How to Get a Slice of Harvard's Billion Dollar Case Study Industry | My First Million #222

Shaan Puri

There's a whole bunch of big money industry financial players that will happily pay **$25,000**, **$50,000**, or **$100,000** a year just to be like, "Explain this shit to me."

Sam Parr

sean what what are you wearing

Shaan Puri

you get so offended when I don't have sleeves I forgot

Sam Parr

I'm not offended I just think that

Shaan Puri

like shook I I you're completely flabbergasted I think a

Sam Parr

sleeveless hoodie is an interesting choice I think it look you look nice and now that you look jacked

Shaan Puri

thank you I'm trying to be jacked

Sam Parr

are you

Shaan Puri

I'm thick and jacked; I have a lot of muscle, but there's still fat on the muscle, so it doesn't look very good. I took this... you know those cars that kids get? It's like a mini version of a car so they can drive it around, like whatever.

Sam Parr

it's not cheap

Shaan Puri

So, we got one for my daughter's birthday. It's like a little mini Range Rover thing. I posted on Instagram—I never post on Instagram—so I shared a close-up of the Range Rover logo and the wheel. You couldn't tell it was a kid's car. I was like, "Yeah, new ride! You know, work hard, it always pays off." Then, I posted a zoomed-out version of it in my driveway, and it's like 2 feet long. I also took a picture posing with it. I didn't realize, or I forgot, that most of the world hasn't seen me in like 2 years. You know, I have long hair now; I never had long hair before. So, everybody on my Instagram is like, "What the... what's going on? Is this you? What is this?" Also, I've gotten considerably bigger and more muscular, I guess.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you've changed significantly over the last, I would say, 4 years. It's been like a 3-year journey.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I got a bunch of DMs from people just being like, "Well, that's funny what you were doing." I was like, you know, proving the haters wrong. Hard work pays off, you know? Like the cringey Instagram stuff that people do when they get a new car. I was doing that, but I was just doing it for a joke. And then also, jokes on me because people are like, "You look weird."

Sam Parr

That's alright, they're actually complimenting you. So, do you know that I was reading stuff on Examine.com? I enjoy reading about things that have a core or that are correlated to longevity. There are different studies on that, and I've discovered two findings. The first is grip strength. Grip strength is highly correlated with longevity. The second thing is...

Shaan Puri

why do you know

Sam Parr

What's the thing? I'll explain why. The second reason, or the second thing, is quad strength. It's about how strong your thighs are now.

Shaan Puri

so you're living till 33100

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think I'm going to be old. However, there's not a correlation between muscle size and longevity. So just because you have big muscles doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to live a long time. What it means is that grip strength and quad strength are both really the most perfect of an imperfect test to assess your upper body and lower body strength. If you're strong, you're going to live longer. It's highly correlated with longevity. So, strength is important, and I think it's good that you're lifting weights.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but I feel like my grip strength and quad strength are not great. I also feel like that's not what the show is about, and nobody cares about my grip and quad strength. However, I do think the longevity aspect is cool. I've been... you know, you have these moments where you're like, "Okay, I'm not doing a project in this area. It's not my work, it's not my job." I also don't even really know what I'm looking for, but I just keep going down this rabbit hole. I just keep watching videos, reading stuff, or kind of talking to people about this topic. I don't have a destination I'm trying to get to, and that's what it's been like with this longevity and anti-aging stuff. I've just been watching a ton of interviews and reading about a bunch of the science regarding what's the latest in this space. I think I talked about it on the podcast; I mentioned Aubrey de Grey.

Sam Parr

de grey yeah

Shaan Puri

And then there's Laura Deming. Do you know who she is? No? Well, she's an entrepreneur. I think she started doing this when she was about 16. I believe she was a Thiel Fellow. She dropped out of college to take the Thiel Fellowship, which was basically Peter Thiel's initiative where he offered $100,000 to anyone who would drop out of college and work on whatever project they wanted. So, he was paying people to drop out. She took that opportunity and thought, "Do I start a company? Do I do this? Do I do that?" I think she ended up creating something called the Longevity Fund. It was one of the first major venture capital funds that aimed to invest solely in anti-aging and longevity companies. She raises money and, even though she's probably still under 25, she's like a veteran in this space now. I think she worked under Aubrey de Grey, or at least knows him. She has this Longevity Fund, and she was discussing what gives her hope. She talked about the breakthroughs or advancements that make her think, "Oh shoot, products are really being made." She also mentioned things that, ten years ago, we thought would be here by now, but we're still ten years away or more. I feel like there's a lot of space in this area. For example, self-driving cars have been a topic of discussion for a long time. People have been thinking about it for years, and it always feels like it's five years away, but it never quite clicks yet. However, you do feel like it's inevitable, and that's kind of how anti-aging is as well.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've been reading it a bunch. One of my favorite books is, it's like the pop culture version of all those Blue Zones. Have you read *Blue Zones*?

Shaan Puri

no what is that

Sam Parr

you don't know blue you don't know what the blue zones is

Shaan Puri

no blue ocean I know but but not

Sam Parr

Alright, so the *Blue Zones* is fantastic. It's a book that studies five different cultures that have an incredibly high number of centenarians—people who are over 100 years old. I believe the five locations are: the Seventh-day Adventists, which is a religious group in mid-California; a group in Japan; an area in Greece; an area in Korea; and maybe Costa Rica. I forget the other ones. The author tries to narrow down to a handful of things that they all do. Those things include eating meat and vegetables, particularly large amounts of vegetables; drinking moderately; and not exercising vigorously, but rather exercising by walking to work or walking around all day. For example, the Seventh-day Adventists believe their body is a temple, so they walk throughout the day and work jobs where they have to lift things above their heads. However, they don't exercise in the traditional sense.

Shaan Puri

use damage their body to try to get super sore and grow the muscles

Sam Parr

Yeah, and they undereat. You know, they don't overeat because they believe that the body is sacred. A few others are that the older folks don't go to nursing homes; they stay at home. So, they have a stronger sense of community. Typically, they drink moderately. I also believe a lot of them have some type of religion or spiritual belief that they're looking towards. That's mostly it, but there are maybe a few more characteristics that they all share.

Shaan Puri

And do you... there's a whole bunch of drugs that are, you know, possibly linked to longevity, like metformin and stuff like that. Have you dabbled in any of those?

Sam Parr

No, but as of today, for the past handful of months, I've been taking a variety of magnesium and ashwagandha, the thing that you mentioned.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

elf elf what's it called l theanine

Shaan Puri

l theanine

Sam Parr

it's one of those it's one of those words that like I write all the time but I never pronounce right

Shaan Puri

theanine yeah I think that's the one

Sam Parr

Kava, and I believe that's it. But I've been interested in some of that stuff; I just haven't... What's it called again? It's called... I forget the stuff that's proven to promote longevity in mice.

Shaan Puri

I don't know rap rapsomycin or something like that rapamycin

Sam Parr

Yeah, anyway, I'm interested in longevity stuff. We'll have to talk about it. I don't have Slack open, by the way. If you're going to message me, I don't have Slack open; I've got Zencastr.

Shaan Puri

no I was just getting like some of the things we were talking about

Sam Parr

Yeah, they're all... it's all meant for lower mood. Also, the blue oceans, a lot of it, they have low stress.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. I think stress is the killer. That's what some people talk about with Warren Buffett because Buffett's diet is like famously garbage.

Sam Parr

like soda mcdonald's

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he, like, I think he eats, you know, McDonald's for breakfast every day on his way to work or something like that. Like a sausage McMuffin every day. I remember watching some video following a day in the life. This was like 10 or 15 years ago, so maybe he's sharpened up since then. At the time, he was saying this is what he does every single day. Then he drinks Diet Cokes and eats M&M's. It's like all his portfolio companies, you know, that he lives by basically. It's shocking because he's in pretty good health. He's got his wits about him, even though he's almost 90 years old or whatever. He's very sharp mentally and has high energy, that sort of thing. Obviously, he's still performing extremely well at his job even at that age. So, a lot of people are like, "Well, that defies the odds." Some people say, "Well, one thing that Buffett does right, he may do a lot of dietary things wrong, but one thing he does right is he is extremely low stress." If I was betting, I would bet that stress ages and hurts you more than any other dietary input. Now, I'm not a scientist; this is just my observation of people. I can see people who are glowing, who have high energy, people who stay healthy and who don't. If I looked at what in my life, the people around me, what would be the common denominator, it's actually not their diets. It's more of their stress and their mindset.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's hurt me in the past. So we're on the same page. Do you want to talk about the results of the NFT thing?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, do I mean, it's kind of insane. So, we did this NFT auction. Here's like the quick summary if you didn't follow. Basically, I'm really into crypto. I did this thing called Crypto Week where I was just deep diving. My goal was to actually use all the different parts of crypto, not just be an investor, but to be a user of what they call Web 3, which includes all these different technologies and things you could do. One of which is NFTs. So, I bought some NFTs. I played with the tools that help you value them or scope them out and all that stuff. The last thing I did was I wanted to mint an NFT. I thought, "Alright, what would be an NFT I would do?" Well, I'm not a great artist, so I'm unlikely to have this visual art that just speaks to you. But I was like, "What do we do well?" I thought, "One thing we've done is we've created this audience through My First Million." What if we created an NFT called "5 Minutes of Fame"? 5 Minutes of Fame is real simple. It basically just says, "Hey, the owner of this NFT, the owner of this token, it's like the Willy Wonka golden ticket. If you have this golden ticket, you get access to the chocolate factory." So for us, it was: if you own this token, you get access to the pod. You get 5 minutes of airtime on the pod where you could talk about whatever you want. If you want to talk to us and just shoot the shit, bring your ideas to the table, fantastic. If you want to ask questions or promote your company or whatever you wanted to do, that 5 minutes is yours. So, kind of on a whim, I just texted you being like, "Hey, idea, what do you think?" You're like, "Cool, go for it." I minted it on OpenSea. I paid a little bit of Ethereum to create it. I set up an auction for 7 days and I started the auction at 0.25 Ethereum, which was the equivalent of, at the time, about $700 to $800. It just closed last night at midnight. The auction closed and I think it made $33,000. I think it closed at 11.55 ETH, which is about $32,000 to $33,000.

Sam Parr

I think it was a little more... let's see, 11.5 times 11.5 times 3,055, or $35.

Shaan Puri

yeah so that was that's what it closed at last night and so it gotta

Sam Parr

be something and so so

Shaan Puri

we should shout out the winner

Sam Parr

I thought it was going to go in about $25,000 to $30,000. That's what I would have predicted. As for how much an ad would cost on this podcast, maybe $10,000, and we would do a couple of them.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think, you know, $10,000 would be, you know, maybe the... I don't know. We don't sell ads anymore, so I don't know what.

Sam Parr

the 5 or $10 maybe

Shaan Puri

going ad rate would be for it

Sam Parr

but you can't we don't sell them so you can't even get it but yeah who's the winner

Shaan Puri

The winner is... his username is just like "d2d something." So, I don't actually know the person. You know, it's sold to kind of an unnamed artist.

Sam Parr

and we have what they're

Shaan Puri

They're going to do with it. They can hold it, so they can basically say, "Alright, cool. Y'all are growing 20% month over month. I'm in no rush. Let me just hold this for the foreseeable future and let this thing grow." Then, you know, they could cash it in later. So, the username, the one person you want is **d2d628**. You can go look at their profile about some other stuff that they own. They own some other NFTs that are valued at 5 ETH, 3 ETH. They own one that's valued at **335 ETH**, so they definitely have a portfolio.

Sam Parr

of entities

Shaan Puri

that they collect 335 I mean that's like

Sam Parr

is that 900,000

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's like **$1,000,000**. That's the set price for it. I don't know if that's what it'll go for, but that's the list price that’s asked. So anyways, this person won, and they can sell it. They could just say, "Cool, I'm gonna flip it." The way they use it is they send it to our wallet. They will have to burn it by sending it to our wallet, which takes it.

Sam Parr

out of

Shaan Puri

Circulation... and then that's how we know you were the owner of it and you cashed it in.

Sam Parr

alright let's you wanna talk about you wanna talk about harvard

Shaan Puri

yeah we talked about this we hinted at it last time so let's do it I think you did a bunch of research

Sam Parr

Yeah, but I want you to kick it off and explain to me why you got interested in this. Basically, I've known about this for a while. I launched Trends because I read all about this, and I want to know what caught your eye. I think I've brought this up on the podcast a little bit, but what caught your eye?

Shaan Puri

you initially told me about the harvard business review in passing you just said something very very you were like I think they do like a $100,000,000 you said something like that and so that caught my eye this was maybe 5 years ago and at that time I like kinda stashed that away and then when we sold bebo one of the I did I did a brainstorm of like would I start another thing and one of the things that always interested me was education education education education I was like okay well I like business I mean this is before the podcast even I was like I really like business and kinda digging into nerdy business stuff could I package that into a product it became this podcast but one of the ideas I had was could I compete with harvard business school's hbr kind of their media arm because what they do at the time I was looking into their case studies so what they do is if you ever go to business school and there's many business schools that do this they have kind of like case based learning project based learning basically and so you you go into class and you see you get this printed out piece of paper that says here's the scenario you're the ceo of sony and you're coming up with the new playstation and you're competing with xbox and right now sony's market share is going down and you need to figure out a way to get it to go up here's some of that background and it basically gives you a case to walk through and basically give your kind of like your 2¢ on what you think the strategy should be and all that good stuff and then the teacher has kind of like an answer key essentially it has the results of how things played out and what worked what didn't and and kind of a just a guided discussion and so it's basically like the curriculum for a business school so I the reason I got interested in this because I was actually gonna go start a company making these case studies focused on technology focused on on kinda like cutting edge tech and either sell it to schools or sell it to companies who wanted to train their managers so that was my like idea I still kinda wanna do that someday but I did back away from it when I realized that harvard really had a monopoly I think the stats at the time were that 80% of all the case studies all the business school case studies were harvard business school case studies and then the second thing was if you go talk to a professor I think I talked to 2 and I was like hey I'm gonna do all these great case studies it's gonna be so much better and they were like yeah but like what's that phrase like no nobody gets fired for buying ibm it's like nobody gets fired for buying the harvard harvard case study if I go buy the sean case study and if if anything is off about it or even if it's good like it's just gonna have lower perceived value than the harvard one so actually I need to stick on the harvard sauce and I was like oh that's a problem it's the credential it's the brand of harvard not the content of the case study that really makes a difference

Sam Parr

So, let me set the stage here and give some numbers to explain what we're talking about. Okay, so every number I'm going to tell you is from 2019. All of these numbers are public, so this isn't ideas, theories, or rumors; this is fact. In 2019, Harvard Business School made **$925,000,000**. I'm going to rank in order where that revenue came from, so **25%**... or yeah, **25%**.

Shaan Puri

which is around 2,000,000,000 basically just to make the math easy

Sam Parr

yeah why I have

Shaan Puri

to we don't do public math

Sam Parr

we don't do public math 25% or around $250,000,000 came from endowment and gifts okay that's the 2nd largest thing I'm gonna save the 1st largest for last the 3rd largest thing 24% or around $240,000,000 executive education tuition we made fun of tyra banks for saying she went to harvard because she went to an executive education that's what she's talking about the 4th largest thing get this only 15% of revenue mba tuition right tuition is the 4th largest one the final 2 are harvard business school online so basically online courses which is 5% of revenue and then finally housing rents and other 3% so the biggest one their biggest revenue stream is 28% roughly $280,000,000 that makes almost 2 times what tuition makes what is that their publishing arm right so they make money in publishing through a couple different ways basically 2 or 3 they make a little bit of money through advertising but it's pretty it's nominal but they have 400,000 subscribers and subscribers pay anywhere from 10 to to $50 a month depending on which package you get but the bulk of their revenue comes from the 15,000,000 case studies they sell to around 4,000 universities now that number of around let's say I think I believe the exact number is $262,000,000 in revenue how does that rank so let's put this in in in in perspective here the new york times I think probably the largest print publication or text based publication in america revenue of 1,800,000,000 the economist another 100 + year old brand 429,000,000 harvard business review 262 forbes which has you know all they do is publishing a 180,000,000 fortune a 100 and and axios 58,000,000 however amongst all of those harvard business review has the highest revenue per employee so they're the most efficient so $582,000 per employee so that that's some of the numbers shockingly big shockingly big

Shaan Puri

Shockingly big. So, just to break that down into kind of the different categories, let's focus on HBR. What are their products? They have the review they publish, which is kind of like a magazine, right? Essentially, it's like a sort of smart person magazine. Then they have the case studies. What's the split between those?

Sam Parr

Case studies and subscriptions. Yeah, well, they sell about 15 million to... they sell like 18 million case studies a year, and they cost like $10 to $20 a piece. So if we break it down, I actually have the exact numbers. They have 400,000 subscribers, and they sell 18 million case studies. I would imagine that of the $262 million, $200 million is from case studies.

Shaan Puri

Wow, yes. So that's kind of unbelievable. That's basically recurring revenue because they have to pay for it each year.

Sam Parr

Yeah, the way it works is your professor, who's teaching at any MBA program, basically at one of the 4,000 universities in America, has given Harvard their credit card. The professors just scroll through and they go, "Click! I want that." Oh, I have 120 students, therefore 120 times $20, that's how much I'm going to pay. Just click and bill it to the university. And that's how it works.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. I still want to compete with this. Actually, now that you've brought this up again, it just makes me want to go do this. So, I tweeted this out, or I put this in my newsletter actually yesterday. I said, "Top universities are an amazing business." Imagine having $100 million in recurring revenue through tuition or publishing. A huge, huge fund—not venture capital, but a huge fund—which is their endowment. You own your real estate and you pay virtually no taxes because you're a nonprofit. I think Harvard paid, I remember reading this one year, they paid $12 million in federal taxes on all that revenue because they're a 501(c)(3) or whatever it is. They're basically a nonprofit university. I think there was just some new bill that now they have to pay some tax on their endowment, so their bill went up to $50 million, which is still, you know, not very much for a $1 billion a year enterprise.

Sam Parr

Check this out, dude. Harvard's endowment is $40,000,000,000. So, let's just say that they get a 7% return. That's a little bit less than $4,000,000,000, right? That’s their annual profit. I would have to run the numbers, but I believe I did this one time. If they gave free tuition to all of their students and only paid their bills with their endowment profits, they would still net a profit of a few hundred million dollars a year. So, like you have to keep in mind that Harvard, like you say you want to compete with Harvard. Okay, cool, I hear you. They have not infinite, but close to as many resources as you could ever possibly need to build.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so, what is Harvard worth? Right? Like, if you were going to value Harvard, how would you value Harvard?

Sam Parr

The same as Nike or something like that. I mean, you have to look at what the multiples are for Nike. Interestingly, if we just looked at the Harvard Business Review revenue, Harvard Business Review had $262,000,000 in 2020 revenue. If we added the same multiple that the New York Times currently has, it would be worth—just the business school portion—$1,200,000,000. Yeah, oh sorry, just the publishing arm of the business school.

Shaan Puri

Right, so just the publishing arm, the media company would be valued at $1,200,000,000. Is that what you said?

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

and so the whole thing is probably 50,000,000,000 or more

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot. One would argue that they're not exactly optimizing to make revenue and profit. I mean, I don't know too much about it, but I would have to imagine that they're not, you know, "smacking the whip" and telling everyone, "We gotta improve margins."

Shaan Puri

right yeah it's kinda crazy so

Sam Parr

And let me give you some more stats. You know, MIT Tech Review? Have you ever read that? Yeah, you'll see them floating around. I recruited a person from MIT Tech Review to work at The Hustle, and that person told me all about it. They were doing north of $20,000,000 in revenue. It's archaic; it's a very, very old enterprise. Columbia has a popular one, and the University of Virginia is the second highest seller of case studies. And get this, here's another big one: you know Oxford Press? Have you heard of the Oxford University Press? Yes, they own the Oxford Review and they make books. So, they do close to $1,000,000,000 a year in sales.

Shaan Puri

wow from their book publishing

Sam Parr

from their book publishing yeah and case studies with lots of books

Shaan Puri

Alright, so how would I do this? Sorry, let's brainstorm together. I think people get the idea that, hey, these are much bigger businesses than you would have thought. What would you do if you wanted to get some of this action? If you said, "Wow, that's a lot of money being spent on..." let's just start with case studies.

Sam Parr

well look so you're you're

Shaan Puri

You're advising your buddy Sean. Sean says, "You know what? I think I wanna do this, but I don't have the angle." What would you say?

Sam Parr

So, I did this, dude. My company, Trends, the one that I just sold, we did this at the end of this year. Trends will potentially be a $10,000,000+ a year recurring revenue business. So, we built this exact thing. If I owned it and was trying to make as much revenue as possible, I would start in, and knowing what I know now, I would charge probably 10 times the price. I would probably charge between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. I would start in different niches and I would slowly start checking off the boxes. I would build this elite, kind of scary brand, you know? Something like Viacom or Blackstone—something that has this like... or like, what's the university that starts with a "D"? Dartmouth! Like something kind of cool sounding. I think, what's the... what's the research engineer?

Shaan Puri

port okay here we go we got the

Sam Parr

Yeah, or you know, Gartner. We'll just call it like... I don't know, I'd have to look around. It's like your porn star nickname. I'd be like your favorite piece of furniture.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

and you're like

Shaan Puri

You know, like the hardest metal or rock surface near you? Okay, granite. And then, like, you know a word that means research?

Sam Parr

Yeah, we're going to call it "Macklin Inc," like the street that I grew up on. Macklin Inc. You start doing these... and you start hiring salespeople. You know, you build like a gardener, and then I would branch down and start hiring a few more pop culture-centric writers. Then I would do a little bit more broad... a little bit more broad one. But, you know, this is what Gartner did, and Gartner has a significantly large business.

Shaan Puri

and does that price anomics do this too you know about them

Sam Parr

They tried to, but they didn't execute that well. That doesn't mean the business sucks; they just failed at executing it. I think they ran out of steam or lost interest.

Shaan Puri

I see. Okay, and what you sold to basically small business freelancers, entrepreneurs, and agency owner types?

Sam Parr

Yeah, dude. We have, you know, over 20 or I don't know, tens of thousands of subscribers. Okay, and we did that well, but I'm an idiot because the reality is those same people would have spent $1,000. Right now, they'd spend $300. So, I messed up the pricing. I should have charged either way more or way less. Another way is I should have charged $100 or $99 and made that an impulse buy. $300, which is what we charge, that's not an impulse buy. $99 is. So, you charge $99 for a couple of small things, then you have an upsell of $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, or $5,000. Very few people buy that, but you use the $99 one to get into the funnel. That's what you should have done. I did $299. That was dumb.

Shaan Puri

You have 22 things you would have done differently. One is the price. Then the other, you're saying, is you would have niched into certain categories and really built those categories out. What would be the first two or three categories?

Sam Parr

Oh, I would probably... let's see. I mean, it would have to be like what I know. So, I bet I could have done media pretty well. I also think I could have done D to C. What I could have done is gotten companies like Nike to give me $20,000 a year. They would have gotten two things: 1. I would have published one or two case studies a month, maybe four or five case studies a month, on the latest and greatest in e-commerce. I would focus on the D to C folks—who's who in the category, who is crushing it, and why they are crushing it. 2. Every single month, I would host a digital or sometimes in-person panel. I would go out and find, you know, the Sean, the Sully, the Ramon, or the Moises—three or four young companies that are crushing it. All these gray-haired Nike executives would want to come in and be like, "Oh, that's how you guys are doing it! That's how you're thinking about X, Y, and Z." I would do that panel once a month, and you guys would get free access to the young guys. But then, the companies would have to pay $20,000 to $50,000 a year. Here’s the third thing I would do: I would come up with a very cute graph or some type of signature thing where I rank the D to C brands. I would have a power ranking—here are all the power rankings of the latest and greatest D to C brands that are under eight years old. Here are the best up-and-coming ones, and here are the incumbents, the older guys, with their power rankings. I would create something that wouldn't be bullshit; it would be some type of legitimate ranking. I would come up with a proprietary method for that ranking, and I would keep it updated at all times.

Shaan Puri

right yeah I I agree and I think you could do this right now in crypto

Sam Parr

that was a great idea by the way the idea I just gave was great

Shaan Puri

it was great

Sam Parr

that would fucking work that will work

Shaan Puri

Yes, it was an absolutely great idea. Now, I think you could do this in other spaces. I think you could do this in crypto. Why? Because there's a whole bunch of different brands too.

Sam Parr

keep track of

Shaan Puri

All the different tokens... There's a whole bunch of big money industry financial players that will happily pay $25,000, $50,000, or $100,000 a year just to be like, "Explain this shit to me and tell me what I need to know."

Sam Parr

Paying for easier crypto would be way easier to sell than D to C because crypto is fear-based. So, you want anything that's fear-based.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. It goes after the biggest wallets. People who... it's one thing to say, "Oh, these brands are crushing it," but if you know which tokens are crushing it and which networks are crushing it, you can actually make money off them. On the other side, you're afraid of them if you're the incumbents that have huge wallets. So I think that's why it's better.

Sam Parr

Additionally, with crypto, you've got all these guys like Sean and Jack Butcher who are spending 24 hours a day on Discord and Twitter, studying. They're like, "Oh, Kevin Rose just tweeted this out." Then you have some gray-haired guy at Morgan Stanley who’s like, "Why do I care what Kevin Rose does? And what the heck is Discord?" And you're like, "Yes, exactly! Forget about it. I'll spoon-feed this to you." Like, a big-name influencer just tweeted this. The likelihood of it getting big is pretty high.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

you know what I mean

Shaan Puri

Yeah, for sure. So, I think that's something. By the way, if somebody does this, let us know. There's a guy who reached out. I gotta show you this. There’s somebody who reached out and said, "Hey, you guys were talking a while back. I think I came on the pod one day and I had this idea. I was like, somebody needs to do Barstool for tech." This person reached out and they're like, "Hey, you had this idea a while back. I want to do it. I'm actually pretty uniquely qualified to do it." He explained why: "I did this, I did this, and I did this. If anybody can pull this off, it's me." And I'm like, "Actually, that's pretty believable." So, I'm going to help this person think it through and maybe launch this thing. I'm going to share that with you. But I love when ideas come to life with a legit operator. By the way, I also hate the exact opposite: "Hey, I love that idea! Would love to talk to you about it." No, no thanks. I just have zero appeal in that one.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think it's far more appealing to someone to say, "Oh, I've been working on this for 3 months. I've made $15,000 so far."

Shaan Puri

exactly

Sam Parr

okay let's talk

Shaan Puri

I have a stock reply now, which is like, "Hey, glad you liked the idea! I would love to support, but I get a bunch of DMs all about the same idea every time we release one of these." So my rule is basically, if somebody shows me that they're actually doing something—there are a lot of people who talk about it, but very few who do things. If you end up doing something, actually building a product, getting some users, or making some money, definitely hit me up. That'll get my attention, and I'll happily help then. But just for peace of mind, I can't help everybody who just says, "That's cool! I'd love to think about it."

Sam Parr

Dude, that's so much nicer! I just say, "Let me know when you have traction." That's usually what I say. I also, if someone comes to me saying they're considering working on X, Y, and Z, or they say, "This was amazing! I'm starting to work on it," and then a month later they say, "This is amazing! I'm starting to work on this other thing," I say, "Oh, you are disqualified." I will no longer think of them.

Shaan Puri

you're one of them people

Sam Parr

You have no grit. I do not want to talk to you about if you jump from idea to project to project to project without a really, really good reason.

Shaan Puri

I yeah

Sam Parr

you're done yeah I just ask you

Shaan Puri

I'm super guilty of that, but I understand why you feel that way, and I think you're correct. Okay, let's do some other topics. Let's see what else you got. What are some other topics you want to discuss? I might know.

Sam Parr

you lead you got something

Shaan Puri

well I see this omaze thing and I kinda wanna talk about that and then there's another one which let's let's do actually I think this one's more this one's funnier the topic on our sheet says maybe don't fake it till you make it it's like it's timely right so I tweeted out that I retweeted this story of this guy who was like hey you know the the elizabeth holmes the founder of theranos her trial starts today funny story I actually interviewed theranos after all the scandal happened so that I thought that was kinda interesting because there's a lot of people that were like oh yeah I met her back when everybody thought they were hot shit and it was a $10,000,000,000 startup and she was the next steve jobs and I had this funny experience this guy's experience was all the news had come out and then a smart mentor of mine was like hey you should take a look at this role at theranos like this high level exec role he's like they're are you joking and they're like no no like you know it's they're they're misunderstood and she's amazing you should talk to him and then like another person said anything oh okay I guess at least I'll get a good story out of this so he flies there and he interviews with her and he like kinda tells this story I don't remember all the details but it's an entertaining story you can find it on twitter and actually you can't because twitter search sucks but like yeah just take my word for it it's an entertaining story so the the topic here is like there's been a bunch of these I feel like that have like happened in the tech world lately and I think in the tech world there was this gospel of fake it till you make it yeah that's that's the cool way to go about things that's the hustler way and then you see things like ferret theranos you see nicola motors which was like this like fake tesla basically literally like took the name right like tesla was the inventor's last name nikola was his first name so tesla was successful so he names his company nikola and he claims that that's not why he did it but obviously it is why he did it takes the company public via a spac it runs up to this like $40,000,000,000 valuation and then somebody's like hey bro have you ever seen a nikola car on the streets and like no nobody's ever seen a truck of theirs ever and it's like questionable if it even exists they have like one video of their truck and it's basically like just going downhill it's like they just had a truck and they released the neutral the value put it in neutral and just let it roll and they're like look electric self driving truck and and so anyways you know eventually the ceo trevor milton has to resign he forfeits some of his stock but he gets away with 1,000,000,000 still he's but he's charged by the doj with securities fraud this year and and so you know he's got a still got at his peak he had like a $10,000,000,000 fortune now it's a $1,000,000,000 fortune but likely to lose it all my buddy worked at this company called headspin and was like he was like he had worked at a bunch of I won't say the names I don't wanna give them away but you know high profile tech company you've heard of high profile tech company you've heard of he worked at them pre ipo and then he was like I'm at headspin this is the next one and he sent me an investor deck for it and it looked great I was like oh I should invest in this company like it's a saas company what headspin does is they like if you have a mobile app and you wanna test it you wanna see how does this work on a shitty android phone in in thailand on low network conditions well like how are you gonna sit in your office in san francisco and test that they basically had phones everywhere in the world in these like little like data rooms and they would run your app and they would report back how your app runs this is cool it's a great idea and they would give you performance testing performance data benchmarked against your competitors in every every region on every phone on every every cell network and and so they're at the time in their deck they had a $100,000,000 of recurring revenue it was like oh this is clearly going to be a multibillion dollar company fortunately I just for whatever reason didn't invest I just got busy and I forgot about it and it came out that the ceo had just literally made it up so he's like just making up the revenue numbers and so he's you know charged with fraud the company is kind of like you know in disarray a little bit and he was just reporting false revenue and like telling all the kind of bookkeepers in the company like you know they're on a need to know basis about what they can know and hey if we're gonna raise money I need the number to show this

Sam Parr

My take on this is that there's good news and there's bad news here. The good news is most people are good and they don't lie. There are amazing things that I've done just off of trust. For example, I've told you this: I bought a car one time. I just called the guy and said, "Hey, you have it? I'll take it." He was cool, so I just sent him the money. Then, just like I was hoping, he delivered. I do that all the time; that works most of the time. The bad news is that these dishonest people exist, and it's very easy to get away with this. I mean, you can get away with it for a little while. Most of the time, you're caught, but it's really easy to lie and get away with it for a while. So, how many of your startups have you invested in?

Shaan Puri

maybe 40

Sam Parr

okay I've done probably 25 or 30

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

how many of them could be lying to you think and and like if

Shaan Puri

100% of them could be lying to me, and I would not know. That's for two reasons. I'll explain why. I'm going to be honest about this, but most people are not honest about it.

Sam Parr

I didn't want to call you out, and I do the same thing. But I didn't want to call each other out without... so I want you to volunteer.

Shaan Puri

Most investors, myself included, do zero due diligence. We meet the founder, yes, and we play with the product. Those are the two easy things. We see if I can use your product; that tells me something. I can kind of just check Twitter to see if people are talking about this. Are there good reviews about this product? Whatever. I talk to the founder and I just see, have they, you know, were they a drug dealer before this or did they work at Google? Does the stuff they're saying add up? Or are they saying things that just don't make sense? For example, "Oh, you said this number the last time, now you're saying this other number. Which one is it?" But do I go audit their financials? No. Do I audit their data room? Even if they sent it, they don't usually even send a data room. But even if they do, do I go in there and look at the numbers? No. Even if I looked at the numbers, would I know that these numbers are real? No. These are their self-reported numbers.

Sam Parr

no they're they're they're oftentimes a photoshop of their quickbooks

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I don't know if you mean Photoshop as in edited or just like a screenshot.

Sam Parr

a screenshot of their quickbooks which could be photoshopped

Shaan Puri

Or their analytics tool, and it's like, "Oh, what does active user mean?" It's a lot of effort to figure out what the heck they're talking about here. But, you know, directionally, I can see what this meant. So, I do so little diligence. Most legit investors do so little diligence. We are all banking on the fact that there are some angels out there. I mean "angel" not as in angel investor, but as in a good person on earth who actually does dig in. I know some of them; they're rare, and they only do it with a few companies.

Sam Parr

I I I co invest

Shaan Puri

name them that means I don't really know that many of them

Sam Parr

I co invest a lot with ankur from teachable and he does diligence and he'll send me

Shaan Puri

Ryan Hoover does diligence. When I meet with a founder, usually on the call, within maybe 10 minutes, I've decided yes or no whether I'm going to invest. Usually, it's no. But if it's yes, it's like I'm in in principle. I'll even tell him that I don't want to confer; I want to sleep on it. But like, I'm in in principle. The "I want to sleep on it" is just because I've learned the hard way that my impulse investing is not always going to be the best. So, there's no harm in letting it cool off and just digging in a little bit. But Ryan Hoover, I send a lot of deals to Ryan Hoover. He sends a lot of deals to me, and he always is like, "Great, we're going to dig in and get back to you." That means they go, they talk to customers of the product, they use the product themselves, and they look at competitors. I don't think that they audit financials or audit metrics or anything like that. I still don't think that they do that. But they do more diligence than most other people I know who go off of, "Cool, if you're saying this, I trust that what you're saying is factual and true and that you are not, you know, essentially lying and committing fraud."

Sam Parr

So this whole "fake it till you make it" thing is what we're talking about. My point is, it's so easy.

Shaan Puri

it would be it would be totally easy to to do this

Sam Parr

Yes, intellectually speaking, it's obvious. You gotta go... you gotta be... you gotta be messed up, and you gotta be willing to, you know, hurt folks. But intellectually speaking, this is very easy to do. It's also easy to...

Shaan Puri

And by the way, if you're smart, even if you looked into it, it's easy to fake it. I remember one company we bought. We did an investment in a purchase, and we looked at their Google Analytics. We were like, "Okay, you're saying you have this much traffic. Let me see your Google Analytics dashboards." They sent us access, and we went in ourselves—not just screenshots. We were looking at Google Analytics, and everything looked good. Then, I don't even remember how this came out, but we looked at the code of the website. Most investors don't even know how to read the code, let alone are they going to take...

Sam Parr

the time to go

Shaan Puri

read it

Sam Parr

they they they put their analytics they put their analytics code on someone else's website

Shaan Puri

No, they had it on this website, but they were multiplying it. They just doubled every event. So if it said "1 user is here," no, actually "2 users are here." They just inflated it by 2x. I don't remember exactly if they just put "2" or if they told the fixed pixel to fire twice, or if they were doing something else, but it was a multiplication by 2 on their traffic and usage. I was like, "Wow, do I need to go read the code? Or like, do I go use crypto? Am I really going to know how to audit the smart contract?" No, I don't know how to do that. A handful of people on Earth know how to do this. There's a lot that happens that is based on trust, and there's a sort of cost of doing business when getting into business with outliers. The good thing about Silicon Valley is, unlike crypto and some other industries, it is a long-term player's game. You see repeat players in the game. What that means is your incentive to have a good reputation matters. Now, does it fully matter? Well, no, because if you could be Adam Neumann and walk away with, I don't know, over $1,000,000,000 from the WeWork thing, maybe your reputation is tarnished, but you've got $1,000,000,000 now, right? The size of the prize makes it worth it for some people to flush their reputation sometimes. But at the early stages with early-stage startups where I invest, your reputation matters more than what you can walk away with financially from that round.

Sam Parr

Additionally, I think that you can actually screw your reputation. But as long as you have a reputation as someone who turns $1 into $2, regardless of how big of a piece of shit you are, you'll always be able to convince someone to give you money. For example, there's this guy named Garbosh. I believe he started a company called RadiumOne and Blue Lithium. Am I getting all these names right? That's amazing!

Shaan Puri

You got that one wrong. It was something like that, I think. My sister worked for him, so I know this guy very well.

Sam Parr

so give give the background of this this guy it's it's crazy fascinating this is actually a great story

Shaan Puri

The guy's a young, successful entrepreneur. I think his first venture was in ad tech. He started an ad tech company and sold it for around $200 million. I believe he raised very little capital, so he owned a significant portion of that company, which made him a hundred millionaire. He goes on Oprah, and Oprah's like, "Wow, you're amazing! You're like a bachelor; any woman would want to be with you." I think he's good-looking; he has some charm and a lot of confidence. However, I don't think he's that good-looking. He was very rich and successful at a young age, and he would say very motivational things. His Instagram was all about "You can do it," like he was Barack Obama with the hope poster on his Instagram. Fast forward, he starts another ad tech company, but as things begin to go a little weird, he ends up getting busted. There’s a corporate weirdness and then a public weirdness. Most people only know about the public weirdness, which is that he got caught on tape kicking his girlfriend or beating her. He kicked her like 127 times on tape.

Sam Parr

basically he had kidnapped he was in charge with kidnapping he wouldn't let her leave the house

Shaan Puri

Like, she was his girlfriend. She was there. They got into a fight; they had an argument, and he was assaulting her. The cops... literally, the footage is out there on the internet. You can go see this now. The cops take this footage, and he gets fired as CEO of, I think, Radium 1 at the time, or whatever kind of new ad tech company he had built that was valued at $500 million to $1 billion, something like that. He gets kicked out as CEO because, okay, even though he hasn't been charged yet, dude, there's a video of you beating a woman on the internet. You're not the CEO anymore. And he's like, "I'm innocent." I don't even know how he tried to say, "I'm innocent," but he basically tried to say that. So he goes to court and ends up getting off because the footage was collected improperly. They collected the evidence in an improper way, so you couldn't use it. Even though everybody saw it and everybody knew it, he ended up getting charged for kidnapping instead of assault or something like that. It was like, you know, something softer. I don't have all the details right, but basically, I remember there was some problem with the way the evidence was collected. So he has to do some public service and rehab. He lays low for a bit, but he comes back with a new company, Gravity 4, I think was the name of it.

Sam Parr

I think and do you know nick sharma

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

I think Nick Sharma was his assistant.

Shaan Puri

nick sharma was like his chief of staff I think I think it's his uncle if I'm correct

Sam Parr

like blood uncle

Shaan Puri

I think it's his blood uncle wow or relative in some way I hope I'm not wrong on that but I'm pretty sure I am so basically so here's some other kind of inside stuff that I know so then so he's building gravity 4 and it's like in the ad tech space ad tech is a very competitive space so my sister worked at a startup that was a different ad network platform they did like retargeting for a bunch of big brands like booking dotcom and whatever and they were doing all right but they go and they start to pursue an acquisition why because facebook's always changing the rules and today we're a preferred partner but tomorrow facebook you know might give that out to every agency or whatever my business is very fragile I'm super dependent on facebook and being one of these preferred partners and so they go out to sell the company and I think they get some good interest they get some offers maybe it's from facebook Google other ad networks whatever it is and gerbache wants to buy the company so this is what I heard so you know rumor rumor bernie tells me no no I can't confirm any of this bernie tells me that he hears about this he goes to bid on it and he's a low bid he's not the winning bid and they're also like dude you're no way we would ever sell to you knowing what we know about you and what he does is he goes and he basically gets he tanks their their prospects in the market how he basically goes and spreads fear uncertainty and doubt to the other bidders and he gets facebook to pull their their access or their privilege or whatever it was so he he somehow gets them basically like he takes away their one like core business asset and like just ruins their ability to to sell the company and now they're like short on cash can't go raise money everybody knows they just tried to sell the company and it flopped for some reason and he goes and gets it for pennies on the dollar and like has a big falling out with the fact like you know not on good terms it's not a happy sale it was a fire sale and you know they got something out of it because they they needed to get some value but like against their good against their will sell to gravity 4 and he's rolling up these ad tech companies and from the start he's saying in 18 months we're gonna take this public we're gonna go get to a $100,000,000 in revenue we're gonna take this public it's like dude we have like no product we have like no team you're just buying these companies and we're supposed to like integrate them like instantaneously like you just bought 5 companies this month that none of them like are succeeding and we're supposed to make them all work

Sam Parr

And this was after he got caught. This was after he got arrested twice, I believe, for beating two different women. Both, I think, were caught on camera. What like blatant, blatant horrible crimes. This was after, right?

Shaan Puri

And he's got like a bodyguard at the office. This huge bodyguard travels with him everywhere. He's got this model, like a supermodel, who just comes into the office and then out. That's his new girlfriend, I guess. I don't know what's going on there.

Sam Parr

why would anyone work for this guy after he just

Shaan Puri

Completely erratic behavior. On one hand, it's very ambitious and inspiring. You're seeing your shares go from 1 penny to him saying, "We're going to go public at $1,000,000,000." So you're like, "Oh shit, okay, we're going to make $10,000,000 if I see this out. I'm going to make $25,000,000 if I see this out." Like, okay, maybe I should do that. On the other hand, you're like, "This is a house of cards." We don't actually have a stable product. We haven't integrated all these acquisitions. The revenue is a little bit flimsy because, again, we're just rushing this whole thing through. Then he got in trouble again, and that whole thing fell apart. I think he's back now with another company. If you go look him up, I think he's back again.

Sam Parr

And that's my point. You can have a horrible reputation, but if you make money, you will always be able to get money. I'm not saying that's good; that's just what it is. What did your sister do for him?

Shaan Puri

Well, she was at the company that got acquired by him, by his company. So then, there was like a temporary period where the whole company went over there. Then, I think within 6 months, there was not a single employee left from the 40 or 50 that got acquired. I don't know how many it was, but something like that. There was only 1 person left at the company by then.

Sam Parr

Why would anyone choose to work for this guy if they know that he is a piece of shit? That amazes me. I don't understand why you would continue to trust someone like that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so now he's doing something called Vendor Cloud. He says on his Twitter profile that he has had 3 exits for over $400,000,000 and is a philanthropist. I think he...

Sam Parr

I don't think he lives in America anymore. I think he moved to Bangladesh or... I forget where, but...

Shaan Puri

yeah it says hong kong

Sam Parr

hong kong okay yeah

Shaan Puri

Yes, he's going for it again. I don't know... and you know, who knows what the other side of the story is? I only know one side of the story. And yeah, Ben, make sure I don't get sued from this. Bleep out whatever gets his name.

Sam Parr

And everything that we just said is just a story. A lot of it was factual, but we definitely could have gotten some of the facts incorrect.

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly I

Sam Parr

But the story is like 10 years old, maybe 6 years old. It's not that recent.

Shaan Puri

yeah it's pretty wild dude go watch like the oprah video with him it's just it's pretty crazy

Sam Parr

Yeah, he was a piece of shit. So, fuck that guy. That's what I have to say about that. That's a fact because I think this piece of shit...

Shaan Puri

briefly we tried to end so briefly and then it's

Sam Parr

No, dude, fuck that guy. I think maybe I did get all the facts right, but I saw a video of...

Shaan Puri

this thing my opinion of this person

Sam Parr

yeah yeah I mean

Shaan Puri

I my eyes saw this video

Sam Parr

Yeah, my opinion is "go fuck yourself," Garbesh or whatever his name is. Alright, what do we want to do now? Do we want to wrap up, or do we want to do one more?

Shaan Puri

let's do one more thing you got anything quick

Sam Parr

no

Shaan Puri

Let me see... oh, one second. Let me look at my little stash file here of a thing. Did I talk about Canva last time, dude?

Sam Parr

just how it raised more money at a $40,000,000,000 valuation or something

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so do... okay, check this out. This is going to be a bad segment because really all I'm going to say is, "Go read this article." So, what I want you to do is just Google "Canva journey LinkedIn." What happened was the founder, Melanie Perkins, she posted on LinkedIn a kind of like... she's...

Sam Parr

pretty amazing this woman's amazing

Shaan Puri

And when I say **full history**, I mean like details. I love details; I love the art of the start. So, I just want to share with you some of the things. Okay, so what's the story with **Canva**? Canva is an awesome product. I use it. It's basically like it lets you design things like marketing brochures, infographics, ads, banners, emails, whatever, without being a designer. You don't have to have design skills. They have enough templates, and it's easy enough to just change photos, colors, and text that you'll get a good-looking output without being a designer. That's great because it brings a whole new group of people into the world of design. Alright, so what's interesting about this? First, they have just raised at a **$40 billion** valuation, which is insane. It's one of the most valuable companies to come out of **Australia**. Secondly, this story is wild. I actually didn't know a lot.

Sam Parr

about it can you link to it link to it for me I don't like it I'm I'm just

Shaan Puri

gonna tell you about it and then I'm gonna I'm gonna link to it I I want you to just just just hear me hear me tell it and then ask the story ask questions alright so so basically she was I think a design tea a teacher or she was like teaching part time at like a like a school for like design and art or something like that and I think one the way they started was actually not with a product called canva it was with a product called fusion books and all they were doing was they were trying to solve the problem of if you've ever put together like a yearbook or like a photo book it's very hard to like lay it out I was like oh I want this collage with like 8 photos but I need them to fit right and then I want the background to look pretty and have a flower and then like you know page 2 I want it to be a big picture and 2 small pictures whatever right the layout of photo books so they created fusion books which is basically like software / like yeah software basically that that would that would make that easy and so they were like okay they like they got they got a little money back from their tax return and like their part time jobs and they were like alright that's our funding for fusion books and it's like you know you don't need a year to make a yearbook do it in minutes with fusion books and it's like the most like non impressive looking startup ever and she doesn't just like what a lot of people do when they tell the story is they they what I say fast forward through the hard part it's like yeah we started with fusion books and then you know through after a couple of years we started canva we realized canva's a better opportunity and what canva's trying to do is empower design it's like blah blah so wait what happened in those 2 years so what I love about this post is it actually talks about those 2 years and so it's like a photo of her at some like trade show with her like fusion books yearbook thing and she's standing there like a dork behind the table nope no people are at her booth and she's like smiling she's like yeah this booth was a huge waste of money because like there were more exhibitors than attendees so that was a flop and then like she's like we didn't I didn't know how to code and like we didn't know how to find a technical person and so it's just me and my boyfriend trying to do this and like we convinced this one part time engineer to do this but like here was the problems and like here's our printer oh

Sam Parr

my god

Shaan Puri

We're literally printing yearbooks for people and dropping them off. We're trying to get every school to use us, blah blah blah. Alright, so they start doing all that. At one of these events, I think it was either a competition or the "Inventor of the Year" in Western Australia, they came in as runner-up. She's like, "You know, I'm wearing this dorky suit, I'm holding this runner-up prize." But at that event, I met this guy named Bill Tai. Bill Tai is a kind of famous investor in Silicon Valley. He's definitely famous now because he was the seed investor of Canva, but he's done many big deals. I think you can probably Google him. He was a VC who just happened to be speaking at the event. He gets there and he's like, "Oh, you know," they talk for five minutes, and he's like, "Hey, if you ever want to come to Silicon Valley, let's meet up." She's like, "Oh, cool." Then she does the thing—this is the "fake it till you make it" that actually works. It's not "fraud till you make it," it's "fake it till you make it." She wants to meet up with him but doesn't want to say, "Hey Bill, I booked a flight to fly from Australia to San Francisco to see you." So instead, she says...

Sam Parr

I happen to be

Shaan Puri

There this month, like, would you be free? I would love to chat. If he says yes, then she'll book the flight. So he's like, she's like, "Yeah, sure, you know, happy to meet." And you should also meet this guy Lars from Facebook. He's ex-Google, like, you know, you should meet him. And she's like, "Wow, this is amazing!" Then she posts every step of the way. She posts the full presentation that she made for him, which I love because she released it slide by slide—the good, the bad, the ugly. Like, this one's titled "The Future of Publishing is the Cover," and it's like fusionbooks.com.au, right? It's like this... *shitty* thing.

Sam Parr

oh my god

Shaan Puri

And it's like she posts this pitch deck, and you know, she posts like five of them in this blog post. You can see the evolution all the way to Canva. So she goes to meet with Bill, and she's like... she Googles "how to dress at a Silicon Valley investor meeting." It's like, you know, dress comfortably. Just look smart casual. You don't have to dress up too much. So she's like, "Okay, I'm not gonna wear my woman pantsuit or tracksuit thing. I like my power suit." She's like, "More like business casual." Then she gets there, and he's like, "Oh, you didn't need to dress up for this, by the way." And she's like, "Fuck! I thought I was dressing down." She starts off the meeting totally mortified. So then she's like, "You know, I presented him this pitch deck." And, you know, I'm explaining the future of publishing, and he's like, "Cool! Do you have an iPad or an iPhone?" She's like, "No." And he's like, "You're telling me the future of publishing, and you don't own an iPad or an iPhone?" Then she's like, "Shit." But she shows this slide in her presentation, and it's so funny. Dude, you'll see it when you get there. So I'm gonna send you the link now. Scroll down to where you see this cartoon character—it's like clip art—and it says "Fusion Books." It's right by the finish line, and there's a trophy at the end of the finish line that says "The Dominant Online Publishing System." That's the trophy for winning. Then behind her, you see two cartoon characters of Google Docs and Microsoft Office, like falling behind, falling over, and fighting each other. It's like basically she's saying, "We're gonna beat Google Docs, so we're gonna beat Microsoft Word." And so even at this...

Shaan Puri

Where she had like terrible name terrible design didn't know how to dress didn't know how to pitch an investor

Sam Parr

oh my god yeah

Shaan Puri

She didn't have an engineer. She had the ambition, which is like "porn" to investors. The ambition to say, "We're not just building yearbook software; we're going to beat Google Docs and Microsoft Office." If you're crazy enough to say that, an investor will listen to the next three lines you say. They might think, "Oh, you're just delusional," or, "Actually, maybe this person is crazy enough to pull something like this off."

Sam Parr

and when was the turning.

Shaan Puri

So then she hits a long period of time where she's trying to find an engineer. Bill's like, "I'll invest in you if you can bring on an engineer." This guy Lars, a Facebook and Google guy, I'm introducing you to, he's an engineer. If he approves of the engineer, I'll back you because then I think you have the software skills to pull this off. So she goes to Lars and says, "Hey, can you introduce me to some engineers?" He's like, "You know what? Yeah, but it's hard to introduce you to engineers. How about this: if you find engineers, I'll screen them for you." So she finds about 20 engineers, and he screens all of them, giving a thumbs down on the initial screening. No matter how good she thinks the engineer is, he's like, "Not even close." She's getting demoralized because Bill's not going to invest unless Lars signs off on the engineer. Lars is like, "I don't know what the hell he wants," but he's just not signing off on any engineer. This goes on for about a year. Then she hustles and creates a bill. Bill is famous for kite surfing, and she had kind of kite surfed before. So she's like, "Forget it, I'm going to become a kite surfer." Then she says to Bill, "Hey, I was just kite surfing," and he's like, "Oh, you should come kite surfing with me." So she gets in with him again to do this thing. This is completely not the way I would advise anyone to do this—just chasing one investor like this—but whatever, this was her journey. Then she posts this thing where she talks about it. She writes a note to herself and posts it. She goes, "Mel, you're extremely tired. You're in a challenging situation, though you could pull through. Nothing bad is really happening, but you're feeling depressed because you were used to achieving things quickly. This is a hard environment, and there's no doubt you will succeed. You will find the team that you need, you'll get the investment that you need, and you will build the company you always wanted. You have chosen to put yourself in a challenging situation. If it wasn't challenging, then you wouldn't feel satisfied when you get to the end goal." I love it! She was writing herself these pep talks and posted it, which is kind of vulnerable to do.

Sam Parr

Anyway, she looks exactly the same now. Like, she's handled this. This woman, she's the CEO, right? Yeah, so she's been through hell building this business. She looks totally the same now. It looks like the stress did not bother her. That's crazy! I'm looking at these photos, and I'm like, "But in these photos, they are 10 years old." She looks exactly the same. Yeah, I love this woman.

Shaan Puri

So, she goes, "Okay." Then, she finally... let me just fast forward some of it. She finds the engineer. Laura's like, "Hey, this guy is like the best engineer I've ever worked with. You should hire this guy." She's like, "Oh man, amazing! This guy's already prescreened." So, she talks to him. The guy's interested, but he's like, "Oh, I got my own startup right now and I have a team of six. I just can't do it." She checks back in like three months later. She's like, "Hey, how about now?" And she checks back again three months later. He says, "Hey, Bhavan." One of those times, he's like, "Yeah, you know what? Let's do this." So, he says, "Let's do this." She's like, "Oh, that's amazing!" Blah, blah, blah. Let me fast forward this story because you should really just go read the post.

Sam Parr

I have it up this is amazing there's a

Shaan Puri

A whole bunch of things, like she posts every investor rejection letter, which is just like, "Ah, sorry, I just don't feel comfortable investing in Australia," or "I would love to stay in touch, it looks like we're gonna have to sit and wait this one out," or "The valuation's too high," or "It's pre-launch," or "I don't think the timing is quite right." And she's just like, "You know, whatever." We just kept going, kept going, kept going. Then she recruits this guy out of Google. She like makes him, almost retains him, and she puts together a presentation. It's like, "You know, this is... I don't know his name, but let's just say his name is Greg. This is Greg. He worked at Google. He had a great life, but he started to get bored. He started to wonder, 'Is there more for me out there?'" Each one of these is just one slide. It's like a little flip book. And he thought to himself, "What if I could go and help a small team where I could bring my expertise? What if I could bring the power of design to like a billion people on Earth? What if I could do this? Wouldn't that be better than just sitting at Google for another five years?" But then Google said, "Oh, we need you, Greg." But then Greg remembered, Google’s gonna keep Googling whether he goes there or not, but Canva may not if he doesn't join. So, you know, he makes this pitch and he's like, "Oh, I love it! You really made me feel special, so I'll do this." I feel like it just showed a lot of the grit and the hustle, and it did not fast forward the ugly part to the...

Shaan Puri

Where I'm like, "Dude, get to the Canva part! What is all this?" But it's like, yeah, that's probably how I’m feeling.

Sam Parr

that amazing reading this post

Shaan Puri

Imagine how she felt living this for three years or whatever it is. And then, yeah, like, you know, they launch it, it takes off. It's like, you know, super successful, and now it's a $40,000,000,000 company. So, happy ending at the end of that one.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think her... I don't know if she was dating or if she's now married after they started, but her and her co-founder are married. So they...

Shaan Puri

were dating then married now I think

Sam Parr

So, it's pretty badass. They have **two times the wealth** now. This is a good story. I missed this. I don't know how you found this; I guess you found this on Twitter.

Shaan Puri

It's on LinkedIn, which is funny. I know somebody sent it to Ishan, who used to be on my original podcast.

Sam Parr

love because he's australian

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's Australian, and I have him in a Slack channel with me still. We just post cool links. He posted this one, and he's like, "Damn, this is actually really good."

Sam Parr

this is amazing this is a good find this is totally badass

Shaan Puri

alright that's it for today good episode I think I don't know what do you think

Sam Parr

how how do you

Shaan Puri

think that was dan what what how was it

Sam Parr

The Harvard Business stuff is really cool. I really like that segment. Alright, we'll see. I think that was well researched. Oh, by the way, we gotta give a shout to Mario. What's Mario's last name?

Shaan Puri

mario gabell or something like that

Sam Parr

yeah he's actually I actually stole a ton of information from him so good job mario

Shaan Puri

mario gabriel sorry

Sam Parr

He's badass. He has a newsletter called "The Generalist." That's right, so that was awesome. Alright, that's it.

Shaan Puri

alright we're out of here see you