazy high in the world of social media.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I think even the big ones that are like half a million or a million viewers, they are... it's kind of like a background thing. So, and you only get so little time to talk that even if there was a much bigger audience, it's hard to get... it's hard to really make any headway in a 3-minute segment.

Sam Parr

Yes, so like it's prestigious, but it's definitely not nearly as impactful as just the actual tweet that you're coming on to talk about. It was right.

Shaan Puri

Or this podcast, right? More people will listen to this podcast, and I'll get more mileage out of this. It just doesn't have the same feel; it doesn't get the juices flowing in the same way that being on CNBC does. But I also say this: I think this is more interesting for anybody who's ever done this. Have you ever gone on... it's such a weird experience. Have you ever gone on a TV thing? So you get connected in, and it's like a Zoom call basically, right? And you can't see them. So on TV, it looks like you're all split screen; you see your face, their face, and the other person. But in reality, you have no facial expressions because you can't see each other's video. You're only hearing each other, and you don't know when it's your turn to talk. Then the thing I screwed up was I was like, "Okay, I was going down this checklist of worry." I was like, "Okay, is my home internet gonna be good? Alright, is my hair gonna look stupid? Am I gonna say something stupid?" And then, like, it's never the things you expect; it's always something else. So as soon as it started, I was like... like 10 seconds in, you'll look, if you watch the video, my eyes are darting around everywhere because I have nothing to look at. They're not on video, and so I'm just looking around my stupid home studio garage thing. I look like a suspicious character because my eyes are so shifty. Then, like 30 seconds in, I realized, "Oh shit, I need to be staring at this camera because that's what will look normal." So that was a weird thing I did. And the other thing was I said Kim Kardashian's butt, and I said...

Sam Parr

I know I thought that was funny

Shaan Puri

balls and stuff so you know I said some stuff maybe I wasn't supposed to say say

Sam Parr

No, they came. You were a good interview. It was great! I watched the whole thing, and it was good.

Shaan Puri

thank you

Sam Parr

alright you wanna talk about the first idea yeah

Shaan Puri

let's do it

Sam Parr

"You want to do this thing, Toucan?" "Yes." "Okay, so I, along with Joe Speiser... we're... I'm kind of following in your footsteps a little bit. We created this thing, HamptonVC.com, and we're just investing in companies together." "Nothing... I grew up in a bad neighborhood on a street called Hampton, and Joe is wealthy and has a house in the Hamptons."

Shaan Puri

alright we were thinking

Sam Parr

For we were thinking about names, and I was like, I grew up on a street called Hampton. You live in the Hamptons, and it's just your own.

Shaan Puri

money or it's a fund

Sam Parr

We're mostly our own money, but him and I... Joe's an investor in your thing, yeah. And he was like, "Man, I wanna put even more money in." And he goes, "You just wanna invest with me?" I go, "Yeah, sure." And then he's like, "You wanna do a rolling fund?" I was like, "No, that sounds like a lot of work." Yeah, he's like, "You wanna do a syndicate and you could just pick some deals?" I go, "Okay, cool. I'll do it with you."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

So, it's just like a deal-by-deal basis. We created an angel-less syndicate, which means that whenever you invest in something, Sean, you have to tell me, and then I'll invest.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, I have a bunch. I heard this great description of AngelList, which is like "Substack for VCs." It's the easiest way to kind of spin up a little investment fund the same way Substack lets you spin up a little newsletter. It's awesome!

Sam Parr

So yeah, we did it. We found a company already and we invest. I was just going to invest using my own money. I was planning to do maybe 10 to 50 deals a year, ranging from really low amounts to $5,000, all the way up to $25,000. I was just going to do a ton of stuff, but all at low prices. He was like, "Why don't you just do this syndicate thing?" and I was like, "Alright, let's try it." So we're doing that. But can I tell you about the first company that we are about to finish with?

Shaan Puri

So, I know about this company, but can you give a two-sentence description of it?

Sam Parr

It's called **Toucan**, and it's basically the really dumbed-down version of Duolingo, which is a language learning website. But it's a Chrome plugin, and it changes a handful of words of every article that you're reading into the language that you want to learn. So it's contextual learning. It's more complicated than that, but that's the simple version.

Shaan Puri

Right, yes, exactly. So, it helps you learn a new language without the effort. I would say it's kind of genius, honestly. The founder, what's her name? Taylor something?

Sam Parr

she's magical

Shaan Puri

She's great! She's been a fan of the podcast. Actually, she messaged us a long time ago, before this fundraise, saying, "Hey, the pod is cool! Check out what I'm doing." Or maybe I...

Sam Parr

missed it really ah I can't believe I missed it

Shaan Puri

And so, I've been following it since then. I kind of thought about investing, but I didn't pull the trigger. Maybe I should have. I thought the idea is genius because the biggest... it's okay, so here's my thing. There are a lot of these things that people want to do. You want to work out, you want to learn a new language, you want to become... blah blah blah. You have all these kind of like "I should, I should, I should," and as Tony Robbins calls it, you "should all over yourselves" because you're just not doing the thing. The biggest friction is not that it's hard to learn a language; it's hard to make the time to sit down, open the book, or download the app, open the app, and focus. Just doing Duolingo for 30 minutes a day doesn't sound that hard, but in practice, it's like a separate thing to do. What I think is super smart about what Toucan is doing is that you don't have to make it a separate thing. You're already browsing the internet, so why not let this thing automatically shift a few words on every web page you're visiting? You don't have to start a separate activity to learn the language; you'll learn it in bits and pieces while you're browsing. I thought that was actually pretty goddamn genius, to be honest. And you also tipped me off on the power of Chrome extensions. I don't even know why I didn't invest; this seems like a great idea. Maybe I'll hit her up after this and see if I can get in.

Sam Parr

Have you? Yeah, do it. If you don't know her well, I can try to introduce you and you could just do it directly with her. But this woman's a superstar. I met with her and... like within 5 minutes I was like, "Oh well, you're gonna be the CEO of a billion-dollar company."

Shaan Puri

oh really okay

Sam Parr

I hope it's this one, but she was just so put together. She was so poised, she was charismatic, and she just oozed CEO.

Shaan Puri

wow interesting I've never heard you say that who else have you felt that about if there's does anyone come to mind

Sam Parr

The guy from Superhuman, whenever I heard him talk, I was like, "Oh yeah, you are so... I would bet on you for just about anything."

Shaan Puri

yeah whatever he was gonna do if he said I'm gonna write a book I'd be like oh it's gonna be great if he

Sam Parr

I was like, "I'm pretty sure you're gonna be successful." Yeah, so I felt that about him when we met with the Shopify guy... Harvey or Harley? Harley, I think. But obviously, he's already hugely successful. There was a handful of people we've interviewed where...

Shaan Puri

They have been... He came in, and he just had camera quality like nobody's business. He had this good-looking guy in this great-looking office with an incredible camera. I feel like, you know, he couldn't... he didn't even say a word. I was like, "Oh wow, this guy is like a power player."

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so this woman, I felt that with her. I was like, "Oh, she just... she just was on top of that." I just felt great about another person. This is a little bit early on in their experience. There was this woman named Payal, I think that's her name, who started ClassPass. When I talked to her, I was like, "Oh, you're really special." So anyway, this woman Taylor met with her, and I was like, "Oh, you're whatever. Yeah, sounds good. I'm in no matter what." But I started like also... I mean, let's move on past Toucan. It's jointtoucan.com. The reason it's interesting is they have this like... she worked at Headspace, so they have this like Headspace cute branding stuff, right?

Shaan Puri

By the way, we should say "toucan" is like the bird, Toucan Sam, type of thing. It's not... yeah, it's spelled like that: T-O-U-C-A-N.

Sam Parr

yeah toucan which I don't know do those birds like speak or something I I don't know why

Shaan Puri

Maybe... that might be it. Yeah, so do you have any kind of stats you could share about them? Like, give us a sense of why you feel like this is working.

Sam Parr

I didn't ask her for permission to talk about that, but basically, Duolingo does about **$200,000,000** a year in sales and has, I think, **5,000,000** users or **10,000,000** users—something ridiculously high. What I want to talk about in this segment is **Chrome plugins**. I'm like, well, this company, Duolingo, is very successful; it's a **$5,000,000,000** company. I've been thinking about Chrome plugins. What I'm considering is two things: 1. Look at successful companies that already do over **$100,000,000** in sales and ask, "How can I create this in the form of a Google plugin?" 2. Identify which behaviors people want but don't engage in because there's a little bit of friction. How can I use this plugin to alleviate that friction?

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Now, there's a ton of downside with Google plugins. You know, you're a Google plugin, so Google can ruin you. But it's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly interesting to me. That's what I wanted to bring up—some Google plugin stuff. Basically, I don't know if this is how she did it, but the way that I look at it is you just look at what behaviors people are already doing. For example, learning a language. People already want to learn a language; you just change the text of the article to a different language, or at least parts of it. Grammarly did this with grammar, so you just fix it as you write. One that I use all the time is SimilarWeb. It tells me the traffic of someone's website. Passwords—you use passwords on a regular basis, so a plugin just inserts different passwords. Loom is another one. Have you heard of Loom?

Shaan Puri

oh yeah my buddy was with the guy who started it

Sam Parr

isn't that worth like $1,000,000,000

Shaan Puri

not yet but getting close it's several 100,000,000 I think it was the last round

Sam Parr

and all it does is screen recordings recordings

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so they basically say, "Oh, you want to show something on your screen? Here's a click. Boom! Record. Share." The two famous ones that everybody kind of has heard about are Honey and Grammarly. Honey sold to PayPal for **$4,000,000,000**. Honey had, I think, **17,000,000** users when they sold. What Honey does is, if you're about to check out on some website, Honey will go in the background looking for deals. It checks if there’s a coupon for this or a sale somewhere else, or a coupon you can use right now, and it surfaces a discount. Okay, that makes total sense! I don’t have to take any action or remember to look for a coupon; it’s just going to do it. The Honey sign glows whenever it has a discount available for you. So that was one. Grammarly was another, and I think that shocks people because Grammarly does over **$100,000,000** a year.

Sam Parr

So, the Grammarly founder spoke at HustleCon. He's an engineer, a very by-the-book, straight-shooter type. He's really cool; his name's Max. I was shooting the breeze with him, and I said, "Dude, a freaking plug-in? Who would have thought?" He kind of had a funny, shit-eating grin on, and I asked, "How big are you guys?" He replied, "We do over $100,000,000 a year in sales." I was like, "Would you ever believe it?" He said, "Yeah, I thought it could be done." Then I asked, "You just raised money?" He responded, "Yeah, we raised $100,000,000 the other day." I inquired, "Why?" He said, "Because it was at a valuation north of $1,000,000,000."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I was like oh my god you pulled it off

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they did exactly. So those are like the big successes, but there are some other ones, right? For example, Pinterest was started as, I believe, a Chrome extension. It was the "pin" button that basically allowed users to gather all the content for Pinterest to become a cool app. You needed a quick way to pin while you were surfing the web, so that was one. Then there are others. If I look at the plugins that I have installed, I have Adblock or, you know, uBlock Origin or whatever. That's definitely one of them. I think this was one of those non-obvious ideas because it kind of feels like not a serious company. It's like, "Dude, you're just making this plugin." Definitely, there are a lot of people—like my mom—who doesn't know what Chrome extensions are. She doesn't know there's a Chrome extension store, and she doesn't really know how to install them. She knows apps, but she doesn't know Chrome extensions. So, you're going to get a little bit more of a tech-savvy audience. You know, it's a smaller market overall, but the friction is a big deal.

Sam Parr

I actually want to change your opinion on that. I went and looked at the numbers. There are **1.6 billion** iPhone users. Okay, **1.6 billion** users and **2 million** iPhone apps in the store right now. For Chrome users, there are **3 billion** Chrome users and **200,000** plugins. There's a ton of opportunity here. I hear you that your mom doesn't know how to do this, but if she saw a commercial on TV for Grammarly, I bet she would know what to do. You just go to **grammarly.com**.

Shaan Puri

Actually, she does know Grammarly because of that. She saw it and she's self-conscious about her English because she learned English later in life. She doesn't want to write something stupid, so she downloaded Grammarly for that reason actually.

Sam Parr

And so that's why when I saw this Toucan thing, I was like, "Oh, you guys just run a commercial for this on TV. That's easy. You're gonna get so many users." The plug-in... the reason why the plug-ins are interesting to me is the churn is so low. Churn on plug-ins are so low compared to iPhone apps or...

Shaan Puri

And we both have plugins. You have a plugin for The Hustle, and I have a plugin for my "One Big Thing" framework. It's just like, "What do you want?" There's like no churn on it. Do we have like thousands of users now? The engagement's not super high; they don't always use the thing, but they leave it installed. So, we've both dabbled in this—not seriously, I would say. Neither of us took it super seriously, but we were interested enough for both of us to build a Chrome extension and get it out there to, you know, 5,000 to 10,000 people.

Sam Parr

It's interesting, and I think that people discount it. I think that it's far more interesting than most people realize. So I actually had Abreu pull some of the biggest plugins: - AdBlock - AdBlock Plus - Adobe Acrobat What do you use Adobe Acrobat for?

Shaan Puri

I don't know probably like flash or something I don't know

Sam Parr

Here's a list of various web services and tools mentioned: - SafePrice: A deal-finding tool - Video conferencing from Cisco - Google Translate: A language translation service - Toucan: Likely a language learning tool (interesting connection to Google Translate) - Honey: A browser extension for finding coupons and deals - Pinterest Save button - Skype: A communication platform - TamperMonkey: A popular userscript manager for browsers [Note: The original text didn't provide context for why these services were listed. This formatting aims to present the information clearly while maintaining the original content.]

Shaan Puri

I don't know it looks like it's trying to keep you safe

Sam Parr

dave there was a

Shaan Puri

Cool, there was one called Ghostery back in the day that would just show you who's trying to track you on every website you go to. That was kind of cool, and we're trying to shut that down. There's also these paid ones. So, was there anything interesting in the paid group?

Sam Parr

No, but tell me about the ones that you've invested in because they're actually similar. Because in this document that we have, I said screenshots would be great and you said, "Oh, I invested in this thing called Bubbles." Which I remember you telling me about, but what is that?

Shaan Puri

Bubbles is a lot like Loom, which we talked about earlier. The idea is: how do you easily share what's on your screen with your coworker who wants to see it? So, how do you do that? Some people just take a screenshot. They use the hotkey on their keyboard, take a screenshot, and it goes into their desktop file. Then they have to go grab that, drag and drop it to their friend, and then the friend has to comment on it. But they can't comment on it; they have to send it back as another file. It's kind of annoying, right? So, what Bubbles does is much simpler. It's a little Chrome extension, and on any page you go to, you can say, "I want to record a screen recording like a video," or "I want to take a screenshot." My favorite one is a scroll screenshot. You know when you're on a website that is long and you want to take screenshots of the website? You have to take like eight screenshots and then send them as separate files to somebody.

Sam Parr

it's a pain there

Shaan Puri

With this, it just takes one long screenshot and sends it to the person. So it's easy to capture what's on your screen. You can then comment using bubbles, like speech bubbles. You just click anywhere you want to point something out on the screen. For example, let's say for The Hustle, you want to make the trends website better. You would: 1. Record a screenshot 2. Click bubbles 3. Tap on the part of the screen where you're like, "This thing is stupid, we need to change this" 4. Write, "This thing is stupid, we need to change this" Then, the whole file is a link. You just share a link with somebody else, and they can comment back like a Google doc. It's crazy!

Sam Parr

is it doing well

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's doing well. It's doing well specifically... Actually, I think the initial niche that they've done well with is agencies. So agencies, like creative agencies, there's always creative people within the team that are sending ideas, mockups, concepts back and forth with each other. And then they have to share with the client also, and the client has to give feedback. So there's a lot of showing screen stuff and commenting back and forth on it. That's where they're getting an initial foothold, and I think it'll kind of break out from there. So it's like Loom, but it does more than what Loom does.

Sam Parr

and what's dashworks

Shaan Puri

So, Dashworks is a company I have that serves as the home page for your organization. This is a Chrome extension sold to companies. Let's say someone joins "The Hustle." You give them their laptop, and if they work with Dashworks, when they open up Google Chrome for the first time to use the internet, they would not just see the generic Google "new tab" page. Instead, they would see "The Hustle's" branded page. That page can do three things: 1. **Search Bar**: There's a search bar where you can type in anything, and it will find the file inside your company. Most companies now use tools like Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, Asana, and GitHub, all of which are in the cloud. If you've ever been on your MacBook and wanted to find a file, you just use the little Spotlight search finder. You type it into Spotlight, and it finds the file on your computer. However, with the cloud, none of the files you need are on your computer; they're all in the cloud. This search bar serves as a way to find files across all your cloud apps. It helps any employee find any file that's in your network without needing to know where to go to find it. It's essentially a search network. 2. **People Search**: The second thing you can do is search for anyone's name. For example, if I want to know, "What does Steph Smith do at The Hustle?" I can type "Steph," and it will show me her profile, detailing what she does and who she reports to. 3. **Announcements**: Lastly, as the CEO or admin of the company, you can post announcements or updates that will show up in their Chrome "new tab" bar. You can say things like, "Welcome to these new employees," "Happy birthday to this person," or "Hey, remember this Friday we're all doing happy hour," etc. So, I thought it was cool that they're using the Chrome extension to deliver critical internal company information: a search for people, a search for files, and internal announcements.

Sam Parr

So, this is interesting. There's another one that I actually don't know how to say the name of this company, but you wrote it in here.

Shaan Puri

how do

Sam Parr

you pronounce that

Shaan Puri

luster

Sam Parr

Jack, our friend Jack, was one of the early users and I think invested in it. He says that it's awesome. Basically, they look at Wirecutter, Amazon, and dozens of other sources. Anytime you have a product in front of you, it tells you the average review. Kind of interesting, I don't know... I think...

Shaan Puri

it's a little better than that I think what they do is you say your search

Sam Parr

my description was about a year ago

Shaan Puri

You know, I think what it does is you go on Amazon or whatever and you search for "flat screen TV." There are so many products out there, and all of them have great ratings, like 4 stars. What do I make of that? So, what Lustre does is try to make the buying process simpler. It basically says, "Here's the recommended option for what you searched for." Our AI has searched all the reviews and different websites, gathering all this data to tell us that this is the most popular result for what you're looking for. Then, it provides you with the high-end version of it and maybe the low-end version as well. I don't know if the product has evolved too much since then, but that's what it kind of did at that time. It helped you figure out which product you should actually buy using data. And again, you didn't have to remember to go to Lustre. It was a Chrome extension, so while you were shopping on any website—whether it was Walmart, Amazon, Best Buy, or wherever—you could see, "Hey, here's the product we recommend and here's why." It would summarize what the reviews say about it automatically for you, which I thought was pretty cool.

Sam Parr

I think that this could be a good product. When he pitched it to me, and when Jack told me about it, I was like, "This is stupid. I'm not in." I understand though... I actually think I was wrong about it. It's really cool.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so the founder of Student's really smart. For this one, he showed me a chart, a graph that was doing pretty well. So here are some other ideas of things... Those are ideas that we've either invested in or seen. I have a couple more for you. Let's use your framework of: 1. Take a popular app like Duolingo (that shows there's a need or demand - people want to learn a language) 2. Make it a Chrome extension as the user experience instead of a mobile app

Sam Parr

so or at least one of the main widgets or main points of distribution

Shaan Puri

Right, so let's take meditation. You have Headspace, you have Calm. Why don't you have a Chrome extension, a Chrome plugin, that will basically say, "You've been browsing for 2 hours straight. You have 85 tabs open. Hey, let's take a minute. Would you like to earn some mindfulness points and take a 1-minute quick meditation?" It just... you tap the thing, it turns on, and there's a guided voice that does a guided meditation for you. I think a Chrome extension for meditation could work because it's so popular as a mobile app. But again, with a mobile app, you have to remember to go do it. Whereas this could just kind of, as you go, pause you and help you out.

Sam Parr

That's great! I think that has legs. I'll keep going with this game. Do you know how on your iPhone, what's that thing called where it blocks you from using a website after a certain [time]?

Shaan Puri

amount of time oh yeah like time something I don't I don't know what it's

Sam Parr

part of

Shaan Puri

I never use that shit no do you

Sam Parr

yeah I mean I have it installed

Shaan Puri

screen time because that's what it's called

Sam Parr

Screen time... I used to have this Chrome plug-in called "Nukem." I think it was called Nukem, or the option was called Nukem, where after a certain amount of time, you would "nuke" your website, and you could not go to certain websites. You could only go to like Google Docs and email, and that was it. I loved it! So, similar to meditation, I would 100% try to create more of these... what do you call this? Change your "stop using stuff" app.

Shaan Puri

Right, right, right. Yes, defend yourself against yourself. Okay, I have a smart idea and I have a gimmick idea. Which one do you want?

Sam Parr

okay

Shaan Puri

smart one or the gimmick one

Sam Parr

smart one first

Shaan Puri

Alright, smart one first. Okay, we had the founder of... You mentioned the founder of Superhuman. He's the guy who built Rapportive before that. We both loved Rapportive. It doesn't exist now, so some people might not know what it is, but what Rapportive was doing was: When you were emailing somebody, as soon as you typed in their name or their email, a little sidebar would pop out of your email that would just show you: - Their face - Their name - The last few tweets

Sam Parr

It was like, at the time, it was like magic. We were like, "How on earth do they know all this?" It was crazy.

Shaan Puri

So, it just makes you a more thoughtful person because you can see the person. You can see what they're up to. You can click their LinkedIn to get a little more information. It kind of served it up; it was like you had an amazing executive assistant who was like, "You know, by the way, sir, you need to know this about this person." I think you could take Rapportive all around the web. You could make it where anytime it sees a name on a web page, it just highlights it yellow. Then, if you just hover over that, it'll tell you something about that person. I think you could bring this idea of anytime you see a name, tell me a little bit more about that person. I could think you could turn that into a Chrome extension rather than something that was just for email.

Sam Parr

how would you make money off of it

Shaan Puri

Ads! Boom! That's my easy answer. I don't know... oh, alright, okay. But here's my gimmick: one which definitely needs ads. I think there should be a Chrome extension. Let me take that back; I don't think this should exist, but I think it would be funny if somebody tried to do this. So, if you ever remember the $1,000,000 homepage, it was kind of this cool idea: "Here's a website, there are 1,000,000 pixels on the page, buy a pixel and sponsor it." Okay, that's cool. I've always thought about similar ideas—how could you make a million dollars off something simple and goofy? There's this concept in the Bitcoin world of, I think it's called a fountain or a tap. It's basically a website where you go to, and then sometimes there's like a spout, like a fountain, and sometimes free Bitcoin comes out. A bunch of people like to go to these. Some projects use these to say, "Go collect your coin for my new coin, go there and get some." You would go to the website, collect some of the new coin that you can get, and then other people have done this to be like, "Hey, sometimes something comes out, sometimes it doesn't." It's a game of chance.

Sam Parr

It's like... what do they call this? They call it a... There's this company that did this with candles. We talked about them. It was called Diamond Candles, I think. And at the bottom of every single candle—we're talking candles like a wax candle that you burn in your bathtub or whatever—it's like... like cool candles. That's how you... that's **fucking** the only way I know how to use **fucking** candles, is when I'm sitting in the bath.

Shaan Puri

I like when you start dropping f-bombs to get masculine real quick while talking about bathtub candles. I gotta... fuck you.

Sam Parr

I I use my my bath bombs or what are they called

Shaan Puri

yeah bath bombs

Sam Parr

Anyway, I've got all of them. I'm a... I'm a... I'm a sensitive guy, man. And anyway, they... at like 1 in 10,000 candles probably has a $1,000 diamond, right? The rest have like nothing.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Something like a Cracker Jack ring, and what you could do with this is you could always have coupons or discounts off of something. If you redeem them, the Chrome extension gets a kickback, but every once in a while, one out of x does get a Bitcoin.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. So, something like that where basically every time you open a new tab, there's a little package in the middle of the screen. You give it a quick click, and then you're either going to get nothing, you get air, or you get a tiny little something. It's like a puzzle piece, or maybe like a little something... I don't know, something. Or you can actually get some Bitcoin. You can get little satoshis, basically. It would just become this little hamster game where every time you open a new tab, are you really going to not click the thing? I think you could get a lot of people to install this to try to get free Bitcoin while they just browse the internet. Every time they open a new tab, it's like a little mini scratch-off lotto ticket that they get to scratch off that might have some crypto inside. You could give away little shit coins, you could give away micro amounts of Bitcoin, you can give away little puzzle pieces. If you get it right, it's like the Monopoly game at McDonald's. You actually earn the Bitcoin if you get all the pieces. You can make a game out of it, basically. Then, the rest of the screen, you just plaster with ads, or sometimes what comes out of the box is just an ad. I think that's how you make money off of my gimmick Chrome extension.

Sam Parr

Well, I hope someone tries this because I think it would be hilarious if they create a product out of your joke. So, long story short, we'll move on from Chrome plugins, but I think it's so cool. I think people are underestimating this space a ton, and I'm excited to see what comes out of there.

Shaan Puri

The last thing I'll say on this is the general idea here is that there's a platform with 3,000,000,000 users and it has an app store. There are going to be winners. Now that I look back, isn't it obvious? I still stand by the fact that there are only 200,000 Chrome extensions and 2,000,000 apps. That's ten times less, but hey, that doesn't matter. There are several winners that we've talked about here. So, I would say, how many other platforms are like this? Everyone talks about apps in the Google Play or the Apple Store, but what else is there? HubSpot has a platform, Salesforce has a platform, Slack has a platform. Where are all these platforms? There are going to be winners. Once these platforms reach a critical mass, somebody's going to build something that's frictionless on top of it that is able to generate revenue. So, I think there's money to be made in the unconventional app platforms that you don't really think about first.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I could go on forever about it, but I think there's WordPress, I think there's Google Sheets, and I think there's Gmail, right?

Shaan Puri

I mean

Sam Parr

it's a lot of Google stuff but I think there's way more than people think

Shaan Puri

right alright so what does

Sam Parr

that mean what do you wanna do

Shaan Puri

let's do what's the update on social stuff what is that

Sam Parr

Oh, I was saying just like our videos... man, our videos are crushing it! We're the guys - Henry and Jordan, or Henry and Dylan - who are making these. We made an offer to them to make dozens and dozens [of videos] a month.

Shaan Puri

like are they doing it because I love their videos

Sam Parr

I think they're gonna do it. So, we're gonna do like I asked them. I'm like, "Send me a quote to do 30 to 60 videos a month."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

so we'll do our stuff I actually think that they can reduce the quality a little bit like

Shaan Puri

they're too good

Sam Parr

Well, I think they take a long time. I think they can reduce the quality on YouTube because people watch YouTube a bit more passively. They should continue with the high quality on Instagram and Twitter because it's only 2 minutes long.

Shaan Puri

So weird... People need to subscribe to watch the videos because they're not just a video of what we talk about. It basically takes this hour-long thing where we're just shooting the shit, finds the most interesting 2 minutes, edits us down so that we sound smart, and animates over the top of it. So it's actually fun to look at and makes way more sense than just hearing us talk about it. **Where do they go to actually watch the videos?** Because we need them to subscribe to the video place.

Sam Parr

So, there are a few ways you can do it. The first is to follow either Sean and me on Twitter, where we share a lot personally. The second is The Hustle's Twitter, which is just @TheHustle. The third is The Hustle's Instagram, which is @TheHustleDaily. The fourth is our YouTube channel. We actually have to figure out how to manage this because we're using our old YouTube account called youtube.com/hustlecon. So, just Google "The Hustle My First Million" on YouTube, and you'll see it. We have to figure out how to manage that because it's actually kind of getting popular now, you know? About 5,000 to 10,000 views per video. If we do have three videos a week, which we're going to start doing, that gets to be somewhat interesting.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

so we gotta figure that out but those are the ways that they could find it right now

Shaan Puri

yeah I like the I go through the youtube one I like youtube myself and so

Sam Parr

but they're getting a ton of comments

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the comments are great, and I love responding to them. So, right now, it's early days. I'm responding to all of the comments because...

Sam Parr

me too

Shaan Puri

it's fun and they make fun

Sam Parr

of me a lot I can

Shaan Puri

make fun of me more

Sam Parr

than you

Shaan Puri

Soon there'll be too many comments to respond to, but for now I think there's like 17,000 subscribers. So I want to like triple that just off of the listeners from this podcast. Go to youtube.com/hustlecon (like HustleCon) and then subscribe to that channel so that you get the videos from us. Then we're gonna start video [content].

Sam Parr

The video will have only 5,000 views but like 100 and some odd comments, which has been kind of crazy. Then the Instagram is getting a stupid amount of engagement, and I think, Sean, you're actually crushing me in terms of clips with hits. So a handful of your clips have gotten close to 100,000 views. We had one with Zach Crockett, one of our writers, and he got 70,000 [views] I think the other day.

Shaan Puri

nice

Sam Parr

and so we're just gonna start churning them out and we're gonna soon do way more of these

Shaan Puri

love it

Sam Parr

I think we're going to launch a few more podcasts. It's TBD, but there's one called "How X Makes Money," so Steph wants to break down how something makes money. Then a similar podcast is "The Economics of [Blank]," where we'll talk about the economics of something else. What else are we going to do? I forget a few, but anyway, we've got to... we're going to just churn out these clips.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's way better to listen to, honestly. Like when I listen to those... if I listen to the podcast, I kind of cringe myself because I'm like, "I hate hearing my voice." And also, you know, we wander. It's an off-the-cuff, unedited conversation. But the clips, they're great. They're just great. Anyway, what else would you like?

Sam Parr

Let me wrap this up. One thing I just want to say now, because I think I want to look back and remember this: I think that in one year from now, and maybe two years from now, these style of clips that we're doing on social are definitely... they're kind of their own genre. Would you agree? It's not like we're changing the world here, so I don't want to over[state it]...

Shaan Puri

No, we're gonna get copied if that's what you're getting at. Because already, every time I retweet one of them, other successful podcasters or YouTubers are like, "Holy shit, who's making your clips?" And I'm just like, "Dude, you don't... I don't know their name. I forgot. I swallowed that key and that box is locked." Because I think they're great. I think they're better than everyone else's, and I don't want everybody copying us and have the same shit. But it's... it's actually gonna happen.

Sam Parr

It is going to be the beginning of a new genre. Do you agree? Like, no one makes high-quality content for a Twitter video.

Shaan Puri

yeah and it's it's like easy it's easy pickings basically for for us now

Sam Parr

alright we'll do one more segment

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let's do it! I've got two quick ones. First, Gumroad just raised $5,000,000 through a crowdfunding campaign. I wanted to get your take on that real quick. We can go quick; I don't know how much we have to talk about this, but is it a good investment or a bad investment? Secondly, I want to know your thoughts on crowdfunding since you raised funds through it as well. So, I'll give the two seconds on Gumroad. If you've never used it, Gumroad's awesome as a product. It's the easiest way for a creator to sell digital products. For example, if I make an ebook or a PDF that I want to sell, I can go to Gumroad, and in 10 minutes, I'll have a website up where I can sell my digital product and take payments. It does two things right: it lets you sell a digital product, which Shopify is not great for since Shopify is more for physical products. It's just simple. If I'm just selling one thing, I don't need a complicated store. I don't want to have to write code; I just want someone to be able to come and pay with a credit card. Another cool feature they have is the "pay what you want" model, which is sort of like a tip jar for something you create. Some people have made a lot of money doing this. I know people at The Hustle, and I think Steph did a book on Gumroad that made around $30,000 in sales, maybe even $50,000 or something like that.

Sam Parr

it did 70 I've made tens of thou I've made tens of 1,000 of dollars on gumroad

Shaan Puri

what was your product you sold on gumroad

Sam Parr

How to... So, before The Hustle, I owned a roommate matching business and I mastered Craigslist. In cities like San Francisco and New York, a person on Craigslist will get hundreds of replies to their apartment listing. So I just taught people how to email others in order to get an apartment on Craigslist. It was so successful that on the first date with my now-wife, I asked her how she got an apartment. She's like, "Oh, I just used some guide online." And she had bought my guide! I mean, I sold a lot of them.

Shaan Puri

nice

Sam Parr

so that was my product

Shaan Puri

that's hilarious I didn't know that yeah so gumroad is good for that guy

Sam Parr

by the way I'll plug it gumroad the miracle craigslist template

Shaan Puri

There you go. Okay, so it's for that kind of thing. It enables a different kind of seller. They've been around for, like, I literally think, 10 years now. They went through this crazy story where they came out, got hot, and raised a bunch of money from big-name VCs. Then, things didn't go so well. They had to basically unwind the whole thing, so they laid off or let go of employees, or whatever. They went back to kind of like a 1 to 3 person operation. I think they went to kind of bootstrapping it and focused on profitability because they realized they couldn't raise any more money. Now, they're back 10 years later. So that was, you know, a 10-year arc, and now they're kind of restarting it again, going big again. They have some pretty interesting metrics, but you can pull up their fundraising thing.

Sam Parr

The metrics are... it doesn't make that much money, but it has a... so basically, the way Gumroad works is people post stuff for sale. In terms of gross transactions, I don't think they report that as revenue.

Shaan Puri

202.1 million, or something like $220,000,000 in GMV, which is a bit... like a month or a...

Sam Parr

half year

Shaan Puri

yeah per year

Sam Parr

Yeah, so pretty high GMV [Gross Merchandise Value]. It's growing like crazy. It's a really good product, I love it. But the actual... not the net income, but like the net revenue, it's not significant.

Shaan Puri

it was like $200,000

Sam Parr

a month

Shaan Puri

It was like... I think I just read it, so I'll pull these up, but O'Brey, go get The Republic's fundraising page. It has all the stats on it. But basically, if I remember correctly, it's like $8 to $9 million of net income last year that they got to keep, and then from that they had $1 million of profit at the end of the year.

Sam Parr

I don't think then it's that high but that would be cool if it were but

Shaan Puri

The basis basically exploded during the kind of like COVID bump. So you could check out this fundraising page real quick. We'll just see it.

Sam Parr

"Go ahead, read off the stats and then I'll tell you my opinion... Well, I'll just tell you my opinion now while you're looking that up, which is: I would not invest in this at all. I would run away from this." "Okay, so I'll give you the numbers. I'm gonna..."

Shaan Puri

Explain why in a second. Last year, it was $73,000,000. This year, it's $143,000,000. Their revenue off that was $9,000,000. Their gross profit, they say, is $2,600,000, and the net income at the end of the day for them was $1,000,000 in 2020.

Sam Parr

And that was only $1,000,000 because they only had one employee. So of that two... so they really had $2,600,000 in revenue, and the only thing they had to support was 1 or 2 employees and certain [expenses].

Shaan Puri

In revenue, $9,000,000 was their take off the total transaction. They have more than one employee now, I think, because he kind of rebooted the company to grow again. So $9,000,000 is what the company made. But they're raising [funds], I think, at like a $100,000,000 valuation or something like that.

Sam Parr

**Technical:** I would not invest in this at all. I've really butchered the numbers here. Sorry.

Shaan Puri

yeah me too sorry we should have prepped this one

Sam Parr

I would not invest in this at all, and I'll tell you why. I was a fan of Gumroad since 2012. My friend Nathan Barry told me about it because he had a book there. He went and spoke at the Gumroad office, and I went to their office and watched him speak. I was like, "Damn, this is great! What is this whole Gumroad thing? This is awesome." I began as a Gumroad user in 2011, but the founder was like a prodigy. His name is Sahil. I think his name seemed like a cool dude, really smart. He left Pinterest as the third employee to start this. He was like a prodigy; he started the company at 19, but he failed, which is great. That's fine; you take swings, it doesn't always work out. He raised $16,000,000. He got the investors to write it off, saying, "Alright, we'll give you back all the equity. This is dead for us." Then he went and worked on it, and he kept working on it, which is cool. But now, none of the investors or the employees who previously worked there have their equity because somehow, in good faith, they said, "We're out of here, fine, you could have it, and it's actually going to turn out to be something." I wouldn't want to invest in this person for two reasons. First, I don't think that he cares about investors. I think that he just cares about creating cool stuff and making his lifestyle great, which is no problem. I'm a little bit like that as well, but I wouldn't want to invest money at a $100,000,000 valuation with someone with that attitude. Second, if he takes money and doesn't give it back to the people who he gave equity to and tries to build this thing to sell, I think that that's unethical, and I don't want to be part of that. So that's why I would pass on this.

Shaan Puri

Interesting. Yeah, I've heard somebody else talking about that as well. I don't know the whole situation, so I can't say exactly how those conversations went down and what everybody was on board with and whatnot.

Sam Parr

By the way, I don't know the whole situation either. A lot of what I've just said is... that's the public summary. I've heard rumors and a lot of it is hypothetical, but that's what I think. I mean, if you just read publicly what's going on, you can kinda...

Shaan Puri

It's in line with what I've heard. None of that's out of line. I don't think that he did it to screw anybody at all. I don't think so. I think literally the expectations of the company were too high. It wasn't going to continue growing at that pace, it wasn't going to...

Sam Parr

continue to run on to screw anyone either

Shaan Puri

So he was like, "Either we shut this down, we set a fire sale, or we kind of unwind it and get it back to a bootstrappable company. But if we're going to do that, then this whole venture structure and all these employees don't make any sense anymore." I need...

Sam Parr

to be strong with that

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

I'm great with that until

Shaan Puri

Right now, you're going back to the growth story. The reason I wouldn't invest is pretty simple: I don't think it's a great business. I don't like businesses like this. I don't like Patreon; I don't like Substack for the same reason. I think they are amazing products and good for the world, but they make for crappy businesses. If you just look at the numbers, these guys are doing $150,000,000 of GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) ten years into the business, and they're making $1,000,000 of profit at the end of the day. Still, that $1,000,000 of profit is being valued at $100,000,000 today. For me to get 10x on my money—which is what I need for an illiquid early-stage startup—this has to become worth $1,000,000,000 or more. So, you're telling me that this company, which is doing sub $10,000,000 in revenue and about $1,000,000 in profit, is going to be worth $1,000,000,000? I find it... I think it's a bad bet. You're not getting paid for the risk you're taking because you're already paying up at a $100,000,000 valuation. Why? Because he's super popular on Twitter and well-connected with other investors. For example, Naval is an investor, and all this stuff is because they're friends and whatnot. I don't think the retail investor is getting a great deal here. I also have this general thing that's kind of unpopular, which is that crowdfunding is the bottom of the barrel for companies. The best companies, the ones that are hot and growing, get picked up by professional investors. The stuff that you end up seeing on crowdfunding sites, I don't think are the big breakout companies in general. Now, I know The Hustle actually did a small crowdfunding thing, but yours was a little different. You raised... I can talk...

Sam Parr

about that

Shaan Puri

You raised from real investors, and you could have raised all the money from them. You raised most of it; you just opened up a small amount so your community would feel like they bought into the product. I think that's a different thing than...

Sam Parr

It is a different thing, but I still regret it. I actually regret doing that, and I wish I didn't do it. I wish I didn't do it because when you do that, you now have a whole lot of people who are going to ask you questions and things like that. It's quite distracting, and also...

Shaan Puri

Paid out, by the way, from this deal—the Habsa deal—they all got a check. So they all know what the thing sold for, then, right? How are you planning to keep it a secret if they are all going to get some multiple of their money?

Sam Parr

because the multiple that they get was because the total consideration was

Shaan Puri

oh like the retention of employees and all that stuff they don't get that

Sam Parr

Yeah, like I personally am going to make a ton—maybe more money—just off the retention package than the cap table package.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

So there's things like that, and also it depends. I'm not saying for my deal, but for some deals it depends how the note's structured. Yep, but it's not fun. I think because you have to report to people on a quarterly basis about certain stuff, and so it's basically like you're a publicly traded company.

Shaan Puri

yeah that may not be worth the hassle

Sam Parr

I don't think it's worth the hassle and I do agree that a lot of them are bottom of the barrel not all but a lot

Shaan Puri

right yeah and if if that

Sam Parr

Said if you're okay with not having privacy, which some people are cool with, I do actually think it's wise to get some users to invest in you. You know, this is actually how Samuel Adams beer company got started. They let their customers buy shares in the company before it went public. And in their case, they said it helped them a ton.

Shaan Puri

I agree. I like when you raise funds from customers. I don't think that's the same as just going on a crowdfunding platform and saying, "Hey, person who wants to invest in tech, but you don't have the network, the know-how, and you're not in any of the funds, you should just invest in my thing." You're not a customer of it. Whereas, let's say you're Samuel Adams or, next week, in the next episode, I'm going to talk about Ben and Jerry's. Ben and Jerry's did the same thing. They did a share offering to their local customers in Vermont so that they would be more likely to shop at their store and continue to come back because they feel like a part owner. What you guys did with The Hustle, you let the readers invest. I think that's very different from what you see on most crowdfunding sites. Typically, when you show up on a crowdfunding site, it's because you've struck out with real investors, so this is your last shot. That's why I say "bottom of the barrel." That's not nice, and I'm sure that's not the case for all companies. I have friends who have done this, and for the friends I've had that have done this, that's exactly what happened. They struck out with sophisticated investors, so they go to unsophisticated investors and try to patch together $3,000 checks, $5,000 checks, or whatever.

Sam Parr

get you know a

Shaan Puri

lot of that they're

Sam Parr

not gonna be successful it just means they weren't they couldn't get it done in the traditional way

Shaan Puri

Where the business is at today was not "juicy" enough. These professional investors are like hawks; they circle companies that have high growth potential and could be big winners. They pounce on them before they even start fundraising. Typically, if you're at the crowdfunding stage, it means: 1. You've not been scooped up early by the hawks 2. You've probably pitched to them, and they said no Now you're turning to retail investors.

Sam Parr

great well you wanna do one more topic or

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let's do one more. The other one is this idea or something cool that Ben showed me called "Study Stream Live." Have you heard of this?

Sam Parr

no

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna Google it. Somebody tried doing this for work, but it's basically like, "Hey, everybody's working from home remotely. It could be kinda lonely." I forgot what the name of the work-related one was, but it's basically... I.

Sam Parr

Had one. It was called Peak, and this is more of a whole thing. There were times when we had this one plug-in that would take a picture every 30 seconds or every 2 minutes or something, so you could see your coworkers and do stuff. But there were definitely times—this sounds kind of bro-y and embarrassing—where I was shirtless, on the toilet using my computer, or walking around in my underwear. There were times they caught me shirtless in Peak, and I was like, "Oh my God, this is right!" Like, you're laying in bed playing on the computer or like...

Shaan Puri

So, that's a bit of a different thing. Alright, I know what you're talking about there. That's kind of like spontaneous; it's a passive way of sharing what you're doing. This is different. You want to focus; you want kind of like a study buddy. So you say, "Alright, for the next hour, match me with someone else." I think **Focusmate** is the name of the one I was thinking about. It matches you with one person, and you both get to work on something. In the beginning, you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm working on my email newsletter today," and the other person's like, "Yeah, I have this report I need to give to my boss."

Sam Parr

I'm on this right now I'm on their website I already know what's gonna happen with this company

Shaan Puri

So, let me explain what it is first. You get paired for the hour, and you're supposed to focus and get something done. It's supposed to increase your productivity because you kind of have like a buddy who's holding you accountable from just drifting off and doing nothing. You also can meet people, and it's like a speed dating thing where you're going to end up bumping into people. You're not just alone all day in silence in your house. That's the idea Focusmate was trying to do for work. The study thing... what was it called? Study... live?

Sam Parr

it's study stream stream

Shaan Puri

Live, so these guys are doing it for university students who are studying and doing remote learning. It is actually blowing up. If you go there and try to join one of these rooms, they have like 10,000-person rooms. You can go join a server, like, "Okay, I'm going to join this server." There are 1,000 spots, and they're all full. I've tried to join them a number of times, but they're full most of the day. Which is interesting because that means there are about 10,000 people concurrently using this product at any given time.

Sam Parr

how did ben find this

Shaan Puri

He said, "Oh, this thing's going viral on TikTok." That might be a temporary thing where they're full right now because they're going viral on TikTok. But you know, TikTok is kind of a younger generation platform. It basically speaks to them, which is like, "Hey, you know, you're at home. It's kind of lonely, it's kind of boring, and you don't meet anybody. You don't get to see your friends, you don't get to meet any new people, and you want to focus, but it's hard to focus."

Sam Parr

I wouldn't say it's going viral. The most viewed video has 35,000 views, but they do have traction for sure. Every video has around 7,000 views, so yeah, you're...

Shaan Puri

Getting traction... Other people talk; it's not their own videos. I think it's other people talking about it that went viral. That's how people discovered it. Somebody was saying...

Sam Parr

I'm on the website right now. I go to their website, and it says, "Boost your focus. Join a 24/7 virtual room." I click a room to join; I click the focus room, and it just takes you to a Google Zoom room.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

like I just clicked do it

Shaan Puri

it's gonna mess up the podcast but don't join it

Sam Parr

Well, I just clicked it, and it prompts you for a Zoom room. Now, am I weird or dirty in thinking this is just going to become like... "dicks"?

Shaan Puri

and this is chat roulette I mean

Sam Parr

I think that the younger people, the people who use us, are like better internet people than our generation. So I don't think... I actually like our generation, I think would default to thinking it would be dicks. I think that these folks would not default to that. But is this... it looks like a really innocent and lovely internet community. Is it gonna be ruined with that? That's... that's...

Shaan Puri

Wherever there can be dicks, there will be dicks, right? So I think that definitely there are going to be some people doing it. They're going to have to figure out a way to stamp that out. One thing might be, you know, the big question here is: can they pull off a subscription? Can they get you to pay to have this study buddy kind of setup where you get to focus and meet some new people? Will people pay? I am skeptical of it, but I found it interesting. This is new; I don't know how to feel about it. So I'm not the judge. I'm just kind of like, I'm going to watch this one and see what happens.

Sam Parr

So, a whole bunch of media dorks that I'm friends with are all like, "Oh, media is like the future of education, commerce, and community." They use these stupid buzzwords and say all this nonsense. No! They say, "We're gonna create a 3D thing," and I'm like, "No, no, no, no." You guys are thinking about this all wrong. First of all, colleges are always going to exist, and we're always going to need them, whatever. But this company that I'm seeing, StudyStream, is a crazy unique Gen Z thing. The people I've talked to about this are typically in their thirties and forties. This looks like it was created by an 18-year-old who's in the know. It's totally unique and so interesting. I don't care if this fails; I think it's a really good swing. Very unique, very, very unique, and a great brand.

Shaan Puri

It was like a student project. I don't think this is meant to be like a company necessarily. There's a kind of "About" page on there you could probably check out, but it sort of said this was made by the student group of... whatever place. It just seems kind of like a humble side project that is getting a little bit of momentum. It kind of tells you there's something interesting there. It's not easy to get that level of traction. Well, I don't know if it'll stay... it's probably not going to be the biggest thing in the world, but I thought it was a pretty neat idea.

Sam Parr

I think that this is an incredibly successful project. Who created this? I'm looking for it. Is it a guy named Paul Scott? Did he create this? I just like him Googling the URL; you can't find anything about it. People on Reddit are talking about it. This is crazy! That's, yeah, this is super interesting. It's still very underground.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I thought this thing was cool. That's all I kind of have for today. I have two good ones for the next podcast, so I'm excited about that.

Sam Parr

I found it it this thing has funding

Shaan Puri

it's like a company company

Sam Parr

So I googled StudyStream.live and I went to a guy's LinkedIn page. He's the co-founder of a VC firm called Knowledge Collective. It's a venture builder focused on global impact by disrupting health, education, and sustainability. He has StudyStream.live as one of their portfolio companies, along with: - Study.pow.live - YoungLeaders.digital - KC.institute

Shaan Puri

I think that's all for this episode. Let's wrap it up. What did you think of this one?

Sam Parr

Oh, by the way, everyone said that the recap at the Michael thing was the best thing. So, I guess we should do those more often.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I thought that was good. I hope people stuck around to the end because we didn't... I think we probably should have put a line in at the beginning that was like, "Hey, this is an interview with Michael Saylor. He's an awesome guy for this reason." You know, the interview was a little bit weird. We actually debrief it at the end of the show. If you want to skip to the last 10 minutes or you want to listen to it, that's in the last 10 minutes. But blah, blah, blah... I feel like there's probably a lot of people who got 5 minutes in or 10 minutes in and were just like, "What's going on here? I'm going to listen to something else. I'm going to go do something else." But the people who did make it to the end gave us a lot of good feedback on it. By the way, some of the feedback that we got was like, "Why'd you guys try to bro out with him at the beginning about cars and stuff? He didn't want that." Blah, blah, blah...

Sam Parr

Dude, we actually... What's so funny is we like, planned that. We're like, "What should we do for icebreakers?" And we said like 8 ideas, and I was like, "I can just ask them about cars, right?" And then we're like, "No, that's the best of the worst. Just ask them about cars."

Shaan Puri

yeah I I would agree with them that it didn't work but I would not agree that you should just like not try to get the guest into like like to shake out their pr speak right like it you know more more times than not it's better to get somebody feeling loose and comfortable and laughing and talking about something that they're genuinely like something about themselves then them just showing up for their you know 8th interview of the last week and just saying the same thing again which you know for a guy like him he does a ton of interviews so you know if you wanna listen to one of those like I've listened to many of them they're all the same on youtube you can go listen they're good but they're all the same and so I was hoping to shake them we failed at it and I actually had a kind of an interesting learning afterwards that I'll I'll tell you about I I was thinking afterwards I was training I went and worked out right after the the thing and my trainer could tell my head was kinda somewhere else at the beginning he's like what's up and I was like man we just had this interview with this guy I was so excited about it because I think he's a baller but honestly the interview was kinda awkward and and I felt like we he was he was a little bit flat it didn't seem like he wanted to be there and then I feel like you know I thought we could shake him out of that I thought we could make it good no matter how the guest comes in but like it didn't work the shit we tried didn't work and he was like he asked me a question and I I sort of thought about it he goes you know he got me thinking there's this woman named glow who is the executive coach for a bunch of the top dogs at twitch I think for the coo she's been her exec coach for like 14 years or something like that and she always comes and does these like with the exec team she'll do this like team building thing with us where she'll come to our off-site and normally if you get all the execs in a room it's just very type a it's like we need to talk about our problems we need to talk about our goals and our plans and like how we need to be more cross functional and blah blah blah and when glow is there she won't let you just like stay in the logical part of your brain you have to like get real a little bit you have to be like a more of a human being more more open more emotional you have to be able to say if you're pissed off at somebody she'll get you to actually say what's on your mind and not to stay at the surface so she's like a master and this woman's like I don't know 80 something years old so what she she is like she is so good at this like I remember the ceo emmett he has this like twitch type little like a tick like a kind of like a speaking tick he has where when he's thinking hard or if he's like disagrees with you he'll start like kinda like grabbing this thing on his neck and he'll just do this for like 10 minutes while he's talking to you and I noticed it many people noticed it but nobody's ever gonna say anything to emmett about this like I'm not gonna be like dude what are you doing or like hey you know you do that it's like I would just never say it and nobody ever says it so he always does it but it's like and so this is the first time I knew she was a baller was as soon as he started doing it in one of the big exec kind of off sites she was like emmett knock it off with that thing you're doing on your neck and I was like I was like woah this lady is and like that was just like she was just she didn't even think about it she said it and she said it in such a like harmless way he took no offense he's like oh yeah thanks they just moved on and then for others and then she'll like actually do like some pretty sophisticated techniques where you say something and she'll be like you know you kinda hesitated when you said that and I know you you're a confident guy you typically don't hesitate what's what was that and then you like start pouring your soul out to glow and she like gets you she opens everybody up so anyways I was thinking what would glow have done if she was in that interview with michael sailor and that's when I realized what we should've done we should've just 5 minutes in when we both recognized like hey this is not going super well and I don't know about you I that's how I felt would you say the same about 5 minutes in

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

And so, what we should have done is just been like, "You know, Michael, I have watched a ton of your videos. You are super smart. You have taught me a lot about this space, and honestly, I was really, really excited to have you on. I'm a fan of yours, and I don't say that about most of the guests." I've seen you when you're switched on, and when you explain something, it’s so spot on. It really resonates. I feel like you're not fully switched on right now. We should have just addressed it and said, "Hey, I know you probably do a ton of these, but I've seen you at your best. Can you give us your best? Can you give us your A-game?" I don't know what the phrasing is; it doesn't really matter what the phrasing is, to be honest with you. But I think we should have, at the beginning—not in the debrief while it was happening—found a way to just open you up. Just say, "Hey, look, let's call it what it is right now. What are we doing here? Let's make this great." You know, there are people out here who have never heard of you. I've heard all your interviews, but there are people who listen to this that have never heard of you. They've never heard...

Sam Parr

Of you, we should have 100%. I think what a lot of people don't realize, and what I didn't realize until I got into this game, was that we're trying to be friends with these people, or at least cordial and friendly. It's really awkward to be like, "This is weird, isn't it?" It's like, imagine just having a conversation with a stranger at a party that you met. I mean, that's kind of what we're doing.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

And it's really uncomfortable to do that, but we should have done that. That's what we should do more of.

Shaan Puri

And even now, while I'm rambling, I'm not saying the right thing... it's not coming out right. But what I do know is that *was* the move. There's no... that was the lesson. That was the big gain from that. Like, I thought the episode was going to be amazing. Frankly, I don't think the episode *was* amazing, but an amazing thing came out of it.

Sam Parr

I really liked it

Shaan Puri

I know, but for me it wasn't something I'm proud of. However, the amazing thing that did come out of it was we got into an uncomfortable situation and we got a rep trying something that was hard to do. We kinda failed at the rep, but because of that situation, I now know what I will do next time if I'm ever in that situation again. So... that was the goal that came out of that for me. I wanted to share that.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I would actually want to interview more crazy, interesting, off-the-wall people. I think we just need a few more reps to get in there. Most people we've interviewed have been pretty easy. I mean, Ty Lopez was hard, and I think we actually kicked that one in the ass.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I thought we had beat on that one. That one was also challenging. I was thinking, I actually think you're really good at naturally doing the thing, which is warming the guest up. I think you're very informal and very casual, so that just sets the tone. They're like, "Oh, that's the tone of this thing." You're not trying to give this polished intro. You're just like an interesting guy, right? Like, you're cool. Then they're like, "What?" And you're like, "You know, you're a cool guy. You're clearly smart." I remember with the guest who came on for Deep Sentinel, you were talking about how you wanted to convert your truck into an overlander. He had that in common, and it actually worked out amazing to just talk about something that was not just, "Hey, tell me about your company and why it's so great." Because he knows that pitch; he'll go into autopilot. You got him talking about something that was not autopilot. With others, like the David's Teas guys or whatever, I think you called one of them a "handsome dude" or something. He gets them laughing and gets them out of there.

Sam Parr

I called him really good looking

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you're really good looking. He doesn't expect that, and so I think you do a good job of it. But sometimes, obviously, it's a swing of it.

Sam Parr

It didn't work, dude. Like, Michael alpha'd me. He alpha'd me so hard. I was like, "Yeah, I got this card so fast." He's like...

Shaan Puri

I just like jet

Sam Parr

he's like I prefer jets and yachts I was like alright

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Alright, Daddy, you got me. Abreu, what do you think about today and last week, actually?

Abreu Andrade

One of the comments on that video was, "I've seen dozens of these videos and nobody's ever asked them about that ship." So there you go, Sam was the first to ask about the ship. I think we should have them back on. I think the second time around might be better.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think, Sean, one thing that I don't think I'm handling well - and tell me if you're struggling with it - is with these videos getting out, we're getting way more comments and becoming a little bit more public figures. It definitely does... like, I'm a... I think I'm a pretty tough guy in terms of not letting a lot bother me. It bothers me sometimes. Does it bother you?

Shaan Puri

It's definitely the case that one negative thing I hear is worth 20 positive comments. It doesn't even have to be negative; often it's something totally true or just something ridiculous. But a negative comment does sit in your brain a little bit more. I think there's probably some getting used to that, where eventually it'll just wear off. In any public speaking or any time you put yourself out there, you develop thicker and thicker skin as you go. For us, I wasn't podcasting a little over a year ago. I didn't make content, I didn't put my face on video, and I didn't put my name behind ideas that are good. I didn't try to interview a billionaire or do all this stuff. So, I'm definitely getting thicker skin. On the whole, I don't feel like I'm too sensitive about it because I spend very little time thinking about it. But if I'm honest, a negative comment definitely does reverberate in my ears 10 times more than a positive compliment, which I just kind of brush off immediately and don't even touch base.

Sam Parr

I care about positive compliments. They might as well not exist; I don't even see them. It's not to the point where it ruins my day, but it gives me... it's like a shitty half hour.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

it's like a shitty half hour

Shaan Puri

I also think I'm more than anybody, right? Like when I did the CNBC thing today, I watched the video and in the first 10 seconds, I'm like, "Why the fuck do I blink so much?" But what am I doing? Do I always blink this much?

Sam Parr

if it makes you feel better

Shaan Puri

nobody else looked cool

Sam Parr

I think you looked cool. The way that you look now is like a hundred times cooler than the way you looked a year and a half ago.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, my hair is out. It passed the awful zone of growing it out, and now it's like, "Okay."

Sam Parr

no and you like you used to have a little baby face you just look better I just think you look like a cool person

Shaan Puri

oh thank you appreciate that

Sam Parr

the facial the facial hair I think you look like a cool guy

Shaan Puri

I say you're back I like compliments alright there we go I'm back I'm back at the game

Sam Parr

right up rayu am I wrong he looks way cooler now

Shaan Puri

Than what he's wearing... The thing that you probably don't like is when they compare. When one of them likes... if they love you and they hate me, or they love me and they hate you. Those are the ones that suck because it's one thing just to be a hater, but if it's like, "No, I like that guy, I just don't like this other dude," it's more personal than just being like, "You guys are idiots." It's like... yeah, whatever.

Sam Parr

I think what's interesting, though, is that I don't believe there's a favorite so far. I think they hated you more and liked me more, and I think it's slowly shifted a little bit. So now, I actually think we're equal.

Shaan Puri

we'll see we'll see what happens at the end

Sam Parr

I think we're equal in terms of the dislike and the likes

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's good practice to do this kind of thing. I really recommend it to anybody who... I don't know, like if you have time, if you have that extra hour that you're spending just watching TV, make content. You'll learn a lot of things making content. You'll learn a lot about yourself and what makes other people resonate with something or not. You have to come up with interesting things to say, which means you immediately become a more interesting person. So, I really think making content is something everybody should do for a period of time just so that they can experience it.

Sam Parr

what do you think of bray abreu

Abreu Andrade

I think this part was almost better than the podcast the last 10 15 minutes

Sam Parr

I don't know if that's an insult or a compliment

Shaan Puri

no the podcast was good

Abreu Andrade

But this part made me smile and laugh, and when the podcast can do that as well, that's great. But this podcast didn't, although it was informative. Yeah, I think you guys should take the good with the bad, right? Like, being out there, Sean, you've been able to create this big newsletter, you raised the fund, you got all this positive stuff. So like, a few bad comments... I don't know, the positives way outweigh the bad. I guess that's the way of looking at it.

Sam Parr

do you have a big newsletter now

Shaan Puri

That's like the same. It's like a 2, actually. The thread that went viral just now, the Clubhouse thing, added a few thousand people to it. But let me see what it's at. I think it's like 22,000 or 23,000 subscribers now.

Sam Parr

I will say it makes me feel so validated in my sense of self-worth that I was doing newsletters 5 years ago. Now, all the cool kids, like Sean and Greg, and all the other cool kids...

Shaan Puri

and I literally thought it was stupid what you were doing I was like what is he doing

Sam Parr

Finally, finally, all of the cool kids get it. It took them forever, but I do feel validated.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

and you

Shaan Puri

You did it right. You got it big and you cashed it out, and I think that's the... you know, that's the... you went full... you're lapping us at this. Like, you already did the whole thing and all of us right now are still like: "Oh, we gotta make interesting content. Then we gotta capture that person. We'll get the... let's get their email address, that'll work. Like that's a good idea. And then let's hit them up regularly with something, and then let's figure out how to make money." It's like you've already done like 8 of those steps. We're all just...

Sam Parr

Like, no, I think there's room to build significantly bigger things in significantly shorter times. But I 100% feel validated. I mean, I get I'm wrong all the time. This is just the one time that I've been right, and it makes me feel validated. My sense of self-worth has just boosted.

Shaan Puri

By the way, I tried this thing. Okay, so check out this thing behind me: this Vesta board. Have you seen this before?

Sam Parr

no is it a bitcoin ticker

Shaan Puri

No, no, no, no. I don't know if you could see it because my camera doesn't auto-focus on it. I tried to have this behind me, so on the thing behind me right now, for those who are listening, you can see this. I basically have this giant board. The board is like if you go to a train station and you see those little flip board signs where it says, "This train is at station 6," and then it switches to "Train departs at station 8." It's one of those. It does that thing, and you can put any message on here. You can program it so I could put, like, today's revenue, and it'll keep updating every hour on there. I could put a message or a quote that I like on there. So it's like a piece of art that kind of changes behind me. I tried to get this up for the CNBC thing because I was going on. I bought the domain "thatdudeontv.com" because I was like, "Oh..."

Sam Parr

my gosh that is awesome great idea

Shaan Puri

I was like, "What if I can get a chance to shout something else?" Like, oh dude, if I try to do my name, no one's gonna spell that. No one's gonna remember Sean Japuri. Sean with *two* freaking A's... like that's not gonna work.

Sam Parr

great idea

Shaan Puri

So I got that "dude on tv.com" [domain]. If you go to it, it just redirects you to my website. I had it behind me during the interview so that anybody who saw it could go to it. But the guys on TV were like, "Hey, we need you to move over to the middle." I was like, "Oh shit, it's gonna block my sign." But he said, "No, you need to be centered." I was like, "Oh, okay, whatever." That was my little attempt to [promote my website].

Sam Parr

get any traffic

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I haven't had a chance. This morning's been so busy, dude. I did the CNBC thing, and then I took care of my daughter. Then there's this crazy situation with my wife's e-commerce store, where there's like, you know, crazy theft going on in the warehouse. I'm trying to deal with that and figure out how to handle it. So, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on, but I'm just trying to get back to my paternity dad life and chill with the baby. That's what I want to do. I'm basically just going to chill with the baby for the next few weeks and try to record this podcast, you know, for about one hour a week or whatever, two hours a week that we do this.

Sam Parr

Paul Abreu, A, B, C, D, A. Oh.

Shaan Puri

Alright, we could never leave without Abreu. You're kind of like... you tell us the bedtime story. We only can't get off the air until you give us the validation.