Startup Dojo, HQ Trivia & Life Advice | My First Million Podcast 02-20-2020

Sam Parr

Alright we're good

Shaan Puri

this is a podcast you know chris d'elia he starts he always calls his audience babies

Sam Parr

babies he's like he's like

Shaan Puri

okay babies let's talk no I've never it's hilarious

Sam Parr

I only watch his clips. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast, and then unsubscribe and subscribe again so we can climb up the charts. Yes!

Shaan Puri

we're climbing

Sam Parr

I think

Shaan Puri

We were top 50 a few days ago when I checked. Then we were 65, and we were creeping to 55. So, I saw some good movement there.

Sam Parr

It's like the movies where a band is climbing up the Billboard charts, and they show...

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly

Sam Parr

The smartest way to... Number one, the clips that we're posting on our social media are not getting as much traction as I wish.

Shaan Puri

traction like what are you views or comments or what do you mean

Sam Parr

Well, I only care about views and comments in order to get more podcast listeners.

Shaan Puri

yeah so I guess there you would need people essentially tagging their friends or you'd need to start showing up in discover

Sam Parr

Yeah, and it's still starting. I also have noticed that when I have a smaller following than our branded channels, when I share something, it gets way more engagement than a brand. So I need... yeah, people like following people.

Shaan Puri

And listening to people more, I also don't ever share it. So, I should share it with that big 9,000 Twitter followers I have, you know?

Sam Parr

you have 500 more

Shaan Puri

than me

Sam Parr

you have 500 more than me but I'm gonna beat you in the next 4 days I think

Shaan Puri

I also bought 5,000 a long time ago

Sam Parr

me too

Shaan Puri

They degraded. They like go away because Twitter bans the accounts. But when I bought the 5,000, I got way more followers per day.

Sam Parr

same

Shaan Puri

because people wanted to follow somebody who already has a lot

Sam Parr

of followers I'm averaging 200 new people a day

Shaan Puri

I don't even check. I don't even check. Alright, what do we got? I want to talk about this idea. It's not even an idea; it's a company: Arsenic.

Sam Parr

yeah they've been around for about 4 years now

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I know I don't know how

Shaan Puri

they're doing do you know if they're doing well

Sam Parr

They were doing okay. Basically, the way that I knew some media people who talked about them and knew them, I'm almost positive that it's run like it looks. It seems to be a bunch of kids who are good looking and rent a mansion, and they just do...

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

like debauchery and shit

Shaan Puri

So the idea is that **Arsenic** is essentially *Playboy* for the Snapchat generation. They have a Snapchat channel because, you know, the idea is like, "Okay, *Playboy* is a big deal. What would *Playboy* be like today?" It would not be a magazine; it would be, you know, a Snapchat channel. They created this Snapchat channel, which is perfect because if you follow it, you get it. If not, it's not in your face. So it's not like Facebook, which would be a little weird, or Instagram, which would be a little weird.

Sam Parr

and they have email too and they just have this mansion

Shaan Puri

And they have all these models. It's not porn, but it's definitely models who are good looking. They just have one model sort of take over the channel. At least, this is what it was three years ago. I just think it's a great idea. They raised $3,000,000. I don't know how they're doing.

Sam Parr

so they've got books they do like tours I think that it could be doing a the idea is cool

Shaan Puri

I bet it's a cash cow

Sam Parr

I think it

Shaan Puri

Well, I can only assume it's grown, because they were getting millions of views back then on their videos. Unless Snapchat blocks them, they're not outside the bounds of what Snapchat allows.

Sam Parr

snapchat allows porn right

Shaan Puri

no they don't allow porn but they don't see

Sam Parr

a lot of porn they allow nudity

Shaan Puri

they don't if you're putting on your stories you'll get banned eventually if you're doing nudity what if

Sam Parr

you have a private account

Shaan Puri

they don't do nudity

Sam Parr

what for a private account

Shaan Puri

you can eventually if it gets flagged they'll take it down like it's not in the rules to do nudity

Sam Parr

well that's fine have you heard of onlyfans

Shaan Puri

yeah love it so explain onlyfans

Sam Parr

OnlyFans. So basically, what happened is on Snapchat, all these porn stars were putting up like porn... yeah, like softcore porn. I don't think it was like sex, but they would say, "Pay me $10 and I'll let you follow me."

Shaan Puri

right and you'll follow my account where I post nudes

Sam Parr

And OnlyFans launched. What they did was create a platform where they... I don't think they started with porn, but now it is that. Yeah, so just embrace it. Basically, if you... I don't even think it's just porn. I think it's like web girls, like webcam girls. You pay $20, or however much they want you to, and you get access to their private video feeds.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's like Patreon but for porn, basically. You pay, you become a contributor, and then you get their private photos and videos.

Sam Parr

It's taken off, has it? Yeah, and the reason... yeah, because I was doing like, "Who cares if I consume it or not?" From a business point of view, that's how I know about it.

Shaan Puri

well we all care if you consume it or

Sam Parr

not and and it

Shaan Puri

I mean no surprise like it's not a sponsored conversation research on it takes off

Sam Parr

Yeah, but here's why I think these things take off. It's the people who don't take care of the creators. They, for these types of things, they go away.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

and so

Shaan Puri

There's always demand. The demand is always there. The question is, does the platform allow the supply to do what they want to do? The big platforms don't do it because it's not worth their brand and risk, and all the stuff because they have big...

Sam Parr

Huge OnlyFans! I for sure bet, I would bet you, they're north of $100,000,000 in subscription revenue. And then they take their cut.

Shaan Puri

That's insane! At one time, we had a live streaming product called Blab, and it wasn't working. We had to pivot, and we eventually pivoted to video gaming. I definitely laid out a case to the company as an investor. I was like, "Look, porn is where..."

Sam Parr

it's not porn

Shaan Puri

this would be the best

Sam Parr

like these they're not fucking on camera I don't think

Shaan Puri

Okay, well, whatever you want to call it, like "softcore porn" or whatever, going after the cam girl market is a pretty big market. The websites that are there really, really suck. So, why did you get that? Well, we had kind of a heart-to-heart. We were like, "Is this what we want to build?" My co-founder felt a certain way, and the investors felt a certain way.

Sam Parr

what did farcon wanna do

Shaan Puri

he was like not down to that

Sam Parr

I'm so down with that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I think it's a personal choice. Since then, I've had a bunch of entrepreneurs reach out, being like, "Hey, we saw you did Blab. We read your post-mortem. You guys got to 4,000,000 users, but it didn't work. I have a very similar concept; I think it's gonna work. Can you give me some advice?" I tell them from the bat jump, I'm like, "This version's not gonna work. Consider porn. I think it could work. Consider the cam girl angle because, you know, that's the one stone we didn't turn when we were considering where to pivot this thing to make money."

Sam Parr

Dude, I would for sure do that because... Think about all these platforms like Patreon and all that stuff. They're like, "We're gonna empower creators." Okay, I'm behind that, even though a lot of times I think they don't. But if you're gonna empower a creator, imagine this: like a woman who can just crush it by not breaking the law and just using her own body. Philosophically, I'm so in favor of that.

Shaan Puri

right yeah I think as a business person I'm definitely in favor of it I think it's just a personal question

Sam Parr

business person I love it as just like a human being I'm like yeah

Shaan Puri

so the you

Sam Parr

wanted to to your body

Shaan Puri

To go, ideas or trends off this. So, there's this fund called Vice Ventures that is basically investing in things that...

Sam Parr

we've covered it on trends

Shaan Puri

That other investors won't invest in because, like, investors typically, if you're a VC, your investors, they're called LPs. They are typically not just rich individuals; they're institutions. So, it'll be like a pension fund for firefighters in New York or, you know, the school endowment will give you $20,000,000.

Sam Parr

and so you can't

Shaan Puri

So, they won't want their money going into certain types of companies. This is why cannabis investments started to take off. Only alternative investors—investors who had a little more freedom—were able to go into them. Big investors knew there were good spaces, but they weren't able to move on it as quickly because they had to worry about their limited partners (LPs). So, Vice Ventures came out and they were like, "Look, you know, sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever." They were basically taking sort of the seven sins and they said, "We specifically look for companies that are doing business in these areas and we'll invest in them." I think it's a very smart approach. If you're going to do a venture fund, you could either just make another cookie-cutter fund—"Hey, we're a seed fund, come to us instead of all these other guys"—or you take a focus and build a brand around being different. I think it was a very, very smart approach.

Sam Parr

I like it. I've invested in this company called Lucy. Yeah, it's a nicotine replacement; or it's basically Nicorette gum.

Shaan Puri

We gotta get, what's his name? Dave. We have to get him on because when I met him for the first time through you, after Hustle Con, he spit off seven ideas while we were just standing there talking. I was like, "I'd ask for one," and then he gave me a dope idea. I was like, "You got more of those?" He goes, "Yeah, I got a list," and he started reading off his ideas. They were fantastic. He might...

Sam Parr

be listening

Shaan Puri

we gotta get him on the on the couch to do this

Sam Parr

A quick story... Yeah, okay. So, I worked out of this office called **The Founders Dojo**. It was the greatest thing ever! I'll tell another story about it, but basically, if you've seen the TV show **Silicon Valley**, it was like that. We had an **Ehrlich Bachman** type of guy named **Dave**, who was a great guy but totally inappropriate and disgusting—in a good way. The office was filthy, and there was this guy... I forget his name, but it was **Ritesh** and **Chris**.

Shaan Puri

oh yeah and I remember this

Sam Parr

And it was this little skinny Indian guy. He was crazy and awesome. He was like the stereotypical Silicon Valley hacker, where he could get a job at any big company and make $200,000 a year. But he was like, "No, fuck that! I'm not doing that. Fuck the corporate pigs!" So, he would sleep at the office, and Dave would buy him pizza all the time because he wanted to be poor and do this thing. He created an app—or no, a site.

Shaan Puri

website yeah

Sam Parr

A website that would crawl Tumblr? No, I think all of the internet. Okay, for the fastest gifs that had the highest velocity of growth. So if a gif launched, popular gifs, he would tell you right away which ones were going to be the most popular. Then you would see it on the screen. It was called "The Worst Drug" (theworstdrug.tv). It's not there anymore. And that sounds like a silly thing, but that's not why he did it. He did it because what he was trying to do was find the fastest technology that could identify the fastest growing content. If you would go to theworstdrug.com, you could type in something like "dog," and the search feature would autofill wicked fast—like way faster. Then you would click enter, and it would be bam! A high-definition gif.

Shaan Puri

it was high def it was full screen and it was full screen it was laser fast

Sam Parr

So, the technology is very much like PodPiper. The technology wasn't like whatever PodPiper did; it was the fact that it was all behind the scenes. A bunch of nerds were saying, "Yeah, our GIFs load the fastest," and like, "Look, it's in HD," and it happened in nanoseconds. He would spend nights working on it, and I would come back to see just a tiny improvement. But we'd all gather around it. Well, here's the crux of the story: it turns out that the most popular GIFs on the internet—99% of them—are super hardcore raunchy porn. Like, real raunchy porn.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, because when I went to the site, it was all porn. There wasn't like porn and then some basketball GIFs. It was only porn. So I was like, "This is a porn site."

Sam Parr

And so, at the office, at the dojo, we would have these huge screens of his workstation. The way that he sat was such that everyone could see it, and we kind of got immune to it. But it was like the raunchiest stuff ever. He would be like, "Guys, check this out!" Early in the morning, we would come in at 11 AM, which was early, and he'd be rubbing his eyes and say, "Check this out." All eight of us would gather around this high-definition screen, and he would type in the word "facial." He'd say, "Watch how fast this loads!" We were just so immune to it. We were like, "Oh, you're looking at the content." We would say, "Oh yeah, wow! You could see the shine in the liquid." It was so funny. We would have these lawyers come into the office and people who were actually investors trying to raise money for other companies, and we would forget that this was on the big screen.

Shaan Puri

and what happened so this sounds like what's the end of this business guy doing now

Sam Parr

what happened

Shaan Puri

to the site

Sam Parr

The site, the worst drug, got millions and millions of visitors. The engagement was stupidly good, but he couldn't monetize it. There were so many restrictions that no ad network would allow him to use it. Even though the site was getting at least millions—maybe even tens of millions—of monthly unique visitors, it made zero money and only cost them a lot of money. The story ends with someone in Bulgaria or Latvia, like a former communist country, wanting to buy the site. It was all weird; they flew him out there, and he thought, "Wait, these guys are like mobsters." They ended up bailing, and they just shut it down because it got...

Shaan Puri

so what does he do now now he works at facebook no

Sam Parr

He bailed. I've never seen him. He stole my skateboard. I had a skateboard I left at the office. He stole it, and I've never seen him since.

Shaan Puri

you gotta get away dude it's just

Sam Parr

I've never seen him

Shaan Puri

you need to transfer raj

Sam Parr

that's his name raj I've never seen raj from hunt

Shaan Puri

This guy down because he... that guy is going to build something amazing, or it's going to be a very sad ending. But either way, it's going to be not average, not the usual.

Sam Parr

he was he was like if you think of like this idea of what silicon valley is that was that

Shaan Puri

Right, wow, okay, that's incredible! I like that story you were talking about. Okay, we were talking about arsenic. Real quick, quick idea: so what they're doing is the Playboy on Snapchat. If that's working—and I don't know if it's working—so go look into it. But if it is working in a big way, I don't think that there's just going to be one of those. In the same way that there are all these porn brands, like Girls Gone Wild, which focuses on college-age themes, somebody out there could create arsenic for college or for different genres. And so I...

Sam Parr

just need to but just to clarify arsenal arsenic is not porn

Shaan Puri

modeling scanty modeling more like playboy

Sam Parr

and maxim max or current playboy

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, you could build Playboi but in other genres, or you could just literally clone them. I think it would be very low cost, and you would be able to drive a lot of views and ultimately get a lot of sponsorships in the same way that Maxim and Playboi were able to make pretty big businesses out of what they do. Now, they had subscriptions, so I don't know if you would do subscriptions. Maybe you could use OnlyFans, I'm not sure, but we should figure it out.

Sam Parr

yeah I

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna look up the onlyfans

Sam Parr

I am really interested in this. I have a lot of ideas. I'll come back a little more prepared on this because I think there is something there.

Shaan Puri

what else you got

Sam Parr

okay so you have hq so hq died obviously

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I thought like it could have been cool I'm like they could be like jeopardy jeopardy is huge

Shaan Puri

So, if you don't know what HQ was, it was a mobile app. It was a game show, like *Wheel of Fortune* or *Jeopardy*, but all done on a mobile app. When I saw this product, our friend Eric, who does Tribe Socks, showed me this app. He was like, "Dude, my friend went to go work at this company. It's really interesting. Check this out." He pulls it up, and at 6 PM every day, they would do the game show. You would get a notification at 6, open the app, and there would be a host—a live guy, you know, a live game show host on live streaming. He would ask trivia questions, and you would push the button. You had 10 seconds to answer, so you would push the button real quick to answer. If you got all 10 or 12 questions right, you'd win the prize at the end. At that time, there were about 400 players, and the prize was like $500. This thing grew like crazy; they had games with over 1,000,000 concurrent players.

Sam Parr

I feel like sometimes like a 1000000 and a half

Shaan Puri

And exactly over 1,000,000 players participated. I believe they had over $1,000,000 in prize money over time. This thing had a great run, and they received tons of funding; Founders Fund funded them.

Sam Parr

$10,000,000 in funding at a $100,000,000 valuation

Shaan Puri

And then they had big-time brands launch stuff on there. They were like, "You know, this game is sponsored by Nike. It's all trivia about athletes, and we're gonna drop this shoe. The new shoe release is happening live on HQ, and that's the prize." They were doing some interesting stuff, but it was kind of a fad.

Sam Parr

which everyone knew

Shaan Puri

Which everyone knew because it was like games have this hype cycle and then this decline over time. Games aren't super, super sticky; most of them. This was definitely that. So, this big novelty grew like a crazy viral product. In many ways, as somebody who makes products, it was very inspiring because it was so simple yet so awesome. I actually felt...

Sam Parr

like there product there I'm not trying to be hyperbolic but I felt like there was some revolutionary things

Shaan Puri

For sure, it was like, "Oh, I'm looking at the future. This is what the future looks like." I still think that's what the future looks like. HQ died for many reasons, as Scott referenced.

Sam Parr

founders are are fucking crazy

Shaan Puri

Literally, one founder died; he overdosed on drugs. The other founders are sort of always infighting. They both come across, at least from the outside, as a sort of moody artist. One of them, I believe, started Vine also.

Sam Parr

russ yeah yeah they both or both of them

Shaan Puri

They are both the founders of Vine, so definitely sort of brilliant guys in a way. But the...

Sam Parr

everyone says that russ is a dick

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and so he got removed as CEO because he had some problems. He was, you know, he was a jerk or whatever. The other guy got removed too, but I never figured it out. The game show host, Scott, became this kind of cult sensation because he was the host. Everyone saw him every day. He tweeted out when it shut down recently, saying, "This company died for one reason alone, and that's the sort of incompetence and arrogance of the founders." I was like, "Yeah, damn!" That is like, you don't usually hear that. Everybody's so PC and always just worried about their career.

Sam Parr

well he's a comedian he didn't give a fuck

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he definitely did not give a fuck because that was pretty brutal on the day that he shut down.

Sam Parr

Let's say, can I tell you what I would do? Yes? Okay, so I would... I have no idea if they did this or not, but I would have built this knowing that it's going to die. It's like, my thing is, I'm going to be a hit machine, right? I'm going to use this formula. I always thought about this with... remember the cronut? Okay, you know how these viral food things go viral? One day, I sat down and thought, "What makes them go viral?" I've broken it down to a handful of categories. It's either... it's got to be a food that's typically a side, but you're going to eat it in excess. For example, only cookie dough instead of ice cream—that's just cookie dough.

Shaan Puri

right or you make the you make the topping the main

Sam Parr

Yep, so like one formula you could use... Yep, yeah, another like... or like fondue. So, like, fondue is typically an appetizer, right? Another thing is you take the shape of it and you make it a ridiculous shape.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

easy

Shaan Puri

including small to big like there's bob's donuts and your doughnut is bigger sizing

Sam Parr

So, you make something small big and big small, right? The fifth or fourth thing is color. Rainbow bagels! So, you just take the color green ketchup.

Shaan Puri

instagrammable yes

Sam Parr

yes and then I had a 5th one which was

Shaan Puri

so mashups which is cronut right

Sam Parr

oh yeah and then and then that was the 5th one you take

Shaan Puri

The Doritos Locos Taco, one of the most successful fast food items in the last 10 years, was this Doritos Locos Taco. Then, every fast food chain hired these agencies to be like, "Find me the next Doritos Locos Taco."

Sam Parr

And so those are the five categories that I discovered. Then it's like, okay, so you just make it go viral by having distribution via Thrillist, BuzzFeed, and then eventually it's like, well, you just have your own handle. Then you're just going to make these go, and you're going to have a small shop outside in Brooklyn or in Manhattan, and you're just going to...

Shaan Puri

you're always putting out bangers yeah

Sam Parr

You're just gonna **knock it out of the park** and you're gonna have a line all the time. Then, three months later, **boom**! That one shut down. Now we're doing cookie dough ice cream.

Shaan Puri

so every season you come out with a new one viral sensation

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like, "Alright, now we're doing... I love this! We're doing rainbow cake now or green ketchup and hot dogs." You just think, "Okay." I've always thought about it like, man, that's the way to go. You just have a small... you just are banging these out. And then for the ones that last, that are hits, like Corona, might be a hit. I mean, that's kind of like its own category now. Yep, then you've got that as one of your temple franchises, right?

Shaan Puri

it's always available

Sam Parr

yeah that's what I would do and then so with hq trivia I would have done the same thing

Shaan Puri

So, this is like **supreme** for food. It's like you have this limited, scarce kind of out there thing. What you're doing is you're making these sort of wild concoctions on the food side using these five different [ingredients or elements].

Sam Parr

but it's all formulaic

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

so you're following one of these 5 formulas singa

Shaan Puri

And then you do a limited edition drop. You basically say, you know, you tweet out at 1 AM, "It's live." You get a huge line. People cover the fact that there's a line, and then it becomes a thing in a hipster town.

Sam Parr

yeah and this is so easy like bagel bites like pizza on bagels I mean

Shaan Puri

Those back when you were doing your hot dog stand. If you knew everything you know now, but you still needed to do a hot dog stand, you would end up doing something more like this.

Sam Parr

like green ketchup like that my shtick the ketchup would only be green

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And what I did back then was, I had a little shtick. Mine was my onions. I would boil them in Coca-Cola, which a lot of people do. I would just tell everyone I did that. So, there's actually a famous copywriting trick. Have you ever heard of a wristwatch being described as having "quartz movement"? Yes, they all have *fucking* quartz movement. They all do. All of them do. Or like "space age aluminum"? That's not even a thing. First of all, what's that Mad Men line?

Shaan Puri

it's like our filters are rolled or something like that yeah

Sam Parr

And they're like, "Well, everyone's is." And they're like, "Well, they don't know it." Right? So, "space age aluminum," that means nothing. First of all, all aluminum...

Shaan Puri

first of all nonsense

Sam Parr

Yeah, and second of all, quartz movement. Every single watch has that, right? So the idea here is you just take something that they don't know, even though all the insiders know, and you just tell them.

Shaan Puri

Right, we did this experiment when we were working on the sushi restaurant. We took the descriptions of our food. For example, a Philadelphia roll, which is an Americanized sushi roll, consists of salmon, cream cheese, and cucumber. Dan Ariely, who was one of our advisors and the author of "Predictably Irrational," told us that one of the reasons wine charges a premium is because they created a whole language around what they do. He suggested that we need to create a language around sushi so that people who start to learn about it feel like they know more and are willing to pay more for a better experience. We just needed to teach them what the better options are. So, we started adding descriptive words. One experiment involved having two versions of our website. One version was the normal website, while the other was an A/B test. In the A/B test, our Philadelphia roll was still called the Philadelphia roll, but the description was enhanced to say something like "Atlantic fresh, never frozen salmon with authentic Philadelphia cream cheese and finely sliced cucumber." We raised the price, and surprisingly, we received more orders even despite the higher price.

Sam Parr

that's crazy yeah and

Shaan Puri

and so it's just like a psychological thing around yeah

Sam Parr

that shit works

Shaan Puri

Yeah, around the descriptions of things. Okay, back to HQ for a second. They did try to release other games. They came out with a word scramble type game. I think they kind of ran out of time, and also they had built the hype too much. A lesson to be learned: when you build this much hype, if you start to fail, you death spiral way faster. The pressure of your expectations and hype will crush you.

Sam Parr

Well, so that's what I mean. I would have built this company expecting that, like we discussed, that clog. Then they're like, "Well, they're building it, so they're gonna just capture all the value upfront and then let it die." Right? So if you would have built that right, like built that into it, it could have been a company kind of like I imagine Zynga does this, which is they just have like, "Alright, this game's only gonna last 80 days, maybe."

Shaan Puri

Right, so two quick ideas on this HQ thing. So, HQ died. Okay, you know, rest in peace. But there are two things you could do if you wanted to make use of the insights that were found in this. I think you could do this on top of Twitch, YouTube, or any live streaming platform that already has an audience. You don't need to create your own app; you should just host a channel that's hosting a show and give away the prize money, promoting it in the same way. I think somebody could build this on top of one of the existing platforms without having to build your own tech or acquire downloads of your app, which is really expensive. If you just did this every day at 7 PM on Twitch, I think a bunch of people would tune in. The second idea around this is that maybe the HQ format, which is this live video streaming with a charismatic host and question and answer, could be used in education. I would love to see somebody create an after-school game that parents actually pay $3 a week to subscribe to, where your kid learns science through some Bill Nye the Science Guy type of host. It's trivia, it's interactive, and they get points as they...

Sam Parr

as they answer it

Shaan Puri

I thought about starting that company, but I really think that it could work. I think it might also have the sort of fade in interest. I remember as a kid, I loved Brain Quest and I played all these learning games. They were great! So, I think this is a modern-day version.

Sam Parr

Of that, that is quite sticky. I think that as we get older... I mean, your kid's not old enough, so I imagine you'll learn this once she gets old enough. But these things that we used as kids were just huge. Yes, huge! I'm into that.

Shaan Puri

And you wouldn't need tens of millions of people because you're not advertising. You'd be on subscription. Parents would be like, "Oh, I don't have to drop my kid off at tutoring, and I don't have to learn this myself. My kid already wants to sit in front of the iPad all day." So, okay, here's an iPad game that I feel good about because you're learning. It's kind of cool because it's live and interactive, and I could play with you. I'll pay $3 a week for that.

Sam Parr

Do you want to hear what I've found in that same category? I'll come back with some more research, but I was just surfing around and saw it is about allowance.

Shaan Puri

okay tell me more

Sam Parr

So, a friend, Ramon's kid, I was like, "Hey Victor, does your dad give you an allowance? He better be giving you some money, right?" He goes, "Yeah, but it's all in this app." I was like, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, it is automated. I get $10 a week if I do everything. I have a list of everything I gotta do, and then it just sends me this $10. But it sends it into an account, and I can use those at the places that he's already approved for me to spend it on. Or, if he wants, I can get this debit card that only works at a handful of places."

Shaan Puri

that's a great idea

Sam Parr

yeah I was like of course obviously that's a

Shaan Puri

of course idea yeah I get mad at myself for not thinking of it

Sam Parr

So, I'm going to go. I haven't thought about it. I haven't seen their financials or anything. I've done... I'm going to.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

when he told me that I was like oh okay obviously great

Shaan Puri

right what else we got

Sam Parr

let's do rocket this let's do let's we'll

Shaan Puri

come back to the

Sam Parr

rocket ship let's get mood and then we'll just go down the list

Shaan Puri

okay do you wanna keep going

Sam Parr

wait what's this rocket ship thing you wanna talk about that or skip it

Shaan Puri

we'll do that at

Sam Parr

The end. Okay, do-it-yourself perfume. So, on trends, we released this on Tuesday. Two things were interesting that our guys found: Steph and our guy. So, men and women found... which we only have two people.

Shaan Puri

so your guy and gal found that

Sam Parr

**Two things I'm thinking about:** First, everyone talks about meditation being a huge trend right now. However, people searching for sleep is actually significantly more prevalent. This makes total sense because I am a subscriber to Calm.

Shaan Puri

sleep stories

Sam Parr

they're they're pushing sleep like crazy

Shaan Puri

yeah sleep stories I think was the breakout product for the breakout feature for calm

Sam Parr

That's crazy! I didn't realize this until they pointed it out. I'm like, "Oh yeah, that does make sense." Sleep is way bigger than meditation, and meditation is huge.

Shaan Puri

Sleep is also something a lot of people search for. For meditation, you're trying to teach a new habit. Sleep is something everybody does, but many people have problems sleeping. So, they will actively search for and pay for solutions that will help them sleep.

Sam Parr

I pay for a bunch of them. I pay for an Alexa app called **Nature Sounds**, and they have like 26 sounds. I pay extra money to combine them. So, the one I sleep to is **Winter Railroad**.

Shaan Puri

what does that sound like

Sam Parr

it's a train it's a train going to the mountains in winter

Shaan Puri

what's the winter part what is the sound of winter

Sam Parr

you hear like wid

Shaan Puri

oh okay

Sam Parr

I love it

Shaan Puri

I'm feeling you shared something very personal there

Sam Parr

I love it

Shaan Puri

it's great

Sam Parr

I use it. I go, "Alexa, play nature sounds," or sometimes I'll do "ship in winter" because it sounds like an icebreaker. Then I say, "Alexa, turn off in 20 minutes." And that's why.

Shaan Puri

This is also like one of these hackathon projects where some developers say, "Okay, watch this. Just say two words."

Sam Parr

I go search

Shaan Puri

The internet for sounds, and I smash them together, and it makes an audio thing. Yeah, like this should—if Ercon's next hackathon—they should build this.

Sam Parr

like I don't even know what it could be like chickens in china street

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. What happens to Sarah? She doesn't like... does she like the same?

Sam Parr

she's down with it she's down with it

Shaan Puri

So, do you take any sleep aids? Like a vitamin, supplement, or CBD, or something like that?

Sam Parr

melatonin

Shaan Puri

melatonin

Sam Parr

Yeah, does that work? Help? Or, yeah, it does. If I really can't sleep, I'll take one of those. Did my computer die? I think it died. One of my uni... uni gel, is that what it's called? Unisoft? It's basically like a mild dosage of NyQuil without the medicine part.

Shaan Puri

Oh, that's good. So, yeah, okay. It's the way some people take NyQuil just to sleep. This is the "just to sleep" part. It's just to sleep; I don't have a cough.

Sam Parr

yeah it's just a light version you don't take that stuff

Shaan Puri

I heard this phrase today: "I could sleep in a ditch." So, when I decide to go to sleep, I instantly fall asleep and I do not wake up at night, ever. I'm blessed.

Sam Parr

You know, I am typically like that as well, but not as bad. There's this guy that we should profile. He’s a Japanese billionaire—or, sorry, a Chinese billionaire. He started a... so he’s a big shot now and owns like half a bank and all this other stuff. He got rich by creating a melatonin product. He just took melatonin, rebranded it, made it sexy, and called it a sleep aid. It got huge! Then he launched the Zynga of China and ended up buying the building that they worked in, just like Zynga. It became this huge thing. I’ll have to bring him up because I love him. He’s reckless and has built a fortune and lost it all like three times.

Shaan Puri

right yeah you love that

Sam Parr

I love those guys. Okay, and then we also talked about **do-it-yourself perfume**. Apparently, that's a huge community. It's do-it-yourself perfume, and there's not a ton of companies in the space.

Shaan Puri

so what's what's happening what are these people trying to do they okay they don't wanna buy perfume they wanna mix their own at home

Sam Parr

Yeah, so basically, perfume is a huge business. Paris Hilton, a lot of people forget about her, has sold roughly $5,000,000,000 of her perfume.

Shaan Puri

cycling back to the porn conversation earlier okay paris hilton yes

Sam Parr

Yes, and let's say her stuff costs $100, which it doesn't. It's typically a 90% margin.

Shaan Puri

yeah incredible

Sam Parr

So, huge fat margins, and everyone now knows this. The idea here is that people are trying to make their own perfume at home. There are a lot of subreddits around it and many communities that discuss how to create your own perfume. However, there aren't too many companies that are making it easy to create your own perfume and formulas and things like that.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that makes a lot of sense. This is like one of those industries where when you hear about the winner later, you're like, "Oh, okay, it was set up for success." For example, Warby Parker. One of the reasons Warby Parker works so well is that the existing eyewear industry was all owned by this one conglomerate.

Sam Parr

exotica

Shaan Puri

That had price pricing power and was marking things up like crazy. So they didn't have to invent something to lower the price. They just had to not be greedy and be like, "Okay, yeah, we can offer this at a fair price and still have margin."

Sam Parr

as you own cologne

Shaan Puri

I own cologne, and so what you're saying is basically that cologne is vastly marked up in the same way razors are super marked up. Dollar Shave Club came in, but instead of somebody just making a Dollar Shave Club version of cologne, they're giving you a DIY kit. There are probably Reddit communities of home brewers for perfume.

Sam Parr

yeah it's actually pretty great

Shaan Puri

there's an infinite number of recipes and scents so you're gonna yeah

Sam Parr

and what would you say

Shaan Puri

try a bunch

Sam Parr

is if you took it a step further an interesting scents could be sold already

Shaan Puri

yeah so you could create a marketplace where you could sell yours

Sam Parr

yep

Shaan Puri

To just even to your own friends and family, you could create a kit for people to do this and make a better kit. I'm sure there's one that exists. Another idea, you know, we were talking about kids' stuff earlier. My niece would love to mix her own perfume. That would be like a great afternoon! My sister would buy her this little kid-friendly perfume-making kit. It's one of the arts and crafts things that she gets to do. She makes it, and everyone who comes over, she gets to show them her creation.

Sam Parr

perfume for that I think you

Shaan Puri

could do this kids it would be a big deal

Sam Parr

Here's another angle that we found in trends: **soap**. Do-it-yourself soap is a big thing. People want to make their own soap. And what was the third one? **Juice**. But we already know... no, that's right, **juicing**. Yeah, okay, it was pretty great.

Shaan Puri

I like that. I would have never known about that. That's pretty fascinating to me. In fact, I'm going to tell my sister to start this business.

Sam Parr

Okay, so yeah, let's get into it. A topic that we talked about yesterday that you wanted me to look into more was **auctions**.

Shaan Puri

auctions yes

Sam Parr

I had never heard of this company that you showed me, Heritage Auctions. Yeah, I think that auctions, particularly marketplaces, I would love someone to criticize this because I want to hear the downsides. I think that they are potentially one of the top 2 or 3 business models.

Shaan Puri

auctions

Sam Parr

or well auctions and marketplaces

Shaan Puri

well marketplaces for sure

Sam Parr

yeah but auction style marketplaces

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

I think they're they're one of the best

Shaan Puri

yeah you've seen a bunch of them yeah I think ebay being the sort of classic yeah

Sam Parr

And I think eBay sucks, by the way. There's someone who's totally going to crush them. I mean, they're going to be dead... not dead, but...

Shaan Puri

Somebody told me this is half, half, half information. Somebody told me eBay has had like a revival. They don't do the auction stuff as much anymore. It's basically Amazon-ish now.

Sam Parr

for retail hate it

Shaan Puri

I hate it but somebody said that their numbers have turned around I don't I don't know if that's true

Sam Parr

Well, they're a behemoth. They're not going anywhere anytime soon. I mean, they're like Google. You might say, "Oh, well, they're sucking," but okay, they're going to last for another 50 years at least.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

So anyway, I love auctions. I like niche auctions, and Heritage, which you pointed out, they do that. You got that pulled up, Henry, and you could pull it up on your phone. They did $800 million in sales, so it's not on the screen.

Shaan Puri

yeah no I know

Sam Parr

so let's look at their top categories do you have it on your phone

Shaan Puri

yeah I still have it so coins I think was their top right

Sam Parr

Yeah, so they do, I think, $300,000,000 in currency, right? Okay, but look at some of the more interesting ones. Movie posters: $20,000,000 in sales. What about comics? Comics are on there.

Shaan Puri

yeah let me just pull it up

Sam Parr

what's it say for comics henry

Shaan Puri

50,000,000

Sam Parr

comics 50

Shaan Puri

sports 60,000,000

Sam Parr

sports 60,000,000

Shaan Puri

sport collectibles basically

Sam Parr

mhmm luxury

Shaan Puri

real estate 19,000,000 wine 10,000,000

Sam Parr

crazy right tons crazy and here's what I like about it

Shaan Puri

Dude, this is a big idea. We talk a lot. In fact, I have a pet peeve. We talk a lot about these small little business arbitrage hacks. This would be a big, big company if you could get this right.

Sam Parr

And so, what? I love marketplaces, and I love auctions. I love auctions because there's a time component to it. That urgency makes you buy more. What I think is even better is that for Heritage Auctions, I think roughly half of their sales, which total $800 million, are online, and the other half are in person. You want to know another in-person auction that's doing wonderfully? Which one? Barrett-Jackson. Have you heard of Barrett-Jackson? No? What is it? So, Barrett-Jackson is based in Arizona. It's bootstrapped by one guy. Is that his name? Barrett? Maybe Barrett. Barrett is dead; Jackson is alive. Okay, or it could be the other way around. One of them is dead. But what they do is they actually have... they put this on TV all the time. I watch it all the time. What they do is sell cars—classic cars.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

Not all classic cars, but just rare or interesting cars. You could buy a $10,000 car there. They'll have a car on and they'll say, "This Ferrari, there were only 500 of them. It sells for $200,000." They show it, and you're like, "Oh, awesome! That sale just happened in 3 minutes. That was great!" So, they do, I believe, 68 shows a year and they make $100 million in revenue. Yeah, it's a huge business, and I love that. Another one is Bring a Trailer; they do cars as well. The guy who started Bring a Trailer also started Mailbox, Gentry Underwood. He sold that to Dropbox.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And so, I like these auction places. First of all, I like niche auctions. I like watches—anything that's niche. But tell me, what is another current marketplace that's very illiquid and hard to sell? What do you wish could go away faster?

Shaan Puri

Houses are one luxury house which they put on here because it takes a while to sell a house in general. Open Door is trying to make that instant as a market, as a real estate company, but not as much as an auction. I have a friend who did this with sneakers. He...

Sam Parr

people are doing that now I think it's working well

Shaan Puri

He did it as a 90-minute auction. He would say, "The sneaker goes live. It's 90 minutes, and we're going to get you your guaranteed price." They basically offer the seller, "We will buy it at this price if the auction doesn't go higher." So if you agree to that, you start the process, and it's 90 minutes.

Sam Parr

what else

Shaan Puri

I don't know what else you got

Sam Parr

small businesses okay

Shaan Puri

just flip my business

Sam Parr

And this is a maybe. It could just fall flat. This is one of those ideas that could be amazing or it could just be a horrible idea. But if I were a quiet little brokerage who sponsors this, or if I were another brokerage, I would 100% have an event and try to gather 1,000 people. We're going to auction off these businesses.

Shaan Puri

My idea from yesterday: the first dibs, where you're auctioning the future—first future, whatever you're going to create. I think that would work really well with this as well. But businesses, the hard part is you have...

Sam Parr

there's so many hard parts about it

Shaan Puri

There's a lot of hard parts, but one is just the diligence. So, like when I buy the movie poster or whatever, if it has the certification and the person who's selling it says, "This is authentic," I don't need to look too much more into it. Whereas with a business, you really have to understand all these different components. I think that's hard.

Sam Parr

I agree, it's hard, but I think it's interesting. Right? Because if someone, like if I knew Shopify apps or something, and there was this gathering where they were just auctioning off a ton of them, it's kind of like a storage war. You're not sure what you're going to get, but let's just find out. It could be fun to gamble tens of thousands of dollars.

Shaan Puri

just storage units that would be interesting like a mystery box basically that you're buying

Sam Parr

well fuck yeah actually that would be really yeah

Shaan Puri

that would be really fun and and interesting is it it have to be cheap enough

Sam Parr

that's interesting is someone doing store storage unit

Shaan Puri

like blind auctions

Sam Parr

yeah yeah surely they have to be right

Shaan Puri

I don't know, but you could tie some of these ideas together, right? So, like what HQ showed, where they basically took a traditional TV show and turned it into a live streaming mobile app. The game show is on your phone. This is the future of TV. You can do a QVC or, I don't know what show you talked about, you watched the auctions on, but like you...

Sam Parr

can well that's for eric jackson but there's another one called the

Shaan Puri

You can turn these into mobile live-streamed shows. You can essentially sell these all through... you know, you could take one way to look at this is *Antiques Roadshow*.

Sam Parr

that's what I was thinking about right

Shaan Puri

So, one way to look at this is you start selling some item that's not currently sold on these auction places. It might be hard because a lot of time has passed, and sort of like, you know, the law of supply and demand has pulled things that want to be sold this way into the market. But maybe you could find a new niche, or you just take the existing platforms and make them smaller, more lightweight, and mobile-focused. You just win that way. And so, like, I don't know if you know Tophatter.

Sam Parr

yeah what do they do

Shaan Puri

Tophatter is an incredible company. It's like Wish; it's a mobile app where you see a bunch of really cheap stuff from China. Random stuff. It can be like a back brace, a ring, or, you know, whatever—a poster of...

Sam Parr

there's dollars dollar store crap

Shaan Puri

The dollar store... well, it's like the Wish crap, which is random electronics and memorabilia items. Yeah, laser pointers, class rings, and like, you know, whatever. But what they do, which is interesting, is this: the item starts... so you open up the app and you see all these things. You've never seen your adrenaline spike like this in a mobile app before. All the prices start at like, whatever, $50, and they just start dropping. Then somebody just hits buy and they buy it. So you kind of want to wait to get it lower, but you don't want to wait too long because somebody else is going to buy it. So, Top Hatters is a startup here in San Francisco, and they do $100 million in revenue. Very good! It's a very interesting business. I don't know how profitable it is, how sticky it is, blah blah blah. But when you go into the app, it's like being in this high-stakes Chinese market.

Sam Parr

like those dollar auction like those penny auctions things it's a little bit

Shaan Puri

Like that, but you don't have to buy credits and stuff like that. It's more like Wish, but instead of browsing and picking, they inject into your FOMO [fear of missing out] part of your brain. So you're like, "Okay, this item, do I want it? Do I want it for $6, $5, $4, $3? I'll take it!" Then you end up buying a whole bunch of stuff. It's just a bunch of moms who are bored at home shopping on this thing, and they feel like, "Hey, we're getting tons of value." But like, this is stuff you didn't even know you wanted. You don't even want it. It's just...

Sam Parr

shit

Shaan Puri

it's just shit

Sam Parr

and I'm gonna download it and buy some stuff I buy shit all the time

Shaan Puri

top hatters cool

Sam Parr

we wanna do one more or end it there

Shaan Puri

let's do one quick one so I have this career advice so there's this great line I think sheryl sandberg said a while back which was if you're offered a seat on a rocket ship you don't ask which chair you just sit down and buckle up something like that that's her quote and I see people get this wrong all the time and so you're making let's say you're listening to this and you're making career choices so we talk a lot about businesses business ideas but a lot of people who are listening to this are not yet they haven't you know they have a job and they haven't yet you know started their own company necessarily so when it comes to job selection if you think about the companies you're thinking about joining I want you to classify them into cars rocket ships or titanic and basically you're gonna the goal in your career advice is not to look at the role you know like what does the job description say it's not even really to look at the compensation package although you know there should be a minimum there but you wanna optimize for getting onto rocketships and so a rocketship is a company that's growing really really fast they figured out what they're doing and there's still a whole bunch of problems to be solved and they're the right type of problems a bad problem is nobody wants our product we have to figure out how to get them to want it a good type of problem is too many people want our product we have to make sure we can keep up with this demand and so you wanna you wanna find a rocket ship and you wanna take whatever roles you can get on that rocket ship you wanna sit down you wanna buckle up because what ends up happening in these fast growing companies is if you're good and you kill it for even 2 months you'll get moved and promoted to a better spot because they'll be like oh this person can actually do something we have so many fires to put out okay we thought you were junior but like hey junior you're now working on this thing because you're the best we got and we I've seen you problem solve so far and so what a the mistake people make is they try to pick a role that's a higher ranking role initially or better competition initially but they join either a slow moving company where they're not gonna learn and it's not gonna grow or they join a titanic which is just you know about to sink but hey I got the best seat on the titanic you don't want that either and so my advice is find the rocket ship companies take whatever seat they'll give you crush it and then they'll move you up

Sam Parr

Great! I think that to add to that analogy, a lot of people shouldn't join that fast-growing thing. Or do they want that fast-growing thing? But they want something that's mildly growing. Is that what that car is?

Shaan Puri

yeah I think that's that's where yeah I'm speaking to the people that

Sam Parr

like someone that is

Shaan Puri

They're trying to max out, but they're currently on the job track. So, if you're trying to max out and you're not starting your own business, this is the next best thing, in my opinion.

Sam Parr

yes like not a lot some people

Shaan Puri

a lot of people don't wanna max out

Sam Parr

they have kids and they're like I want a nice life

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

I don't want a high risk high reward life

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and to those people that advice doesn't apply

Shaan Puri

Right, and I'm just guessing a lot of those people don't listen to the podcast. Because if you're that person, you probably listen to, like, I don't know, Bon Jovi on your way to work. You don't listen to a podcast about business and ideas and all that stuff.

Sam Parr

sure

Shaan Puri

I think we've self self selected at least

Sam Parr

I think that's good advice

Shaan Puri

And by the way, have you had a job? Have you been employed, let's say not during college age, but since then? Or have you just done businesses of your own?

Sam Parr

we had like an acquisition and I was kind of employed there but I

Shaan Puri

but you haven't gone and just interviewed for

Sam Parr

jobs I interviewed once a couple times and I never got them

Shaan Puri

what'd you interview for

Sam Parr

for vungle for jack smith my best friend I interviewed for hish up and I didn't get

Shaan Puri

it what happened

Sam Parr

they just didn't call me back I started they didn't call you back

Shaan Puri

jack didn't tell you

Sam Parr

the guy who's like my best friend now I didn't know him I interviewed at his job

Shaan Puri

oh you didn't know him at the time

Sam Parr

I didn't know him

Shaan Puri

okay got it

Sam Parr

got it they interviewed me and they didn't hire me and then 2 years later we became best friends

Shaan Puri

and you were trying to be a salesperson or what

Sam Parr

I don't even remember I think so by the way I have

Shaan Puri

A similar story: I applied to Stripe. I think I might have told this story already, so I apologize if I did. In 2012, I was going to apply for a job for the first time in my life. I had started two companies before that. I thought, "I'm moving to Silicon Valley, I'm going to get a job, and I'm going to learn from other people rather than start my own thing." I only applied to two jobs. One was Stripe, and I got to the phone screen. I really had it made because the guy who was interviewing me had a mentor in life who was one of my former advisors in my startup. He had written a blog post saying, "This guy Sean is like... he has the highest bias for action of any entrepreneur I've ever met." He made a warm introduction to this guy and said, "Trust me, this guy's legit. You should hire this kid."

Sam Parr

how the fuck did you not get that job

Shaan Puri

And so, I thought I was cruising too, and maybe that's why I didn't get it. But I get to the part of the interview where he was like, "Alright, you know, this job has a lot of sales and persuasion stuff. So, you know, we're a piece of software. I want you to... we're gonna do a little role play. You're gonna sell me a piece of software." And he's like, "You can pick any software you like, whatever you're familiar with."

Sam Parr

you probably got creative or something

Shaan Puri

And I was just like, "Okay, so here's what I would do. I would talk to you about this." He said, "No, no, no, don't tell me what you would do. I'm the customer, hello! I just picked up the phone." I was like, "Fuck." So I said, "Hey, you know, I'm telling you about... I picked Basecamp as my software. Big mistake because I don't even know Basecamp very well." And so I just pulled... I just... so they...

Sam Parr

didn't call you back for that reason

Shaan Puri

By the end of that role play, he was just like, "Yeah, I don't think this is for you. I'm just being honest with you. I just don't think you're..."

Sam Parr

a hypocrite for this that was 8 years ago

Shaan Puri

some yeah I was like probably 2023 or 24 at the time

Sam Parr

how fuck how early

Shaan Puri

but I'm like I I blew it like it wasn't their bad like I definitely blew that interview

Sam Parr

how early of an employee would you have been

Shaan Puri

so I think they were at like 5th maybe 50 people or less or a 100 people less

Sam Parr

cost you $5,000,000

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, I don't know how much equity I would have gotten. I would have had to do the rocket ship thing. I would have had to start in a crappy seat, crush it, and then get into a good seat to get equity. But, like...

Sam Parr

I did that with Uber and Airbnb. I had job interviews at Airbnb and Uber early on, among the first hundred people. One of them, I got an offer, but then they rescinded it because I lied about my resume. The other one, I didn't get past the final interview.

Shaan Puri

what did you lie about

Sam Parr

I had a criminal record and I

Shaan Puri

told them

Sam Parr

I didn't oh okay so I I've I've moved all the way out here

Shaan Puri

you called my bluff fair play

Sam Parr

I've moved I've moved all the way out here they're like oh alright don't come to work on monday

Shaan Puri

dude that's hilarious at least you had a good eye for picking these companies

Sam Parr

And then I applied at Vungle, and they sold for $800 million. So I always tell people to find out where they want to work, who will also deny them, and then invest there.

Shaan Puri

okay let's start with where would you wanna work at today if you were you back then where would you be applying today

Sam Parr

great question do you have an answer do you wanna go first

Shaan Puri

A couple of years ago, I answered this. I was like, "The only place I would be really interested in working is AngelList at the time."

Sam Parr

no that'd be a horrible place to work

Shaan Puri

And so, I thought AngelList was doing really interesting stuff, and I think it's going to be big. It did end up becoming big, and this was like 7 years ago, so this was a while ago.

Sam Parr

yeah no that would be a horrible place to work though because that evolved guy is fucking crazy

Shaan Puri

really I love him all well I don't know

Sam Parr

He seems like a brilliant genius, so a great person to listen to, but a horrible person to manage. If I had to work somewhere, I would probably choose a place with really good managers. Most startups have horrible managers, and it may...

Shaan Puri

like when you were looking at uber airbnb you didn't know the managers so you weren't using that criteria then

Sam Parr

No, but the... I don't know if it would have been successful. Sarah, my wife, works at Airbnb and she loves her managers. You know how everyone’s like, “So what are you gonna do next?” They always say that. And she’s like, “What do you mean? Why would I ever do anything next? This is awesome! I’d be here for a really long time.” Right? I would love to have that feeling.

Shaan Puri

I would probably now look for a company that's interesting. I would go find all the most interesting biotech-based companies. So, anybody doing something with genetics, genomics, modification, anything like that, I think that's a big wave that's coming. I'd go try to be early there. Self-driving cars—if there's someone who's awesome there, I'll do something in that. It's hard though; it's really hard to...

Sam Parr

If I wanted to make a lot of money, let's say I wanted to be like, "Alright, I'm going to try and save $100,000 in the next 3 years of work."

Shaan Puri

just go work at facebook or what

Sam Parr

Facebook, Google, or an enterprise sales role at a super boring B2B enterprise software company.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

where the where the average deal is like 3 or $400,000 a year

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

that's what I would do

Shaan Puri

So, if I took my own advice, I would look for who's a "rocket ship." I would try to maybe like Lambda School; I think it's interesting. I would just basically try to go find who's the fastest growing startup right now that's at maybe 50 people or 20 people.

Sam Parr

what are they

Shaan Puri

I would go try to find 10 people, whatever they are, and then I would be like, "Hey, I'll come solve any problem you've got. We'll figure it out."

Sam Parr

I went to the Substack office the other day. They just raised **$16,000,000** in funding. You know how many employees they have? **5.**

Shaan Puri

5

Sam Parr

I would that would be an interesting place to work

Shaan Puri

okay who does better in the long term onlyfans or substack

Sam Parr

Okay, so for creating the owner's wealth, OnlyFans is for creating a valuable company that could potentially sell for more than Substack, by far.

Shaan Puri

So, take both paths. Right? Substack's going to either have to sell or go public. And OnlyFans might just, you know, spit off cash.

Sam Parr

if I had to work so where would I work

Shaan Puri

no no no which business do you think nets more more money in the end which business succeeds

Sam Parr

onlyfans

Shaan Puri

onlyfans yeah

Sam Parr

Because the likelihood that Subsec is going to succeed is low—very low. But if they do it right, I think it could be really big.

Shaan Puri

yeah I was talking to the guy hamish I think his he came

Sam Parr

to here the other day

Shaan Puri

oh okay cool I was trying to get him on this podcast

Sam Parr

and he was I already asked him he said no

Shaan Puri

yeah he was like oh you know my first million I don't wanna

Sam Parr

that's what he told me too I'm like dude shut up just come do it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was like, "You're overthinking this, dude. You're just doing interesting things. We just want to talk about your stuff in front of a bunch of people who are interested." He was overthinking it a little bit. Nice guy, but...

Sam Parr

I went and met with him and their old CEO. We could probably get him on. They're just engineering dorks; they're cool.

Shaan Puri

Right, and then I think they're going to have the same problem that Patreon has. They're going to build an awesome product that supports a lot of people. It's a really valuable tool, but they're taking a very small cut of a very small amount of money.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so what I'm trying to do is tell them to pivot. I'm like, "Guys, we'll pay you a ton of money if you create paywalls for bigger companies."

Shaan Puri

right they're not gonna pivot they raise their money and they they have their dream

Sam Parr

we're a few meetings in we'll see yeah I think it's a 10% chance

Shaan Puri

10% alright that's pretty good okay cool what else we got anything else or

Sam Parr

nope we're cool we'll end it now

Shaan Puri

alright thank you for listening