All right, we have Sheil today here, who is by my call the most interesting man in tech.
And that is a big claim and I'm aware of the power of my words, but I did not stutter.
Sheil, I think I've told you this before, but I think of all people, I feel like you live in this beautiful blend of you do things that make you successful, but then you do a lot of things that just seem like a lot of fun and they're random and you're letting, you know, life kind of bounce you in whatever
direction it's going to take you.
And it's kind of inspiring and Sam, I know it's inspiring for you because Sam is a perfect square and he just likes to be a perfect square and he doesn't know what to do with this crazy blob shape like you.
Sam, is that right?
Yeah, I mean, he's inspiring to me.
Like he just does the silliest stuff.
But let's just say, so Sheil, here's like, I'll brag on your behalf.
So basically you have what, a $320 million VC fund, you've built a business called Thistle to a hundred million in revenue and you've built another business that sold domains.
I think you've sold half a billion dollars in domains.
You've done all this amazing stuff, but then you do like the silliest things.
Like you did like an online version of the bachelor, you're in a Justin Bieber music video.
Like you do ridiculous stuff.
Sponsored by Taco Bell in the Metaverse.
He had a wedding in the Metaverse with Taco Bell somehow.
I don't even know what that is.
I didn't know about that.
That's awesome. What was that?
Oh, it's a long story.
But yeah. Taco Bell sponsored my wedding.
We had a series, I figured like, if you're going to have a wedding, it's a great excuse to bring your friends together.
And so I was like, it's an excuse for all your friends to come together.
As many times you do it, they're all going to come.
So we had six weddings and nine wedding related events over the course of a year.
One of which was sponsored by Taco Bell because we entered a contest and my amazing wife let me do this.
Yeah. I don't even know what to make of all this.
I went back and I listened because you've been on the podcast way back when I first started it because you were a friend of mine in San Francisco and I wanted to have interesting people on the podcast.
I actually went back and listened to it this morning because I forgot all of it.
I don't remember any of this.
So I'm going to repeat a couple of the stories I actually want to start.
You brought some ideas, opportunities, you see things like that.
I want to get to those, but I want to start with maybe the relatable side hustle.
Can you talk about one of the way, one of the early ways you made money, which was this story about the iPod mini.
I don't even know if you remember the full, full story here, but can you tell this iPod mini hustle story?
Yeah, I was like a new graduate college graduate.
I was working a job.
They gave me an iPod mini, which is the iPod had come out.
It was white and the mini came out.
It was smaller and it was available in four colors, blue, yellow, pink and green.
And right after I got it, my headphones got stuck in a bike.
I was riding and broke and Apple was not selling those headphones like those iconic headphones that I wanted.
Apple wasn't selling them.
So I had this idea of like, let me make these headphones and I'll make them in the colors matching the iPod mini.
And so I went to China for the first time in my life just to like figure this out.
And I like, you went for this reason.
I went for this reason.
Yeah, I just, I was working a full -time job.
I took a two week vacation and I was like, let me spend those two weeks in China.
And I - Where in China?
China's a big place.
You were just like, I'm just going to go.
I'll find a guy. What was the plan?
Okay, so I went to Hong Kong actually originally.
Like I looked up trade shows and there was this big consumer electronics trade show.
So I was like, I'm just going to go to this trade show and then I'll figure it out.
And I hadn't booked anything else.
So like I went to this trade show.
There were thousands of boots.
And so like, I just went around having no idea about anything.
Just like went to these boots, found ones that made headphones.
Their English was very poor.
I have - my Chinese is negligible.
So it was a lot of like, they pull out a calculator and I'm like, this is what I want.
And then like, I had some sketch drawing that I had made of what I was looking for.
And then they're like entering a number into a calculator.
They're like, that's, you know, $5.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, that's like 83 cents.
And then I actually went and visited their factories in like Southern China, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
And it was awesome.
Like, it was a really cool way for me to get into business.
How much time passed between your headphone breaking and you're like, oh, I should sell headphones and I'm in China.
I think it was like a couple months.
So you have a job, you decide to go.
You're like, I'm just gonna kind of fund this off my savings.
Did you place the initial, big initial order?
How did you do it? The initial order, it was cheap.
It was, yeah. 10 ,000 headphones.
And I think, yeah, I mean, for me at the time, it was a lot of money.
Like it was my first job.
But I think it was like a total outlay of $20 ,000.
Gotcha. And so you make these headphones, which by the way, seems like an insane oversight by Apple to not sell the headphones.
They made no sense.
Just like you're saying they were iconic at the time.
And you have to market these.
How are you going to sell like a thousand or 10 ,000 pairs of headphones?
So now there's a playbook, quantitative marketing, all this stuff.
At that time on the internet, there wasn't a playbook to follow.
So I started out like going after blogs.
There were a lot of blogs when I was like, I'll give you a giveaway for your for your readers.
That was that was one technique.
And then one that was pretty awesome is Facebook had just come out.
And at this time, Facebook was limited to college campuses.
And the way that they monetized Facebook at that time was you could set up a flyer.
So like I went to Carnegie Mellon, I could pay $10 a day to have the sidebar at Carnegie Mellon.
And it was basically for like a flyer.
Like if I was throwing a party, I could advertise on Facebook.
And so what I did was I went back to my high school friends who went to the biggest colleges.
So like University of Michigan, Ohio State, like those Penn State those kind of colleges, where they had like 30 or 40 ,000 students.
And I said, Give me your Facebook ID.
And they gave me their Facebook login, I paid them something.
And I was able to market to those audiences for still $10 a day.
Like, I want the biggest audience you can for that $10 a day.
And so we did in Michigan, we did like the colors of Michigan, like blue and yellow stuff like that.
And it was a cool it was a cool little business.
That's, that's amazing that Facebook used to let you do that just to like market to your whole campus for 10 bucks a day is insane.
How much did it end up making?
Yeah, so how much rate to make?
I want to say net was probably like $80 ,000.
Do you plan anything?
So like one of the parts of this episode is that like, you're pretty spontaneous and but but but you have a you know, a $300 million fund, you have $100 million your company, who knows what that's worth, but at least probably a $100 million like pretty like epic success.
But you also do the really random things spur the moment type of decision making.
Yeah, I just like I think I've always chosen like the more adventurous path I would say.
And then I think something I got from my grandfather, my mom's dad was like, he was just always bored and always coming up with new ideas, he would at the time was different, he would like read about something in the newspaper and be like, I should start something.
So like, in India, when TVs were coming out like growing up like there's one TV station and then expanded from there.
And he was like, oh, TVs are gonna be big.
And he started a TV manufacturing company, knowing nothing about anything.
Like he just was like, I'll just learn how to make TVs.
And then he set up a manufacturing company.
It was hard to get us a phone in India.
So he created this like payphone company that allowed people to just use payphones.
And like, he would just read about something in the newspaper.
And like me as a kid, he would mail me like clips in the newspaper.
And he'd be like, should we start this company together?
I'm like 15 years old.
And he's like giving me an idea.
And he had some good ones.
One of the ones I remember, like I just messed up recently, he passed away many years ago, but he had this idea for like, he looked up ancestry .com.
Great business. And he was like, in India, people love their ancestry.
Why don't we start one for India?
And that was an idea he had for me.
Good idea. Wow. Did anybody do that by the way?
Is there now an ancestry?
I actually don't know.
Is that still up for grabs?
Still probably a good idea for my grandfather who now passed away many years ago.
Yeah. That's wild. Sam on the first episode he did, he talked about the domain business.
It's kind of a longer story, so he probably won't do it again.
But the short version of it is, you were selling or you were not selling, you were the auctioneer for people who wanted to buy new domain, like top level domains.
So like dot photo, dot app, dot blog, whatever.
And so Amazon and Google and rich guys would come and they would try to bid and you guys were the auction to do that.
And you would take 4 % of the auction you sold, I got a $500 million worth of top level domains.
But one of the things he talks about, he's like, yeah, so my co -founder was this expert in auction theory and I met him on a train in India.
He just had these little things he threw out.
Like, yeah, I was just happened to be on a train in India, met this guy, ended up starting a company with him.
Was he an American in India or an Indian?
He's German. That's ridiculous.
What year was that?
I met him in 2006. When Dharmesh came on the podcast, Dharmesh the founder of HubSpot, we talked about the Steve Jobs speech that he gave at Sanford.
That's pretty famous.
A lot of people know that now.
He talks about like, you can't connect the dots, looking forward, you can only connect the dots of your life looking backwards.
And the famous example is he's talked about like how he used to love studying calligraphy and fonts, and he got really into that.
He took courses on it and then only later when he started Apple computers, he made sure that the first set of Apple computers had these like beautiful fonts and no other computer company cared about that.
But he did, he connected those two dots, his passion for X and his passion for Y and they both came together.
And Dharmesh pointed out, he's like, you know, I think a lot of people look at that and they just sort of shrug like, well, I guess I just can't connect the dots, so don't even try.
He's like, no, what that means is your job is to be a dot collector.
And yeah, the dots will connect later, but you gotta be a dot collector.
And so when I say that, like, I guess like, what are some examples for you of dot collecting in your life?
Where at the time you didn't really fully realize it, but you chose more adventurous path or you followed your curiosity and then good things later ended up happening.
I think there's a lot of that.
And I love that idea of being a dot collector.
I think there's a lot of like just saying yes to stuff.
So one, I'll just say, I'll say yes to a lot of crazy ideas that people throw at me.
Investing, of course, you have to be discerning when I'm investing other people's capital.
And so for the fund, I think we're very discerning.
But for ideas for myself or like people invite me to speak at a conference in some random country, I've been to like a lot of these countries that people don't go to just because somebody invited me.
And I think that I've learned a lot by doing those things.
One of the crazier things I did is I lived in India on a dollar a day.
It's like a Mr. Beast video.
It's funny. And I did it for a year.
So like I moved to India, I was 24 years old.
And I lived for one year on around a dollar a day.
What does that do in India?
Is that like a McDonald's value meal?
Yeah, maybe like a McDonald's value meal per day.
And so I think like what I learned from that, I think it was like supremely influential in my life.
And I learned one, like, I don't need a lot of money to be happy.
Like I was so happy in that time.
And like I went from I was a management consultant in the United States, like making a six figure salary, and I moved to India on a dollar a day.
And I had a convertible here in India, I had like a bicycle.
And even the bicycle was like a big deal for me to buy.
And I just had so much fun.
And there's this concept in India called jugaad, which is a Hindi word, it means like, there's no perfect word for it.
It kind of means like creative problem solving.
And I think like, I really learned a lot of creative problem solving during that year, like just reusing things.
I learned like the importance of community resourcefulness, which is spent $365 in one year.
That was it. Yeah. Does that include rent?
And what type of program is this?
It would the program no longer exists.
It was called indiecore.
And it was like a volunteer program.
And part of it was like they want I wanted.
So I was working for Kiva nonprofit, microfinance institution.
And I wanted to live like my borrowers.
And so the people that we were lending money to were living on a dollar a day.
So I was like, I'm gonna do it too.
So did you have a midlife crisis when you're 25?
Like why did you do this in the first place?
What was the line? Yeah, the why is kind of silly in hindsight.
But actually, I watched a movie, a Hindi movie called wrong the Basanti, where they're like, the India isn't just going to change, you have to change it.
And I was thinking like, I grew up in America, but I have a lot of affinities to India.
I want to change India.
So I had this like lofty ambition.
And then I don't think I did anything for India.
Like I did a lot for myself.
But I don't think I accomplished anything for India.
That's good. I was trying to convince Sean, like three weeks ago, I think we're it was like live like don't spend any money for a week or something like way less significant than what you did.
And I got like a hard No, a hard no.
I didn't watch that movie, dude.
I wasn't inspired. In hindsight, it was stupid.
Like I got I got super sick.
I got typhoid. And I will be saying that.
Yeah, besides that no, overall, it was an amazing experience.
And actually, like I have so many so many of my close friends today are from that time.
There's another good doc collector story.
I think for you you correct me if I'm wrong.
But I think you were one of the first investors in flexport.
Is that right? Yeah.
And, but you didn't just like, it wasn't just like a traditional VC move where somebody cold pitches you and then you write this check because you're like, Yeah, I totally see the future of freight forwarding.
No, it wasn't that there was some, you did something you just said yes to something before that.
I don't know the full story.
But I know that it wasn't just a cold pitch that walked into your office.
And by the way, just so we have context, what's what's flexport valued ish now?
And what was it when you invested?
Like how big of a deal is this?
Yeah, so I actually don't know the most recent but it's in the several billions of dollars.
And when I invested, it was a $10 million valuation.
Something like 10 million to 3 billion, let's call it.
Yeah. And I sold some of my shares.
And the ones that I sold it was more than 100x return.
Wow. Okay. All right, go ahead.
Sorry. And okay, so flexport.
It's a digital freight forwarding companies.
One way to think about it.
If you have a bunch of stuff in China, I need to get it here.
There's a bunch of steps required in between and they'll help you do those steps.
Like when you wanted your iPhone, your iPod mini headphones to get here.
They got to get onto a container, get onto a boat, get from the boat to the port, port to the truck, truck to your warehouse.
How does all that happen?
Go through customs, all those other stuff.
Exactly, exactly. And so it just made sense to me that this needed to be digital.
It's a real pain in the ass if you don't use flexport or something like it.
And so I met Ryan at a party and we bonded over some really funny things, which were he, I think he's a really hacky guy.
Like he just figured stuff out.
He started the company by himself, a non -technical like outsourced team originally, and then eventually he built, he built up a lot of stuff internally.
But, we were buying Uber credits in our name.
So I did that. You did that too?
Was it what your guy did, Nia?
No, no, no, we were like, I was advertising Google Adwords for my referral code.
And at times, I would buy free rides from this guy in India who was probably doing what we were doing.
Like I would buy like a thousand dollars of Uber credit for like $100 or something like that.
Okay. So we were effectively doing the same thing, like just advertising for our name.
And we kind of bought it over that and became friends.
And then he had done some previous businesses in the import export space.
And so I was like, dude, whatever you start, I'm going to be investing in it.
And it's obviously turned out great.
That's amazing. Isn't it crazy by the way, how like, so, I don't know what Ryan's worth, but like, if you have a multi -billion dollar company, you're in the vicinity of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars of net worth.
So you're like, it's like, you're a big shot.
And just eight years prior, you're selling Uber credit.
And that's a pretty common story, I think.
For sure. For sure, Silicon Valley, it's like, so many people that you meet, I guess like I've lived in San Francisco for 12 years now.
And I this is like a common story.
There's a bunch of people I met early on, who were just like hustling, and then eventually started something that became big.
That's so funny. Sean, that's actually like you talked about the service area, or like all the dot collecting.
I think part of it is being in San Francisco, like I moved here in 2012.
And there were just a lot of interesting things happening.
Like if you were out meeting people, you met people doing interesting things.
The way you're saying you live is different than what you probably advise the companies who you invest in to live.
Just like saying yes to a variety of things, which if I wanted to paint this in a bad way, I'd be like, well, you're 80 D and you can't focus and you're missing out on like year eight, nine, 10, and year 20 where all like a lot of the compounding growth comes from.
How do you balance those two things of being focused, which is like what every VC will ever tell a founder versus saying yes to speaking in Latvia or going to China to start a new company.
It's such a good question.
And I think the way I think about it is, I'm probably more of your zero to one guy than I am you're like one to 100.
And so like I've started a lot of things and then mostly found other people to actually run them over time.
And like some of the things I started got to exit and were successful.
But if you want to have like huge success, multi -billion dollar companies, which is like what we're hopefully investing in, you need to be really focused.
And so I would not invest in most of the companies that I would start.
Like if I were running a VC fund, these companies aren't VC fund, VC type opportunities.
All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you about a friend of the pod who's got their own podcast.
If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend.
She's been on MF and many times and she's got her own podcast called the A16Z Podcast.
And it's all about technology.
If you think about it, technology has evolved like crazy.
I mean, I grew up in the nineties.
I had CDs, phones had cords.
You couldn't use the internet if your mom was on the phone.
And now there's like 3d printers and there's rockets that can go up into space, AI.
There's so much crazy stuff going on.
And you got to have a place that helps you stay ahead of the curve.
And that's what the A16Z podcast is trying to do.
It's a podcast from the VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz.
And it's trying to give you an inside look at the trends that are shaping our future.
They've had guests like Mark Cuban and Neil Stevenson on, and they talk about topics like deep fakes or the science behind GLP ones or autonomous drones, no small boy stuff at all.
Steph is the host. She's awesome.
I think you'll enjoy the podcast.
So check it out. It is the A16Z podcast.
And I like this tagline to say, it's like eavesdropping on the future.
That's pretty cool.
That's a good tagline.
So check it out. The A16Z podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
What's the story of Thistle?
Cause I remember we went out to dinner once many years ago and you're like, you started this, like you helped start.
I don't know what your role was, but you helped start some local food delivery business.
And at the time there was just a bunch of them going out of business.
Sprig was going out of business and it was like, it was like, looked like a bloodbath and you were like, no, we're kind of approaching it.
Like not the venture funded way.
I started ordering from it.
I started eating it all the time.
I love Thistle. And Sam just said it's now a hundred million a year business.
What is, can you tell, what is the origin of this, this business?
Yeah. So the origin is myself and my roommate at San Francisco at the time, we were, we felt like we were just like making unhealthy choices and like eating the fastest thing possible to get back to work or whatever.
And the idea was like, what if there was healthy food in your fridge already?
You would just, that would be the most healthy thing you could eat and the most convenient thing you could eat.
And at the time, as you said, there were these companies, Sprig, Munchery, Spoon Rocket were the most popular ones in the Bay Area where you could order, and for like 10 or 15 bucks in 20 minutes or even 10 minutes, food would show up at your door.
And we were like, should we invest in these companies?
Should we start one of these companies?
I ended up driving for Sprig.
I was like, let me sign up to be a driver.
There he goes again.
That is so funny. And yeah, and for those two people who don't know, Sprig is talking about all of our friend, Gigan, and it was one of the innovators before Doorda, or I think before Doorda.
And you're driving there as like due diligence?
Yeah, I like signed up to be a driver and to like, yeah, diligence.
And I was like, okay, so there are a bunch of problems with this model.
I don't know if this is going to be a massive business.
And the problems are one, they're wasting a ton of food.
Like you cannot predict how much food you need on any given day.
And they were like, yeah, we have this AI model, like we're gonna predict if there's a giants game, it's this, if this, it's actually like kind of impossible to predict.
So wasting like a third of their food, drivers all are driving at the same time, it's like lunchtime, or dinnertime.
That's when it's all happening.
And then routes aren't optimized.
So like, you're kind of driving one place, then you go and you have to go somewhere else across the city.
So we were like, can we solve this?
And so we set out to solve it.
And the idea was a subscription service.
And the idea was you have to order by Friday your meals for the week.
And there are people like it doesn't work for me like I'm, I might be I don't know what I'm doing tonight for dinner, but like somebody might invite me to something I'll go.
But a lot of people are more structured in life.
And the idea was for those people, we can give them a meal plan.
And it's kind of like a private chef might be, and do it at an affordable price point.
And it's been great.
Like the business is awesome.
This whole .co if you're on the East Coast or West Coast, you can check it out.
Is it bootstrapped?
Or do you guys raise funding?
We did ultimately raise funding.
And we've raised a few rounds of funding, but not that much money over time.
But it's gonna be it's a good outcome for you personally.
Yeah, it should be.
You know, look, I think food businesses are tough, low multiple businesses.
And so I don't know what it's going to be.
I haven't like, you know, I haven't like assigned any value to that equity, but hopefully it's going to turn into something else.
Is it still just in San Francisco?
I remember at one point you had said it was like doing 20 million a year in just San Francisco is it did it branch out into like 100 other cities now or what?
So yeah, so it's all along the West Coast and the Northeast as well.
Yeah, I see it out where I live.
I live out of New York.
And I see, do I see billboards?
You might see billboards.
You see a lot of bags.
One kind of like fun thing is a lot of celebrities use them.
And you'll see like videos of celebrities on the internet, like carrying the Thistle bag, which is kind of cool, like this mega famous person is carrying something that I helped create.
You know, you sent us a list of like four or five, six ideas.
And interestingly, Sean, a few of them are in your wheelhouse involving schools, a few of them are in a thing or two that I know about.
And I think it'd be interesting since you see so many ideas with the fund, and you've been well connected in Silicon Valley for I don't know, 20 years now, if you could list out some of the interesting opportunities that you're kind of seeing.
I have some that are like, maybe venture scale ideas.
And then a lot most of my ideas are not venture scale, but I could talk about a few of them.
One is I just got back from Florida, my parents moved to Florida, they moved to a Indian retirement community.
And it's called shanti niketan.
And it's not that well executed.
But the idea is, Indian, they like this guy created a huge plot, where he put up like 100 homes.
And then there's a community center, where they have Indian food, they have like movie nights, stuff like that.
It's really fun for all for Indian people for Indian retirees.
Do you have to be Indian to go?
Or is it just like everyone who lives there is Indian?
Yeah. But like, can I go enjoy?
You can go check it out anytime.
Yeah, eat the food.
And so the idea, it's a good idea.
But it's not that well executed.
And I've just been thinking, like, there are a lot of retirement communities out there.
And most of them are aligned to a single affinity, which is golf.
And so like most retirement communities are built around golf, which is great for people who love golf.
But there's so many other affinities out there that should have their own retirement community.
And, you know, people are living longer than they did.
So like people are still retiring at 65.
But they have like not only are they living longer, they're living longer, healthier lives.
So like, my parents are still like relatively healthy, I expect them to live another 2030 years.
And you can build these communities where people like do whatever their affinity is.
And so I think there's an opportunity here in building a roadmap for an affinity and then like stamping it for other affinities over time.
Sean, don't you know someone in this?
Yeah, yeah. So I've looked at this because I found it fascinating for the same reasons that she was saying.
Well, first, they're good businesses, right?
Because you're basically taking raw land.
And then you're like, you just do the math, you're like, okay, cool, we're going to sell, let's call it 50 plots or 75 plots or 100 plots.
And the numbers get pretty big, pretty fast when you're buying these at a, you know, a raw state and you're able to sell them.
But they also, one of the things that some of them are doing is they blend together, the like different health spans.
So for example, you can start there when you're just retired, but then you need some assistance and then there's like assisted area.
And then there's like, you need a lot of assistance.
And then you're at the kind of like the, the full, full service model, but you don't have to move.
You don't have to like move very far, right?
And your community's still there?
Yeah, you're still in the same community.
You don't have to like, you know, do this like big cross -country move.
It's not the scary thing.
You just sort of, as your body, you know, goes down that gradient, you just sort of move down a different level of service in the community.
And so that's super profitable when you do that.
And the LTV of the customers, I mean, imagine, right, your 2030 years in one of these communities, it's really high.
And I know it because my parents kind of had the same reaction that Shills' parents had, which is, yeah, I mean, that'd be great.
I don't play golf, but if there was a place that had the food we like with people that we get along with the speak the language, you know, that we have have the same cultural values.
And I was like, well, that's going to exist for every, every race, but also not just race, like what are other things that people bond over?
Or is like the central pillar of their life?
And how do you build communities around that?
That's seen, this seems very lucrative to me.
Totally. For this for the one my parents did, there was a waiting list.
So my parents prepaid, they put 100 % of the money down and didn't get the home for five years.
And on these things that you when I think of an old home, I think of like, like a hospital looking center where but these are like a plot of land where you buy a house.
Yeah, they bought a townhouse.
Got it. And you pay like a monthly fee.
Yeah, you pay monthly fee, you get food, which is, you know, for Indian people, especially, I think a really big deal.
And then they have like, they have a bunch of community events, like they they play like cards, they have a community center, they play they have movies, Indian movies going on, they have concerts.
Actually, I talked about our weddings, my parents, one one of the events that they had was a, a showcase of all of our wedding videos.
And I'm like, I called in, like we called in and did cute.
That's hilarious. Yeah, because I feel like, you know, this is like the country club model, but it's just for what else is there besides a bougie country club?
Like what are the other ways that people could get together in a clubhouse and have, you know, that that would add a lot to their lives, because it's pretty lonely.
If you're older, you're living somewhere, you don't know other people and the effort it would take to go make new friends or drive to places, just for certain events, versus having it almost like resort style for you.
It just makes a lot of sense.
And we have a friend who came in the pod, Craig Fuller, who did this with airline or flying enthusiasts.
So basically, he bought a plot of land, he developed homes on it, he pre sold a bunch of them.
And basically the center of the property is instead of a golf course, it's an airplane hangar.
So that's cool. If you own like a Cessna or something like that, you could keep it there and you could live there.
So you know, it's like, I want to go fly this morning, I'm just going to walk out.
It's like a runway in the middle of the neighborhood, basically.
That's so cool. Yeah, so I think you can do this for a bunch of different affinities.
Like I've talked to my Chinese friends and like their parents play a lot of mahjong and like stuff like that, that I think you could just build this around every affinity over time.
So I think there's something there.
And I like these businesses that are high dollar value, meaning you're not going to become a billionaire, but you can make tens of millions of dollars doing this.
Definitely. And very high likelihood of success.
Like you don't need like she'll told you the idea, you don't need a stroke of genius now, and like 50 people could go do this and they would hold you know, it's just a matter of execution at this point.
Like if you just do the basic things.
Like with all these retire, like the, what do they call it?
The shortage of space?
I think so. I think like the reason my parents pre -bought it was they like the other Indian communities, they couldn't get in, like the prices had increased so much.
Or they're just, there weren't availability.
So like they pre -bought into a new one.
So I think it has to be a doctor, it's actually a status symbol.
You can't get into the community or you're just barred if your kid's not a doctor.
Dude, how much is a nursing home?
By the way, should I be budgeting?
Like I was like. Same starts worrying about.
I'm worried about work now.
No, I'm worried about it for my parents.
I was dude, listen to this.
So are you going to put your parents in a nursing home?
I don't know. Like Indians could never do this.
Sometimes I think they like that, don't they?
Like they want, I don't know.
I thought it was like enjoyable.
I don't fucking know.
But so I was, I was being with a, like a financial advisor like three years ago and it was like 20 years in the future, I was like, what's that $250 ,000 a year spend?
And he was like, Oh, you're going to have kids, right?
I was like, Yeah, but I'm not going to have triplets.
He was like, Whoa, well you're going to have one kid and I assume that they're going to go to like a school that's in like the 85 percentile of cost.
And so in 20 years, if you have kids in two years, it's going to be $250 ,000 a year.
And I was like, dude, don't make up this bullshit.
He goes, I didn't make it up.
I just took the trailing like 20 years of growth for like Harvard or whatever 90 percentile cost school is.
And I just applied that for the next 20 years.
And that's just how I came up with it.
And I was like, baffle is that it's going to be I think it was maybe 150 ,000 years.
It was six figures.
And now that I'm realizing with old people homes or nursing homes, I'm pretty sure that some of them are 10 and $20 ,000 a month today.
Yeah, that's right.
That's how much it costs, which is insane, I guess.
So like what am I gonna have to pay if my parents eventually do this?
Are we talking like half a million dollars a year?
It's not that high.
But there's a range.
So you can do a $3 ,000 a month bed.
You can do $8 ,000 a month bed.
You could do $15 ,000, $20 ,000, depending on if you want to go basically the risk -crawl.
Is 20 ,000 the fanciest?
There's no upper end to anything in life.
You can spend an infinite amount of money if you decide to.
But I would say like nice places can be at $10 ,000, $15 ,000 a month.
But also some of these are covered by insurance.
Some of these are not.
Some of this is out of pocket.
There's a whole bunch of different factors.
I know that in also different cultures, like I said, shame on you, just kind of joking.
But in Indian culture, it kind of is like that.
There's an expectation culturally that either the parents move in with you or they're going to have their own house and you're going to have in -home care for them.
So there's all these different ways that you could care for elders.
It could be that they're in a nursing home or a senior facility.
Or it could be that you're paying for somebody to come to their house every day and help them manage day -to -day life at their house, which is obviously going to be a different cost.
My grandparents, for example, they have their own house and they have basically round the clock somebody like a kind of a nurse that basically lives in their house that just helps them with everyday things to just function in their own home because that's what was comfortable for them.
That's cool. I think for all those, any of those different types of things, being in the same place with the community makes sense because your grandparents may not need that one person full -time, they might, but other people might want a fractional one.
It's so much easier if that person lives in the community or comes to the community and can serve many people at once.
A bunch of people tried this for like young, 20 -somethings after college.
It's like an after college community, blah, blah, blah.
But this is way better because people are going to be in these for like 30 -plus years.
Exactly. They have money actually versus that 20 -something.
Yeah, they might spend one or two years after college doing this in a big city, but then they're going to kind of graduate out of it.
So you're going to have this crazy churn all the time.
I like your model better.
All right. What's another opportunity?
What's another idea you got?
Go to this Yelp one.
Okay. So the idea is Yelp for Professional Services.
I originally had this idea I think before Sam put out Sam's list, but the idea is why is it so hard to know which insurance brokers are good, which lawyers, which financial planners, which accountants?
How do I know who's good and is going to serve my needs?
There should be a site for that, and it's easily monetizable.
So I can give you guys an update.
So Sean, 10 or eight months ago, I created this thing called Sam's list, sam's list .co, and it was like Yelp for accountants.
And I just did it because I needed an accountant.
And I found an accountant, by the way on the website.
So it worked. It hasn't like taken off this year.
It did $99 ,000 in revenue and a little bit of profit.
And we have we're adding like a financial advisor category.
But I completely agree with you of having these review sites for professional services is necessary.
Everyone is begging us, by the way, if anyone wants to go do this, go for it.
Everyone's begging us for Sam's list, but for agencies.
I don't know anything about agencies, so I don't know anything about that space.
But that is one thing that people have been begging us for is to have an agency category.
But I think that's just because I have a lot of agency owners who follow me on Twitter.
No, but I think if you look on Twitter, like people are constantly posting like, Hey, I need help with this.
Can you can anyone recommend an agency?
I feel like, like, we have a website designer that I really like.
And I feel like once every couple weeks, I'm recommending him to somebody.
And like, there should be a place where you could just search and find, like, I'm looking for an agency, I'm willing to spend x x to y.
And, you know, it should be a site that does everything.
And maybe Sam's list is that it's fucking hard to pull these off, by the way, it's hard.
Here's why they're hard.
Like what we found was like we had a lot of like mom and pop accountants on the website.
And like, you're basically imagine like, so what Sean did with Milk Road, when I did what I did with the hustles, we'd have advertisers.
But the ideal situation is you have advertisers who are spending tens or hundreds of thousands or once the hustle got to a certain size, sometimes they're spending millions of dollars a year.
But when you're working with a accountant, I'm basically selling packages for like $500.
And you're like the mob, like knocking on the door, like taking off my money.
You know what I mean?
And it like, you know, like the client hasn't paid yet.
So I don't have the money yet.
But I promise I'll get it to you next week.
Like, it becomes a little bit of a game like that.
And so if you're going to do it, the ideal situation is that you're doing it accountants are basically a lot of them are like mom and pop organizations, it's a pretty bad group to sell to.
But like, whatever organization or industry you want to do this for, it has to be where they're already spending a lot of money and it's bigger companies who can write bigger checks.
Otherwise, they're just going to end up like Yelp.
Have you guys ever known like the joke in San Francisco when we lived there was Yelp is where you go to learn how to do sales because it's such a hard job.
And all they they would hire anyone with a pulse.
And they would be like, all right, here's 40 grand a year and then you get commission.
But if you hit your target earnings, you're gonna make 200 grand a year you'd be so rich and they find out that they're having to go like get an ice cream shop shop to give them like nine hundred dollars.
Wasn't it more like threats than sales?
Even it was like, oh, this review is really hurting you, wouldn't you?
But don't you just wish that would go away?
Yeah, I might be able to make that go away.
I never found any evidence of that actually happening though.
Like, people have been like, provide me evidence and I don't think I only there's actual evidence of that happening.
There is with the Better Business Bureau, by the way, but not with Yelp, from what I can tell.
Where did that come from?
I came from business owners complaining about it.
Who else would put that story out there?
Well, so people have said like, okay, if there's any proof of Yelp saying, pay me money and you'll get a better review or that review will get knocked out, send it to me and then nobody has ever sent it.
Fair enough, fair enough.
All right, what's this pearly whites one?
You got my attention?
Okay, so this is my wife's idea.
There's something called the dry bar where you can just go get a blow dry of your hair.
It's like kind of like an in and out thing, 20 minutes and you get your blow dry.
My wife feels like she would like to get her teeth cleaned more than the twice a year that you're able to with a dentist on insurance.
And so the idea is you go to a place and all they do is clean your teeth.
They don't do any, they don't do x -rays.
They don't do anything else.
You're in and out 20 minutes, a hundred bucks, 120 bucks, something like that.
And she would do that like every couple months.
And that's the idea.
So she likes getting her teeth cleaned.
She likes getting teeth.
I think is weird. I don't, but she does.
And I could see people doing it like, Oh, I'm going to an event.
Like I'm gonna get my hair done.
I'm gonna get my teeth done.
Teeth cleaned. Well, I like the unbundling of like the dental checkup, right?
It's like, what's the, what is the one part that people kind of would want the most or need the most often that if you separated out of your normal dental kind of cycles, there might be just like a market for people who just want this.
I kind of buy that, but I thought it would be teeth whitening, not cleaning.
That's part of it also.
And actually like you probably make more money in the whitening side, but what you could do is actually like you standardize and like have a really nice looking space and dentists would franchise this and they'd be like, Oh, I'm a dentist.
I can open one of these.
You need to have dental hygienists and in a dent in some states, you need to have a dentist there.
Um, but it doesn't have to be like, they don't have to be doing the work.
They should have to be there.
Right, dude. I went to my dentist and he had this sign, but like it stood out because everything in the dentist office looked like a dentist office.
It just looked like mom and poppy.
And then there was one sign that was really nice.
And this one sign was basically advertising kind of what you're describing.
It was like a 20 minute teeth whitening for like 85 bucks or whatever it was some, some dollar amount.
And I was like, what is this?
Is this yours? And he's like, Oh, actually, yeah, there's like this company that made this service that then we can then sell to our customers and they provide like the marketing and the name of this.
And they're trying to popularize this, but we just get incremental revenue because we're able to upsell this essentially.
And I was like, Oh, that's basically like the hunt brothers pizza model, what they did for gas stations.
They're like, Hey, here's a, here's a pizza shop inside your gas station.
Somebody's doing this for dental offices where they're putting in this like teeth whitening upsell program.
And I was like, it's kind of work.
I get it. It works.
Because otherwise, you know, the dentist offers like, you know, 1500 services.
If you really wanted to, you could go and ask them, what's it called?
I don't remember the name of this one, but I, I don't think it was, I don't know how popular this is, but I remember just thinking, Oh, this makes sense.
I could see why it's a win for the dentist.
It's a win for this company.
And I can see why consumers would be when you're just sitting there trapped in the chair, literally like strapped into the chair.
It's the first thing you see in front of you.
You stare at that thing for 15 minutes and you're looking at this before and after photo and you're like, yeah, cool.
Add that on. I'll take that.
I'll take the whites.
So I'm obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high net worth people.
The reason being is that there's not a lot of information on this demographic.
And so because I own Hampton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of young and incredibly high net worth people.
We have people worth hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton.
And so every year we do this thing called a Hampton wealth report where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs and we ask them all types of information about their personal finances.
We ask them about how they're investing their money, what their portfolio looks like.
We ask them about their monthly spend habits.
We ask them how they've set up their estate, how much money they're going to lead to charity, how much money they keep in cash, how much money they're paying themselves from their businesses.
Basically, every question that you want to ask a rich person, we went and we do it for you.
And we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people.
So if you want to check out the report, it's called the Hampton wealth report, just go to joinhampton .com, click our menu, and you're going to see a section called reports and you're going to see it all right there.
It's very easy. So again, it's called the Hampton wealth report, go to joinhampton .com, click the menu and then click the report button.
And let me know what you think.
Speaking of Hunt Brothers, another idea.
And this is one of my best friends is doing this and I invested, but it's called Pizzaretta Luna.
And the idea is, when people go to hotels, they most often order pizza like mid range hotels, people order pizza constantly Domino's coming in.
So the idea was, what if we gave you the ability to sell a high quality pizza.
And originally it was like, we'll give you the oven and the pizza that's like hand tossed made in Italy actually shipped over from Italy tastes amazing.
And so a lot of hotels use Pizzaretta Luna.
And then we have the table tents and all that other stuff.
Dude, this is a great idea.
It's just Hunt Brothers, but for hotels and Italian.
Is it working? It's working.
Yeah, it's been pretty successful.
It's still fairly early, but it's it's doing really well.
And what's the hard part about this?
Because like, you know, the Hunt Brothers thing, I think they started out doing wholesale ingredients.
So they already had like a ton of infrastructure in place where they were already selling, you know, does and all that stuff to, to pizza shops all around the place.
And that's why they were able to like, just take the next logical step and create their own brand and then provide those same ingredients to the, to the, the gas station owners.
Is this really hard to spin up or was this actually like, you know, pretty doable?
I mean, it's complicated.
Like my friend is on a plane to Italy all the time.
Like he wanted to make sure it was like super high quality, something the hotels felt really proud to offer.
Wait, but why? I don't think I could tell if this pizza's from Italy.
That's it. Like, like, would my taste buds know the difference between like, he just said it.
You're like, yeah, this is not cheap pizza.
It's not cheap pizza.
Like Italy. Like is that, you know, how like, um, you know how like Florida has like Hollywood, Florida.
Like it's a small town.
Yeah. Can we call it like, you know, is there like an Italy?
Italy, Wisconsin. Yeah.
No, it turns out like the, the ingredients, like it just does taste better.
Like they know how to do it there.
It's actually, so what you're probably thinking is like, isn't it expensive to bring it over here?
It's actually not. It's kind of worth it.
And they have the experience and know how it's actually made like near Naples, which is where pizza comes from.
Dude, my dad, I remember when we were a kid, he saw this pizza place and the sign just said hand toss pizza.
And there was like a guy in the window tossing and my dad wouldn't shut up about the hand toss pizza for like, you know, a year.
And these things just work.
I don't know why there's something to it.
If it says world's greatest cup of coffee, I buy it every single time.
Oh, totally. That shit always works on me.
It always know the, the gray goose story.
Yeah. The taller bottles, the taller bottles, but also, so the, so the guy who started Greg, you started it by the way, when he was in his like 70s, he was like, and he was like 70 years old and decided to start a startup.
Was he successful? So he, before that he had created Jagermeister, not created, but he had brought Jagermeister to the US and made it popular.
So like the Jagermeister story was he's out one night.
All right. He was like part of the family alcohol business.
His wife's is his wife's parents business.
And then they get in a fight, they kick him out and he's like, all right, fuck this.
I got to do something.
And he's out one night.
He sees people, he sees a German like group of friends sipping this like weird cough syrup looking thing.
And it was Jagermeister.
And it was like a after dinner type of thing.
And he's like, what is that?
He inquires about it.
He figures it out and he decides I'm going to become the US importer of this thing called Jagermeister.
But to make it popular, what he did was he created the Jager bomb and got like Jagerrettes, the girls who would go around bars pouring the stuff down college kids' throats.
And he made it the party drink.
So Jager becomes this like big drink.
He's successful. Now he's in his 70s and he's like, all right, I'm going to start a new one.
I want to start a vodka company.
And he basically says I'm going to do two things differently.
First he goes, we need to source the vodka.
And they go, great.
We're on our next flight out to Moscow.
And he goes, no, no, no, we're not doing Russian vodka.
They go, what do you mean?
We're all like, that's where vodka comes from.
He goes, go to France and find me vodka.
They go, there's no vodka in France.
He goes, go to France and find me vodka.
Because if I told you this is French vodka, it just makes that dirty Russian vodka look like crap.
And so they're like, but what if it's not better?
He goes, I said it's French vodka.
That means it's better.
And so he sends one group there and he tells the other group, he goes, go, go to the bar right now and buy the most expensive vodka that there is.
Bring all the bottles here.
And they bring all the bottles and he's basically like lines them all up.
And he goes, cool. Whatever the time, what's the most expensive vodka was like absolute at the time.
He's like, cool. We're going to be 30 % more expensive than whatever the most expensive one is.
And, um, what that's their bottle.
Okay. It's this fat bottle.
We're going to be a tall bottle.
And then he got that he commissioned somebody to make it and they did the frosted glass and he's like, that's it.
That looks expensive as hell.
And he created gray goose off of this very simple concept.
It was like either Italian or French vodka.
Put in this expensive, tall frosted glass bottle.
It's so tall. It wouldn't even fit on the shelves.
So you had to put it on the top shelf because if you put it on the middle shelf, it wouldn't fit.
It was too tall. So it had to become top shelf, like vodka by default because it was so tall.
Isn't that amazing?
That's hilarious. That's so funny.
It's interesting. Cause it's basically like a commodity.
Like it's all, it's all pretty much the same.
It's hard for people to distinguish.
Uh, I have a friend who started a vodka brand.
Um, and the bottle cost more than the vodka.
And it was like a premium brand.
Dude, it seems like a, it seems like, um, like a horrible business to be in.
It seems like really challenging.
Alcohol in particular is tough because the regulatory environment, it's different state by state, what you can sell and you have to get licensed and all this stuff.
It is challenging. Always.
Um, do you want to do another one?
Yeah. What else? Yeah.
What else are you excited about?
She'll that you think somebody could go do?
I think something I want in my life is like a school for AI tools.
So like, maybe you could franchise it.
Um, but for me, like right now, I would pay a few hundred bucks to go to a class, like half a day, just to become a better photographer, iPhone photographer, and like show me how to edit things and like make fun, funny things on the internet, memes or whatever.
Same thing for video.
And I think the same is true for many other products that you can use like AI or software for.
So it's like a software school, um, in person.
Two month, but just for you, like just other two other tools that are useful in your life.
Exactly. Yeah. Is for adults or for kids?
It can be for adults.
I think start for, start with adults and then also kids.
Sean, he was telling me before this, he was like, uh, you know, I'm trying to hire this person to teach me how to do like video editing and use AI.
And I was like two things.
One, Sean actually hired an AI like tutor, which is actually pretty amazing.
And then also you went on this big rant a month ago.
It's probably the greatest in terms of like, Eeky guy of like what the world wants, what Sean's good at, what he's passionate about and like what the world's willing to pay for it.
Like him creating like, uh, you know, another full sale university.
It's quite aligned.
Oh yeah. I had this idea.
Well, first I did, I did an AI tutor, mostly just because I've realized that coaches are just an absolute life hack.
Once you get some money, it's like a luxury that doesn't actually cost that much, but adds a lot of value to your life.
And so now anytime I want, want to do something, my first stop is who's a coach I can hire that will speed up my learning curve, be a forcing function because they're going to show up and it's going to like force me to actually stick to this hobby.
Um, and yeah, I get better faster.
How do you find him?
Uh, with this, I just tweeted it out and I was like, Hey, who could, I'm willing to pay $500 an hour for somebody who's going to, um, you learn all the new stuff that's going on in AI.
And then I want to stay with you for 90 minutes every Wednesday.
And I want you to, um, tell me what's going on, but also like, like teach, like, like I'm hands on keyboard, struggling, trying to do the thing.
Cause that way I'll like actually learn how to do it.
And, um, it's been kind of amazing to be honest.
You're still doing it?
Uh, we're still doing it.
It kind of shifted a little bit like other friends wanted to join.
So I invited a couple other friends and it's just kind of a group thing now.
And, um, yeah, it's pretty amazing.
So, uh, that's, that's been great on the AI side, but just in general I'm a big, like, um, it's like, it's like comical now how, how my first answer to everything is to get a coach and, um, but whatever, I'm going to keep doing it till it doesn't work.
And it's, it's worked at everything.
We hired a, we hired an organizational coach to come and teach us how to like organize a closet.
Like I'm so on board with, oh my god, we pay so much to our organizer.
We don't have a coach.
We just have an organizer who comes in and she is doing so well.
She reached, she, last time she was here, which was like two weeks ago, which is cause she's here all the time organizing something.
Um, she was like, Oh, my client from San Francisco is flying me.
I'm going to go organize their new place in Switzerland.
So she's like, this thing going.
It's an incredible business.
I mean, it's not like a huge business, but she's, she's got people under her and stuff now.
Is it just like magic?
Like, is your house just like incredible now?
I think it's fine. My wife loves it.
Wow. I have a friend that just bought a home.
They moved in its huge house, like 8 ,000 square feet.
They paid this service $25 ,000 to be there before, like to map out where everything like it was like, you know, like starting from scratch to like be there to map it all out, to buy the storage supplies and then to put the labels and to come up with the strategy.
It was 25 grand. That's a lot.
It's, it's a lot. I think we paid, I don't remember.
I don't know how much we paid total because I don't see it, because if I saw it, it would drive me crazy.
But I do remember the kitchen was a couple thousand dollars.
Do you, do you have the like Indian, uh, frugality gene?
Oh, big time. Okay.
You're not a good spender.
I'm not a good spender.
And it's like, my lifestyle hasn't changed that my net worth has increased quite dramatically over the past decade and my, my lifestyle hasn't changed.
I'm always looking for a deal.
Like anything I buy, I'm going to slick deals first.
I've like got the credit card points thing down.
Like all this stuff that shouldn't, I shouldn't be doing is like stupid optimization, but for me, it's kind of a game and I love it.
What are the, give us a quick credit card tip.
What do you, what's your credit card stack?
Because I don't want to do the research, but I might just piggyback off you.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Okay. So, um, I use the U S bank smartly card.
It's 4 % on everything.
And if you just want a single card, that's the card to go off of.
You need to smartly.
That's what it is. Yeah.
Yeah. It's 4 % on everything.
By the way, I use it on my taxes.
So wait, what I pay 1 .82 % to the government to use my credit card.
And then I get 4 % back from U S bank.
It's just like, I'm getting 2 % back on my taxes.
I could use that for like Facebook ad spend.
I could use it for anything.
You need a Facebook ad spend.
Yeah, exactly. Is there like a limit or is it unlimited?
Just your credit limit.
Um, wow. And now it's called U S banks smartly.
And you have to have, you have to have a hundred thousand dollars with U S bank.
But what I did is I just have a brokerage account with a single stock.
And that's my hundred thousand dollars a U S bank.
It's a great deal. Like they, they're losing money on me for sure.
Dude, on one hand, I'm like, this is sick.
I gotta do this. And then on the other hand, I'm like, I just like, you know, I don't know.
Setting it up. Dude, 4 % is pretty legit.
I went through a lot of hoops to get 2 .6 from bank of America.
Bank of America. Yeah.
And uh, so now you're just shitting on that.
This is, this is way better.
This is way better.
I also, you also tweet all types of stuff.
Like the other day you're like, does Robinhood give like 4 % interest or something?
Robinhood has a card that gives 3 % cash back on everything.
And then right now they have a promo where it's like 4 % or 5%, it was 5 % if you put $25 ,000 into a Robinhood brokerage.
Dude, it's kind of interesting because if you are a really big company or you're spending a lot, couldn't the difference between 0 % and 4 % like have a meaningful impact on your margin?
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you're buying Facebook ads for like, could be really massive for you.
For me, even just my taxes, getting 2 % back on my taxes is, you know, many thousands of dollars, pretty sweet.
That's crazy. It's like free money.
I know a guy who, um, well, I could say it actually, his name's David Hauser.
He did a podcast. So it's public.
But he sold his company Grasshopper for I think $125 million.
And he, he's like, you know, famously, he's, he's a friend of mine.
He's like famously frugal and like, you know, whatever.
And he was like, convince American Express to let him pay his tax bill, which on a $100 million sale, I don't know what that would be, 36, $40 million or something.
And he was like, I now have unlimited, basically, like unlimited flying.
He's like, for the next like 30 years, I ball out on, on flying and I don't have to pay for a thing.
And, and he paid with his, you know, $40 million tax bill on Amex.
The one thing, so, um, speaking of miles.
So like, one thing I don't want to do is accumulate a lot of miles.
I already have more miles than I need.
And like people are like, Oh, well you're getting 4%, but I'm actually getting 5 % because I get miles and miles are worth 2 .3 cents to me because, but then I look into it and they're like, how is it worth that much to you?
And you're, you're like flying on some random time of the day on a business class flight, but it's not the flight I want to take.
Just give me cash back and I'll, I'll buy my own.
Right. Also don't miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate.
Plus you don't actually use all your miles.
So even exactly in theory, every point is worth X.
You're never going to use a hundred percent of your points.
So you have to discount back off that.
Exactly. So for me, cash back is king.
Dude, I know a guy in Hampton, by the way, who has, who is a two person company and he spends 10 million a year on Facebook ads or something.
And he's like, I get all these miles.
And so I just, I was like, Hey, book a flight for me and I'll just send you the money.
And I got, you know, I, I bought four first -class tickets to Europe.
And I got probably a 30 % discount because of it.
It was awesome. Significant savings for me.
Do you have any other good, uh, financial wins or hacks?
So you got the 4 % cashback card.
Is there anything else that like is a needle mover?
Actually, I've started using Robin Hood for a lot of stuff.
So Robin Hood had this thing where, and they, they continue to have it where, um, that's dangerous.
I don't think it's dangerous.
Robin's a big company.
They're, they're making lots of money.
I'm, I'm, I'm a Robin Hood bull and they had this thing where you could move your assets over and they would match 1%.
So it's pretty amazing if you have, let's say $10 million of assets in stock somewhere, you move it over, you get a hundred thousand dollars free money.
How long does it have to stay there?
I think it's two years, but I've been very happy with the service.
And, and I, I, I just did the transfer, Acast transfer from Schwab.
Schwab called me like red alert.
And they were like, we'll give you $15 ,000 right now in your account.
You don't have to do anything.
You just, we're just going to give you $15 ,000.
Don't move your money.
And I was like, yeah, but I'm getting a lot of work from Robin Hood.
So I moved it and I've been very happy.
And then I have a lot of other, I now use other products on them and they have a great margin rate.
It's like 5%. It's great.
Do you, are you like a stock picker?
What do you do with your personal portfolio?
Are you just like boring index funds?
Do you do anything interesting?
I want to not be a stock picker.
I want to be boring index funds, but inevitably, like I get excited about an idea and I invest in it.
And it's been very good for me.
I've, I've like been fortunate to outperform the market pretty significantly.
What was your big best pick?
I bought like my biggest position was Nvidia in 2017.
No shit. And what was that based on?
What was the idea there?
It was, I did a lot of research, got excited, and I thought there were two theses.
Like I actually, it was more based on crypto than it was AI.
And I was wrong. Like we moved away from GPUs and moved into a6 for crypto.
But it ended up being right anyway.
And it's been awesome.
So that was in 2017, the stock was rained?
It's about 30 something X from that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like it's a 30 X, 150 today.
Back then it was five bucks.
30 X is wild. Did you keep it in the whole time?
And it was, yeah, I've kept it the whole time.
I haven't actually bought any more or sold any.
So yeah, I have, and it was, it was like my biggest position in 2017.
And you're, you're basically like a FinTech expert, right?
Your fund is FinTech.
You've invested in a bunch of FinTech things.
What's your position on crypto?
Are you like, are you a big Bitcoin bull?
Do you believe in all the altcoins?
Like what's your, what do you stand?
Because I haven't heard you talk about it much.
Yeah. I don't talk about that much.
I, Bitcoin is so actually, looking at my assets, it's probably Bitcoin number one, Nvidia number two, and then like the house that I live in number three.
No way really. And so say more.
Well, what got you into Bitcoin or crypto at the beginning?
And is it, is it just Bitcoin or do you also believe in ETH and Solana and other things?
I only have Bitcoin and ETH and I have some of the others, but like not a meaningful amount.
I actually have a tweet where I was like, like anti Bitcoin and Bitcoin was like 60 cents or something.
And I was like, this is never going to work.
Here's why, governments are never gonna allow it, blah, blah, blah.
And then I finally bought in around $300.
And the idea was, I still like, what people believe then, what people told me was like, it's going to be a fast and efficient way to move money.
And that isn't what happened at all.
Right. And so in some ways I was right.
It doesn't, it doesn't matter that I was right.
I lost a lot of money by not doing it earlier.
And I think as a store of value, like the more successful it gets, the more successful it's going to get.
Right. And so that's it.
And more and more people are putting money in, so I, I've put money in.
Now, for me personally, for me personally, that makes sense.
For my fund, I want to invest in things that like actual people are going to be able to use and like have real impact on the world.
And I haven't found that many use cases.
We have made a couple of investments in stablecoins.
I think there's something there.
I was going to ask you.
Nerdy question. There's a, a lot of people are paying attention to stablecoins right now.
Is that what fart coin is?
That's an unstable coin for sure.
Butthole. People who don't know a stable coin is basically, it's a digital token.
So it has the benefits of being like able to be transferred online easily and programmable and things like that, but it's just pegged to the dollar.
So you put a dollar in a bank account and then one digital dollar is created.
And that's the idea is that in order for the digital dollar to be created, an actual us dollar has to be put in a bank account somewhere.
And so there's companies like Circle and others, Tyler, who are supposedly doing this.
And I guess it's kind of like a lot of people believe it's like stablecoins is taking off now.
There's some charts.
I think that all in podcast been talking about this recently, a stablecoin in the stablecoin business get bought or a tech business that that was bought for over a billion by stripe billion dollars by stripe.
So what is there anything actually going on here or is this just all a lot of hot air?
I think there's something real here.
I think like they're transferring money internationally is challenging and there's something called Swift, which is how banks do it.
It's basically like a messaging protocol.
I think stablecoins can make things easier.
I think still at the end of the day, I think people are overhiding stablecoins because at the end of the day, in on -ramp and an off -ramp to get money.
And they aren't that like I had this issue.
I had a wedding in India and I needed to pay a lot of vendors in cash.
There was a lot of cash and I was like, hey, I tweeted it.
Can somebody help me get a lot of cash in Mexico?
And the reality is there's a reason why it was so difficult.
And the reason is like money laundering.
And actually, also, even what I was doing was illegal because or what what my vendors were doing.
They wanted cash because they don't want to pay taxes.
And so the reason it's hard is because the government doesn't want you to do one of skirt taxes.
And I had this convoluted thing.
Actually, you guys might appreciate.
I convinced my bank to let me normally you can withdraw a certain amount of money per day.
I convinced my bank Schwab to let me do $4 ,000 per account per day.
And I opened six bank accounts at Schwab and I was able to go to an ATM and withdraw $4 ,000 of cash per account per day.
And I was there for the week prior that basically paid for a lot of my wedding.
Do you do you know what that take away from this all by the way is?
That's the second time that you've said something where you went to a major institution and...
And negotiated. Yeah.
When I hear about you went to Schwab, I'm like, is Schwab a person that you can go to?
I don't understand.
You know what I mean?
It's like getting Google AdWords help.
It's like if I had a Gmail issue, it's like, just, hey, Google?
Yeah. I need you to fix this.
I didn't even realize that you could call Schwab or call Bank of America.
And yeah, I know you guys don't offer this, but you got to.
Yeah, I think if you explain your situation to them, actually, one thing I do is I know pretty quickly if I've got a good agent or a bad agent and then if I have a bad agent, I hang up and call again.
What's the test? I just told them my story, told them what I needed, and then somebody walked me through the process and I got it done.
And so I think you could do that all the time.
Speaking of negotiation or talking through something, I think something a lot of people should do is realize you can negotiate at Macy's.
I did this with my wife.
My wife, she bought a wedding dress, a post -wedding dress at Macy's.
It was for one of our weddings.
We were at Macy's and I was like, I want a T -shirt to negotiate.
I want you to get a better deal on this dress.
It was like, I don't know, a $400 dress or something.
And I was like, can you get a better deal?
And she did. She got like 20 % off just by asking at Macy's, for like a person at Macy's and she saved like a hundred bucks or something.
Do you ever do that?
Yeah, I mean, I'll do things like, I'll be like, hey, I won't know if they had a sale recently, but I'll be like, I think you had a sale recently.
For example, I went and got something at Brooks Brothers Zero Day.
And I know that one time a year, they do like a 40 % off sale.
And I went like three months after that sale.
But I was just like, hey, can you, can you match that?
And if you, I always prefer to go to women.
Like the workers that are women, I have way more success because they're just like easier to like get along with.
And like, you know, you like doing a little fake flirt.
But that works like way better for me is for with retail, just like talking to a woman and being like, hey, how are you doing today?
You know, look, I know this is a little obnoxious, but can I get that sale discount or what?
My buddy Dan. And always they have like, they have a bunch of QR codes or like barcodes and they just scan a QR code or barcode.
And it's like, oh, you're 20 % off.
And like, all you need to do is ask.
My buddy Dan, his mom was like the master at this.
If like when we were in college, we would go try to like, you know, buy stuff for our dorm rooms or our apartment.
And she would just, while we're checking out, she'd be like, and give the boys a discount.
Give these college boys, give these boys a discount.
And then they would be like, what for what?
And then he's like, give them a discount.
Yeah. She would just be like, come on, give the boys a discount.
They need it. And then she would just tell them, like, give the boys a discount.
And then sure enough, 20, 30, 40 % off would just happen like that.
And I would never even think to do it, but she would just say it like, like it's a done deal.
Like, oh, it's happening.
Not like, do you think it'd be possible?
Is there any way we would really appreciate it?
She was just like, oh, and then throw that in.
Put the discount on top of it.
Whatever you got, like, give the boys a discount.
Alpha is like every clerk.
Yeah, exactly. I think it's good.
I think it's something like I want my kids to learn.
Like if I have kids in the future, hopefully I will, like I want them to learn these sort of things.
And it's like, it's also like somebody posted like what job do you wish you had?
I wish I had a sales job growing up.
And like the people that are selling you like Dead Sea cosmetics or something, like they're just coming up to you or like cell phone accessories.
They're like, Hey, what phone do you have?
And then they try to sell you something.
And I feel like those are really useful things that I wish I knew.
The Dead Sea guy at the mall.
Oh my God. An unbelievable skill set.
Just an incredible skill set.
Is that a scent or a lotion?
I think it's like a body scrub.
It's got to be like a 98 % profit margin sort of biz.
Yeah. Didn't your dad sell like door to door or something?
Yeah, my dad sold him encyclopedias door to door when he just moved here from India.
It's actually a great story.
He like he, um, he was very poor in India.
He to come to the United States, like he, he studied at IIT in India, great university.
And then like to come to America, he needed to raise money.
So he like raised money from the community to pay for his flight over.
And you had to have $300 to stay in America.
Like on your passport, they stamped that he had $300.
He came with exactly $300 in his pocket.
And so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back.
And he had the stipend as a master's student and then a PhD student.
And he decided to work as an encyclopedia salesman, Indian guy, thick Indian accent at that time.
He was in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, door to door, selling encyclopedias.
And he became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country.
Did he really? I'm like, yeah, he really did.
And he, he asked him about it.
Like, what was the secret?
What was the pitch?
I think it was just like working day and night.
I think was the catch.
And crazy enough, so he, he made enough money to buy an apartment in like a condo in India, like a one bedroom condo in India.
And that's still the condo that like my uncle lived in.
And still like we still go and stay in that condo that my dad bought with his earnings from working as an encyclopedia salesman.
Did you actually have a bunch of good tweets about your dad?
Like, I feel like I kind of know about him.
Like apparently Did that video.
Did you see the video recently?
First of all, he quoted Robert Mugabe, who was like a dictator in Africa.
Like the dad like at she'll sweating.
He like any corroded Robert Mugabe, who I think was like the dictator of Zimbabwe.
Like he wasn't like, quote, it was about treating everyone.
Well, it was like, quote, like, he was clearly on like brainy quotes, and he typed in like a quote on love.
And like it was by like a killer dictator.
And then I was like, Robert Mugabe very, very famous for his quips.
And I'm like, I think Robert Mugabe was famous for something else.
And then he's got this other video of his dad on a cruise.
Like he's like, we lost my dad, but we found him dancing or something like that.
He's like dancing with this other couple.
And then and then so we went on a cruise family cruise couple weeks ago.
It was awesome. I I was very skeptical of going on a cruise.
We went with eight family members.
It was it was super awesome.
But anyway, we go to this tasting menu restaurant, and my dad shows up with a pizza to the tasting menu.
And I filmed him like the people like we're like pretty mad at him.
Yeah, I saw that. I loved it.
He like covered it with a napkin.
He's like, oh, no problem.
No problem. And they're like, no, sir.
We can see it. It's still there.
He's like a baby. You like put something for their eyes and it doesn't.
It just doesn't appear anymore.
Exactly. Exactly. That's hilarious.
Um, dude, thank you for doing this.
Well, this was fun hanging with you as it always is.
And I recommend if you want to hear she'll store go back and listen to the episode.
I think it's episode 18.
I think it's called like the, you know, the guy who, you know, made millions on selling wacky domains because you told your story kind of like in order there.
And it's a great, it's a great episode.
I went, you know, for me to go back and re listen to my voice.
Like anybody knows, if you're listening to your own voice on a recording, that's painful.
And so for the fact that I went through an hour episode this morning, that means the episode's pretty good.
And they give you a follow up.
Before you guys made it so big.
Yeah, you were there.
You were the cause.
And you got to give Sheila a follow on Twitter.
You are a great follow.
Like you just do the, like, it's just the small things in life.
Like you just tweeted out.
Apparently do you have a couch?
That's like a square.
Yeah. I was, it's a nine foot by nine foot couch.
I love this thing. My wife hates it, by the way, but I love it.
You just tweeted out a photo of your couch and I just like, who on earth would buy this?
And then I'm somehow convinced that it's the right decision.
I've always been curious.
They go to the furniture stores and they have the pit.
It looks like a pizza because it's like a nine square thing.
You have to like hop on like a small child and just like crawl around the couch because your feet aren't going to touch the ground.
And you did you bought it.
I love it. It's so fun when you have people over, but it's also modular.
So you can turn it into other things.
Thanks for doing this man.
You're the best. We appreciate you.
All right. That's odd.
I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like days on the road.
Let's travel. Never looking back.
Hey, Sean here. Quick break to tell you an Ev Williams story.
He started Twitter and before that, he sold a company to Google for a hundred million dollars.
And somebody asked him, they said, have, what's the secret, man?
How do you create these huge businesses, billion dollar businesses?
And he says, well, I think the answer is that you take a human desire, preferably one that's been around for thousands of years.
And then you just use modern technology to take out steps, just remove the friction that exists between people getting what they want.
And that is what my partner mercury does.
They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has managing your money and being able to do your financial operations.
And they've removed all the friction that has existed for decades.
No more clunky interfaces.
No more 10 tabs to get something done.
No more having to drive to a bank, get out of your car, just to send a wire transfer.
They made it fast. They made it easy.
You can actually just get back to running your business.
You don't have to worry about the rest of it.
I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now.
And it's used by also 200 ,000 other ambitious founders.
So if you want to be like me, head to mercury .com.
Open an account in minutes.
And remember, mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank.
Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC.
All right, back to the episode.
