00:00
I used to chase money a lot. Like, how do I make money? Maybe this will make us money. Maybe this will make some money. And that was good because I, like, learned skills about how to make money, but
00:08
The things that actually paid off, none of those really paid off with a big dollar amount.
00:14
Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world I know I could be what I want to.
00:19
I put my all in it like a day's off on a road. Let's travel never looking back. Alright. Before we actually get to the content,
00:27
A few things. We've been making a ton of changes to this podcast. The numbers are working. I think the last month was our highest ever, right, Abreu?
00:35
Leave so. Yeah. So I'll try I think we should start saying the numbers. I think we should start saying the numbers. I think we should say what it is. Say what we're gonna do and say what happens, so whether it works or it doesn't. Yeah. So the trailing thirty days was, I think, three hundred and fifty thousand listens.
00:51
Which if it's not the highest ever, it's one of, like, type one or two, but the trajectory is is really what matters. And that great. So we're getting around
01:01
an average episode. I think is twenty thousand downloads an episode, which is I think a sixty percent increase from the year before. Is that right, Abritu? Am I am I getting all these? Yes, sir. Twenty two twenty three thousand. Right. I believe so. So let's say we're at twenty two thousand
01:17
it used to be fifteen.
01:19
Of course, it used to be zero. So, you know, whatever it's growing. And our goal
01:23
is a hundred thousand per episode.
01:26
One rose bowl stadium per episode is what I wanna be doing, something like that. And, so we're not far. Four x is, you know, it's not far. I think naturally that would happen in a couple years. And what we're gonna do is just accelerate it so it happens in one. Yeah. I feel quite confident that if we do the same thing, but more, it would happen with time. But I don't want to do that. I'm impatient. I want it to happen immediately. So
01:49
the changes we've made is we've prepared more for every podcast, which I think is very clearly working. Yes. We now have these videos going
01:58
which I also think is clearly working and that it makes me feel good. Is it driving
02:03
downloads? I don't actually I'm not convinced, but it's worth it. I think. What you know what it does do is there's a whole group of people that, like, either a just don't listen to podcasts or don't listen much. So they're, like, kind of, like, otherwise they would only hop in once in a while. They didn't build a habit with us. And they follow just through the clip. So there's actually just like another audience that's like, oh, good. I watch those clips every time because they're good. And I always get messages about them. Yeah. And I'm in that category as well. I've never I don't think I've ever listened to a Joe rogan podcast, but I watch a lot of clips. Right.
02:34
And
02:34
we're putting our clips on YouTube, which
02:37
is not working. That is not working well at all for us. Right.
02:41
It can maybe the we're putting the full episodes on in a handful, have twenty to thirty thousand views, maybe even more. A couple of them have a few more
02:49
that's working, but the clips are not working. And then we're doing email blasts and the hustle. I think that started two weeks ago. That is working. We should we should rewind. We should basically say we had a meeting. Which was, like,
03:00
I don't know, week ago, maybe something like that. And it was, like, oh, okay. We got all these ideas. Basically, I had thrown a few ideas. You had a few ideas. Abray, you had a few ideas. Buddy Ben had a few ideas. We're like, oh, yeah. Great. Aldi sound good. So, like, who's gonna do them? And then we kind of had this, like, come to Jesus moment where it was like, look,
03:17
In Sam, we trust. Like, if and we can't we can't outsource this to somebody else who doesn't really
03:24
I don't wanna say it doesn't care, but, like, it's a different thing when it's your baby. It's your show.
03:29
You are getting the, like,
03:31
the more people who listen to this, the cooler opportunities we get, the the better DMs we get every morning. And so, like, clearly, it matters more to us than it would be for even if it was somebody's full time job. And, the second thing is, like, your skill level is super high. Right? Like, we saw you grow the hustle. I saw you grow the hustle. A lot of people who were subscribers saw you grow the hustle, saw you grow trends from scratch, And so you sell the thing. And it's like so I got excited because I was like, I'm gonna get to see Sam in action even closer than I did with the hustle where, like, you would send a monthly update Now I'm seeing how you actually operate, and it's pretty dope. And I actually think the listeners will like to see how you operate, how you approach growing a thing. And, that I think that'll be exciting. That's a lot of pressure. Thank you for the comment. That's a lot of pressure. I I will say I think growing the podcast has been I mean, that's actually one of the harder things I've done. Yeah. But,
04:21
HubSpot owns us now. It's not my money. Like, it's their money, and and and so we're in a totally I mean, we're I our owner, you know, the company this company now does a billion a year in revenue. There's, like, a billion plus in cash in the bank account. Like, So we could actually so we're gonna have a lot more resources.
04:37
I actually am not convinced that that's actually gonna help us grow though. Yeah. I I don't think resources helps you grow, but I think. I I I would say, like, that wasn't the problem before.
04:46
It could be helpful, but that wasn't necessarily the problem. And then, so what we're doing now is, we don't have ad an email anymore. So in the hustle, we do zero advertisements
04:55
and the podcast is going in every day now,
04:59
or not every day, but, a lot.
05:01
And then also what we are launching at HubSpot and the Hussle is we're creating this thing. Well, I actually don't know if I could say too much about it. But there's gonna be a lot more podcasts. And amongst those podcasts, we can promote one another, and that's what you're gonna hear. So whoever is in our our podcast crew. We're gonna promote them, them us, yada yada yada, and I actually think that's gonna help a ton. I think that,
05:25
actually don't think I could talk to any. And I don't It's pretty dope who's in that, but we'll we'll say it later when you can. So, okay, can I give the audience the five ideas that we had brainstormed that were like, oh, okay? Once thing one was, like, let's put Sam in charge of it because Sam knows how to grow shit. That was step one. Step two. Okay. So what are the, like, How would you grow a podcast if you're gonna grow a podcast? So we said, here, I'm gonna just rattle off the ideas. Number one,
05:49
big name guests that actually have an overlapping audience. So people like Shamath, people like Tim Farris,
05:56
not just like a famous person who, like, for example, we had Jake Paul on.
06:01
Super famous, but his audience and our audience not gonna have a huge amount of overlap or it's not necessarily that his fans would would connect with us and become long, you know, ongoing subscribed.
06:12
Okay. The other one was paid. Can you advertise to grow a podcast, right, like running some experiments on, take a few thousand bucks, run it on a paid campaign, and see, can you grow through paid. I think we'll find out if that's interesting. We're doing.
06:24
So we bought ads in,
06:27
player FM, Abraham, is that what we did?
06:30
Yep. Yep. And then,
06:32
we're buying ads and a few more. I have a few more that we're buying ads. Did that work, a brave player f m?
06:39
It's hard to tell because they claim a lot of their views come from desktop listeners,
06:45
which doesn't necessarily get measured according to them. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's that's like saying like Thank you.
06:52
Yeah. Yeah. It's like saying like no, look, the it's like this is like selling, like, CBD treats for dogs. Like, does it work? Right. Can't ask your dog. Yeah. I guess. It's like the greatest business ever. It's like selling vitamins b for your puppy.
07:07
Yeah. Exactly. So I would say if it's hard to tell, it didn't work. It is a very obvious way to think about it. Okay.
07:15
Another one, go on other people's podcast. So do a do a tour going on other people's pods. They already have an audience. Those people listen, they say, oh, man. What a great guy. I'd love to listen to more of this person. They were interesting. Boom. Get some people from that. Clips.
07:28
People have seen we tripled down on clips. We found awesome clip makers. We're making fucked on the clips. And we're gonna post the shit out of them. So I think that's a good good strategy.
07:36
There's the and then the last one that I thought was kind of an interesting one was like, get sharper on the branding. So if you wanna grow a product,
07:44
the sharper, the hook of what is the product,
07:47
you're the better chance you have to grow because it'll be more clear it'll resonate with more people. And so being able to describe it well, as well as,
07:56
just being, like, on brand all the time about, like, what this is and what you get out of it if you to it. I think that's an area that honestly was kinda shitty at, which is ironic because I think we're pretty good at it with our startups, but we're pretty bad at it with the podcast, like, the name doesn't really make much sense.
08:11
The description, I don't know. We don't have, like, we don't do an intro when you join to, like, be like, oh, this is the podcast where x y z happens. We don't have, like, a a highlight reel of, like, you know, start here. If you're if you're new to the pod, like, go here. This is the onboarding episode. You know? Basically, it a sense, it kinda succeeds a little bit in spite of itself. Right.
08:30
And and a lot of people say the name doesn't really matter or sorry. The name doesn't reflect it. And I'm in my in my opinion, George, names is it doesn't your name really, like, it rarely will it hurt you. In some cases, it actually could help you. I think Coinbase is, like, the perfect name ever. Right. But even if if Coinbase was called, like,
08:48
blue sky
08:50
sunglasses, I'm just looking at I'm just making shit up that I'm looking at. It would work.
08:55
Blue sky.
08:56
Like, it will work. It it would have worked.
08:59
Okay. So, should we move on to coinbase, actually?
09:02
Let's move on to Coinbase. So coinbase went public today, and it's everything about it is astounding.
09:10
We wanna start. I can read off some of the kind of the numbers of, like, just how big is that business, and then we could talk about the returns of this in the of the of the investment. So big is the business? So coinbase came out. They're public now, so now they released their numbers. Their q one numbers came out fifty six million users.
09:27
Six million monthly active users, which is I think more than e* trade had, you know, like total I think e* trade had, like, three million,
09:35
like, trait trader accounts or whatever. And so the this is kind of amazing to me that there was more people on coinbase.
09:42
Coinbase makes up eleven percent of the crypto asset market in terms of how many assets are stored on crypto
09:47
on point base.
09:48
Three hundred thirty five billion in trading volume. Okay. Here's the interesting bits.
09:53
One point eight billion in revenue for the quarter.
09:57
For the quarter, for the quarter. So round up to two. So about eight billion ish in revenue is annualized.
10:04
Eight hundred in net income off that off that one point eight billion in revenue
10:09
So, like, two point four billion dollars annualized in profit. Right. And, and then, yeah, so basically, a Coinbase goes list publicly today. It wasn't a it wasn't an IPO. It was a direct listing where you basically you know, IPO is you create some shares
10:23
you you issue new shares to to buyers. A direct listing is you don't issue new shares. It's just people who have shares can get, you know, like, basically sell some of their their shares.
10:31
So, they they listed. They had about a hundred fourteen million shares for sale. And, it's up about forty percent on day one. So the the implied market cap as of right now, is about a hundred and ten billion dollars. So what I wanted to know was,
10:45
there's this kind of a phrase in in the startup investing world, which is, like, Anytime there's a gold rush, like some new frontier, new space,
10:53
it can be hard to, like, pick the winner. It can be hard to, like, you know, just grab your shovel dig and find the gold. There's a thousand people looking for gold. You don't know where to dig. It might be this one. It might be that that land land. You know, you don't know exactly where the gold is. So the foolproof strategy in any gold rush is what they call the picks and shovel strategy. Meaning, you you sell the shovels to people who are gonna go mind the gold. And so coin base is kind of a classic picks and shovels thing in the crypto market. So you you could buy Bitcoin. You could buy Ethereum. You could buy one o you could buy coin or doge coin or one of the thousand alt coins that exist. And you're betting, okay, maybe one of these will become, like, the digital currency.
11:30
Or you could back a coin base and exchange that's gonna trade a bulk, you know, a bulk number of these coins. And so I wanted to know Once coinbase got up to where it was like a hundred billion dollar valuation, I had the question of what would have been a better investment?
11:44
Coinbase at its seed round or Bitcoin
11:47
that same day. If you could've should you have bought the currency or should you have invested in the company? And, the reason I thought this was interesting is I remember
11:56
twenty thirteen. I was
11:58
I just kinda heard about crypto from a guy in my office, like, our Pete, our our IT guy was, like, Dude,
12:04
Bitcoin is the shit. It's at seven dollars now. It's at eleven dollars. I was like, I don't know what that means. And he was like, yeah. Fuck fiat currency. And I was like, fiat I that was a car. I didn't even know that's a currency at the time. I didn't know what that meant.
12:16
And he was like mining Bitcoin using our servers at the office. And he's like, oh, we've mined two Bitcoin today. And I was like, okay. Good for you, Pete. Like, what does that do? You know, I was kind of like, you know, mocking it, but I was curious also. So I started go into listening to some talks. And,
12:30
and so one of the things I was looking at was, like, our our smart VCs are people smarter than me investing in this space. And what I remember happening was I listened to this talk and it was Andresen Horowitz. It's Mark Andresen,
12:42
who now blocks me on Twitter.
12:44
He was talking at it. I think he's talking about how crypto is gonna be great, how it's how Bitcoin is gonna, you know, is is such a interesting technology.
12:51
How, blockchains might change everything. And then the interviewer was like, so how many investments? How much money have you put into this? You're you're kinda hyping it up. Like, how much money have you invested? Like, we haven't invested in any crypto companies yet. This is like, I think twenty twelve, twenty I think it was twenty twelve. He goes, right now, we're just owning the currency. We're just buying Bitcoin.
13:09
And I was like, what? That's so weird. These guys, like,
13:13
they're they're a VC fund. They've been on companies. There's a few companies out there, like, I found it to be super strange. He goes, right now, the bet we don't know which of these companies is gonna emerge as the winner. So we're just buying the underlying tech the underlying currency. We actually think that's the right move right now. And, and later, you know, Andrew's Network has and actually did invest in coinbase later and, since invested in many projects and actually
13:34
And Theresa Horowitz changed their whole fund structure
13:37
from a private, you know, VC fund to, like, some other kind of, like, financial investment vehicle. They went and got registered with, like, the SCC or whatever. Because they wanted to own crypto assets and you couldn't do that out of a traditional fund. They couldn't you couldn't buy currencies out of a traditional fund. The the paperwork, the docs don't let you. And so,
13:54
So anyways,
13:55
I went back and looked at the numbers. So
13:58
coin based announced the seed round September twenty twelve.
14:02
Don't know. They probably raised it a little bit before that, and then they announced it. They raised six hundred thousand dollars from investors, including a crowdfunding campaign, which I, which I found interesting because
14:10
I am You don't like them. I shit on crowdfunding all the time as like Me too. It's always the bottom of the barrel, but this was through Funders Club. Funders Club had put in, like, two hundred eighty five thousand dollars through its crowd funding into that that crowd. And so, anyways, what is is fun in Butter Club is just a start up? Like, it's a start up itself. Was a is a YC start up. And then coin was a YC startup. And so Thunder's Club took a took a share. Like, did a did a crowdfunding campaign for for that. If I've read this correctly, I I could be wrong in this part. But anyways, I went and asked one of the the seed investors. So if somebody who,
14:42
a friend, who invested in the seed round of Coinbase, I said, what was the valuation back then? He said it was fifteen cents a share. So fifteen cents a share there, and he said the a round was only twenty cents a share. So it wasn't even that much more.
14:55
Something like that. So so fifteen cents a share, and,
15:00
now it's it's trading right like, right before this podcast at three hundred thirty dollars a share or whatever. And so you got this, you know, two thousand x markup. I think twenty two hundred x markup.
15:10
And, so you invested a hundred thousand dollars in the in the seed round of coinbase.
15:15
That's worth two hundred twenty million dollars. On this day today because it goes it goes public. Now
15:21
if you would invest in Bitcoin, same time, Bitcoin at at in that same month was trading at twelve dollars a coin, Now it's at sixty two thousand dollars a coin. So
15:29
your same hundred k instead, you know, would have been worth five hundred million dollars. So still Bitcoin was the better investment.
15:36
Even though this was like a, you know, you invest in a startup that's became a hundred and ten billion dollar company, still Bitcoin outperform, but it's, it's closer than I would have thought because Coinbase is really gone up in value in the last two years. So let's give some more numbers.
15:51
I think right before we started, the valuation
15:54
was eighty billion
15:55
But a few hours ago, the hundred billion. Right. We're gonna use a hundred billion because that math is a little easier.
16:02
Brian Armstrong is the CEO. He's thirty eight years old. He owns, I think, twenty percent of the company,
16:09
which means,
16:11
a hundred billion, his net worth is twenty billion dollars, which puts him, I think, like, in the top fifty richest people in the world at thirty eight,
16:19
the company coinbase, I Let's see. It started went twelve. So it's, nine years old.
16:25
So, basically, became
16:27
the
16:29
from zero to British's
16:30
top fifty richest people in the world in only,
16:33
ten ish years, nine years. And also,
16:37
he owns twenty percent of Coinbase.
16:39
Who knows? How much? I don't have. I certainly don't know. But you have to ask how much Bitcoin does this does this person own if you told me that it was another twenty billion,
16:51
I don't think I would be surprised at all. Do you would you be surprised if you own twenty billion is a that that is that is a that is a very, very large amount. So I don't think it would be quite so high, but I wouldn't be surprised if if it was over a billion dollars. I I think twenty billion would be twenty billion would be, like, you'd be one of the the top three, I think, Bitcoin Wales. I think at at twenty billion or something like Okay. Okay. So I think that limits you much.
17:17
Would you think I I I I I don't I didn't do the math ahead of time, but
17:22
Would you think he would be a top fifty Bitcoin holder? That seems reasonable. Right? It's plausible. Yeah. So so I don't know. We, you know, he I don't think he's ever said or disclosed, you know, if he he was buying the underlying coins. Those so the biggest thing is did you hold, right, because Bitcoin on this run up. Right? So from when, you know, if if he's doing coin based. Bitcoin's at ten dollars a coin. Right? That becomes your kinda, like, frame of reference. Bitcoin today is trading at sixty three thousand dollars. Sixty three thousand dollars from twelve is such a, like, mind boggling, like, change. And so when I I was talking to the the my friend who was an investor in Coinbase, I said, I was like, wow. Did that did that mean does that mean the coin base outperform Bitcoin? He goes, no. I think Bitcoin still wins. He goes, but
18:03
name one person who held all their Bitcoin from twenty twelve to twenty twenty one. He's like,
18:09
me, Sam's right. Well, I guess, like, of people who owned a lot of it at that time. Right? No. I didn't I didn't own a lot. I own I bought hundreds of dollars worth, but no. Not a lot. So let's say you owned a lot, you know, as that nest egg becomes ten million, twenty million, a hundred million dollars, you're gonna, like, a lot of people would would liquidate some of it. And so he was saying,
18:27
you know, all of us at coinbase, we really couldn't sell this whole way. And he goes, the illiquidity was a feature, not a bug. Like, it would the fact that we couldn't sell this whole time for coinbase,
18:37
It was the best money making strategy for us to, like, not be able to be liquid until now. I didn't sell, but my numbers were, like, tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right. It certainly was not a million or tens of millions, but,
18:52
I I didn't sell because I actually forgot my password.
18:55
And I was like, oh, I just don't wanna log in. It's too hard. And so I didn't log in. Have you still are you have it now or no? Yeah. I have it now. Like, I had, I had, I just never did, like, forgot your password thing in my email because I was like, oh, too much work. Maybe, it's a sign. I'm just not gonna sell. Right. And so I didn't sell. But can what do you have in front of you? Are you looking at something? I mean, looking at this tweet you put in of Danielborough? I wanna bring I wanna bring this up. Yeah. So
19:20
the numbers here is fascinating,
19:23
but I actually don't think that's the really fascinating part. What's the fascinating part is the psychology behind this because Today is coin based. In twenty years, it's gonna be something else.
19:32
Fifty years ago, it was real estate or something. A hundred years ago, it was oil. There's always something.
19:38
And
19:38
the psychology behind the human being, I think, is far more interesting. And by the way, he was an engineer at Airbnb before he left to go start coinbase. His Airbnb shares from, you know, would have done amazingly as well. Right? Like Well, he only worked at Airbnb, I think, for a year. And before that, he worked at Deloitte. So I'm almost positive granted he was probably a genius, probably, like, you know, crazy high IQ, but, like,
20:00
normal guy,
20:02
normal, like, a a normal nine to five,
20:05
And also, so let's talk about the let's talk about the personality part here that I love. I like knowing what drives people, what makes them tick? We talk about billionaire of the week, and it's not actually about the money, but what what what what do people think who achieve greatness? Right. In this case, it's money, but reality greatness could be a a variety of things. So Daniel Gross is the guy we had in this podcast. He went so hacker news if you guys don't know what hacker news is, you should read it every single day. It's basically, Reddit, but only for nerds. I love it. I read it every day. It's,
20:32
tech folks. And anyway,
20:35
Brian Armstrong has a handle on tech news or on hacker news, and you could read his old post. And he has this old and Daniel Gross, tweeted out some of this guy's old posts. His handle,
20:47
is, actually, don't know what his handle is, but we'll sorry. It's b armstrong. Yeah. And so Be Armstrong actually had a blog. Listen to his blog. And this is actually kinda funny. It's called start breaking free dot com, which is which is kind of on Right. On brand consistently. And, actually, if you go to start breaking free dot com, it's controlled by a virus.
21:06
So it, like, they it automatically wants you to stall a It's controlled by a virus.
21:12
Or you know what I mean? Like, go are you, like, it's like, like, if I go to it right now, it's gonna try to install, like, you know, security software that actually is gonna steal all my money. Yeah. Just steal all the bitcoin. Yeah. It's gonna well, it's gonna say, like, you won, you, you know, you're the lucky winner.
21:26
Like, somehow he let the domain expire or something like that, and,
21:30
someone got a hold of it. So now it's just a scam, which is kinda funny.
21:34
That the guy who's supposed to be, like, mister Security, his web his domain expired and, yeah, whatever.
21:41
Anyway, you can see his post history, and he was launching a lot of stuff. He launched this one thing and it says, hey, hacker news. I just built a new forum software. Hey, hacker news. I just built a new photo sharing website. So the guy was really prolific, and it's really interesting to see his posts. Yeah. He was definitely, like, trying
21:59
like, what Daniel tweeted out was, I, you know, I looked back at Brian's hacker news submissions before he started coinbase You can see what you see is a story of a hacker working on different projects
22:10
slowly zeroing in on his launch coordinates.
22:13
Right? Because he's he's consistently shipping stuff. They're not all, like, you know, some of them have, like, one upvote.
22:19
Seven up votes. Thirty two comments. Right? Like, they're not, like, taking off So you see a guy taking a bunch of swings. And as it swings, you can see it was, you know, like, something about maps, something about could, you know, how would you start your own country, something about, like, could you build an entire web app in one language? And then it's like Bitcoin Android release.
22:38
You know, like, how Airbnb does X, and then it's about you know, like, how to build your own forum. Bitcoin iPhone app. And, you know, it just, like, sort of finding finding, like, the thing that is his thing.
22:49
And This is this is true for everybody. Right? Like, you know, people joke about Sam's, you know, Sam's footlong wieners or whatever your hotdog stand. Yeah. You know, my sushi restaurant It's like if you dig back into people's first projects,
23:02
you're always gonna find interesting things like Mark Zuckerberg, first project that, I've heard him talk about. Have you heard this? The dentist office thing?
23:10
No. He set up a internal, like, just net internet network for his dad's dental office. So it was like a messaging like, the secretary in the front desk could message him and his office, you know, at the back. So he just, like, kinda set up the internet inside their office and let them message each other. Then he built Wow. Wire hog, you know.
23:27
Oh, and wire hog, I think, was really successful, by the way, for, like, a seventeen year old kid. It for yeah. Exactly. For a seventeen year old kid, it was it was more successful and there's chat transcripts of when he after he, like, leaves to go work on Facebook, he moves, you know, in the social network doc, they they moved to Palo Alto. It's like, this is it. Facebook's gonna be the thing. There's chat transcripts I've been talking at that time, like because, like, we should scale and and and do a wire hog. Yeah. Like, I think wire hog's the thing.
23:52
Like, you know, like, so even them, it's not obvious at that time. And whereas people try to project that these guys are visionaries,
23:59
They are, you know, visionary geniuses who never had a doubt in their mind, and then they saw the future, and then they built it. And it's like, well Well, I actually think that a a couple of those things are true. They could be visionary geniuses or rather they could be geniuses,
24:13
but that's actually not a prerequisite, but it does help. But they definitely had doubt regardless of how confident someone is. It doesn't matter if you're kind of a grager and you're going in a fight, you always have doubt no matter what.
24:24
And second,
24:25
They probably didn't have a vision until it started getting a little bit of traction. Right. And I I go back through. There's these there's this an interview on YouTube of Mark
24:34
doing he there's, like, some college news station that's interviewing him. Some guy some guy some guy has, like, a college podcast and he invites Mark Zuckerberg, because he's got the college social network, that's kinda like taking off on a handful of colleges. I think they're on, like, I don't know, five or or ten campuses at the time. And he's like, you know, so what what is this gonna be? You're gonna go out to more colleges and then what? Like high schools and then, you know, non college students?
24:57
And Marsha, we're sitting there in his, like, basketball shorts,
25:01
with a red solo cup in his hand, and he's like, I don't know. Like, I don't know if it has to do that. Like, Why can't this just be, like, the cool thing for colleges? Like, once you take it out of the college thing, then you let everybody in, it's, like, less cool. Like, maybe this is just cool. And, like, now he's literally putting fucking satellites into the sky to give people in India the internet so that they can use Facebook. Like Yeah. So the Tesco aspirations changed.
25:23
The takeaway here, and I actually just went back to my high school the other day to, like, give, like, a talk. And I was, like Dude, doesn't that thing look small?
25:31
You walk in high school? Yeah. And you'd be a sixteen year old and you're like, oh my gosh. Like, I felt I was mature. I felt I knew what I was doing. You're a child. Yeah. I could beat you up. Yeah.
25:42
I'm like, I was like, dude, I'm thirty.
25:44
And I thought that we were more similar, but we're not. We're not at all. Yes. Yeah. And we're not, like Why are these chicks on low to the ground?
25:52
Yeah. Everything is so small. And, like, water fountains are disgusting. I can't believe I used to drink for them. Anyway,
25:59
I was like, you guys just do shit. Take swings, tinker on stuff, First of all, a lot of stuff that starts out cool, it actually looked really dumb early on. But even if it it stays dumb, just get into the habit of taking swings and making stuff because, like, I'm not, like, Uber successful, but my first shit was,
26:19
like, a poison Ivy business. It was a Poison my business. What is that?
26:24
My first stuff was, like, stupid. And, like, it led to existing and listening. And, like, hopefully, the thing that I'm doing now is actually gonna lead to something even bigger. And I also did a ton of research, and I found out that there is this poison IV treatment called Zanful,
26:36
z a n f e l, I think, Zanful,
26:40
and basically
26:42
I did more a ton of research, and I found the guy who started it used to work at a cleaning supplies company. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. What is going on here? Like, that's kinda weird. The I just saw that connection, and I did research. And I found out that basically what he did was he took this thing called I think it was called Mean Green. And it was really good at washing,
27:02
oil off mechanic's hands, and it cost, like, five dollars per gallon. It was dirt cheap. But he found out that, the way poison Ivy works is if you if the leave gets on you or if it leave gets on you, it gets this oil on you, and you have to use this oil stuff this oil remover. I've done it today. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with poison oak or whatever.
27:20
Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. And I was like, oh, so I'm just gonna bulk buy this mean green crap and repackage it and sell it for forty dollars as opposed to I sold it for, like, forty dollars for, like, some, like, a like, a Carmec size or, like, a, you know, like, a, like, a chopstick size thing when it costs, like, forty dollars for, like, literally an industrial sized barrel, and I just repackaged it I was making thousands of dollars a month, and then I quit doing it because I was like, I don't wanna do this. Anyway, it was kind of a cool thing, but I shut it down because I was like, Alright. This is making money, but, like, I don't wanna do this. I'm not proud of this. This isn't, like, anything I I like to talk to tell people I'm doing. It's kinda lame, even though it's making, like, five grand a month, shut it down. And,
28:02
the point is the thing that we're doing now, I have a feeling it's gonna lead to something even bigger. And,
28:08
In in coin bases regard,
28:10
everything was much bigger in a much shorter time frame, but, it doesn't matter. It's the the exercise, I think, is still true. That's great. You know, those guys who came and set up, my studio here, they just released a vlog on his channel. This guy Henry, I forgot his last name. Henry blancaster or something like that. I don't know what it is. But, basically,
28:29
I don't know how you'll find him. Henry,
28:31
on YouTube, he did this thing. He put out a video statement, like, oh, the advice that I got from Sean Puri. And I was like, okay. Well, I'm I'm one of his, like, I don't know, hundred subscribers. Like, I'll click this. This is about me. So I will go ahead and watch this video. His his videos are actually super well made. He's like, like, very casey neistat. Yeah.
28:49
Yeah.
28:50
Which just shows how hard it is to win on YouTube. Like, his quality is really but, like, no one gives a shit because it's just YouTube. There's a billion things on there. Hey. As we said, just give it some time and just keep trying with my hit. So so the advice And I was like, I'm curious what the advice was because they came over, and they were, like, doing all the work, and I'm just sort of standing in the garage with, like, a cup of coffee just like, you know, just sorta,
29:09
trying to be nice. I'm not helpful, but I was, like, trying to talk to them. And I was, like, if they're, like, you know, hammering things, and I'm just, like, asking him questions and giving him some kinda, like, here's how I would do it if I was you guys because I really resonate with anybody who's, like, if you're, like, twenty two, twenty three and then you
29:25
You're smart, but you chose not to go the traditional path. And, like, that feels right. But then you also just get these, like, hunger pangs of, like, doubt when it's, like, shit. My friends actually have a salary. Wait. Like, I'm sleeping in a, like, well, you know, four of us are sleeping in this one bedroom apartment.
29:41
And,
29:42
And so I started, like, I really, like, empathize with that because that's where I was. And, like, I just wanna tell them what I
29:48
what I would tell myself, which is, like, dude, you're doing the right thing.
29:53
Here's how you need to think about this though. Don't, like, don't worry.
29:57
You know, here's how here's how this is gonna play out. What I told them was like, look, honestly,
30:01
the best times of my life were three of us living in a, you know, one bedroom apartment. My my co founder and my roommate lived in my closet, because he couldn't even afford our dirt cheap rent. So Trevor lived in my closet and, like, turned my living closet into, like, a a room for himself with a lava lamp and And then, like, his girlfriend moved in with him in the closet too. Oh my god. And so then, and I was like, you know, he had a grocery cart because there's no he didn't have a closet. Because he was living in a closet. So he stole a shopping cart, rolled it into his closet, and used that as, like, his hamper, his closet for himself.
30:32
And I just remember, like, Like, at the time, everything seemed so shitty. It was like, oh, this is the shitty version of life. And now I'm like, no. That was the that was the most fun time. Because all we were doing every day was just trying to figure shit out, trying new different schemes and projects. We had no responsibilities, no burn, and then we were just like party for fun, like, on the side. And so I I just remember to think, like, now that I look back, I'm like, that was the shit. And that's what I was trying to tell him. I was like, first of all, guys,
30:56
this is the best. So, like,
30:58
like, embrace this part. You're never gonna get to have this again with your friends like you have right now. It's it's so fun to embrace these five years. I said the second thing is, Like, I used to chase money a lot. Like, how do I make money? Maybe this will make us money. Maybe this will make some money. And that was good because I, like, learned skills about how to make money, but
31:15
The things that actually paid off, none of those really paid off with a big dollar amount. The things that paid off were, like, the people I was meeting and, like, doing projects with or learning from, Like, those relationships pay off big in the end.
31:27
You know, the the learning of, like, building skills around, like, I did my first e com project like you, I was selling these wristbands that called fat bands dot com. And it's just fat fat fat wrist band that I, like, noticed that a bunch of kids were wearing on on campus. I thought, oh, wait. Maybe that's a trend. Let me try to sell those online. You can customize them. And so,
31:46
those skills translated, but the the business did not. And so what I told him, the the advice that he put in the video
31:52
that I didn't even realize I said was, like, you're twenty three years old now? Like,
31:57
here's the trick to this whole thing. You're doing the right thing. Everyday, you're just making stuff, you're trying stuff, you're making content. You're having a blast with your buddies.
32:05
We're gonna measure the scoreboard when you're thirty, not when you're twenty four. And it's, like, that was the game changer, like, kind of, like, advice I wish I had and that I gave them. And maybe
32:15
thirty five or forty. Right. Like, but basically, it's, like, Don't, like, you're planting seeds. Don't go dig up that seed the next day and be like shit. This didn't grow into a plant. Like, no, plant that seed, water it, enjoy it. And just say, look, I'm not trying to win the whole game in one year,
32:30
in a year and a half. And, like, if my my if my friends who went took this banking job or consulting job or are doing better than me in in eighteen months. Like, I don't need to feel like I made a bad choice. Like, I'm making the right choice for me, and it's gonna, like, Let's look at this as a ten year game, and we can only measure the score. That, like, the fourth quarter is ten years from now. So that's the only time you can look at the scoreboard, really. And the seeds that you're planting, at least in my experience, and I think in a lot of my friend's experience, and it also seems like you, for sure, is It's shit. It's shit. It's shit. It's shit. And then suddenly, it's like, oh my god. It worked. Yeah.
33:05
Like, so it, like, it's shit for the most of the time. And then finally, it's like, oh, okay. Now it's all happening. Your learning goes in this, like, gradual curve Like, it your learning does go up every year where you're like, oh, man. Last year, I was such a dummy. I didn't know shit about shit. And now I know better how I would And then the same thing happens the next year and the next year and the next year. But your results can kinda stay flat lined for, like, a decade almost for, like, seven years before it actually, you know,
33:32
stops being a flat line and it just, like, curves up rapidly.
33:35
So I wanted to continue talking about this, but I'm actually gonna save my stuff that I have these notes here. I'm gonna save that for the next time because I don't want this episode to be entirely this stuff. Although, frankly, I love this stuff. Bray, do you like this or not?
33:49
Yeah, man. I'm just soaking it all in. Okay.
33:52
I like this stuff, but Sean, you wanna move on. You wanna do the other thing. You wanna do acquire or do you wanna keep talking about this? I don't wanna keep talking about this. I wanna do either some micro acquire or some ideas. I wanna do micro acquire. And this is an idea, actually. Okay. But
34:06
We at the hustle, we've worked with this guy, and I never talked to him because,
34:10
I wasn't the one working on the project. But, anyway, I just started hanging out with him recently. This guy named Andrew
34:16
people call him gas, but his last name was like Gaznati or something. How do you know Andrew? Gazdeky or something. Yeah. Gazdeky.
34:22
I think they can just call him gas. Do you know Andrew or do you know who he is? I did the, like, the mini spec with him. So that's the only way I know him just through DMs. I've never talked to him.
34:31
Andrew is thirty two, I think.
34:34
He previously had a company that I think was an agency, and he told me that he sold it for, like, tens of millions of dollars. So it was very, very successful.
34:41
But his new thing is incredibly interesting. It's called micro acquire. I think it's just micro acquire dot com. That's right. And the premise is very simple.
34:50
He finds people that wanna that wants to sell their their company, and he just talks about it in the newsletter. It's basically, like, appsumo or, like, the hustle, but,
34:59
a newsletter that just sends out cool companies, except what he does is he makes you pay money to be access to to get access to it. You only have to pay two hundred dollars, three hundred dollars though, and you get a year's access. And his numbers are pretty interesting. And keep in mind, Andrew's actually the only employee. So no one works there.
35:15
And so as of today, he's got fifteen hundred subscribers paying two hundred ninety nine dollars a year, and that brings his revenue to about four hundred thousand dollars a year. And I posted a chart of this. Do you see the chart I posted? No. I'm on his Twitter because I was looking for that because I know he posts oh, here it is. Yeah. No. I have the chart. So I posted it. And I'll he just sent this to me. So I guess, I mean, I said can I share He he built it in public? So he he he announces the revenue publicly as part of his, like, way of getting more traffic. So he's at four hundred twenty five ARR. And look at the thousand chart. Yeah. That's a pretty amazing chart.
35:48
Really see what the growth happened,
35:50
like, in November, December, January, February. Like, just last, like, four, five months. Yeah. And it's pretty interesting. And I actually shared with you. Just scroll down a little bit more. I shared with you his
35:59
his vision. But what this guy is building
36:02
I mean, this is his vision. We'll see if he can pull it off, is a a different type of Angel list. So, basically, he wants to disrupt investment banking, and he wants to make it easier to buy and sell companies,
36:13
and it's incredibly fascinating. So he wants or sorry, not disrupt AngelList, but kind of be like AngelList. I feel he wouldn't describe what it is. So Oh, what it is. Go ahead. You go on there if you wanna buy a small
36:24
SaaS business. So a small business that makes recurring revenue through subscription.
36:29
And,
36:30
and so that's the that's the that's the thing. I browse And the size are
36:34
it ranges. So it could you could buy one for five thousand dollars. That's making a hundred dollars a month of revenue or something like that or zero dollars revenue, but it has users. So you could buy it for as low as, like, a thousand or five thousand dollars, you could buy a business. And as high as there's a couple for, like, single digit millions of dollars on on there. Maybe there's a few that are outliers, but that's, like, I would say the sweet spot, the range for these things are kind of like hundreds of thousands of dollars is like where the, you know, decent businesses are on this platform. And this is the thing where I talked about this once on the pod, but he had dmed us and he was like, hey, like, love my first million You guys are great. Would, you know, would you guys wanna do something with me where I, like, give away a
37:14
five thousand dollar microsaaS business?
37:17
I was like, dude, that's a great idea. I'll, like, go in with you and, like, I'll pump this to the audience. And so, basically, I tweeted out, like, I didn't even talk to him. I didn't actually respond to his DM. I just tweeted it out. Hey, me and Andrew are giving away a SaaS business for five thousand dollars. Like, who wants it? Oh, you know, all the businesses there will buy it and give it to you. It's like these are business that are already working to some extent.
37:38
You know, it's like we just need to add some hustle who's a hustler who wants this business. And what ended up happening was bunch of other people started chiming in being like, I'm in for five k. I'll put five k in. And so we ended up raising a hundred thousand dollars as a micro spec, meaning a blank check company. So we raised a hundred thousand dollars into an entity to go and use that entity to go buy a business off of micro micro part. And then as of last week,
38:00
It closed. So we found an entrepreneur,
38:03
found a business, and we closed that deal,
38:06
to buy a Shopify app.
38:08
That's amazing.
38:10
And that that's pretty wild. I'll be eager to see what happens, and I'm sure you'll reveal it in, like, six to twelve months.
38:16
My opinion around micro acquire is,
38:19
at worst, it's gonna be okay. Right. At best, it could be amazing.
38:24
I don't know what it's gonna what's gonna happen to it. What do you think it's a really fascinating business? And I
38:29
the the the thing is now. I'm actually shocked he's letting me talk about it because I feel like I can clone this so quickly.
38:36
Yeah, it's a lot of work. Like, I saw this guy doing the one deal we did, and it was just, like, fuck ton of work till there's, like, you know, shepherd everything to make it happen, do the paperwork, get it deals, do the close. But that's not the work for
38:48
micro acquire. Well, well, they they have to help you do the transaction. So so that's their that's their function.
38:54
It's what's good is that they don't make money on the, like, transaction closing. They make money on you paying a premium subscription. Like, I pay a monthly fee to be able to browse businesses.
39:04
Which is a much better model because you're not just reliant on taking a brokerage fee of
39:09
closed M and A because there's just not a lot of closed M and A that happens. But there are a lot of people who are curious and will pay the, you know, a hundred bucks or whatever it is, two hundred bucks to be able to, like, browse the premium listings and get the get the details, get the info. And so What I would do if I was Andrew is I would decrease the price to ninety nine dollars a year because that not or even thirty nine dollars a year, because that would make it an impulse buy and I would get loads of people, then I would do this company selling. Then I would have a course that costs two thousand to five thousand dollars and would include and include a community and was all focused on buying and selling
39:45
I'm pretty confident that you can get that to around thirty, forty, fifty million dollars a year in business. I don't know if that would be a valuable company to, sell. But I'm pretty sure that you could make ten to twenty million dollars a year in profit for at least a handful of years. Yeah. I think it's That's what I would. I think it's needed. So I think it's smart that he specializes in SAS. I think that it's smart that he's, like, curated marketplace versus,
40:08
like, Flippa or these different foot places where you just so much fucking junk. You don't know what to there's no trust. So I think he's doing it right that he's bringing trust to these kind of, like,
40:18
lower trust, like, marketplaces.
40:21
So I I'm with you. I really like the project, and I'm with you that The minimum is a good outcome.
40:28
The maximum is like, oh, wow. This was a big idea hidden in plain sight.
40:32
And, I'll I think it's interesting. I think it's more likely gonna just be the good outcome, but I like that it has the, you know, the option to do both. And it seems like a fun a fun kind of business to build if you're this guy. I think he wants it to be the okay outcome, which is he owns it, and he lives a really good lifestyle. Right. And,
40:48
which by the way, I think, like, I would probably do the same as well.
40:52
So, anyway, that's a cool company I wanted to bring up. What do you got? I got a couple. Okay. So I'll go for
41:01
We talked about this before, but I'm curious what you think. So,
41:05
photo p.
41:06
We talked about this many, many months ago, but you know, we were much smaller than people. Those people aren't probably even listening anymore. So we'll just pretend it's the first time. So there's this thing called photo p. And all it is is it's Photoshop
41:18
But it's free,
41:19
and it's in the browser. You don't have to download anything. And the guy who makes it I don't know much about him. He posts on Reddit or, you know, he he has posts on Reddit. It's pretty big thread. I think you know a little more about them than I do. Kinda like the back story, but it's a free version of Photoshop that has cloned
41:35
every feature of Photoshop pretty much. It's like it's the exact UI of Photoshop, which is crazy because Photoshop is such a complicated
41:43
piece of software to build. And this guy just chipped away. Just chipped away. Just chipped it away
41:49
and basically built
41:50
Foto p and p as in, like, the the vegetable, like PEA.
41:55
And so, photo p dot com, you go there and it's just, like, one banner ad That's, like, how we make this money, I think. I think it does a million dollars a year now because so many people use this goddamn thing, like, students and, like, people who don't wanna spend, this Photoshop is really expensive. Who don't wanna buy Photoshop can use photo p and get, like, eighty to ninety percent of the same power without any of the cost and without any of the headache of downloading a big ass one gigabyte application.
42:20
What,
42:21
oh my god. I'm on it. So we I know this person. Is that what you're saying? I I remember the first time we brought it up, you had already heard about it because I was like, dude, this I have a really obscure thing, and then you're, like, mister obscure. So you're, like, oh, yeah. I've seen this on Reddit,
42:35
at the time. I remember being, like, shocked that you knew about this thing because I thought I had just discovered, like, uncovered Jim, you know? Yes. I see it. It's from November two thousand eighteen.
42:44
A guy yes. Because it it got fifty thousand up votes. And he started it by saying, I made a free alternative to Photoshop.
42:51
Yes. Ask me anything. And that's how he got promotion for it. Yeah. I like this. So And you think he's making a million dollars a year doing this? Yeah. So I I don't I don't know why, Ben told me this Ben gave me this topic and he was like, photo p, you know, he's like, you know, photo p? I was like, yeah. He's like, you know, it's been a million dollars a year. So if I'm wrong, Ben's wrong. I didn't look at myself. But,
43:10
by the way, I got access to similar web. I've got a premium account now, so I can actually You got the goods.
43:16
Yeah. I, someone who works at Hub spot.
43:20
I'll I don't know if I can blow up there. Anyway, I got similar web. Dude, I'm the same way we're at at to it. I was like, oh, dude, you got a premium app annie account that's, like, couple thousand bucks a year to see app download stuff, like, share the login. And they're like, you know, we're like a company. You just buy a seat and it's just company pays for the seat. And they're like, if you if you think you would use this, just buy it. I'm like, oh, but they're like, I felt like such a pirate. Like, I had to, like, hide. I was Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. I wouldn't boot like that. Like, what yeah.
43:48
That's not what I meant.
43:51
That that still trying to, like, be a little bit less hood rat Sam and more, like, oh, yeah. It's, like, this is ROI positive. Just buy it. Right. Right. It's actually, like, very much looked down upon to be way. Like, I was negotiating with somebody, and they're like, wait. Well, why are you trying to, like,
44:06
why are you trying to, like, save us all this money negotiating with this vendor? Like, just pay the thing and do it upfront.
44:13
And you're like, but this goes against, like, everything in my jeans. I can't not do it. Like, when you meet to a hotel in the motel six.
44:21
Like, I saved us a two hundred dollars.
44:24
I always used to tell people, yeah, like, take care of your accommodation, and it was they would actually be sleeping in my house. Stay at my aunt's house.
44:32
And I would actually go out my girlfriend's house and they would get my bedroom. I did that all the time. I'd be like, yeah, we'll take care of your accommodation.
44:39
Because we get hustle got. They just looked at my house.
44:44
So according to similar web, voter P gets eight point five million,
44:47
monthly uniques. They spend a ton of time on the website.
44:51
And most all the traffic is direct.
44:53
So I if you told me that this made a million dollars, I would think are you sure it's not a million dollars a month?
45:00
I don't know. I I gotta I gotta check. I don't think it's a month. I think that would be pretty pretty crazy. I think I think a year because, you know, he's only he's not monetizing well. Right? He's just got display ads. So He's, you know, he's got the bottom of the barrel monetization,
45:11
I think, on the on the site.
45:13
Yeah. You could probably crush this, though.
45:16
Speaking of just oh, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say, like, you know, okay, to
45:21
so what? So I think there the so what here is, a, photo piece cool and interesting and, like, just a cool thing to know about. But, b, like, Could you do this for more things? Like, first of all, take the whole Adobe suite
45:33
and do the photo p for after effects, do the photo p for illustrator, photo p for for the whole suite. Right? Like, anything that has over x million users,
45:43
you could do this for. What else? Like, maybe it's, like, autocad. Like, I don't know if that's free or if you pay for it or whatever. You know, like, I forgot, like,
45:51
what's that thing called math lab mat lab or something like that? It's a thing that all the engineers have to use.
45:56
Like, is matlab paid? Is, you know, great. Can you can you do this? And I think a version of this is,
46:02
called OBS.
46:03
So have you ever used OBS?
46:05
No. What's that? OBS is a open source,
46:08
piece of software. That's basically the most popular thing for every Twitch streamer or YouTuber. So it's the easiest way to, like, stream from a PC, high quality video and audio to Twitch to whatever. So for years, Twitch actually just up till recently. Twitch didn't have any way. If you went to Twitch, you're like, great. I wanna be a streamer.
46:26
They're like, cool. Go go use OBS. With the hell's OBS, Twitch doesn't have a button just saying go live. And, same thing with YouTube. You go live on YouTube. Nope. Can't just go live on YouTube with, without, like,
46:37
using more sophisticated software.
46:39
And so, OBS is actually an open source project maintained by a small community developer, but really it's just one guy, Jim. And I met this guy, and Jim's like, you know, I don't know, five foot seven and, like, long hair down to his kind of waist. And he looked like an open source, you know, like, app developer, and he's just, like, extremely high ethics and morals where he's just, like, The app is one hundred percent free. He's been working on it for a decade,
47:04
and it's supported by donations of people who are like, dude. I I run my whole business off OBS, like, Sure. Here's ten dollars, you know. And, and Twitch. Twitch actually was paying him every month,
47:15
just to keep maintaining OBS because it was, like, cheaper to just pay Jim a, I don't know, x thousands of dollars a month than to, like, have twenty engineers try to recreate this thing. I think that that is cool. Think that, like, when I hear that, I'm, like, that's badass. I I love that that that I love that that exists. Right. But what was my what was my thing earlier? I'm, like, cornrows and sleeve tattoos, that I respect it. And I think it's bad ass. I just don't want it. Hey for me. I'm not wearing it. And now that's my case with this, which is I'm so happy that that exists.
47:45
I ain't doing it because there's a bunch of examples of this. So another example is Spiceworth. Spiceworks dot com. They were doing, like, fifty, sixty, seventy million dollars a year in revenue, and they ended up selling in because they raised too much money, it didn't work out. But they had traction. And, basically, what what spikes or Spice Works did was they created a software. So if you're, like, if you have, like,
48:08
a thousand employees and you wanted to figure out which computers you you needed to buy. They created software to help you figure that out which normally costs money, and they actually made money through advertising on the website. In my opinion,
48:22
that's, like, neat,
48:24
but
48:26
Just charge people money for your thing because I I'd like would you rather be photo p or Adobe?
48:31
Yeah. I know what you'll work. Of course. Of course. I know which one I'd rather be. So I think it's cool to actually do that free stuff just to get a ton of users. But after a while, like, while we photo p, I would be like, well, if I just I should just hire more engineers, and we should just make some premium features
48:45
and upcharge. And that is what I would do. Right. I would not do this Well, there there's another way of looking at it, which is
48:51
sometimes,
48:52
like, free doesn't mean no ambition. So, for example,
48:56
Skype was like, hey, free international, you know, like calling.
49:00
And, WhatsApp. Same thing. Why did WhatsApp take off? Because SMS was actually really expensive. They had to pay for every tech especially international texting. It was super expensive.
49:08
So what's that free was the was the growth hack. And for these guys, I would say free is also the growth hack. But, you know, if you're If you wanna just be one person maintaining this thing and, like, whatever, like, you're
49:20
where you do it matters. So Photoshop is still at least big but nowhere near as big as texting and calling was. Right? That was like such a huge market. And then the second thing is, like, if you're gonna do free,
49:31
find some other way to capture a ton of value. So,
49:34
Skype and WhatsApp were able to capture a bunch of value using a totally different method, whereas photo piece is like, cool. Here's a here's one banner ad.
49:42
You know, and that's enough for me. Or OBS is like, hey, donate to me and that's it. Whereas OBS could have, like, created, you know, either premium features or sold to Twitch or, you know, could have done many things to try to capture more value out of the free thing that they made.
49:56
Do you know the website unsplash? So unsplash is, like, alternative to Getty's images. So Getty's images
50:03
everyone has probably heard that word. Not a lot of people probably use it. We used it. We paid them fifty grand a year, and we were a small client, getting images. They pay photographers.
50:11
They buy rice. Why were you paying so much?
50:14
Because When there's cheaper or freer options for photo libraries,
50:18
gettys is the best.
50:20
So a lot of free or cheap ones, they don't actually have images of of the people. So for example, if you wanna write about Elon Musk, a lot of the free ones don't have good pictures of Elon Musk. Second, once you get to the size that we wear, like, we, like, which is not that big. Once you get past, like, five hundred thousand monthly uniques, you probably wanna stop doing things illegally when it comes to photos because there's all these people that yeah. And which is, like, a, it's the right thing to do. Right? You you are using other people's stuff. So you shouldn't do it. It's it's okay to kinda boot like it early on. But after a while, you should pay for it. And we were a small person. We're and we paid, I think, fifty I forget tens of thousands of dollars.
50:58
And, anyway, there was this competitor called unsplash. I think unsplashes don't. I think they're badass. They are just acquired acquired recently.
51:07
I got a little information where I like, I found I heard a little bit about what they were doing. They were only doing around
51:14
four ish million doll five million dollars a year in revenue, even though like hundreds of millions of their images for being downloaded. Right. And I was actually shocked at how small they were.
51:25
If I had that much traction a, I would have been far more aggressive about selling ads on the site and, b, far more aggressive about getting subscriptions
51:33
and charging a lot of money for them because this website unsplash, which from the outside appeared to be doing wildly well. And I imagine they actually were acquired for a lot of money because if a proper person could get their hands on that, they could crush it, I would think. But
51:46
if if you have that much usage, like unsplash it, unsplash wasn't ubiquitous, but it was quite popular. You can make way more money by charging money front for all that stuff. When unsplash giving away their stuff for free, I think they're only doing, like,
52:00
four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue. Right. Right. Right.
52:05
Okay. Yeah. That's a good that's a good example of one. I had one other topic I wanted to do.
52:11
Okay. Which one's more interesting to you? Is it the affirm for x or is it game film for salespeople? I'll let you pick from those two categories.
52:19
Affirm. And I have a I have a take on there that you're not gonna like. Oh, okay. Good. Good. Alright. So, if you don't know what firm is a firm was a company started by,
52:29
Max Levchen, I think. Am I mixing this up?
52:35
Co founder PayPal.
52:36
A firm went public, I think, this year or last year. It's, about seventeen, eighteen billion dollar company right now. And what a firm does is when you're on an e commerce site, you're going and you're buying a mattress online, you go to Casper's website,
52:49
and it'll be like, oh, wow. This mattress is twelve hundred dollars. And it'll say, or or
52:55
for, you know,
52:56
ninety six easy payments of of eight dollars You can own this mattress. Right? So it's basically a pay as you go software
53:04
that lets e commerce stores sell more stuff because
53:08
if people don't have the full amount or don't or, you know, they're hesitant to spend a large amount of money right now, you can offer them pay as you go plans with a zero effort. And then they take a cut. So, you know,
53:19
you know, on on our e commerce store, we offer we use one called SESL, and SESL will,
53:25
basically say, great. You could buy this thing for, you know, four payments or eight payments of ten dollars instead of paying the full amount right now. And,
53:33
And then they take seven percent and then they send us the rest of the money. And so it is kind of a no brainer as a retailer because it just it really does improve conversion.
53:42
For us, customers were asking for it because they were used to buying it. It's
53:46
it's it's public to trade a company now. It does really well. And so and there's several of these. So there's afterpay in Australia, which is even bigger afterpay is a thirty four billion dollar company, which is kind of interesting because Normally, Australian companies are much much smaller.
53:58
Clarna is, like, big in Europe, I think, for this. I think Clarna is even bigger than all of them. Exactly. So Clarna is what probably the biggest one. And, and so there's kind of this war going on. They're all trying to, like,
54:10
like, I think a firm partnered with Shopify. So it's, like, built into Shopify now. That's a big move. But, basically, okay, pay as you go. Interesting space.
54:18
Kind of was one of the big ideas that just came out in the last, like, ten years, and is a good example of
54:24
Once it started working in the US, it was not hard for people to just sit and be like, cool. We're gonna do we're gonna do a firm for Australia. We're gonna do a firm for UK. We're gonna do a firm for India. Whatever. Right? I think, generically, that was a good business idea.
54:36
What I thought was interesting is what else could you use it for? So I heard of one company in this, this year's YC batch
54:42
that was doing pay as you go. How did you get access to that?
54:46
Bro, big time investors like us, that's what we get access to.
54:50
Actually, YC still has not accepted me into the investor pool, even though I've invested in probably, like, ten YC companies at this point.
54:56
Yes, but but But I have a friend who gave access. So so that's no problem.
55:01
So anyways, one of the companies,
55:04
what they do is they're a firm for general contractors.
55:07
So another high ticket item, you're getting, you know, your garage redone or whatever, bathroom remodeled, or you're building out, you know, a multi family apartment complex or whatever.
55:16
They're giving the general they what they did is they went to the general contractor just like, that's their version of the e commerce store. And they say, hey, instead of charging your client twelve grand for this, you can just offer them pay as you go, and it helps your clients pay you money. And, you get a higher collection rates, you know, have less less kind of late payments and defaults,
55:36
and higher conversion rate because people can afford you this way. You it makes you more affordable.
55:41
And, they were doing alright. They had, you know, decent revenue and, you know, it was early still. But I thought, oh, this is interesting. Are people gonna do pay as you go in more more industries, more more sectors and what else might Okay. But here's my here's my take.
55:55
Clarna,
55:56
after pay, and a firm,
55:58
I like the people who start them. I think they're horrible companies for the world. I think that they you they should
56:04
burn down completely and not exist. I think that because it's getting people in debt. It's getting people in debt. It's making you buy stupid shit that you can't afford. So where, like, where's a firm? Like, if you go to, like, fashion nova, like, people who can't afford Yep. A true who people who wanna do a firm for a twenty nine dollar pair of pants. I'm like, don't buy those fucking pants. Don't use a firm. Don't buy any of this. You don't need this bullshit. Don't buy it. Do not buy it. Run. And also, if you're gonna have to buy it, don't go in debt to buy it. I think this is horrible. And I'm actually shocked at a guy like Max Lipschin, who I think is a cool dude. Started PayPal. He started all the stuff. It's bad ass. I seem like a nerd. I love nerds. What are you doing? This is useless. You're just, you know, you know, Donald just started how he got the idea.
56:50
Tell me. He was,
56:53
so this is the version of the story. I know I'm gonna be, you know, somebody who was theirs probably knows a lot more details, but what I'd heard was There was an engineer
57:01
who had, so he had this lab. Like, I had monkey inferno. He had a lab called HVF hard valuable fun. And it basically was an incubator where he said, I'm gonna do any project that satisfies those three criteria. It's gotta be hard. It's gotta be valuable. It's gotta be fun. And so, and then they kinda, like, didn't have,
57:16
I think they've they've had, you know, a few nice companies glow came out of its fertility tracker, and then a firm was the big one. And Max, like, went all in, and he became the CEO of a firm and all stuff to to take it forward. But the origin story from what I heard was, as an engineer
57:30
who had come up with, like, a new, like, database technology or database technique He's like, oh, look at this. He's like, basically, just like nerding out. He's like, look at this. We could do, like, so much computation and so little time and, like, with this new technique. And I was like, okay, but what are you gonna use for. It's just kinda like blockchain. It's like, great. You're blockchain, but, like,
57:46
why do we need a blockchain? What are we gonna use it for? Does it really make this better? And, like, there's you needed to find an application the way that blockchain
57:54
found
57:55
money currency as as the core killer app,
57:58
what he what Max realized was he came into the this guy was a EIR for him. So for months, he was just, like, working on this, like, databasing technology and how he was gonna use it. Couldn't couldn't really figure out an application one day Max walks in and he goes,
58:10
dude,
58:11
like, credit scoring and credit reporting is so, like, ancient.
58:15
We should be able to, like, If you're a person today, I should be able to take signals from the internet. Social social networking data,
58:23
publicly available data on the internet. To do instant credit worthiness
58:28
versus, like, the way that this works today with this kind of, like, you go get a credit score and it's based off of, like, you know, stuff in the in the past. So his his insight was
58:36
there has to be a better way to determine the credit creditworthiness of a person.
58:41
And he's like, your databasing technology is actually perfect for doing that on the fly and doing that at scale. And so they came together and he's like, great. I'm gonna, like, basically create this application to do this. And I think at first, they didn't want to do I don't think the initial very initial idea was what they ended up doing, which was like pay as you go on e commerce websites, but pretty quickly they realized that's the use case. That's the market that needs this the most is, basically, instead of,
59:07
Like, I guess my question to you would be, do you also feel the do you also use a Visa and Mastercard? Like, because it's just credit cards. That's all this is. It's just credit.
59:15
So do you also hate credit cards the same way you hate pay as you go?
59:19
You wanna know what's funny is, my
59:22
my personal credit card limit is four thousand dollars.
59:26
So I've gotta I've I've never had any debt. Other I just gotta Do you want those people to use debit cards instead of credit?
59:32
I do it because lately someone has advised me to do it, but for a long time, no. But I'm not against credit.
59:39
And I realized that what I'm saying is not entirely logical. It's definitely emotionally driven.
59:44
And you're saying and and I'm not, like, going this hardcore libertarian route, which is, like, Well, I'm like against the government. Therefore, all government is bad. I'm like, no. No. No. No. No. No. Like, I'm gonna draw. And so what I'm doing right now is basically I'm drawing the line, which I get,
59:57
It's just that's just not always the best. But I think that credit cards in some cases are good and affirm in most cases are bad.
01:00:06
That's what I think.
01:00:08
Okay. I think that's, you know, that's what I'm doing. Because
01:00:10
the people, like, do you know do you have any, do you know, like, in Europe? Like, our friend, Ramon, and a lot of my other, friends from Europe, there are, like, you know, credit cards. We don't use credit cards, like, in in in in Germany.
01:00:23
Yeah. Like, in in a lot of places in Europe, if you wanna use the credit We use bidets proper cleaning. Yeah.
01:00:29
Which, by the way, whenever people were flipping out over COVID toilet paper, I'm like, dude, take a shower. It's like,
01:00:35
you flip it out over this. Why are you fighting over this?
01:00:38
Anyway,
01:00:41
You're gonna shower every time you shit?
01:00:43
How easy to say. But, like, it's it's the inconvenience
01:00:48
is not bad enough that I'm gonna fight over that. That's fine. That's right. That's what I'm saying. Not gonna, like, stab someone in. Like, I'm not gonna go to jail over this. Like, I'm just a shower,
01:00:58
or I'll just be uncomfortable. Anyway,
01:01:01
I just think, like, credit cards aren't that common in Europe. There it's definitely an American thing. But long story short, I am not in favor of a firm.
01:01:09
I think that that is a stupid thing to spend his life working on. That's my opinion.
01:01:13
I would love for him if I we could go to or bait him into coming on here and he's and convincing me of, otherwise, because I I'm open minded, but I think it's dumb. I think it's stupid. For general contractors, that's a little bit different. But for buying, like, a twenty nine dollar pair of pants, like, don't fucking buy the pants.
01:01:29
Well,
01:01:30
I,
01:01:31
my
01:01:31
family member trains his daughter in jujitsu. And so maybe
01:01:36
maybe we could use the the daughter jujitsu connect to get max on the pod, very soon.
01:01:42
Am I wrong though? Do you agree or disagree? I disagree. I disagree completely. I think credit is a great thing. It helps the economy move I I'm always a kind of don't hate the player hate the game type of situation where
01:01:53
I put the burden on the individual in the same way that I wasn't, like, oh my god.
01:01:59
Joule or, like, you know, like, is, you know, is is Greg Goose evil? Because it's alcohol and alcohol causes problems? No. Like, I don't think so. I think it I I, basically, for myself, I live my life where I never blame a company for tricking me into, like, doing something. I blame myself if I don't have the self control and, like, thought process to to do it. And so that's how I I look at others too. I will never blame a credit card company
01:02:23
for
01:02:24
for somebody getting in debt. Now what I do say is if you're
01:02:28
not transparent about what the fees are, what the charges are, what the rates are, then that's shady. Right? You're withholding information. You're not disclosing. You're hiding the fees. But,
01:02:38
but in this case, they don't charge people more, for, you know, for buying. A lot of the times, it's zero percent interest, actually, because they they can offer the customer zero percent interest
01:02:49
because they take seven percent from the merch helping them close the sale. And so it's actually a interesting model compared to That's interesting. I didn't know. I didn't know the full price. So It depends on the credit worthiness. If the like, when I I I bought a Eight Sleep mattress
01:03:01
using a firm. And I was like, because I was like, oh, do I wanna spend, like, two grand right now? Oh, I'll try this a firm thing. And I was like, oh, this is cool. I can just pay in payments and it's zero percent interest. Because I had a lot of trouble. Doing it. I also have a Eight Sleep. I tried doing it with there, and I actually had was gonna have to pay, like, a pretty hefty fee I was like, oh, no. Because you don't have high credit.
01:03:22
Something. Like, for some reason, I don't have a good credit my credit score is is not bad anymore, but it was bad.
01:03:28
I didn't have history. Anyway, I I've one one last idea on this, which is,
01:03:33
I think this is the same thing as, like, you probably know what layaway is I don't even really fully understand what layaways layaways sounded like a total scam to me. It's silly. It's silly. Basically, like, what it is is if you wanna buy a five hundred dollar thing, you would go each week and you would give them a little bit of money and would start paying down your balance, and then eventually you'd get the item. Right. But it's crazy because you don't like, with a firm, you get the item first and then you pay later.
01:03:56
Buy now pay later. Right? That's the that's the Well, you have to remember there's a the one big thing, which is, like, is that if if if it's gonna take you three months to purchase and you can't if you don't have the internet to buy stuff, like, you wanna guarantee that they're gonna like, that's yours.
01:04:10
Right. And I guess for me, it's, like, items really out of stock. But, apparently, there's a huge thing. Like, Walmart, like, in most parts of the country,
01:04:17
layaway is, like, a huge part of their business. And it's a it's a it seems like a pretty predatory thing in a way, but I I I don't know too much about it, so I shouldn't really speak on it. But, anyways, I guess my my point is Why aren't people doing a firm for retail stores? So why isn't this the same option every time I check out, you know, my wife goes and shops at, I don't know, wherever you know, Nordstrom.
01:04:39
Like, when she checks out, they're like, oh, you know, do you wanna open a Nordstrom card or whatever? Why isn't it? Hey.
01:04:45
You wanna pay the full amount today, or would you like to pay in installments?
01:04:48
And you could pay in installments. Now maybe this is already the case. I don't know, but, like, it seems like something that should be built into the point of sale at retail stores. I don't do a ton of retail shopping. So Yeah. This might be me being dominated actually is totally a thing.
01:04:59
Does a firm plugin to Shopify?
01:05:02
Yes.
01:05:03
And do a lot of people use Shopify to but, like, Nordstrom doesn't use it, but, like, a coffee shop might Yeah. Not really. They're they're trying to do more of that square is definitely trying to do a lot of, like,
01:05:15
retail plus online blah, like, you know, brick and mortar and online.
01:05:19
So maybe Square does it, but, but I think a lot of retailers that just have their old school POS still. This is like one of those rare topics that you're up. And I'm like, oh, I don't know. Like, how do people buy stuff at stores? I haven't done it. Yeah. So we should just smoothly exit this exit the topic before we
01:05:35
before we try to try to start. Are we gonna find the emergency exit on this one?
01:05:40
Okay. I think we should wrap it up. That's a good good episode.
01:05:49
I feel like I could rule the world and know I could be what I want
01:05:53
to.
01:05:54
I put my all in it like the days off on a road. Let's travel never looking back.
00:00 01:06:00