Liver King's $100M Supplement Business, Shaan Loses $250k on Luna, & The Real World Ted Lasso

Sam Parr

He said that he was selling $100,000,000 worth of liver supplements. Basically, these pills are like eating liver, just in a small pill form. I looked it up on Amazon and did a bunch of research, and I think it's true. I think it's 100% true; that's how much he's selling in these Amazon supplements. Alright, so we're doing something. The contest is this: you go to our YouTube, find our full videos, and chop them up into little clips—like 10, 15, or 20 seconds, whatever you want. Then, you post it on social media. TikTok is the best one, but you can use other platforms too. Just use the hashtag **#MFMClips** (that's MFM Clips with an "s"), and we'll find you. Basically, the people who make the best videos typically have the most views. Last time, we actually gave it to someone who had the most views and then another person who just made cool videos. Anyway, you can turn these episodes into small clips, use that hashtag, and we'll give you $5,000 based on what we think are the best ones. Last time, did we give it to 2 people or 3 people?

Shaan Puri

I think at least two people won last time, and it was a win-win. Their channels blew up - they had hundreds of thousands of views on individual videos. I think someone hit 1,000,000 total views. And then they won free money, so it was good.

Sam Parr

And the guy who won, or I don't know, he was one of the guys who won, he built a business around this. It's now doing **$1,000,000** a year in sales, or north of **$1,000,000** a year. Like, it's doing like **$80,000** a month or something.

Shaan Puri

Like that... He came full circle. He emailed me the other day saying, "Hey, I think I could help drive some growth to your Milk Road. Would you like to pay for this service?" And I was like, "Honestly, yeah, I would like to pay for the service." Good on him for turning this... finding this need that we had, which is a need everybody has. Which is, "Hey, we make a bunch of good content. Can you chop it up, package it up, find the good bits, and help them, you know, see the light of day so that we get more exposure?"

Sam Parr

Yeah, so it's a good idea for everyone to participate. That's why you guys should do it. There are details on [mfmpod.com/clips](http://mfmpod.com/clips) or if you just go to [mfmpod.com](http://mfmpod.com), you'll see the details. It's really simple: just chop up our clips or chop up our videos that you see on YouTube. Use the hashtag **#mfmclips** on pretty much any social media site. But honestly, just use TikTok; it's the easiest one to go viral on. If you use it there, we'll find you, and then we're going to DM you based on whether we like it. We'll give you **$5,000**. Very simple. So, Sean, what's up, dude? Long time no see! I missed you.

Shaan Puri

I know, dude. I feel like I wrote down so many topics while you were gone, and two things happened. Number one, I kind of forgot why I was interested in half of them. I'm like, "Oh, I don't even know what this note means at this point." This just shows me that this podcast is not just for the audience; it's for me to be able to get these ideas out of my system. It helps me develop this constant muscle of seeing opportunities and ideas. If I don't have this outlet, those ideas just kind of go nowhere, and that muscle starts to die. I felt the atrophy. The second thing is, out of all these topics that I've been saving up, I'm like, "Dude, when Sam comes back, I got ammo! I got stockpiles of ammo!" You know, when you came back, it was like I was a prepper of ideas, and I just had this whole underground bunker full of them. Then you sent me this thing about the Savannah Bananas, and I can't think about anything else. I only want to talk about this. This is the only topic I'm interested in.

Sam Parr

so so that's please introduce

Shaan Puri

This and let's talk about this. I don't want to hear about your trip. I don't want to hear about your family. I don't want to hear anything—only Savannah Bananas.

Sam Parr

That's a topic that I did the same thing with. I took a two-week vacation, and you took a one-week vacation. While I was on vacation, I saw this video and I wrote it down. I was like, "I have to talk to Sean about this." The best way I can describe this thing is it's like the Harlem Globetrotters, but for baseball. So, the story behind this is basically about a guy named Jesse Cole. He was an amateur baseball player, and he got hurt. He thought, "Well, what the heck, what am I gonna do now?" I actually don't know which league this is, but it's a minor league baseball league. I think it's called the Coastal Plains League. Is that right?

Shaan Puri

what it is that's right

Sam Parr

I actually don't know entirely what that is. I guess, is it like a minor league or a proper minor league?

Shaan Puri

I don't know I don't know

Sam Parr

So, anyway, it has "professional baseball players," but I don't think they make a lot of money. He bought this team in Savannah, Georgia, which has a minor league team that wasn't doing so well. They were like, "Jesse, do you just want this? Just figure out how to make it work, and we'll just pay you, or you could just pay us back when you start making a little bit of money." Alright, so anyway, in Savannah, Georgia, they had a minor league baseball team. They gave it to this guy, Jesse Cole. He bought it, but it was for so little money that he overdrafted his bank account by a couple of thousand dollars. So, he didn't have any startup money. His wife helped him do it, and they started...

Shaan Puri

And the team said, "You know, how many people come to the games?" They're like, "I don't know, like 100-200 sometimes. It's picking up." And he was like, "Oh shit, what did I get myself into?"

Sam Parr

This stadium is completely empty, and he's like, "What do I do with the stadium? How do I get people to come?" He didn't know anything. So he goes, "You know what? Screw it! We're gonna make this one thing. We're gonna do one thing, which is make baseball fun." He has this naming ceremony, and they're like, "Well, what are you gonna name it? The Savannah, like, you know, Trojans or something?" And he's like, "No, no, no, no! Everyone, I want to introduce you guys to the Savannah Bananas!" It's like a hilarious mascot of just a banana. They're like, "Wait, what's going on?" He's like, "No, no, no! So what we're gonna do is we're gonna have fun." What they do, basically, is have normal games in the league where they are actually trying to win and doing real stuff. But even at those games, what they do is the players will introduce themselves, or like the umpire. There are crazy videos on TikTok where the umpire, when he goes down to sweep the batter's box, he drops down low, and they play "Get Low" by Lil Jon. It's just hilarious stuff.

Shaan Puri

They have male cheerleaders. They do trick plays and have choreographed dances that the players perform in between innings. Instead of a traditional hot dance team, they have a grandmother's dance team, so all the dancers are really old and move really slowly. He said, "I got this team," and he's just a baseball player. He realized, "I don't know anything about how I'm going to make this work," but he put it all on the line. They basically sold their home, overdrafted their accounts, and went all in on this. He read every Walt Disney book and P.T. Barnum book for inspiration. He realized it's not about baseball; it's about entertainment. He said, "We're not here to be the most winning minor league baseball team; we're here to have the most fun and create the most enjoyable environment that people will want to feel like they belong to." He thought about the things he hated about a baseball game and decided to do the exact opposite. For example, he hated that there were ads everywhere in the stadium, so he ripped those down and put up funny things instead. He also disliked that buying a beer costs $14, making you feel gouged. So, they switched their ticket prices to be all-inclusive. You buy a ticket for unlimited food and drink, or whatever it is. He mentioned, "I don't know how they do that with alcohol," but that's what he said: all-inclusive tickets. Since baseball is really slow, they implemented a two-hour limit for the games. There’s no walking up to the mound to talk to the pitcher for five minutes, and there are no bunts. They did all these things to speed up the game and make it more fun and entertaining.

Sam Parr

And then they also have the normal game, so they play in the league. Coincidentally, in that league, they won the championship. They went from actually being the worst team to the most winning team.

Shaan Puri

dude just like ted lasso shit

Sam Parr

Yeah, so it worked. But then they do this other thing called **Banana Ball**. In between the normal games, they continue hiring the team throughout the off-season. They travel from city to city and also host this at their own league or stadium. They have this thing called **Banana Ball**, which means there are no bunts, no visits to the mound, and a 2-hour limit. If someone in the stands catches a foul ball, the batter is still out.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, there's like a video of this. Someone comes to bat, they're on stilts, and then they're throwing out the first pitch. Some kid comes out and throws a banana, right? Like, everything is gimmicked.

Sam Parr

And their social media... By the way, they have 4,000 people that come to every game. Look at the TikToks that I posted up there. Did you watch them? They're hilarious!

Shaan Puri

I've been seeing these over the last year or so. The pitcher does a funny dance basically before he throws the pitch, and it's just so likable. The best way I could describe it is that it's so likable. You see it and you're like, "I wish I was there. I wish I was having as much fun as those guys are having." I love that they don't take this too seriously and that it's so counter to everything else you'll see in sports.

Sam Parr

Did you ever know any baseball bros in college? They're always like fun-loving... Sometimes like hardcore bros with cut-off t-shirts that dip all the time. They're kinda fun to make fun of because they're bros, but they're typically really, really nice and very fun-loving. That's it.

Shaan Puri

Like, they're the real estate guys of college in the sense that they're successful, but they're the dumbest group of jocks. You know, I think it's like if you meet... I don't know, like, I don't know who might be dumber, but maybe it's like the wrestling team or something. I don't know.

Sam Parr

No way! The reason why is with baseball: you don't have to be in that good of shape to be awesome at it. So you're like...

Shaan Puri

The discipline of standing... and so what you get really good at is killing time because baseball is so boring. You're sitting in a dugout with your boys or you're out in the field.

Sam Parr

the field by yourself trying to amuse yourself while

Shaan Puri

The ball does not come to you, so that breeds you trying to amuse yourself while the ball does not come to you. This breeds a very self-amusing type of person, which is awesome. It doesn't... like the discipline bar isn't exactly like...

Sam Parr

Really high, you know, like with wrestling, you have to diet and take it seriously. With baseball, not really as much. This team, it's hilarious, and I think it's a good business. I read somewhere that it was doing like $6 or $7 million in sales. But I could actually see this becoming... I don't know if it's ever gonna be like huge, huge, like multibillion, but I think this would be a sick thing to own. I mean, it's probably like what people thought about WCW or what's the wrestling thing called? WWE. WWE, where it was like a joke at first, and then they're like, "I don't know, man, this is pretty fun," and like, "We're getting into it." So it's kind of like that.

Shaan Puri

Well, I would say this is to use the Alex Hormozi thing he said on the pod, which was like, "This is a level 2 opportunity but done with like level 14 execution." Right? This is the best execution at kind of a pretty crappy capped opportunity as to how big something could be. Like, he's built... if he just did this brand, if you put this level of enthusiasm and branding into like a D2C product, or a media company, or like a casino, you know, there were such bigger opportunities. So, you know, if this person ever decided to do something else, you know, "Shut up and take my money!" But like for now, I'm just glad that this is successful. I'm glad that this exists. This is very inspiring. I sent this to our team and I was like, "This is the level. This is what level 12 looks like if you want to kick ass with thinking outside the box and building an epic brand."

Sam Parr

Speaking of level 12 and D2C, dude, your interview with Moiz was really good. I listened to it a couple of times.

Shaan Puri

what is he like he's very open that's the best part

Sam Parr

He typically isn't that open. Frankly, I don't think he... I almost think he was too open. He kind of made himself a target, I think, because he's quite wealthy. You asked him a question that we have to ask people all the time. You just said, "So, what do you do with your money?" And that's all you said. He goes, "Well, I've got $50,000,000 just sitting in short-term bonds. I've got $10,000,000 in real estate." I basically sat home during the pandemic because I couldn't travel. I went to my mom and dad's house and just bought real estate online. He explained all this stuff, and I was like, "Oh man, that is so sick that you're telling people that."

Shaan Puri

I knew it was good because it was supposed to be an hour, and we went for like an hour and 45 minutes. At that point, it's not even about going slightly over time. It's like, no, you just did a separate second podcast at the same time. I just kept going because I was really interested in what this guy had to say.

Sam Parr

no he was good what was your favorite part

Shaan Puri

Mine was okay. So, the money part I think was definitely interesting. The part that's... I said this on the thing, which is, I gave him this nickname of "Bare Metal." He does business and entrepreneurship in a way that is, to me, completely unnecessary but also awesome. I would not want to do it that way myself, but I love how hardcore he is about it. He wants to be so close to the action. He just wants action. I like action, but I like to sit in the press box and watch the action from the comfort of my seat, you know? Then, I can head out early before the traffic hits. Whereas he's like, "I'm gonna go do this." He doesn't just want to buy real estate; he wants to buy real estate from a foreclosing auction where there are no pictures on the website. Then, he wants to take those... whatever those giant scissor plier things are called, and go snap the lock off the door to see what he got. Then, he's going to try to flip this thing again. He takes so much pride in this being, you know, an extra $5,000 a month of income. He's going to do that 42 times this year because that's where the opportunity is. I'm like, "Holy shit!" And he's like, "I'm not gonna use a broker; I'm gonna get my own broker's license." He was just so unnecessarily hardcore about it that it was awesome to me.

Sam Parr

He also said, "I did customer service until we were at $25,000,000 in sales, and I answered the most customer support tickets of anyone at the company."

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, "I did. I was the only service person until we were at, I think it was a lower number. It's like a quarter of a million a month," which is, you know, whatever, a few million dollars a year in revenue. But then he says, "Even at $25,000,000, even now or something like that," he's like, "Before I left, I was still probably the number one agent." Meaning, like, I don't know if you've ever used the gorgeous help desk system, but yeah, everybody's a different agent. You could just see the stats on who's closing a bunch of tickets, and it's like that to me is insane. Like, I own a D to C business, you know, way smaller than that, and I don't know if I've ever answered customer inquiries. I think the first, like, three months I did some customer service from my phone, and then that was it. Even now, I haven't logged into the system; I have really no idea what's going on. But that's also why he's him and why I'm me.

Sam Parr

one time he

Shaan Puri

that's why he's successful and I'm happy

Sam Parr

What? Yeah, one time at the beginning of the pandemic, he was like, "Hey, you wanna go buy some credit card debt with me?" And he'd like... I don't know, I didn't even get into it with a bad...

Shaan Puri

luck because my answer was

Sam Parr

Just like, yeah, my answer was like, "Absolutely not! No, why? Of course not." And he's like, "Yeah, but we get a 20% yield and I already know how to do it." I'm like, "Dude, I just don't even want to explore that. I don't even know anything about that." He was like, "Alright, well I'm gonna go buy this, you know, I forget, but like a million dollars of credit card debt." It was just crazy that he was saying that. I'm pretty sure he owns like a hundred single-family homes, which if you talk to a lot of people in real estate, they would say, "Single-family homes? That's just not economical. It's not an interesting thing. You should always do bigger, so you get bigger apartments and economies of scale." And he totally does like the most hardcore thing there is.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I think the way they bought those was during the 2008-2009 crash, when, you know, there was the subprime mortgage crisis. People couldn't afford their homes, basically, so homes were getting foreclosed on. I think what they did was they just drove into a neighborhood and walked door to door. They would say, "Oh, this house is for sale, we'll buy this one," and then the next one, "Hey, are you moving out? Would you sell this?" So, they bought them all. It's almost like a multifamily complex. I think they bought like 25 that were in the same neighborhood or something like that. They did it with their dad and then the two brothers. They just walked around and bought a bunch of homes in one summer, which is, you know, the best family bonding that you could think of.

Sam Parr

One time I was like, "Moiz, why are you buying these single-family homes and why are you selling deodorant? Why don't you do software or something that's better and easier?" And he goes, "I'm a merchant. That's all I know." He goes, "All I know is I'm a..." He said he's a merchant. I think of like my grandpa's grandfather was a merchant.

Shaan Puri

at the bazaar I think of a

Sam Parr

I think of a guy from the Bible who brings Jesus myrrh. He's like a merchant, you know? And he's like, "I'm a merchant. This is what I do." So anyway, I thought that podcast was really good. That was great.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's amazing. He's really interesting, and he doesn't hold back, which I think just makes him very entertaining too. I told him this: "Your brother is one of my best friends. I think he might be smarter and better than you at business, but you're a way better podcast guest." Because you're going to mix it up. He wants to share his opinions and doesn't see why he shouldn't. I love that because, in a world full of kind of cowardly people, where it's fear-based, it's really nice to see somebody who's not afraid to just say what they think and what they do. He’s like, "Yeah, you can make fun of me if you think so." Sure, some of the things I do are stupid, but okay, and did.

Sam Parr

you did you talk about luna yet

Shaan Puri

No, I don't think so. I don't think I've done a podcast. I was in Hawaii when it happened. I was on a beach, and then like Luna crashed. I went to literally zero, and I was like, "Oh man." For a day or two, it kind of messed up my vacation in a way, but not because I was doing something. I didn't even have access to my wallet; it's not just on in the cloud. So, I just wasn't home. I couldn't even sell if I wanted to. I couldn't do anything really. And then, I didn't even want to be doing something. I was like, "I want to be enjoying this vacation," you know?

Sam Parr

Tell me what happened. Can you tell me? Like, you had told me that Luna's kind of cool, and you told me like 6 or 8 weeks ago.

Shaan Puri

yeah actually so I did something cool too in the last few days you'll see it come out I I I went really over the top with a piece of content I haven't done this since I did that clubhouse thread that was extremely over the top but I was like I kinda find this entertaining and this might hit and the clubhouse one like really hit hit like I don't know like 20,000,000 people saw that thing I did that again with the luna stuff where I recorded I basically am creating like a almost like a john oliver style show you know his show last week tonight or whatever where he just kinda like dismantles one topic for like 15 minutes and it's like but it's peppered with jokes I did that on the luna thing so that's gonna come out last day or 2 but that was a very fun exercise to try to like so tell me what happened to try to be funny but the story is I guess for for those who don't know okay so here's the short here's the short version of the story short version of the story is you have bitcoin gets big has this like anonymous creator and it's supposed to do like one thing really well which is like basically this like digital gold and then you have ethereum gets really big and it's got this guy vitalik he becomes the next cult hero first it was satoshi for bitcoin then it becomes vitalik and and vitalik solves a major problem with bitcoin which is that he makes it programmable and ethereum takes off and ethereum's more programmable form of money but both bitcoin and ethereum have like one major problem which is that they're not very good as actual currencies right they're called cryptocurrencies but you don't use them as a day to day currency you don't use them to go buy stuff and this is for like a variety of reasons right like bitcoin if you try to spend it you'll get taxed as if you just sold a home every time you do a transaction and then the merchant doesn't want it because they're like oh shit what tomorrow this is gonna go down 20% of price like dude I'm not trying to invest I just need money to pay for tomorrow's inventory like I don't wanna take this in my coffee shop and so it's not really you those aren't really you so basically there's this idea of creating stable coins there's a coin that's always gonna be worth $1 and like this is the spoiler it's like you know you don't want it to not be worth $1 which is what happened with with the terra project but like you know it's supposed to be worth $1 so the way that most people did it the big ones usdc tether those are the 2 big ones they're like it's basically like like a like a safety deposit box you give them a real dollar they'll give you a digital dollar and if you ever want your real dollar back they're like I promise it's in the bank vault whenever you need it come back and redeem it and and those kinda have some controversy because crypto people don't like it because it's like well how do I know you're not lying like how do I know you didn't just take all that money in the bank vault and go spend it or invest it in some risky way and that's why people think tether did does and and also they're like dude what if the government just cracks down this one company like they could just like they have to operate in some country yeah

Sam Parr

like it's centralized the the whole it's yeah centralized this decentralization thing isn't real so in that.

Shaan Puri

So, okay, that's the pro argument for this project. The project is called **Terra**, and one of their currencies is called **Luna**. The idea was that we need a decentralized stablecoin; we need decentralized money.

Sam Parr

Does that mean that one person invented Terra and then another person invented Luna using Terra's technology?

Shaan Puri

No, no. Terra is like the name of the company, Terraform Labs. It's a group of people who came together and said, "We're going to create a stablecoin." Then the stablecoin, one of them, is called UST. So think about it like the US dollar version of Terra: UST. That was their stablecoin, which is something that's always supposed to be $1. Luna is the thing that backs it. Okay, so remember I said, in the other version, what backs the digital dollar? It's a real dollar in a bank account. The way that the US dollar used to work was that what backed the US dollar was gold in Fort Knox, right? That was before we got off the gold standard. But the idea is, what gives this currency any value is this backing currency. They were backing it with Luna, and Luna was meant to be this... it's like two. They basically created two coins: the stablecoin and then Luna, which can actually go up and down in price as a stabilizing mechanism for the stablecoin. So, whatever... these are some details. They're not super important to what actually happened. But it was one guy, right? Because I saw what actually happened.

Sam Parr

so but it was one guy right because I saw like

Shaan Puri

there's like an asian guy

Sam Parr

founder but like there's a team

Shaan Puri

right this is a it's a company okay just like a startup right mark zuckerberg that's this

Sam Parr

guy do kwon

Shaan Puri

got it okay so do kwon who's do kwon

Sam Parr

he's a pretty interesting character

Shaan Puri

Right, because he basically started with Stanford computer science graduates. He began working on something like mesh networking, an internet thing. That was his first startup. Then he realized, "Oh no, crypto is the future. I'm going to create a stablecoin project." So they came out with this idea, and there were some skeptics because they had seen decentralized stablecoins—this uncollateralized, decentralized, algorithmic... a bunch of buzzwords. But that's how you describe it. A stablecoin failed before; there was a project called Basis Cash maybe five years ago. Basis raised, I don't know, $80,000,000 or something like that from tier-one investors like Andreessen Horowitz and a bunch of other VCs. However, they didn't even launch. They were like, "Oh, we don't know if this algorithmic thing will hold," so they kind of returned 85% of the money as a failed project. That was the last big version of this that had come out. Then Terra comes out, and the difference was they said, "Look, this works as long as there's demand for the stablecoin." So they asked, "Where does the demand come from?" At first, he came out with the idea that they would use it for e-commerce. In e-commerce, every time there's a transaction, there's like a 3% credit card fee. They proposed doing it at 1% if they used crypto. For a merchant, that's real money saved if someone uses this option. What they did was say, "We'll pass the savings to the customer and the merchant, 50/50." Then they went and talked to all these e-commerce companies in Korea, where they're from, and they got like 27 large e-commerce companies, including the second biggest one in Korea, to use them. So, imagine like... not Amazon, but let's say eBay.

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

They got eBay to use it, so everyone's pretty hyped. They're like, "Oh shit, this is crypto with a real worth, real-world use case. Finally, a real-world use case!" This is... and you.

Sam Parr

were hyped on it I was hyped on it

Shaan Puri

And this guy, because he was on stage, he's like, "Look, crypto is full of a bunch of projects that have no real-world use cases and very low user bases. We have a real problem that we're solving, and we have real users. We have 2,000,000 people using our payments app to do this in Korea." I was like, "Wow, awesome! I buy in." And then things started.

Sam Parr

to get

Shaan Puri

over much did

Sam Parr

you invest in can you say you wanna say it now

Shaan Puri

I started with $25,000, and then I had an opportunity to put in another $200,000 as part of a group of VCs who were buying Luna. They invested in the company and got to buy Luna at basically a **40% discount** to the market rate. At the time, it was trading at almost $100, but we got to buy in at just under $40. However, it was locked up; it was going to be released over a number of years. So, I did that. So, I was like...

Sam Parr

oh dude

Shaan Puri

I like this project. Anyway, if I get to buy it 50% under market, like hell yes, sign me up! Also, these are all tier 1 crypto investors. I mean, they raised $1,000,000,000 from investors, so it wasn't like some random project. It was like, "Oh, well, these guys are smart; they're doing it right." That validates my belief. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and do this. For a while, it looked like a genius move because Luna was trading at, oh, I don't know, it hit like $116. It was one of the best performers last year.

Sam Parr

basically how much were you up by

Shaan Puri

In about a year and a half, Luna went from under a dollar to $116, so I did like a 100x in 1 year. I was in at around the $30-$35 price range. Overall...

Sam Parr

40% of 30 or 30

Shaan Puri

No, no. My price, my actual price, was like **$35** blended. So then you were... you went.

Sam Parr

I was up to 3 50 7.50

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. My $200, my $250 was like $750,000. I was like, "Oh great, it's doing well." This was just the start; it was growing really fast. Not just the price, but the number of people buying the stablecoin was going up. I think the stablecoin had like, I don't know, $18,000,000,000 of TVL or something like that, so it had gotten pretty big. But I kind of noticed, I was like, "Wait, they don't talk about the e-commerce thing ever anymore." That's because it kind of didn't work. It was working slowly; I think merchants kind of cared, but not enough. Consumers didn't really change their behavior, so it wasn't like a sexy growth story. I don't think it was working, so they just stopped talking about it. Instead, they started focusing on serving the crypto community itself with a savings rate—a savings account. Basically, there was a savings account on the network that said, "If you deposit your stablecoin here, you get paid 20% interest on your stablecoin," which is kind of amazing, right? Because if I take my dollars to Bank of America...

Sam Parr

I get yeah but that sounds like some posit scheme shit

Shaan Puri

Sounds like it, right? But it's not. I'll tell you why. So, it was like Bank of America gives you 0.2%. This was giving you 20%. A lot of critics said exactly what you said, which is, "Oh, this is a Ponzi." I will argue it is not a Ponzi; it was even better than a Ponzi.

Sam Parr

like a what's one up from a ponzi

Shaan Puri

okay so a ponzi

Sam Parr

fucking stealing

Shaan Puri

Basically, a Ponzi scheme works like this: Customer A gives you money, and you use that money to pay out Customer B. Then, Customer B gives you money because they have faith in it, and you use that money to pay out Customers C and D. So, you're taking one customer's money and paying out the other. This was even better: they just created a currency out of thin air, printed like $1,000,000,000 of it, and then they just gave it away. Right? Like, the market believes...

Sam Parr

it right now so have you seen on what's that where they have patty just patty's dollars on yeah

Shaan Puri

patty's bucks and then all of a sudden yeah

Sam Parr

patty's bucks it's always sunny yeah that's exactly what happened they just created their own currency and just collected the dollars

Shaan Puri

In a way, that's what all currencies are, right? The U.S. dollar... every country does this. They create their own currency, and if you believe it's valuable, then it becomes valuable. If you cease believing it's valuable, then it devalues. We see this in different countries, and that's what happened here. For a while, people believed it was valuable, and they kept investing in it. Two things happened. One was that everybody knew that this 20% savings rate is not sustainable. The reality—the joke that was my joke version of description—was when they raised the $1,000,000,000 from investors, they basically were like, "Look, this savings rate is really good for customer acquisition. This is a marketing budget." Just like Uber subsidizes your rides, like why was an Uber ride back when we all started using Uber like $12 when a taxi would have been $28? It's like because VCs were basically giving...

Sam Parr

uber money

Shaan Puri

And they were losing money on the rides. That's what Terra was doing; they were losing money on this savings rate, but they were getting a whole bunch of new customers. So, like, they got almost 4,000,000 people to create wallets on the network. It was like they were buying user acquisition. Now, you could argue that was either dumb or not dumb, but it was definitely unsustainable. Everybody kind of... anyone smart knew that it was unsustainable. But it's like, "Hey, look, I get rewarded for being early here. I'm going to get this subsidized earnings savings rate, and that'll go away as this gets more popular." But like, cool, that's my benefit for being early. That's how almost every crypto project works, and it's how many startups work as well. Investors subsidize the usage of your free product until it's big enough where they'll start to charge or raise prices.

Sam Parr

To get to the kind of fast work again, I care about your take on what happened to you. But to get to the crash, what happened?

Shaan Puri

To get to the crash... Okay, so all along the way, people are like, "Hey, algorithm and stablecoins only work when demand keeps going up. Once demand starts to fall, this thing will free fall." So, yeah, you have demand right now; that's why everything looks good. But once this starts to fall, it'll create a death spiral. Meaning, once people stop wanting UST, Luna's price will go down. Once Luna's price starts going down, people will start selling Luna. It's basically just an interplay between if UST either started to depeg, meaning instead of being worth a dollar, it was worth 95 cents. People will not want it; they'll lose confidence in the stablecoin. As they lose confidence, they'll sell, which will create more supply of Luna, causing the price of Luna to go down. That will cause even less confidence in the whole project, and it'll just death spiral. That was the belief. All along, this guy Do Kwon, who started off seeming like this smart, kind of "wanna change the world" guy, he'd become kind of an egomaniac. It was part of his persona. He was like a Donald Trump or Elon Musk style guy. If you disagreed with him, he didn't just say, "I agree, let's agree to disagree." No, he was like, "I will shit on you. I will call you stupid and poor, and I will make fun of you." Is that...

Sam Parr

literally what he said

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he would call everybody stupid, poor, and he would basically... oh my god... say "You're all fudsters just spreading FUD," which is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, you know? And look, they've been wrong all the way so far. "They're gonna keep being wrong," and this is exactly what Elon did about people who were shorting his stock. He was like, "Oh, it's gonna be the short burn of the century! You guys are gonna look so stupid!" And, you know, people were betting against him, people were betting for him. So anyway, yeah...

Sam Parr

but he this guy forgot like the thing to make this work is you have to be right

Shaan Puri

Exactly. He was right for a while. By the way, it's really funny. There's one Twitter account that wasn't just saying, "Hey, this ain't gonna work." He specifically laid out a 15-step plan, saying, "Hey, look, I did the math. If somebody was motivated and had $1,000,000,000, they could destroy Terra, which is currently worth $40,000,000,000." So, if you put up $1,000,000,000 of sell pressure, I think you could crack the whole Terra project. It would have to be a smart, focused person who would have to time it right. And basically, he retweeted that and was like, "And this is like famous last words." He goes, "Man, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on Twitter." Yeah, well, billionaires wait.

Sam Parr

he said retarded

Shaan Puri

yeah really yeah

Sam Parr

What a dumb idiot! Why would he do that? How'd you call him a dumb idiot? Well, like, why would you say that like that?

Shaan Puri

idiot would do such name calling how how

Sam Parr

can you how can you speak like that when you're like this like like a ceo of like a that's just

Shaan Puri

Like crazy, Trump called Mexicans rapists and stuff. Dude, this is like crazy. People are crazy; they do crazy shit. And then they're basically, their fans, in his case, were called lunatics. We're like, "Yeah," and then like all they...

Sam Parr

thought that was cool

Shaan Puri

Well, I don't know if they thought that specific wording was cool, but in general, his character... I mean, he renamed himself **Stable Quad**. He became a billionaire, he got a million Twitter followers because he became a cult of personality, similar to you.

Sam Parr

oh my god what an idiot though

Shaan Puri

So, anyway, he tweets it, and he's really an idiot because he said, "This is the most [r-word] thing I've read on Twitter all week." He goes, "Billionaires who follow me, please go ahead and try this." And sure enough, like two weeks later, or a week later, they did. So basically, somebody or some group—it's not confirmed who it is, and it's not confirmed that there's a coordinated attack—but it does seem like it. People started dumping like $1,000,000,000 worth of the stablecoin, which caused the peg to go down. When you have that much sell pressure, it won't stay worth a dollar; it slipped to 92 cents. On top of that, they were also dumping Bitcoin, which was the reserve collateral that these guys were holding. So Bitcoin's price starts to go down, UST starts to break the peg, and people start to panic a little bit. They also started withdrawing. So they did three things: they took it out of Anchor, the savings protocol, so you saw $1,000,000,000 worth of withdrawals. Then you saw them sell it, and you saw Bitcoin's price tanking. All of a sudden, people started getting a little worried about, "Oh shit, is something bad happening to Taro? Let me just go ahead and sell." So more people started to sell, and you see like $3,000,000,000 to $5,000,000,000 of sales happening in a very short time.

Shaan Puri

Of time, and this also coincidentally—or very planned—happened right when they were doing, like, a kind of moving houses. I was like, "Oh man, the doors are open." They're moving, the moving trucks are outside, so the doors are open. That's basically what happened. They were moving all their liquidity from one liquidity pool to another. There wasn't much there; there were fewer shock absorbers than you would expect when they started to sell.

Sam Parr

it went from a hun over a $100 to what what's it

Shaan Puri

at now less than a penny like fractions of a penny what yeah

Sam Parr

okay so how much value was wiped out

Shaan Puri

40 something $1,000,000,000 48,000,000,000

Sam Parr

that is crazy that is crazy

Shaan Puri

And a stablecoin went from selling... So that's Luna Terra. The stablecoin, the UST, was selling at, you know, it's a dollar. It's supposed to always be a dollar. It goes to 92 cents, then 85 cents. So I'm on the beach in Hawaii, and I'm just getting texts from Ben, "Yo, Terra's depegging." And then it goes down to 70 cents. Then it shoots back up to 90, giving false hope for a second, and then it plunges to 65, 60, 50. I think it's currently trading, I don't know, 15 cents to the dollar or something like that.

Sam Parr

you're you're you're out 2.50

Shaan Puri

I'm about 2 yeah 2.25 something like that

Sam Parr

how does that feel

Shaan Puri

it may feel shitty of course right like you know lose more of your dollars

Sam Parr

when when you're sitting in hawaii

Shaan Puri

She doesn't really care to know, nor does she want to know the details. I told her, "Oh, well, from all of crypto, we lost several million dollars in the last three months because crypto has just been selling off like crazy." She's like, "Okay, so like I shouldn't buy this bag or I should?" I was like, "I think it's a shouldn't right now. Let's go ahead and hold off on that." That's the level of conversation we've had about the whole thing. She's not stressed about the big picture. She's stressed about micro stuff. If we have a late fee or a parking ticket, she'll freak out. But on the big things, she's very chill.

Sam Parr

but how do you feel about that now now that you've lost you said several let's just say $3,000,000

Shaan Puri

Like, I guess a couple of feelings. The first was, I'm not surprised. We went in pretty eyes wide open, which was this is a risk-reward type bet. You don't just say that; you have to actually know what the risk is. The risk was always that nobody's ever made an algorithmic stablecoin work. And by the way, here's one spoiler: this guy Do Kwon turns out he was also the anonymous co-founder of Basis, and that got leaked as well. So it's like, dude, you know, fool us all once, you know, shame on you. Fool us twice, what the hell is wrong with you? That's my take on it.

Sam Parr

did he did he tweet out like I'm I'm sorry I'm a dick or like did he acknowledge

Shaan Puri

He's like, "Look, we didn't mean for this to happen, obviously." I have no idea because some people are like, "Dude, did you benefit from this in some way?" That happens to crypto people; they will raise a bunch of money, do a bunch of it, and then run away with the money. His claim is, "No, we didn't. We lost more than anyone on this whole thing." I feel really bad that this happened. He's kind of just like, you know, tail between his legs a little bit. He's sulking and he's much quieter now while everybody's dancing on his grave, deservedly so, because he was cocky as hell. So, that's what's going on with him. With me, it's sort of like, "Alright, I lost some of this money. That's not good, obviously." But, you know, it doesn't feel good. It's sort of jarring. I've had startup investments go south, but it kind of happens over a longer period of time. This is like you wake up on Tuesday and one of your best performing investments has gone to zero in 24 hours. It is quite jarring to watch the price drop like a knife and feel pretty helpless. There's nothing you can really do about it, partially because my Luna tokens were locked up and partially because I was away from my computer. You know, whatever.

Sam Parr

But you're not... I would like, I mean, I would lose sleep over that. I would be like, I need... almost, almost, not quite scarred, but like a little bit. It would almost be close to where I would describe it as traumatic.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's not that for me. And again, I think it's because I write down whenever I do an investment. Here's my reasoning: I think there's a good investment and here's what could go wrong. The "what could go wrong" was exactly this, which is like people think that if there was a bank run, this would debt spiral. I see no reason that this wouldn't debt spiral if there's a bank run. I don't know what would cause a bank run, but it's possible. And it's like, "Oh, what would cause a bank run?" It was like either a motivated player created panic at a time when the project was vulnerable because all the markets—stock markets, crypto markets—are all down and they were moving the liquidity. So it's like, well, the risk kind of played out. Like, that's okay. You know, it's like I've had pocket aces get cracked before, and I wouldn't even call Luna pocket aces. It's like I had a flush draw that got beat. Okay, you know, like to use poker terms, I had a flush draw that got beat. That's what happens. Even if I had a 60% chance of winning, okay, I got my money and good, but it wasn't my life savings. Now, there are a lot of people who lost a lot more money on this because they put in a lot of money. So to me, there's also like a post-mortem of like, okay, there are some rules. Like, you don't put more than, you know, 15% in any one project because all of them have these black swan risks. You never want to be that vulnerable to any one thing.

Sam Parr

is the majority of your net worth in crypto right now

Shaan Puri

it was not not not not

Sam Parr

including

Shaan Puri

everything cut now

Sam Parr

not not including private like not including private businesses

Shaan Puri

No, of the liquid stuff, it's a little less than half now. It was a little more than half before. So, you know, the stock market also hasn't done great. I don't know, I haven't really gotten that bad.

Sam Parr

I've lost so much I don't log in to my thing anymore I I've just I don't even look at it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for me, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna go trade right now. For mental health purposes, I don't calculate my net worth when it's so far down. You know, there is a good forcing function. I'm like, "Alright, great! Let me make sure I'm earning money and working hard." It's very easy when, over the last year, year and a half—let's say since the kind of COVID money printing system—I mean, the whole 10 years has been a bull run or whatever. But like the last year and a half, shit just inflated like crazy. So it was like, "Man, do I even need to work?" I'll just look up every day and I made a whole year's salary in a day. You know, it's kind of demotivating to work. And then this is highly motivating to work when you start losing a year's salary per day. You know, that starts to add up. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess that's my full reaction to it.

Sam Parr

me too that's exactly mine as well it's like you just just make more money yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly

Hubspot

This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago that I totally missed. HubSpot: grow better. Alright, well, let me switch topics a little bit. I want to tell you something that's kind of, I think, hilarious. Dude, have you seen the Liver King?

Shaan Puri

the guy on instagram

Sam Parr

yeah I

Shaan Puri

He was just describing it. So, he's super jacked and he eats... this is not the same raw food guy, right? But he does eat.

Sam Parr

like no a different one he's more than jacked he looks like the hulk like yeah he's

Shaan Puri

like comically jacked

Sam Parr

Yeah, like it's funny. He looks like if you popped him with a pin, he would blow up like a balloon. You know what I mean? He looks swollen. Basically, his whole shtick—and I researched him a little bit—is that "we aren't men anymore; we're soy boys." The best way to overcome that is to get as jacked as possible and live like a manly man. I think he lives in Texas and he has two kids. The whole family sleeps on wood crates; they don't use beds. They basically sleep on the floor because it's kind of like we're cavemen.

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

And I think he says that he eats like a pound a day of raw liver. This is crazy stuff; the guy is crazy. He also says he doesn't do steroids, which I went and tweeted about. A lot of people I know who know him messaged me, saying, "Obviously, that's not true. He definitely is on steroids." If you look at him, you can just tell he is doing something. Anyway, in a GQ article, he said that he was selling $100 million worth of liver supplements. So basically, these pills are like, instead of eating liver, you just swallow this pill.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And I looked it up on Amazon. I did a bunch of research, and I think it's true. I think it's 100% true. I think that's how much he's selling in these Amazon supplements. He has his own store and is associated with like 3 or 4 other different stores. He owns or co-owns this thing called **heartandsoil.co**, which is all about only eating meat and fruit. He owns this other thing called **thefittest.com**, which, if you click on it, is like hardcore propaganda. I mean, not necessarily negative, but what's the difference between propaganda and a mission statement for a brand? It just says, "We were once the fittest version of ourselves, descendants of the sole survivor species of the genus Homo." He explains why we need to go back to these things. The product is called **Honor**. This product fundamentally supports everyone, and it's like bone marrow and liver. Then there's another one called **Fuel** and another one called **Ignite**. Look at this picture.

Shaan Puri

Of this guy at the bottom, he's just like this super swole guy. You know those heavy chain links that they use to pull tires and stuff? He's just got those around his neck and he's grunting as he lifts the chain links with his neck. It's crazy! I even make fun of it because it makes fun of itself the most already.

Sam Parr

So, it was like a caricature of what this lifestyle is about. I'm not entirely against this lifestyle; I just think it's hilarious.

Shaan Puri

is your lifestyle by the way what are you talking about

Sam Parr

No, but this guy is kind of... I think he's an idiot because, I mean, he's clearly doing something right. I understand he's going extreme to sell more stuff, which I'm not against, but he's 100% on gear and he's saying that he's not. So I think it's kind of... that's kind of like this whole premise is based on a lie. But anyway, he also... I even found out someone at the agency that he hired. He hired an agency to get big on social media and he got to like 2,000,000 followers in like 24 months. That's a very short amount of time. So anyway, I thought this guy was interesting and I hadn't... I wasn't sure if you had known about him. Very intriguing. How many followers does he have on Instagram? Does it say?

Shaan Puri

1,500,000

Sam Parr

what do you think of his supplement sites does that look do those numbers see real you know

Shaan Puri

you're saying that the you're saying that the amazon

Sam Parr

Amazon? No, I'm saying all his empire does is $100,000,000 selling supplements on different platforms. Yeah, it doesn't look like these are...

Shaan Puri

All his... like he doesn't own all these. Maybe he's like an affiliate of some of these or something. In his Twitter bio, for example, he just has his eBook. He doesn't even have a site. And then this Heart and Soil one... like who are these guys? Our store?

Sam Parr

He owns a large percentage of that company as well. Isn't this crazy?

Shaan Puri

yeah so paul saladino md is the main guy this is the carnivore diet guy yeah

Sam Parr

yeah the carnivore md it's all these guys yeah

Shaan Puri

that thing sells like crazy

Sam Parr

Yeah, and if you... I did some more research. This Liver King is in all the guy's photos and on his "About" page and things like that.

Shaan Puri

this heart and soil is a good it's a good brand they do a good job

Sam Parr

I'm in I'm gonna steal

Shaan Puri

some of these ideas from my d2c brand they do some

Sam Parr

Nice things! This company is called **Heart and Soil**, and it's run by this guy named **The Carnivore MD**. He's popular on Twitter and he's like a doctor who says he basically only eats meat and fruit. I joined one of his Facebook groups because I actually did the all-meat thing for like 30 days. I wanted to try it, and he's got like a 30-day challenge. It was pretty fun! In the group, I would post things like, "Is there any good book or research that actually goes against this thing that shows that all meat is actually not great and that you should be vegetarian?" Kick ass!

Shaan Puri

me code red code red he questions the premise yes

Sam Parr

they destroyed me and they were like they they just posted photos of you're just

Shaan Puri

well yeah

Sam Parr

Exhibit A: Soy boy. They just ripped me apart, and I was like, "Okay." So anyway, there is a little cult.

Shaan Puri

I've never been called the n word before but then I went to

Sam Parr

the carnivore group and I I

Shaan Puri

asked if meat soup is good for you

Sam Parr

Dude, they did not like me. They didn't. They were upset at me. So anyway, I thought that it was kind of interesting. It is a little bit of a cult, but...

Shaan Puri

well okay

Sam Parr

this like that

Shaan Puri

This whole episode, I think that the thread here is sort of like these extreme cult leaders. So, the "banana savannah" guy is basically creating a cult, right? He's creating a brand with rituals and members, and like a whole thing. Things outside the box. The Do Kwon from Terra Luna and the Lunatics, they... you know, that was definitely a cult.

Sam Parr

oh that was their name the lunatics

Shaan Puri

That's what, like, you know... like laser eyes for Bitcoin, Lunox.

Sam Parr

that's a great brand

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. Lunatics! It was really good again. The party was great until the cops showed up and took everybody's money. So, you know, that was great. But, you know, my personal experience with that... you have this Liberking guy. I think he's... can I bring up one more? And we'll just make this...

Sam Parr

the whole decision I I I bet you I know who you're gonna say

Shaan Puri

martin shkreli

Sam Parr

I am on board a little bit wait I'm I'm part of that cult

Shaan Puri

We're all... we're all just, what are we, Shkreli addicts or something? I don't know what we were going to call ourselves, but I...

Sam Parr

think they should they should we we should call ourselves the creeps

Shaan Puri

yeah we're all creeps

Sam Parr

martin shkreli and the creeps

Shaan Puri

he okay so I have kind of a backstory with this guy but just in general

Sam Parr

I have to explain the famous backstory

Shaan Puri

Okay, so Martin Shkreli... If you just Google "most hated man in America," I think he comes up as number one. Yeah, at least he did at the time when I first heard about him. He is known for, or he's known and hated for being a kind of price gouger with a drug. What he did was he owned a pharmaceutical company that focused on small, less popular drugs that were niche. He bought this drug called Daraprim and increased the price from about $13 to over $500. I don't know the exact amount, but the percentage was like he increased it by 5,000%. So people were outraged, and then immediately the news picked this up. It was like, "Oh man!" They started calling him the "Pharma Bro." Because first he did this, they were like, "How dare you?" But instead of apologizing and walking it back, he was like, "Fuck yeah, I did! I own this; I can charge what I want, you know? Like, this is America. That's the price of this drug."

Sam Parr

he doubled down

Shaan Puri

He doubled down, and he loves attention. He's amazing at getting attention. A lot of the attention is hate, but he's amazing at getting it.

Sam Parr

But he was only 33 or 34 when he did this. He basically controlled two pharmaceutical companies that were each public at over $1,000,000,000 in market cap, I think.

Shaan Puri

I don't know. I can't confirm those. That might be right, but he also had a hedge fund before that where he invested in biotech stocks.

Sam Parr

yeah just like he had done big things

Shaan Puri

And he was... he's a very smart guy. Now, people think he's a crook. Some people said he was a crook because he raised the price of the drug. That's not a crime; that's just something you don't like. Then he actually got indicted and went to jail for doing something that was legal. I think it was like he basically paid investors from one company with the stock of his other company and then wasn't clear or something like that. I don't know exactly what he went to jail for.

Sam Parr

He's been in jail for two years. He went back to jail; he didn't get released early or something like that for threatening Hillary Clinton. He didn't really threaten her, but he made a stupid joke on Twitter.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so he just got out last week. That's kind of the funny part of this. He gets out and it's like, you know, I don't know who's a famous person that everybody wanted to be freed. It's like, you know, "Free Young Thug" or whoever.

Sam Parr

like martha martha stewart

Shaan Puri

Yeah, free Martha! Like, whatever. There was a group of people that were excited about his arrival. I was excited too because I enjoy reality TV. I enjoy, you know, the drama.

Sam Parr

he's like our version of kim he's he's our kim k he's he's that's exactly what he is

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, I wanted to see a plot. He comes back, and I just started thinking about Shkreli in general. I have a couple of ways we can go. We can discuss things I find very interesting, or borderline admire, about the way he does things. Then there's what he has been up to in prison, and what's interesting there. Where do you want to go? I have both.

Sam Parr

I like both of those. So, what has he been up to in prison? And the backstory, you actually need to mention this: he was an early user of your product, Blab. I spoke to him a couple of times on Blab. When the hustle first launched, we were in our first office. So, this was in the first six months. One of our reporters was this young woman named Brina, who was, you know, like a pretty good-looking woman. She DM'd him for a story, and he was like, "Hey, do you just want to fly up here and we could hang out?" He was asking her out. So, I had a little interaction with them as well.

Shaan Puri

So, we had an app called Blab that was basically, if you've seen Clubhouse, it was Clubhouse before Clubhouse. It had video on it, so it wasn't just audio. It got sort of popular. We tried using it; we tried getting podcasters to use it. We got some marketers to use it for promoting their stuff. Then we started getting some bigger brands. The NBA started using it, UFC started using it, Oracle... but none of them could hold a candle to our number one power user, Martin Shkreli. Martin Shkreli came on the app and basically broke it from day one. The first time he came on, instantly the room filled up to about 5,000 people. It was more people than we had ever had in one room before. It hit our max limit. We were like, "Who is this guy?" That's when I first Googled him and found out he was the most hated man in America. He was famous enough to draw a ton of people in, but he was not famous enough to have other things to do, which was the perfect sweet spot. As I said, he is the most lethal weapon in social media. He has since been surpassed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk as the most lethal weapon in social media, but before that, it was Martin Shkreli. The reason I say that is because he created a ton of content. He would go on Blab every day from about 5 PM till 2 in the morning. He would be on that whole time, and he was the master at creating nightly entertainment. You know, Jimmy Fallon, Jay Leno... you guys can't touch this guy in terms of nightly entertainment because he had no producers, no script, nothing. He would hop on and somehow cause enough ruckus that this room would have thousands of people in it all night long watching. We were hooked to it. We would see this in our data; people wanted us to kick him off because, again, he's a bad guy for raising the price of this drug and for saying things that weren't cool. But this guy was driving in hundreds of thousands of new users to us every single month. So, I was like, "I'm not trying to kick this guy off. This guy is where the action's at."

Sam Parr

this was 2017 2018 cancel culture wasn't a thing yet

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I was like, "Dude, I'm a startup. I'm gonna do what it takes to get off the ground." Like, yeah, Bitcoin used the Silk Road to get off the ground. And, you know, YouTube started as a dating site. Facebook, you know, before this, did face mask comparisons, like which girl is hotter. Not everything starts with the most clean-cut, you know, thing. Airbnb started by faking and scraping, you know, Craigslist sites and emailing them as fake people saying, "I'd love to book your thing. Can you just list on Airbnb?" Like, dude, people do what they have to do to get their project started. So we had Shrilli, and I used to watch it. At first, what I noticed was everyone who came in came in to throw stones at this evil man who raised the price of this drug. But he did not sit there and apologize or whimper. He fought back. He would give his side of the argument and invite you up for a debate. That's when you saw how strongly held opinions could be with no logical backing, with no real rationale behind it. The argument was so hollow. And this was not just like average people; people who were very successful businesspeople would come on trying to stand on their high horse, you know, telling him what he should do. Then he would dismantle their argument. Journalists from CNN and other places would come on, and he would dismantle them. He was doing a combination of making fun of them, hitting on them, and breaking down their logical arguments all at the same time. I've never seen anything like him. I just thought, "Wow, this guy is very entertaining." I don't agree with everything he's saying, but I think he's very entertaining. So, the data doesn't lie. He is very entertaining. He is the only guy that plays...

Sam Parr

Later on, in some of the Blabs, he would have these cute women in the background. They clearly had just met him on Blab, and he was just like, "Hey, I'll fly you out. You wanna hang out?"

Shaan Puri

So, this is what started happening. Everyone started off hating him. After about three weeks, he developed an army of believers—people who were... there was a guy who became known as "the creeps." This guy's name was Young Shkreli. When Martin was tired or had to go eat, Young Shkreli would go hold court. He was just an extreme knockoff version of Martin. He would hold court defending him until Martin came back to defend himself. Then, all these women started joining, and they loved him. They were just hanging out there all the time. They weren't just cam girls or models; they were actual fashion models, OnlyFans people, whoever. They would get on and say things like, "You know, Martin, I don't know, I would date you." The room was always filled with his posse. It was like going to where a mob lord is at, and he's got his goons. He had his goons, dude, and his army was just growing. Within a couple of months, the number of people who loved him outweighed the number of people who hated him. It was the most surprising thing; it was like watching a cult form in real time. It was fascinating. I remember a CNN journalist came on, and she was like, "Martin, I know everybody kind of attacks you, blah blah. I don't want to attack you; I just want to ask you some questions." He replied, "Well, you're on my show. Let's go." She said, "No, no, no, I want you to come on CNN." He responded, "This is better than CNN. You're on my show. You have questions? Let's go. These are my terms. You can ask any question you want, no holds barred, right here, right now. If you're not prepared, come back and prepare, but you can do it right here on my show." She said, "I'm not going to do that, Martin. I can only do it there." He said, "Alright, fine. Come with me to my fundraiser gala tonight. I'll fly you out." He goes to screen share, buys her a plane ticket, and says, "What's your email address? I'm sending this to you." She replied, "I'm not going on a date with you, Martin." He said, "If we said it's a date..." and then he was just playing people perfectly.

Sam Parr

Didn't she end up quitting? One of the women who hollered at him from the Washington Post ended up quitting the job. In case you didn't know.

Shaan Puri

Remarkable. When he goes to jail, this woman from the Washington Post or someplace is assigned to cover him, or cover the story. She falls in love with him, but then breaks up. She has a family; she has a husband and kids. I think she leaves them for Martin. She falls in love with Martin while he's in prison, and then Martin breaks her heart. Now she's heartbroken. You know, whatever. She gave it all up. She gave up her career and her family for Martin and fell in love with him. This guy's got some cult leader qualities to him. So anyways, he did some crazy stuff when he was on Blab. He was so loyal to his army that he'd be like, "I've got a date tonight, but don't worry, I'm leaving Blab on." So he would leave it on in the other room, and you could eavesdrop and overhear his date, which is again...

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

Prime time entertainment. Is it wrong? Yeah. Is it entertaining? Yeah, it is. This guy was phenomenal. Anyway, I found him interesting. I was observing from a marketing perspective: how is this guy staying relevant? That drug situation was years ago. How is he still in the spotlight? He would just do things. For example, Wu-Tang Clan had an album that they were selling as a one-of-a-kind for their biggest fans. He bought it for $2,000,000. Now, this guy, who they didn't want and had a feud with, had this album. Then, on Blab, he would play snippets—10 seconds of the album—and no one had ever heard it before besides him. He would just tease it, dangle it like the original NFT. When there was a building for sale in Times Square, he tried to buy it for $10,000,000 to erect a statue of himself in Times Square. Again, it gets covered. He was just newsjacking constantly. He was hijacking the news and putting his own spin on it.

Sam Parr

Did he have money when he got arrested? I think he actually showed a brokerage account that had like $70,000,000 in it.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think he had like somewhere between $50 $75,000,000 if I remember like at the time

Sam Parr

but then he like had to declare bankruptcy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I think at one point, ironically, his attorney that was defending him raised his price by 5,000% and started charging him $60,000 per hour. I don't know if this is real or not, but Martin came out in the news and he was like, "This is outrageous!" People were like, "Dude, the irony of pot calling the kettle black." I was like, of course, this is just another article he wanted written about him. He's just a master of getting attention. He did so many things like this; I can't even count the number of things he did. I was like, wow, this guy just knows how to stay in the cycle and constantly reinvent himself. Just when he pushes you away, he'd lure you back in. For example, on Friday nights, he would hold his nightly Vlad thing where he had thousands of people, and it was like a roast session. He'd say outlandish things, and you just feel yucky for being in there. Then, Saturday morning, he would wake up at 8 in the morning and do a live finance session where he would teach you how to analyze stocks, and they were phenomenal.

Sam Parr

and I watched a bunch of them

Shaan Puri

They're still on YouTube; you can go watch them. He is very smart, and he was so thoughtful and patient as a teacher. He's a fantastic teacher. So anyway, that's like the backstory. He gets out, and when asked how prison was, he immediately jumps on Twitter Spaces. By the way, that's another funny story. When he had to speak in front of Congress—yeah, I guess it was Congress—he had to go testify. He went there with a smug look and kept saying, "I will take the Fifth. I choose to exercise my Fifth Amendment rights to not speak." He just repeated that on loop for an hour, but he was smiling smugly, which just pissed them off. He was drawing the whole time. As soon as he left the room, he jumped on Blab from his phone on the train and said, "Alright, who wants to see my drawings?" He showed his drawings of, like, dicks and stuff that he was drawing on his piece of paper. He was live while the hearing was still going on, embedding one screen with his drawings and talking mad shit about the Congress people on the other screen at the same time. It was just high-level social media usage. So anyway, he got on Twitter Spaces, and when they asked how prison was, he said, "Oh, it was awesome." He talked about the prison system and how unjust it is. He mentioned that 95% of the people in there had traumatic childhood issues with their parents. He said, "I hustled out other people's lockers so I could store more books." Basically, he was summarizing his experience. So first, he's been blogging. Have you read his blog from prison?

Sam Parr

no but what did he say about prison he's he I mean I bet you he was actually well respected there

Shaan Puri

yeah he's like and probably

Sam Parr

because everyone's like tell me some stories

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, he was kind of like, you know, he had his crew there or whatever. He said he created a crypto study group. What did he say? He goes, "When everybody else was working out in prison, I would read because brain gains are all that matters, not muscle gains." He's like, "Roscoe, Arnie..."

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

He's like, "I created a group called Crypto Thugs in prison." It was just me teaching crypto to the rest of my fellow inmates or whatever. He had a bunch of interesting stuff. He had a lot of predictions about crypto in there. He basically spent his whole time studying crypto, artificial intelligence, and biohacking, and stuff like that. So, he's got this blog post with a ton of predictions about the future. I'll read you a couple of his.

Sam Parr

I'm on I'm on his it's just it's martsquareley.com

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, I think so. So, I'm going to read you some predictions here. **2025**: In about three years from now, self-driving cars will be the successor to mobile computing. They will trend upwards, and people will spend **8 hours a day** in their cars. Tesla will near a **$10 trillion** market cap, and Musk will become the first trillionaire. **2026**: An AI-generated song, maybe a GPT-4 song, will be created with zero human editing and direct participation, and it will chart on Billboard. **2030**: Virtual reality and the metaverse will be ubiquitous and widely used. All you will need is a comfortable, ergonomic optical interface; that's what was the limiting item.

Sam Parr

I think he's wrong on that one

Shaan Puri

2030: Vehicles, self-driving cars, reach majority penetration in the U.S. Car accidents drop by more than 50%. He says he just keeps going. He goes out to like 2050, making predictions such as: by 2050, the lifespan for a newborn is now 100 to 125 years. Ninety percent of nonsurgical medicine is automated. Most contract law is automated on-chain. He keeps going. Now, right or wrong, you could disagree with all these, but he's just a very interesting thinker—a very interesting guy to follow. He does these book reviews that are hilarious. For example, he might say, "This book: 3 out of 5. The first three-fourths? Giant waste of time. Last fourth? Interesting about this topic." It's like, "Oh good, you saved me a bunch of time reading that book." I kind of trust your opinion on these things. So, I don't know, his blog is worth a read.

Sam Parr

We... I tweeted out asking to get him on the pod, but I had no Twitter handle to tag. I didn't know who he was, or you know, which is kind of hidden. We maybe found the right one. Yeah, but we should get him on. I feel like we're big enough that we can get him, and he's an interesting guy enough. I don't like giving our audience, like our platform, to people who I think are full of shit. Like, for example, Jordan Belfort. I wouldn't want him on.

Shaan Puri

dude I would want him

Sam Parr

would you

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's the same. Remember, people were like, "Oh, I can't believe you guys had Tai Lopez on." It's like, well, due to me.

Sam Parr

like scale

Shaan Puri

Would I want to talk to this person? That's the test. If I would want to talk to this person, that means they're interesting. Just because you're on the podcast doesn't mean we say, "This person is awesome and legit."

Sam Parr

I agree, but I don't want to endorse certain things. Maybe like, "Well, how are we endorsing?" I don't know. But this is like a... you don't wrestle with this at all?

Shaan Puri

No, I actually find that stupid. People do this to Joe Rogan and others as well. They're like, "Why would you give him the platform to say his stupid stuff?" It's like, dude, I'm going to have a conversation with him or her because they're interesting to me. I'm going to find out what they have to say. If they say something silly or stupid, I'm going to try to push back and give my point of view. The listener should be smart enough to come to their own opinion about things. In fact, the right way to counteract speech you disagree with is not to suppress it, but to bring it to light. You know, put the sun as the best disinfectant type of thing. Bring it to light and then let people make an informed decision based on what they heard.

Sam Parr

well I I I agree with that

Shaan Puri

at all just to have someone on the podcast

Sam Parr

I'm on board with that I I and admittedly I'm wrestling with how I my opinion

Shaan Puri

on this show you know made wolf of wall street because jordan belfort is a bad guy like no hell no

Sam Parr

no but I don't want

Shaan Puri

to and they glorified it dude they put leo dicaprio

Sam Parr

They made it look... I actually don't, I like by myself watching that movie. I'm like, you know, I don't want to watch this. This guy was a piece of shit. He's robbed a quarter of a billion dollars from people. And yeah, I'm watching this movie and I'm like, "Oh, I want to be like that." So I find myself not wanting to watch it. But what I was saying was Martin Shkreli is the type of guy who I actually don't agree with probably a bunch of the stuff that he's done. But I'm not convinced that he's like an evil guy. I think that he's just a weirdo. When he was smiling at Congress, I was like, "Oh, I actually think you're just weird and you just don't know how to interact with people." I don't... I don't, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

he knew what he was doing he's a troll

Sam Parr

I think he's a troll, but I don't... I think it comes from a place of just being really awkward. Not necessarily that he's a horrible guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know. People will come up with their own conclusions. I've seen a lot of people say he's a horrible guy. You ask, "Why?" Oh, because he raised the price of the drug. Why is that bad? Because then people can't afford it. Well, do you actually know that insurance pays for 98% of it? And then he gave away the other 2% if you couldn't afford it through insurance. He just gave it to you. Yeah, but then insurance costs go up. Cool. Well, then you should have a problem with like these 15 other things. Also, if these drugs are not valuable, then there's no research for these niche diseases. That's why a lot of these niche diseases just don't have any R&D budget—because there's no value in them.

Sam Parr

so proof that his biggest crime is having a punchable face

Shaan Puri

exactly exactly you know

Sam Parr

what I mean like and that's a real thing and he's very dislikable

Shaan Puri

He's dislikable because he trolls, and he's rude to people. He makes fun of things, and he's like, "Yeah, okay, cool," but that's not a crime, you know?

Sam Parr

But I would love to have him on and talk to him because he's the type of guy I don't think he's a liar.

Shaan Puri

Shrill it! Shrill it in the briefs. We want to do an episode. This is our open invitation. I hope this gets back to you. I'm the guy who made Blab. We spent many, many hours together in a way on that platform. Whenever we were getting DDoSed, it was because of you. I put up with that... So, you know, give us one. Give us a solid and come on the pod!

Sam Parr

so we'll we'll have to tag him wait is that twitter thing I think

Shaan Puri

that's his real account

Sam Parr

yeah but is that a secret or not

Shaan Puri

because he was in the twitter spaces under that doc

Sam Parr

so alright so that'd be cool

Shaan Puri

yeah