MFM #159: A 9-Figure Sex Toy Company & The Man With A Million Acres

Sam Parr

I I don't think I would wanna do something that high profile because if you screw up it would be a big deal

Abreu Andrade

oh look at you you're afraid to fail now oh you

Shaan Puri

You make it big, you sell your company, and now you're like, "I gotta watch my step. What's going on?"

Sam Parr

who where's the

Shaan Puri

where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh what would that guy do

Sam Parr

sean's in your studio are you in a garage is that what that is

Shaan Puri

I am in my garage. We upgraded; we improvised. So, we did this crazy thing where we talked about it on the podcast. We were like, "Shit, we need to upgrade our setup." I think mostly it was you just telling me to get a haircut, which is fair, and to wear a shirt. I took that as I need a whole new studio. Basically, these guys from Chicago, who are 23-year-old guys that love the podcast, heard that. This is like their forte; they do camera and audio. They have their own podcast and their own YouTube channels. What I realized was, I went and watched their YouTube channel. This guy, Henry, has about 570 subscribers. So, it's not like a huge YouTube channel, but if you watch it, the quality of the video, audio, and editing is at the same level as Casey Neistat's channel. I showed this to our friend Sully and said, "Check these guys out! Look at their channel. These are the guys coming this weekend to make my studio." He responded, "I remember when I was kind of like 21 or 22. We were coming up, and what the kind of 30 or 40-year-olds used to say was, 'Oh man, you guys have this huge advantage because you're like digital natives.' That's what they were calling us. We grew up with a computer and the internet. I think we got the internet and computers when we were in 6th grade."

Abreu Andrade

I don't know about you

Shaan Puri

It was probably around the same, 5th or 6th grade, something like that. For our parents, they were getting a computer when they were 35 or 40. So, you know, you didn't have it to grow up on. He goes, "These guys, this is the next wave. They're video native, basically. They grew up with a camera in their hand and they just constantly shoot videos. They know how to edit it. They're not afraid to be on camera, and like, it's such a superpower." I think it was so true what he was saying.

Sam Parr

You said one thought line that I think is the real superpower, which is being on camera. For you and me, we're kind of like media people, so we're maybe a little bit more used to it than the average Joe. But even I am still very uncomfortable just talking to a camera and looking at it. Young people are not. When I was at the airport, I saw 12-year-old kids with their phones on the ground with a pop socket, right? They were filming, and I could see that they were doing TikTok dances. It was like, that's unheard of for me because I'm like, "Oh my God, you're going to do that at the airport with people watching?"

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Yeah, the upside is they all look cool, they know how to dance, and they know how to edit videos. The downside is, you know, they're riddled with anxiety and stuff like that. So, it's not all good, but... I... but...

Sam Parr

they're not having sex which is a topic we're gonna talk about today

Shaan Puri

Gonna talk about that, but the other thing I was going to say is, let me ask you this: when you get us, you're on Snapchat, right? You have Snapchat?

Sam Parr

I no I have an account

Shaan Puri

Alright, so... Obray, you gotta chime in here. Obray, how old are you? 27? Alright, so you're more like us than like the people I'm talking about. I'm not gonna say Gen Z.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but Sean, I think those... I think those couple. He is a lot hipper. He's a lot hipper than we are. Alright? He's a little bit more into it.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so basically, Brady, when you have Snapchat, right? Someone sends you a snap. They send you a picture of something they're doing or something they're looking at. You need to reply. Tell me, do you just type the reply like in the text version, or do you send back a photo?

Sam Parr

that's so weird

Shaan Puri

Yeah, see, that's crazy to me. That is wild to me. I'm like, you say something, I comment like it's... like it's Facebook, right? I just write like, "Oh, looks fun! Cool! That's great!" You know? Like I'm like a 90-year-old.

Sam Parr

You're talking about young people. Another interesting thing to do is when you ask a young person, or did you show me this? When you ask a younger person, "What do you do when someone calls?" If they put their hand up, for the people listening, I have my hand like I'm waving hi, like a high five. If they put their hand like a high five to the ear versus if they put their pinky and thumb out like this...

Shaan Puri

Well, or if you say, "Hey, do like a gesture to take a picture." So if I said to you, "Hey Sam, take a picture," you're gonna do this.

Sam Parr

that's an old voice camera yeah

Shaan Puri

This is not a camera, right? So, what they do is they hold up their hand like this with their thumb, like you're holding an iPhone. We're out here with a Polaroid trying to demonstrate what a picture is. Anyway, I don't even know why I'm talking about that, but basically, these guys are... I would say younger people are video native, and I think that's going to be a huge, huge win for them. Because people like us are self-conscious and just don't know how to use the tools right.

Sam Parr

I want to bring up a topic that's both related to this and something else. At Sean's old office at Monkey Inferno, the guy who owns it, Michael Birch, is awesome. It looked like it was out of a magazine, but he had one or two things that really stuck out. One of them was this Macintosh computer. Was it a Mac 2 or an Apple 2? I'm going to look that up. The reason I'm bringing this up is that I am building my studio to look good like yours. I was thinking of designs and interesting stuff to put in the back. Also, this whole NFT thing has got me interested in art—like, you know, just beautiful, interesting, cool stuff. I've always liked stuff that was just junk, right? That's what I used to like, but now I'm going to try to get some nicer things. Anyway, I was looking around. How much do you think an Apple 2 is? Is an Apple 2 the same as a Macintosh 2?

Shaan Puri

I

Abreu Andrade

don't know well wow how much do you

Sam Parr

think an apple 2 that still works costs

Shaan Puri

I don't know a couple thousand I'd say maybe somewhere between 25 it would be my guess 25,000

Sam Parr

You can get one that's in pretty good condition for like **$500**. You can get a Macintosh 2, which I don't know the difference between the Apple 2 and the Macintosh 2. You can get a Macintosh 2 that is still in the box for like **$1,000**. Do you remember the commercials when we were younger? We were in our teens, probably in **8th** or **9th** grade, where it was like a colored Mac. So it was like a blue... it was called the **iMac**, I think, right?

Abreu Andrade

yep

Sam Parr

You can get those for like $300 now. Strictly speaking, from a collectible standpoint, it's interesting. It's cool to look at. That's incredibly cheap for a machine that...

Shaan Puri

I'll tell you what: every single person who came to our office was like, "Oh, this is awesome!" Now, granted, it's tech nerds coming to the office, but they were wowed by this thing. There was expensive art all up on the walls, but nobody cared about any of that. People saw this old thing, and then we would boot it up. When it turned on, they were amazed by it. So, it definitely... every single person noted and commented on it.

Sam Parr

I think these types of old computers, these vintage computers, are going to get really popular. The reason I think that is that I was looking up how much they cost. For a gift, I thought about buying people an iPad that wasn't connected to the internet. Did I tell you this? No? So, I was going to buy our investors...

Abreu Andrade

I was gonna buy them like a small thank you

Sam Parr

I was like, "Maybe if I spent $200 ahead, let's see if I can go and buy a bunch of... if I can buy like 20 iPods that aren't connected to the internet." My plan was ruined because I'm like, "Oh wait, you have to have..."

Shaan Puri

itunes

Sam Parr

iTunes... and that doesn't even exist. So, like, this is pretty much meaningless. But these old iPods...

Shaan Puri

by the way itunes exist I don't know why well

Sam Parr

but I mean like you who no one buys can you even buy mp threes anymore from it

Shaan Puri

I don't think so yeah yeah you have to like have your own music

Sam Parr

Yeah, like that. No one does that anymore. We all stream. These things didn't even have internet. I wanted it so you could download it, and then it would only work if you were attached to Wi-Fi. But anyway, old iPods, like the first generation ones, are expensive—like $500 to $600. So anyway, I think that both would be cool to have this stuff on your...

Shaan Puri

Dude, if an old iPad is $600 and an Apple II in the box is also $500, I definitely know which one I think has more long-term value here. Those things are collectibles. I think you're spot on. I would scoop up 5 to 10 of those right now and just hold.

Sam Parr

I'm okay. So, like, here's a vintage Macintosh II in good condition for $250. I'm looking at it on eBay right now. There's also a Macintosh in the box for $400. It's pretty interesting, right? I think that this might become pretty popular—these old computers. I think that it's kind of a cool idea.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I like that a lot. Those are good. I actually will go after this on eBay and try to scoop up at least two of those, just to hold and see what happens.

Sam Parr

alright you wanna get into you have 2 updates and then we have an idea 2 ideas

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay, so one update is on the Michael Jordan thing. So, last episode we talked about Michael Jordan's house, which has been on sale for 10 years. It’s a **56,000 square foot** house that was originally listed for **$30,000,000**. Now, it’s been price cut, price cut, price cut, all the way down to **$13,000,000**, and it’s still not selling. This is after *The Last Dance* and after this giant boom in trading card collectibles. For example, the Michael Jordan rookie card is going for almost **$2,000,000**, yet his **56,000 square foot** house can’t sell for **$13,000,000**. Something seems off. A little tiny **3-inch** piece of cardboard can sell, but not this. He’s also paying property taxes. I think somebody said he’s paid about **$1,000,000** in property tax just while it sat on the market. So, we threw this out there last time: "Hey, look, why don’t we either collect just me and you, or we crowdfund? Why don’t we buy MJ’s house and see what we could do with it?" We got a bunch of good feedback. I would say there are a bunch of smart people who immediately pointed out that one of our ideas, which was to turn it into some kind of museum—the Museum of Mike, you know, the basketball museum—wouldn't work because the HOA and the neighbors would never permit you to let tens of thousands of people come into their neighborhood and go to this museum every year, right? So that was...

Sam Parr

What I thought about... I mean, I was thinking about it. I just figured there’s gotta be a way around something.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. When you start an idea, you don't think about all the different small reasons why it might immediately fail. You think, "What if this works?" Then you try to find a way to make it work. But the more interesting one, in my opinion, was always the simpler one. You don't have to turn it into a museum. You don't have to get permitting. You don't have to have guests coming in and operations folks. You just treat it differently. You don't treat it like a house; you treat it like it's a monument, a piece of art. There are paintings that sell for $85,000,000. So if a painting sells for $85,000,000, I think Michael Jordan's house, this relic of the greatest basketball player of all time, is going to be worth something. The idea would be to crowdfund it. You get, I don't know, 5,000 people to each pitch in $2,000,000. You buy the thing out for $10,000,000 and hold it as a piece of art. There were a couple of good suggestions I thought came in through Twitter. Some of the good suggestions were that you could list this on Rally Road, where people go to buy vintage cars or rare first edition "Lord of the Rings" book sets for $35,000. You know, 500 people could each buy a fractional share of it. So that was one idea people liked, and the Rally Road guys said, "Hey, we're interested. Let's talk." So I'm talking about it.

Sam Parr

oh they they howled at you

Shaan Puri

They did. They replied to the tweet, and then Rob, the... I think he's the CEO. I don't know, he's a co-founder. He emailed me yesterday, and so we're going to chat and see if this...

Sam Parr

is why does everyone cool reach out to you

Shaan Puri

bro they know they know

Sam Parr

damn and I didn't get anyone hollered at me

Shaan Puri

well are your

Sam Parr

are your dms open on twitter

Shaan Puri

My DMs are open. Yes, I've also talked to him before through DMs because I was just like, "Raleigh is fucking awesome!" So, I had reached out to him, actually.

Sam Parr

in the whole

Shaan Puri

Week saying, "Hey, Rally is awesome! Can I invest in this thing?" So he knew I was a fanboy already. But anyway, that was one interesting thing. Some people in the crypto world were like, "Dude, let's turn this into an NFT, bro!" So I talked to the founder of Nifty Gateway, which is just exploding. This marketplace is just exploding for NFTs right now. I asked him, "Hey, would you like to dabble?" Then the last thing was that some people were like, "Hey..."

Sam Parr

and what did they say

Shaan Puri

He was like, "Hey, this is cool," but he was also like, "You know, we're just crushing so hard on the digital stuff. I don't know if we want to get into this physical thing." There were some cool ideas from Twitter. Some people were like, "You know, let's say you came in and you bought a $50,000 chunk. Instead of the $2,000 entry, you go for $50,000. That should get you, like, if you present your certificate of ownership, if you show your app and you show that you own a piece of this thing, you should be able to have like a 3-night stay once a year with you and all your friends."

Abreu Andrade

we're gonna

Sam Parr

time share mj's house

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, you're not fully doing an Airbnb; you're treating it like it's art. But if you own a big enough share, if you're a super minority owner of this thing, then you can actually stay one weekend a year. I thought that was pretty dope. So, anyway, there are some cool ideas. But then at the same time, I ain't got time to do this, and neither do you. So, what's going to happen from here?

Sam Parr

You're asking me? I don't know. I feel like you're kind of the leader on this one. Nothing. If I had to bet, nothing. And here's why: when I did my deal, every smart person I talked to, you know what they said? I bet you can guess what they said.

Shaan Puri

no no what did they say

Sam Parr

do nothing for 6 months right don't invest sit on your hands

Abreu Andrade

yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, don't invest. So many times I've wanted to change and do something, and everyone has said the same thing. I'm going to try my hardest to stick to it. So that's one of the reasons why, although that's probably a bullshit excuse, the reality is I don't think I would want to do something that high profile. Because if you screw up, it would be a big deal.

Abreu Andrade

oh look at you you're afraid to fail now oh you you make it big

Shaan Puri

you sell your company and now now you're like I I gotta I gotta watch my step what's going on

Sam Parr

who where's the where's

Shaan Puri

the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh what would that guy do

Sam Parr

Dude, my first time buying a real estate asset and doing something like this would be, I mean, that would be national. I mean, I guess, yeah, I mean, I'm not...

Shaan Puri

Saying you buy it, I'm saying clearly the way to go here is to **crowdfund** this thing because it's just more fun that way. You don't have to put out **$10,000,000** of risk capital.

Sam Parr

how many emails did you get

Shaan Puri

So, somebody—oh yeah, that was the other thing—somebody created a website. Jonathan created a website; I think it's like **buyjordanshouse.com** or something like that. He said, you know, pretty early on after the tweet, he had 200 people dropping their email. I think about the same on Twitter said, "I'm in," including a bunch of higher profile people. There's a bunch of people who are...

Sam Parr

yeah a bunch of really wealthy people

Shaan Puri

Founders of companies, owners of businesses that were like, "I'm in for 5K, I'm in for 10K," type of thing. Now, are they just talking? Is this real? I don't know. We'll see, but...

Sam Parr

I think it was cool. I mean, the little video that we had reached 100,000 people across a couple of different platforms. So, it was cool. What we decided as the takeaway from this is that we gotta do viral clips all the time. We gotta be like Obama.

Abreu Andrade

the club isn't the best place to find love or

Shaan Puri

Exactly. It's not even a conversation. This is now just a collection of clips. Yes, the clip had 60,000 views too—your Twitter clip of you talking about it.

Sam Parr

really

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

Well, the shitty part is that it's you talking about it and me looking at just like... it kept showing my face and you're talking the whole time and I'm just...

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's the way the world goes. You put the white man's face up there, and the brown guy's just in the back, coming up with ideas and handing them over.

Sam Parr

That's why they get our voices confused. They say I look like a bro, but I talk like a nerd. You look like a nerd, but you talk like a bro.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that was the most spot on! I wasn't even mad at all. That is so accurate. And you know, now I understand why people keep saying this thing that they get us confused. I'm mixed, almost.

Sam Parr

Now, let's talk about sex. You have something on here, and before we get into it, I want to tell you a fun fact. So, we have this list where Sean and I list ideas. He has one thing that says, "Why aren't young people having sex, and what are the opportunities here?" Apparently, 31% of men aged 18 to 24 were sexually inactive before COVID.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

The tweet was from a guy named Matt Allison, who does a bunch of cool stuff. The tweet's not there anymore for some reason, or at least I can't see it.

Shaan Puri

it got canceled probably can't

Sam Parr

say apparently

Shaan Puri

you can't say men anymore

Sam Parr

So, this guy Nat is really interesting. His name's Nat Ellison. Google him; he's got a cool website. He owns this agency business. Did you know that this guy is interested in this because he owns this thing called... I'll have to look up what it's called, but it's a Kegel app. Do you know what a Kegel is?

Shaan Puri

I do know what a Kegel is. It is the exercise you do with your private parts.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so basically, it makes it so you don't **prematurely ejaculate**. I think women do it too, you know? I don't know, like...

Shaan Puri

I think women do it because it can increase pleasure. But also, I think it's just healthy for you to do. It's just like a movement that's good for you, I guess. I don't know.

Sam Parr

And this guy, his name is Eliason, Nat Eliason. He has an app called... I'll look it up what it's called.

Shaan Puri

But it should be called "squeeze" because to do a Kegel, you're basically trying to, like, you know, for a guy, you're basically trying to flex your balls. That's the best way I could describe it. And for a girl, I'm sure there's the equivalent, but I don't know what it is.

Sam Parr

It's called "stamina"—I don't know what that play on words is. Anyway, it walks you through how to do these Kegel exercises, and it makes like $100,000 a year. He just made it one time, and it just ranks. It's a crazy interesting thing, Kegel exercises. I never knew that was a thing. Go ahead.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so we've talked about this before. I think you were actually the original person to kind of rant about this. You were like, "Dude, kids aren't having sex." You know, people make fun of the hotdog stand thing. They're like, "We get it, you used to own a hotdog stand." The other story that I've heard you tell a number of times, because it's very entertaining and I think it gets you hyped up, is when you went to some camp. They had a Gen Z analyst there, and the Gen Z analyst was like, "Hey, all the kids are depressed and not having sex."

Sam Parr

and then

Shaan Puri

You were like, "Dude, what's going on?" and you talked about Replica, which is this messaging app where you message a virtual girlfriend. I tried it out after you told me about it. I went and downloaded it, and it was okay. It was interesting. There's definitely a bunch of people who are really into this. It's like this AI virtual girlfriend, but I have a different slant to it that I want to bring up here.

Sam Parr

so and by the way this whole sex thing this has been a problem in japan I think for years

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Yeah, there's like, you know, the "sexless generation" or something they call it. Okay, so I want to actually talk about a company that's based in Austin, right where you are. You might be able to see it if you look out the window. It's called Interactive Life Forms LLC. You know these guys?

Sam Parr

yeah I I know where their building is I've seen their building

Shaan Puri

do you know what they make

Sam Parr

no interactive do they make sextiles

Shaan Puri

**Interactive Life Forms** is the maker of the Fleshlight, and I wanted to tell you about this. I did a little research after receiving a message from a founder of a tech company. I won't say his name because he asked me not to, but he messaged me and said, "Dude, idea: modern fleshlights." I was like, "What?" He explained it to me, saying that the sex toy market is bigger than you think. He mentioned that female sex toys, like dildos or vibrators, are on the rise. There's this big movement trying to remove the stigma around it. I don't know if you've seen any of this, but it's kind of linked to the feminist movement. They call it **sex positivity**, which is basically saying that sex doesn't need to be taboo. It doesn't need to carry a stigma; it's okay to have sex. That doesn't make you a bad person or anything like that. With this sex positivity movement, there has been a significant boom in sales of sex toys, primarily female sex toys. So, I started looking at the most popular male sex toy, which is the Fleshlight. Here's some information about the Fleshlight: it was started by a guy named Steve Schubin. This guy is super interesting. He is one of 13 kids, played college football, then went into the army. After that, he came back and became a police officer with the SWAT team in LA. He retired from SWAT when he was in his 30s because, while he loved being in the police force, it didn't pay well. So, he decided to start a business. His wife is a professional tennis player, so he has this hot tennis player wife, and he's like, "I'm going to start a business," but he doesn't know what he's going to start yet.

Sam Parr

And by the way, do you know who that hot wife of Steve Schubin's son is? No? It's Aubrey Marcus, the founder of Onnit.

Shaan Puri

oh no way I didn't know that

Sam Parr

And he found Joe Rogan. Yes, because Fleshlight was Joe Rogan's first sponsor that Aubrey secured.

Shaan Puri

that's amazing okay so I'll I'll get into that that's that's actually a part of this so so he so years go by he does nothing then they're in their forties steve's wife gets pregnant and the doctor tells him hey you're in your forties so this is kinda like an at risk pregnancy so you can't you can't be having sex and he's like okay doc like you know what do you want me to do I'm a 63 red blooded american what what am I supposed to do and so he starts thinking about it and he goes why isn't there a why isn't there a sex toy for men and so he's he originally plans to make a mannequin and in fact he in 1998 he gets a patent for a mannequin with sexual application so it's basically like a doll that he wants to make so he's trying to make this doll and he puts in 50 k and he starts working on this doll and he's he's trying to blend all these different polymers how do you get this skin feel of this doll how do you get the flesh to feel like flesh how do you get it to look like a doll feel like a doll feel like a human and and he makes it a family business so he brings his sons into the to the table they get a whiteboard out and they start brainstorming together as a family which I find hilarious because you know in my family this is not a this is not a business we could start together so he he keeps going 2 years go by he's put in a quarter $1,000,000 now he's sold 0 0 product so far and he keeps trying to make this full body doll and he meets a guy one day a friend of his and his friend's like hey I think what you're doing is great there's this weird taboo around this but why not more pleasure in the world what's the problem so he says will you give me one I'll I'll buy one off you and he says cool what's your address I'll send you the doll and he's like no dude no way I can't bring that doll into my house he's like just take out the part that's like the vagina of the doll and send me that like put it in a little box and my my wife won't see it and just send me that and so he's like dude if my friend who wants this won't like can't buy this doll this doll is dead so that's why he pivoted from the doll to just the just the like you know just the the organ part of it just a single piece one component and so he's like oh okay how how do we brand this so him and his sons are brainstorming and they're like what do guys like guys like tools okay this thing is kinda like a flashlight okay we'll call this the fleshlight so that's how it gets its name during that process and so he eventually

Sam Parr

was like a father son project father son project multiple sons are weird man

Shaan Puri

And so now, years have gone by. They've put in over **$2,000,000**, and this guy believes so much in this thing that he ramps up production. He's pumping out **1,200** units a day before they've sold anything because he's like, "The world is gonna love this. They are gonna buy this thing." So he goes all in on this to meet this future demand, and it turns out they actually did it. The flashlight now generates, I believe, about **$100,000,000** in revenue. It's definitely above **$50,000,000**; they don't report it, but I did some sleuthing, and I think it's a **$100,000,000** a year company with over **100** employees. They basically dominate the market for male sex toys now. And you know, this guy who went all in on this thing ended up being a successful family business, which I think is just a heartwarming story.

Sam Parr

What a crazy story! I had heard a little bit about it, but I didn't realize all those details. I think... way.

Shaan Puri

This is the best part of the whole story. So, he opens up a facility in Austin, so it's manufactured near you. Then he has one in Spain and he has one somewhere else in Asia, I think. He has so much manufacturing capacity. So, what do they do with the excess capacity when they have a little extra? Guess what they make. They make prosthetics for elephants who have had their legs blown off from landmines in Southeast Asia. So, they're the top maker of elephant prosthetics in Southeast Asia. That's their backup; that's their side business.

Sam Parr

what got you interested in this

Abreu Andrade

well when this guy said it

Shaan Puri

I was like, you know, the founder who messaged me... He goes, "Dude, every guy jacks off. There's gotta be a market. What if you..." He's like, "What if this... I don't own this product, you don't own this product. But what if this thing made it ten times better?" Isn't that crazy that there's still a taboo around this? That's gonna change. Dude, the sex positivity thing for women is gonna affect men. I bet you can make a modern-day D2C version of...

Abreu Andrade

the fleshlight and so I started thinking about it and started looking up okay how big

Shaan Puri

Is this how big is this industry? It is a pretty big industry. The sex toy industry itself is about **$20 billion** a year.

Sam Parr

what percentages to to men

Shaan Puri

So, women... this is kind of, I was trying to figure out the sales difference. It's mostly dominated by female sales. The Fleshlight is the biggest for males, but the female industry is much bigger. About 65% of women say that they have used one. There was a stat that said 50% of men said that they've used one, which I don't believe. I know a lot of dudes, and I haven't heard one ever talk about this. So maybe it's just happening on the down low.

Sam Parr

but sex toy

Abreu Andrade

yeah like the folks

Sam Parr

I've never I've never had one conversation with a friend not a single

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I don't know if I believe that statistic, but basically, the European market is bigger than the American market. In places like Italy, it's super common. Apparently, they're known as "free love" places. The fastest growing markets right now are India and China, where it's the most taboo. What's happened is that because it's all gone to e-commerce, the e-commerce companies are using very discreet packaging. They send it to you, and it looks like one thing, but inside is another. That's where this market is growing. There are a bunch of startups in this space as well that are doing around $15 million a year, like Lovehoney. Just check out this traffic. The top website for this, the top sort of Amazon for this market, is called Adam and Eve.

Sam Parr

yeah I was just I was just looking at adam and eve because they have stores all over san francisco

Shaan Puri

They have about 8,000,000 visitors a month to their eCommerce store, which is a huge eCommerce store. Lovehoney has about 4,000,000 visitors to their store. What's interesting is all these problems, all this friction in trying to build one of these companies because Stripe won't let you take payments.

Sam Parr

why wouldn't stripe let you take payments for a dildo

Shaan Puri

they say they say we don't we do not do any sexual products so that's

Sam Parr

the code

Shaan Puri

So, you can use Shopify, but Shopify uses Stripe. Therefore, you can't really use Shopify because Stripe won't allow it. Companies like Adam and Eve and Lovehoney, they can't process payments on Stripe. There's an opportunity, I think, for building a payment processor like Stripe for vice products. For example, cannabis can't use Stripe, and neither can any sex products or porn. Just those three industries alone represent multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in turnover. So, who's building a payment processor like Stripe for vice? I don't know, but I want to look into that. Another opportunity is to build a brand that figures out a new form of marketing. You can't advertise on Facebook, Instagram, or any mainstream display network for these products. I was looking into how they get around this, and I was curious: how would you get around this if you were trying to market one of these products? It's an interesting sort of job interview question I would ask someone. Well, I would...

Sam Parr

You write articles, right? So, if we're talking about a vibrator, you would write an article about sexual health, I guess, or something like that. I would have to do research to understand what a woman who is about to buy this is interested in. I would write that article and display it on Outbrain or somewhere else. It's hard to decide where to display it.

Shaan Puri

so I looked into how these guys are doing it and I think there's there's 3

Sam Parr

interesting pornhub you gotta go you can do pornhub

Shaan Puri

So, they use adult ad networks like Traffic Junkie and ExoClick. They advertise on porn sites, basically. That's a good, straightforward method. The other thing they do is heavy content marketing. Even though you can't advertise on Facebook and you're kind of limited on Google, you can still do it for certain keywords and for topics that people are searching for. For example, if people are searching for "What is the best one I should buy?" or "What are the reviews?" You remember how the mattress company Casper was buying up mattress review websites and then promoting Casper? That's what these guys will do as well. They'll buy up the review sites and then just put their products as the best-reviewed product on there. They'll say, "This is... you know, I'm an affiliate for this company." That's one way. Then, I thought the most innovative approach was that they also do direct sponsorships. Like you were saying, Fleshlight was one of the first sponsors on Joe Rogan. They'll go directly to podcasts or newsletters that are willing to take them as sponsors, and they'll go for it there. But the last one I thought was interesting was what Fleshlight did. This whole segment is a little bit X-rated, so apologies if you're listening to this with kids in the car. I hope you've skipped forward at this point.

Shaan Puri

But basically what Fleshlight did was they wanted celebrity sponsors. So what they did was... you know, Nike goes to LeBron James and says, "Okay, we want you to sponsor our stuff."

Sam Parr

so are they gonna get women to be there

Shaan Puri

They went to famous models and porn stars and created molds of them. So, it's like you can buy the... I forgot the name, but I looked up this chart of who was the top-selling SKU of that. There’s a woman, Kayla or Shaila or something like that. I don't remember her name, but she's some model, some porn star. I don't know who she is, but she's famous. They bring them in, do a cast mold of her body, and then they turn that into a product. She can then sell that product to her fans. So, I was thinking, if you were going to do this now, you have OnlyFans, where I think over $1 billion is being paid out to their creators. I would go to OnlyFans creators and do this. I would use that model for them. I think that would be probably the strongest distribution tactic you could get.

Sam Parr

Dude, what a fascinating thing! I would invest in this, but I would never work on it.

Shaan Puri

I would never work on this. I have zero interest in it, you know, to actually pursue it. But I do think it's one of those things that nobody talks about. Because nobody talks about it, it's both interesting and surprising when you look into how this whole system actually works. So, I like, you know, just like I love the Silk Road, but I would never go on the Silk Road and buy drugs. I like to learn about it and see how it worked, how big it was, who was behind it, and how they kept it stealthy. That's fascinating to me. Just like I like watching prison shows, but I'm not trying to go murder anybody. I like watching, you know, bank heists, but I'm not planning to rob anybody. That's how I am with these types of products.

Sam Parr

So, at the Adam and Eve store, what was it called? Yeah, Adam and Eve stores. I saw that we had so many locations in San Francisco. We probably had 3, 4, or 5 different locations. It's a pretty huge business—hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Currently, it's owned by, I believe, a private equity company. That is also another fascinating business. Did you research that?

Shaan Puri

No, I didn't research that one, but I found two other interesting things about how they market these products. I thought it was pretty clever; it just shows entrepreneurial creativity. Alright, so there's one company that's using a sort of MLM model. You get one person who's kind of a seller for you, and they have a party. This is like the old Tupperware parties; they call them "passion parties." In these parties, women invite their friends over to show the different toys and what they can do. I don't know how this sounds, but it seems like the most awkward party to me. However, apparently, it's working. The second one that I thought was super interesting was a company called Diamond Products. They make some brand of something—I have no idea what it is—and they couldn't advertise through any traditional channels. So, they went and bought Sir Richard's Condoms company. They realized that condoms are allowed to be advertised on TV and on different websites. The restrictions are looser compared to brands like Trojan. We've all seen Trojan ads on TV, for example. So, if the restrictions are looser there, they bought that company. On their website, they just upsell other products. The owner said, "They're sold in Whole Foods. This makes it so easy for me to advertise because now I own this little thing." He referred to it as his "Trojan horse," saying, "This is how I advertise my sex products company." I thought that was pretty interesting. You know, if you did this with Instagram models and OnlyFans, you could basically copy the model of that watch brand, MVMT. They went to $100 million in sales in watches. I bet you could do the same using their influencer strategy.

Sam Parr

Dude, how interesting! I love learning from these types of people. I don't even like going to this... I went to the Fleshlight website. I don't even like going to that, I think.

Shaan Puri

close the tab

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think it's weird. I'm on my work computer, just so anyone at HubSpot listens. I apologize.

Shaan Puri

My wife's dad listens to this podcast. I'm just going to tell him, "Hey, don't listen to this one." I apologize if he...

Sam Parr

listens to this one fairly academic discussion about something

Shaan Puri

Well, the worst part is now I'm getting retargeted like crazy because I was doing research on this for the podcast. Now, all my ads are completely messed up.

Sam Parr

well do you want to talk about another interesting person yes

Shaan Puri

or do

Sam Parr

You want to talk about an idea person? Okay, we're going to do an interesting person. There's this guy who we're going to feature as "Billy of the Week." By the way, I think we're going to do this. We've discussed doing this every Friday. Maybe we will, but Google has...

Shaan Puri

Got it! We need a jingle for the "Billy of the Week." It needs to be like, "You know, the Billy of the Week." Somebody make us a little jingle for that!

Sam Parr

That would be pretty cool. We do need that Google "Brad Kelly" and make sure you spell it like "Brad." So, it's **brad** space **k-e-l-l-e-y**. Okay, if you're on your phone, do it: "Brad Kelly." Now you're gonna see a picture of a guy with a red beard. Do you see the red beard?

Shaan Puri

I see it

Sam Parr

Okay, and then to the right, you're going to see a picture of an old guy with a longer beard. He looks like Mark Twain.

Shaan Puri

yep see it black and white

Sam Parr

okay so that that's the same guy

Abreu Andrade

the photos are just

Sam Parr

He's just older now. This guy, he's so interesting to me for a couple of different reasons. His name is Brad Kelly. He's probably in his sixties and he's known as "the man with a million acres." That was a headline written in the New York Times about him. They wrote it because he is one of the largest landowners in America. At one point, he was number 3 or number 4. He's kind of known for being incredibly reclusive. He doesn't do any interviews or anything like that, but he's bad to the bone. He's a really interesting guy. I've read a little bit about him and I've kind of got a feel for this guy. He's so intriguing to me. He was born, you know, he's 65 years old-ish. He was born in Kentucky and went to college in Kentucky, but at age 19, he dropped out because he started buying warehouses. He started making enough money buying and leasing out warehouses that he thought, "Alright, I'm gonna do this. I don't need school anymore." Eventually, he started renting them out to people who were building stuff, creating little miniature factories. He would fix them up and lease them to people. Eventually, he saw that people were using them to store tobacco. One of his tenants moved out and they left a machine that turned tobacco and pumped it into cigarettes, or you know, like a rolling machine or something like that. He thought, "Well, I got this machine, let's try it." So, he started making cheap cigarettes and eventually, he rolled it into a proper company called Commonwealth Brands. If you Google Commonwealth Brands, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I recognize some of the brands. They're like, I think maybe... which one?

Shaan Puri

he has like 15 or so cigarette brands is that right

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like... I think Parliament's... that's like when I was a kid. We would joke that if someone spoke Parliament, that meant they were like a "bro kid." But he made cheap cigarettes, and after 10 years, he sold this cigarette company for $1,000,000,000. I hate smoking, and I don't think it's cool to smoke. He didn't hide that. He said, "I've never defended smoking, and I hope that it will be phased out of society. But I did it because, you know, it made a living for me." You know, it made a living for me and using almost all I...

Shaan Puri

Love when billionaires say they're just trying to make a living. It's like, no, you made like a billion livings. That's a lot of living.

Abreu Andrade

a lot

Sam Parr

Of livings and with all this money, he did a couple of interesting things. The first interesting thing is he bought Lonely Planet. You know what Lonely Planet is?

Shaan Puri

I heard that name what is that is that a dating site that's a dating site

Sam Parr

I bet you, if you look at your book collection, you might have a Lonely Planet book. It's a travel website and book company.

Shaan Puri

oh okay

Sam Parr

And it was a big deal for many years. Then, when digital came along, it got crushed. He bought Lonely Planet for $70,000,000. They probably had 300 employees. He met this young guy who was 24, and he put him as CEO. They never signed a contract; they just shook hands and said, "Alright, you're CEO now. Talk to me if you need me."

Shaan Puri

such a kentucky thing to do to say yes

Sam Parr

And this kid ran it, and it didn't do so hot. I mean, it would have been cool if there was a better ending to that part of the story, right? Either through a combination of the 24-year-old not doing well and COVID, they sold it for $50,000,000. So he didn't make money on it, but what he did with the rest of his money is he bought ranches and leased them back to the owners. They make a little bit of profit, but not a significant amount. At this point, he owns over 1,000,000 acres in America, which is a huge, huge amount, making him, in 2012, the 4th largest landowner in America. The guy never does interviews; you can't find him if you want to. He's really hard to find. The only reason people really know about him is that he sold one of his ranches for $400,000,000. He's a really interesting guy. I like him because I think that I get caught in this world on Twitter of, like, "Oh, build in public. What's your MRR? I gotta go to executive coaching." It's so nice to hear from a guy who actually seems like a pretty thoughtful person. But he definitely gives off the redneck vibe. Obviously, he's highly intelligent, but they say that he goes to his ranches, likes to drink bourbon, and wear a kilt. So he's kind of a wild guy.

Shaan Puri

he's into some weird shit alright

Sam Parr

Yeah, but he's a pretty interesting guy. I wanted to bring him up because I bet most people have never heard of him. He's so interesting! He also owns... do you know what Kentucky Downs is?

Shaan Puri

the horse horse truck

Sam Parr

yeah he owns that

Shaan Puri

oh wow

Sam Parr

And so, he just owns all types of real estate. That's where he put all of his money into. Very interesting person.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this is cool. So, why were you saying the part about people who have executive coaches? What was the contrast there? So, explain that one.

Sam Parr

Like, I see people who have small companies that are barely just starting. They're tweeting out leadership quotes or talking about how they need to be more inclusive at their company, and I just get sick of this hype thing. I see all the people saying, "Oh, build in public," and I'm guilty of this as well. We're part of the hype cycle, right? We're media. But it's cool to see someone you've never heard of who is anonymous, shuts the fuck up, and just works. They do cool stuff and have a cool life. It's entirely like... you know, everyone's like, "I got in a fight on Twitter about people buying domain names." You think this guy knows how to buy a domain name? In one of the interviews, he said he doesn't know how to use email.

Shaan Puri

right yeah this guy is not vegan yeah this guy how much

Sam Parr

no this guy eats vegans

Shaan Puri

Right, this guy is made of leather. Yeah, okay, so you just like that. He's kind of like a tough guy, a rough guy, a business guy who doesn't give a fuck. Everybody else, you know, makes such a big deal out of little things. That's kind of what it is.

Sam Parr

I just think it's cool to see and hear different perspectives. I'm sure that he does a lot of bad stuff. I mean, he owns a cigarette company, right? That's kind of pretty shitty. But it was just cool; it's cool to have a different perspective. This guy, if you Google him, I'm pretty sure there's only three pictures. I've researched this guy a lot, and I've only found three pictures of him. He's worth $3 or $4 billion.

Shaan Puri

I like it. Alright, he is indeed the "Billy of the Week." I wonder how people will react to this guy because I think some people are so anti-cigarettes that they're like, "You are idolizing this guy who did bad things, like a warlord almost." I don't know... You were the one who also said you would not invest in Juul, right? Was that you?

Sam Parr

Yeah, look, I'm not defending this person's actions. I think that no matter how evil or horrible someone is, you can always find something interesting. Maybe saying "admirable" is a bit of a stretch, but you can always find something interesting no matter how bad someone is. I don't think this guy's necessarily a bad guy, but yeah, I mean, he... he’s so poisoned. Yeah, it's pretty right.

Shaan Puri

See, I think of it... I don't know, maybe I'm a little disconnected from reality, but for me, I'm like, I don't like movies where everybody is a good guy. I would not play a video game where you just walk around as a good Samaritan. Those aren't fun to me. I think that the real world has all kinds of people—shapes, colors, beliefs—all kinds of different things. I'm interested in the variety of ways that people live their lives. I'm glad that people live their lives doing all these different things, even though a lot of them are like villains. I'm not saying this guy's a villain, but I think that's just the way the world is. I think it's crazy to believe that the world shouldn't be that way or won't be that way. People are going to live their lives doing different things. Maybe this guy likes to drink bourbon and wear kilts on a farm that he owns. Alright, great! I'm glad that character exists. I'm glad that these characters exist. I think that most people will not feel that way. Most people will say, "Well, if this person's a bad guy, he shouldn't exist." I don't know, I find that to be... this is not the way I think about it.

Sam Parr

I believe every great man or every great woman is also a bad man. What I mean by that is, if you are at all considered great at anything or one of the best, inevitably you have enemies. You can't make everyone happy, right?

Shaan Puri

By the way, can you tweet that out? I'm doing this thing where I'm getting behind me one of the things that's going to go behind me. I'm getting these laser-etched signs that are basically tweets. It's called **lasertweets.com**. You can get any tweet turned into a wooden laser-etched sign. I'm going to hang a couple of my favorite quotes and tweets behind me. One of them, one of my favorites, is "Every great man is also a bad man." So, I need you to tweet that out so that I can get it made. But what you can't do is... or you can, if you want to, not make it gender-specific here. I just need you to tweet that out so I can get that one made. You're going to get it on my wall!

Sam Parr

I don't think I... I think I made up that phrasing, but I read it in a book and I don't remember exactly how they phrased it. That's how I phrased it, but I believe it to be true. Dude, I did so much research on this guy. I went to land forums. A really interesting research tactic that you should do is type in whatever you're searching for, like "fleshlight," and then type in "forum." You are brought to user-generated content of message boards and what people are saying. You could do the same thing but just type in the word "reddit." It's pretty sick. I went to land forums where this guy bought people's land. They go, "Yeah, you know," or someone was like, "Hey, this guy named Brad Kelly offered to buy my land. Who sold to him?" People were like, "Yeah, we sold to him. He's fine enough. Don't bother us." He offered us a fair deal. So they're like, "Well, and we all..." and people said, "Well, we read about him doing cigarettes, and that kind of sucks, but he's never caused us a problem." So anyway, every great man is also a bad man.

Shaan Puri

I like it did you want to do any any of these other ones or are we saving them

Sam Parr

I think this one should they should be saved

Shaan Puri

okay I have one quick one because I don't really have much to say but we talked about or

Sam Parr

we could do the ndvc one

Shaan Puri

Okay, I'm going to do a quick plug for these guys who took an idea we talked about and made it a reality. We discussed Levels.fyi, which is a salary comparison website. We had a whole episode about open salaries and whether or not to use transparent data, how that helps, blah blah blah. We said, "Hey, Levels does this for the tech industry." You can go see, "Alright, if I'm a Facebook Product Manager Level 5, what will I make if I live in Seattle? What will I make if I live in San Francisco? What's the benchmark? What are some data points so I know if I'm getting hosed or if they gave me a fair job offer or not?" So we said, "Dude, somebody should do this for other industries because this is awesome. Why isn't this happening in others?" These guys made MedLevels.fyi, and it's basically about doctor pay. If you go to it, you can see they don't have a ton of data yet, but they're getting some. They're getting doctors to input how much they're getting paid based on where they live and what type of doctor they are. I think it's great—super simple. It's just basically an Airtable displayed on a website, so it's really easy to build. Shout out to them!

Sam Parr

out to you it's Google forms I think

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying, like, in theory, right? It's such a simple, simple product to do. So, med levels... FYI, good job by those guys. If you're a doctor, listen, go put your stuff in there.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I was looking at this. Alright, we'll wrap it up by talking about one more thing. Maybe we should put this in the beginning, but let me ask you: how has your angel investing gone so far?

Shaan Puri

I'll tell you in 10 years that's the problem with angel investing

Sam Parr

but how many deals have you invested in

Shaan Puri

I think a little under 20, maybe like 18, something like that. We've invested in about 18 companies, deploying around $1.5 million to $2 million, something like that.

Sam Parr

and do you feel confident that you have some winners

Shaan Puri

Yeah, definitely. There are some winners. Now, we'll see. I think anything can happen, but I would say I'd be surprised if out of these 18, we don't have, you know, 2 companies that are worth $1,000,000,000 or more. I'd be surprised.

Sam Parr

So, wow, that's pretty sick. A few weeks ago, I tweeted out something that Andrew Chen said. Basically, I asked Andrew Chen, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, what his advice to me for angel investing was. He told me his opinion, and I tweeted that out. People sh*t on me, even though I was like, "I'm not saying this, I'm just..."

Shaan Puri

I'm the messenger

Sam Parr

Yeah, like I'm just reporting on someone interesting's opinion. I did tend to agree on a couple of the things. One of them was that there's this narrative of people who hate venture capital (VC). They're like, "I would rather grow slower." It's like, okay, that's cool, do that, but in...

Shaan Puri

Order... and they also say profits matter. You know, they love to mock Silicon Valley companies. They're like, "Dude, these guys, you know, they don't know anything about profits." Sorry, I'm just over here running a profitable business, just growing steadily every year. So they like to get on that kind of high horse.

Sam Parr

Which is crazy because both can exist and be wonderful, right? But there was this guy who I really liked, and I don't mean to criticize him at all. It was called NDVC, and it was kind of weird. I don't know why it was a venture capital firm because its whole shtick was basically, "We invest in bootstrapped businesses that want to grow slowly." They didn't exactly say "slowly," but it was for bootstrapped companies, which is, again, a little bit of an oxymoron. Why is a bootstrapped company going to be taking venture capital, right? But a lot of people really liked it, and the guy who ran it—I forget his name—I met with him. Awesome guy. And they went out of business this week.

Shaan Puri

and bryce I think it's his name

Sam Parr

Bryce... I like Bryce. Bryce is a good guy, but the model didn't work. I wanted to bring this up because something that Andrew said was, he said two things. He said, "Invest in quantity," so just kind of throw money at a bunch of stuff. Anything that seems promising, just kind of mindlessly invest in it. Second, he said, "Make sure it's growing 3x a year." If it's not, then it's not good. A lot of people didn't like when I said that, and they didn't like it. I think because it kind of hurt their feelings, like, "Well, you're saying I'm not worthy of venture capital." And the answer is, yeah, you're not.

Shaan Puri

you're you're not

Sam Parr

and but that's okay that doesn't like you shouldn't be offended right

Shaan Puri

You don't have to shut down your business. That just means this type of asset, this type of venture... you know, venture capital is chasing a certain profile of a company, and you may not fit that profile.

Sam Parr

And by the way, I think that most people... I bet you, I mean this sounds so douchey, but I bet you I've made significantly more money than a lot of people who have raised absolutely.

Shaan Puri

I was telling somebody this the other day. I was like, you know, media companies... We were talking about media companies and you know, you guys just sold your... you guys are a media company. It wasn't the biggest exit ever. It's not like, you know, some insane thing. But I was like, "Dude, how much did you raise total? Like, $1,000,000 and a half dollars? $2,000,000? Something like that."

Sam Parr

a 1,000,000

Shaan Puri

A $1,000,000, right? So it took so little money. And in not so... so give the profile. It was a $1,000,000, and it took you how many years from start to finish? But... but...

Sam Parr

When we started liquidity, we raised money to finish in less than 5 years, and I made 8 figures.

Shaan Puri

Right, exactly. And so, you owned, you know, the majority of the business or whatever. Because you didn't have to raise all this money and dilute yourself over and over again from round after round after round. If you look at companies that are selling for $1,000,000,000, where the founder owns 4%, or 2%, or 7%, it's not like they didn't sweat it for 10 years. Every hair on their head is gray because of that path. So, the size of the exit is not really linked to the outcome for the founder themselves.

Sam Parr

I agree, which proves that we're not alright. I know for speaking to myself, and I think you're not dismissing this idea of anti-VC, whatever. But this company went out of business, and it goes against this narrative of like, if you're going to give money to venture capital or companies that fit the profile of VC, you want them to be what many would just think or describe as reckless.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and that

Shaan Puri

One thing I didn't get: why did they go out of business? So, basically, they couldn't raise more money. Was that the idea? Yeah, right. That's how a VC fund goes out of business. He said in his thing, "We invested in 10 companies," or whatever. He gave some numbers. So, tell me that. He goes, "They were all bootstrapped and profitable, and they're all still going." He said something like, "We've invested in these; they're all still going, they're all still profitable, but we couldn't raise any more money." I was like, "What? What do you... I don't understand. What is his reason? Why did they go out of business?" He kind of sounded like he was crying a little bit, like he was kind of whining because he's like, "Our LPs didn't like our model, so they pulled the plug." Because, you know, whatever. I didn't read the thing very carefully, so you tell me. You looked into this.

Sam Parr

no I mean yeah

Shaan Puri

why is he saying they failed

Sam Parr

I don't think he was whining. I think he was just stating the fact that most people don't like this idea and weren't willing to stick it out. I don't blame them because if you go to indy.bc, the website features a video of a unicorn head on fire, as if they're anti-unicorn. In my head, I'm...

Shaan Puri

Returns are good if his returns are good. People would still be looking to back the fund because people who invest in funds are interested in the returns.

Sam Parr

aren't as good as other stuff like me

Shaan Puri

So, that's what he needs to say. It's not that people don't like this; he needs to say, "I was wrong. My returns weren't as good as I thought they would be, and they were not good enough to get more money." People invest. I invest in VC funds. I also invest in real estate, which has a different profile. I'll invest in crypto, which has a different risk-return profile. I invest in many things. That's why I thought it was kind of whining because he didn't just say the honest truth. I had this idea that this would be a great way to invest, but my returns were actually **shitty**, and therefore I couldn't raise more money. Either that's true, or his returns were actually good, and he just sucked at going and getting new investors. There are only two ways to go about it, right? I didn't understand. I stopped reading because he wasn't saying the truth, in my opinion.

Sam Parr

No, I mean, he said the truth. He said that, like, our strategy— a lot of LPs bailed. It cost us 80% of our LP base. They didn't want to come back, and it was just... yeah, the strategy didn't work in the sense of investors.

Shaan Puri

Did he post his returns? No. Okay, that's the thing he needed to say, right? He's saying they didn't like our strategy. So, he's kind of just patting himself on the back. I felt he's like, "They didn't like that we were going against the grain, going against the VC thing, and they had to pull out because of that."

Sam Parr

it's like well is

Shaan Puri

Is it that they didn't like what you were doing, or is it that it wasn't working and the returns weren't very good? They didn't believe the returns were going to be very good. I don't know... I'm being harsh on the guy. I don't know the guy, but...

Sam Parr

No, he's cool. I'm not bringing this up to Sean. I think it's cool he took a shot. It was a bad shot though, and that's great, right? You take swings, sometimes you miss.

Shaan Puri

for sure

Sam Parr

But I think, though, it's important that we look at what this means here. I think that someone like Andrew Chen, who from the outside you might think of as an elitist—like he went to, I don't know, he just gives this vibe that he's an elitist type of guy. And he kind of represents a lot of people like him, right? These VCs who are like, "Oh, fuck these tech bros." The reality is, though, that that strategy of doing stuff that appears to be reckless from the outside is the right strategy. It just feels really uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Shaan Puri

Dude, if you... it's a classic: "Don't hate the player, hate the game." It's not that the VCs decided, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to invest in a bunch of companies, and 1 or 2 will return the fund while everything else goes to zero." It's not that they want that. That's actually extremely stressful for them. If I get into a company that becomes a $10 billion+ company, I'm a hero and I'm the best. But if I miss that and invest in a bunch of other good companies that didn't quite get there, I suck. I can't raise my next fund, and I'm out of a job. So, it's crazy to me that they're not picking this; that just is the nature of the game. They have to play it if they want to succeed. In any game theory, the players in the game will eventually find the metagame—the strategy that is the optimal strategy. If you, just because of your opinion, personality, and morals, don't want to play it, cool, that's fine. But you're just not going to be playing the optimal strategy, and you're going to eventually lose the game. I think it's crazy that people hate the VCs when that's just the way that innovation works. The innovations that break through become humongous, and the innovations that don't become zeros or close to zeros. The winners are so big that they dominate all the returns.

Sam Parr

But then there's this other ground where it's like FVC. Personally, I'm on that boat where I want to be a VC, but I don't want to take VC money. And that's this other group of people. It's like, dude, they all can exist, right?

Shaan Puri

And that's why that quote is so insightful, right? "Don't hate the player, hate the game." Cool, you can hate the game; that's allowed. That's in the quote. You're allowed to hate the game and say, "I'm gonna play a different game." No problem! You can play games where you bootstrap, where you don't raise VC money, or where you don't do business at all. You can go be an employee somewhere. No problem, that's always an option.

Sam Parr

Well, I guess we just did a little rant, but I wanted to bring that up. We'll see if this episode turns out to be anything interesting.

Shaan Puri

abreu how do we do

Abreu Andrade

b + I want the graphics guys to like slam a big b + all over the screen

Shaan Puri

alright why b + you gotta give give the people that your explanation why why why are you saying what you're saying

Abreu Andrade

I mean, it was good research, but it wasn't as juicy as it could be. It was good. I've never seen Sean more animated than when he talks about flashlights, by the way.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I was super into that. To be honest, it got ruined when I went to the website. It's pretty freaking disgusting. But did you go to the website?

Shaan Puri

no I did all my research but I didn't go to their website

Sam Parr

It's not great; it's pretty gross. But no, I think it's interesting. I think what we'll have to do is, if we did an entire episode on Fleshlight or an entire episode on this guy Brad Kelly, I think it would be crazy fascinating and cool.

Shaan Puri

want more I thought I thought brad was saying I went too much into it

Abreu Andrade

no that the the flashlight was the best part I'm just saying you're very animated about it

Sam Parr

yeah I would do

Shaan Puri

Here, I have space, but it's cold. So, I have to talk in an animated way to not freeze my ass off. You're...

Abreu Andrade

passionate about flashlights it's okay

Sam Parr

So, I've been listening to a true crime podcast every night. It's weird that I'm in bed with my wife, about to go to sleep, hearing about how this guy just murdered and raped these people. But there's this one lately called *Generation Y*. It's really popular, and all it is, is two guys discussing crimes and mysteries ranging from 9/11 to serial murders to the Bermuda Triangle—all that type of thing. All they're doing is talking and retelling a story. We should definitely just do that with one interesting person.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's great. Although, if it's not true crime, I don't know how interested people would be in it.

Sam Parr

If you told a 60 to 90 minute story in the same way that you told that Fleshlight story, people would love it. I could tell because I was enthralled by it.

Shaan Puri

what's the first story we could tell how could we try it

Sam Parr

Well, one time we talked about this: the French Bill Gates. That guy was so intriguing to me. If...

Shaan Puri

You do 60 minutes. That's like, you can really only tell your own story or something you really know. Or, you know, the "American Kingpin" story. You can like retell it, retell the book basically as a podcast.

Sam Parr

Well, that's what you're doing at the end of the day. You're just reading 15 articles and telling the long story about it. What you could do is have one of us be the more researched one, while the other listens and asks questions.

Shaan Puri

okay alright I'm down to trying if you have an idea

Sam Parr

am I wrong abreu

Abreu Andrade

I mean, it could work. I'm just... I don't know how you can make it that exciting. Like true crime, there's suspense, there's mystery. You know what's going to happen. I don't... I guess business, maybe like big business scandals, you could do that with.

Sam Parr

no dude you do it exactly like you did the fleshlight guy

Shaan Puri

The origin stories... Yeah, I think origin stories are good, right? That's what I tried to do with the Fleshlight guy. It was like, basically, you tell how this thing came to be. So I think you could do it that way.

Abreu Andrade

it works I don't I but I agree with sean I don't know how you get 60 to 90 minutes out of it

Shaan Puri

I think you basically... yeah, forget the 6 minutes. That doesn't matter. It could be 20 minutes; it's no issue. But it's like just a well-told story—a well-researched and therefore well-told story about something that happened honestly. For me, I started listening to this YouTube channel that basically is like book summaries, but actually done well. I actually like it.

Sam Parr

what's it called

Shaan Puri

A productivity game is a YouTube channel with about half a million subscribers, I think. I might be wrong on that, but it has a lot of subscribers. I've listened to probably 10 of their book summaries of just books I've bought but haven't gotten to. I'm like, "Do I really want to go read 'Made to Stick' or can I just watch this 7-minute video?" And like, "Oh, those are the 4 principles of 'Made to Stick.' Cool!" I still might read the book, but now I know if it's interesting or not. Similarly, I'm reading, you know, whether it's like, for example, I read this book about PayPal, whatever the PayPal origin story is. If we just retold that, it's like, you know, just take the book and then turn it into a 20-minute retelling of the story. I think that could be pretty well received.

Sam Parr

I know that would work

Shaan Puri

american kingpin would be great

Sam Parr

There's this awesome podcast called **We Study Billionaires**, which sounds lame, but honestly, it's really good. You guys know they're huge. They read a book on someone or just a long article and then retell the story.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

it's really good I love this podcast it's called the investors podcast you never heard of this

Abreu Andrade

preston pish

Sam Parr

yeah they're good man

Shaan Puri

I know their thumbnail the red thumbnail

Abreu Andrade

they're huge yeah

Sam Parr

40,000,000 downloads they have so that would work

Abreu Andrade

about the fanboys

Sam Parr

I guess we should publish what we're talking about right now. But speaking of books, you know what I'm doing? This isn't the one I'm doing with it, but I'm just going to read one book this year. I'm going to study the heck out of it. I'm sick of reading like two books a month and not remembering anything.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for me, YouTube is just so much better. I'm going deep on, you know, like Charlie Munger and Peter Lynch, watching so many of their videos or listening to their content. There's just a lot of wisdom in there. Charlie Munger said this thing: "I don't want to read the news. I want to read something that made sense 30 years ago, makes sense today, and will make sense 30 years from now." I'd rather just read that 10 times than read whatever the latest thing is. And that's kind of what you're saying.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I agree. Alright, well, let's bounce. I'm gonna get my...

Shaan Puri

shit set up by the next podcast better