Encarta | How To Bootstrap A SaaS Company From $0 to $200M

00:07

Alright. We are live.

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What's going on, man? How are you? What's going on, gentlemen?

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So we have Patrick Campbell. What the company was profit well.

00:17

Yeah. So starting But originally, it was it was something else for first. Right? Yeah. We called it price intelligently. So we did a little piece pricing software, morphed into pricing software and service,

00:28

a lot of service, actually, and then started building this metrics tool and all that kind of stuff and then recently sold the paddle, which is a payments infrastructure product, if that makes sense. And the headline the headline price was two hundred million dollars and you bootstrapped the company. And I think in a tweet, you said you owned I don't know if it was you and your cofounder or company owned, but, like, you guys owned almost all of it. Right?

00:50

Yeah. We we were boost jobs. So we owned a hundred percent of it. And so we, yeah, but we were pretty generous. I think I tweeted about the the fact that we were pretty generous about giving out equity. So I had a hundred percent.

01:01

We had, I think the headline numbers. We had thirteen millionaires.

01:04

We had like thirty, thirty five people made six ks or more, and then there's like a hundred and twenty people all in, people who had worked at the company previously in the current employees who got some sort of consideration out of the deal. So And the price was I think the It was two hundred. It was over two hundred.

01:19

It was over two hundred technically. Like, we're not public. I I don't know. It's so weird about these numbers. It's like, what are you public with? What are you not? And I have a board and a boss now, so I have to have to be a little careful, not that careful, but a little careful about all the things I say. You do you do seem like you're cultivating that trillionaire energy that we like to see. So I gotta say, I'm getting the vibe. I'm getting that I'm getting that extreme

01:43

satisfaction and relief vibe. That comes when you sell a company? Well, Sean, ask him where he just moved to. How tightly wound I am. So, yeah, that's interesting. Ask him where he just moved to. Go ahead, Tom.

01:54

Where did you just move to?

01:56

I moved to Puerto Rico for all of the obvious reasons. Just put it out there.

02:01

Just to be very clear, very obvious reasons why I moved here, and it's eighty. And I'm not a huge fan of the heat, but, I am, like, basically recording with a six k camera right now, and that's that's that trillionaire energy where it's like, where do you put the money? I don't like cars. So I got a really cool, like, dope setup, basically. Right. I mean, that bookshelf needs a little upgrade too, if I'm not if I must be honest here. I feel like, you know This was literally, like, IKEA. I don't have anything behind me like, let's throw some books up and kinda go from there. So we'll we'll get there. We'll get there. So what what exactly did you guys well, I I I we used you, I believe, But I think we got I think we used you for free. And I was like, how did these guys make money? What exactly did did you guys do?

02:43

Yeah. So the the headline kinda positioning is we we basically exist to,

02:48

run and grow subscription businesses automatically. And the automatically thing was thing that, like, really worked well for us. And what I mean by that is, like, in the perfect vision world, you should be able to plug in profit well to any subscription So in the Stripe, charge b zorro, whatever you're using for your billing, and then automatically, like, you get all of your metrics for free, which is probably what you're referencing. And then, we reduce your churn your cancellations automatically,

03:10

optimize your pricing automatically. And now with the whole paddle deal, we, like, take care of your taxes automatically charge backs, all that kind of fun stuff. And so Yeah. I think the the the the big thing for us was when we were this pricing service,

03:23

we wanted to get to something that was more pure software.

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And we were helping a company with their pricing that was about to IPO, and we actually discovered they were calculating MRR and churn completely wrong, which was really fascinating.

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And so we kind of put those two insights together and then started producing this metrics product. So you get all of your financial reporting if you're a subscription or SaaS company.

03:43

And then there were, like, thirty competitors.

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And it was, like, all overnight, like, the space where we thought we were gonna be billionaires for, like, metrics. All of a sudden, it was, like, Oh my god. Like, everyone and their mother is building a Stripe integration. And so,

03:56

we did some homework. We did some research, all that kind of fun stuff and basically discovered that, either this is a terrible business and we should stop doing it because no one is really great at monetizing metrics

04:05

or the free route, which is what we did. And,

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I think that's probably when we should have raised money, like, in in hindsight.

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But long story short, that's what grew and we at at the end. Well, still going, but we had thirty thousand companies using Profawell.

04:19

Basically, when we sold, and that number is just kinda going up every single day, which is great.

04:24

And when you you reached out to us and you were like, hey, I think you do you listen to the pod? Is that kind of why you reached out to us? Of course. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm glad to hang out with the twelve year old from a recent episode. I learned. Yeah. You you said something which kinda tipped me off. You were like, I grew up in Wisconsin doing hood rat shit. Had tip to Sam. And I was like, oh, okay. He knows There you go inside jokes. He he knows. Sometimes you just wanna do hood ratchet.

04:46

Of course. That's why we're getting a ranch built in Utah right now. Everything's gonna be great. I guess that's that's the hood rat world there. Are you are you really? You're building a ranch in Utah?

04:55

Yeah. That's the goal. So I I grew up in Wisconsin. Right? So I grew up, like, literally milking cows as a kid and, like, you know, kinda having the let's let's say the Sampar lifestyle. Like, my dad has no idea what I do. He is, like, just confused. He thinks I'm being a tax evader moving to Puerto Rico. Like, all that kind of fun stuff. Blue collar.

05:12

Sam, he's just more rich.

05:14

Yeah. Yeah.

05:16

What'd you say, Sean? That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's like, you're just more rich.

05:20

Yeah. It looks like. It is that's what it seems like. I do what I can. I think the difference is that Sam's living a little. Like, I'm, like, all in, like, just still, like, nose to the grindstone. But, yeah, I grew up in Wisconsin, and then after school, I I moved to DC. I worked in US intelligence and then worked in, tech in Boston, and that's kinda when I got into the, to to the business base, basically.

05:40

But what I was gonna say is you reached out intelligently because we get a bunch of people who are like, hey, would love to come on and tell my story. It's like, yeah. I'm sure you would. Who wouldn't wanna come on and and tell their story? Like,

05:50

I also like to get, you know, free fame. But the the thing you did was you sent us, like, I don't know, six or seven bullet points. You're like,

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here's, you know, here's some stuff I can talk about. And then you sent us, I would say, like, five or six really interesting things. So I kinda wanna hop around on those.

06:06

Sam, did you have a favorite one that you liked from these?

06:10

Okay. Well, let's so do you have it in front of you? It's hidden industries. I got in front of So, okay. Yeah. Well, you That's the juicy one. He that's the juicy one. So, basically, you said, I think we have the largest subscription financial database in the world. Right? Like, you you guys have a hundred percent. Twenty thirty billion dollars of annual recurring revenue flowing through your system, which is just a bunch of data that will tell you. I bet you there's some things that are like

06:34

No way. They make that much. Right? There's like some surprising niches that that make a lot of money, and then there's maybe some trends or benchmarks. So so take it where you want it, but I think that's that's gonna be super interesting for. I know. I I wanna know it. I wanna know the answer, so I know people listening will too. Yeah. Totally. So there is there's there's a couple things. So one, like, just to give an example, like,

06:54

we we would always, like, so we study the data in aggregate. That's what helps like, train our algorithms for, like, churn reduction and all that kind of fun stuff. But then the other really interesting thing is, like, we publish a lot of content on this. So a lot of SaaS companies, it's what should our churn be? What should this look like? So we publish a lot of that. The other thing that got really interesting was we would basically be kind of like hidden, like, helper for deal flow for a lot of VCs, and we would never, like, reveal someone's, like, particular numbers, of course, not, but, like, what was really fascinating is when kind of the the Jungle Scout Amazon, you know, kind of play was happening, like, we would all of a sudden have, like, all of these apps just break our QA scripts because every time, like, someone was growing too fast, we would go, oh, something must be broken with the metrics. Right? So that's a little bit of context. There's, like, three or four really fascinating industries, especially going into a recession that I think are are really good for, like, people who wanna fast move into them. One,

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of these industries that's kinda crazy to talk about quilting and crafts.

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Quilting and crafts subscription companies are, like, growing insane.

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What's fascinating is the quilting space. If the if you didn't know, quilting is, it's about a four and a half billion dollar per year industry.

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The average quilter spends about eight to nine thousand dollars per year on, like, quilting supplies.

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Most of that comes not just online, but it comes through quilt shops.

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So there's a really interesting local play that we've seen some of these companies use and some of the more popular apps. Quilting just means, like, making a blanket that has, like, designs on it. Right?

08:21

For the most part,

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now as a mom, a Midwest mom who does hardcore quilting, like, there's a lot of other stuff. Like, our house, we didn't have pictures up. We had quilt that were hung -- Right. -- of, like, different designs and all kinds of stuff. But, yeah, every major milestone in my life, I got a quilt. Like, I have six quilts in Puerto Rico that are useless to me just given how, like, warm it is here. Mom, what's there's there's paint. I see it went to someone else's house. They had a painting on the wall. It's like, no. No. No. You don't need that. Just put blanket on the wall. He quilts. Yeah. That's great sound deadening. It's really good sound deadening. But, yeah, it's really interesting because, like, that market has gone wild, like, even, like, knitting, like, crafts that of stuff. And what's really interesting about it is, like, especially in the subscription space, there's a lot of these built in type projects that these companies have started taking advantage of. So there's this thing called block of the month club that has been around since quilters have existed. You create a block of a quilt every single you know, month, basically, and it's like a community type thing. So there's something there. Quilt retreats are a huge thing, like quilt retreats. Like, I didn't know about that. Like, all of these mostly, like, middle aged or older women coming together, like, hanging out and staying up all night talking and, like, you know, quilting. So That's one space, the craft space knitting, all that kind of stuff is really interesting.

09:32

Another one that's interesting is,

09:34

basically, old people

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But before you move on, before Sam, do you know stuff about quilting? I feel like you, maybe we have knowledge about this stuff. No. I I don't, but I'm looking at I just Google a block of the month club. So that that's like a that's like a genre of clubs. That's not like the name of a of a club. Right? And I just I'm just looking yeah. Yeah. Or, I don't know, a style. And I'm looking up what what these are is what these are. And I'm looking at the businesses.

09:59

It wouldn't shock me if some of these are doing nine figures. So a hundred million dollars plus in subscription revenue based off there's some of their traffic. Like, there's craftsy.

10:08

There's annie's

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kit clubs dot com. Do you know anything about these?

10:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's there's there are definitely nine figure companies in the space. I'll put it that way. And then Nine figures a year. So a hundred million plus in subscription revenue for sell, and they basically,

10:23

like, I don't know what differentiates all of them. Just click on the ads, but they just sell, like, they send you a block. You know what a block is, Sean? Like, it's just one square patch of the quilt. A a square patch and during the holidays This is making my dreams come true right now. Just this whole like, learning you guys right now in the People think that I I am bid Western. I grew up in, like, an urban environment. So I grew up in, like, the city. So we didn't we weren't exactly quilting, but We basically, what they do is they they send you a patch, like a like a block, like a six inch by six inch block, and it looks like it's like got, like,

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pumpkins and a snowman on it. And that's, like, the holiday version of But what what do you do with that? You stitch that into the other blocks that you've been getting?

11:05

Yeah.

11:06

So, basically, here's here's how quilt gets made. I can't believe I'm about to explain this. So a quilt gets made by these blocks. Now sometimes it's just designed, sometimes it's got stuff on it, like snowman and stuff like that. So you create these blocks, you build a top. So let's say you want, like, a king-size bed. It's just the top. So it's just one layer of fabric.

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What you do is you take it to a quilt shop,

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and then you go to the quilt shop, and the quilt shop's gonna charge you per inch to put a back and then a batting, which is like the stuff that makes it kind of a blanket. And then they, like, put a design in there as they, like, put those layers together, and then you have a quilt.

11:40

Right. And then some hardcore moms, like my mom, has her own basically quilting machine. It's like an eight foot machine.

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To basically make all of these quilts out. So, yeah, it's and this is the thing. Your mom's a bad Ninety nine percent of them are on, like, Facebook. They're all, like, they're they're really targetable, which is really fascinating. And, like, the YouTube content that's come out of, like, the quilt community is pretty wild as well.

12:03

And, yeah, there was, there's this one in Missouri. I can't remember exactly, but it was, like, this town that was, like, basically, you know, on its last legs. This woman, her, you know, basically her son started doing YouTube videos where she would just explain how to do quilting stuff. It's created it basically revitalized the town. Like, because everyone comes on buses to come visit the town and go to the quilt shop and all that kind of fun stuff. And,

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the quilt shows quilt and craft shows are pretty fascinating.

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This is all my childhood coming out because I got dragged to use bookstores and quilt shops, basically.

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And the quilt shows are wild. Like, they'll just be famous quilters on stage with a camera, like, doing quilt stuff, like, basically, which is just kind of a fascinating world. And It's a lot of money in it that's, like, kind of like old school, meaning, like, there's a couple of really big players that kinda sell everything.

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And there's all these new school folks coming in and kinda lopping off different segments. What what what's a new school company that I I would look at?

13:01

So the one I was describing,

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These moms while you're looking at that these moms, these quilters are not using Instagram a lot. It looks like. I'm, like, looking up quilting on Instagram.

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And Facebook groups, real heavy.

13:16

There's not a ton of pages on Instagram that are doing quilting. But yeah. Sounds like an opportunity, by the way, to, like, build big quilting pages on Instagram. They are Facebook groups. The the Facebook group, I've seen I saw just researching while I'm here. I'm looking at tons of highly engaged quilting Facebook groups.

13:33

Well, it's also interesting. Like, you'll even in Boston, like, there'll be these little, like, meetups. So the younger community, they're they're kinda going through,

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knitting into, like, quilting because it's like, oh, you get to build something. The designs are a lot more modern and all that kind of fun stuff, but Yeah. It's an interesting interesting world. A Missouri star quilt company is the one that I was referencing, the YouTube kind of kind of world. How big is that?

13:58

I don't know their revenue individually. I don't think they have a subscription, but Have you heard of Hallmark, you know, Hallmark cards?

14:05

Of course.

14:06

So the neighbor used to own, like, fifty Hallmark stores. And I was, I was, like, how is this how are these people so rich? And they're like, oh, wait. Now they own, like, a hundred Hallmarks.

14:14

So Hallmark is an interesting company related to this, and I'm everything I'm saying is is off the top of my off memory. So I may be wrong, but They Hallmark is a privately owned business. It's owned by a family, and I think it's one of the largest privately owned companies in the world in America.

14:30

And they do five billion dollars a year in revenue.

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And I think that they make money in two ways. They, have these stores that are franchises, and they just sell cards. So Hallmark just sells cards. And then the other thing that's kind of weird is they own Hallmark Media, which is a Hallmark

14:47

TV station. Channel. Yeah. Yeah. Where they make, like, it's a joke. It's like a genre, Hallmark movies, which is like sappy movies that moms like. But I wouldn't be surprised if they own,

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like, if if they're just, like, you know, behind the scenes in in the quilting game, just calling the shots. You know what I mean?

15:06

Yeah. They're they're deep in the underground quilt game.

15:09

Yeah. Big quilt.

15:15

That's just There's only one one I fear. It's big quilt, couldn't after us. In fact, I'm gonna stop laughing about this. It's those companies, man, they're huge. Some of the big originals, they're huge. This this hobby, I think, has legs for a couple reasons. One is

15:30

It has a bunch of factors that individually

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are strong characters of, like, you know, potentially good businesses, but when you stack them, it becomes even more valuable. So it's like, this is a stacking of trends. So you have the trend of DIY

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and crafts at home. Right? Then you have the trend of oddly satisfying, which is you've seen these videos of people cutting sand or like ASMR or stuff like this, which is like, There's a therapeutic

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benefit to doing these things tact like, these repetitive, tedious,

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clean, straight lines, you know, stuff with your hands that you can do. That has like a a tactile feel to it. Then you add on community.

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And it's like, oh, yeah. People get together and they do this together. Okay. So now this is an excuse. It's like, you know, guys get together and play poker or something like that. It's like, yeah. Yeah. We don't all really, you know, we're not trying to be the best poker player, but it's just an excuse to sit around and bullshit. And so you start stacking these on top of each other, then it's like nostalgia because people are making quilts out of, like, their kids' clothes and stuff like that because know, they don't want to check what else? Yeah. What do I do with these old stuff? And then all it becomes this, like, this, like, memory and this heirloom. And I'm like, you know, I have a blanket that my grandma made before she passed away. And it's like that means something to our family because she made it. Right? It's like a memory of her. So you stack all these things on top of each other. And now you have this like, you know, sort of like this

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you know, Long Island iced tea of a business where you stacked all these different, you know, things into one cocktail, and it's it's just a strong in a son of a bitch? Additionally, I think,

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maybe you could kinda tell me if this is true or not. But from my experience,

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most in Silicon Valley and young people, they're like, we're gonna make this app or this widget for, like, millennials

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or gen z. In reality, every business that I know of personally that are, the majority of my friends who own businesses

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that sell stuff to women in middle America between the ages of thirty and sixty

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hands down

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has the highest loyalty and engagement and lowest amount of churn. Is that accurate?

17:27

Other than businesses. I'm talking about a group of consumers.

17:30

Yeah. So normally, if you're selling to

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normally older audiences from a consumer perspective, retain at a higher rate,

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mainly because of the implications that you're already alluding to.

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It's they're they're less finicky. Like, they're harder to convert sometimes because of that loyalty. But once they're in, they've, like, made a decision, and then they're they're sticking it out for quite some time.

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And this is kind of, like, as a lesson, like, I can tell you anytime there is a more premium product or a more niche audience.

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You just have better churn, like, every single time. So, like, butcher box started with the, you know, whole kind of, paleo crowd, a very niche. It was very premium.

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In terms of price point worked out really well. Woops started very high. They were like, we're athletes and then all these people who were like, I wanna be an athlete too, and they're charging thirty bucks a month. Right? It that's always what I recommend is if you're starting something, especially if you're bootstrapping,

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start high and then come down. It's a lot easier. Than it is to, like, start really cheap and then go back up. Unless you're running a freemium model, which is a very different model to run. Sean, have you ever been doing applebee's

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lately?

18:36

Hell, yeah. Chili's an applebee's, baby. Have you really been to an applebee's?

18:41

Yes. I have.

18:42

That's hilarious.

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So do you know how their whole shtick is, like, even though it's a chain, it, like, they they put, like, the neighborhood baseball team on the wall Which who knows if it's act they're actually from that neighborhood. Like, you know, whenever you go there, they make it feel like that. Well, I had a friend that worked on the advertising

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part of of Applebee's. And one time we had to go there and, like, order everything on the menu and drink and eat it all, it was horrible. But I was like, Tony, this food is, like, quite bad. Like, this is horrible. I don't, like, I don't I don't think you're gonna be able to be able to make this cool. Like, you know, you're telling me, like, we it was like a nuclear green,

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like, limeade. Like, I was like, dude, this is horrible. I don't wanna drink this shit. This is awful. Or, like, one time, I thought Why does the cheese taste like beans? And the beans tastes like cheese. Let's go Yeah. Well, they they sent over something. I'm like, I don't know what this is. It's so we dipped it in there and it was icing.

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Like, it was like a side of icing. And I was like, dude, this is horrible. Why do people like this? He's like, well,

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it's mostly middle America, and they call I believe that they called their ideal customer, a Jim Bob, which is someone who is in their fifties, sixties and seventies and has a little bit of money. But once they continue going there, because feels like it's the last, like, hoo rah for the neighborhood, and they're supporting their neighborhood, and they're willing to put up with the crappy food because it somehow feels like they're way of life is under attack, and this is like the last,

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like, thing that represents their neighborhood, even though it's some huge national table. The world is changing so much. And this is all this is the one staple

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that, like, you walk in and it feels exactly the same as it did when you were fourteen.

20:15

Right?

20:16

What what what are we gonna say? I literally wrote this last night. So I'm I'm reading a Slack message last night, twelve thirty five AM. So right after midnight, I just slack this to myself.

20:25

I I wrote, if you're selling a cool thing to a cool person, you're playing the game wrong. That is hard mode. And this is all of, you know, you you meet most people in DTC, most people in Silicon Valley. It's like they're they are in their twenties. They're cool and new in the world, and they're selling to cool and new people in LA and New York and San Francisco.

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And they're like, yeah. Course, like, you know, I'm gonna create this new cool thing and I'm selling it to new cool people.

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And what you wanna do is you wanna sell simple things to simple people.

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And so, and I had a a buddy tell me this with with,

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project I was working on. He goes, he goes, okay. So what's your main, like, sales channels? Like, on Facebook ads. He goes,

21:06

okay. So that means your customer at scale is an overweight, overworked mom in Texas.

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And he's like, so I look at your website, and I don't see anything that, like, appeals to her. Like, it doesn't have to look like her, at least to look, like, how she wants to look. And, and it's it basically was like, you know, if you can't sell

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to an overweight, overworked mom in Texas, like, you can't scale. And, and I was like, what the hell? Like, okay. Okay. But, like, you don't even know any overweight,

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overworked moms in Texas to you. Well, I used to live in Houston turned out to be a valuable. It's just like you were saying, like, you know, my mom used to drag me probably kicking and screaming to these quilting shows. And now that you're an entrepreneur, you're like, Oh, quilting leash. Tell me more. Right? Like Yeah. It's like we flip, you know, the thing we used to resist now, we we, you know, wanna wanna go go for. So it was the same thing. Like, growing up in Texas, I was like, man, I just thought everything cool was in New York and San Francisco and LA, and I just wanted to go there. And now that I'm here, I'm like, Dude, I don't wanna sell to these, like, fickle millennials who are, like, you know, you know, trying to do, like, berry detoxes. Like, I want to sell, you know, something to a mom in Texas because if I could do that, that's a license to print money. And, like, if you go look at, you know, the best selling car,

22:14

last, I don't know, thirty years is the Ford f one fifty. It's a, you know, it's a pickup truck that sells for for thirty six thousand dollars. You go around San Francisco. You won't see one. Right? You you know, you would think the best selling car in America is the Tesla model x, you know, and it's like,

22:30

that's just not the case, because you're in you're in a bubble.

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And so, you know, and I think the Jim Bob, you know, overweight mom in Texas, the, you know, the the other one is, you know, the enterprise sales one is, like, you know, you're selling to Bob the mid level manager or the, you know, senior manager

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who's, you know, got a little bit of a belly and he's losing his hair. Like, that's who you're selling to. And you gotta, like, Can you nail that sale? Cause if you can, you could build a very, very big business. And I mean that, like, the most loving way possible, which is basically just saying,

22:58

to most entrepreneurs and most kind of young people, like, get out of your bubble.

23:02

Well, you end up not chasing fads.

23:05

Like, there's a lot of fads, like, business built on built on Fads. Right? And and those are great businesses. Right? Like, we hear about them all the time. The guy who what was it? The,

23:13

the teeth? Like, I can't remember, like, the the the hillbilly teeth. You remember this at gas stations? Like, apparently, like, twenty million dollar, like, business. Right? Like, the snuggie,

23:22

huge fad, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe, in revenue, but, like, something on quilting has been around forever. It's not sexy. Right? But the targeting gets really interesting. And, like, some of the other things, right, like, you guys talk about this a lot, where it's like services business,

23:36

you know, lawn care, HVAC,

23:38

all these other things end up being, like, stuff that sticks around for a long time. And know, through the businesses that you don't really hear of, and there's a lot of opportunity in terms of roll up or, like, flipping the model that, you know, was basically being used by the folks that are the incumbents.

23:51

What are some of these other areas? Or if you're if you're gonna innovate innovate on just one thing. So it's like, oh, quilting people love, but there's not a lot of Instagram theme pages and communities on Instagram. Okay. That's like It's just like I can do one new thing on top of nine old time, you know, nine things that are still gonna be the same. And that's like a new thing. Right? Sam did the news,

24:11

but he did it through email instead of through, you know, printed papers. Right? And so, like, one new thing, and then he didn't need to change everything else. Everything else could stay the same because the human needs stayed the same. Oh, yeah. Sorry. We went up long ass time on quilting. But Talking about quilting, baby. It's great. Yeah. What else what else do you got? What are some other, kind of niches that you like? Three other spaces have to go deeper.

24:32

Trades roll ups, plumbing companies, HVAC companies, electrician companies. There's a lot of that stuff happening.

24:38

It's not like machine shops or those types of things where it's just, like, hard to innovate. It's, like, skilled enough that there's a niche and there's, like, a moat, but it's not skilled enough that you can't roll it up. Lot of these guys and gals are looking for basically a way to retire. And it's kind of like accountant, you know, shops. Like, they don't get more than one x max, right, in terms of their business.

24:59

Basically things to sell to kids of old people. That's the best way to put it. What does that what does that mean? I don't know. Yeah. I saw you wrote that. Products that prey on baby boomer, kid guilt.

25:10

Yeah. Yeah. So a really good example.

25:12

It's not a huge company because it's a one man shop out of Boston is nanograms.

25:17

It's basically a,

25:19

I I don't know if you email or you post it on Instagram, and then it automatically sends a postcard to your Nana or to, you know, whomever you wanna send it to.

25:27

So there's some really interesting

25:29

things that are happening there where, like, you have high disposable income in a certain group, low amount of time that wants to be spent necessarily with, like, you know,

25:38

their parents or their grandparents depending on, you know, the the personality.

25:43

And as basically the trend that's happening is there's a huge portion of population that are aging. So you're seeing, like, the multiples on things like, old folks homes or hospice care actually increasing pretty substantially.

25:55

Which is kinda crazy. And then there's there's there's gotta be more technology plays. I don't have like a giant technology play there. I just have seen like a number of people, like, start to build on that particular trend.

26:05

And then the last one, which I think is really interesting is death. Why does that sounded terrible? I find death interesting. No. I'm not that that's scary. But,

26:14

There are four

26:15

or maybe five companies that basically own everything in the literal last mile of your life, coffins,

26:24

the the funeral service homes, everything that's being sold in the funeral service homes, even, like, how the memories and and kind of, like, that last part looks,

26:33

There are some businesses that have tried, but because of, like, the five people kind of owning everything and multi billion dollar companies. What's the big one? It's essentially happened

26:42

I don't have the names in front of me. I know someone tried

26:45

five years ago.

26:47

My name Dave Balter in Boston basically tried to start a, like, memory,

26:51

company where basically you would load up memories essentially. And then all of a sudden, you would get that information back.

26:59

Via Alexa. So you could be like, oh, Alexa would tell me about my grandpa or something like that and what happened, like, six years ago or something with him, in an adventure. But

27:09

He was the one telling me that, like, basically, he would go visit, you know, these companies, like, hey, maybe I could sell to these companies, and they were all, like, buttoned up suits, you know, all that kind of fun stuff. And so That's a space that I think given the aging population. There's probably something there that that makes sense as well.

27:24

Gotcha. K. Let's let's switch gears real quick. You had said something else which was,

27:29

let's do some quick hits. Okay. So let's try to do these.

27:33

Give me the kind of the quick quick jab on these. You said, I used NSA learnings to do competitive intelligence. What the hell are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I my first job out of school, I worked at NSA. So I was an Intel analyst. Best way to put it is I was like Jack Ryan's desk job. So none of the cool stuff. I did have weapons and defensive driving training, which is kinda cool. The defensive driving training is, like, much more useful than the weapons training in my real life.

27:57

But what's really interesting about it is,

28:00

like,

28:01

it's basically was the best career start in, like, first principles thinking and, like, thinking about, like, a target.

28:06

And so I had a competitive Intel program, basically, at Profawal. It was just me running it where,

28:12

I had every quarter I had stats. And it's kinda like what you guys have talked about before, but, like, a little bit deeper. So what I did is I had shadow list of, like, our each competitor, even our partners, like, customers, and I would send, like, shadow NPS surveys,

28:27

you know, product research surveys, these types of things. And the thing that people miss on competitive intel is, like, it has to be done over time. And this is something that, like, they teach you when you're going a target on the inside, which is, like, I need to understand

28:40

not just a point. I need to understand, like, multiple points in order to kinda create a profile, basically,

28:45

How did you do? How did you get that MPS stuff?

28:47

Oh, he say he sent a fake MPS. A straight up sent surveys to their customers to their customers to their customers. So it walked me through that. How do you get through all your research methodologies? This is crazy fascinating.

28:59

Yeah. Yeah. So,

29:01

there's two there's two main sources of information. There's moles and then mass data. Moles are, like, qualitative, like, almost like customer development product conversations.

29:09

These are former employees these are,

29:12

you know, customers I know that are friendly to me. They're not gonna switch because of whatever, but I can, like, talk to them. Okay. Well, let's pause that former employees. You got you find okay. This person used to work here. What what happens? What is the what is the guide? I do this all the time. Present this. Yeah. Me and Sarah talked about this on the pod once. But totally. So I like, you meet him at a conference.

29:33

Oh, it it looked like on Twitter that didn't end well. They weren't, like, for four long, wonderful years at so and so. I've now moved on, blah. It was, like, I'm now over here. Right? They took out the competitor name. That's someone I wanna, like, like a better phrase, target and have a conversation with and be like, hey, man. How's everything going? Right? Like that type of a thing.

29:50

And again, you're not gonna get a a vast amount of information But again, it's about collecting different points. Right? And then I've talked to an investor, and then I've talked to an investor who's thinking of investing in the company. And then I've talked to, like, some customers who are officially churning from the product. And all of a sudden, I can start putting this together. But

30:06

the the more fascinating stuff and and that's color. Right? Like, that's color that kind of guides your because you as an analyst,

30:12

what you're trying to do is you're trying to predict what's gonna happen or based on some sort of stimulus, what they're going to do. Right? If all of a sudden something comes in or there's a feature that's launched or some sort of messaging or marketing thing that happens, what are they going to do? And that's gonna help you respond to whatever they're going to do, right, and prepare for it. Right? So that was really interesting because you almost get, like, feel from those types of people. Like, oh, it turns out, like, an exodus. A lot of people are leaving. That's great. Let's step on the gas here. But the real kind of secret sauce is what, you know, Sam started asking about, which was

30:42

There are many lists of customers that you can find. If they have some sort of a snippet, obviously built with clear bit, all those types of things. Right?

30:50

That's one.

30:51

Everyone likes to talk about their customers. Right? So they have case studies. That's two. Everyone likes to put the logos on their website That's three. Right? And so you're looking at social, you're looking at built with, you're looking at all these logos. And then I'm like, well, who's the main customer? Right? I can go find all those email addresses. Right? And you're not looking for, like, oh my god. I have ten thousand people because most of these people don't have ten thousand customers. Right? What you're looking for is enough that then I'm gonna start sending on an every three month basis a survey or every other month I'm gonna send an NPS survey and then I'm gonna send what domain do you send the survey from? Like, what company name plus feedback feedback dot com or something or what? There's a couple. I don't wanna go too deep, but, like, probably, like, invitations already fried on this. So, like,

31:34

let's say you're, let let let let's say you're trying to, let's say you're a critical spot competitor and you wanna get HubSpot m MPS information, you send an email that it's like,

31:43

hub hubspack feedback dot com or, like, get hubs hubspot feedback dot com or something like that? I wouldn't go that far because if someone finds that out, like, it looks real bad. Right?

31:54

But what I would and I'm sure people are gonna think everything I'm saying is really bad, but, like, whatever. Right? And so what I would do is I'll do more, like, marketing software research dot com or something to that effect. And then the way that I position it is, hey, so and so, you've been identified as a user of HubSpot. I would love thirty seconds of your time to understand what you love and what you don't love. Right? And the thirty seconds there, thirty to sixty seconds there is really important We've sent, our pricing software's fed through surveys. We've sent, like, probably ten million surveys at this point. If you're not compensating someone on an individual basis, The raffle thing doesn't work. It's it I mean, it will work for some people, but most people doesn't work. But you if you're not compensating, you have thirty to sixty seconds. So I'll send a survey that max five questions. Right? NPS standard question.

32:37

Here's five features. What's the most appreciated or most preferred feature on that list? Same list. What's the least preferred? Right? So three questions. Maybe I'll throw in, anything else you wanna tell us about HubSpot. Right? And then all of a sudden I have, like, a picture. And then I'm gonna send, oh, interesting. We're thinking about building this thing. They're thinking about building that thing. Like, let's do something next next quarter or next month. But the same survey can be sent multiple different times. But the important thing here is you're building a timeline. Right? Because now all of a sudden I can see these trends. And what was really interesting, and the thing that I told you guys about was Not only so first, you should never show this information to your product team. It is the worst information. Like, we've seen, like, competitive based product teams are really bad. Like, it just doesn't work.

33:18

But I have data, and I'm happy to share it, that competitive based marketing teams, like teams that and it's correlative, of course. It's not causal, but Those folks who have competitive programs typically have much better retention and lower cack.

33:31

Because they just understand. What are you talking about? Basically, he's saying what in blaming us what he's saying is, you you learn this stuff. If you go tell the product team, hey, here's here's what they said they want, or here's what you should build. Screw them up. They they screw them up. They don't they don't build the right stuff. If you go to the ultimate team and you say, here's what here's what pain points were most important to them or here's what benefits were most important to them or here's What here's how they ranked these guys versus us. The marketing teams,

33:56

if you have that competitive intel as part of your process, a marketing team will perform better, than a marketing team without that component. Perfect example. Real world example.

34:05

We start hearing, this is the early days of the metrics product. We realize getting accuracy for metrics is actually

34:10

incredibly because it's not like marketing metrics that can be, like, five percent off, like, financial metrics. If you tell me I have this much money that's supposed to be in my bank account, I'm making decisions based off that. It has to be ninety nine point nine, if not a hundred. Right? So we start feeling this just as a product team. All of a sudden, we start hearing from some of my, like, my my moles, if you will, and they don't know that they were these people just to be clear. It's not like I turned them and they're, like, you know, there's drops and everything like that. But also I start hearing, like, oh, yeah, we're using it for the accuracy Right? So all of a sudden, we start hearing this totality of information. All of a sudden, that is our core marketing strategy every single time. Comparison pages, we didn't do that many of them, but every single comparison page is the number one thing. All of our ads, like, competitive ads, that's what they were. And then over time, all of a sudden, that became their home pages. Right? Because they're reacting to us rather than us reacting them because we found the snippet that makes the most sense.

34:59

And

35:00

the the most, like, aggressive thing,

35:03

if this doesn't sound aggressive enough is I have all this data. I have all this information. I've collected it. I've synthesized it.

35:10

I know. And by the way, do keep that like a spreadsheet or like a notion and you're making and you're writing, like, narrative formats

35:16

It depends on how I'm using it. Right? So the data is just tracking over time. Right? So I've I can send you, like, some slides or something like that. So I have some slides that, like, I put together for when gonna go raise money for the first time as well because it's it's just really good data in general.

35:30

One thing I have is is basically spreadsheets that has a lot of this information, especially a qualitative, then the other thing that I build off of this are red team docs. I don't know if you guys know what those are, but basically, like,

35:40

every thought I've had or every thought that I learned from this data, because this data, like, customer data and market data is probably ten x more important, but this is like some interesting data that's easy to talk about in a podcast.

35:51

But red team docs is when I look at all this data, it's like What are the things that kill us? Every single thought that I've had that could, like, kill us or hurt us goes into a doc. Some of those docs get

36:02

built out Oh, someone accuses me of x. Someone says this on Twitter. And then it it basically at minimum has, here are the steps that we're gonna take so that when that thing happens, all of a sudden, we have a head start on the on the little critical piece of the thinking.

36:16

But to make a long story short, the the thing that I reference with you guys is I would have like, these are all funded competitors.

36:23

So they would try to go raise money. I would have their,

36:27

the people they were trying to raise money from come to me not tell me that they were trying to raise money, but it's obvious because they invest in the space. It's not the associate. It's like the partner coming, like, all that kind of stuff. Of them would straight up tell me, like, hey, we're thinking of investing and so and so. What do you think? But what I would do then is I would show them these slides. And I would just basically be like, Here's all the information on on us and and the person that you're thinking of investing, and I wouldn't say that unless they were upfront about it. And what it I I know for one, we we killed one of the rounds that someone was trying to raise. Like, I can tell you that definitively.

36:58

Because one, like, Okay. I'm gonna invest in someone going against this psycho who, like, has all this information. Right? Like, that's a pretty scary thing. And then two,

37:06

like, all of our numbers are better because I, you know, we just ended up, you know, doing really well at certain a certain number of things. Right? And so,

37:14

that that I think is, again, it's a program that I think that you should have at least at a bare minimum,

37:20

from a marketing and go to market perspective. If you have a market that becomes really competitive, If you're in, like, the blue ocean as they say, like, it's probably a waste of time. But it's just something where our ocean got red real quick.

37:31

Quicker. I think the look on your face. Tell tell me what you it right now.

37:35

I think I'm very good at research, and I'm very good at doing what I do, which is like doing the exact same thing of finding moles, getting intel, reverse engineering,

37:44

You have said of I think I'm in, a nine out of ten. You have said some some things to me that I realized that there's another couple levels that I can go to improve. It's pretty magical,

37:55

that the that that's pretty amazing.

37:58

Yeah. Well, then keep in mind,

38:00

like, I have all this market data. Right? That was interesting too because all of a sudden I can understand, like so for example, COVID hit.

38:07

Again, I can't look at anyone's accounts, and we're very, very,

38:11

very, very, like, strict about that. But I can see, oh, this sector that has fifty plus accounts, which is our our terms,

38:17

this sector's tanking this sector's taking off. I can change my marketing almost instantly. Right? And when you have some competitive intel, especially on segments, like, I knew the segments that our competitors are going after, and I knew the segments we were going after. It just helps feed the wheel. And when you're feeding the wheel and you're getting that PhD in your business, which I think is really important if if you're going all in, like, all of a sudden, it's, like,

38:38

now a lot of the decisions, like, we don't have to think about because it's, like, we know what's happening. We know what string's being pulled. Let's react to it. Respond to it and kinda go from there.

38:46

How much of your time is spent on that? Are

38:49

sorry. Go ahead. Well, now it's assist the best way possible.

38:53

It's a system now. So it's a system. So I don't spend that much time with it. I just get the collect. Right? And it's just documentation. Right? So for example, I have names. Like, I know I have I have six names that I can tell you. Of users of a competitor of ours. I see them pretty regularly, especially since events are back. I'm friends with a couple of them. Right? And I'm not, like,

39:11

I I'm not hiding the fact. Like, hey. How's it going with competitor a? Right? Like, I'm not hiding it. Right? Like, and that and that's the thing that, like, there's a point here where I I think you're you're kinda being an asshole, like, and and you're, you know, being, like, conniving. And then there's a point where you're just, like, being smart and collecting data. And I try to stay, like, obviously, on that part of of the divide, if that makes sense. Did you ever think about turning

39:34

would you ever turn that to a business?

39:36

Yes. Yeah. I think you could create a really good business around collecting NPS data. Honestly, g two crowd reviews, that's where there's a ton of, like, data

39:46

Like, I would love someone should create this because it would just do my job, which is great.

39:51

Quarterly report, kinda like for this is the thing. Forced to reports, I think there's also, like, a market to, like, blow that whole business up. Give me, like, quarterly reports instead of these reports where you called a hundred people, quarterly report on the same company or on the same industry

40:05

that has, here are the reviews, the new reviews, positive of a competitor, here are the bad reviews, negative of competitor

40:12

here's MPS data, all that kind of fun stuff. And, you know, again, you have to be careful on how much you use this information. Like, you you're using it to build, like, a profile. You're not using it to, like, immediately react to. And that's a complete mistake. A lot of people make. Sean and I had we brainstormed this a lot, and we were talking about how we both use glass door reviews because even though, like, glassdoor is typically, like, either fake or incredibly happy employees or, like, disgruntled employees. There's not really a middle. But, like, you could still get a lot of interesting information from there and you get in intermit information from, like, LinkedIn. Like, they'll say, like, you know, I manage a pipeline of, ten million dollar a year business. And like, oh, okay. Thanks for telling me. And, like, we would, like, we we we brainstorm this idea of this business where we I think we call it, like, I spy or something or, like, it involved, like, spying on, like, many people in a in a particular industry and just sending you an email because you can use like Facebook ads manager and be like, oh, wow. These guys just made a switch. They are now targeting older women as opposed to younger women. And we called it like spy something, and it's kind of funny you are for the NSA. You you you you you don't You are the spy that we were talking about. So, like, it is kind of interesting. I do think that actually a business could be built doing this.

41:19

I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot?

41:22

HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application.

41:27

Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

41:31

HubSpot, grow better.

41:35

I think the problem is is that

41:37

So I've been telling you about customer development, customer research, because you should do all of this for your customers. That's what you first start with rather than your competitors. A competitor stuff sounds sexier. Right?

41:46

But I think that, like, I used to talk when I give talks at conferences or, like, events, all about customer development.

41:52

Fifteen percent of people like care. And then even when you give them, like, the everyone cares. Everyone tweets the tweet. Oh, yeah. You should talk to your customers. Right? Fifteen percent of people actually do the work. And then when you actually take care of the work for them and just give them the data, and this is the the one risk of this type of a business. I'm sure there's a big business in it, but then they, like, don't know what to do with it. Right? And so all of a sudden it's like, okay. You're you're kind of giving people information, which that's probably fine because it's a vitamin then. Like, they don't they they like that they have it. Right? But then actually implementing on stuff, like, they probably don't do it. And that means, like, I don't know if you get if you get a thirty six month customer, like, I'll take it. Right? Like, they don't need to be sixty months necessarily for for you to build a big business.

42:32

Right.

42:33

You're doing one other thing that I find fascinating.

42:36

Actually, well, there's two. You said you're buy I'll start with the the less fascinating one. You said you're buying a shit ton of debt for pennies on the dollar and gonna forgive it. So what's what's actually going on there? Everyone wants to be mister Beast. On a long enough timeline, everyone wants to be mister Beast. That's what it feels. Life theory, I like it. No. So, like, here's the thing. I

42:55

I'm probably going to reinvest everything that I got into this until, like, another business. Did you say how much how much did you make from the sale?

43:03

Trying I I gotta work with a lot of people. So I'm trying not to to to be super blunt.

43:09

Over or under nine figures.

43:13

I'm not gonna say what I got. Let's just put it that way.

43:18

I asked you if

43:19

it was I asked you if it was over or under a hundred million dollars, and it took you a minute to think about it. So what I'm going to assume is that it It's that number. Give or take thirty percent.

43:32

Give or take thirty percent. Yeah. Let's just let's but, like, again, part of it's stock, it's not all cash. Like, there's a lot of different factors here that we I I don't want to get into, but I am I'm going to I'm fine right now.

43:45

Like, I'm gonna do fine that if that makes sense. So, but I wanna reinvest it all because, like, again, I'm I'm not a car guy. I'm not, like and again, I've had it for, like, two months. I went from, this is a fun fact.

43:56

I did the whole Dave Ramsey. Don't have any debt, pay off the house as soon as possible thing. So in January, I had twenty thousand dollars in my bank account and I paid off house. Like, that was it. And then this happened. So,

44:07

I haven't adjusted to it is what I'm trying to say. So, like, this might change in, like, six months, but I I wanna, like, You know, I wanna go all out and and go all out not in a way of, like, you know, like, fancy cars and stuff like that, but, like, and stuff that's really interesting and gets me on the quickest path learning. And one of the reasons for the debt thing, and also the I don't know if you're gonna bring up the other one, but, like, the debt thing was this the debt markets just crazy. Like, it's insane. Right? It's it's it's insane how much debt there is, how that debt is purchased. I don't understand it. And this is one of the ways that I can really understand it and also do some good in the world where it's like I can buy a bunch of debt for pennies on the dollar. I can understand how that system works, how debt collectors work, how the debt collector sell to another debt collector

44:46

and then also, like, obviously, forgive some Make it simple. What what what debt have you bought? What what how are you buying debt? What debt are you buying? How are you buying it? What are you doing with it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm I have not actually purchased the debt yet. Right? I am basically exploring right now. I just put some feelers out because that's the other thing. The debt market. Who did you reach out to to see if you can acquire some debt? See, see, that's the interesting part. That's about to was about to bring

45:09

it's so shadowy

45:11

that, like, there's not, like, a website that's, like, we buy all the debt and then sell the debt and all that kind of stuff. There's nothing. So I have a buddy

45:18

I think he's I don't know if he's cool with me saying his name, but he used to he runs a really cool subscription conference now, but he used to do this. And I was asking him, he was on, like, the the board of one of these debt agent, like, associations, like a business association.

45:30

And I was, like, hey, man, isn't it scammy? And he was explaining to me that, like, hey, man, isn't it scammy? And he was explaining to me that, like, In that market, there's like twenty percent of the market that's like very bad. Like, those are the ones you hear all the stories about threatening people. The other part of the market Like, he was in this. He was like, he would just call people and be like, hey, like, what can you do? Right? Because he bought it for pennies on the dollar. So he's like, give me thirty percent. Great. Like, he made money, they get it done, all that. And this is like someone who owns This is like someone who owes two thousand dollars because they got an X-ray or took an ambulance or

45:59

I don't know whatever else you have credit card debt for. Right? Yeah. And and the other thing is the reason the reason this is interesting and this is, like, kind of speak a little bit more, like, how I'm thinking is, like, I don't wanna build a quilt company, although it would be fascinating. Don't get me wrong. Like, I the stuff Palmer Lucky's doing in defense, I'm all about it. The stuff that, like, Aaron Schwartz did, before his passing, like, in terms of opening up,

46:23

databases that were that were behind, gateways, but supposed to be free and making them free. Like, that's the type of stuff I wanna do. And, like, if you look at debt, money in politics, and defense. Those are three giant areas where, like, there's huge things holding us back.

46:38

Cost plus pricing and defense is holding us back. The Palmer's working on it. Debt, there's just a

46:44

so much debt. Most of its student or not most of it, but a lot of student debt. And so, like, there's something interesting there of, like, how can you make money, but also, like, not be a jerk. Right? And also, like, you know, take that burden off people's plates. And then politics, money, and politics, there's there's something there because I don't think we're just gonna magically have, you know, people wake up and be like, let's vote against having this much money in politics. So, like, What's the world look like where you accelerate the money in politics

47:09

and hopefully break some of the log jams and kinda go from there? So that's that's those are the three things I really think about, in terms of, like, post paddle life, if that makes sense.

47:17

And,

47:18

Sam, do you wanna do anything on those? Otherwise, there's one other Yeah. Well, before we wanna get to this last one. This is interesting, but I I would do wanna do a quick I have a quick question which is

47:28

you you're thirty two. Right? Thirty three? Oh, do you?

47:32

Yeah. Thirty

47:33

thirty three. Yeah. Turn thirty four in a couple months. So you're thirty three thirty four. You just made a huge sum of money. Have you done the math

47:41

to when you become a billionaire,

47:44

I'm sure you have. And,

47:47

how does it feel to have such a huge some at such a young age. I mean, the that's pretty wild. Right?

47:54

Here's the thing I learned.

47:56

And some of your guests so, actually, friend of the show, Hermozy. I talked to him a couple weeks ago.

48:01

And

48:03

what I told him, and he kind of was like, yeah, exactly. Back was

48:06

it amplifies the worst in you and the best in you. You're just the same person. Right? So, like, I thought when I was gonna get money, I was gonna, like, Oh, I'm gonna be healthier because I can, like, afford, you know, someone to yell at me about eating. It's like, no. Like, now I can afford to go to terrible places all the time. Right? And

48:23

You know, I could afford that before, but, like, I think it's one of those things where

48:27

I'm a big believer. It's something I talk a lot about, and I don't know if this is interesting, but, like,

48:31

Teddy Roosevelt of all people wrote this speech called the strenuous life,

48:36

and is basically his concept. And I think it's a better speech. Everyone references man in the arena. I think man in the arena shit versus strenuous life, he basically said in a modern parlance, like, if you've been given something, like, whether it's, you know, middle class life, upper class life, whatever it is, if if you've had an exit, even though you worked for it, right, whatever.

48:54

Like, your duty is to re like, go be strenuous Right? Your duties to go crazy and, like, you know, go deeper and make big swings. Right? And that's why I'm talking about, like, I don't wanna go into quilting because it's, like, yeah, there's a money grab there. I think it's great. Like, I wanna, like, fix democracy. I wanna, like, have defense. I wanna fix debt. Like, I wanna try and fix those types of things.

49:12

Because I think, like, for every person doing that, like, you obviously have tons of people that are digging ditches who have no ability to, like, you know, they're leading a string of slice because they have to. So Yeah. I'm and I know that sounds like, I don't know. People judge that answer, like, in multiple different ways, but, like, yeah, I'm having fun, but I'm also, like, all in. Right? Like, I'm trying to go. And part of the reason we went to Peddle is, like, I didn't wanna, like, hand over the keys because I wasn't done yet. I wanna see what a company going through a public offering, like, looks like. Like, I wanna see that so that I can decide do I like that? Do I wanna go big next or do I wanna do more like small shit? So that's kinda what what I'm thinking about if that makes sense. When you were younger

49:47

were you

49:49

kind of, like, highly competitive at anything or, like, you know, you between ages, I don't know, twelve to eighteen,

49:55

Did if you look back now, if you were like a a researcher just getting to observe you behind the glass panel,

50:02

Would you have seen anything in the way you behave that would lead you to think, oh, this guy is gonna have, like, a really interesting career in life or would you have looked like an, you know, an average teenager at that time?

50:15

Yeah. So I had a knot

50:17

I don't know how Sam would look at this. I I had like a a Midwest childhood. Let's say a bad Midwest childhood, which is like the things that happened to me like, would clearly be abuse today, but maybe back then, like, they were, like, okay. And so,

50:31

so there was that. And I think that, like, That makes me an incredibly insecure human being. Like, I'm I'm incredibly insecure about, like, most things. But what I kinda learned, and I don't know if this was trial and error, but I had some good, mentors in life is, like, instead of, like, taking that and go become, you know, a deadbeat, like, channel it. Right? Like, use that anxiety, like, and channel it. The one thing in the answer to your question,

50:53

fun fact. I am a national champion debater.

50:57

So I, I did speech and forensics.

51:01

In in high school. Should I make the joke, Sean? Yeah. John, or do what's it? There you go. Would you consider yourself a master? Twelve year olds. Twelve year olds. I love it.

51:09

Yeah. So I I did. By the way, so this is the thing, this segment. I don't know if you heard this. We did this segment on here. I said, I observed these three patterns.

51:16

People who are amazing. A debate go on to do amazing in business. People who are amazing gamers can go on to do amazing.

51:22

And the poke poker was maybe my other one. But those three are, like, not you wouldn't associate that with success in the business world, but they have, like, this I just keep seeing it over and over and over again. Well, so you know what it is. So I I did,

51:36

so I, like, I was doing football and, like, wrestling and all that stuff. I I had to have foot surgeries for whatever for some reason. And basically,

51:43

I was like, oh, I can't I can't do wrestling that season. So I went and started doing what's called forensics when you're in high school. And

51:49

Then I was like, oh, you can get scholarships. So I went to the school I went to on scholarship to to do this, and it was one of the best schools in the country for it. It's Bradley University, like, lovely school, but, like, as the Northwestern kids would make fun of us in Illinois, like, you get a public school education at a private school price, basically, unless you're on scholarship, that type of a thing. And If you think about it, so what I was doing is, at least in college, for forty hours a week, four years,

52:13

I was synthesizing

52:14

information and structuring arguments and getting to root Right? Which are these things that we always talk about. I never wanted to go into business. I my dad still thinks I should be a doctor. I was gonna go into law law, but, you know, more people were graduating

52:26

you know, in law school than actual legal jobs when I graduated.

52:29

So long story short, it was one of those things where I was like, you know, I can synthesize information really quickly. Right? And and that's, like, I gotta talk a little faster and all this other stuff. And so I think that's that's helped me a lot because literally our marketing strategy in the early days was just write blog posts, and I can write them pretty quickly, and they're relatively deep. They're not all gems, but, you know, it's one of those things that that definitely helped me. And I use it. I probably use it every day.

52:51

You wanna go to the last one, Sean? This is the most interesting one. You're doing you're also doing a hostile takeover

52:58

of a publicly traded person. So I saw this Is this guy I I don't know how you say it. I've only heard Mike in the background.

53:05

K Mikey m is his, like, handle.

53:08

And So there's this guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell the story. What what who's What did he do with him? What the heck are you doing?

53:13

Okay. So,

53:15

again, quickest path to learning. That's I think that's really important for, like, entrepreneurs, executives in general.

53:21

Mike Merrill,

53:22

like, thirteen years ago, two thousand eight, something like that, he became the first publicly traded person. So he sold shares in himself,

53:30

He's there's an interface. The the the website is a little buggy sometimes, but there's an interface. He sold shares. He gets the money. But then what he does is he gets to choose to put votes up And then the people who bought shares vote their shares.

53:43

And he doesn't do little stuff. Like, he does little stuff, like, what color glasses should I get? So a lot of the things we probably don't wanna make decisions on our selves, which is really interesting hack. But he also what he'll do is he goes and he'll put should I move in with my girlfriend?

53:56

He puts that up for a vote The debate is fascinating because some of them are his friends and his family. And then there's just Randos in Connecticut being like, I've known Mike for, like, a long time through the project. I don't think this makes sense. He said this, like, three years ago, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's fascinating. So I knew about this.

54:14

Girlfriend What's the what's the URL again? Say the spell it out. K, Mikey, m, k m I k e y m, dot com.

54:23

And,

54:25

so I I got a little money. And I was like, I've I don't know what it's like to, like, do a takeover of a company. Right? And this is when Elon Musk was, like, doing his stuff with Twitter,

54:34

And so long story short, I was like, oh, this could be fascinating. One, because there's, like, I don't know how people react when this stuff happens. And so he put an auction up for,

54:43

additional shares. And this is what he does every so often when he needs some cash. He'll actually put an auction up and people can buy,

54:50

presumably if it's a Dutch auction under the share price. Right? And I did, like, by the way, do do you get anything as a shareholder? There's no dividends. There's no, like, nothing like that. We can sell your shares. People buy, like, shares. So, like, I put my shares up and get money, like, actually get cash. Right? Dude, look at Sean, go to the website. I'm he so he he just says the things So look, it let me give you an example. It's called the finger holders contract gig. I guess finger holders, the name of the company, but the short the t l and b r is Should I take a short term gig contract coordinating the development of the community around the launch of an n f g project called finger hole finger holders. Should you take a job? Yeah. And then it goes the whole background of, like, why I'm interested in this? Why do I wanna do this? What are the contract details? How much are they gonna pay me? What's the proposal? And then there's three hundred. I think

55:37

There's like a crazy amount of comments that says like pros, working on a project, sounds fun, cons, NFTs are divide dive the, divisive and may alienate some of your shareholders. And there's, like, incredibly thoughtful discussion on why he's, like, for sure.

55:51

What?

55:52

So listen to this. So I sneakily I start buying shares and I start researching people who haven't been active because you can see the last time they, like, logged in and stuff. I wanna start contacting them. He launches this auction of about two thousand shares. And I know that most votes, there's only about five thousand shares that are So I was like, cool. If I get two thousand shares, which is like ten, eleven percent of the entire thing. And then I I did a sneaky way of doing the auction, which we can get into if it's interesting. But anyways, So I get the shares, and then I go speak at his shareholder meeting. He has a how much did you pay for the two thousand shares?

56:24

It's like thirteen grand. And so So then his market cap is only like,

56:29

it's it's Yeah. It's not it's it's the market cap is a hundred thirty thousand. Where everyone gets in. Yeah. So right now he's got, I think, sixteen thousand shares or something that are have been sold in the share price. I haven't checked today, but there's a share price. It goes up and down based on, like, purchases but he's worth it. It's in the six figure range, I think, ballpark.

56:45

I'd think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you owned all the shares theoretically, that's the value. But then the other thing is the community makes it interesting I go speak at the shareholder conference and I go, Hey, and it's on YouTube. And I say, listen, I'm doing a hostile takeover of Mike. Here's why. Like, I think the project's undervalued. You guys voted to, like, make him not go on social media. Like, that doesn't make sense. Like, in order to get more people, he has to, like, do this blah blah blah. I think it and then all the questions are, like, Well,

57:12

what about, like, is this good for Mike? Because there's a lot of his friends, like, he's actually in person friends. And I was like, listen, I think what's good for what's good for the share price is good for Mike and vice versa. And I talk like you talk about it. It's like a half hour interview I did. And it and then everyone and then there's all these people, especially the people who don't know him who are I think Patrick, I think the takeover is good for the project. I think it's this. And you only need to go through walls. Five hundred or a thousand more shares, roughly to control the vote. You thought

57:38

no. No. No. I already I already had I got nineteen

57:41

hundred and thirty out of the auction. Right. Right. But you said each vote has about five thousand and you just need -- Yeah. -- you just need fifty one percent. But it's never it's never one-sided. It's never one-sided. So, like, if if it's two thousand five hundred twenty five. So you already can swing whatever vote.

57:55

And and what's funny is I'm texting him. And I'm like, hey, man. Just so you know, here are my intentions.

58:00

Like, it's like a little it's a little over. Right? That that that's cool. That's that's some insider trading, though, no?

58:07

No. I didn't I didn't do anything.

58:09

Elon goes and talks to Parag and he's like, hey, look. I'm doing this and here's what I wanna do with Twitter. And also there's kinda nothing you could do about it, but I'm gonna inform you because that's seems like, you know, the the standard due process. Yeah.

58:23

Yeah. What does, what is what obligation does this guy have to follow what you say? Like, you know, what if he just says Fuck off. I'm done with this project.

58:30

In I mean, he could shut the project down. I don't know. Like, so first, before I started doing this, I started tweeting to him about

58:38

What happens if there's a hostile takeover? Elon Musk seems interesting. Right? Because I wanted to see, like, is this, like, it's is this gonna be a good investment? Probably not? But, like, I'm learning. I I can't tell you how much I'm learning. Right? Because all of a sudden, it's like, oh, interesting. Shareholder made. They responded to this. And these aren't, like, the investors that I want to be working with in the rest of my life, but it's really fascinating.

58:58

He is never for to my knowledge in thirteen years gone against what a vote has said. But he could. It's it's all in good faith. He could. I mean, there's no yeah. There's no, like, oh my god. I I can sue him or anybody. Also, he he gets to choose what he puts up for a vote. So if he's like, you know, I just wanna move on to my girlfriend. I don't have to put it up for a vote. But there has been some talk of you get to burn some of your shares in order to put a vote up for a vote, which is fascinating.

59:24

It's he's been covered by wired, Atlantic, all kinds of stuff. It's and it was in a lull and I'm injecting some excitement into it again. And Yeah. I'm I'm moving at the price chart. So it looks like it's it's started. Two thousand eight it opened at a dollar, ninety nine cents, it looks like.

59:40

And it basically was, like, between one and three dollars, then it kinda peaked in twenty thirteen. Maybe he got some press or something like that. It was thirteen thirteen fifty, something like that. And then for the last six years, it's basically been been flat at roughly four or five bucks,

59:56

for a takeover. And and now it's six eighty five right now. And so,

01:00:01

It was about five when I started the takeover. This is far more interesting to be as small as it is. Right? I mean, to be as to be as unknown of a project, it feels it's on it feels unknown. To be as unknown of a project as it is, it's been around this two thousand and eight. It's pretty

01:00:18

Un under covered. Right?

01:00:21

Well, so in the beginning, he got a lot. He was, like, on the Today show. He was on all kinds of stuff. And then he did because what was interesting is he's had some epics with it. Like a project was, I think it was called the girlfriend project, and it was literally about his relationship. His real his girlfriend by shares. His ex girlfriend is still a shareholder. I'm pretty sure his current I don't know if it's his wife or not. Is is like a share like, and that was the end of the shareholders meeting. Was his girlfriend is current girlfriend or wife having a conversation.

01:00:47

It was the most interesting, like, half hour I've ever seen in my life. Because they were just and they they're friendly. I think there might be friends, but just them talking about Mike. And it's kinda beautiful because you have all these people who, like, Are there just from a money perspective or just a fascination perspective in my case or from a love perspective,

01:01:04

like supporting this guy and, like, trying to make the right decisions for him? So I think it's brilliant. Like, as soon as I announced this on Twitter, we got some inbound from, like, some, like, I don't think their their documentarians or something like that. Like, don't know if it'll come with anything, but it's like, it's a fascinating story that I think deserves more more more give. So I'm glad you asked about it because you guys have a pretty medium audience. So it's great. There's there's even, like, what happens when I die? Like, unlike a company, I will die. So what happens to my shares after I die? There's, like, This is pretty crazy. I mean, it kind of makes no sense in that, like, you know, there's there's yeah. It's completely nonsensical. Yeah. But, bro, you bought a hundred and fifty thousand dollar in age of a monkey. So, like, this is,

01:01:43

you know, like Did you buy an eight?

01:01:46

Punk.

01:01:47

You gotta po oh, your punk guy. This is from apefest. So this is my Nice. Yeah. Yeah. It was a fifty it was a coin flip to, use the milkrow portfolio. Either we buy up, an ape or a punk. And they were the same price on that day. And we knew that the the purchase was gonna have to happen. The board April is about to buy the punks. And so it was like, what do we Which asset should we buy? No knowing this news is about to break or it has just broken or something.

01:02:11

And we flipped punk, and then apes went through the roof.

01:02:16

Everything's down now too.

01:02:17

It's interesting. Very interesting. Dude, check this out. So if you go to,

01:02:21

Mike's blog, so there's news dot k mikey m dot com,

01:02:26

where he, like, it's it's ran, like, a shareholder company. I mean, like, like, the investor relations page of a publicly traded company, and he has a list of all of his principles. And on health, it's those, like, as of October twenty third two thousand nineteen, I'm in favor of experimenting with psychedelics. And you click psychedelics,

01:02:42

And there's a, like, notes from a board meeting about, like, who voted and why they voted and what is and what the reasoning is and how they are or are not start doing psychedelics. Then in two thousand, sixteen, I will not take,

01:02:56

a a Cylium pills. I don't know what that is. And it's, like, talks about why he wanted to take them and everyone's voting and he has, like, a update on that. And then, like, entertainment,

01:03:07

shareholders will have direct control over my television television watching. I will and then two thousand nineteen, I will watch Spider Man.

01:03:16

There's subscriptions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I will not subscribe to Spotify.

01:03:22

Yeah. Some of these are, like, stupid. Like, the glasses one, it says that thirty four users voted with eighteen eighteen hundred shares. So thirty four people participated in that vote the glasses. I guess that was not a very,

01:03:33

not a very big one. Let's see this. And if But I believe he's good. I haven't I'm pretty sure for people, like, who he's voting for, like, president up. Like, he's done stuff like that as well, which gets really fascinating. Yeah. But that's just as meeting list as the classes thing.

01:03:47

He is in, I believe he's in Oregon. So I'm not sure. I mean, he's in a state that is is gonna vote one way or the other anyways.

01:03:54

Wow. Yeah. Twenty twenty, I will endorse Bernie Sanders for president.

01:04:01

Okay.

01:04:02

Amazing. Listen, man. This was this was fun. I'm glad you came on, and

01:04:06

yeah, good times. Thank you. Brought some good stuff, but Sam, what did you think? Dude, can you send me send me the, the research thing? That was the most fascinating thing. That was really interesting. I will -- And -- I'll send you some redacted. I'll send you the structure, and you can fill it. Don't redact it. No one will I won't share it with any of these losers. It'll just be for me.

01:04:24

Don't connect. Let me think about it. I'm at again, I have a boss. I'm on a board. I gotta be careful now. So, yeah. Well, are you guys I'll send you something.

01:04:31

And Pedal isn't public now, but it will be. Right?

01:04:35

I mean, we're we're not going next year. A number of years probably before anything like that happens, but,

01:04:41

great.

01:04:42

You know, you're thinking of laws.

01:04:45

I'll hook you up. I'll hook you up with something. Don't worry. Don't worry. This was awesome. I I typically hate having not hate. I I say no to everyone that Sean brought you in. Yeah. We we kinda hate having guests, but

01:04:57

than we have them anyways. And we're not we're not fully sure why we do it, but we do it. In the moment, it seems like a good idea. Halfway through the episode, it's like, I kinda wish I was just bullshitting the instead of doing this competition. But I'm always happy when we do it because I don't have to prepare. But,

01:05:11

you are one of the One out of every four is awesome, and I'll just hope that everybody thinks they're that one out of four. You actually were that one out of four. So good for you. What makes a good guess versus not a good guess, just for the audience to hear. If they come close to the pod. If they if they already know the vibe, if they know the the -- Okay. -- what's cool, that that tends to work really well, I think. What do you think, Sam? I agree. And most people most people aren't like Sean and I in that they don't do this for a living. And so they need to come prepared with the things and and even us, we come some we do research. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't, but there's at least bullet point. So it's like, alright. Next.

01:05:46

And you did a good job of of saying next. A lot of people,

01:05:50

if you I don't know if you paid attention, but Sean very purposely in the beginning. He's like, I don't really care about the company and your background. Let's just move on to the other stuff. And, we we actually we we we tend to do that a lot. And so that was cool. And so that makes me guess. Interesting, except for Michael Taylor. That episode was, like,

01:06:06

That episode was money because he was just so weird. Like, it was just like, what's gonna happen, guys? Like, what's gonna happen the next minute? That was that was an one. Did you hear when he out outsold me? I was like, yeah. I like fast cars. He goes, I don't like fast cars,

01:06:20

but I have a really fast jet.

01:06:23

That's well, no. The quote, the quote I tell everyone from that episode is. Yeah. I don't really like things that you can't in normal use go at their max speed. Like, and that's what he is referring with cars. Like, it was like boats and jets I'm allowed to to go at max speed. You know, car is not really. So I just thought of who even has that thought about, like, am I utilizing this machine to its fullest velocity?

01:06:46

A guy who most of his balance sheet to Bitcoin. That's that's who has that thought, which is great. I love that those people exist. Dude, Sean, I did you see my Instagram or Twitter or something I did? I, this weekend I was in the Hampens.

01:06:59

That's not a humble brag. It was my in law's house, so I had nothing to do with it. But and That's a Midwest thing. He just did a Midwest thing. Just so you know. The very Midwest.

01:07:08

Oh, no. I have a yeah. I have an Equinox member like, they're gonna do my laundry. So it's like worth -- It was on sale. -- like, I'm not a big time guy. I'm not a big time guy. Yeah. That's what he said. It was my in law's house and I went out there. And I drove we went to the beach for a bonfire on the fourth, and we drove by this area that was just pat it was like a it's like a small one lane road and it was packed full of cars, but they were fancy cars. And in front of me was a bugatti, and it was a special bugatti. And I looked it up as like a five million dollar bugatti. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? And so I get to the parking lot to park my car, and it was full of black limousines, but not limousines, like the escalades, full of them. And then In the corner, one of the limos had their trunk open. And literally, I'm not exaggerating. I have video of it. A hundred limousine drivers. They're just hanging out, drinking coke, eat and chips. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? And they go, it's Michael Rubin's party.

01:07:57

Michael Rubin has a famous white party. And I made a joke. I was like, only lets whites in, which they didn't, like They didn't kill with the drivers? No. Yeah. Yeah. I was, like, you know, like, oh, white's old. Really? That's weird. Maybe I should go.

01:08:11

I don't know. It was a bad joke. And and and anyway, I go,

01:08:14

Ruben, and they go, yeah, it's Ruben. He

01:08:17

He's having this party. It's famous. He goes, I drove this one guy was like, yeah, we drove Drake. And so, like, I was like, yeah, JayZ's there. And I was like, wait, really? And I looked it up on Instagram and it was crazy party. And I was like, well, tell me everything. He goes, you know, I drove this guy, and he's broke. One guy goes, I drove Tyrice. Remember Tyrice some fast and furious?

01:08:36

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I drove that guy and and the driver goes, I'm Richard than he is. That guy's broker than a joke. I got more money than that guy. I was like, wait, what? Really? And he, like, keptition. He and he kept telling me all this that he goes, the guys who are really rich, they typically drive themselves because they got that bugatti and they wanna show it off.

01:08:54

But

01:08:54

it it was really fascinating. I was just hanging with these. I we hung with them for, like, half an hour, just asking them all rumors and gossip, and they knew it all.

01:09:03

That's amazing. I after you as you sent that, you sent me that video, and then I went on Instagram, and I saw, like, six NBA players were posting stories from the party. So it was like James Harden, that party. Mhmm. And then whoever, you know, like these other guys were, you know, joellen beads at the party, and it's it's the all white party where everybody's,

01:09:19

everybody's,

01:09:20

Like, it was a rapper and athlete to seem like, which is which is Exactly.

01:09:24

It was it was so cool. And, like, he's got, like, this private beach area, and then we were, like, a hundred yards down the beach and right next to the parking lot, and it was just packed. And we there's bugatti because there's all these crazy car. It was pretty it was pretty wild. I I just imagined you in the in the party with, like, you know, that meme where it's the guy at the party yelling into the girl's ear, and you're just, like, it's a newsletter.

01:09:45