The $5M Question, The Company You Would Build If You Had the Time, VR Therapy, and More
YouTube, Broadway, and $5 Million Questions - December 16, 2021 (over 3 years ago) • 01:06:49
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | 100%. I've been saying this for a long time, which is that anybody who can figure out how to employ the stay-at-home mom workforce is going to make **$1,000,000,000**.
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Sam Parr | Dude, this morning my friend had a 40th birthday party, and he rented out an entire water park.
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Shaan Puri | this morning | |
Sam Parr | From like 7:30 AM till about 10 AM, I went to the park. It was me, Ramon, Neville, and then, you know, David Perrell was there along with a bunch of other guys. It was so fun! We had this whole park to ourselves.
Then I came home, threw up, and went to sleep.
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Shaan Puri | did you caught something because you you threw out a nostalgia why why are you puking | |
Sam Parr |
I didn't like... When I was a kid, I used to love that stuff. Then I did all these slides and went too hard, going through them. It's kind of hard to explain, but you're in these tubes that go in twisties, you know?
Yeah, yeah... It just made me sick to my stomach. I was like, on the ride home, "No, but I think I might throw up. Can you unlock the window?" I can't believe how old I got.
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Shaan Puri | you savage you threw up out the window you didn't | |
Sam Parr | Even though I didn't do it out the window, I came home and I got sick. I just had to lay down. I cannot believe how life has changed. | |
Shaan Puri | like you didn't even drink just just the straight just the action just the movement | |
Sam Parr | the act just like the like well did you go to rides on dis at disney | |
Shaan Puri | like the my my daughter's 2 so I did only like the dumbo ride like the most simple rides | |
Sam Parr | I don't like... I think it's a little crazy. I think I would have done the big stuff, but I think I would throw up at this. I couldn't handle it; it was horrible.
But man, this is why Austin is awesome. So, okay, David Perrell... I don't know him that well, but just two blocks up there's this restaurant. Sarah and I went out to breakfast, and he was there. We knew who each other were, and we just said, "What's good?"
We're not going to hang out. Last night, I had this guy over named Chris Williamson. Do you know who that is?
No? Who's that?
He's like a popular YouTuber, and he just DM'd me. He said, "I'm in Austin; do you want to hang out?" I go, "Yeah, just come over for dinner."
We're just constantly seeing people. It's pretty wild. It's a small, weird town with a lot of cool people here.
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Shaan Puri |
Yeah, that used to be the case in San Francisco. You would just bump into people everywhere that were like-minded, doing the same thing... people who are also in the same game. But I don't know, I moved out of the city now, so I'm in the suburbs. My neighbor is 80 years old, you know? If I bump into him, he's telling me about crochet or something like that. So this is not the same.
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Sam Parr | Well, it's awesome here. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
Do you want to get into some stuff? You have a bunch of really interesting things to talk about, while I have less interesting things to discuss.
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Shaan Puri | yeah let's do it let's pick 1 | |
Sam Parr | Well, actually, let me lead with mine because I have less stuff. This is pretty much the only thing. But you talked to this person, alright? This woman named Rebecca Zamolo. You talked to her, right?
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Shaan Puri | yeah I think you butchered your last name zamarolo I think | |
Sam Parr | zamarolo sorry | |
Shaan Puri | I'll tell you that | |
Sam Parr |
Alright, so I did a call with her as well. I DMed her and we started talking. This woman is amazing! So basically, it's her and her husband - her husband's name is Matt. They're partners on this.
She has a YouTube channel. It's... anyone listening to this, you probably only know about it if you have kids. So it's meant for children. It's like... it's like acting, fictional stuff.
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Shaan Puri |
Age like 6 to 8, maybe 6 to 10-ish, where it's not the absolute beginner kitty Cocomelon type of stuff. It's somewhere in between, and yes, they basically... it's a little show. It's almost like a TV show, you know? Whether it's Blue's Clues or whatever else, they create these videos. These are like 10-minute videos that are entertaining.
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Sam Parr |
On her personal channel, she's got like 10 or 12 million subscribers. She has 7 channels total, so 6 other channels:
- One for her dog
- One for her husband
- One for gaming
- ...and various other types of content
She's releasing 8 videos a week. They have a team of about 6 to 8 people. She told me a little bit about some of the business numbers, and my mind was blown. It was astounding.
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Shaan Puri | unbelievable | |
Sam Parr | It was unbelievable. Did you talk to her about her business? We can't... like, I didn't ask her if I could say anything, and she didn't want that. But... put.
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Shaan Puri | That on blast... but yeah, I like the idea that the dog has 10 times, maybe 20 times more subscribers than we do on YouTube. It's like, "Oh, this is my dog's gaming channel," and it'll have like 400,000 subscribers or something crazy.
So, she gets... YouTube has, I mean, 10,000,000 subscribers is no joke. And the amount of production and content output... like just that thing you said sounded like, "Oh, 6, like 7, 8 videos a week." It's like, okay, so they do a video and release it pretty much every day.
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Sam Parr | but they're like 40 minute long sometimes | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, they're like long videos with storylines. For example, she'll say, "We moved into this new house, and there was this weird door in my bedroom." So, we created this storyline about a secret passage that takes you down, and then there's a villain inside. The villain is my husband.
That's the premise, and then they create a whole play, basically a little screenplay, and they shoot it. While we were talking, she mentioned, "Yeah, downstairs there are like 8 people for our crew—our kind of film, audio, you know, editors, whatever—that are all here." And she's like, "Yeah, my life is crazy."
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Sam Parr | It's wild. She was telling me about different stuff. There's this guy named Darman. His first name is Dar, D-A-R.
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Shaan Puri | him well yeah | |
Sam Parr | okay so you're friends with him | |
Shaan Puri | I'm not friends with him. My wife either knew him in college or something like that. We've done some deals with him and his wife around influencer content.
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Sam Parr |
So he's got 13,800,000 subscribers, and it's kind of lame what he does. Lame in that it's not going to fit what we do, but basically it's like Hallmark channel videos. For example, one was like "Bully Someone Bullies an Autistic Kid and the Reaction is Crazy" or... and it's like a fictional Hallmark video.
I think children watch it, I guess, to understand values. He's got something like 100 employees, and he's brand new to this... like within [the last few years].
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Shaan Puri | like a 3 year thing | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, yeah. Like, 2 to 3 years ago, they had 100 employees, and they pump these videos out. Right now, he's got 6,300,000,000 views. Oh God, it is crazy! Across all their platforms, their videos have been viewed 27,000,000,000 times.
Some of these YouTubers, I am just blown away at how big their businesses are. When I'm thinking about it and I talked to Rebecca, I'm like, "This actually isn't that hard. I could do this."
If you dedicate like 40 or 50 hours a week and start from scratch, you can get big really fast. But you have to treat it like a job, not a hobby—just like anything else. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah like a business not even a job because | |
Sam Parr | you're managing | |
Shaan Puri | A bunch of people... and you gotta have a product for customers and things like that. So, yeah, I totally agree. I'm on his Twitter, and it says, "New videos Monday through Thursday, family-friendly, kid-approved."
Right? This is a product you're offering. We release on these days; we are kid-friendly, rated G. You know, here's what you're gonna get out of this, and that's, you know, my studio company or whatever.
But by the way, before this, I think he was doing like a cannabis company.
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Sam Parr | an ecommerce thing yeah they have an ecommerce and cannabis business like unrelated | |
Shaan Puri | doing all all kinds of stuff | |
Sam Parr |
It's amazing, it's incredible. These YouTubers... I'm blown away because there are so many that you have no idea who they are, but they have these empires that could be potentially making tens of millions of dollars a year.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I also think, you know, it's really hard to do what they're doing. It's not for everybody, and I guess that's kind of obvious. But what I'm trying to say is, even if you could do it, not everybody could do it.
Even if you could do it, it doesn't mean you should do it. This is such a hard thing to do: to get on that treadmill and say, "I'm gonna produce awesome content five days a week, nonstop." If I ever stop, the algorithm punishes me, my subscribers leave my channel, my Patreon supporters stop giving me money, and I don't have ad content for my sponsors.
If I ever, you know, just don't feel like being in front of the camera, it doesn't work. There's no substitute teacher to step in here and take over this business.
So, I think it is a really valuable and powerful business when you have it. Anytime you have the trust of millions of people who enjoy your entertainment, that's great. But man, I don't think it's worth it. I'm not even just saying that theoretically; I've thought about doing it, and I'm like, "There's no way this is worth it for me."
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Sam Parr |
And that's what I said to her. So this guy, Dar... I think he's not like the face. I believe in most of his videos, I don't think... I think he's in close to none of his videos or something like that.
With her, she was like, "Yeah, but we've got all these 7 other channels now, so we've diversified beyond just me."
I agree with you. I think that's a hard treadmill, but I would say to the other side: like everything, if you start anything, you just gotta work at it for a long time.
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Shaan Puri | I think I could share this. When I recorded the episode with Hasan Minhaj, who's a comedian and is on TV shows, he asked me at one point, "What would you do next step if you were me?" I think the episode's coming out soon.
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Sam Parr | and on the podcast you that | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, like, kinda like, okay, from a business point of view, what would you do next?
On the podcast itself, I don't think I gave him a great answer. I think in the podcast we were talking more about how to invest your money, and I was like, "You know, here's kind of the thought process I would go down." It was kind of a boring, lame answer, to be honest.
But afterwards, when we were hanging out, I told him what I think is actually the real answer for this. I said, "You know, everybody should do what fits them. Something that looks exhausting to me might feel amazing to somebody else. So, you know, don't take my word for it, but let's just pretend I'm going to give you my two cents, and you can throw it away if you don't like it."
I said, "If I were you, this touring business model seems awesome. I was at your show; it was, you know, 4,000 seats sold out. Every average ticket is like $150, and you just did that eight times in this city. Then you're going to go to 50 cities on this tour. You could just add it up and be like, 'Wow, you can make a lot of money touring.' And then there's no limit to that.
Yeah, this is a 4,000-person auditorium, but you could do your same set in front of 30,000 people in a bigger stadium, like, you know, Chris Rock or Dane Cook or whoever these other people who do that size tours."
So I said, "You got a business model that works." But the problem is, I was like, "You're a new dad like me. I can't imagine being on the road going to 50 cities. We've been invited to many things, and I've been like, 'Yeah,' and then I'm like, 'Traveling is so hard with little kids. I gotta leave my wife. I don't really want to leave the house for an extended period.'"
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Shaan Puri | Of time right now, I like being home. So I was like, "You know, for me, I would want to get rid of the travel component." I said, "Well, okay, how do you do that? You can't have a substitute teacher come in and say your jokes on stage. That doesn't work."
What I told him afterwards was, "If I were you, I would stash cash and create a two-year runway where I could just work on one thing, and that is creating the next *Hamilton*." He was like, "What?" and I said, "I would use your storytelling and comedic abilities. I would create *Hamilton* for brown people."
Because that's like his audience; his demographic is heavily skewed Asian. I said, "I'll create *Hamilton* for brown people." I don't even know what that means; I'll just take that and say I'm doing that. Then he reacted to it or whatever.
The reason I would do that is because then you get the business model of touring, but it's not you on the stage. You only have to create it once. *Mamma Mia!* has been running for 16 years and has done over $600 million in ticket sales. You know, *Hamilton* has done over $1 billion in ticket sales. It's the same story, the same songs, the same jokes every night, done by a different cast of kind of like, you know, fungible or interchangeable pieces.
So you're not super dependent on any one talent; you can switch it off and switch out people if you need. To me, that seems like an amazing business model. I would do that.
So that's kind of my example of this YouTube thing. You can also do the YouTube thing but in a different way. I think it's cool that Dar isn't the face of his videos, so then it's more like a production company. It's like a TV show he's created, not so much a vlog.
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Sam Parr | Dude, there's this guy. People are gonna laugh at me because I don't know, or if you know who this is. Is it Andrew Lloyd Webber? I forget who it is. I forget the guy's name.
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Shaan Puri | it's is that the fan of the opera guy | |
Sam Parr |
Yeah, and did he do Joseph... something? Jesus... radical? What's that Broadway show where it's like radical Jesus or... it's about Jesus and then they're...
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Shaan Puri | like jesus christ superstar | |
Sam Parr | fucking ed | |
Shaan Puri | you're looking for | |
Sam Parr | yes so we | |
Shaan Puri | Get "School of Rock," "Phantom of the Opera," and "Evita," which are all big hits that I've heard of. I've never heard of "Jesus Christ Superstar," but yeah, that's apparently from the seventies. | |
Sam Parr | yeah he he's a billionaire | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, so I looked up the play model. I was like, "Is the play business a good business?" | |
Sam Parr | it could be | |
Shaan Puri |
And I think it can be... so the top IP definitely accrues like a ton of value. Like I said, if you go look at "The Lion King," it's grossed like $2.1 billion. That's the number one stage play.
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Sam Parr | what's number 23 | |
Shaan Puri | Hamilton is like getting up there; it's like number 2 or 3 now, but it's very new. So, it'll surpass The Lion King if it just keeps going.
There's like Phantom of the Opera, there's Mamma Mia. So, you take the top 10, and they're all doing like $100 million in gross sales.
Okay, now you don't get to keep the gross sales, but I think you could do this in a way that works. So, like the guy who created Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, whatever his name is.
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Sam Parr | yeah but did the did the author get paid too on that one | |
Shaan Puri | So, this guy Lin, who's the creator of it, he has like a 7% royalty or something like that.
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Sam Parr | wow | |
Shaan Puri | So, he's made like tens of millions of dollars off of the profits. They actually crowdfunded the thing.
What they did—I don't have the full story in front of me because I'm just trying to say this off the top of my head from memory—but I think what they did was to raise the money to create the thing. They had a bunch of patrons basically chipping in money, and they all get to keep a profit share after a certain amount of money had been recouped.
That investment has been paid over like 10 times. So, if again, if I was Hasan Minhaj, I'd be like, "There's Web 3 stuff going on. Interesting. A lot of people flush with cash buying into stuff. Okay, cool. Digital tickets, NFTs. What can I do with this?"
I would basically raise $10 million through an NFT presale of the show, with different tiers. You know, some of the tickets have backstage passes attached to them, some of them don't, whatever.
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Sam Parr | that's interesting and and | |
Shaan Puri | I would just let people buy this. I'd raise $10,000,000. I'd use the $10,000,000 to go into a bunker to create whatever the health Hamilton for Black people is, and then I would Hamilton for brown people.
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Sam Parr | people for indians | |
Shaan Puri | Oh yeah, sorry, not black, brown people. So then I would take that show on the road and I would just try to... I would be like, "Yeah, I know it's hard, but being a successful stand-up comedian has a success rate of only 0.1% or whatever, you know, to get to where he's at."
So like, yeah, you want to get to the 0.1% success rate, but this time with a superior business model that doesn't require your face on the stage saying the jokes.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, I think that's sick. I think that's a great idea. I think that actually, that's wonderful. I believe that could be incredibly creatively fulfilling. | |
Shaan Puri | I wish I had said it on the spot it's like one of those when you're in an argument and then like later you're in the | |
Sam Parr | shower that | |
Shaan Puri | Oh, fuck! I should've said that. That's what happened to me. But luckily, we were still hanging out at that moment, so I was able to tell him, you know, then.
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Sam Parr | This is a cool idea. I think in the next couple of episodes, what I'm going to do is actually bring in... I'm going to do some research on the Broadway business or, like, I don't know, theater. I guess what do you call it? Theater?
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Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr |
It's actually an interesting idea. I was always curious because "American Idiot" basically did this. So Billie Joe Armstrong wrote... Green Day wrote "American Idiot" the album, the song. They turned it into a rock musical.
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | you you didn't have to be there they didn't have to be there | |
Shaan Puri | you know exactly | |
Sam Parr | and they got paid a lot from it | |
Shaan Puri | The Book of Mormon... let me see how much the Book of Mormon has made. Right in here, $500,000,000 has been the gross ticket sales of the Book of Mormon.
Then, if you did something like Hamilton or The Lion King, you could take that same intellectual property (IP). Those characters, you have merchandise... you have other things. The key is, you gotta own the IP.
So, I think, you know, when the Book of Mormon launched, it was bringing in $19,000,000 per month. I don't know what South Park generated lifetime, but I bet it's kind of on par with that. Or, you know, I guess South Park is probably a bigger success.
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Sam Parr | yeah oh | |
Shaan Puri |
Wow, South Park! Okay, just in... I didn't know this happened actually. It looks like a couple months ago, the South Park creators signed a **$900,000,000 deal** for more episodes for 6 years with ViacomCBS. That's insane! I didn't know that.
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Sam Parr | that's actually amazing that's amazing | |
Shaan Puri | Right now is the best time ever to be a production company or an IP holder. We said this a long time ago. Remember, I said someone needs to... There are all these platforms now. At the time, it was Netflix, Amazon Prime, and then I said Disney+ was going to come out; it hadn't come out yet.
Then there was Hulu, and there are all these different platforms. Apple TV+ came out. They all want original content. They're all hungry for content, and they are betting **$1,000,000,000** budgeting every single year to buy content. I think Netflix or Amazon or something like that, they're paying like **$6,000,000,000** per year for new content production.
So, it is the best time ever to be a seller of content. At the time, we had said somebody should create YC for content, basically the way that Y Combinator helped produce software startups. It just said, "Hey, two engineers, okay, you're 21 years old, you graduated from Stanford. Alright, come here. This is essentially like a business school, but you're going to create a little business. Maybe you can sell to Facebook or Google, or you'll end up becoming the next Airbnb. You'll go public."
I think the same thing applies to content. You would come in as two creatives. You have a pitch for an idea of a show you want to create. You have three months to basically create the sizzle reel or the pilot or whatever. Then there's a demo day with a bunch of buyers from all the big streaming platforms, and they just buy options on your stuff.
I just think that's a beautiful idea. I still think that's a great business idea, and it's only been proven when South Park signed a **$900,000,000** deal with CBS. Shonda Rhimes, I think, signed a couple **$100,000,000** deals with Netflix to produce six shows. Reese Witherspoon sold her production company, which didn't even have that...
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Sam Parr | for like a 1,000,000,000 | |
Shaan Puri | For like $1,000,000,000, this is, you know, tech startup money that's being sold for TV content, which is amazing. So, you know, that's a... | |
Sam Parr | it's way more fun than building software | |
Shaan Puri | Way more... way cooler! Way cooler than that.
I think today Hasan Minhaj also announced his production company. He created a production company today and announced it. I think it's called 186K Productions or something like that, which is smart.
Again, once you see Reese Witherspoon and other people's production companies selling, we had Rob Dyrdek on, and I think he said he sold his production company for $200 million or something like that.
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Sam Parr | that he I think he said he's walking away with a 100 him personally | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, so I think, you know, at least... let's say at least $100 million, probably closer to $200 million. He sold his production company, which basically just produced shows for MTV. That's a great business to be in, and I think it's only going to get better for like this kind of 5-year [period]?
And then these platforms are going to go away, like Paramount+ and, you know, like Quibi died, you know?
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Sam Parr | paramount + what the fuck is that that's good love paramount + | |
Shaan Puri | why do you love paramount what what's the one show you love on there there's gotta be 1 | |
Sam Parr | They have a lot of documentaries and stuff on Paramount. It's like older, it's a little bit old school.
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Shaan Puri | or like peacock you are you a subscriber to peacock | |
Sam Parr | hell yeah | |
Shaan Puri | oh my god dude what's your peacock dude | |
Sam Parr | Peacock... I literally was just laying in bed when I wasn't feeling good. I watched *The Office* on Peacock. Peacock is the only place that you can get *The Office*. | |
Shaan Puri | nbc's one right yeah | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, you could use "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation." It's the only place you can get it.
So, I use it for "Parks and Recreation," "The Office," and "AP Bio." Have you seen "AP Bio"?
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Shaan Puri | no I don't know what that is | |
Sam Parr | it's like with the | |
Shaan Puri | class I took took in high school | |
Sam Parr | it's like the main guy from it's always sunny you know dee's brother dennis | |
Shaan Puri | yeah yeah yeah | |
Sam Parr | it's sick but peacock's good man peacock it's just it it all costs so much money it all costs | |
Shaan Puri | so much money it all | |
Sam Parr | costs so | |
Shaan Puri | much money looking to shit on one of them I thought peacock was safe but I guess no | |
Sam Parr | peacock's cool dude | |
Shaan Puri | sponsored by peacock I guess I don't know what's going on here I pay | |
Sam Parr | I pay for all | |
Shaan Puri | of them man a free subscription | |
Sam Parr | do you wanna do some let's dude you have so much stuff here let's just bang through it | |
Shaan Puri | yeah let's do one okay so let's do | |
Sam Parr | do this tweet thing | |
Shaan Puri | Okay, let's do this tweet. So, this guy Suhail, who created Mixpanel and is now creating Mighty, which is a cool company. Have we talked about Mighty, by the way?
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Sam Parr | yeah mighty browser it's pretty awesome | |
Shaan Puri |
I think we talked about it, so yeah, let's skip that for now. Anyways, good entrepreneur, cool guy, whatever... He tweeted this thing out, and my tweet's not loading right now, but I think it was something along the lines of...
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Sam Parr | It said, "What's a company you'd start if you had more energy, time, or a lot more money?" Right? So, which?
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Shaan Puri | Is basically like, if you took away your **bullshit** reasons, what's the thing you really should be working on right now? I find that to be a very interesting question.
I have another question that's similar to that, so maybe we'll do both of these questions today. I went through the replies, and I want to read you five of my favorite replies. I want you to just give me your gut reaction: **hell yeah**, **hell no**, or **I don't fucking get it**.
Okay, so the first one came from Gary Tan, who's a big shot investor guy. He was the first investor in Coinbase and made like **$1,000,000,000** on that. He said, "A reference check network." Do you know what that means just when I say just that?
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Sam Parr | Yeah, so the problem being solved is how to get, like, if he's the only one to invest in someone. Hey, does anyone know if this person is honest?
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Shaan Puri | Right, or you're hiring somebody and you want to know, "Okay, yeah, you worked at this place. How do I get a reference check?"
So normally today, you ask the employee, and they give you three names. Of course, those are the three people that are only going to say good things, which is kind of annoying in the first place. You can't really get the right people. Then you kind of have to bug them. There's no real incentive for them, except maybe to help out their ex-employee.
Then you have to think of whatever questions you're going to ask. Most people ask pretty poor questions, but there are better ways of doing it. In the end, you're just trying to get this fuzzy picture of, like, "Is this person any good or not?"
So that can be done better, and I think he had some solution in mind, which is something on the blockchain. It was just like, I am able to have people who are linked to me. Somebody can go and request a reference from them. Maybe there's a little payment made; I'm not sure. Then they share information, but it's not publicly shared. It's just shared privately with me, given the context of, you know, who the employee is and what this job is.
So I thought that was alright. I thought it was really specific. One that I thought was cool because there was a lot of talk about solving clean energy, and I don't really know what to do with that idea. It's not that that's a bad mission; it's just like, "What the heck am I supposed to say about that?"
Okay, somebody else said, "Create the largest employer of high school students in the U.S." What do you think of that?
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Sam Parr | Sick, sick! And yeah, I mean, that sounds awesome. Yes!
So, what is that now? McDonald's? Yeah, I mean, in that... yeah.
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Shaan Puri | probably honestly I guess | |
Sam Parr |
It might be like McDonald's, I don't know what that would be. I talked to these guys who were building a company - I forget what it was called, you probably know what it was - but it's basically like an Indeed.com, but it's meant for teens and it looks like TikTok. And like Panda Express and McDonald's and PacSun were all advertising on it, and you could scroll through and look at job opportunities for you.
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Shaan Puri | I wanna say it was called like peach something or like lemon something or something like that I don't | |
Sam Parr | Remember, I don't recall, but Panda Express was spending a ton of money on it. So anyway, yeah, I think that's cool. | |
Shaan Puri | I think it's a great idea it's a great idea I think it's a great prize to go for | |
Sam Parr | I actually would say that this is like an interesting framework which is who do you want to employ | |
Shaan Puri | 100%. I've been saying this for a long time: anybody who can figure out how to employ the stay-at-home mom workforce is going to make **$1,000,000,000**.
If you just work backwards from the fact that there are a bunch of moms who are at home, they want to earn a little extra income. It doesn't have to be a ton; they want to maintain the flexibility of being able to stay at home and work—not necessarily a fixed number of full-time hours or the same hours every day.
Who can solve that problem? There's only one example that I know of that's solving that problem. I don't know if you know any.
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Sam Parr | for moms | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr | maybe user voice dot com I think they do it user testing user testing dot com | |
Shaan Puri | that that's the one I was thinking of | |
Sam Parr | oh is it really my mom | |
Shaan Puri | my mom worked for them yeah | |
Sam Parr | so oh my god it was so funny | |
Shaan Puri | I knew about it | |
Sam Parr | What a random thing that we both knew that! So, I would say, **UserTesting.com** is an amazing company, by the way. You just pay someone to go through your website.
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Shaan Puri | Public, by the way, how cool is this? They just went public and my mom's stock... and my mom was like...
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Sam Parr | you know say what it is | |
Shaan Puri | User testing is basically a service where I have an app or a website. I want to know where it's confusing for users. The design makes sense to me, but sure enough, when somebody else is using it, they're confused. They can't find the thing they want.
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Sam Parr | and they just record your mom like scrolling through the site | |
Shaan Puri | So, they have an army of testers, which is just a requirement to be a normal person. We do not even want you to be highly skilled; you're supposed to represent the average customer.
They have a bunch of people, and they send them a little camera that records their finger on their phone. Basically, it records them as they talk out loud.
You give a task, like, "Find a Christmas gift for your dad and put it into your cart." They respond, "Okay, I'm looking for the gifts for Dad section. I don't see it."
They start scrolling and say, "I don't see the button that says 'Menu.' Oh, there's the menu! Dad, dad... oh, it's 'Men's.' Okay, I'll click 'Men's.' Yeah, I don't get how this is sorted. Oh, this is by new release."
They just talk through what's confusing to them, and that 15-minute video goes to the company. The company gets to watch it and share it internally. Their researcher basically shares it with a designer or the engineers.
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Sam Parr | and they pay like $300 for it right | |
Shaan Puri | No, no. Each test is like $25 or $30. Now, it's all switched to subscription, but originally it was $25 to $30 per test. The tester gets $10 for doing the test, and the company keeps $15 to $20.
So, the tester's like, "Cool, I can do like 4 of these in an hour." A bid would come online, like, "Oh, Chipotle wants you to test their new mobile menu." You would just have to quickly say yes, and then you qualify. They're looking for women, you know, ages 40 to 55 in the U.S., and you're like, "Yeah, great! I qualify. I can take this test."
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Sam Parr | and that's a $1,000,000,000 company now its market cap is over $1,000,000,000 did your mom get paid did they give her shares | |
Shaan Puri | Yes, awesome! So basically, my mom first started off as a tester. Then she got hired by the company to review the other testers because you have to do quality control.
She became someone who would watch the tests and give feedback to the testers, like, "Hey, your audio sucks," or "You're mumbling," or "You didn't follow the instructions of the test. One more strike and you're out of the testing pool." That was her job.
She was the oldest person in the company. I think my mom is 63 now, and she just retired this year. So she was there at 62 years old. My mom had Slack and knew how to use all the tools, like Jira. She knew what a Jira ticket was. It was crazy! Who knew?
She got some shares and always told me, "Should I?" I was like, "Yeah, you want the shares for sure." Then she would tell me, "Hey, the CEO did an all-hands meeting. He said this, this, and this." I said, "That sounds good. This company is doing well."
I should have bought secondary stock in the company during that time because I had basically inside info that this company was pretty good. This is a good quality company, and I was a user of the service as well.
So, it goes public the other day, like two weeks ago. I asked my mom, "How many shares do you have?" She looks in Carta and tells me the shares. I'm like, "Mom, you made $150,000 off of that!"
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Sam Parr | this no way and then | |
Shaan Puri | She's like, "Yeah, because her strike price was super low. She was there for like 4 or 5 years." And so I was like, "That's amazing!" My mom was so happy. I know she's gonna have... | |
Sam Parr | to get | |
Shaan Puri | out of money | |
Sam Parr | And so, this is why I think this model of "Who do you want to employ?" is actually interesting. There are two reasons for this.
First, it's motivating. For example, if the majority of your employees are women who have stayed at home for a long time and now want to get back to work, that's incredibly motivating. It's like, "Look, we're serving our employees." It's very noble and cool.
Second, let's say you want to hire ex-cons or something. It's interesting. Or, if you're going to hire a bunch of 16-year-olds for their first job, you can train them how to be men and women and prepare them for the rest of their lives. It's actually incredibly cool and fascinating.
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Shaan Puri | There's one I want to look up the name to give them a shout out here. So it's "Hire Military Wives" as EAS.
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Sam Parr | That's awesome! It's called... and it also helps with expectations. So, you know what your... what's it called?
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Shaan Puri | squared away | |
Sam Parr | squared away and it's | |
Shaan Puri | Basically, a woman... I think her story is that she... I'm assuming she was in this position; I don't really know. But basically, it's military spouses. I was like, "This is a great idea!" Because, you know, these are our employees. They want this work. It's great to provide for their family while, you know, the husband's away. I just think it's awesome.
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Sam Parr |
So it helps significantly with expectations because then user testing knows, "Alright, we're mostly going to be hiring 50 to 60-year-old women who probably don't have a ton of experience with Slack and Jira." So now we know what we're getting into, or we...
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Shaan Puri | know the processes we know how to hire the culture is good they all get along yeah because it's like like mindedness | |
Sam Parr |
Or if we're hiring a ton of 17-year-old high school kids, we know like, "Here are the deficiencies and here's where they kick ass." Or if we're hiring guys out of jail, we know like, "Here's where they're going to struggle, here's where they're not going to struggle." So that's cool.
What are some other great ones on here? That's a good one. It's kind of vague but pretty cool.
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Shaan Puri | I'll do two more, okay? We'll do one on VR therapy.
So, VR is not there for mainstream use cases. The average person is not coming home and spending a couple of hours in VR. There are a few people who do it; they like to play games. But VR is really awesome for training.
I know medical schools buy it so that doctors can be in the operating room and experience a highly lifelike simulation. I think therapy is a good application too. Being able to put a headset on and really change your environment, change your state of mind, and role-play through scenarios or talk to somebody and feel like you're there with them is kind of amazing.
I look forward to seeing VR with these really specific high-value use cases until the mainstream thing is ready.
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Sam Parr | Dude, I'm down with that. I also think I could conquer a bunch of phobias with that, right? So, I'm down. I think that's cool.
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Shaan Puri | Like I know that athletes are doing this. You know, there's this great... we both love UFC and MMA, and the NFL is this way also.
There's this phrase that Conor McGregor's coach always says: "You want to upgrade the software without damaging the hardware." So, it's like how do you train and improve without putting strain on the body and hurting yourself? Because training is so physically grueling.
One way that they're doing it in the NFL is with VR headsets. The quarterback, instead of just watching film, is first-person reading the defense without having to go stretch, get their ankles taped up, or go out on the field and potentially sprain a knee or get hit.
It's like they get to practice reading the defense and all the different coverages just in VR. Then, when they get out there on the field, it's that same first-person view, being able to turn your head and only seeing parts of the field. It's pretty much like a one-to-one recreation. I think that's kind of awesome. I want to know which company is doing that. I'm sure there's a company doing it.
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Sam Parr |
My favorite videos on YouTube to watch right now are where they take folks who play sim racing (racing simulations) with VR sets. These people have amazing setups at home that are like $10,000, $20,000, or even $50,000. Then they go and put them in a real race car and... they really suck.
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Shaan Puri | they're good | |
Sam Parr |
No, they do really well, you know. They... it takes them like, in all the videos I've seen, 5-10-20 minutes to get used to the noise and get used to the smell and just the slightly different sensation. But they pick it up super fast. And so it's guys who have actually never raced before, and they get them out there and they give them the fast cars, and they pick that shit up. It's pretty amazing.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, like I think even stuff as boring as sales could be practiced in a much more lifelike way. I know that teachers are doing this for how to talk to students about if they're feeling depressed or if they're being bullied.
It's like you sit there, a student walks in, you can see their face, they're saying something, and then you have to react. You have to kind of choose what to say live. It makes it so you get to practice before you go do the real thing.
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Sam Parr | that's cool any other good ones | |
Shaan Puri | There were a couple of other ambitious ideas. One is **terraformation**, which we've talked about before. This involves taking deserts on Earth and turning them into rainforests, basically creating a green oasis of trees. This process helps to clean up the environment by absorbing a significant amount of carbon dioxide from the air, making it more breathable.
By learning how to terraform—essentially transforming unlivable land into livable land—we can benefit Earth. Additionally, this knowledge will be crucial when we eventually reach Mars and need to make it a hospitable place. I thought that was kind of interesting.
There's another idea related to this: **drone-based wildfire fighting**. This involves sending in drones to put out wildfires, which I think is pretty cool too.
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Sam Parr | I think that's great. Those are really neat. What's another one? What's this legal question for $5,000,000?
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Shaan Puri | this I thought was cool alright so there's so as you know I'm a tiktok binger nowadays and tiktok is the only social media that like I when I leave it I feel better than when I came in everything else like facebook feel awful at the end instagram I feel like oh man my brain is rotting twitter I'm like that was a waste of time just dealing with a bunch of people's bad thoughts and tiktok is really I I cannot believe how much I enjoy it like it's is it just entertainment addictive it's entertainment but there's a lot of education like I learned a lot of shit off tiktok now it's all little life stuff it's like you know like I don't know stupid examples but like hey if you ever take a photo and you see that like you know where you're like when you take a photo your eye can have like a red like you know you look kinda evil like the camera has that flash or whatever like a red dot if that's ever white you should go to the doctor because there's actually like a a very like there's a chance that that's a very bad thing and then this guy was replying saying actually I had heard that I saw the photo like the end of that I went to the doctor it turns out I had eye cancer he's like I actually have my eye removed but like it saved my life that we had found it early and I don't know this is random shit that to like you know just quickly seeing like how an avocado gets to your door it's like oh cool this farmer farmer tiktok is dope like parenting tiktok is great it's like when your kid is just not listening how many times have you done this I'm like yeah fuck that's me and they're like here's a better way to say it I'm like thanks you know parent I never had to teach me how to do this really important thing in my life like you just learn little shit so anyways I was on it and there's this account called legal baddie legal baddie is just like some hot lawyer and she's like here's my question for you she goes if I told you that you were gonna make $5,000,000 a year as your salary regardless of what you do so you're just you you were gonna work 30 40 hours a week you're gonna make a fixed rate of $5,000,000 a year what would you choose to do as your work like you still have to work to get it what would you choose as your job and obviously this is like you know a hidden question of kinda like what do you actually really enjoy to do if money wasn't an issue and so and but you still had to work right so there's one of like oh if I had $100,000,000 well then I probably maybe I wouldn't work at all like maybe I would just do blah blah blah this is like you have to work to earn this but no matter what job you do you're gonna earn the same amount so which job do | |
Sam Parr | you want I'm looking at her profile I love legal baddie I love this woman | |
Shaan Puri | why it's just her luck what what do you like | |
Sam Parr | she's just like | |
Shaan Puri | she's a baddie | |
Sam Parr | she's she's this this one is a lawyer is that her her shtick | |
Shaan Puri | yeah she's a I think she's a lawyer otherwise | |
Sam Parr | I just think it's she's structured it | |
Shaan Puri | legal means something else I don't know what's going on | |
Sam Parr | if this | |
Shaan Puri | woman 19 and that's why she's the only person | |
Sam Parr |
Lawyer from UCLA Law, I think it's amazing. She's probably making more money off TikTok and... I particularly like it with women, but I like it with men too, where they talk about cool shit like passing the bar exam or whatever. But then she's got a whole bunch of nail stuff.
I always think it's cool when you can break that barrier of... smut and cool stuff, and also legitimate life-helping content. I always thought that was cool.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. I'm with you. She has 500,000 followers on here, and like, you know, her top videos have...
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Sam Parr | Yeah, she's like doing purposely "hot girl" stuff and then also telling you how to get into law school. I always say, I always think that's cool.
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Shaan Puri | Law school, and then Downer Dog, then back to a quick bar exam tip, and then back to my favorite name.
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Sam Parr | And like, here's a bit... here's a pretty racy bikini video of her, right? So, yeah.
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Shaan Puri | She knows what she's doing, right? Let's give credit where credit is due. She is giving the market what it wants. I love this differentiated approach.
She's not just one of the, like, TikTok hot girls in a bikini or whatever. She layered it with... and that, like, the skill stack, as you call it, right? How rare is that? There are not a lot of lawyers on TikTok, and there are not a lot of hot girls. She might be the only one, right? So she's competing in a pool of one.
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Sam Parr | And there's this video of her talking in front of, like, C-SPAN or some type of press. I love this! Anyway, I love her.
So, what's the question? $5,000,000. What would your job be?
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Shaan Puri | What would you do for your job if you were for sure going to get paid $5,000,000? What would you choose to do for that 30 to 40 hours a week?
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Sam Parr | what's your answer | |
Shaan Puri | no I wanna hear yours first | |
Sam Parr | I don't know | |
Shaan Puri | what comes to mind | |
Sam Parr | $5,000,000 a year and you have to have like a 40 hour a week job right | |
Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr | Definitely something involving charity. So, like, something involving not making money. If I can get $5,000,000 and all I have to do is spend time running a dog shelter or...
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Shaan Puri | that's awesome | |
Sam Parr | I would do that in a heartbeat if I could pay 5 not | |
Shaan Puri | what I thought you were gonna say | |
Sam Parr |
If I could do $5,000,000 to run like a dog rescue, I would do that in a heartbeat. Or to help inmates or ex-inmates find jobs, I think that would be exciting. So, or even like... everything we just discussed about helping stay-at-home moms get employment. Anything that involves helping people and not making money, I would do that.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, that's good. Mine's kind of similar, but I would probably teach. I just love teaching.
Now, the question is, what would I teach? I think I would teach kind of like business and life skills to people who are really motivated to have a great life and a successful business career. Those are the people I like hanging out with the most.
The thing I enjoy doing the most is basically learning new things and then packaging that knowledge up to teach it to others. I love answering questions and talking things through with people to help them figure stuff out.
So, I think that's probably what I would do. But I feel like your dog shelter idea made me think, "Oh, maybe there's an even more lightweight option for pure enjoyment."
Actually, I know what it would probably be: I would be a basketball coach, or I would be a player in a basketball league. That would be amazing! The absolute most fun I have is playing basketball, and the second best would be coaching a basketball team.
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Sam Parr | This woman, a legal baddie, has another question: Would you rather have $10,000,000 today or $100,000,000 in 5 years? That's the easiest question ever.
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Shaan Puri | which one would you take | |
Sam Parr | a 105 | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. 105 is great. If it's 50, I think it's a lot closer.
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Sam Parr | it gets a lot closer at 50 because 50 could turn into a 105 years in a bull market | |
Shaan Puri | 10:10 will turn into 20, but also you got to have 10 now. You don't have to wait 5 years of your life, which is, you know, pretty significant.
But yeah, I think my answer is I'd be on some Gordon Bombay shit, and I'd go do my Mighty Ducks thing with some, like, you know, high school team.
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Sam Parr | I think that's a good answer you wanna do a few more | |
Shaan Puri | Let's do something else. Let's brainstorm a couple of ideas for a business.
Alright, here's a problem I just ran into: sending a gift to your production partner or factory partner overseas. Sending gifts in general is hard, but sending gifts overseas is even harder. The act of mailing things can be complicated. For example, I wanted to send them a bottle of wine for Christmas, but I thought, "I can't mail that. How do I do this?" I had to look up UPS's alcohol shipment rules and make sure it doesn't crack.
So, I was searching for a way to send my factory a gift in China. I wondered if there was a version of DoorDash in China where I could just browse what they have, push a button, and have it delivered. I actually found this really janky website—I'm going to find the name of it—but it looked like an old-school Craigslist site. It said, "We send gifts to your business partners in East Asia."
I thought, "That's all we do!" You can browse through about 50 gift baskets, ranging from extravagant options to more modest ones. You can choose to spend $40 or $4,400. They just say, "Great! What do you want?" Their address field is formatted for Chinese addresses, so it's optimized. You have confidence that they will actually deliver the goods.
I'm not going to have to worry about logistics. I can just put in some money and have a thoughtful gift for my factory partner. I like this idea because there are probably many people like me searching for this solution. For instance, it's Christmas, and I want to get a gift for my business partner.
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Sam Parr | do they not have can you not order an amazon thing and send it to china | |
Shaan Puri |
No, I don't think so. Oh, I don't know... maybe I could have just done something as simple as that. I don't think so, but maybe there's... maybe I needed to go on Taobao and figure that out.
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Sam Parr | yeah but that's a pain in the ass because I don't know what taobao is | |
Shaan Puri | Exactly! This was like, "Pay with PayPal, you're done." I was like, "Great! This is what I wanted."
It was also organized as a gift, so it wasn't just an item where they're going to get it in a shabby Amazon box. It looks like a gift; it's in a gift-wrapped package, which is nice. That's the goal of what I was trying to do. It's like edible arrangements to China is what I was trying to do, essentially.
So I sent it, and I was just thinking you could do this and then do cold outreach to like the 1,000,000 Shopify stores and be like, "Hey, you know what's a good idea? You should send your factory, you know, your manufacturer..."
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Sam Parr | a gift basket | |
Shaan Puri |
A gift basket, and you know, it costs $6... it goes a long way. You know these people, they're the key to your business and [inaudible]. Blah, blah, blah.
Gifting is a big thing in China. It shows respect. Don't be rude. And you could do that three times a year, like, "Oh, it's..."
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Sam Parr | that's great you know | |
Shaan Puri |
Chinese New Year, it's whatever else, and I think just through outbound [marketing] you could create like... probably like a $1,000,000 a year revenue business. Maybe $3,000,000 a year in like 2 weeks. I think you could create that.
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Sam Parr |
So, listen to this crap. The other day we got a mattress delivered to our front door, a Zinus mattress. It's huge and it had Sarah's name on it. I go, "Sarah, why'd you order a mattress?" She goes, "I didn't order a mattress." And I'm like, "We gotta find out who sent this mattress."
We can't open this up because if you open it up, it's a pain in the butt. We're just gonna keep it in the box, maybe send it back, or we'll sell it for like $200 or give it to a friend.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, so here's like a heavy, huge box. It's so big that you can't open it, and you don't know where it came from.
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Sam Parr |
Yes, and it says Zinus, so I know it's a cloud mattress. I don't even know what size of mattress it is. Okay, I gotta open it up.
And she posts on Twitter, and Nick Huber [of] Sweaty Startup says, "That was from me." And I go, "Oh, very funny," and he goes, "No, that was seriously from me." I... we wanted you to know I invested in his storage business.
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Shaan Puri | yeah | |
Sam Parr |
And he said, "We wanted you to be able to sleep well at night knowing that your money is being taken care of."
I was like, "Well, I appreciate the sincerity. That's lovely... Yeah, who the hell has a... I don't have like a spare..."
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Shaan Puri | an un mattress bed | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, like I don't have an un-mattress bed. What were you thinking? Maybe a blender would have been cool, or like just chocolate... like, like... | |
Shaan Puri | a pillow | |
Sam Parr | A pillow would have been nice. Yeah, like a fancy pillow. I could use another one of those. He gave me an extra mattress, so we've been texting our friends, "Does anyone need a mattress?" | |
Shaan Puri | he he created a pain in the ass for you yes I'm like dude just | |
Sam Parr |
"Send me chocolate-covered nuts, or you know what I mean... like give me some flavored... like some weird fruit or something. I don't want a fucking mattress!" He sent me a mattress. I've got this huge mattress in the front door.
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Shaan Puri | sound problem | |
Sam Parr | and I've got guests coming on friday and I'm like looking like a redneck with this mattress on | |
Shaan Puri | my front | |
Sam Parr |
We have a bed. They're staying in the bed that's already in the guest room, and I'm like, "Look, I look like an idiot. I look like a country bumpkin with just a mattress on my front door." And I'm like, "Just ignore that. We'll get rid of it."
So I'm on board with better gifting, Nick Huber. This will make it to you. I really appreciate the gesture though, it was very nice. But maybe like peanut butter cups and like chocolate-covered nuts and like some chocolate turtles would be more sufficient.
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Shaan Puri | I love it! Alright, so that's one quick idea: the factory gift idea with the outbound outreach to every FBA and Amazon seller. Sorry, Shopify seller. I think you could side hustle your way into $1,000,000 a year doing that.
Okay, here's another random thing: have you ever seen EMF-protected pants?
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Sam Parr | is that for your computer on your balls | |
Shaan Puri | Is that your phone? Yeah, no EMF. It might be EM... something else. Electromagnetic... whatever radiation I'm on.
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Sam Parr |
I'm bored with this though. I hate... I don't know, it's EMF. The studies... I don't know exactly what it is, but basically having your laptop on your lap and that heat is not... I don't know if it's radiation or what it is, it has proven to kill your sperm.
Another thing: wearing tighty-whities, you know, like tight underwear where your balls are against your body, that actually kills your sperm because it heats your body up too much.
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Shaan Puri | let them baby swing you know what I mean | |
Sam Parr | you | |
Shaan Puri | can't you can't be you can't be you can't the bird's gotta fly yes you | |
Sam Parr | can't keep | |
Shaan Puri | Them in the net... So, I've noticed that there are a few people in my life who are like the canary in the coal mine. They get really into stuff, and when they first say it, I'm like, "Why are you even thinking about this? Why do you even care about this?"
You're one of these people, by the way. It's like, dude, Sam just got really into mobility and stretching. He's gotten really serious about ripped dudes who want to stretch and be super mobile. Or he'll be on this kick about really wanting toughness challenges. He thinks life is too good and he's too soft, so he's craving this core primal challenge in his life.
Is that just Sam being Sam? Actually, what it ends up being is Sam being ahead of the curve by like three years. It's going to become quite popular. There are a few people in my life that are like that. My brother-in-law is like this, you're like this, and my trainer, I've learned, is one of these people too.
He'll say something and he's super into this thing. I'm like, "I've never..." He'll be like, "Oh yeah, dude, I take kratom." I'm like, "Oh, kratom? What the fuck is kratom?" Do you know what kratom is? No? It's basically... So, he's big into these supplements, nootropics, which, you know, the promise of them is amazing, but you can't tell if they work or not. People who believe in them are like, "Oh, this feels great."
But it's that thing we talked about before. It's like the best product in the world is CBD for dogs because...
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Sam Parr | yeah it's the best | |
Shaan Puri | You think you're giving them, you know, pain relief, but you'll never know if it does anything. And like CBD for humans is like that too, but the dogs can't talk.
So, there's a whole bunch of these nootropics or supplements. It's like, "Oh yeah, I take lion's mane, I take, like, you know, fucking milk of magnesia." I don't know, whatever. It's just a bunch of random names.
Later, he was telling me about like Tongkat Ali, and then Dr. Huberman came on. He's like, "Yeah, I don't do testosterone anymore. I get it from these other, like, more natural herbs, like Tongkat Ali and whatever." I was like, "Dude, there's only two people in my life that have ever said this name, Tongkat Ali, and like, it's these two people."
I've just noticed he's ahead of the curve on a lot of these, whether it's fashion, fitness, supplements, nootropics, you know, books that he's into, and so on.
On the supplement side, he's really into this thing called kratom, which is kind of like Advil. You don't take it instead of Advil; it helps with your aches and pains without the side effects of like...
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Sam Parr | that like thin your blood or hurt your kidneys | |
Shaan Puri | yeah like you're bad for your liver and shit like that | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | And so, anyway, I feel where I'm going with this. Okay, so he's like, "Oh yeah, dude, he's got his fashion line coming out," where he's making clothes. Basically, I'm his only customer right now because it's not released, but I just get to have a bunch.
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Sam Parr | of his shit and I'm like oh this is amazing | |
Shaan Puri | He's like, "Yeah, the shorts have pockets with EMF protection." And I was like, "What?"
He's like, "Oh yeah, I'm big into, you know, why not have EMF protection?"
I asked, "From what?"
He's like, "Yeah, your phone's in your pocket all day. It's right next to your balls. You just don't want that, you know? I want to have kids. I don't want to have you having all this stuff there."
And I'm like, "I guess you're right. That's pretty sick."
It's so normal that everybody puts their phones in their pockets. I'm like, "Is there something to be worried about?"
I call this "FUDware," where FUD stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. So, did you make...
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Sam Parr | that up | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, there's a general trend I have creating here called **FUD wear**. I think that FUD wear is going to be anything that's like, "Oh yeah, you know, like blue blocker light glasses, EMF radiation-proof pants."
You know, it's not to say that any of this is false; it might be totally true. But it's basically preying on people. When you tell them, "Oh, did you know that parabens? You should never have aluminum in your deodorant," they're like, "What? Aluminum? Am I gonna die? Alright, I'm never using Old Spice. I'll use Native deodorant instead. It's paraben-free."
It's like, "What the heck's a paraben?" But I guess I've heard parabens are bad for you. You know, like that guy who came on the show and he was like, "Oh yeah, I don't drink out of plastic because of phthalates."
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Sam Parr | I don't drink out of plastic either | |
Shaan Puri | And it's like, but it's still super common. The smart people I know are starting to say this word, **phthalate**. I never heard this word before, but I'm starting to hear it. This tells me that there are a bunch of people who, as they become aware, are going to start to steer away.
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Sam Parr | or teff or teflon pans | |
Shaan Puri | right exactly like the nonstick or whatever | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | So, I think there's just a whole class of products that are just **FUD** wear. You could just find the next FUD of like, what are people afraid of? It's like, "Oh, they want to do UV cleaning of their phone and their toys because UV kills, you know, COVID." And, you know, UV red lights are covered.
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Sam Parr |
One, food wear. That's fantastic! So a few more... like the water filters. There's those charcoal silver water filters that are everywhere. I think Justin Mares said he tried to get a built-in... like a huge one so all of his home water goes through this thing. What does he call it?
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Shaan Puri | He has, like, intense... I asked him, "What do you do for water?" He goes, "I go way over and I have, like, a 12-foot tall system that's filtering."
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Sam Parr | my mouth is it called like bur it's called like bur berkeley or berkeley I don't know | |
Shaan Puri | What it's called, but when Rob Dyrdek was on, he said that too. He's like, "I'm making a shower head filter company." Because like, "Oh yeah, what if I found out that I'm showering in toxic chemicals? Well then, I'm gonna buy this attachment that purifies it."
If you just put a little seed of doubt into my brain, I'm gonna be like, "Yeah, why not? I'm just gonna add on the side of safety."
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Sam Parr | And in the same realm with that, I actually would want to look into this. I think laptops on men's laps is a massive issue.
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | I I like it it could potentially be quite big | |
Shaan Puri | Just make a whole company focused on protecting men's balls from modern-day harm. It's like, "Yeah, here's a laptop tray that's made out of kryptonite." I was like, "You can't pass through this."
"Here's your shorts, put your... put it in this pocket. It won't fry your balls. You know, wear this underwear because your underwear has cotton phosphors."
It's like, "What's a cotton phosphor?" I don't know, Sean just made it up, but it's bad for your balls. And so it's like, did...
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Sam Parr | you just make | |
Shaan Puri | it up | |
Sam Parr | just good | |
Shaan Puri | sounded good right dude it's pretty fun | |
Sam Parr | The heat... it does freak me out. Like, having that heat, I feel it and I'm like, "Oh, this is horrible for me." So, I have a pad; I put a pad on my lap.
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Shaan Puri | A small, you know, pomade you need to apply to your balls every night before you sleep. Because, you know, when you sleep, gravity pulls your balls and it's bad for you. Like, I could make up an endless number of ball...
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Sam Parr | Problems. Here's this one that I saw. These guys launched and they advertised with us early on. I was like, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Why are you guys even doing this?"
And now it's a $1,000,000,000 company: Manscaped. Have you heard about Manscaped?
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Shaan Puri | I asked a buddy, "What's one of the best investments in your portfolio? What are your best investments?" I thought he would name some tech company or some cybersecurity company.
He goes, "Oh, Manscaped is great because they raised only a tiny amount of money and they're worth like, yeah, close to $1,000,000,000."
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Sam Parr | is it a $1,000,000,000 company you think | |
Shaan Puri | I I don't know something like that it's worth | |
Sam Parr | But they sponsor the UFC, and that's a really expensive sponsorship. They sponsor a ton of stuff. If you told me that they do like $150,000,000 in revenue, I wouldn't be surprised. | |
Shaan Puri | I think it's definitely over a 100,000,000 in revenue | |
Sam Parr | for you think it's over 200 | |
Shaan Puri | I mean I don't know | |
Sam Parr | And I've never used one. I told Sarah to buy one for me because I wanted one for my nose hair, and I think they have like one.
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Shaan Puri | did sarah have to buy for you why why didn't you just buy it | |
Sam Parr |
She wanted it as a Christmas present. For my Christmas, I was like, "Give me the nose hair one." I think they have a nose hair one, but like an all-in-one... Is it all-in-one? I don't mind using [that].
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Shaan Puri | I will give you that cover. They give you that air cover to be like, "Yeah, I just want to trim my beard and my nose." And oh, what do you know? It comes with all their attachments. Maybe your boy will start manscaping.
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Sam Parr |
Yeah, I'm cool with sharing... like using that on my face and on my... no, the nose one's different. But the Manscaped buzzer, it's just a normal... I think it's just a normal buzzer. I don't know how it's actually different than like a normal hair [trimmer].
[It's] much different and they crushed it. This category... I never in a million years would have thought that this was gonna work.
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Shaan Puri | It sounded like a joke when it came out. I remember just being like, "Oh, that's a funny joke of a company." Cool, cool joke of the day for a startup.
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Sam Parr |
Yes, and they kill it. They sponsor all the major boxing and UFC stuff. These guys are killing it, and it doesn't look... So, I'm on board with "Protect Your Balls." That's a good business, and FUD is a phenomenal name. What's it stand for?
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Shaan Puri | FUDware. FUD is fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They say this in the market a lot. Like, if people are like, "Oh, I heard China’s gonna ban Bitcoin," or "Isn't it true that Satoshi was part of the NSA?" It's like, this is just FUD you're spreading to get people to be uncertain and doubt, and sell their positions.
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Sam Parr | Dude, that's great! Like, compression socks... I buy compression socks, so that's *footwear*. I have no idea if it works, but it's just what I do.
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Shaan Puri | is it supposed to do | |
Sam Parr |
Compression socks when you run: I have calf pain and Achilles pain all the time. Compression socks are socks that you pull really high up to your knees, and they have a lot of compression on them. They keep your calves tight.
If you've ever worn compression shorts - like that tight underwear for your thighs - it's like that for your calves and ankles.
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Shaan Puri | gotcha okay I like it I dig it | |
Sam Parr |
Can we wrap up with one thing? Yeah, so recently this Bitcoin thing... Craig Wright. I don't know much about it other than like one article I read. I guess he's an Australian guy and he was being sued by this person who wanted a share of the money. What's the story?
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Shaan Puri | I don't know about his lawsuit, but I know about Craig Wright. He has been claiming for a long time to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
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Sam Parr | so so he | |
Shaan Puri | he claims to be the creator of bitcoin and then people who are smart in the community are like there's no fucking way | |
Sam Parr | So, people... this lawsuit basically involves Craig Wright, who is being sued by the spouse of someone. Craig Wright had a partner, and the partner died. The spouse of the partner sued Craig Wright, and Craig Wright won the lawsuit.
In winning, the spouse claimed, "You owe me money because of this reason and that reason. You and my husband created this thing together; you owe us some money."
I forget exactly how it worked, but in winning the case, the jurors said, "Well, no, you're Satoshi, and you worked on this alone." So, in order for him to win—in a weird way, I don't know the exact details—they were basically saying, "Yes, we believe you're Satoshi, and Satoshi worked alone."
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Shaan Puri | So, okay, here's the story: Kleinman versus Wright. The jury ruled that David Kleinman's relationship to Craig Wright did not constitute a business partnership. This means the estate was not entitled to a share of the Satoshi Nakamoto fortune, which Wright claims to have control over as the self-reported creator of Bitcoin.
The jury ruled against Wright on the conversion account, awarding $100,000,000 to Kleinman. What a ruling against Wright! Yeah, so he said they got $100,000,000 out of it.
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Sam Parr | I don't know because I thought he was celebrating. It was a little confusing, but was this like his legal team?
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Shaan Puri | So, okay, they wanted $1,000,000,000. They didn't get that, but they got $100,000,000 against him for the unauthorized use of funds from the Climate and Rights Shared Venture with W and K Info Defense Research LLC.
Okay, I don't know, this is from something else.
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Sam Parr | so did is this guy the guy who started it that's what I wanted | |
Shaan Puri | To know, so basically, he claims to have invented Bitcoin. There's a great clip, by the way, of Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum, on stage.
He goes, "You want to know what I think?" and they're like, "Yes, we'd love to know what you think." He gives a quick two-minute rant that just destroys Craig Wright. He says, "I think if you were the creator of Bitcoin and everybody was saying you're not, and you keep trying to tell people you are, all you have to do is one simple thing. You just have to sign something with Satoshi's wallet, and that will show that you're him. The fact that you're not doing that..."
He calls it some term like "Occam's Razor" or whatever. He says, "The simplest explanation here is that you're not Satoshi. Because if you have a simple way to prove your claim and you do not prove your claim using that simple way, you cannot prove your claim."
So he kind of just called him out right there.
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Sam Parr | so who who | |
Shaan Puri | the crowd went wild | |
Sam Parr | so who is this you think that is he he's he's died or he's still quiet | |
Shaan Puri | The best theory is that it's this guy, Hal... I forgot what his name is... Hal Finney. So, Hal Finney was like a cryptographer. He received the first Bitcoin transaction; he was like the second wallet.
Normally, what does a developer do when they test something? It's like, "Oh, I send it from Sean A to Sean B," like my test account basically. That's how I do the first transaction.
He was very active in the forums, and then he died right around the time he got ALS. He died around the time of the last known time that Satoshi ever posted anything. So, you know, it seems like...
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Sam Parr | Why wouldn't he tell? Do you think he... why wouldn't he tell his wife or his family? You know, it looks like he has a wife in these pictures.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, well, maybe he did. And, like, you know, some people are so mission-driven in their thinking.
There was a real genius in the idea of being like, "I'm gonna have this pseudonymous name, Satoshi Nakamoto. I'm not gonna use my real name," which means I'll never get the credit for being a genius if this works.
But also, it's kind of like the parent dies so the child can survive. The only way a currency like this could have really worked is if you couldn't trace it back to the creator. Because then they would just attack the creator. They would say the creator has too much power. They'd say, "This guy has ulterior motives. He has control. He is too powerful."
You know, he's just the new bad guy. Okay, you're mad at the Federal Reserve and the governments; now you're mad at this guy for being a private citizen in control of this. | |
Sam Parr | so and you think this is him | |
Shaan Puri | I personally think it's him. I've looked into it a couple of times about who the most likely candidates are. You know, is it a group of people? Was it the government themselves? Was it one person?
It does seem like it... I guess I shouldn't say it does seem like it. There's really no evidence of the existing evidence that's there. This is kind of speculative data.
You have how Phineas fits the story in my worldview the best, so I think it's him.
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Sam Parr | god that's I love these mysteries I I | |
Shaan Puri | which would mean that it's it's sort of gone like his coins are locked up | |
Sam Parr | unless he gave them to his wife | |
Shaan Puri | Unless he gave her the keys and told her, "Don't touch it," because it hasn't moved—not a single coin has moved ever.
You know, I think if he did, let's say he did give her instructions. How would I give instructions? I would say I would probably not actually let her have it. I would say, "This file is going to be available to you on this date, 20 years from now," and I would say, "Follow the instructions inside."
So I wouldn't even give her the opportunity to make a bad decision because I would say, "If these move before Bitcoin wins, then this will be very destructive for it." Like, if the creator of Bitcoin starts to sell Bitcoin, that will trigger a huge sell-off in the market because it'll be like, "Oh, the creator's alive! They don't believe in it; they're selling their coins." Who is it? It'll create this whole drama, and it'll hurt the project.
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Sam Parr | but has any money ever left his account | |
Shaan Puri | no not a single satoshi has ever left his account | |
Sam Parr | so then he would have had to have create a different account for her to live on or something | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, which could have easily happened, right? You know, at some point. But, you know, people can also see the ledger, so they know who all Satoshi sent the coins to. They know which wallet Satoshi sent coins to, and some of them are known identities, like the other people that were in this crypto community, the Cypherpunk community, that wanted to test out the project early on.
But, you know, he very easily could have just had her set up a mining rig, so it didn't even have to come from his account. He could just say, because he didn't give himself the coins, he mined the coins. Sure, it's just that mining was so easy at that time. So, you know, she could be miner number 8, you know, that mined some coins, and that's it. | |
Sam Parr | that's she could live off that yeah god how well we should | |
Shaan Puri | See, like, yeah. How's Phineas? How's she living? Is she like in a $40,000,000 home in Venice?
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Sam Parr |
I don't even know if he... I mean, there's a woman with all these pictures with him. It looks like a wife. I don't even know anything about her. I just googled it; it doesn't say anything on the Wikipedia about his wife. But oh yeah, his wife raised... Yeah, so he does have a wife. Funny.
I'd be curious... I'm looking at pictures of his house when he's dying. Like pictures of him dying, and he's in his home. It does *not* look fancy.
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Shaan Puri | yeah yeah also als just looks so brutal man | |
Sam Parr | yeah it feels like the worst | |
Shaan Puri | completely debilitated that's really tough | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so anyway, that's fascinating. We should do like an entire episode on that. This is so interesting too.
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Shaan Puri | I agree. We should just do the research on what is all the research that's out there and what's the conclusion. I think people are... I'm fascinated by this story. I think it's one of the coolest things, straight out of a movie, but it's actually real life. It's one of the coolest things that has ever happened, you know?
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Sam Parr | I like that and the Silk Road, but I think the Silk Road case is far more cut and dry than anyone thinks. I think Ross did it. I think Ross did everything.
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr | what's the | |
Shaan Puri | what's the con what's the controversy people think what | |
Sam Parr | Many people were running it. Dread Scott, Pirate... whatever the name is, Dread Pirate Roberts or whatever. Yeah, they're saying that was multiple people.
Whenever I post about Ross Ulbricht, people are like, "Free Ross." And I'm like, well, he did kind of hire people to kill... what? I know, like, other people... I don't know.
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Shaan Puri | what you have you seen the comments so you have a youtube video about your story | |
Sam Parr | yeah they hate and they're they're like the | |
Shaan Puri | Comments are like... there's an army of people that love Ross and hate anybody that says anything bad. You didn't even say anything bad. I didn't.
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Sam Parr |
I didn't say anything bad. I think he did it, but... my thing is like, I mean, he sold drugs. So there's some consequence to that - not life, but some consequence. But if you did like murder for hire? Yeah, life is definitely fair. If you do it 3 times? Totally fair.
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Shaan Puri | right | |
Sam Parr |
When I read that book *American Kingpin*, I looked at some of the evidence and I thought, "Yeah, there were some bad cops working on the case and those guys got in trouble." But it definitely seems like this guy did it. I don't understand how there's any shadow of a doubt.
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Shaan Puri | Right, by the way, Fran Finney's Twitter bio... I'll just leave it on this note: she says, "I graduated from Caltech. I spent 35 amazing years married to Hal Finney, who lived with ALS from 2009 to 2014."
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Sam Parr | currently living in dubai | |
Shaan Puri | I vow to spend the rest of my life making him proud I thought that was nice | |
Sam Parr | yeah man she seems like a sweetheart and she turns out life | |
Shaan Puri | be like hey | |
Sam Parr | turns out she | |
Shaan Puri | happens to me | |
Sam Parr | drive like a ferrari and a bugatti and like only wears gucci | |
Shaan Puri | I thought about this for the rest of my life these fresh ass gucci's | |
Sam Parr | yeah gucci life yeah | |
Shaan Puri | This is hilarious! Did you ever see that meme? You know that guy, Hasbullah? The little... like the little... | |
Sam Parr | guy him | |
Shaan Puri | So, he tweeted out this thing. He goes, "Man, people say I had this..." People always talk about my disability. Do you see this meme?
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Sam Parr | yes and what did he say | |
Shaan Puri | Yes, yeah, I got disability to make that bread. I got a picture of him holding a huge block of cash. He's like, "Disability to make this money."
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Sam Parr | I love that kid he's not a kid I think he's like 20 | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I don't know what to say. I'm going to get canceled just trying to describe anything about him without being offensive. So, I'm just not going to say anything.
Alright, let's roll. I'm out of here. |