This Scottish SaaS Company Makes $1M/Year Per Employee (#461)

Sam Parr

I'm gonna blow your mind. Ready? So, Scotland. You know Scotland, you've heard of that country, right? You've heard of that place. Familiar? The land of kilts and sheep. That's a good question.

Shaan Puri

redheads but okay

Sam Parr

And redheads, but it's also home to one of the coolest SaaS businesses that I've ever heard of. It's called Petroleum Exports, and it's known as Pet Tax.

Shaan Puri

let's jump in we got a bunch of stuff today

Sam Parr

We're going to do what's called a **business breakdown duel**. Sean and I are now in a western duel. I guess a western duel is when we both did a business breakdown without knowing that the other one was going to do it. So now we're going to compare. I'm going to go first, which gives you the advantage because the person who goes last usually wins in rap battles. It's always like when they do the applause for "person A" and "person B." "Person B" always wins.

Shaan Puri

I get to hear you say your thing and then I could make fun of what you said

Sam Parr

Yeah, so anyway, you're going to get the advantage, but that's okay. So I'll go first. Okay, but before I go first, I've got to give a shout-out to Andrew Lynch from Net Income. It's a Substack; it's where I found this particular business, and I'm stealing a lot of his numbers. But I'm going to blow your mind. Ready? So Scotland... you know Scotland, right? You've heard of that country, Scotland? Right? You've heard of that place, the familiar land of kilts and sheep. But also, I think there are sheep there. I don't actually know; that's how little I know about Scotland. But also...

Shaan Puri

redheads but okay

Sam Parr

And redheads, but it's also home to one of the coolest SaaS businesses that I've ever heard of. It's called Petroleum Exports, known as Petex. It's a challenging name, I know, and it's a highly technical specialist software crucial for oil and gas operations. You can go to petex.com to check it out. So, pull that up. But Petex, it's a highly technical specialist software that's the backbone of some of the most important operations in the oil and gas industry. It sounds boring, and that's because it is. However, last year they made £78,000,000 in revenue, which is about $100,000,000 USD. On that $100,000,000 in revenue, about £67,000,000 of it was profit. Of that profit, they basically took out all the money. They paid a dividend of £41,000,000, which is about $60,000,000, and that was paid to the owner. It wasn't even retained by the company, which means for every dollar they took, about 52¢ went directly to the owner's pocket. Now, here's the cool part: none of this is rumors. This isn't hearsay. I'm not just telling you I heard a story because in the UK, if you're a privately held company that hits a certain threshold in revenue, you have to submit your reports. You can just log in; it's called Companies House. You can just go there, and you could see all this information. So, I went and looked at many, many years of their data, and I'm going to tell you a story about how this company came to be. It was started by this guy named... we're going to call him Abe. His name's Abe. He's a Muslim guy with a very, very challenging first and last name. Can you see his name? Can you tell me how to pronounce that? Abdul Hamid is the first name and the last name, but it's very challenging. There's a "d" and there's a "j" together; that's very challenging.

Shaan Puri

oh so you are calling him abe or he goes by abe

Sam Parr

I'm calling him abe his last name is

Shaan Puri

if you look at it met many muslim abe's but

Sam Parr

I'm going to call him Abe. His last name has a "D" and a "J" next to each other, and I don't even know how to pronounce that sound, so I'm sorry, Abe. It's a very challenging name to pronounce. He started the company in 1990, which is based in Aberdeen, Scotland. Aberdeen is basically like a hub for the oil industry; it's kind of similar to what Houston is in America. The company originally served as a petroleum consultant for the oil and gas industry, as well as retailers. They would create mathematical models to help people in the oil and gas industry manage their projects. Today, they've pivoted from consulting to providing software. They only have 420 customers, and their core product is composed of complex features with descriptions like multi-phase network modeling, optimization, and a thorough dynamics fluid characterization package. So, pretty complicated stuff. As I said, they started as a consulting business and they did £78,000,000 in revenue last year, which is about $100,000,000. They made £58,000,000 in profit and paid out £50,000,000 in dividends, meaning the company doesn't require much capital. They made all this profit, and most of it—£58,000,000 profit and £50,000,000—came out of the business and went directly to the owner's pockets. He's been doing this for years. Their biggest expense is employees. Because they're based in the UK, they pay UK software engineer salaries, which are lower than in the US. The average all-in cost per employee, of which they have 86, is only £101,000 per year. This means they are generating £9,911,000 in revenue per employee.

Shaan Puri

so 9 x nine x basically roi per per person that they hired

Sam Parr

so yeah this company absolutely kills it and I wanna tell you when I was analyzing this company and if you look up andrew lynch his substack he does a really good job of explaining the technical details of the company I wanna explain some of the entrepreneurial takeaways that I had so if you go to the top link sean in our doc right at the beginning of the story you'll see the substack where you can it's his andrew lynch has a thing called net income and that's where I discovered this so I wanna tell you some of my takeaways takeaway 1 focus + time that's what this guy did so everyone talks about focus but what does focus means you basically in my opinion need to focus enough to turn your idea into a machine and then after that I think you can deviate some attention away from that if you want but the company needs focus and that focus took takes time so I went back and I looked at a lot of their revenue and so did andrew so if you scroll down sean you'll see a graph of the revenue and what you'll notice is that it took them 15 years to get to $10,000,000 in revenue £10,000,000 right I'm gonna call it dollars so $10,000,000 in revenue and I know a lot of people I think maybe you have done this with one of your businesses got to close to 10,000,000 revenue in like 1.5 or 1 or 2 years actually and so 15 years particularly in like the tech internet space it feels horribly long but I think that's okay that's the right feeling and so what I try to do something I've been thinking about for a while is I ask myself in 10 or 20 years will I be happy if I started this today and that's a really good quote but that answer is incredibly murky more often than not sometimes it's like a I think yes it's a very murky thing and there's this famous story about jeff bezos when he started amazon he has this thing called the regret minimalization framework where he says this story about he was like well even though I had this good job I decided to start amazon because in 80 years when I'm 80 or when I'm 80 years old will I be proud that I started it today the answer was yes but in that same story he also said that he thought at most amazon could make is a $100,000,000 a year so he he it's not like he had the full picture so it was like yeah I I think this can work and so I went and talked to dharmesh who's the founder dharmesh shah the founder of hubspot I also talked to kip who is the cmo and kip joined hubspot in year 5 I asked kip how big do you think hubspot could be when he joined you know how big did he think so hubspot today is worth $25,000,000,000 when I asked him he said I thought it could hit a $1,000,000,000 in valuation it's a little bit of a stretch but I thought we could do a $1,000,000,000 in valuation meaning like what's that 80,000,000 in revenue I don't I don't know how that

Shaan Puri

something like that

Sam Parr

And then I asked Dharmesh, "How big do you think he could get?" He goes, "Really, I didn't have any idea." But I knew that all I wanted was 1,000 customers who would each pay $250. This, by the way, is only $3,000,000 a year in revenue, and I thought that would be a pretty cool milestone. The reason this is important is because the biggest pain in a business is not just failing, but it's failing slowly. It's spending a decade working on something and wasting your most nonrenewable resource, which is time. Wasting that time is significantly worse, I think, than losing $1,000,000 a year in one or two years and then quitting. So that's where it's kind of an art, a skill, an intuition, and talent. That's where all this stuff comes into place. So tactically, what does this mean? Ben Franklin said, "A small leak will sink a great ship." Warren Buffett said, "If you find yourself in a chronically leaky boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."

Sam Parr

Being only work on things as long as your boat isn't leaking, as long as you don't have any holes in that boat. But here's the thing: every early sales company, yeah, everything's leaky at first. So I went back to Dharmesh and back to Kip, and I said, "Guys, tell me about this HubSpot right now." Your guys' net revenue retention... I don't know what it is exactly, but I think it's like 105%. This means for every dollar that someone spends at HubSpot, the next year they're going to spend $1.05. And he said, and Chip and Kip, they said a few things. So I'm going to mix it up a little bit, or I'm going to kind of interchange with what they said. But I believe it was Kip who said, "Our churn at first was terrible. It was beyond bad. At one point, we were losing 30% of customers on an annual basis." I then asked Dharmesh, "Was your guys' churn really that bad?" He goes, "Yeah, it was definitely really bad. It took about five years in order to get it to a good place." I said, "Well, what did you do to fix that?" He said, "Our goal was not to make customers happy; it was to make happy customers." This meant everything from our branding, pitch, marketing, sales, and service should be thought out in a process where the outcome was a happy customer. That meant it was everyone's job. Marketing needs to be reaching better fit customers who are less likely to churn. Sales shouldn't oversell and should only qualify customers who are likely to succeed, which helps reduce churn. Product needs to make sure they don't just build new features, but build features that reduce churn. They have to ensure these features get adopted. Churn reduction is a team sport. You also have to remember there's a power law: 90% of stickiness will be driven by 10% of the product and company features. So, instead of adding 100 features, just find the ones that work and double down on those.

Sam Parr

Being all ships are leaky at first, but hopefully, you can figure out a way to do it. Last but not least, my takeaway: $10 a month is rarely going to feed a bunch of hungry mouths. Our listeners, including you and I, sometimes fall into this trap. I had a $25 a month product as well. A lot of times, what we do is look for arbitragers or small little hacks. That's neat, that's all cool and all, and every once in a while, it gives you that dopamine hit. But this company, the reason I like it, is you know how much they charge per year? $300,000 a year for a license to their company. They only have 450 clients. Andrew, in his Substack article, said something great. He goes, "Imagine you're running an oil rig that extracts hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day. Brent crude is currently trading at $75 per barrel. So every 100 barrels is $7,500 in revenue. Your IT guy comes up to you and says, 'Boss, Patux just raised their prices by 10%. I think we could save $3,000 annually if we switch software providers to another thorough dynamic fluid characterization package.' Instead, you tell them to piss off. Don't touch a thing. Just make sure nothing breaks. A measly $3,000 is nothing in the grand scheme of a huge capital-intensive business." So they put their price up 10% and everyone moves on. It helps them solve problems in their business and makes their business better. This is my breakdown of this company. I love it! I love this company! I love these Scottish guys. Jonathan's giving me a clap. What do you think about this one?

Shaan Puri

yeah jonathan you like that one oh

Ben Wilson

Yeah, that was you. You kind of touched it all. You got the opening story with impact and then the three big takeaways at the end. That Q and A with Kiv and Dharmesh was a nice touch.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that was a good touch. I like how you brought that in. There was a bit of a spelling and pronunciation challenge at the beginning, but you overcame that, and I'm proud of you for doing that.

Sam Parr

You know what I say? I went to speech class when I was a kid, by the way. I always tell people I just have a big tongue. My tongue's really thick; I got a thick tongue.

Shaan Puri

something that's hard for me big tongue yeah

Sam Parr

I got... I got a fat tongue. It's just... it's like a snail in there. It's like a...

Shaan Puri

a slug

Sam Parr

I got a slug of a tongue. I have molasses in my mouth. I don't know what to say. It's hard for me to say some words sometimes.

Shaan Puri

It's like the further away from Saint Louis a person gets, or a company gets, the harder it is to explain them.

Sam Parr

that's interesting you know I I

Shaan Puri

Guess, two things on my mind right now. I bet there's an opportunity to create another FedEx, basically. With machine learning and AI, you could go into these kind of old-school, big-dollar type companies and say, "Hey, look, we have the ability to process your data or to give you insights that's going to save you money." Like, yeah, a 10% efficiency gain, 20% efficiency gains. I bet that these opportunities have existed, but the more powerful machine learning and AI get, the more those opportunities open up. The bottleneck is people who even understand what problems exist inside, you know, some shale gas company or inside ExxonMobil, and then being able to go sell into them. There was a guy I met very early on when I was doing my startup. I didn't really know any other entrepreneurs. There was one guy who also went to Duke, and I wonder what happened to him. I haven't kept in touch, but I think his name was Evan Anderson. He was building a company that was selling to us from Osberg. Yeah, this is exactly right. Let's see what happened with this company. So it was selling to companies that were in Oklahoma. I was like, "Whoa, you moved to Oklahoma?" He was like, "Yeah, this is where my customers are." I was like, "Who's your customers?" And it was like all the oil and gas companies that are in America. What he was doing at that time was basically, quote unquote, "big data" for oil and gas. I was like, "That's a great idea." I'm looking at it now; he's still there as CEO, 14 years later. So this company has been pretty successful. I was like, "I would check in with him and be like, you know, what's the challenge?" At this time, I'm working on a sushi restaurant chain, and he's like, "You know, I'll spend six months just courting the right guy, the right suit at this company. I gotta take him to, you know, a football game. I gotta invite his family over." We gotta get...

Sam Parr

to know him we gotta get him comfortable with this you know this software but once I

Shaan Puri

Once I close that deal, these deals are going to be worth $1,000,000 and $1,000,000 over time. They're never going to rip us out once we get in. I'm curious how this company is doing today, but I know that, you know, 15 years ago, I was like, "This is a great idea." I intuitively knew it because I was like, the same effort it's taking me to do this silly sushi restaurant thing, he's spending the same amount of time. He's just working for a much bigger prize with much more defensibility and a much clearer value. He's going into an industry that has never had this sort of software capability. He's like, "I will sit here until I understand your problems, and then I will build solutions for this." I just love that approach. I think that's a great mindset. If people are willing to kind of eat shit and go outside of their comfort zone of problem areas they understand, there are pretty big opportunities.

Sam Parr

yeah and it's cool did you see this graph from andrew lynch of this company's revenue

Shaan Puri

yeah this is like a perfect hockey stick but over a long. Of time

Sam Parr

over a really long. Of time

Shaan Puri

I mean, that's something we talk about a lot. Like, this 15 years to get to $10,000,000... You know, respect for continuing and making it all work. That's not for me. What's Lemoy's quote? "Why does everyone make fun of getting rich quick? That's the best way to get rich." And I'm gonna tell you about a company in a second here that said in their first week they did $1,000,000 of sales and never went less than that from there on. And you...

Sam Parr

think that that's not true correct

Shaan Puri

I think it's I think it's a lie but I love a good lie

Sam Parr

I love a good lie tell me about this give me a good lie you don't

Shaan Puri

Underestimate how much of startup stories are just lies. Okay, so here's my big business breakdown: I see your dual, and I raise you. In my head, by the way, we were doing an old-fashioned Western duel, but now I decided it's *American Gladiators*, and you're Laser and I'm Blazer, and we're going at it on the joust. And so this morning I was thinking about...

Sam Parr

who's lying out there

Shaan Puri

Who's lying? Men's problems. Let's play with this. Let's play with that. Okay, so most people have heard... you got a little...

Sam Parr

You got a little situation? Is that the issue? You got a little situation? No, no, no, no, that's not how.

Shaan Puri

We got... actually, here's the actual train of thought. I was thinking about these T-shirt companies. A little segue here to tell you how my brain works. So, I think about these T-shirt companies. I don't know if you've seen this, but basically, in the last kind of like four years, there's been a bunch of companies that started and succeeded by doing the most obvious thing. I've seen this happen again and again: there are these windows of time where big ideas are just hidden in plain sight. In the last four years, a bunch of companies have started that do such a simple thing—they just sell basic, plain men's T-shirts. These were the big DTC (direct-to-consumer) ideas. So, like, anybody who wanted to do e-commerce, drop shipping, or build a brand, the opportunity was sitting right in front of everybody. It was just men's T-shirts. You have Cuts, Fresh Clean Tees, True Classic Tees, Built Basics—all of these companies that, in the last sort of four-year window, have built $100 million+ companies. Some of them do about $50 million a year in sales, while others do $100 or $150 million a year in sales. So, this is the kind of range, but to go in like a three-year...

Shaan Puri

To get to $150,000,000 in sales, that's what True Classic Tees did. It's just bananas, to be honest. So, I'll tell you the numbers for True Classic. Year 1: $15,000,000. Year 2: $90,000,000. Year 3: $150,000,000 in top-line revenue. They did it all through Facebook ads, selling plain, you know, white, black, and blue men's T-shirts. That's the same thing I think Fresh Clean Tees is doing, somewhere around $50,000,000, north of $50,000,000 in revenue. I think Cuts is over $100,000,000. It's crazy that these companies all scaled so fast doing such an obvious thing. There was no massive innovation. I was thinking about this, and I was like, man, there are these windows of time. Then I thought about what other windows I’ve seen like this. I stayed in the e-commerce world and thought about back in 2017 when both Roman and Hims launched, doing basically the same thing. They launched within a couple of months of each other. Basically, people had the same idea at the same time, and both of them became $1,000,000,000+ companies doing the same thing. What they did was, you know, I guess the summary is they took advantage of a... what do we...

Sam Parr

Call it an inflection. Sam Lowe's, this inflection in this case, well, this was regulation inflection.

Shaan Puri

This was a regulatory inflection. What happened was there was proven market demand for drugs like Viagra, Propecia, or Rogaine. So, for hair loss or erectile dysfunction, there was a proven business there. They started in the early nineties, and by 2017, the patents expired for those. When the patents expired...

Sam Parr

have you ever taken a viagra or anything like that

Shaan Puri

haven't have you

Sam Parr

No, but if someone told me it's awesome, I would. I've never had it, though.

Shaan Puri

It's awesome! So, the patents expired, and basically, now there are generic versions of these drugs. At the same time, there's another regulatory inflection: telemedicine was becoming more prevalent. Things were getting opened up for telemedicine, meaning you could prescribe drugs without going to the doctor. So, drugs without a doctor was the key framework for this type of business. They both launched, and the HIMSS guy, Andrew Dudum, said, "We launched, and in our first week, we did $1,000,000 in sales, and we've never done less than $1,000,000 since then." I was like, "Wow, that is incredible!" It is true that HIM scaled really quickly, so their revenue was $1,000,000.

Sam Parr

a week so he said they never did he said they never did less than a1000000 a week after watching

Shaan Puri

Yes, oh, is that... I was like, "That's insane!" I was thinking about that because I've launched many things. The first week is... you're talking about patching holes on a boat. That's how the first week is. It's like you don't even have inventory. You don't have a million dollars of inventory. To do a million dollars, how much are you spending in ads? Did you just blast like half a million dollars in ads in your first week? Facebook ads doesn't even let you ramp up that quickly, so I was a little bit suspicious of this. The revenue did ramp quickly. They launched at the very end of 2017. In 2018, the full year, they did $27 million in revenue with $27 million in ad spend. So they spent 100% of revenue on ads, which means they burned a bunch of money. In 2019, they went from $27 million to $83 million, and they spent $50 million on ads. In 2020, they were forecasting about $140 million, and then I have the actuals. Check out this revenue growth; it's pretty insane. In 2021, they did $270 million. In 2022, they did $540 million. In 2023, they're projecting to finish at $800 million in revenue. So this is a pretty crazy run-in, what, six years to ramp up to $800 million in revenue?

Sam Parr

so they could get to a a a 1,000,000,000 in revenue in 7 years

Shaan Puri

exactly they're burning money this whole time even now even at 500,000,000 last year they only have 2% ebitda margin and that's the adjusted ebitda the real the they actually burned 10,000,000 but the the adjusted is that they you know they they they made a a small 2% margin and so super capital intensive they raised like 200 something $1,000,000 before going public and then in going public another 2 $300,000,000 went into the business I think and so it's taken them a lot of capital to get here so I would say 3 things amazing story just in general like props to them for pulling this off like they built this out of an incubator I ran an incubator for 6 years I couldn't get one thing to even 10,000,000 in revenue and they this was like a big hit that came out of a incubator which is very very rare roe roman which is now rebranded roe also came out of an incubator at the same time so they're the 2 biggest incubator hits were were sort of the these 2 companies that did the same thing essentially one did it for hair so I think hims did it for hair hair loss and roe did it for ed and then they both just added the other product as they went so impressive in that way the revenue growth impressive the ad spend and the money burned incredible I now question is this even a good business so like they basically showed that their their tax or their cost to acquire customers is really high like their cost to acquire customers is basically what do I have it here it's like a 100 + dollars to acquire a customer let me grab it I think it's like $150 on average to to acquire a customer the lowest it's been is like a $100 to acquire a customer and they basically think they think they 3 x their money in 3 years which is actually not very good for ecom like my ecom business which is nowhere near the scale of this is way more efficient than this like they're trying to pay back essentially you know a little over a year we're trying to pay back in in 2 months and so like you know it's amazing what just pure aggression they approach this business with they were just like yeah we're gonna scale this thing and we're gonna pour a bunch of money in we're gonna burn a bunch of money but we're gonna ramp up and like we're gonna try to thread the needle to get this business to work when it's at the billions in in in scale and they kind of pulled it off because they went public with versus pack and they got liquid before the business really worked

Sam Parr

This week, I had to chop down a tree at my farm, and I didn't have an axe, so I just used a sledgehammer instead. My wife was like, "Oh, did you chop down that tree?" I was like, "I kinda smashed it down." I just sledgehammered it down. That's kinda what these guys did; they just kinda sledgehammered their way into the market.

Shaan Puri

Have you seen this guy on TikTok who just chops trees? He gets like a million views, and there are hundreds of thousands of women commenting, like, just gasping, "I need him!"

Sam Parr

is he hot is he not shirtless no is he shirtless and hot

Shaan Puri

He's shirtless and he just chops the tree perfectly. It takes him like 10 strokes to bring down this giant tree.

Sam Parr

is that like the innuendo for sex or something

Shaan Puri

Literally... I'm watching this thing and I'm like, "I don't even know why I'm watching this." This is, just from a purely objective level, very attractive. I'm just gonna say this: **this is very attractive**.

Sam Parr

his hat

Shaan Puri

He just wears like suspenders. He looks like a lumberjack, but he's like GQ'd out. So he's... he's like a groomed lumberjack that's super... with a CrossFit body that chops down trees instead of going to the gym. He's incredible. So you're kinda like that. You're like that but, you know...

Sam Parr

I'm like a store brand.

Shaan Puri

yeah you're you're like in the in the in the zip code of that

Sam Parr

So that's basically what these guys did. They kind of brute-forced their way. But why don't you think this is a good business?

Shaan Puri

Well, I think that the amount of capital it took to get to this business value is significant. It's worth $1,800,000,000 on paper, and they've taken $500,000,000 to get here. So, if you just zoom out, it's like we 3.5x our money. That's not the most impressive thing, but when you frame it another way, it's like, "We're going to hit $1,000,000,000 in sales, and we've done this in 7 years." We've built the largest telemedicine health company for men and women. You could frame it one way, or you could just kind of look at it the other. It's like, now here's a business where I have to pay $150 to acquire a customer, and it takes 2 years to pay it back, if that. We'll see how it all projects out. It's super sensitive to factors like marketing costs. They pour so much money into marketing, and what if Facebook costs change? How's that going to affect them? I'm not saying it's a bad business, but compared to that FedEx company that does $100,000,000 in sales and dividends out $50,000,000 to the owner, I know which business I would want to own. I would want to own the business that didn't need a SPAC to succeed—the one that's distributing like a mega yacht every year to this guy. That's sick, and it has like one millionth of the notoriety of a brand like it.

Sam Parr

so other things about the yeah tell me the the the other interesting thing

Shaan Puri

So, other cool things... I think there are a series of notable points for the research. I want to put these on the screen, so I’ll put the images on screen on YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, just pause and go to YouTube because you’ve got to see these. If you go back through their history, first take a look at this thing I have on page... what is this, page 3 or something? The P&L. Do you see this P&L? This was in their S-1 to go public. It literally just says: - Revenue: $27 - Gross Profit: $8 - Adjusted EBITDA: -$68 That's the P&L they shared in their investor presentations. Like, what kind of kindergarten level of detail is this? What kind of crayon P&L are you doing? This is *fucking* ridiculous! And I was like, this is why SPACs went to shit. Because half the P&L is just projections. You can't do that if you go public the traditional way, but in SPACs, you can make these forward-looking projections. That's how all these guys got away with it. It's like, "We’ve got a shitty business now, but in five years, we are crushing it." They were able to tell that story, whereas you can't make forward-looking statements in the traditional way of going public. Then I was like, this is some absolute basic beginner-looking thing. I was just stunned at this. This is on the SEC website. That's an embarrassment. Alright, the second thing you can go to their website and you can find in...

Sam Parr

the web archive their landing page from

Shaan Puri

The beginning... so check this out. This was their first landing page. This is like the month that they launched it. It just said, "Guy against staggering odds. Two things happen: 1. The universe, 2. You." "Let's walk at our full height, honor our forebearers, have a smile, and for God's sakes, floss. Shop now." And it just scrolls down and it simply says, "Sex. This is simple. You need erections when you want them and not when it's convenient for your penis." There’s an eggplant emoji that says, "Shop sex." There was another one for hair that was like the same. It was like, "She needs to run her fingers through your hair a lot." Then it just says, "Our best sellers." There’s just a very basic bottle that says Finasteride. That’s like the generic name for Propecia, you know, for male pattern baldness or whatever. They were just selling it for $28. They only had two SKUs: Finasteride and vitamins. Not even like Vitamin C. It’s just, "Hey bud, here’s some vitamins." It's so incredible to go see. I love, love, love looking at successful businesses' early landing pages just to see how they got their business out the door. One thing that’s interesting is from the beginning, they actually had a pretty strong branding and brand identity. So if you go do this with like Snapchat or Uber, the first websites are just absolutely fugly. I have this blog post on the internet that’s called... you just search "Sean Perry early startup landing pages" on Medium. It’s called "10 Throwback Startup Home Pages."

Sam Parr

when did you write that article

Shaan Puri

I wrote this in 2015 so this was

Sam Parr

"What month? What month? June? Oh, you beat me!" On October 12, 2015, I wrote an article titled "Proof That Your Favorite Startup Started Out Awful." It's a list of 10 landing pages.

Shaan Puri

yeah you caught me

Sam Parr

your favorite startup

Shaan Puri

I think we knew each other then. You can go look at Airbnb's; it's literally plain black and white. It just says, "For good hotels, stay with a local." Uber looks like a janky thing—everyone's private driver—but it resembles an old-school car service. Snapchat has one of these yellow bubbles that says, "Buy now," you know, like "Buy 2, get 1." It just says, "Free download inside," and it says, "Introducing Snapchat: real-time picture chatting for iPhone." There are two girls in their bikinis, and it just says "7 seconds" on the screen, like a self-destructing photo. So you can see what early startup landing pages look like. What's interesting and unique in the HIMSS case is that they actually had their branding from day one, which I think was a smart move by them. They specifically branded it with opposite colors to every other male wellness product. Every other male wellness product is essentially blue, and they were like, "No, we'll go with an all-neutral color scheme, lowercase font for the brand name." We're going to make it subtle because there's a stigma and a taboo around this. It's not something you want to brag about. We don't want bold; we want to be able to give you this package in a discreet way. You know, and I know, and that's all who needs to know. I thought that was a smart thing for them to get right from day one.

Sam Parr

All their models are like... it's usually like a cool-looking Black dude or like a racially ambiguous guy. It's like, "Oh, I can see myself in you. I'm a young, cool guy with... like I wear cool jeans as well."

Shaan Puri

were your parents all of the power rangers why are you all tall like a half in here

Sam Parr

it's usually like a like a pretty racially ambiguous good looking guy with nice teeth

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah the teeth are always on.

Sam Parr

Versus like viagra is always like brett favre looking guy

Shaan Puri

And then, this was one of their early, early ads. It just says, "Get hard or get your money back." It's just a guy holding a tiny pill, and it's a... and then.

Sam Parr

and what ethnicity is that guy

Shaan Puri

Oh dude, his hand is like a gradient in Photoshop. It's like all colors. You see here, it says "eggplant emoji, rise to the occasion for less." One thing that they did really well was figuring out how to advertise on Facebook with a taboo product. They would do stuff like show a picture of a limp cactus, and then another, and it would be like, "So you don't have this problem." They were very clever with their marketing. They also created ad inventory. They would go to stadiums and say, "Alright, a bunch of guys who are in our demographic are at the stadium. We could either spend like $400,000 to get on the jumbotron along with BMW and a bunch of other big brands, or we could go to the stadium facility manager and say, 'Hey, how much for the urinal space?'" They're like, "What?" And they say, "Yeah, we want to put a little ad on the urinal and we'll give you guys, you know, X price to be in every urinal." They're like, "Yeah dude, we got like 30 seconds of guys' focus time while they're touching their thing, looking at our ad. This is actually kind of perfect." So they would create new ad inventory that didn't even exist before, just trying to figure out how to spend $100,000,000 in a way that's going to be as efficient as possible. So they're, you know, really just like...

Hubspot

Very... they're like a very advanced marketing agency. Essentially, our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: "Grow better." Another thing that they did, and I did a big breakdown on this one time, was if you Google "Viagra alternative," "cheap Viagra," or "buy Viagra online," they show up number one. What they did was they actually sponsored a ton of Twitch people, and somehow that got their links out there. They got tons and tons of backlinks really early on, so Hims.com ranked quite high. I think if you... I think "Viagra alternative" might be like their word. I forget which, but it's one of those pages, and that's where they got most of the revenue early on.

Shaan Puri

Oh wow, that's interesting. You know, there's another cool thing. I'll put this graphic on the stream. It's this graphic from... I don't know, have you ever read *Sacra*, by the way?

Sam Parr

I don't even know if that's

Shaan Puri

how you say it sacra yeah

Sam Parr

yeah the like the research thing I like it yeah they're pretty cool I

Shaan Puri

don't think people know about them but they

Sam Parr

It's like really good research. S A C R A. Yeah, so they had done.

Shaan Puri

A thing... they had this great graphic which basically illustrated that telemedicine is a trend with a lot of opportunity right now. They showed a picture of a guy and a girl in a diagram. You could look from head to toe—literally from head to toe. You start at the hair: there are companies like Hims, Keeps, and Roman. Then you go down to the eyes, and it's like there's Prescription Contact Hub, Hubble, which was a D2C startup doing prescription contacts through a phone app instead of going to the doctor. When you get to their bicep, it's like TRT (testosterone replacement therapy) with a bunch of companies like Hone Health and others. Then you go to their abs, which is about weight loss. When you reach the crotch area, it's about erectile dysfunction. Then you go down to the toes, and it's like, "Here's toe fungus." Next to them, there's a little pet, and it says, "Hey, here's Pop," which is insurance for your pet. Instead of going to the vet for everything, you can use Pop. They did the same thing for women, and you could literally see that if you've seen those diagrams showing the big opportunity to unbundle Craigslist, they took Craigslist's homepage and showed how every little section of Craigslist became its own billion-dollar startup. They did the same thing to your body; every part of your body became a billion-dollar startup, essentially from one D2C wellness company or multiple in some areas, like skincare.

Sam Parr

All of their logos look exactly the same. Lowercase font, pastel colors... I think it's... oh.

Shaan Puri

By the way, one other little observation: a lot of these D2C successes came from a certain type of founder. Not all of them, but many are from MBA founders—like those who went to business schools. It's funny because, in the startup world, business schools are kind of an easy punching bag. You can easily make fun of them, saying, "Bro, you don't learn business in school; you learn business by doing business." And that's how I feel, to be honest with you. So, I'm like, that's true, but there is something interesting about a lot of D2C companies: Blue Apron, Birchbox, Stitch Fix, Warby Parker, Rent the Runway, HelloFresh, and then this guy who did Hims—he went to Wharton as well. So, it's like a lot of these big companies have founders who fit a certain profile. I think there is something about the type of person who would do well in business school and the types of things you learn there. You do this market landscape analysis, figure out the opportunities, and then you realize, "Okay, good. I just need to be good at marketing and then good at operations in order to put cash in here and get things out." It's not very software-based; you don't have to be the innovator who's the sole inventor of something. I think it lends itself to that type of entrepreneur, which I found pretty interesting too.

Sam Parr

Well, here's what our listeners need to do. They need to either, probably in the YouTube comments, let us know. I actually want them to know who won the duel. I also want to know if they think him is a good business, but also who won the duel. So you'll have to vote by saying our names.

Ben Wilson

we'll include us a spotify poll as well so you can just vote in the app

Sam Parr

And we'll do a Spotify poll as well. Some guy in the YouTube channel said, "Who's this blonde host and why is he so annoying?" So just to clarify, the "blonde annoying guy" that someone mentioned in the comment is Sam. I went first, and Sean, the "brown less annoying guy," went second. Let us know who the winner is in this duel. I'm very eager to hear what people are going to say. I know which one I would rather own, but I think they're both quite interesting, for sure.

Shaan Puri

you saw this post by mark zuckerberg that he did the murph

Sam Parr

I tweeted out the picture of it and it got like 5,000,000 views. It kind of took off. So, do you know what the Murph is?

Shaan Puri

I had never heard of the Murph until I saw this. Then I was like, "I must do the Murph."

Sam Parr

It's named after Lieutenant Murphy. I believe context clues lead me to believe that he died in the military. His favorite workout, I believe, is: 1. 1 mile run 2. 300 squats 3. 100 push-ups 4. 100 pull-ups 5. 1 mile run All while wearing a 20-pound weighted vest. Is that the workout?

Shaan Puri

That's exactly right. Run a mile, do 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, and then run another mile while wearing a 20-pound vest. Zuck basically takes a "bro gym" shot. He says, "I gotta use the Blackberry for this." He's got the phone down here, not smiling, with his mouth open, and just snaps a picture of himself drenched in sweat. He says, "Just did the Murph," but he's also got a picture of his daughters doing push-ups. He goes on to say, "This year, I got it done in 39 minutes and 58 seconds." I read that and thought, "That sounds really fast." If he had just said, "I did 100 pull-ups today," I would have been like, "Man, what a day! Fantastic!" Forget all the rest; I was already impressed by 100 pull-ups. To say he got that done in weighted pull-ups in 39 minutes? I was like, "That sounds ridiculously fast." Sure enough, all the comments were like, "That's an insane time for the Murph. Have you ever done this workout?"

Sam Parr

I haven't, but the world record holder of the Murph is this guy named Hunter McIntyre. He's DM'ed me on Twitter and Instagram, and I've talked to him because I... I like him a lot. Or I followed him, and I feel like I like him.

Shaan Puri

is that what fit guys do they just dm each other

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like a club, you know? Once you can see the sixth ad, you start following each other. Yeah, I'm one of us.

Shaan Puri

good to see you

Sam Parr

And he DM'd me. He listens to the pod. He's the world record holder, and I think his world record is like 34 minutes. Zuck's time was 39 minutes, which means he would have gotten like 10th or 15th place at... there's like a Murph Games or something like that.

Shaan Puri

I mean, I had so many thoughts brush through my head when I saw this. First, I saw 39 minutes and I thought, "I've taken shits longer than that!" That's a crazy fast time. Then I thought, I don't think I could even do a Murph in an infinite amount of time. I don't think in my life I have done a total of 2 miles running, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 air squats, like with a £20 vest. I have just never done it. So my time is currently 35 years. Then I thought, this mother... this guy has decided, "Yo, you know what? I'll just become one of the richest people in the world."

Sam Parr

the most powerful people in the world and the one of the fittest guys

Shaan Puri

in the world

Sam Parr

like he's basically and wholesome

Shaan Puri

Top 1% wealth, top 1% intelligence, top 1% power, and now he's top... top 1.1% Chad. Also, I am blown away.

Sam Parr

all before the age of 40

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. And he's got two kids or something like that. I'm like, I mean, David Goggins should go to sleep listening to Mark Zuckerberg videos for motivation. This guy is incredible! I went and bought more stock, and I bought a plain gray, you know, cookie-cutter T-shirt in his honor. I was like, "This is it! I'm gonna retire this to the rafters of my office." I'm gonna hang a gray shirt just to honor this man. He gets so much criticism, and man, he's really turned his public persona around. Do you remember he was the biggest dork? Not just like, "Oh, when he was young," but recently, he was the biggest dork. He tried to do something cool, like when he did that hydrofoiling thing and painted his face white like a geisha. It was just like, "Oh man, you know what? Keep all your money; I don't want to be you." And now he's like, "You know, just got off work, did a quick jiu-jitsu tournament, came back, and deleted Snapchat off the earth." I'm like, "Wow, this guy is just making power moves all day." He's incredible. He's a very inspirational dude.

Sam Parr

He's done it scandal-free. So, Zuck is only 37 now. You know, probably 5th or 6th is...

Shaan Puri

he only 37

Sam Parr

something like that I mean he's still in his thirties how old is he

Shaan Puri

39 yeah 39

Sam Parr

He's only... So basically, he's been married to the same woman, been with her since college, has 2 kids. Seems like his family life, on paper, seems awesome. There was a time where... the most scandalous thing that he did was he had a video where he talked about smoking meats. And every year he sets... Do you remember that? Because every year he sets goals. No, no, that's not the most scandalous thing. That was...

Shaan Puri

It's just hilarious that he was like a robot trying to be like, "Hello humans, I am doing a barbecue with... I have flesh on a grill with fire." It was like, bro, this is the robot. The most scandalous thing he did was when he was in college and his AIM messages got leaked. That was like, you know, a real wonderful day in my household. I was like, "Hey, cancel Netflix! I have my entertainment for the week." I'm reading all of Mark Zuckerberg's AIM messages for the next week.

Sam Parr

That wasn't even that big of a deal. What he said was pretty on par with an 18 or 19-year-old person. Like, it was well...

Shaan Puri

Maybe it was a lot. One part was a little bit like, "Is this what we want?" Like, this guy's... this is the guy running Facebook. Where he was like, "Yeah, just tell me if you want anyone's... you know, name, date of birth, address, whatever." He's like, "These dumb f***s just trust me." The quote seems to be referencing a conversation about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It highlights concerns about privacy and data collection, portraying Zuckerberg as cavalier about user information. The speaker is paraphrasing and recalling a reported conversation, expressing disbelief or concern about the attitude towards user data.

Sam Parr

They just put everything in the system. So, you know, we sound like something a 90-year-old kid who invented this stuff would say.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I would say that was the last time I was relatable with Mark Zuckerberg. Ever since then, he's created a gap. He's outpaced me from there.

Sam Parr

Every year, he sets these goals. One year, it was that he only wanted to eat food that he killed or grew, and I think he did it. Then, another year, he said, "I'm gonna learn Mandarin because I want Facebook to come to China." I think his wife is Chinese, and he was like, "I'm gonna learn math." Then he goes and gives a talk. I think he does give a talk to a Chinese university.

Shaan Puri

He gave me an interview. They go... They fly him out there, they're like, "Thank you so much Mark Zuckerberg for coming. We are so happy to have you." And he's like, "You know, well..." [Mitchell imitates Zuckerberg] and he just starts speaking Chinese. And they're like, blown away.

Sam Parr

It's really great, man. He's basically fluent, and so the guy kills it. He does great. When he got into e-foiling, which is basically surfboarding without a wave, he was doing it with an American flag and he had too much sunscreen on his face. That's my guy! A guy whose biggest flaw is that he's goofy... he's not the kind of... my guy. And then now that I see...

Shaan Puri

Oh, you're zagging the other way. You're saying, "Zuck, bad move. Unrelatable. Too good. No vulnerability, no relatability." Now he's no longer "girl next door" hot; now he's just "supermodel" hot.

Sam Parr

Zuck's the best, man. He just... you know, our friend Nikita Bier has this joke where he says something like, "I would never..." or... I forget why he says this, but he says he'd never ever ever bet against Zuck. How he's just a complete killer. And he is wrong sometimes, but not in the grand scheme. And this is for the proof.

Shaan Puri

Well, the funny thing is, people will hate this segment because I think it's popular to really hate Mark Zuckerberg. They hate Facebook, I think, because they're like, "My data!" or "The Russians hacked the election!" I'm not even sure what the exact reason is for hating Zuckerberg at this point. I just gotta say, like, this is... I mean, he is inspiring in that he is excellent. If you appreciate excellence, that is kind of inspiring. It's kind of like people who hate LeBron. It's like, okay, I get it, you don't have to like the guy, but I mean, you gotta respect... yeah, put some respect on this guy's name.

Sam Parr

her funny story ain't wrong either by the way when do people play it sometimes

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. He switched teams when he was a free agent. My real estate agent told me this story. She was driving and said, "That's Mark Zuckerberg's house in the Mission," kind of like near Dolores Park area. I was like, "He lives here?" I thought he lived in some private gated community. And she was like, "Well..."

Sam Parr

I mean he has like many houses but this is one this is one and this is

Shaan Puri

Like his main one for a while, and she's like, "And he made it private." I was like, "What do you mean? I don't see any fence." And she's like, "No, he bought the houses next door. Like, he just bought all the houses in the area so that... you know, whatever." And so he knocked on someone's door himself. Somebody opened the door, and it was Mark Zuckerberg outside. And he's like, "Hey, you know, I love this house. Would you sell it to me?" And they're like, "No, I mean, it's not for sale."

Sam Parr

we we love this house we're so close to the park

Shaan Puri

You know, my commute's only 7 miles. He's like, "I'll give you $10,000,000." They were like, "Okay, here's the keys." Basically, they bought the house for $10 million. It was probably a $2 million house, and then the houses nearby him [were] 2 and a half, $3 million. He paid $10 [million] and just got the house right away.

Sam Parr

Dude, that person who sold their house to him would be the best dinner guest. Imagine that story! Because I'm back.

Shaan Puri

To have you on air, if that's you, we would like to have you come tell that story. Because obviously, I'm reenacting what I was told by a real estate agent. I don't know if...

Sam Parr

that's that's true or that's bullshit

Shaan Puri

so yeah zuck amazing

Sam Parr

let's wrap wrap up with this last thing this nike thing

Shaan Puri

did you watch this movie aaron

Sam Parr

yeah I did I thought it was awesome

Shaan Puri

It was pretty sweet, right? Like, not the best movie, but just a solid base hit on a Thursday night or a Friday night. You know, you just need something that's... I don't want to sit here and browse Netflix for the perfect thing. Alright, I'm just gonna go on, I think it's on Amazon, and just watch "Air" and like, just watch the story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan.

Sam Parr

they made phil knight look like a doofus

Shaan Puri

Yeah, why did they do that? I didn't understand. He does, like, appearance-wise, look like a doofus, but they also made him act like a doofus.

Sam Parr

Yeah, which I don't think he was like that when I read *Shoe Dog*. I didn't get that idea. He's more... I think they made him look like he...

Shaan Puri

wrote his own memoir he he made himself sound cool

Sam Parr

Well, I've read a lot about him. They just kind of made him look like a ditzy person.

Shaan Puri

"Like an idiot." Yeah, he's not an idiot, but the guy they feature... So, a couple of things: First, did anything stand out from the movie "Air"? But then I want to go deep on this guy, Sonny Vaccaro, because I think he's actually more interesting.

Sam Parr

who was that the main character I don't even remember his name

Shaan Puri

that's the that's the main character

Sam Parr

so that's that's matt damon

Shaan Puri

matt damon in the movie but you know in in in nike and in the air movie

Sam Parr

I thought one one interesting thing

Shaan Puri

I didn't know what they were talking about. Just do it. It's the slogan that, you know, everybody knows. It's the Nike kind of iconic slogan. At the time, even people internally were like, "Just do it?" They got that from the ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, and they were like, "I don't know, what does that mean? Do you like it?" I was like, "I don't know, it's okay, I guess." They weren't like, "Yes, this is going to be this marketing masterpiece." They were questioning, "What does that even mean?" Then they found out it was from an inmate on death row who was about to be executed. They asked him if he had any last words, and he said, "Just do it." So that became the Nike slogan, which is honestly kind of genius. I want to talk about this guy, Sonny Vaccaro, because he's kind of a gangster that I've seen for many, many years in the basketball scene. The movie was about him, and this guy's pretty fascinating. In the movie, he's famous because he's working at Nike at the time. Nike is the last player; it's just a running shoe company, and they're the smaller shoe company. Adidas is this global brand that's crushing it; they own most of the sneaker market.

Sam Parr

I believe it's pronounced adidas

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Adidas has its own interesting story. Then Reebok is like number two, and Nike's a distant three. They were doing about $27,000,000 a year in sales through their running shoes. So, good, but nowhere near the top tier of shoe companies. Sonny meets Phil Knight and he's like, "Hey, I got an idea for a basketball shoe. I want to create a basketball division. You guys are all about running shoes; we should create basketball shoes." Phil Knight responds, "Okay, come on in. You got this little basketball department; go ahead and try to make it work." The movie is all about one breakthrough thing he did. They had a tiny budget, and in the 1984 draft, they decided to sponsor Michael Jordan. At that time, Michael Jordan was not interested in Nike; he was going to go with, I think, Adidas or somebody like that. He was known as a hot prospect, being the number three pick. Sonny was convinced they needed Michael Jordan. The movie focuses on their efforts to get him on board. What the pitch was, basically, was that they put their entire budget on one guy instead of spreading it across multiple players. He relentlessly pursued Jordan, met his mom, and drove out to North Carolina to meet them and try to build a relationship.

Sam Parr

And then they didn't even show Jordan's face in the movie, which actually was pretty cool. It was basically the whole relationship: how do I impress his mom? Because I know his mom will have my back.

Shaan Puri

she's making the decisions and so they were like well we're gonna pitch him on his own signature shoe from day 1 and we're gonna name it after him so it'll be the air jordan it'll be a whole product line named after him and he ended up negotiating a royalty on every pair of jordan sold and that's how michael jordan became a billionaire not through basketball but through his shoes so that's the the movie part okay cool this guy sonny actually did a bunch of other interesting things that I thought were pretty cool so as a marketer I just respect this guy's hustle so here's some of the things he did to make nike win he created so he was like alright we gotta create like like a kid's strategy it's like how do we get them while they're young and so he created a high school all american game so he was like he called it the the dapper band round ball classic he goes throughout the country he's like I'm inviting you to participate you're gonna compete against you know the the 12 best players or whatever 20 best players in the country you're invited to come do this thing in in in pittsburgh or philadelphia or some shit like that and it was like and so he flies them out there and he puts this thing together now he's got the players so then he goes and tells all the college coaches hey if you're scouting you need to come to this round ball class you can see all the best high school players at once and so then college coaches start coming so now players are like oh if I wanna get seen by college coaches I gotta get to the high school all american game so he just like created through brute force like a conference essentially that would bring together the kind of the core supply and demand and then he could find at that age the best young players and so he that's how he found kobe bryant that's how he found lebron james they were part of his high school all american things in his camp so the second thing he did was he created a summer camp for only the best players called abcd and he brand this is when he was with adidas so this guy worked for nike then he worked for adidas then he worked for reebok so he just this guy was just a hired assassin that went from company to company and would just try to get them to win in their market using whatever advantages they had and so when nike needed something he was like alright you need to get them all their young we're gonna do this camp but also what we're gonna do is we need to get college players wearing our stuff they all wear adidas and because it's the most popular brand so that's just what they choose by default or they choose converse and so he's like you know why don't we you can't pay college athletes but nobody said anything about coaches and so he just started he would go to the coaches and he'd be like hey I'm gonna give you $10 and here's 26 pairs of shoes give them out oh they happen to be the sizes of like most of your guys they don't have to wear them you get the 10 grand either way but we sure do hope you would you know you would go ahead and and you know encourage them to wear these shoes and so he went to jim beyhive and he went to like you know all the top college coaches and he basically bribed them and it was like in this gray area where it was allowed and in 1 year he just traveled like he would just fly city to city he would go to the campus he would make the coach an offer and at the time they were buying this equipment for their program they're like our kids need equipment so we gotta buy this this stuff so he turned the cost into revenue for them and gave them free stuff and sure enough all of them started started wearing nike's for free so all of a sudden now nike's being worn by all the best college players and it's on tv and in 1 year he just did a land grab across the country before the other companies could could react he got all of them and I thought this was just like a genius genius strategy he started he did he did

Sam Parr

He's amazing how far you can go with brute force. This was a sledgehammer. You can get pretty far with a sledgehammer.

Shaan Puri

then then he did another thing he sued the ncaa so he went to this guy ed o'bannon and he was like hey we should sue the ncaa they're using your name your face your likeness to market the tournament and all this stuff and you're getting nothing from it and now college players can get paid through this nil rule this name and likeness thing and it's because he won the case with that lawsuit against the ncaa that was like you know it happened the the lawsuit happened in the last I don't know 5 years or so then the the rule came into effect like a year ago or something and so so I thought that was awesome there were some great quotes about him some guy goes when sonny dies he's gonna sneak his way into heaven and and when he gets there the first thing he's gonna do is he's gonna look for a 69 kid to make a deal with like he's like and and the the other thing they said is there's only one man on earth who could tell you who the best 6th grade basketball player in the country is and it's sonny vaccaro and I just love that this guy just like owned his niche and just absolutely like went balls to the wall and really built like I don't know tens of 1,000,000,000 of value at least inside of nike + adidas + reebok with these athletes and he would have also gotten so he signed jordan he signed he he got he poached kobe away from adidas and then he would have got lebron too when he was at adidas and lebron was ready to sign he goes we need to offer him 10,000,000 a year for 10 years a $100,000,000 contract to this 18 year old kid and robon's ready to sign and then adidas gave him the 10,000,000 but they changed the structure last minute they got a little cold feet and they're like well we don't know if this kid's gonna work out why don't we make it part of it incentive based and so they offered him 7,000,000 guaranteed and 3,000,000 a year of incentives and lebron turned it down ends up going with nike never looked back and like just a huge blunder like basically this guy's whole life he was fighting bureaucracy inside companies and then doing like black market and gray hat shit in the like you know in the streets and every nba player is like no sunny their parents know sunny because this guy was just working the streets and like there are certain companies that have had this tinder kind of had this with what's her name though whitney wolfe who started bumble she was kind of doing this from college campus to college campus like going into the sorority houses and the frat houses in just brute force onboarding all the guys and girls in one campus so that tinder was useful and then throwing parties and doing stuff like that and like you need these people these are like game changing people for your company I remember when coinbase went public brian armstrong did this long thread he did something you never see somebody do which was company goes public they usually just say generic stuff he actually talked about like what led coinbase to be successful and he called out one guy by name that wasn't his co founder wasn't his main investor it was just an employee and this guy dan romero and he's like and you know it's basically special thanks to dan romero who like just kinda like brute force built our relationships with banks and he he basically got them their relationships with banking partners and like I think maybe some stuff overseas and it was just kinda like one of those things like dude I don't know how we're gonna do this I don't know dan that's your mission send him on a mission to go do that and dan basically joined coinbase coinbase as an employee ended up making like a $100,000,000 + through this process and I knew this guy I met him in college he was in mike's class

Sam Parr

didn't he didn't you like used to make fun of him and call him a dweeb

Shaan Puri

I didn't make fun of him, but in my head I did. He was... We took a class called "Computers." Again, I was going through campus looking for the easiest-sounding classes. I took "Getting Rich," that was one class. I took another class called "Computers," and in Computers they were talking about like...

Sam Parr

that's a class person class it's computers

Shaan Puri

And they were just talking about the internet. I remember discussing net neutrality a ton. I was like, "Oh, what the hell are these guys talking about?" I couldn't care less about this. There was one guy in every class who had strong opinions and was super informed. I thought, "Man, who is this teacher's pet trying to impress?" But I realized he wasn't trying to impress anyone; he was just nerdy about this stuff. He just... listen, this guy loves the internet! He wants to make out with the internet. I was sitting in the back of the class, thinking, "Thank you for talking so much, Dan Romero, because I don't have to say a word in this class." It's sort of like "Revenge of the Nerds" in a way. It's like, "Joke's on you!" This guy's passion and enthusiasm for the internet and technology led him early into crypto, which led him to pick Coinbase. His passion for that made him a key person there. This guy probably made $1,000,000 and is now retired, getting to do what he loved the whole time. I used to make fun of people who were overly enthusiastic, and now I preach that enthusiasm is massively underrated. More people need to embrace it!

Sam Parr

and he's got a super handsome headshot now on linkedin dan romero does

Shaan Puri

Good! You can afford a whole, you know, glow up if you get that Coinbase IPO and early Bitcoin money.

Sam Parr

he's got great hair this guy definitely takes himss he's a good looking guy

Shaan Puri

power himss user

Sam Parr

He just bought **$13,000,000** worth of property in Venice and another one in Park City, Dan won.

Shaan Puri

yeah dan won for sure

Sam Parr

But, you could tell that he's ripped too. This guy definitely has abs. Dan won, good job Dan! I'm just like, you just Google him and see his face. You know this guy is fit. I should DM him.

Shaan Puri

yeah you should

Sam Parr

put on the edge of the group deck

Shaan Puri

say say no more I've seen enough to the face

Sam Parr

Yeah, you could tell by his jawline. This guy's got one of those V shapes that goes out, as there's like junk.

Shaan Puri

no no no nfts just lift up your shirt 6 inches I'll tell you

Sam Parr

if you can come out you

Shaan Puri

qualify

Sam Parr

So dude, this guy Sonny... it sounds awesome. I did see the movie, and they made him look like a guy who could just put up with a whole lot of pain. That's what they made him look like. They made him look like a guy who would just get shit on constantly, and he always pulled through. That's what they made him look like. They also made him look exhausted and terribly unhealthy, which is the price to pay... kind of true.

Shaan Puri

yeah they

Sam Parr

Made him look horrible. If you look at photos of him, granted, he looks like... He was born in 1938, I think, so you are what you are at that point. But he definitely looks like he smoked a lot of cigarettes.

Shaan Puri

1938 that sounds very old is that

Sam Parr

I I looked him up on wikipedia I think it's 38 30 old wow

Shaan Puri

yeah he's 83 wow sunny

Sam Parr

yeah so he'll he you know he he's alive and and

Shaan Puri

And by the way, the guy's name is actually John Paul Vincent Vaccaro. "Sunny," goddamn! I like... you have to have a nickname that everybody in your town knows you by. That's like, to me, that's one of the great honors of life. It's like, "Yeah, his name's Sean, but everybody called him Sonny." Whole life, everybody called him Sonny. It's just... such a cool thing. I wish I had a calling card like that.

Sam Parr

that's an italian thing that's like I feel like all the there's always a sonny in the mafia movies that I watch

Shaan Puri

yeah he just operates like a monster for sure

Sam Parr

I like this. This is a good find. I saw that movie and I thought, "I don't want that guy's job." It sounded like an exhausting existence. It's not very challenging, but I did like the movie. They made Phil Knight look a little goofy, which I'm a big Phil Knight fan, so it kind of hurt my feelings. But no, I thought it was a good movie, and this is a good find.

Shaan Puri

alright that's it

Sam Parr

That's the pod. Let us know who won this: the annoying blonde-haired guy who went first, or the less annoying brown guy who went second. That's the pod.