Making Billions with Greeting Cards & Rich People (not) Paying Taxes | My First Million #192

Sam Parr

I think that you've said a lot of amazing stuff for the past two years. I think what you just said right there actually might be one of the most valuable rants in terms of just money that you've ever said.

Shaan Puri

what's up it's me sean and sam the vanilla gorilla

Sam Parr

Alright, we have a good episode today. Sean just said he thought this was an amazing episode. We talked about a lot of different stuff. You have a list; what do we talk about?

Shaan Puri

We talked about the surprisingly big business of greeting cards and eCards. We discussed the crazy Chick-fil-A tech stack and some ideas around creating a consulting company based on that. We also talked about this crazy FBI takedown, where the FBI basically tricked thousands and thousands of criminals with a pretty genius app. What else? You did a good breakdown of Bump Boxes and...

Sam Parr

Bump Box is a business built by a guy who sells subscription boxes to pregnant women and their babies. It's generating about $40,000,000 a year. The babies don't buy it; they might, but it's meant for the babies.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

That's just $40,000,000 a year in sales. We talked about how this article came out about rich people not paying taxes. Well, we discussed how they actually get money to live, which was kind of mind-blowing to me. And we...

Shaan Puri

Talked about one of my favorite childhood actors and childhood movies. How that young child actor has become a crypto billionaire. Then I got excited saying he's the "Billionaire of the Week." But that's all to come in this episode.

Sam Parr

And do me a favor. Go to your Spotify or iTunes. There's a button that says "Subscribe" or "Follow." If you're on Spotify, click "Follow." If you're on iTunes, click "Subscribe." Because when you click that, we go up in the charts. When we go up in the charts, we get more listeners. When we get more listeners, we can record more stuff. Please do that. Thank you, and have a great day!

Shaan Puri

Good episode! Well, first, **happy birthday**! You are, what, 31? 32? 32 now? Okay, great! Yeah, I was feeling bad. I'm 33, and you're always like, "Yeah, we're basically the same age. We're both 30, 31."

Sam Parr

Well, I do it to slight you. I do it as a joke because you're older than me, but I want to make it clear that you're still older than me.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In my head, I immediately stop listening to everything else you say, and I just start thinking, "Fuck, I'm older than Sam." Then I have to go, "What does that matter? Who cares?" After that, I get back, and I don't even know what's going on.

Sam Parr

I do

Shaan Puri

35 okay great

Sam Parr

I do it that's cool

Shaan Puri

I feel even worse now. My trainer, by the way, he's 40 or 41, something like that, and he looks great. He looks like he's 25. Anytime someone says, "Oh wow, I didn't know that," you know, once they find out his age or whatever, he's just like, "I'm living to 105." He's constantly watching videos of people who are 105 but healthy, or like 100, and they still have, you know, they're still madly in love with their husband or wife. He's just constantly watching these videos, these outlier examples, to be like, "That's me. I'm gonna have that life." Do you care about living until you're really old?

Sam Parr

Yeah, well, I tell everyone I'm 130. I say, "30, okay, great." I say I'm going to be 130, but I'm going to act like a current 70-year-old. So, like, the 70-year-olds now, that's what I'm going to be when I'm 130.

Shaan Puri

okay why 1:30 where is that number from I think that's

Sam Parr

A nice, ambitious but realistic number. I think that... so I went out with this guy the other day, and he is a dealer. No, I'll name drop you. I'll kind of name drop. I went out with Lance Armstrong. I got dinner with Lance Armstrong.

Shaan Puri

Dude, you weren't gonna say that. You were just gonna say, "I went out with this guy the other day." Yeah, well, yeah... amazing.

Sam Parr

I... The reason I'm saying that is it comes from a reputable source. He had this guy who worked at Adidas and Nike with them, this huge, ripped guy who was probably 55 or so. He was telling me that there's a direct correlation between lean muscle mass and age... longevity. So the people who have more muscle at an older age are more likely to live longer. That was like a realization to me. So anyway, that was...

Shaan Puri

so 2 for 1 you get to be jacked now and live forever

Sam Parr

Yeah, but wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, a little bit old, but I... well, so we just did this little thing. Let's get back into it. I got a card, an email from my aunt, my Aunt Debbie, who's in her fifties. I forget what it was called, but it was American Greetings, which was the name of the company or the main... Whenever I get one of these things, I scroll straight to the bottom, and it says the name of the brand, but then it says like "Copyright American Greetings."

Shaan Puri

company the the like terms and conditions part

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm like, "Alright, that's the good stuff." So, I always like Wikipedia, and it was this company—it's a greeting card company that does calls.

Shaan Puri

Can I pause you for one second? That thing you just said about this podcast rewiring my brain... that's all I do now. I'm like, "Oh cool, this thing is in my life. Who's behind this? How much do they make? What's the company? What's the backstory? Is there an epic founder behind this?" I was at the dentist yesterday, and he was showing me an x-ray of my teeth. Instead of looking at the x-ray, he's pointing out something in my teeth, saying, "Oh yes, that's good." But I'm looking at the name of the software in the top left corner. It's like "VM Imaging." I'm like, "Hey, can you hand me my phone real quick? I need to write this down. I'm going to go look up this company. I bet it makes like a billion dollars doing this x-ray software for dentist offices." Then, while he was scraping my tooth with some tool, I was just thinking, "Why isn't there a better device? This is the same scraper they've been using since I was 10. If every dentist is buying these things, they can't cost that much. Who's the company that makes these little devices? Are they innovating? Why not?" So my brain has been like... I have this chip in my brain now that has to get to the root source of every product, I feel, which is what you need.

Sam Parr

when you're able

Shaan Puri

to send you a birthday card

Sam Parr

But when I see a building, like a huge warehouse, if it's a massive warehouse and there's a sign on it, I always look up. What's the story of it?

Shaan Puri

that right

Sam Parr

I always do that so yeah well I

Shaan Puri

I was thinking about how people are excited about augmented reality (AR) or when Google Glass came out. They were like, "Oh, it's great! You'll be able to read your email or see directions. The map will be in front of your eyes." But I thought the killer app for this technology would be if I could just look at someone and it tells me who they are. You know, like when you stalk someone? You see someone interesting, you try to look them up, you find their Instagram, and see what their life is all about. I think it would be amazing when we just have contacts or glasses, and I could look at you and it would say, "Sam Parr, CEO of The Hustle," and then show your last two tweets floating above your face. You would have no idea that I just interrogated you.

Sam Parr

There's also practical stuff. Me and Sarah were walking on the street the other day, and Sarah saw a guy with a collared shirt. She's like, "I think we know that person, but I can't tell because all white guys with collared shirts look the same to me." So, there's some practical implications. Dude, when I was a kid and I would use my fake ID, I had a fake ID. The guy was a white dude, but he had a shaved head, and it was clear he had black hair. But if you go to the Indian or the black stores with a clerk of a different race, they all thought that all white...

Shaan Puri

people yeah he looks just like you

Sam Parr

And so the joke was, you have to go to a person who's not white because they all think we look exactly the same. Did you ever do that when you were a kid? Like, you go to the white card?

Shaan Puri

I didn't realize that hack but that makes perfect sense to me yeah do you

Sam Parr

think all white people look alike

Shaan Puri

No, not all white people look alike. But definitely, you know, John, Jeff, and Jacob... I might mix them up from time to time. Yeah, in the same way that, you know, I look like... you know, a season. Sorry to everybody, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, but we were...

Sam Parr

Talking about American Greetings. American Greetings is a huge company, and it's just crazy that this still exists. But I guess it's not that crazy; it's really hard.

Shaan Puri

explain in simple terms they do ecards so you can send a dish a wallet to somebody

Sam Parr

$20 a year yeah

Shaan Puri

$20 a year membership, and they do above $1,000,000,000 in revenue. They own multiple smaller brands. So, they own Jackie Lawson. I don't know if you've ever heard of Jackie Lawson. By the way, no? You should Google this name. So, Jackie Lawson, go look at her website. It's like "Welcome to 1982." I mean, whoever's doing the video on this, you gotta pull up the Jackie Lawson website.

Sam Parr

I love jackie lawson

Shaan Puri

Literally, okay, so the profile photo looks like some bootleg Carmen Sandiego. Then it says "Jackie Lawson," and there's a mouse, like a computer mouse, that's part of the "n." This is probably because when she invented this, it was new to be on the computer sending cards to people. This thing is incredibly popular; people love Jackie Lawson cards. She's really well known and sold her company, I think, to American Greetings. I ran a company for a period of time, maybe a year or two, called BirthdayAlarm.com.

Sam Parr

and I did bring this up by the way

Shaan Puri

yeah I didn't start the company but the company is kind of remarkable I'll break it down so michael and xochitl burch were the investors in my previous company this was their first win so michael is a programmer at an insurance company he's like this is boring wants to go do a start up he comes up with this big idea to do a self updating address book meaning like what if you had a contact list that was like dynamic so I'm in your address book if I ever move I can just change my address or my my email address or whatever and it'll automatically update in everyone's contact list you know dynamically so you have this idea of this he builds this this product it's really complicated it's not really going anywhere but he adds one feature to the address book which is birthday what's your birthday and which is ironically the thing that doesn't change it's you don't need a dynamic address book to do that but he started sending a reminder so like a little reminder would come out like I should have got a reminder yesterday that said hey it's sam's birthday today wish him happy birthday and and this was before facebook so this is actually an incredible you incredibly useful thing so people used to email him being like hey thanks so much for that birthday reminder I would have totally forgot my aunt's birthday you know you saved me on that one or you know I looked like husband of the year because of that birthday reminder and so so he's like shit nobody likes my thing but they just like this one feature so he makes that the product so he goes he makes it birthday alarm.com and all it does is it reminds you of your friends' and family's birthday and immediately the the site starts to like do a little bit better but not like not gangbusters yet so he says okay well how does this product work I should be able to email all my friends and family and say hey add your birthday to my my birthday alarm calendar and and then he he does he at the time there was no term for viral marketing but he's like I don't have a budget to do you know I quit my job to go try to make it big in the startup world so I don't have a marketing budget so I need one user to recruit another so here's what I'll do when I email all my friends and families to add their birthday to mine and they go type in june 15th then it'll say do you wanna save sean's birthday in your calendar and they're like oh yeah sure why not you know tit for tat he just asked for mine I'll take his and then it says cool your birth your calendar has one birthday in it who else's birthday do you wanna know send this to your friends and family so that became the viral loop and all of a sudden he started getting tens of thousands of members still a free product but tens of thousands of users at the time to him felt like $1,000,000 it was like oh my god I've actually made something that's growing and then he's like alright how do I make this even better so he just he went all in on this virality piece he didn't try to figure out the business model or the things he's like how do I make this even more viral and so he's like well today there's still all these steps involved I gotta type in each person's email address I have to figure out what to write so he starts 1 by 1 changing these pieces he's like oh instead of you having to think what to write I'll write it for you just copy paste this right here's a copy button to copy this into your email client and then he's like can I just send this to their whole email address book and at the time nobody was really doing this and so he wrote one of the first scrapers for hotmail where he where you could just log in to your hotmail he's like great I imported all your contacts just hit send and it'll send to all of them and he's like dude this is kinda crazy like he's like for sure hotmail is gonna shut this down in 10 days but whatever 10 days of growth let's do it and so immediately he makes up next morning and there's like a 100,000 members and it just keeps growing exponentially after that and you know here we are he started that website in like 2,001 so 20 years later you could still do that thing in hotmail at gmail where you import your address book they never were able to like fully shut it down and so he's like that hack that I thought would last 10 days lasted 20 years and the site started growing exponentially so now it has you know it's had over I don't know maybe a 100,000,000 members at this?

Shaan Puri

Add their birthday in this meeting

Sam Parr

making like $5,000,000 a year every single year

Shaan Puri

So at that point, it's free. Now, what happens is his buddy Morgan, who is like a friend of his, sends him a link to... I don't know what it was. It was either Jackie Lawson, American Greetings, or Blue Mountain—one of these websites. He goes, "Dude, you should do eCards. I made an eCard website. You should add eCards to this. That could be the business model: sell birthday cards. Right? Don't just remind them of the birthday; let them wish them a happy birthday." He turns that on and immediately starts making $10,000 a day or whatever. The numbers are not exact. In fact, we re-released his episodes; you can go listen to the exacts. But basically, he starts making money with that business, which was pretty bare bones. It was him working on it, his wife working on it, his sister-in-law did the books, and a cousin did customer support. It ran like that for a number of years and was making, at its peak, $4 to $5 million a year in revenue, with most of that being profit—maybe 80% profit at that time. It ran like that for a number of years. He used that to self-fund his next startup, a social network called Bebo. Because he self-funded it with Birthday Alarm, when he sold Bebo for, I think, $850 million, the husband-and-wife duo owned like 70% or more of the company because he had self-funded it using this eCard website. So when I went to run his idea lab, that was still the cash cow that was paying for that fancy office you saw. All those Silicon Valley engineers—most of it was because Birthday Alarm was still cranking out $2 million a year in profit, even though nobody was working on it and there had been no updates for multiple years at that point.

Shaan Puri

And so then I took it, and we tried to turn it around and make it grow again. It started to grow again, you know, after we worked on it. Because of that, I looked into Jackie Lawson, American Greetings, JibJab, and all these different companies. This space is actually pretty big.

Sam Parr

yeah well that's why I brought this up because I knew I would get a story out of you like that

Shaan Puri

There's also one other company that someone who listens to the podcast told us about. I'll give them a shout. Have you seen this app called **Givingly**? No? So, it's a new age version of the same idea. What **Givingly** does is make it easy to send not just good-looking cards, but also gift cards to any service. For example, it was my trainer's birthday, and I wanted to get him something. I had forgotten to give him a gift, so I sent him a **Givingly** card, which was a beautiful little e-card I made on my phone in about five minutes. I was able to attach a $100 DoorDash pass to it, so it was like, "Dinner tonight's on me," is what I sent him. It was so easy to send a gift and a gift card, and I thought, "Oh, this is actually kind of interesting." I talked to the founders, and their stats are honestly pretty impressive. People send a ton of these. The way that they grew is a little unconventional. They grew as a Snapchat mini app, which you kind of don't hear anyone talking about. Do you ever hear about Snapchat minis?

Sam Parr

no I don't even know what that is

Shaan Puri

They released this app platform called **Minis**, and you never really hear anybody talking about it. When they showed me their numbers, I was like, "Dude, where are you getting like hundreds of thousands of users?" They said, "Oh, Snapchat. People on Snapchat just send little cards back and forth to each other all the time. We're the number one mini." I was like, "What?" So, I went and looked in the little mini store, and sure enough, there were like one or two at the time. I thought that was kind of interesting, and it made me think, "Oh, I should do a deep dive into Minis and see what else is actually working here."

Sam Parr

That's fascinating. We've talked about this idea that you need distribution first, and if you have that, you have everything. That's why I like Chrome plugins and WordPress plugins. I didn't even know about Minis.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and you know, I don't know if you need it first. There is definitely a case for that. Other people would say, "No, you need a product people love," and other people would say, "No, you need a great team." The way I think about it is... there's this guy, Nir Eyal, who I think also listens to this podcast. He wrote this book called "Hooked" and...

Sam Parr

he's a listener that's cool I've I've I've read that book

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and so it's an awesome book. He told me this once in my office. He said, "Every business is like a three-legged stool. You have growth, you have engagement, and you have monetization." He's like, "You know, when you start your startup, you have none. You just have a stool with no legs. Then you need to get your first leg on there. It can be growth or it can be engagement, like a sticky product that people love." He's like, "A good startup will have two legs, and if you have two, you have a pretty good shot of figuring out the third. The problem is, there are a whole bunch of people here with one-legged stools trying to raise money." I thought that was so spot on. So then, when I looked at companies, I just thought to myself, "Oh, do they have all three legs figured out? Two of the three, I'm okay with. One of the three, I'm gonna wait."

Sam Parr

Dude, I dig it! I completely agree with that. We have a ton of ideas here, and I'm really excited. Can I tell you something really quick though that I learned? Yeah, so do you remember... is it called ProPublica? What was that article that got released with rich people?

Shaan Puri

I think pro republic was the name it was like the billionaire taxes I didn't read it by the way so I'm not that's cool

Sam Parr

You don't have to have read it, but there... okay, so there's something going on. I didn't read it either, but it's not important because it's just the general topic of how rich people pay little taxes. They do that by basically... and I don't know how to bring this up without sounding like a total douche, but when you make little money, you get access to loans that are like 1.5% or 1.2% or whatever it is. It's based off of... like a lot of times they'll budget.

Shaan Puri

people get the most free shit whether it's province or cheap capital or cheap anything yeah

Sam Parr

Basically, when you sign up for a big bank, you get a line of credit. I think it's 75% of the amount of money you have in there at like a 1% rate, or it's based off the London bond exchange. I was curious about this. A lot of folks, like Elon and just most people who are wealthy, they take loans, and that's what they use to live on. But in my head, I'm like, "But you still gotta pay that back." So how are they doing that? I went and talked to some bankers, and do you know what the expectation is here? The expectation is that you actually live on those loans forever.

Shaan Puri

forever yeah

Sam Parr

And your estate pays it when you die. Is that crazy? Is that a crazy thing to think about? I kept thinking, like, "But how does the bank get their money back?" And it's like, "Oh no, no, no. We expect that it's gonna be an outstanding loan for like 50 years, and we're just gonna keep loaning and loaning and loaning."

Shaan Puri

and then when they die

Sam Parr

we're gonna take our cut

Shaan Puri

They're not trying to make their money off you, the wealthy person. They're trying to take all of your $1,000,000 and lend it out to other people who are going to pay higher rates. So they're like, "Okay, we need to lend money. Where do we get the money? Let's get the money from rich people." How do we get the money from rich people? We offer them amazing terms. Then, how do we make money? Well, we're going to take that money and lend it to people who don't have as much, and we're going to charge them more. Right? It kind of sounds screwed up when you say it, but that's the business model here, I believe.

Sam Parr

yeah it's just like something that I didn't understand I feel like I'm just a dumb idiot

Shaan Puri

if I'm wrong I might be wrong because I'm not a banker nor am I a bank nor have I thought about this stuff

Sam Parr

it's just weird I just thought that was weird and that was totally like that was one of those things where it's like

Shaan Puri

hello it's funny

Sam Parr

this is how the world works

Shaan Puri

so I

Sam Parr

was like I I didn't know that I'm just a

Shaan Puri

Country person, you're like, "Oh, you're the CEO. How much do you make?" Oh wow, this CEO came out and said he's taking a $1 salary for the year. What a great guy! And he's like, "No, obviously that just means he doesn't make his money off his salary. He makes it off something else." Okay, he's getting stock. Okay, great! Wow, he's getting all this stock. Stock's going up. You must pay a ton in taxes. No, no, he doesn't. Why is that? Well, he doesn't sell the stock, so he doesn't realize any gain. Okay, then how does he pay for like that jet? Oh, because he just like lends... he gets a big loan or line of credit off of his stock as collateral. And so wait, so he lives for free off that loan? Yeah, yeah, he does. He just has to pay, you know, 1%, 2%, or 3% interest. Oh wow, that seems pretty good! Okay, even better. Let's say he takes that money and uses it to invest. Now that interest payment is also tax-deductible, so it just gets like kinda crazy how the advantages sort of stack up against each other.

Sam Parr

it was

Shaan Puri

He bought real estate. Great! Now he's going to take this huge depreciation on the real estate he bought. Then, if he sells it for a gain, he's going to do a 1031 exchange into another real estate property and pay no gains. It's pretty amazing.

Sam Parr

I felt like when I learned this, I was sitting at a fancy dinner table for the first time. They finally showed me that the small fork is meant for taking crab meat out of the claw. I was like...

Shaan Puri

oh that's that's for

Sam Parr

oh well goddamn like

Shaan Puri

I thought that was the kid's fork

Sam Parr

yeah I was like I just thought that was the little people

Shaan Puri

I don't

Sam Parr

know what that is anyway I that was like a it just like hit me in the head I'm like duh

Shaan Puri

So, that was the... I had a call with a tax guy, a tax strategist. I'm paying for this tax strategist because I'm like, "Okay, what do you do? Figure this stuff out."

Sam Parr

is it worth

Shaan Puri

My brother-in-law had found somebody through a thing, and he saved him a bunch of money. He was telling me about it, and I was like, "I gotta talk to this guy." So, I talked to him, this guy Jeff, and he's like, "Okay, so what are your goals here?" I said, "I want to learn what the rich people do to pay less taxes and then, you know, decide or try to do some of those things if they apply to me." He was like, "Okay." I continued, "So walk me through this. If I make this much money in a year, I'm just writing this huge tax bill check every year. What do they do where they don't have to do that?" He was kind of amused at my line of questioning, but in the end, he was super helpful. He really outlined all the things. Then at the end, I asked, "Alright, how does attorney-client privilege work here?" I said, "Let's just say I tell you that this part of my house is my home office deduction. Sometimes I nap there, and I also store my dog stuff there, right? That's unrelated to my office. How honest can I be with you?" He goes, "You can be totally honest. I recommend you do, but there's no attorney-client privilege. I could be subpoenaed." He added, "I'm not gonna do anything wrong because I don't have to." I said, "Okay, great."

Sam Parr

basically you just need to ask for like red light green light yellow light like where do

Shaan Puri

Now he'll be like, "Yeah, so... are you active or passive on that?" I'm like, "Suppose I was active, what would the number be at the end? And suppose I was passive?" Then I will give you my answer by the end of this, and he's like reading between the lines... "Oh, okay, I understand."

Sam Parr

and we

Shaan Puri

I haven't even actually gotten into any of my stuff, but I wanted to ask all the questions upfront to him about... like, I'm more fascinated with how the tax thing works. I don't even have a very complicated setup. There's not really anything I could do because I'm not like Elon; I don't have this complicated structure and all these shares I can borrow against in that same structure. But I am paying this guy to tell me what other rich people do, and I'm fine with that. I think that's a great trade.

Sam Parr

Do you want to talk about... you want to go? I've got one idea. So, I... well, I... I'm going to do yours. Do you want to do mine first? I mean, I...

Shaan Puri

have to give

Sam Parr

you the summary and then we can get into it later

Shaan Puri

yeah do yours

Sam Parr

okay do you know who paul singh is

Shaan Puri

I never met him but I've heard about him and my buddy is his business partner

Sam Parr

great so paul at baby bump

Shaan Puri

bumpboxes

Sam Parr

Bumpbox... Oh yeah, sorry. So you'll actually know more about this than I do. Yeah, so I reached out to Paul because... I don't even know how I contacted him, but Paul Singh is a guy who started this thing called **500 Startups**. They're not really around too much anymore.

Shaan Puri

well he he didn't start it right did he start it dave mcclure started

Sam Parr

It yeah, maybe he didn't start it, but he was there at the beginning. So, I don't know if "helped start" is the right word. He was just a guy there. Yeah, he helped make it popular. Somehow, he started traveling in an RV; that was his shtick. He actually left San Francisco before it was cool. He said, "I just want to travel in an RV." Years ago, he started a web hosting company. He wouldn't talk to me about it too much because it's kind of private, but he said, "Basically, I make a million dollars a year from cash flow from that." He invests a large amount into privately held companies, both brick-and-mortar and tech startups, every single year. He travels just to meet new potential investments. At one point, I met these folks who had this thing called Bump Box. It wasn't very popular. So, it sounds like you know the people from Bump Box, right?

Shaan Puri

yeah I know it super well

Sam Parr

Oh, well then you probably know a lot more than I do, but let me tell you what I know: He met these folks and he bought into it. He didn't start it, and he didn't buy it outright, but I think he bought into it for like $200,000 or $300,000, something like that. He bought a portion - I don't know how much it was. Basically, the whole shtick was: "We know statistically where you should be in your pregnancy, and the feelings that you're gonna have, and the products that you're gonna need." So we sell you a monthly box for $50.

Shaan Puri

Well, let me simplify that part. I think it's more like when you get pregnant, especially for the first time, there are all these new things happening inside your body and outside your body. You're trying to figure stuff out, and there are like a million things that you're supposed to buy and do, but you don't know what they are. Even if you know what they are, you don't know which product to buy because you want to choose the one that's safe, effective, and whatever else. So, there's a lot of reading reviews and trying products. What Bombbox did, which is pretty genius, was they said, "Look, we're going to find the best products for every phase of your pregnancy: first trimester, second trimester, third trimester, and then post-pregnancy." They package it all up into a subscription box, so it just shows up on your doorstep. You don't even have to think or worry about this stuff anymore.

Sam Parr

And so, Paul came in and he's like, "Yeah, you guys are doing okay. This is pretty good. I think we could think of this as a tad bit bigger, and we could turbocharge this." Now, their vision is basically from conception to about 18, 19, or 20 years old. A mother is handling lots of different stuff, and we want to be the place that she turns to for a variety of different needs to care for her kids. The company is pretty interesting; it's like $40,000,000 in sales. His goal is to grow the company 2x every single year. Of that $40,000,000 in revenue, 60% is from subscription boxes, and 30% to 40% is from other products. Paul came into this business and he goes, "These boxes are great, but let's just make more and more stuff for this person." So, let's figure out everything the mom needs and let's just make it. Now, 30% to 40% of their business comes from medical equipment, which I don't even know what that means. Whatever, I don't know what they sell.

Shaan Puri

So, I don't know if they're selling this yet - they might have to take this out, I don't know if it's out yet - but for example, a breast pump. When you're breastfeeding, you're going to pump in between feeds or whatever, and insurance covers it. These things are expensive devices that you need... medical devices that the doctor sort of gives you that you'll use for the first year or so after giving birth. [Note: The speaker corrected "of your pregnancy" to "afterbirth", which I've interpreted as "after giving birth" for clarity.]

Sam Parr

And the other stuff they sell is they'll figure out that you want this, and they're going to call you. Then, one of their insurance agents is going to call you and say, "Here are the 50 best types of insurance companies that you should check out if you want to buy this breast pump or whatever." It's all covered by insurance, and then they make a cut off that lead. So, kind of an interesting company that I wanted to talk about. I wanted to discuss it because there are a few things going on here. First, this is a guy who has made a lot of money angel investing in tech companies. He told me, "I never want to raise money. I want to own as much of this business as I can." We could either distribute profits to ourselves and our employees, or we could sell for a lot of money. Secondly, I just think that it's kind of interesting. It's not like it's out of my world. You know, I don't have kids, I'm not a woman, but it's just kind of interesting. What do you know about this?

Shaan Puri

So, Leland, who's the founder, and his wife [I don't remember his wife's name off the top of my head], started this thing. They're amazing! He's been so helpful to me in e-commerce. He really knows his stuff and is just an awesome guy. I think they're based in Illinois or something like that. You know, super, super nice in the Midwest. They built this company out; it's kind of a great company. I think subscription is really hard to do, but when you do it, it's fantastic. I think they've done a pretty good job of actually pulling it off. The way he says it is, "We're not a box company; we're a mom acquisition machine." I'm like, "That's absolutely right!" That's why they think bigger than just, "What's one product we could sell them?" Okay, the box might be the first. What's the second? What's the third? What's the fourth? Because we're just going to acquire moms at an insanely good rate and be able to offer them products that they're going to need for the duration of their child's care time.

Sam Parr

And I said to Paul, "You know, this is great, but you are doing a lot of stuff that I think is a bad idea. But it's a great idea! I mean, clearly you're making it work." You are not just focusing exactly; you're focusing on the mother category, but you're launching loads of different stuff. He goes, "Yeah, that's actually our goal. The reason we're doing that is our whole unique strategy is that we're going to move quickly." But he's like, "When you think about it, a hundred years ago at some board meeting, the guys at P&G or Kellogg or whoever it is, the big conglomerates nowadays, they go, 'Look, we could start building... you could start selling more soap, or we could just buy all the soap and then buy all the razors and just buy everything that you possibly use in your home and own the whole category as opposed to just focusing on this one thing.'" And even though tech focuses on this one thing, let's just do the opposite and say, "You know, why can't we build a family of companies?" I thought that was pretty cool. It broke my frame. It's a little different than what I've heard or what I would have done, and I think it's neat to see something that's the opposite of what I like or what I... yeah, whatever I do.

Shaan Puri

The one caveat would be, I think they did focus on getting Bumpbox's core to work for a number of years, right? This is not new, obviously. So, you buy yourself the right to try a bunch of new things by getting your core to work really, really well and get to scale. I think they did that part. They weren't doing, I think, five different things before. The other thing is this idea is so simple, but when you talk to Leland, you're like, "Oh, you're like a badass operator." He's in the nitty-gritty. He's like, "Oh yeah, in Facebook ads, I can copy-paste this over here, and if I do that, it's just a little bit better." The platform doesn't even really support it, but I can do it manually this way. Or, you know, they'll use a tech... like when they're marketing to people, they're like, "Yeah, we actually call..." I don't know if you've ever heard of this. Have you heard of like ringless voicemail? No? It's just like this marketing tactic that he's like, "Oh yeah, we call our customers." I was like, "Don't people hate getting calls?" He's like, "Oh, it's not a call. It goes straight to voicemail." I was like, "What?" He said, "Yeah, there's a way to call somebody that goes straight to voicemail. You leave a message." So it's a great way to... like that's brilliant! Staying in the email inbox, and you're buried under 5,000 of their emails, the person might get one or two voicemails a day, and one of them can be from us. People like hearing from us, and they hear a voice of a human being talking to them. I'm like, he's just doing a thousand of those small operational wins every year, and I'm like, "Oh, that's why you win." Because this is a simple idea that I think nine out of ten entrepreneurs who tried this same exact idea would have failed. Same idea, same time.

Sam Parr

so why

Shaan Puri

do these sell

Sam Parr

a portion of it if if he's a powerhouse he just needs some help

Shaan Puri

Early on, I think they needed some capital, and I think they met Paul. I'm pretty impressed by him, and I think he's been a good kind of partner for them. But, you know, if you offered them a deal now, I don't think they would take it, right? Because he's in a different position now than when he started the company. Him and his wife were at a conference or something like that, and they were just walking. It was like, you know, the parking lot or the hot dog stands, far away because everything seemed convenient at an event. While they were walking there, they basically had this idea. They were like, "Screw it! Why don't we do this? Let's start a business. Why don't we just go for it?" And they just kind of decided to do it. At that time, you're really green; you don't know anything. Now, he knows obviously a lot because he's been doing this for, I don't know, whatever, seven years or something.

Sam Parr

Have you heard of... I'm making a quick pivot. Have you heard of this thing called the Anti-Galloway Index?

Shaan Puri

I don't know if it's a real thing. I know that a lot of people basically make fun of Scott Galloway for being absolutely wrong about all his investment advice and predictions.

Sam Parr

so there's this guy did

Shaan Puri

someone turn it into an actual investable

Sam Parr

It is crushing. No, no, no. So there's this guy named **Scott Galloway**. I've had lunch with him, and he's been nothing but nice to me. However, a lot of people dislike him because he makes some crazy statements. They tease him for being really woke. He makes these predictions where he identifies the winners and losers of each year, and he makes these really bold predictions. A lot of people in tech, and a lot of people in general, make fun of him because of his predictions. I mean, I'm sure some of them are right, but a lot of them are wrong... like really wrong.

Shaan Puri

massive. Yeah

Sam Parr

Like one time, he said that Macy's is going to crush Amazon. That's just an example. Some *shithead* who I love made a thing called the "Anti-Galloway Index." So basically, if you would have done the opposite of everything he said since 2019, tech companies that Professor Galloway has predicted would fail have outperformed the S&P 500 by a whopping 61%.

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. They outperformed the S&P 500, and the return itself is 61%. Sorry, you know, during that time. And you know, it says even if you exclude Tesla, which was one of his big bets that he said failed and then took off, even without that one, still a 23% return.

Sam Parr

that's crazy isn't it

Shaan Puri

this is hilarious who made this let's give him a shot

Sam Parr

I don't know I don't know

Shaan Puri

Okay, that's hilarious! This is cool. So, here's an idea. By the way, I think there are some new products coming out that let anybody create a basket of stocks. For example, I think there's a company called Doji (D-O-J-I) that is doing this. What they do is allow you to create your own index. I can create the "Sean Index," which consists of 5 stocks that I'm investing in. You can actually put your money into my index and buy those stocks. It will then show over time how my index has performed. I can also make a tech index or a high-risk, high-reward index, or whatever. That's my understanding. I haven't used the product, but I think it's an awesome idea. What do you think of that idea?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I mean, why can't you do that on... I've mentioned them before. I think it's called like Bull... Bull something. There's that one, there's that one Israeli Robinhood competitor, and they've done this. It's called Copy Trader. You create... Webull, is that what it is? Yeah, Webull. And you could do this on that platform. I think it's sick. I think it's awesome.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it seems really cool. I don't know if I get some incentive by sharing my basket, but that would be a really cool model. Essentially, I would get a small cut of the assets that are invested into it if we perform or something like that. Then, you could see who's right and who's wrong, not just people who cherry-pick. They say, "Oh, I invested in this one thing and it's done great," but they don't tell you about the five losers they had. It's all on the record—what you picked. Then, you know, you can see the Gallow Index... how.

Sam Parr

I think that's amazing so you wanna talk about some of your ideas

Shaan Puri

Yeah, sure! Which one do you want to do? So, have you heard about this Phantom Secure thing? I thought this was pretty sweet. No? Okay, so there was a story the other day about the FBI having this huge crackdown on criminals. I was like, "Okay, that's interesting. Tell me about it." As I was reading it, they were talking about this story. There was this app called Phantom Secure. Phantom Secure was marketed basically as an app that you can use if you don't want anyone to see what you're writing, right? So, obviously, criminals are like, "Hey, that's interesting! I'd rather write there than on Gmail, where my stuff is stored on a server somewhere, and those records can be subpoenaed or whatever." At its peak, Phantom Secure had 20,000 users and made $80,000,000 off those users. Just for some math, you would pay to use it, right? Because for you, you're like, "This is a business tool for me." If I'm a criminal, I need secure messaging; I'll pay for this. So, they were making $4,000 per user. Just for comparison, WhatsApp makes like $2 per user. So, you know, $4,000 per user is like an enterprise product for criminals.

Sam Parr

but why were they paying for that versus like the other things like telegram or whatever it is

Shaan Puri

Because this was even more secure. What you were getting here is you're not just getting an app; you're getting a phone that has been wiped. All the other apps are gone. There's only a secure messaging app on the phone. That secure messaging app will self-destruct under certain conditions, like if you're arrested or if you trigger it, or whatever. If somebody messes up the password three times, it’s designed as a burner device for criminal communications. So, the CTO gets arrested. The only way you could even get into the app was through referral. This thing existed, and when they arrested the guy, criminals were like, "Oh shit, we don't have this app anymore." So, the FBI—these, I don't know, the story is like these two detectives were out to lunch one day and they said, "Why don't we create another Phantom Secure, but we own the thing? We own the back channel." They created this app called Anon, like anonymous, and they put it on 12,000 phones. It took off, and they let it be out there for 18 months for criminals to use and start to trust and refer other criminals onto it. The whole time, every message was going to the FBI's secure servers. But they just waited. They let the thing spread like a virus throughout the criminal organizations, and then they just took everybody down. I was like, "That is a badass story! How did you find that?" Props! I don't know, I saw the story and I just clicked it. It's amazing.

Sam Parr

So, do you think... okay, I actually think this is an amazing idea, by the way. It sucks that people were using it that way, but I think it's an amazing idea. It's kind of like Silk Road; it's like an amazing idea where it's cool to create a marketplace where you can sell anything. But it's kind of shady... I don't want to support anything where...

Shaan Puri

You know, who are the people that want a marketplace that'll sell them anything? Even different stuff than I can sell on eBay. Oh, maybe, you know, drug dealers and like, you know...

Sam Parr

I'm not in favor of assassins or weapons dealers. I'm not actually a true libertarian because I do think that some stuff should be illegal, right?

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

But I am incredibly bullish on things like... what's it called? So there's DuckDuckGo. Do you see DuckDuckGo? They just took a bunch of funding.

Shaan Puri

oh I didn't see that no

Sam Parr

Yeah, they sold $100,000,000 worth of secondary shares, and they're doing over $100,000,000 in revenue, right? And then also, do you know Proton? Is it called ProtonMail? Right? I saw you last time made it funny.

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. I'm like, I haven't heard... So the funny thing is, all these ideas I remember hearing about, like DuckDuckGo, six years ago. I remember reading about it and thinking, "Oh, that's kind of weird."

Sam Parr

I thought it was like cute

Shaan Puri

Does anyone care? Like, do people really care? Oh no, it doesn't seem like they care. Move on to ProtonMail, Signal, all these apps. They were right in their core insight, which is that people are going to care about privacy. People are going to care about not being tracked by big tech companies, not being advertised to, and they're going to care about not having all their messages stored forever in a way that could get leaked or hacked. You know, you get canceled or you get your business secrets outed, like Sony did, right? And so all those ended up being true. At the time, for years, they looked like non-winners. People weren't really using them at the time.

Sam Parr

I totally agree. I thought it was stupid. I'm like, "Dart2Go? What are you talking about?" Now, it's my... it's what I use.

Shaan Puri

you use dart2go as your default

Sam Parr

I use it often and I'm starting to use it as default yeah

Shaan Puri

and do you use brave because brave is the new one that I think fits into this category

Sam Parr

brave browser I haven't yet because switching from chrome is shockingly challenging

Shaan Puri

right but switching for anything switching from mail messaging they're all they're all a

Sam Parr

bit challenging a bit easier

Shaan Puri

is it why like

Sam Parr

switching my search thing

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I mean, I could probably get good results on Bing or Google. I'm just really trying to go to Wikipedia, Quora, Facebook, or Twitter, right?

Shaan Puri

I'm pretty sure that private browsing, basically, you know, like Brave or a Brave-like company, five years from now, we're going to look at it and it's going to be just like DuckDuckGo or Signal in that it just takes over slowly but surely.

Sam Parr

I agree, and I think that ten years from now we're going to say, "I can't believe you used to use X, Y, and Z, and you would just do that." That's shocking to me.

Shaan Puri

Right, you used to just give up your location to anybody to be advertised to. You used to like Alexa, right? You used to just have like a hot mic on in your house all the time. So those are going to seem like strange situations.

Sam Parr

That we were okay with... That's the inflection. So the other day, if you didn't listen, we had this guy named Mike Maples on. He was kind of a genius, and he talked about inflections. He said, "I invest in early stage stuff, and it's pretty impossible to predict what's gonna be big. So I try to use some frameworks." I just basically think, like, you know, "What interesting things, what interesting inflections are gonna happen in 10 years that's gonna make X, Y, and Z possible, but it's not possible right now?" And I'm gonna try and get into it. So, like, for example, Uber. What made it possible was that everyone started having really great phones that had GPS in them. Without those GPS devices, it would have been very challenging to do this. One of those inflections that I believe to be true, and I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is and invest in stuff like it, is this privacy thing. I believe that to be true. I believe that's gonna be a big thing coming up. I don't know who's gonna win or what the end result will look like, but I believe you need to make a trend.

Shaan Puri

right right you know what to look for and you know what's gonna look strange now right we talked about guardian that app on your phone that like is like a auto vpn for for your mobile apps brave browser I think fits into that you know when mike michaels was on he said something really fast that I thought was actually super insightful that we didn't really go into he goes he goes every like kinda era of tech the old valuable thing becomes like completely commoditized and there becomes a new valuable thing so what does that mean so he goes you know back when it was like at first you were selling pcs and all the money to be made was in the hardware and then you had like Microsoft and others basically come up and they're like cool ibm you be the hardware we're gonna be the software and then like all the money shifted from being made in the hardware to the hardware became completely commoditized and all the money was made in software applications and then it was like oh software applications are for or you know like where all the money is made and then people started making services like Google and facebook it's like wait it's a free software application so then how do you make money it's like because data is the valuable thing you don't realize that right Microsoft doesn't realize that they're gonna charge you for the software we're gonna give away free software but we're gonna make all the money on the data and it's like okay great and the shift that's happening now is that data is the thing that make money we're gonna make our data open open source we're gonna make our blockchain open anybody can build on top of it and we're gonna go open data so then where's all the money to be made and then you have like kind of like a new answer that comes after that and so I thought that was like such a spot on observation and it's like that's how you observe that's how the next you know $100,000,000,000 $500,000,000,000 company looks nothing like the last one if you're just looking to match what's the next Microsoft you're never gonna think it's facebook this college social network that's free or you're never gonna think it's Google the search engine that's free you're gonna think it's supposed to look more like more like Microsoft this like enterprise paid software thing but no it keeps switching because they they react to it that way and so like that's why you know I got kinda made fun of when I was talking about bitcloud but bitcloud I think is an example of this where they took the most valuable part of facebook and twitter which is the the social graph and the data that's on that's underneath it and they were like nope that's gonna be freely available anybody can take our data you can make a better version of bitcloud you can like you can make a new skin make a new client you can make a fork off this the data is all open open chain which facebook would never give you access to their database that shows you every person their photos and their friends you can never get access like that it's their most prized possession and big cloud basically says that's now free instead we're gonna make our money on these creator coins right it's a different method

Sam Parr

I think that you've said a lot of amazing stuff for the past two years. I think this little rant right here might be the most... not valuable in the sense of like whenever you talk about "fluffy bullshit" that's useful, like "I need to have confidence." Yeah, like that is useful. I call it fluffy, but it's incredibly useful. I think what you just said right there actually might be one of the most valuable rants in terms of just money that you've ever said. I think that I do not have the ability to build pretty much any of the things that you're discussing. I don't. You might have the ability, but I certainly don't. I don't think you do either. But I think that if you are listening to this and you think you have the ability to do some of this stuff, I think we've very clearly just stated a thesis of what the world is going to be like in ten years. I would bet my own personal money that that actually is going to be true. And I think it's going to be not just true a little, but like true a significant amount.

Shaan Puri

Right, and there's not just one trend happening at once. I remember talking to Alex, the founder of Calm. He believed that mindfulness, being calm, and meditation were going to become bigger things. There were multiple years where it was not growing very fast because it wasn't a thing. Then, sure enough, people started to feel really fatigued with technology. They felt really busy and constantly "on." The mobile phone was too much. Then, wow, there's this app that is actually designed not for me to constantly use it and check notifications over and over again. This app is to calm me down. Mindfulness and mental health became a thing. It's like, yeah, mental health became a thing, and he was prepared. He was ready with a solution for that, which he had been baking for years.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I think it's amazing. I think it's going to be a thing. Do you want to do a couple more? Do you want to do this Chick-fil-A thing?

Shaan Puri

So, I read this blog post or article that the Chick-fil-A tech team put out. If I'm not the biggest Chick-fil-A customer, I'm in the top 5 easily in the country. So, you know, anything Chick-fil-A, I'm going to read. What they were talking about was Chick-fil-A using AI and machine learning, blah blah blah. I was like, "Oh, let me see what this is. This is some bullshit." But I started reading it, and it was actually pretty interesting. First of all, 90% of it was just over my head, but I thought it was pretty fascinating what they were saying. Well, first, two things. They kind of put their stake in the ground, which I appreciate. They said, "Chick-fil-A is a restaurant that's sort of different from others. We're only open 6 days a week, but we do more sales than people that are open 7 days a week." That's all.

Sam Parr

the thing to say

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Baller! I strive to be Chick-fil-A." You know, like I want to be Chick-fil-A. I want to work less and make more than somebody who's working more. The other thing I thought about was that a lot of people hate Chick-fil-A because they're kind of overly Christian and they're anti-gay marriage and stuff like that. And I'm like, "Oh, that sucks." But like, this chicken is so good, I'm going to eat here. You know, like the chicken wins in the end.

Sam Parr

What I would always say is that I can like R. Kelly's voice but not like him. I can admit that "I Believe I Can Fly" is a banger and also say he's a horrible human being.

Shaan Puri

oh so you're not invited to my daughter's birthday party

Sam Parr

yeah like I could do both it is possible to do both

Shaan Puri

and so with chick fil a it's like I wanna stuff my mouth with chicken and then be like you guys you guys are wrong you know like that's how I wanna be so anyways I'm I'm like you wanna be like chick fil a a product's so good that you can actually be batshit crazy or even offensive and still the person who disagrees with you they need your product it's that good it's must have so then they were talking about their tech and they were like well our stores when we designed them we thought they were only gonna handle like let's say just for simplicity's sake a 100 orders 100 customers a day or whatever but the actual usage the demand is so high for chick fil a that we get 3 times more output than the store was designed for and he's like so how do we do that right once you design the store it's kind of it's already built you can't really go back and change it so we've had to use technology to get 3 x the output that the thing was designed to do he goes so the first thing we tried to do was can we like predict demand better right so if you wanna pump orders out faster instead of waiting till after the order happens I should I should just say hey there's always a lunch rush at noon so I'm gonna throw a bunch of fries in and I'm just gonna know that I get this much demand he goes but the problem is there's too many variables you know a soccer game ends nearby you get a rush of customers the weather changes and that that causes a dip in customers you know there's too much traffic on the highway that's caused a dip so it's too unpredictable you can't just say fridays at noon are always gonna have this much demand too many external variables but he goes so what we did do instead was we put like hundreds of sensors inside of a store so that in real time I'm basically taking the you know like the order as the person's typing it into the to the machine and that's that's being matched with a sensor that tells us how active the fry machine is and then it gives a signal to the worker to basically like hey dude put more fries in there's gonna be more demand or whatever right like they're taking all these signals and how many people are in the drive through times this times that and basically making predictions of what do they need to make so that they can get that extra 20% of orders done per hour for throughput and so I thought this was kind of interesting and I don't even fully understand the model and I'm kind of like I'm kind of like what's like it's not like mansplaining I'm like dumpsplaining like the thing I just said is not actually what they do but it's the essence of what they do which is they take a whole they have a 100 cent 100 like sort of smart device

Sam Parr

In the store, the small podcast is... we just said, like, "Well, they just... they just... it just... it just bumps boxes." All they do is sell stuff that, like, I mean, that's all. They're not experts at Facebook ads or experts at deal-making for the supply chain. So, I mean, they just do that.

Shaan Puri

Right, so there's like a hundred smart devices in Chick-fil-A that are feeding into a machine learning algorithm. This is designed to help a frontline worker, who makes, I don't know, $16 an hour, to be more effective. They're able to source more sales per square foot. I started thinking, first of all, I had no idea that kind of old-school companies like Chick-fil-A are that deep into adding technology into their stores and services. It made me think of two ideas. The first is that the engineers working on this should spin out of Chick-fil-A and then offer this as a service to every other restaurant. It's basically like, "Hey, Chick-fil-A spent $50 million over the last five years developing the technology to make their store smarter. We generalized it, and now it's a product for you." That's my old export framework. They should export this idea from Chick-fil-A and make it available to any restaurant chain. So that's the first idea. The second idea is, what are the companies like McKinsey or other consulting firms doing? Because I assume Chick-fil-A, when they go out in the job market, are trying to hire machine learning and AI engineers. I bet they're finding it pretty hard to compete with companies like Google, Facebook, and OpenAI. I mean, what great engineer is going to work for Chick-fil-A, right?

Sam Parr

Like, I think you'd be surprised, you know, who crushed it with tech stuff. Relatively speaking, it was Walmart. Walmart had this amazing thing called the Walmart Innovation Lab in Silicon Valley.

Shaan Puri

yep

Sam Parr

It was pretty sick. I was reading the other day about the most beloved brands among young people. It's like Target, Vans, Starbucks, and one other one. The number one most loved brand is Chick-fil-A.

Shaan Puri

Right, so fair enough. Maybe some people, like a Stanford graduate, are going to work for Chick-fil-A and they're cutting against the grain. But I think most people are going to gravitate towards more traditional brands. This really told me that the way most companies are going to solve this is not by having as much in-house tech talent, but rather by hiring consultants who take good tech talent and basically hypercharge them to get them to go faster. So, I'm curious. I bet this exists, but I'm curious who's building a McKinsey-type of company—a badass consulting firm that focuses solely on tech consulting. It's hardcore engineering, specifically around the new age stuff of machine learning and AI. I think you could build a new McKinsey, Deloitte, or PwC that, when your company needs tech answers, you hire this high-priced consulting firm. These guys are not just suits who are great talkers and make great pitch decks. These are engineers who come in, actually build, and teach your team how to build as well. I know that venture...

Sam Parr

or all these guys offer that you think

Shaan Puri

They do offer it, but I think their brand is not positioned as such. So, right, I think there's an opportunity to come in and say, "We dress differently, we talk differently. We don't even have these 10 other offerings that McKinsey has. We are actually the best if you really want to hire the best when it comes to engineering." You know, all of our guys are straight out of Facebook, Google, Stanford, Harvard. That's our crew, and everybody's got a computer science degree. You know, this is our CEO. Look, he's a nerd; he's got Cheeto dust on his shirt. Like, that's who you're dealing with here. Whereas today, I know that McKinsey and others are offering these as part of their services, in addition to tax planning and like 10 other things that they're going to do, you know, like financial audits and other stuff. So, I think there's an opportunity to create a big four type of consulting company if you just went all in on engineers.

Sam Parr

I'm on board. I think it's cool. However, I believe that any engineer who's smart would never want to start this business because that would be hard as hell. But I do think that there are so many cool things that started as agencies, and eventually, they create their own software, which becomes badass. For example, I think it would be cool to do this for 5 to 10 years and then eventually create the software. You could become it. It would be a really straightforward way to have a bootstrap software company.

Shaan Puri

so have you ever heard of consensys

Sam Parr

no what is it

Shaan Puri

So, ConsenSys is a version of this. It's in the crypto space. It was started by this guy, Joe Lubin, who was one of the first, kind of like, six guys backing Ethereum. So, he was like...

Sam Parr

I'm on it now

Shaan Puri

He was like, "Ethereum pre-launch." I think he was one of the main funding sources. Essentially, he came from the finance world and he believed in Ethereum. So, he's known as one of the co-founders of Ethereum. The guy basically became a billionaire off of Ethereum. He takes that and spins off Ethereum launches. Instead of sticking with the Ethereum Foundation, he creates ConsenSys. ConsenSys is like, we have an office in New York, LA, Shanghai, and Tokyo. They have kind of a traditional consulting model, but they weren't just doing consulting. What they do is they have in-house projects. For example, MetaMask, which is like the most popular Ethereum wallet, I think that's built into a browser. It was either incubated there or they found the guy who built it and brought him into ConsenSys. That was one of their projects. They basically go to companies like MasterCard or Visa and say, "You guys keep hearing about blockchain, right? Don't you need a group of blockchain specialists who can come and teach your company how you should be using blockchains?" They consult with you and then build projects for you. They kind of operate as this hybrid agency, incubator, consulting company type of thing. I think they forecasted about $60 million in revenue for 2021. Now, I should say, I personally think ConsenSys is kind of a shady company. They hired like 1,000 people, and I don't think they had the business fundamentals to support any of that. So, I don't think ConsenSys itself is going to be that successful. But that's an example of somebody who said, "Cool, all of the Fortune 500 is curious and interested in this new age technology. We can brand ourselves as the de facto group. If you're a big Fortune 500 company, come talk to us about blockchain." How can...

Sam Parr

I help you. This consensus company is *fucking nuts*. It started just recently... oh no, 2014.

Shaan Puri

yeah started right after ethereum

Sam Parr

they do did this guy joseph lubins help create ethereum

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like I said, he was basically one of the big financial backers early on. He kind of helped when they were pre-launch. He was involved when there was this group of 7 or 8 people that were helping build it, and they each had a different role.

Sam Parr

the amount of engineers

Shaan Puri

that this

Sam Parr

Shit is creating in such a short time is crazy. Do you know that one guy? Okay, so what was that Disney movie called? Like, "The Secret Service Kid" or "The First Kid"? Do you remember "First Kid"?

Shaan Puri

okay yeah I don't know where you're going with this

Sam Parr

okay you you remember that movie you remember the kid actor

Shaan Puri

I don't remember him like fuck

Sam Parr

he was also in the in the movie mighty ducks

Shaan Puri

oh which one was he in mighty ducks

Sam Parr

I don't actually know what he was in mighty ducks what the name was but his name is brock pierce

Shaan Puri

okay

Sam Parr

do you know who brock pierce is

Shaan Puri

he's also in sinbad

Sam Parr

yeah well no sinbad was the the the lead he's

Shaan Puri

the security guard first kid okay do you remember this movie I love this movie

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's great, right? Okay, this guy's name is Brock Pierce. He's a Bitcoin billionaire now.

Shaan Puri

what

Sam Parr

yeah dude Google brock pierce so he was a kid he was in

Shaan Puri

Mighty Ducks. He plays young Gordon Bombay, so he's not one of the kids. He's the flashback of Gordon Bombay as a kid.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but he was like a well-known actor. He was in "First Kid," which was a thing. He was also in "Little Big League." He just did all the '90s kid movies.

Shaan Puri

kid movies yeah

Sam Parr

Every movie he had... If you were born in the eighties, you recognize who this kid is.

Shaan Puri

if you're 31 like me and sam then you

Sam Parr

You recognize who this guy is? Dude, Google him. He's a big deal. He's worth like $1,000,000,000. Hilarious! You'll recognize him. He's a Bitcoin crypto guy and he wears that stupid hat.

Shaan Puri

he wears a stupid hat now that's his thing Google it

Sam Parr

go to images go look at brock pierce

Shaan Puri

oh okay yeah I see him

Sam Parr

is that yeah he's that stupid hat leather vest guy like

Shaan Puri

that's what

Sam Parr

He wears... he like goes to Puerto Rico. Dude, that guy is a billionaire now because he was in on crypto in like 2012, 2013, 2014.

Shaan Puri

He's like, "Hey, I need all those royalties from the first kid. We're putting it into ETH. We're putting it into ETH crowd sellers. Let's do this!"

Sam Parr

It's just the amount of wealth that this has created, and so quickly. It's just crazy. It's such a fun story. But Brock Pierce, the *fucking* first kid, Gordon Bombay, when he was a kid, whatever the guy's name was, he's a Bitcoin billionaire.

Shaan Puri

dude he's he's the billy of the week that's it

Sam Parr

he's done 2 of my favorite things

Shaan Puri

2 of my favorite things in my life were **Mighty Ducks** and **Bitcoin**, and this guy's involved with both of them.

Sam Parr

Now, I don't know, but I read his Wikipedia the other day. He's got some shady stuff going on. I mean, obviously, if you kind of look at him, he screams shady. But his partner was like raping kids. I mean, it was pretty messed up. If your partner's doing that, I'm not saying you're guilty, but I'm saying you probably are involved. I just think...

Shaan Puri

that like

Sam Parr

Yeah, like, where there's smoke, there's fire... type of thing. It's kind of weird to me. So, there's this guy. He's got a lot of... this guy's going to be like the modern-day McAfee, you know? Like, yeah.

Shaan Puri

these guys mcafee

Sam Parr

He became a billionaire and then also did some crazy stuff in Botswana or wherever he went. That's what this guy's going to do. But anyway, Brock Pierce... crazy, right?

Shaan Puri

That's crazy! By the way, I also have this little calculator in Excel that I should publish. It's called "Will the Winklevoss Twins Get the Last Laugh?" It calculates what the price of Bitcoin needs to be for them to end up wealthier than Mark Zuckerberg for taking their idea and making Facebook. Then I thought about it and wondered if Zuck just owns some Bitcoin as a hedge, to be like, "You'll never pass me." But I don't think he's got that petty streak.

Sam Parr

I'm thinking about selling my Facebook stock because I feel like I've totally done a 180. I think Facebook's wack as hell now.

Shaan Puri

but why

Sam Parr

It's just lame. Like, who uses that now? I mean, Twitter is just kicking it. It's just whack. And Instagram, I think, is even stupid now.

Shaan Puri

I love how you're like, "Who uses that?" Like a billion people could raise their hand and be like, "Me!" every day, multiple times a day.

Sam Parr

I just think that it's lame. I think TikTok is so much better and more positive. I like it more, but I think that Zuck [Mark Zuckerberg] is someone I would never bet against. I just think that he's the greatest in terms of the show [likely referring to his business acumen or competitive nature].

Shaan Puri

the video of him spear hunting recently

Sam Parr

no what is he doing

Shaan Puri

Oh dude, you gotta Google this: "Mark Zuckerberg spear." There's this video where he went hunting or whatever. I think that might be separate, but he's at this little throwing range. There's a giant target, and then you see Mark Zuckerberg in slow motion running up to it with a spear. He launches the spear and gets a bull's eye on the target. It's just like everything you would expect out of a Zuckerberg video, which is like, you know, two parts awkward, robotic, and one part sort of fearsome and weird at the same time.

Sam Parr

yeah I'm looking at it now I mean this is just yeah wow you got it

Shaan Puri

By the way, you mentioned TikTok. You should follow this TikTok account; it's amazing! It's called "Vitalik Doing Things." So, Vitalik, who's the co-founder of Ethereum, is also like Zuck—hilariously awkward. I really love the guy. I think he's great. When he talks, he might have kind of an awkward way of speaking, but I love his thoughts. I love his brain, basically. He seems like a very genuine guy. He doesn't just shill Ethereum and crypto, saying it's the best thing ever. He's just way more reasonable and clearly mission-driven.

Sam Parr

I'm looking at it now

Shaan Puri

his story is kind of amazing by the way like she works

Sam Parr

like an adopted russian kid or something

Shaan Puri

Do you know how this guy got started in crypto? No? Since he was 18 years old, he discovered crypto. He started by agreeing to write free articles for Bitcoin Magazine back when Bitcoin was super underground. At that time, Bitcoin Magazine paid him $3.50 per article. He was writing all about Bitcoin and all the cool things you could do with cryptocurrencies. He was just a kid, and he used to go to different crypto projects, meet them, and say, "Hey, I'd love to help or intern or write about you guys." He started getting known as this little "blogger boy." Then, this little blogger boy went on to help write the white paper for an idea called Colored Coins, which was for another project. Eventually, he decided, "You know what? I have all these ideas about how I think crypto could change the world. I'm just going to make it myself." So, he invented Ethereum at around age 18 or 19 and became the youngest crypto billionaire in the world since then.

Sam Parr

where's the name come from

Shaan Puri

russia

Sam Parr

what's that mean oh oh the name ethereum

Shaan Puri

Oh, I don't know why you named it Ethereum. Ether is like... it's sort of like... I don't know if you know what ether is. It's like this... it's like out of the ether. It's like the substance of the world. It's basically... I don't know how you describe ether really. It's like matter. It's like a word like matter in the universe. So, I don't know why he called it Ether. I think it was like... I don't know the backstory. I shouldn't really speculate.

Sam Parr

well you should have figured that out I thought you're like betting your life savings on this

Shaan Puri

I saw, I took one look at this guy and I was like, "I'm gonna hitch my wagon to this nerd. This guy's taking me to the top."

Sam Parr

I think that's a good I think that's a good bet to be honest

Shaan Puri

With you, the TikTok channel "Vitalik Doing Things" is amazing comedy because he's just a very unintentionally comedic guy.

Sam Parr

Dan posted it, and he goes, "I immediately realized that I liked it better than all the other alternatives that I'd seen. I suppose it was the fact that it sounded nice, and it had the word 'ether,' referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

yeah that's the

Shaan Puri

guy you wanna bet on

Sam Parr

alright I think that's the show right

Shaan Puri

yeah that's it