+$1 Billion Businesses You've Never Heard Of (#497)
Hidden Businesses, Merch, Clear, Cricut, and Dating Apps - September 21, 2023 (over 1 year ago) • 01:04:50
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Sam Parr |
There's a story where she's raising funding, and a guy leans over the table and asks, "So why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company?"
She leans back over and replies, "Because I'm a complete and total animal."
The guy leans back and says, "Alright, I'm in."
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Shaan Puri | Okay, what's up? We are here, and I have two little special announcements for you.
First one: we got merch! The boys got merch. We're a little late to the game; we're a little slow. Most people start selling merch as soon as they get a following. It took us four years, but Sam, we figured it out. You gotta sell T-shirts on the internet.
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Sam Parr | And hoodies, but that's I think that's all we have. We'll add more stuff, but we have...
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Sam Parr | It's pretty stupid that neither of us are wearing it today. Mine's in the dryer at the moment.
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Shaan Puri | again slow and stupid yeah so | |
Sam Parr | but yeah it's pretty cool | |
Sam Parr | We have stuff that has some of our favorite sayings. And dude, there's no small boy stuff. Shockingly, caught on.
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Shaan Puri | Caught on in a big way. I'll tell you something. I don't know if you listened, but I did an episode with Samir from Colin and Samir. They basically are like YouTubers that study other YouTubers. So they're always studying creators.
He handed me two things when he came to the interview. He handed me a newspaper. Did I tell you about this? No? He handed me a newspaper that they made—a special edition for hitting some milestone. They printed their own newspaper, and it was like all of the content or interviews from their show. It was like, "Here's the monthly magazine" or whatever. Here's the thing for our stuff. | |
Sam Parr | dude let's do that that's a great idea | |
Shaan Puri | It's a great idea. It looked like a normal thing, but they made it using their content, and I was like, "I love this!" He gave me one and said, "This is the last one we have." I don't know if that's true or not, but man, you know how to make a boy feel special when you say that.
The second thing he handed me was this hat. It was a dope hat that says "Press Publishes." This blue hat they have is super high quality, and I was like, "Oh, this is like much higher quality than normal merch." He goes, "Oh yeah, yeah, here's how I think about merch."
He said, "If you're Logan Paul or you're Mr. Beast, you make consumables. Think Prime Energy Drink—it's a consumable. I'm selling this to you; you're gonna drink it, use it, whatever." He goes, "Mr. Beast chocolate, or even Mr. Beast merch, his t-shirts—these are all just consumables."
He continued, "We don't make consumables; we make collectibles. If you're a creator, you should pick one of the two paths." I love this collectibles idea. He said, "What you want is you want to weigh your look. You don't need to make a fortune through your merch, which is why we've never done merch. It's like, I don't know, do we? We don't really care about making a couple thousand dollars on t-shirt sales. It's never been a motivator for us because we're rich, if you missed that part."
Alright, so the reason is...
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Sam Parr | Oh my God, what a... should we put like, is that our new collectible? Like, "Douchebags R Us"?
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Shaan Puri | Is that the... yeah, we're going to a store near you.
But the collectibles thing made total sense to me. Where he's like, you want the people who are kind of your thousand most devoted fans. People who actually give a shit about what you do. They're all about what you're all about. They think the way you think, they act the way you act. They're very similar to you.
For them, this is like a collectible badge of honor. So, make a limited edition number of units, and when it's gone, it's gone. It never comes back.
On top of that, it's a signal. So that anytime anybody else sees them with that, they know... oh, they...
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Sam Parr | know you're part of the tribe | |
Shaan Puri | They know you're part of the tribe.
Like, if I meet somebody, Ben said this to me the other day. He goes, "Oh, you know what I like?" Because what he'll do often is talk to people who come through my DMs or email us or whatever. He loves to go meet them and talk to them. I'm like, "That's great! You get a lot of energy from that." I'm more introverted and don't like doing that as much.
But he goes, "No, it's... the reason I like it is that normally I don't like just talking to strangers." But he's like, "If you like MFM, there's like a 95% chance we're gonna be friends." He's like, "Because it filters in people who think the way we think and act the way we act. And like, you got a sense of humor."
It's like, you're not gonna like this content if you're not a total business junkie and nerd. If you don't like to learn about business, you're not gonna like this podcast. And if you like everything buttoned up and serious, you're also not gonna like this podcast. So, it's a great filter.
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Sam Parr | it's sort of like when I see another grown man drinking a glass of whole milk for dinner you know what I mean | |
Sam Parr |
Like at dinner, "Oh hey, we probably have similar values. Cheers! Good Catholic, what's up?" So yeah, I feel that.
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Shaan Puri | if you got a favorite flavor of skittles sam sam knows you're | |
Sam Parr | his guy what's the second thing you have | |
Shaan Puri | So, okay, that's the first prize.
The second surprise is the Eclipse Channel. This one, actually, we should've done a long time ago. If you go to **clipmfm.com**, you'll find our new Eclipse Channel, which is basically... we do these podcasts that are about an hour each.
What Clip MFM does is it’s a YouTube channel for only the clips of the best bits from the podcast, clipped out for you. This way, you can watch them in sort of like 3 to 4 minute bursts. For every episode, we're only pulling out the 1 to 3 moments that actually mattered. This includes when somebody told a great story, had an amazing idea, shared something about the way their business works, or broke something down in a level of satisfying detail.
At first, I wanted to outsource this, but then I thought, "No, forget that! I'm going to hand curate these clips myself." I want the channel that I would want to watch because this is how I consume a lot of podcasts. Like, if you're like, "Oh, do you like Lex Fridman?" Yeah, I love the pod! Great pod! But I never actually watch the full ones.
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Sam Parr | what do you search to find it | |
Shaan Puri | If you just go to **clipmmfm.com**, that'll take you there. Or you can just search for **My First Million Clips**. I tweeted it out; it's got like 700 subscribers now. But I need this to get into the tens of thousands of subscribers because if you listen to this podcast, you're going to want to know: why would you not want to just get the best stuff faster or in a more simple way?
So, yeah, anyways, that's my sales pitch for both the merch and the collectibles. The merch is a limited number of units, and it's just a way for our tribe to kind of signal to each other, "Hey, this is what... you know, I'm in the club."
And on the other side, we have the **Klipsch Channel**. How did I do with my sales pitch?
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Sam Parr | That was a great pitch, and the Skittles joke was very funny. You made me feel very guilty because my wife... listen, my wife’s birthday is this Sunday, and I was going to surprise her with a piñata. Hopefully, she doesn't listen to this episode.
I have a closet here in the studio room where I've hidden the piñata, and I've also hidden tons of bags of candy that I bought from Party City—lots of Skittles. Unfortunately, I've got to go back to Party City today because I've eaten...
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Sam Parr | All of the bags of Skittles... so you nailed that one. They're all empty. There's a whole bunch of empty Skittle bags over here.
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Shaan Puri | A raccoon went through that bag. That's not even like a small hole. Why did you need a face-sized hole in that bag?
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Sam Parr | Because when I do nighttime eating, I go into bear mode. I'm like a bear getting a beehive, you know? I'm just like...
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Sam Parr | I'm just like imagine just like using | |
Sam Parr | your fists instead of your fingers that's like what I am at night | |
Shaan Puri | My sister says this thing to her girls. She wanted them to just go to their room and put themselves to bed, so she invented something called "nighttime sister playtime."
She would ask, "Oh, do you guys want to do nighttime sister playtime?" and they would respond, "Oh my God, yeah! Nighttime sister playtime!"
So they go to their room by themselves, they play, and then they fall asleep.
In response, I created "nighttime daddy playtime," which is just when my kids are gone, and I get to eat and be on the internet. That's nighttime daddy playtime, and I celebrate it every single night.
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Sam Parr | Dude, I am like putting my fist in a jar of peanut butter at night. I'd wake up and there's like bear claws all over the place.
So listen, I want to break up a topic. You put it on your list, and it's so funny you put it on your list. Don't say what it is yet, but I did a ton of research on this topic, and it's incredibly fascinating. So I'm going to tell you about this, alright?
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Shaan Puri | we gotta give credit there was a reason we both have it on our list someone tweeted at us | |
Sam Parr | They did. They go, "You should do it." They just said, "You should break down this particular company." I was like, that's one of the very few times where I go, "That's a great idea, sir. That's a good one. We're gonna do that."
So let me tell you how it got started. It's super fascinating. There's this guy named Steven Brill. You have no idea who he is, but I bet you know Court TV. He started Court TV, one of my all-time favorites, you know, the predecessor of Cops, my favorite show of all time. It turns into a huge success.
Then he also starts American Lawyer Media, which is like a $600 to $800 million lawyer media company that he sells.
So his next company is called Verify Identity Pass. It started in 2003 after 9/11, and he wants to come up with an interesting way to make getting onto a plane easier and safer. He comes up with this thing where it's like a credit card, and you could swipe it in order to prove that you're, I guess, not a terrorist or something like that.
It gets a little bit of traction. He raises $100 million to start this business, and he gets 200,000 people to sign up. It flops; it doesn't work out.
So there's this woman, her name's Karen. I forget Karen's last name, actually, but she's got this hedge fund, a very successful hedge fund.
What are you laughing at?
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Shaan Puri | Her name's Karen. Anyone named Karen, I just always think, "Damn, what a sideswipe they got in life." This trend that just started in 2022 changed everything, and all of a sudden, their name was never the same again.
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Sam Parr | she spells it c a r y n which somehow makes it better to | |
Sam Parr | be honest too yeah it it it does it's it's better | |
Shaan Puri | If I was named Karen, I just have to make that slight pronunciation change.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, like how I call La Quinta hotels "La Quinta." It's just a slight rebrand.
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Sam Parr | So anyway, she has this hedge fund. It's successful and all, but she hears about this company going out of business. She's like, "You know, this is actually interesting, and I think they made a mistake. They didn't brand it correctly. I think this should be more of a luxury good company."
So, she buys the business out of bankruptcy for $6,000,000. Then she goes on and raises $50,000,000. She renames the company and calls it **Clear**. Clear is that thing that a lot of you folks see at the airport. They are at around 53 airports.
I think it's kind of confusing at first when you see it because you're like, "Oh, there are two lines: there's the TSA line and there's the Clear line. What the hell is going on?"
Turns out, this company is crazy successful and it actually has a lot more implications than I ever imagined. So, Clear does something like $600,000,000 a year in revenue with a market cap of $3,000,000,000. What they do is they built this technology at that stand where it looks at your eye and uses biometrics. It looks at your eye to figure out who you are, it looks at your fingerprint, and they fast track you in that line.
But have you ever wondered how they get these contracts at these airports? It's like a monopoly. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I don't know how they do | |
Sam Parr | They give away **10% to 13%** of their revenue to the airports. What that comes out to be is something like, in **2019**, they were doing around **$350,000,000** in revenue. They gave out **$35,000,000** to airports. Their most popular airport was **LAX**, which made them around **$25,000,000** in subscriptions, of which they gave **$3,000,000** back to LAX.
So, they're kind of like in bed with the government a little bit. They have all these people on their board who they took funding from **Delta**, and they have **Delta** employees on their board. For example, they have the head of **Delta** and the former head of **TSA** security on their board. It's crazy fascinating because of what they're doing now.
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Shaan Puri | Wait, but Tim, I was doing bad listening because I was looking it up while you were talking. How did they get into... what was the thing that got them in? Because it seems like once you're in the airport and you're the one... of course, this is an amazing business, but what did they do to get in?
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Sam Parr | what | |
Shaan Puri | did she what was the miracle that they pulled off there | |
Sam Parr | They promised airports that they would give them a percentage of the revenue. This way, they would open up a new revenue stream.
Also, what they did was take funding from a couple of airlines. On their board, they added former heads of the TSA and things like that.
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Shaan Puri | old fashioned some old fashioned gentleman's agreement | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so it's pretty fascinating what they did. But what's even crazier is that Karen is actually pretty amazing. There are stories where she's raising funding, and a guy leans over the table and asks, "So why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company?" She leans back over and replies, "Because I'm a complete and total animal." The guy leans back and says, "Alright, I'm in."
They're killing it now; they have 17 million users. But here's where it gets really interesting. I went and read a bunch of their annual reports. It's super fascinating and also scary. What they're doing is you can now sign in to LinkedIn using Clear. You can create an account verifying your identity. You can also go to certain stadiums and buy beer using just your eyes.
Her whole theory is like, "Look, we're going to start with the airport, but eventually you're not going to use a wallet anymore. You might use Apple Pay for some stuff, but for something that involves your identity, you don't need to pull out your license anymore. We're just going to look at your eyes."
It's super fascinating what these guys have pulled off. I didn't realize—I kind of thought it was like a douchey company because I'm like, "This is $50 for TSA for 5 years, and this other thing is like $150 for 1 year. Why do I need this?" But people still buy it. I think I was with you one time, and you bought it without even knowing what it was, right?
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Shaan Puri | Well, we were late. We were about to miss a flight to Miami. So I was like, "Alright, MacGyver, this line... how do we do this?"
Okay, let me just sign up for Clear and see if we could jump the line. And it worked! You had TSA PreCheck; I didn't have it. So I cleared my way in, and we got on the plane.
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Sam Parr | It totally worked, and so it saves you just a little bit of time. But what's crazy is that their vision is huge. It actually is like a super interesting vision that they have on how this business can be much bigger than it is now. It just goes way more in-depth than I ever thought. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I'm not sure I'm a believer in the rest of that vision because, like, I don't care. The amount of effort it would take for... you're at a ballgame and you want to buy a beer. Now, each beer vendor is going to buy hardware to scan my retinas, and I have to stand still for 7 seconds while it scans my eyes just to verify my age. It feels like that's not the right payoff.
The airport one makes sense because it's like, "Hey, look, airport security, it's a big deal." Okay, you can skip this line, and if you're a business traveler, you're going to miss a flight. Those are high stakes; that's important.
So, it seems like the right payoff to kind of work ratio. I wonder where else that really exists where you actually need to, on the spot, verify your identity. | |
Sam Parr |
So last summer, a new law was enacted. Right now, if you live in Virginia (I believe) and you go to Pornhub.com or a bunch of other porn sites... Yeah, go for it. I see you typing.
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Shaan Puri | oh interesting website you referred | |
Sam Parr | me to | |
Shaan Puri | I'll bookmark this | |
Sam Parr | One, there's a new law enacted that for people in Virginia, you have to verify your identity in order to access certain porn websites to prove that you're over 18. It brings up a camera that wants to take your picture from your computer lens to check your identity. Shame on you.
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Shaan Puri | It just starts. Shame just starts coming with your headphones. It's like *Game of Thrones*: "Shame, yeah, shame." | |
Sam Parr | yeah like the avatar is like | |
Sam Parr | a is like a nun holding a rosary and she's like are you sure | |
Sam Parr | But, there are a few instances where this is actually interesting. By the way, those porn companies, some of the things that they're doing is they're making it so that even if you're outside of Virginia, some porn websites are still making you register. This is to make you pissed off at the Virginia congressman who approved this. So, you... they... | |
Sam Parr | should put me on the name of it | |
Shaan Puri | mark ingram in virginia is forcing you to open your eyes | |
Sam Parr | and get | |
Shaan Puri | scanned before you watch porn if you feel any kind | |
Sam Parr | of way about that | |
Shaan Puri | push this button well they even have like a gmail login | |
Sam Parr | For some of these points, it's weird. It's weird is what it is. But like, I... it's crazy. There are a few instances, but the most crazy thing about Clear is like this is a total monopoly that they have in airports. I'm shocked that they've had this. I don't know anything about public valuations, but it seems potentially like an undervalued company. | |
Shaan Puri | what is it valued at and what was the revenue again | |
Sam Parr | It's in the $500,000,000 to $600,000,000 range. They claim they have 90% retention, so it's not as good as software retention, but it looks like their market cap as of today is $3,000,000,000. | |
Shaan Puri | I mean, that's kind of amazing. A $3,000,000,000 company that does such a simple thing. And you said they're only in like 63 airports or something like that? That's crazy that it's so big with such a small footprint. It's such a simple product. Very impressive.
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Sam Parr | They are in 53 airports. In their trailing 12 months, they've done $530,000,000 in revenue.
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Shaan Puri | Wow, that's impressive! Here's a random related startup: Did you ever see this company called Evolve? They make metal detectors. | |
Sam Parr | no | |
Shaan Puri | So their big thing was, it's one of these businesses. One of the meta takeaways of this podcast is that all the businesses are hidden in plain sight. They're right in front of you.
Once you start paying attention, you're like, "Oh, this didn't just get here. Who put this metal detector here?" This is a company that does this. How do they work? Is this the same company at all of these places? How did they get that contract?
Metal detectors are at every big venue, you know, stadiums and concerts, whether it's for concerts or sports, airports, that sort of thing.
So there's a company that had raised money from Lux Capital, a VC firm that does slightly hard tech or hard tech. What these guys did was they made a sector.
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Sam Parr | good pitch for them they | |
Sam Parr | do I don't know whatever | |
Sam Parr | well I was gonna say | |
Shaan Puri | Like cutting-edge hard tech. I was telling you about this metal detector. I mean, those guys at the beach who are nuts also hold metal detectors. I can't really call this cutting-edge.
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Sam Parr | yeah we do slightly hard | |
Sam Parr | stuff yeah | |
Shaan Puri | or or than ecommerce so they but their their actual demo is pretty cool so what they're doing is it's a metal detector that can let you just walk straight through much faster so like you don't need to I think it's like you don't need to like take you don't need to take out everything from your pockets and you don't need to like you know like I guess like it could just detect it faster so the flow of traffic is faster than a a traditional metal detector and that's kinda just crazy to me that that's like such a simple idea that I'm like oh yeah I guess like I guess that's true like if somebody just made a better metal detector going forward they're gonna win a bunch of contracts alright I gotta tell you about one thing that's one of the great joys of my life and I'm not a cars guy and I'm not a watch guy but there's one thing that gives me a lot of joy and that is having a virtual assistant you know here's the scenario I'm running my companies and even though I'm supposed to be this ceo we all know I spend 20 to 30% of my time just doing random bullshit stuff that is not high value but it's just tedious the stuff that has to get done but it's not creativity it doesn't require me and it doesn't add a bunch of value to the business it's just stuff just stuff that has to get done and so that stuff is what a virtual assistant does like just this week alone you know I lose my wallet so she goes to the dmv website fills out a bunch of forms it gets me a new license or you know every morning people have their morning coffee I have my morning metrics and my morning metrics are basically all the business metrics that I care about compiled she goes she finds it for all the different sources puts it in excel sheet takes a screenshot text it to me so that when I wake up in the morning I don't go on twitter or check my email I'm looking at what are what are the metrics at and what do I need to do I'm just focused on the right things so having a virtual assistant is a no brainer whether it's travel booking email inbox or just knocking stuff off your personal to do list that would have just lingered there forever I think it's a no brainer if you're a business owner you should definitely do it I I think one of the best places to find a assistant is shepherd so go to support shepherd.com you know I pay my assistant I think $8 an hour something like that that's double what she was making in her previous job so it's a win for her and for me it's super affordable it's something that you know you don't need to have the biggest business ever be the biggest big shot in order to afford it so it's amazing I now do this for my coo and my cmo too like I just give them assistance without them even asking because I know it makes them more productive that's it does that for me so of course it's gonna do that for them too so go to support shepherd.com check them out get an assistant and tell them I sent you they'll take good care of you if you do that so supportchever.com check it out I have this thing called cricket I wanna tell you about | |
Sam Parr | they spelled this funny | |
Shaan Puri | do you know what this is by the way have you have you ever have you ever heard of a cricket machine | |
Sam Parr | No, so it's C-R-I-C-U-T. No, what is that? Okay.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, Ari, our new producer, is here by the way. This is the first episode. So, if you like how this episode is produced, if you like how it's edited, credit goes to Ari. If you hate this episode, blame it on Ari.
Alright, so Ari, have you ever heard of this machine, the Cricut machine?
I have not.
Okay, this is a DIY, like, home crafting machine. It's 20 years old. This company makes $1,000,000,000 a year in revenue and $100,000,000 of free cash flow a year. Sam, how does that sound?
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Sam Parr | I like the sound of that | |
Shaan Puri | And what it is, is it's basically a cutter. You put in some material; it could be plastic or sticker paper, and then it'll cut the shape for you. So you could do like die cuts, like stickers or whatever. By the way, I barely understand how this works, so I'm going to butcher some of those.
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Sam Parr | I'm I'm looking at it now it's it's it looks like a printer but I guess it cuts | |
Shaan Puri | The printer is more for cutting than for printing. It's basically a way to cut different shapes of things. So, if you want to put something on a water bottle or make a label, you can cut it using your Cricut. | |
Sam Parr | Is this an invention that they made, or is this a style? Is this like a Kleenex tissue type of thing?
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Shaan Puri | no it's more like when steve jobs like I want you know every bill gates whoever was like you know every home was gonna have a personal computer he's like you know a computer on every desk and that that's basically what these guys did so there was like these machines were there before for for you know for people for industrial application and then they what the the company that started it was called like provocraft or something like that they were making these machines for craft shops so you would take your design to a craft shop and you'd say hey I'd like you guys to cut this for me this way and they would have the machine on the on the countertop to cut it for you because you're not gonna have your own machine these are expensive what these guys did was they made it smaller and made it more affordable so that people could just have these at home and and so you know if you go look at etsy you go look at things like this a lot of those people know all about the cricut machine because they have them at home and they use it to make their goods so how do they cut your name out in this cool looking font they don't do it by hand they have a cricut machine that will cut it for you and so just an incredible business and I saw I heard about this because we were looking at it in investment so we're looking at investment from some of the original guys who were early there and they've spun off and they're doing like a new a new like better version of of the cricut machine and I'm like yeah I just don't know how big this space can be he's like well I think it's gonna be bigger than cricut which does a $1,000,000,000 a year and is spinning off a 100,000,000 of free cash flow and you know is a public company and I was like oh okay yeah yeah so my bad and he's he was telling me some pretty incredible things about the crafting community so he's like you know stores like michaels they he goes michaels if you go read their kind of like talk to their leadership or read their ernie simmons or whatever he's like michaels believes that every single person who walks through their door is an etsy seller their default assumption is that if you come to a michaels you are just gonna sell on etsy and because it's like more the majority than the minority which is kind of amazing and etsy is this obviously this marketplace to go sell your goods but if you look okay if that's how you sell your goods well then how do you make them underneath that and so I am very tempted to invest in this space because it is such a big space | |
Sam Parr | what's their product too I | |
Shaan Puri | don't wanna give it up just because it's like kind of proprietary but it's like | |
Sam Parr | some something like cricket | |
Shaan Puri | something like cricket but better it does more things so if cricket just cuts this does other things in addition to cut | |
Sam Parr | got it | |
Shaan Puri | So now, this came, by the way, through our buddy Aldone. If you go back and listen to the episode with Big Al Doan, Al and his mom started a company in the quilting space.
The little breadcrumb trail is we have Patrick Campbell on the podcast. Patrick Campbell runs a payments company called ProfitWell. We were like, "Hey, do you see the payments of lots of companies? Any cool trends in the payment space that we wouldn't have thought of?"
He's like, "Quilting." And we're like, "What?" He's like, "Quilting is enormous. It's like the grandma hobby." He said, "Yes, enormous. There are companies that do blah blah blah."
So he told us about that. Afterwards, I get a DM from Aldo, and he's like, "Hey, I'm one of those companies. We make over $100 million a year, and my mom, you know, Jenny Doan or whatever, started this business, and I joined her. Yeah, we sell crafts for quilters."
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Sam Parr | like the squares right they sell like the squares | |
Shaan Puri |
The squares, the fabrics... they do like a daily flash deal. It's like, "Oh, here's the quilting thing of the day," and that's how they do it. They built this huge thing to the point where he now bought a small town and turned it into like the mecca of quilting. It's like...
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Sam Parr | disneyland for quilting | |
Shaan Puri | The Disneyland for quilters! It's like if you're a quilter and you want to take a trip to indulge in your hobby, this is where you go. I'm like, "Wow, this guy is thinking big. I love this guy; he's a funny guy."
So, he was talking about quilting and then he introduced us to this deal. He's like, "Yeah, I'm investing in this thing because I'm in this craft space, and this is like one of the best concepts we could do here."
So, I'm just scratching the surface on this space. I know nothing about it, but I'm very fascinated by this. I wanted to share that with you.
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Sam Parr | Dude, the Etsy platform is wild! Have you looked into how big some of these sellers are? My mother-in-law started an Etsy store, and she's making hundreds of thousands of dollars selling pillows on Etsy, right?
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Shaan Puri | One of the cool things about Etsy is you can go to the store and they'll show you how many lifetime sales and how many transactions have happened in that store. It's visible on every profile.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and you'll look up something very obscure and you'll see that they've sold 50,000 versions of whatever they have. It's wild how powerful Etsy is. | |
Shaan Puri | By the way, I believe this is how Moyes started Native Deodorant. I think the public story is like this: my sister got pregnant, I was concerned for her health, and I wanted her to have aluminum and paraben-free deodorant.
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Sam Parr | I interviewed him about this | |
Shaan Puri | the real story is what | |
Sam Parr | Basically, he was just looking. I think he was like, "Maybe I'll do mattresses. A lot of people are buying mattresses." This is right when Casper was getting going, and he called that.
So he's like, "Yeah, mattresses." Then he's like, "Shit, these are heavy. This is hard to ship. I don't know if there's a lot of repeat buying on this."
Then he randomly came across a lady selling chemical-free deodorant on Etsy. He ordered that and then he ordered like 5 or 10 other ones. He asked everyone in the office, "Put this under your arms. How's this feel?" Some of it was good, and he's like, "Some of it was bad," but he found one that was great.
He goes, "Hey lady, can I slap a Native label on this and we just resell your stuff?" And that's how it starts. Then eventually, he gets big and gains traction. He's like, "Alright, now we're gonna make our own. Thank you very much." I think she helped him formulate it and...
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Shaan Puri | Something like that. Keep up with the demand. She was like, "Dude, I don't want to scale this to this level. My fingers hurt, sir. Can I take a break here?"
And she was like, "How about this? How about I buy the formula off you, and you help me figure this out? Then we'll bring this to a manufacturer because we've outgrown your scale now."
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Sam Parr | 1,000,000 square feet. Then, after 2 years, he sells the business for $100,000,000 in cash. I think the business probably does around $200,000,000 a year in sales. So, you could argue it was early, but I think he turned out alright. He sold the business maybe 2 or 3 years before the whole DTC (direct-to-consumer) thing became more challenging than we thought. | |
Shaan Puri | But one of the insights was this: I think natural deodorant was one of the top-selling products on Etsy. That's why he had market validation that there's something here—aluminum-free deodorant. | |
Sam Parr | I think it's and | |
Shaan Puri | This is not like... okay, him and many other people do this where, you know, the business has this touching origin story, this wonderful backstory. But like, these are often reverse engineered later. That's not how a lot of these businesses work.
One of my fun things is, let's just be honest on this podcast and say what it is. You know, I started the Milk Road because I was interested in crypto. I saw what you did with The Hustle and I was like, "Oh, I get it. I could do that." And I just did that with Milk Road. It's The Hustle for crypto, and I just went down that road and did it.
My goal was to make a business that made a bunch of money, right? That's the thing. I thought, "Oh cool, doing this I'll learn a bunch about crypto." That's my transparent story. There wasn't some origin story where, you know, my cousin needed help.
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Sam Parr | It hit me... I should just write this email for my cousin, you know? And I didn't stop there. I decided, you know, let's just open it up for friends.
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Shaan Puri | You're all my cousins! Yeah, exactly.
I think you could do that again on Etsy. You could always go back to Etsy and look for top-selling products and use that as inspiration for things.
For Moiz, I'm sure... I don't know this, but I'll put a guess out there. An arranged marriage, he had a checklist. He was like, "What is under 1 pound for shipping? What is a recurring purchase that's consumable? What is something that has a differentiation against a big market but has a unique differentiator?"
Like, natural deodorant that's chemical-free versus what Old Spice and these other guys were doing. He had a checklist and he was like, "Oh, good deodorant, lightweight, review purchase with a clear differentiator. Got it!"
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Sam Parr | by the way these cricut machines are awesome I'm I don't think I might get one of these | |
Sam Parr | these are sick | |
Sam Parr | they're they're expensive they're like a grand | |
Shaan Puri | There's a promo code **SEANCRAFT** at checkout for **$0.10** off.
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Sam Parr | These are awesome! That's a good find. I mean, it's not like it was some rare thing, but it's rare to us, I guess. But it's a good find.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, this is out of our bubble for sure. I invested in this company that does this for bathrooms. They make women's hygiene products, like tampons and pads that go in... | |
Sam Parr | like the vending machine | |
Shaan Puri | It's installed on the wall, and so it's just like a better version of what used to be there. There's always something there, and it looked like something a janitor designed. Then they just made a really beautiful version of it that was easier to use, more friendly, and looked cleaner—more hygienic.
What happened is that every state started enacting laws saying, "Hey, yeah, every women's restroom needs to carry these products," just like you have toilet paper. So, state by state, this is rolling out. They are going into these stadiums, schools, and universities, getting these multimillion-dollar contracts for installing their product.
Once they're installed, they're not going to take them out. It's sort of like clear; it's like these little monopolies that you can get if you're the right product in the right place at the right time with the right sales pitch. Because once it's installed, I don't think they're ever going to uninstall these things and change vendors just because somebody has a slightly nicer design.
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Sam Parr | is that company working | |
Shaan Puri | yeah like I mean I haven't seen I I can't share their like numbers right away | |
Sam Parr | it's like those disgusting baby changing stations what are those called kangaroo or jack or something | |
Shaan Puri | yeah yeah exactly | |
Sam Parr | those are filthy | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, her name's Claire Coder. She's a very strong leader, kind of a personality type person. She does a great job; she's on LinkedIn and super active with it.
The company, by the way, is called AmpFlow. It has a more friendly name compared to what was there before. Once you describe kind of what the process was before versus after, you're like, "Oh, I get it." I understand why other people haven't attacked this space.
Most of the VC funding is going towards men. A lot of founders trying to start these venture-scaled companies are men. They're not even aware of this issue; they've never even been in the bathroom. You wouldn't even know that this problem exists.
But she's done an amazing job of identifying the problem and then building a super likable brand and a likable story. It's like if you could choose between the default alternative or this, you'd obviously pick this.
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Sam Parr | That's cool. I got pitched on a bunch of those, but I passed on all of them because I don't know.
That sounds good that it's working. Hopefully, it makes some money. I mean, when I saw it, I was like, "I don't know, man. Selling like $2 things in the bathroom cannot be a big thing." But you said they're getting $1,000,000 contracts. Who pays for it?
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Shaan Puri | The facility... the facility has to do that. Oh wow, like the facility needs to stock this product and it's a recurring thing, right? They install the dispenser for, let's just call it, $500. So it's $500 to install the dispenser, and then every month or every quarter, you're going to have to do refills.
Again, that thing's going to sit on the wall forever, but it's not going to go anywhere. To me, this is like owning a piece of real estate. All these are going to pay your rent. I think that that's just... I don't know if this becomes like a $10,000,000,000 company. You know, that's like different level stuff.
But it's clear that this is a defensible business. It's clear that it's going to have recurring revenue. Well, there's a lot of facilities out there, and they're all going to have women's restrooms—multiple of them per building. Each one of those is going to need to have this in it, so it starts to add up pretty quick. | |
Hubspot | Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best.
**HubSpot: Grow Better.**
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Shaan Puri | Okay, so let me tell this story. You know, I actually know these guys much better than I do. I only know it second hand, but I'm a fan of this.
Back in the day, when you were doing the hustle, one of the very first things you created—before I knew you—was this infographic about a business that I found fascinating. It was a business called iCracked. I think what you were doing was trying to sell tickets to your conference. You were a speaker, and in your genius, you were like, "Okay, instead of saying, 'Come to my conference, buy tickets,' you said, 'Look at this incredible story of iCracked.'"
These guys were in their, you know, whatever college dorm room—AJ and Tony—and they realized that smartphones were taking off. So they decided, "Hey, everyone else is building apps; let's just try to fix people's cracked phones." Because the more cell phones there are, the more cracked phones there are going to be.
They made this on-demand service. So if you crack your phone, same day—they know that's a big problem for most people—same day, they'll come to you, grab your phone, and fix it. It had this crazy NPS score, and it starts scaling. They get to, like, I think in the first... you know, they only raised $500K, and they get to $7.5 million in revenue. You wrote this, you made this great infographic, and I'm like...
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Sam Parr | this was in the infographic heyday infographics were like the thing back then | |
Shaan Puri | Were they? You were the only one I saw doing them, but they were great. You and what's his name? John, I think he was the design guy. You guys did an amazing job. It was just you two doing the hustle.
And then what you did was, "I love the story. I want to hear more stories like this. In fact, I want to hear AJ tell this story himself. He's speaking at Hustle Con in three weeks. Buy your ticket!"
And then, you know, I didn't... I'm not just going to buy a ticket, but you would release one every, what, like week or so?
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Sam Parr | yeah 1 a week | |
Shaan Puri | By the third week, I was like, "Damn, I love these stories." I thought, "Alright, I'll go to this conference." It sounds like... sounds like these.
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Sam Parr | are great stories | |
Shaan Puri | And so, I went to HustleCon and I met you. You know this story; it has a happy ending.
So, let me finish their story now because what they're doing is pretty interesting. They realized that people are going to have cracked phones, and they need to scale. They scaled through colleges.
They looked at this business model, I-Tech, I guess, which is sort of like a Geek Squad type thing. They thought, "Alright, basically we just need to copy and paste what we're doing." I don't know if I-Tech was the company they were copying or if that's what they called their people, but they figured out how to scale this.
On one college campus, they said, "Okay, we need these runners. We're going to be able to cover this radius and repair these phones this way." And they just copy-pasted it across college campuses.
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Sam Parr |
Basically, they taught college kids how to repair phones, and iCrack would send them the leads. They're like, "Alright, you gotta go show up at this guy's house. You're gonna charge them [some amount of] dollars. It's all done on the phone. You get $100, we get $200," or whatever it was... something like that.
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Shaan Puri | It's just sort of scale. They blitzed, and in 30 days, they're on 28 college campuses, which is amazing. They had booted up 28 campuses in 30 days, which I love. They get into Y Combinator (YC); they're one of the only non-technical teams to even get into YC, and it's because this hustle was obviously very appealing.
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Sam Parr | And so, at one point, they even bought like 200 smart cars that they wrapped in their iCracked logo. They gave them to their techs, and they're all running around San Francisco fixing iPhones and stuff. It was pretty cool.
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Shaan Puri | And then it's like, "Okay, so how did you scale from there?" They go, "Well, we started using SEO and press."
And they're like, "We've realized that the press loves to talk about the following headline: '24-year-old making $1,000,000 doing relatable things.'"
And it's like, he...
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Sam Parr | started out of his college | |
Shaan Puri | Out of his college dorm room, they're just doing something that all of us need: repairing your cracked phone. These 24-year-olds say they're making $1,000,000. So, they took that story and did it at the local level.
This guy grew up in Cincinnati, and he's making millions. Another guy grew up in wherever, and he's making millions too. Whatever college they went to, they did it locally there. They booted up at this college campus, then expanded nationally. They started stacking so that when you searched "fixed cracked iPhone," they could show up organically at the top through SEO from these high-authority publications that were writing puff pieces about them. Love it!
Now, here comes the problem. They've only raised $500,000, and they're at $7.5 million. It's a profitable business that's growing fast. They never announced this, but they go and raise $50,000,000 to scale the business. That $50,000,000 allows them to go international, and at peak, they reach a $36,000,000 run rate.
However, it's just getting harder and harder to keep up with the growth monster. The growth monster is demanding that they reach $100,000,000 in revenue. Because they raised $50,000,000, that means they have to go huge. They've cut off their options, and they just couldn't do it. They could not scale the business beyond that, and they end up selling it to Allstate.
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Sam Parr | yeah insurance company | |
Shaan Puri | And so, one of the guys, he stays there for 3 years. He earns out his deal and decides, "Alright, after year 3, I'm gonna quit and start my next company." And that takes us to Cloud Poker Night.
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Sam Parr | I used it I mean your buddies are clouded what'd you do | |
Sam Parr | yeah well we tested it I was a a beta user and it didn't quite work out when we start when | |
Shaan Puri | You would be a beta user. I am beta. They called the right guy. We need a beta.
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Sam Parr | yeah just say I'm on the phone | |
Sam Parr | It was a little rough when we first started because he was only a few weeks in. But I think now he has nailed it, and it was actually really fun.
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Shaan Puri | So, I want to do two things. I want to show the home page because I love what they wrote as the landing page. The copy on this home page... have you been?
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Sam Parr | to it | |
Shaan Puri | it's so good read it read | |
Sam Parr | it off | |
Sam Parr | So, it says, "Poker is the new sport for business minds; golf is yesterday's news."
[Request access, and then there's a photo.]
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Shaan Puri | it's a cute dealer dealing to that's anthony's wife | |
Sam Parr | that's the founder's wife doing it | |
Shaan Puri | okay great | |
Sam Parr | by the way | |
Shaan Puri | Cute dealer... So, there are people playing, and you can get a demo of the product. It's a super strong landing page. Then, you scroll down, and it says, "Business minds who love poker."
So, just think about the positioning. Almost everybody would be like, "Online poker night," right? "Cloud-based poker for poker software." This is like the generic, ineffective way to market this. But instead, they not only say the benefit of it; they go even bigger. They just say, "Big picture: golf is the old way; poker is the new sport for business people."
That's the "We don't sell saddles here" mantra. When Stewart Butterfield created Slack, he wrote this great memo. If you've never read it, go read it. It's called "We don't sell saddles here." He said, "Look, guys, we made Slack. We know it's awesome. Now our job is to teach the world that this is awesome."
Here's the problem: most people you talk to that run a company are not in the business for chat software. They're not looking for a team chat tool. It's just not something they even consider. They're not even looking for it. So, even if we say we're the best team chat software, it doesn't matter. They don't care; they're not into it.
He said Lululemon made you want to do yoga to live the yoga lifestyle. We need to do the same thing. Instead of selling saddles and saying we make the best saddles, we need to sell the joy of horseback riding. Once they fall in love with the idea of horseback riding, they're going to ask, "Where do I get a saddle?" And we're going to say, "Oh yeah, we sell the best saddles."
So, the same thing here. I love what he's doing by saying poker is the new sport for business people. That's selling the dream. Then, okay, how are we going to go play poker? Use our software.
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Sam Parr | And they have all these quotes about successful people who have played poker. I recognize a few of these people: there's Warren Buffett, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, and Peter Thiel. And look at that, there's the chairman of the Milk Road on their website! Oh wow, Peter's...
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Shaan Puri | That's... you're on there to say it. I had no idea you were on there for that. I did not know that.
I'm on page 2 of the carousel. If he swipes, I never got that far. But what they did was they go, "Business minds love poker." Then it's a quote, and it says, "Which leader said this: Warren Buffett, Chamath, or Paul Graham?" And you're like, "Oh, that sounds like Chamath." Nope, it was Paul Graham. Okay, cool.
Then it asks and shows you another one. So again, using sort of the people you already trust to say that poker... they're not saying Cloud Poker Night is great, but they're saying poker is the best sport for business people.
And then it's "Why poker is so great," blah blah blah. And then it says, "Why you should use our software," which I love. So I think this landing page is amazing.
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Sam Parr | But you have to explain how it works. So basically, I've used it. What it is, is we were going to use it for Hampton, and we're still going to, but we did it for a team night.
The way it works is it's almost like Zoom meets poker. They have a professional setup. In my case, when I used it, it was Anthony, the founder. He's got this home setup that's a card table, and then there's a camera on him. You see him dealing the cards, and you see him talking to you and interacting with you.
You can also see all your other teammates playing. He puts the cards over another camera, of which only you, the user, can see your own cards. So it's really like live poker. There's even a dealer who's like shooting the breeze with you and asking if you want to hit. It's really fun, very interactive, and awesome!
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Shaan Puri | I think it's a great business idea for a bootstrap business. I love this idea!
Yeah, I love poker. I've played poker my whole life. I really think this is a cool idea. I would love to do an MFM version of this. So, like, that's a great idea.
I mean, hold on. I think they did make one for us. I asked the guy this morning, "Hey, this would be amazing!" I don't like... like, the live shows we did were cool because we got to meet people who listen to the pod. That's awesome! But I don't like traveling. I don't like leaving my house.
So this is great because we get to play poker, we get to be on camera, meet other people who are listeners to the show, and we could just host our own tournament.
I think he's going to do cloudpokernight.com/mfm, so there will be something there. He says to RSVP for this. So if anyone wants to play in a poker night, we should do that with people who listen to the pod. I think that would be kind of amazing!
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Sam Parr | By the way, the other founders... So, you talked about Anthony Martin. He's one of the co-founders of iCracked. The other co-founder, AJ, is one of my great friends. He's a crazy person; he's one of the wildest people I've hung out with.
His other company, or his new company that he started, they call it... like one headline called it "the Tesla for chicken coops." So if you go to coop.farm, it's a smart chicken coop. He keys into beekeeping and he's always had chickens and animals and stuff like that.
So he made a smart chicken coop that opens the doors automatically and feeds the chickens automatically. It's pretty funny. I almost invested in it, but I'll explain one of the reasons that made me nervous.
Like the day or a few weeks before the round closed, when the Ukraine thing happened, AJ went to Poland for like a month and was a volunteer helping Ukrainian refugees. The guy's crazy.
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Shaan Puri | is he ukrainian | |
Sam Parr | no he just is into that shit he just does wild shit all the time | |
Sam Parr | like I'll be hanging out with him and he's like | |
Shaan Puri | he used to boat to work | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, he lived right near Oracle, and his office was in Redwood City. It was across this little bay, and he would take this little boat to work.
But every once in a while, they had offices at SOMA, and he would ride this small boat—literally fit for two people—20 miles up the bay to SOMA and dock his boat there. The guy is crazy! He would do... no, and when I say boat...
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Shaan Puri | I remember you told me that like a decade ago, and I still remember. You were like, "Yeah, my friend, he's kayaking to work."
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Sam Parr | by the way boat's not | |
Sam Parr | The best word to describe it is a jet ski that you stand up on. So, like, he would jet ski to work. Basically, that's how small this thing was. | |
Shaan Puri | so was he paddling or it was a motor no he had a motor he had a motor in | |
Sam Parr | he would like motor it was like a jet ski he was like he was like kenny powers | |
Sam Parr | he would like jet ski jet ski to work | |
Sam Parr | he's the aj is crazy he's a crazy person | |
Shaan Puri | didn't this raise a bunch of money from peter thiel | |
Sam Parr | and stuff yeah they raised money from peter thiel like peter it's like | |
Shaan Puri | I see you're crazy and I raise you | |
Sam Parr | It's like, say it with me: "Peter, chicken coop, Leah." It's a... it's a... | |
Sam Parr | it's a weird business but I think it could work | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, that's amazing! I think this is a really cool business, and I want to see how this goes. I actually want to invest in this. I wish I could own a piece of this and just host poker nights.
One of the great things about a business like this is the **virality**. I'm very interested in products that can grow virally. Most people get this wrong. Products that grow virally are not products that succeed through word-of-mouth. If you talk to a normal person, they might say, "Oh yeah, it spread virally because they told their friends." No, no, no. That's called word-of-mouth.
Viral is literally like the word sounds; it's like a virus. You're not even trying to get it on other people, but it gets on them. They catch it from you.
The classic example of this was Hotmail. At the end of every email, it was signed like, "Sent through Hotmail" or something like that. You weren't trying to tell somebody, "Hey, you should start a Hotmail account," but it was added to every email as almost like a little virus that was attached to the email, saying, "Sent through Hotmail. Get your free account today." So people started signing up, and it had this crazy viral coefficient.
Products like Cloud Poker Night have a different kind of virality, which I think could be called **group virality** or something similar to how Eventbrite grows or Meetup.com grows. An attendee becomes a host. A host creates an event, and naturally, they need to invite a bunch of other people because that's how an event works.
Then, you might be one of the 100 people that attend some event. If you liked that experience, the next time you're thinking about hosting an event, you'll go use that same product because it was sort of incepted into your brain through somebody else.
I think the same thing will happen here. What I would want to do is host a bunch of these for fun using the MFM community. But then, guess what? The MFM community, when they have a good experience as players, would then host their team bonding nights, corporate events, or sales events for their businesses. I think that's how these businesses can grow.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, I think it's cool. What do you want to do? Cricket, cut, or gamer dating idea?
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Shaan Puri |
I'll do the gamer dating. Okay, so Sam, here's why you should date a gamer. I know you're married, but if you could go back, here's why you should have dated a gamer. And me too, I've... my wife, she doesn't play any games. I just bought a PS5 hoping that maybe that would sway her. She instead just got upset. So here's why you should date a gamer:
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Sam Parr | you're not a gamer are you | |
Shaan Puri | I'm like the least gamer gamer. I'm in the club, but just barely. I'm by the door... I'm by the exit door.
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Sam Parr | I played call of duty last night for like the first time in the year it's shit's impossible these kids are too good | |
Shaan Puri | It's so difficult, unbelievable. It sucks! Also, all the popular games now, they're like PUBG. It's like, "Yeah, you jump out of an airplane." I'm like, "Oh wow, that sounds exciting."
Then you land, and now you just sort of walk around. You live for 20 minutes, and then you're not going to see anybody during that whole time. You're just going to be collecting supplies. I'm like, "Okay, cool, but for what?" Because then when you do see someone, I'm like, "But I never see anyone."
Yeah, that's the problem. You're just going to get shot in the head, and then it's going to start again. It's like these games where nothing happens. It's crazy.
Anyways, here's why you should date me.
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Sam Parr | By the way, I played Call of Duty last night. I participated in this mode where it's three guys on a team, and we have to work together. There were two guys who must have been friends, and they were talking to each other in Spanish. I was so... | |
Sam Parr | I was so bad that | |
Sam Parr | I couldn't see, hear, or understand. They were writing, and I couldn't understand any of the words that they were saying other than "bot." This is a bot. He's so bad. It's a bot. Vamonos.
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Sam Parr | and they quit on me | |
Sam Parr | because I was so bad just bot vamonos | |
Sam Parr | like that's all that's how bad I was | |
Shaan Puri | I remember I got called a "bot," and I thought it was a good thing because I was like, "Oh, aim bot! I must be on lock that they're calling me a bot." Then I realized, no, this is what they're saying—this is like an NPC.
Alright, so let me do my bit here. Here's why you should date a gamer:
- **They're smart.** You'll never have to worry about where they are on a Friday night. You know they're just going to be in the room playing. They're not at the club; they're not doing anything scandalous.
- **They'll fight for you.** You should date a gamer because they'll stand up for you. They're used to going to war on these things.
- **They're easy to trick into doing things.** You just give them a badge, a level, or some sort of medallion, and they'll grind for that prize.
- **They're tech-savvy.** They can set up your internet and fix stuff whenever anything's broken.
- **They'll always give you space.** If you're the type that needs space, they'll give you space.
But here's the problem: you may want to date a gamer after that great sales pitch, but the problem is there's no gamer dating app. That's my idea! I think there should be an app for gamers to meet other gamers. Here's why this matters...
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Sam Parr | wouldn't it be a sausage fest I mean how many gamers are women | |
Shaan Puri | All dating apps are a **sausage fest**. That's the trick. The guys only see the girls, and the girls only see the guys unless you switch the settings, right?
So, it's like, yes, all dating apps have a ratio of 30 to 1. That's expected, but that's normal for a dating app.
Here's why I think it's cool: I think gamers have a lot in common. Gamers represent a pretty big market. There are hundreds of millions of gamers out there. The gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood, right? So, if you think people like movies, people like games even more.
However, there's no easy way to meet a gamer. If you meet a gamer, you actually have a lot in common, and you might have things to do together.
One of the hard parts about dating apps is that they're all about profiles and flirts, and not really about dates. Then a bunch of companies came in and were like, "We're gonna get you on a date." But the reality is that getting people out into the real world to go on a date is kind of like... really, really high friction.
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Sam Parr | matching them was a pain in the ass I did a bunch of those | |
Shaan Puri | I think that gamer dating would work because you could be like, "Cool, you matched! You guys are both interested in each other, and you might have some games in common." That's part of your profile—what games you both like to play.
You could go squad up, play again, or go play Call of Duty together. In doing so, you're going to be talking and doing something together. It's like going bowling or putt-putt golf, but just more fun.
So, I think somebody could... I mean, this is a legit idea. At first, I was going to save this for a drunk ideas episode, and then it kind of grew on me. I was like, "No, no, no, this could actually work."
If you think this can't work, let me remind you that there is a dating app called Farmers Only. There are dating apps called Black People Meet, and those work. If you think those could work and gay dating can't work, you're nuts. Gay dating could definitely work, and it could definitely be big.
Definitely go sell it—a match for like $75 million in 3 years.
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Sam Parr | is farmers only still a thing | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I haven't checked in on a little while but they used to run like tv commercials | |
Sam Parr | yeah you haven't been keeping tabs | |
Sam Parr | they're wet | |
Sam Parr | that looks very old | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, still paying the hosting fee. Alright, they're doing $700,000 in monthly visits, so not bad.
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Sam Parr | that's so funny what's your name for it | |
Shaan Puri | I don't have one just yet. You know, working title TBD. I'm open to suggestions.
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Sam Parr | yeah I think it's a pretty bad idea | |
Shaan Puri | well I sold it pretty hard so disappointing | |
Sam Parr | I mean maybe dude dating dating apps suck | |
Sam Parr | That's the worst business there is, man, because only like 3 or 4 of them exist. It's like a winner-take-all market, you know what I mean? I'm not a winner-take-all market. | |
Shaan Puri | there's tons of dating apps | |
Sam Parr | it it it I mean | |
Shaan Puri | Who's the winner that took it all? Tinder? No. Bumble? No. Match? Eharmony? No. OkCupid? No. | |
Sam Parr | It's like social media, where there could be, you know, hundreds of social media platforms. But there are like four that matter. Do you know what I mean?
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Shaan Puri | I remember when I was at Monkey Inferno, a guy came to the office. His name was KJ, and he said, "I'm gonna make it Indian." You know, there are Jewish dating apps, farmer dating apps, and black people dating apps. He wanted to create an Indian dating app. I thought, "Alright, that's a good idea, I guess."
I asked him if he had any background on this, and he replied, "I'm Indian and I'm trying to date." I was like, "Okay, I guess you're super qualified."
Then he said, "Here's what we're gonna do differently." I asked him, "So what are the features? What do you have to do to differentiate?" He said, "Well, I told you it's an Indian dating app, so the app's gonna say this is for Indians trying to meet other Indians."
I realized he was right; that is actually the main feature. You're going to curate the people and filter for those who want to meet other Indians, just like farmers who want to meet other farmers or Jewish people who want to meet other Jewish people.
I thought, "Okay, I guess that is already better than Tinder if you're an Indian person looking to meet another Indian." You're going to get a 100% hit rate here versus maybe a 5% hit rate on a generic dating app.
I asked him, "So how are you going to make money?" He replied, "Do you know how much people pay for dating apps? I'll do the same business model." I was trying to poke holes in his plan, but he seemed to have it all covered.
Then I asked, "But what do Indians care about more than others?" He said, "Oh, that's where I'm gonna do something different."
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Sam Parr | I go, "Okay, here it is. What's the big feature? What's the big tech breakthrough?" He's like, "Your mom is your co-user."
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Shaan Puri | You log in with LinkedIn, and I go, "What?" He goes, "Yeah."
And he's like, "Because I don't know if people know this, like Indian culture, it's a big deal. There's like a checklist Indian people date on, like a checklist." It kind of stems from the arranged marriage background where literally, you marry on a checklist.
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Sam Parr |
You know what the pickup line is for... like, I have most of my friends are Indian because you and Neville—my best friend's Indian—the pickup line when you're around other Indians is: "So, what do you do?"
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Sam Parr | that's basically like that's like what they do | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, so basically, he was like, "You're gonna log in with LinkedIn so we know that you have a legit job." And I was like, "Okay." Then he said, "Yeah, that's like the main thing that helps separate people." I was like, "Whoa."
So he builds this app called **Dill Mill**, which means "hearts meet." How do you spell it? D-I-L-M-I-L. He builds this app, and I'm keeping track of this guy. Sure enough, he just starts going into all the niche communities, newsletters, blogs, and YouTubers, just promoting it, running ads, basically saying, "Hey, if you're an Indian person and you're tired of striking out on dating apps because Indian people have terrible success rates on dating apps..."
On normal dating apps, I think OkCupid said that the worst success rate was for Indian males. A close second was Chinese males. They were the two least desirable according to the OkCupid match data that they've released. | |
Sam Parr | you know what the highest was I think the highest the most liked person I think was an asian woman | |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, exactly. I think it was an Asian woman who was number one because they were getting all this attention from both Asian guys and white guys. I think the data showed that they get top preference amongst two big user groups or something like that.
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Sam Parr | And there's this weird stereotype that Asian women are supposed to be more submissive and dumb, like that. I think that there's some weird kinks out there of spoken...
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Shaan Puri | like a true white guy | |
Sam Parr | I'm like no it's like men who | |
Sam Parr | have had actresses like mothers of the african | |
Shaan Puri | white male so | |
Sam Parr | hey it's on the it's on christian rudder wrote that blog post the founder of okcupid I think that's like the whole thing | |
Shaan Puri | Their blog posts were great. That was a great strategy they had.
Anyway, so he, whatever, five years later, he sells this thing. I think he sold it for $75 million or $100 million to the match.
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Sam Parr | group way | |
Shaan Puri | And they were like, "Yeah, we match group is a collection of dating apps. We have our generic catch-all mass market apps, Tinder and what's the other one, Match.com?"
Then they have all the niche apps, and so they own like 20 dating apps or something like that. If you just fill one of those verticals that they don't have a winner in, they'll buy you at like a preset multiple. I was like, "Wow, that's pretty impressive."
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Sam Parr | They paid $50,000,000 for it. I don't know, man. This guy KJ, he's pretty good looking and now he's rich. I think he’s probably doing a single I met.
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Shaan Puri | I met up with him the other day, and he was like, "You didn't believe." I was like, "Well, you're right, I didn't believe."
Actually, when I didn't believe, I really wanted to be right. I'm sorry about that; I was kind of rooting against you in a way. But then you proved me wrong, and you were absolutely right. Congratulations! You did a great job.
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Sam Parr | Have you seen the Indian Netflix show where your parents are setting you up with this matchmaker dude?
At first, I thought that was the worst, you know, like your parents are just telling you what to do. But when you think about it, it's kind of like the paradox of choice, right? They’re just like, "This is it. This is the one. You are doing this." You kind of are forced to find happiness in that.
And it doesn't seem like maybe the worst arranged marriages are they? I have no idea. Are they bad, or is it kind of... they can be and they can't be?
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Sam Parr | I think | |
Shaan Puri | The stats show it's about the same divorce rate as in America. But what that doesn't show is that many people don't get divorced. They're like, "You know, we will suffer in this unhappy marriage rather than get divorced and be happy, but have society know that we failed in our marriage," or whatever. So, I don't think there's a way to really know how successful or unsuccessful it is.
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Sam Parr | Me and... by the way, a quick anecdote. Me and Neville were out to dinner with Dharmesh at HubSpot. Neville was saying how he doesn't... he's like, "Man, India, that's where I'm from. I go back there and it makes you grateful to be in America because these guys got nothing. It's not very nice over there," this and that. Dharmesh was like... not insulting poor Indians, but saying it's like a pain in the butt to be in that situation. And Dharmesh was like...
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Sam Parr | yeah | |
Sam Parr | That was me. I was that guy. I had nothing, and I came here. I was like one of those guys. We had nothing, and they were all just talking about India. India sounds like a wild place, man.
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Sam Parr | it just seems | |
Shaan Puri | Wild people describe things like that because how do you... you know, you can only agree with that. You can't really disagree with "X is a wild place."
It's the same thing as our business pitch of like, "It's just beautifully done. We're just gonna do it beautifully."
It's the same thing. It's like, "Dude, that's a wild place." It's like, what about the food, the cult, the crime? What are we talking about?
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Sam Parr | here's the story you told the story | |
Sam Parr | You told me that when your mom came to America, I don't know if you were joking or not, but you said, "Tooth." That exactly blew my mind. You said the first thing you said...
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Sam Parr | She had never used utensils. Do you remember saying that? This is all on record. You're like, "She didn't use utensils." That's what you said on the last podcast.
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Shaan Puri | And then, Mom, if you're listening, I know you never said that. I didn't say that. I'm being bullied by myself.
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Sam Parr | You know, I am not putting any judgment here. I am repeating what you said. The second thing you said was, "Wait, when she went to hang up."
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Sam Parr | The phone... she didn't know how to hang up the phone, so she just let it hang on the bay phone.
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Sam Parr | and it was a while to hear that story that that was it was like | |
Sam Parr | it made me love your mom is what it did | |
Shaan Puri | She told me the story, and it was unbelievable. She said, "I got on the plane. I'd never been on a plane before. My parents just dropped me off at the airport. I'm 17 years old, and I've never been on a plane before. I don't even know what a plane is, really. I just get shuffled along. I show somebody my ticket, and they send me here, they send me there."
Okay, I get on a plane, and she's like, "I think it's like a train." That's all I've ever seen is a train. So I'm just thinking, "This is gonna be like a train ride," and she's flying for 14 hours.
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Sam Parr | tell her that it goes in the air | |
Shaan Puri | Her parents didn't know either. They had never been on a train or a plane. They were just like, "This is how you get to America." And she's like, "Okay," didn't ask, and didn't ask too many questions.
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Sam Parr | that's insane | |
Shaan Puri | She’s like, “I, you know, plane seat belts are kinda funky.” She said, “I did it! I just pushed it, and it went in on the first try, somehow miraculously.” The person next to her looked at her and was like, “Oh, you’ve flown before.”
And she was like, “Oh my God, I don’t even know what I’m getting myself into. No, I have no idea what I just did. I have no idea how I’ll get this off.” She thought, “I guess I have a few hours to figure out how to unbuckle this by the time I need to get off at my stop.”
So then, for 14 hours, she’s flying and she stays awake because she’s like, “I don’t want to miss my stop.” She’s thinking, “This thing’s not stopping! What’s going on?” She doesn’t know how planes work. It was crazy; the whole thing was insane. | |
Sam Parr | doesn't that make you feel soft your mom your mother is so much more brave than we are | |
Shaan Puri | It makes me feel incredibly lucky that, you know, she did all the hard stuff so that I don't have to do it. Yeah, shout out to you! | |
Sam Parr | know shout out mom | |
Shaan Puri | Bird moms chew food and then just spit it in their baby's mouth so they don't have to chew. That's what I feel like she did with life. She just chewed life for me and then spit it in my mouth. I just have the easy life. And on that visual...
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Sam Parr | Alright, well thank you. That's the pod. What is it? **mfmpod.com**. We got the merch. And then, what's the clip website?
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Shaan Puri | Clip clipmfm.com or just go to YouTube and search for "My First Mailing Clips." Please subscribe! That way, when we reach 500 subscribers, we'll have more incentive to do the work of cutting, picking the perfect parts, trimming them down, and titling them to make them available to you.
If you don't have time to watch the full episode or you want to share just the best bit with somebody, sharing an hour-long podcast with someone is like asking them to help you move on a Saturday—it's just a tough ask. But sharing a clip is like doing someone a favor.
So, go subscribe to that channel so that we can be motivated to keep growing it!
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Sam Parr | alright check it out that's the pod |