00:00
I saw that Roger Federer was one of he's he's part of the, the Billy athlete club. So there is
00:07
five athletes.
00:08
Who have made a billion dollars.
00:10
Tiger Woods,
00:11
Floyd Mayweather,
00:13
LeBron James,
00:15
Ronaldo,
00:16
And I think Michael Jordan may be messy. So that might be six. I think it's five.
00:21
And now Federer is in that club.
00:30
The whole Adam Levin thing's ridiculous. It's just like, is that in like the Santa's fake section on the newspaper as well. It's just like the most obvious, like, people are like acting like it's like a big deal. It's like, dude, what do you expect? Would it look at the guy? Of course he cheats.
00:44
I don't even know the story. Why did he cheat? I don't know. Not why. Like, what what's the controversy? Like, did he do something really crazy?
00:52
I I only read the headlines. I think he just texted, like, texted her Instagram, like, his yoga trainer and said, I wanna roll around naked with you all day. And then he texted this other lady that says, like,
01:03
you know, like, he, like, said, like, hey, like, I wanna go out with you. Like, why are you so hot or something like that? And then later on, weeks later, he texts and says, hey, my wife's pregnant, and we're gonna name the baby
01:13
your name. Is that cool with you? Which is super freaking weird. But I don't know if he did anything wrong, like, legally, but he's just, you know, just doing what, like, guys with, like, body tats who live in LA do. You know, you're just cheap.
01:29
Like, you could he's got the face of a cheater. Right? I mean, it's obvious. At the bottom of your tattoo sleeve is just a place to put your number.
01:37
I wouldn't have got this sleeve as a married man if I wasn't trying to, you know, play the game. Dude, speaking of bros, I think I've just invented something. I've been doing this for the past few weeks. I call it, like, fitness dip. So you know how, like, you know, people dip, like tobacco, they put, like, stuff in their lip, lately.
01:53
Yeah. You know, like chewing tobacco. You put it in your lip. Yeah. I've heard of it, but you're the only guy I know who does it. Yeah. Just like a fat lip. Lately, what I've been doing is just putting in have you seen PB fit It's like powdered peanut butter. Yeah. That's that's great. I love it. Dude, I just get a, like, a tablespoon of it, and I just stick it on the roof of my mouth, and I'll just suck on it for, like, an hour. And I just it's it's my fitness dip, and it just keeps me, like, from, like, pacifier for you. Yeah. It keeps you it's like chewing gum almost. Like, you know, you can't eat anything because you got that in the roof of your mouth and you're just sucking on it real slowly. That's my new fit in this dip. Alright. So how do you get an idea like this? Like, I'm not saying it's a not saying it's probably doesn't taste good or it might be therapeutic or whatever. But why are you like, you know what? Something need to I need something on the top of my mouth. What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? P. B. Fit powder. Alright. I'm gonna, like, I've never even wanted to put anything at the top of my mouth nor have I just taken foods and be like, what if I stuck this here for an hour? Would that be better than just eating it? Because I go to the store and I just, like, look at all the products. I look at at new stuff, and it says to add water. And I'm like, what if I don't? What if I just eat this as plain powder? And I do rebel without a cause over here.
03:00
I don't know. I just tried it. I did it was interesting to me. Just add water. Don't tell me what to do. Yeah. It works.
03:10
It works. You should try it.
03:12
I definitely will not. Alright. So
03:16
what do we got today? You got ideas? I've got topics. I've got a ton of stuff. Let me we can start off with something one thing that's like, I don't know if this is actually interesting or not. You tell me, but basically, I'm reading this book called more money than god, and it's about the history of hedge funds. You know anything about hedge funds?
03:31
Not not a lot. Tell me. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm only in the first half of the book. So I can't tell you much about how they operate now, but because, you know, we're still in, like, the nineteen eighties. But, basically, the guy who invented, it was called a hedged fund.
03:44
And his name was Alfred Jones, Alfred Winslow Jones, a w Jones is what they call them. And he that's kind of interesting. He was a journalist for fortune. You know, he was just a writer. It's crazy that fortune even existed back then. This was in, like, the thirties and forties. And For some reason, for some reason, hedged fund is so funny to me. That's what it that's what it was called. I know it's real, but for some reason, it just seems like something we would just say wrong. Trying to be smart. Yeah. I'm looking at investing in some hedge funds. Yeah. And people would be like, is he putting a d in in there?
04:16
I'm like, you know, go out there, have fun and break an egg. You know, just
04:24
it just I continue on. So it's called it was called a hedged fun and he was researching for an article stock pickers. And he found this, like, small group of people that were doing, like, some slightly different stuff with hedge funds. Are with stock picking. And at the time, like,
04:39
basically,
04:40
rich people viewed Wall Street and a lot of, like, equity investing as just a way to preserve wealth not really grow wealth. And this guy, AW Jones, he was at his forties, journalists, and he goes, oh, with these, you know, small group of people that I'm researching, this, like, mathematical formula stuff that they're doing, It's actually really, really interesting. And so
04:57
he raises, I think, a hundred thousand dollars at the time. And what he does is basically,
05:01
the kind of dumb way of explaining it is which is the only way I understand it, is that he just, like, does a combination of longing, going long on things with borrowing leverage, meaning if he invests eighty thousand dollars, he would borrow another fifty dollars. Now he's a hundred and thirty thousand dollars into a stock. Then with the rest of his hundred thousand dollars, he would buy shorts in such a combination where his upside was much higher and his downside was a little bit protected. And there was, like, some math behind it. And at the time, this was revolutionary. But here's where things get actually really cool. That itself wasn't the revolutionary part. I mean, that was one part of it, but wasn't the main thing. The really cool thing that he did, which wasn't done ever before, is he hired these young stock pickers, and instead of just giving them a salary, he goes, alright. You work for me. I've raised a million dollars. You get fifty thousand. You get fifty thousand. You get fifty thousand. You get fifty thousand. You
05:41
get
05:47
thousand. You can go and hire two people to work with you. You're your own group. You're your own group. You're your own group. And,
05:54
get after it. Let's see what you can do. The person who does least best or the person does worst, you guys are out. And he created this like cutthroat
06:03
culture of these people who were just getting after it. And he was the first person that made it. So you they were only paid a percentage. So twenty percent of
06:12
future upside. And at the time, he did it because they that was that just means your your tax more, it was more beneficial for you. It wasn't income tax. It was a capital
06:21
gains and your tax benefits were, like, way greater, but he told his folks, he goes, yes. The reason we're doing this is Phinesian sea captains used to keep a fifth of the profit of successful voyages. And that's, like, how we, like, he didn't say, pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
06:39
This team structure,
06:41
that's what, like, changed everything. Prior to that, Wall Street was just like the stodgy sleepy place of, like, look, we're just doing
06:48
stocks, twenty percent bonds, and we just let it sit there. But then once he changed that incentive structure, everything changed, and that kinda got me interested.
06:56
That that's kinda like been sitting with me because at the hustle, we used to do this too. We're,
07:01
for our quotas, for our salespeople, we would say, you know, go out and get ad sales and you get a percentage of what you close, but then they would close like dumb shit. They would close like, for example, they're like, who cares if porn company. If it's a weed company, if it's a shitty service, like, it doesn't matter. And then we're like, oh, actually, that's a good point. We need, like, inverse incentives. Like,
07:20
you know, do the readers like this? Is the click through rate high? Do they renew? And I couldn't figure out how to do that successfully. I couldn't figure out because both all I thought
07:29
I thought for sure the story was ending with so then I created a better system and it worked beautifully. You're like, I I couldn't figure that shit out. That's too
07:38
It's like, you know, like, I thought so I would have bet anything that you were about to say. So then we did this. And Pat on the back, I did a great job because I'm so used to people doing that. Like, you know, in tech, nobody says, you know, we kinda hit this problem.
07:54
And we didn't solve it. We just didn't solve it. You know? That nobody ever tells a story like that. I love that you just told a story like that. That's amazing. Well, I I so with my new business, I am trying to think. I'm like, how do I solve this? You know, like, can I pay, like, fifty percent of the but there's, like, but I started researching different ways to solve this? And, I don't know. Have you I I'll tell you a few other examples. But have you had with, like, the milk road or with anything that you've done? Have you had where you're like, if I change the incentives, this other thing changed. Where it's so it's like the product isn't the revolutionary or interesting thing. It's like how you operate. That's what's interesting.
08:29
Yeah.
08:30
I don't think I have a great story personally off the top of my head. Like, we just did one where we needed to fill all the ads for, like, October or something like that. Or, like, what, whatever, some future month. And we were a little light, and it was like, oh, how do we get this up?
08:44
And,
08:45
and Ben was just like, you know, If we just told our, like, you know, salesperson,
08:50
we'll give them an extra ten k if they can get this to if they can get us, you know, to to this fill rate.
08:56
I think they'll do it. And and I was like, yeah. But, like, that's the same thing as their quota. Like, if if they just filled it, they would get that percentage. He's like, no. I think if we just say, I'll give you ten thousand dollars on top of your quota. If you could do this, and I was like, okay. I guess that makes sense. And, instantly, they, like, way overfilled it. So and I was like, okay, I don't think you could do that all the time, because, like, you know, this got them, you know, to get off their ass and do something.
09:20
But,
09:21
yeah, I thought that was interesting. So what's funny is you're right? That does work, and you can do it all the time. So I was researching, like, incentives.
09:28
And one of the there's a handful of ways to make basically, I think Charlie Munger or some one of the, like, rich smart guys said, like, you show me the incentives. I'm gonna show you future results or something like that. And Tell me your incentives, and I'll show you your outcomes. And there are a few successful ways to, like, incentivize people. And so one of those ways I was reading this McKinsey study where they said you actually should give bonuses based on a hundred and five percent performance, not just ninety percent performance, and research shows that if you over attain to in order to get a bonus, people tend to do that versus the other way around. Another thing is you do,
10:04
claw backs. So you get fifty percent, of a bonus upfront.
10:08
And if you don't achieve the goal, that you said you're going to get done, then I'm gonna do what's called the callback, and I'm gonna take that money from you. So you could do this with kids where you say, hey, look, your allowance is a hundred dollars a week or a hundred dollars a month, actually gonna give you fifty now and the other fifty when you do your chores, but if you don't do your chores, you're giving me that fifty back. And that loss of version is actually performs better than if I just say, I'm gonna give you a hundred dollars at the end of the month if you do x, y, and z.
10:35
That's that's a hundred percent right.
10:37
Yeah. The I think lost version is what they what they call it, but basically it feels
10:42
it feels worse to lose money you have than to not gain the same amount of money. Yeah. It should be the same thing, but it's it's definitely not the same thing. And, I had this when we did I did a deal once where we got a million dollar signing bonus. But it was contingent that if we if we left before a year,
10:59
then we wouldn't get the million dollars. And I I would personally. I wouldn't get the million dollars if if I left before a year.
11:06
And,
11:08
and I think if you had just told me, hey, do you wanna stay for a year to get this million dollars? I would be like, well, you know, That sounds good.
11:16
But there's other opportunities. Maybe I could do it this other way. But once they just put the money in my account, they're like,
11:21
that's there now. Go look at that. Okay. Cool. If you leave early, you have to pay all that back. And I was like, oh, man. I gotta pay back a million dollars. And it just felt even my brain knew exactly what was going on. It was like, just don't wanna pay back a million dollars. That sounds like, that that would be horrible. I'm just I'm definitely not doing that. I'm not losing a million. Whereas, if they had just said, Hey, if you if you stay a little longer, you can get this extra bit. I would have been like, maybe I can go get that some other way. And, and that's, like, kind of a crazy, like,
11:50
like, you know, psychological trick. I knew what was going on, and it still felt real to me. Well, and another interesting example, then we could move on, but another interesting example that I was thinking about was for, you know, it's like a really fucked up industry's private prisons because you're incentivized by, like, how many beds you fill, you know. Yep. And that's like, you know, doesn't align with what we want as a society. I'm like, well, what it should be is you're paid a little bit of money for how many beds you fill. But then if the inmate,
12:16
you know, has a recid if if they go back to prison inside the next four years outside of being released, gotta give me that money back. And if they stay out, I'll give you the second half of your payment.
12:27
And I was just, like, I was thinking of all these different ways that because I was thinking about my business. I'm like, how can I change my incentives around in order to get a different outcome? And that was like a really good example.
12:38
But it seems the problem with incentives is that a, it's like, to change them.
12:43
You have to be kind of bold and, like, kind of be the first to, like, really try something new. And, b, oftentimes,
12:50
it's not always straightforward. Like, did you achieve this or, like, tracking the results is actually, like, a huge task in itself, which is what we had at the hustle. I'm like, I could do this, but, like, I gotta build all this stuff to, like, track all this. But anyway, I've I Yeah. Because it's, they call second order effects. Basically, usually the first thing you're trying to incentivize does happen. It's the second thing that goes wrong. Basically, it's
13:11
yeah, you got your ads filled, but they filled it with certain types of content, which led to readers being upset, which led to churn, or whatever. Like, you have to predict what would be the, the second order effect that comes from some of the stuff? There's a there's like a farnam street blog that that I've read about this one. But the COBRA thing? Yeah. Like, the COBRA thing. Yeah. Go ahead. Sort of, like, incentives gone wrong. I don't remember the story at this point. Basically, it was, like, in India right now. Like, there's you know, the stereotype of, like, a guy playing, like, a horn or I don't know what it's called, and, like, the cobra coming up and, like, dancing.
13:43
And like, well, why are there so many cobras in India? And, apparently,
13:47
I don't remember what year it was, but there there was a little bit of a cobra problem and they go, hey, everyone. We're gonna give you fifty dollars every dead cobra you bring it bring to us thinking, great. We're gonna have no more cobras, but in reality,
13:59
the schemers are like, oh, let's breed Cobras and kill them and bring them to you. So, like, oh, nice. This is free money. This is awesome. And that there is now an overpopulation problem of cobras. I I actually just have no idea if that's a true story that's, that's, like, one of the urban legends. Yeah. That's one of those Malcolm Gladwell stories that just, like, becomes, like, known by everybody, whether it's real or not.
14:19
Have you heard the one about, hint talking about David Goliath?
14:24
Yeah. That one's great. Basically, the I'll summarize it in ten seconds, which is basically, like, everyone talking about David Goliath. It's this underdog versus the big shot. And they're like, oh, no. Turns out Goliath was, like, eight feet tall because had a pituitary gland problem, which means that he was, like, had low IQ, meaning he, like, was, like, you know, like an idiot. And he was, like, big, which means if you have that pituit pituitary gland ish or that issue, you can't see. And at the time, the Davids of the world were like shepherds, and they had these sling which is basically, like, they had a rifle. So, basically,
14:54
this, like, led
14:55
baby that this guy had is already deadly, and he hit, like, a big guy who was stupid and blind. So it's really not that, like, impressive.
15:04
Yeah. David's a bully. Yeah.
15:08
Alright. So let me give you let me give you an idea. Okay.
15:12
So I need a name for this. Don't have a name. So working title here.
15:16
But
15:17
I think that
15:18
isn't it crazy that basically so we're we both invest in startups now. And,
15:24
And I had this real one of one of the startups that I invested in is just doing absolutely amazing.
15:29
And I'm like, wow. That thing is gonna make, like,
15:32
our little investment, we put seventy five k in. I was like, I think it's currently probably at, like, four or five million dollars. It's gonna value that seventy five k check. And we're not like, like, the it can still run. Like, that thing can still
15:46
double twice. And you're not doing anything.
15:48
I'm not doing anything. And I was like, and also, so that's kind of a just amazing. And I'm like, oh, I'm excited. Like, the fund is gonna have, like,
15:55
like, the first really, really big winner because we're only two or two years in. And so it's hard to know what's your what are gonna be your big winners, but I think that one's gonna be one of the really big winners now. It's it's it's looking like very, very promising. But
16:08
The second part is I would have never guessed that that would be the one.
16:12
What can you say what it is?
16:16
No. I don't wanna say which one it is yet.
16:19
Because I don't know if they want me to say or whatever. But basically, I looked back at literally that that the batch of that quarter, I did ten deals. And of those ten, I would have said, like, oh, this is probably, like, you know, somewhere in the middle. I would not have it's, like, the one that's the big winner. And I thought, wow, that's crazy. And I was, like, you know, it's pretty unfair
16:39
that employees at tech companies don't have this sort of portfolio approach. And it got me thinking. Well, you talked about -- Or the founders? -- Sarah's list.
16:47
Or the founders? So you talked about Sarah's list, and how, you know, the if you could pick one of these companies, that's gonna four or five x over your four year period there.
16:56
You know, you can become a, you know, a self made millionaire without taking huge entrepreneurial risks.
17:01
But you gotta pick right. And so that got me thinking, like, why do you have to pick right? And so I got two startup
17:08
related,
17:09
community ideas for you. The first is By the way, the way that you're setting this up, it's like, you know, doesn't it suck that Would you eat four thousand calories a day? You get fat? Why does it have to be that way? It doesn't.
17:22
Like
17:23
What if I scream. It just had a bad rap. Yeah. And what if I told you?
17:28
In fact, exhale while eating,
17:30
he has no effect at all. Yeah. It's like, duh. Yeah. Okay. And
17:35
The, alright. So my idea is basically this.
17:38
You take a job at a tech company. You get your portfolio of stock options.
17:43
Or so you get your stock options, you can then click a button and you can what you can pull it. If you could pull it with other companies
17:51
that are like, like, equally risk weighted. So we basically create, like, a, like, a, like, a credit rating agency where we kinda rate stock options. And we're, like, alright. Cool. Like, you're getting it at at this price at this valuation. Good. We know that. That's that's set. And secondly, like, there's a community, like,
18:07
desirability
18:08
to these options. Like, maybe everybody in the community really wants stripe options because they're like, wow, Stripe is great. But I'm not working at Stripe right now. I'm working at the smaller startup that I think has high upside. But, like, I consider Stripe options to be AAA
18:20
stock options. And so you kinda get evaluation and then a trust of that valuation. But you basically put your you put your stock in, and you end up with
18:28
let's call it
18:29
forty percent your stock, and sixty percent becomes a blend
18:33
of other stocks that you get to either pick or index into out of the startup community. And so as a as an engineer or as a designer or who whoever you are, you're getting
18:43
to be a part of you get derisked a little bit out of just your one thing because maybe you got a crazy CEO. You got Adam Newman. You thought WeWork was a good idea. And now three years later, your stock options are worthless. They're underwater.
18:56
And, like, you know, that okay. Cool. That's just how the game works, but Does it have to be that way is my question?
19:02
And so, Sam, I have two questions for you. How good of an idea on this on a scale of one to incredible? And secondly, we need a name for this idea.
19:11
We already know I'm not funny on the spot. So the name thing, I'm I'm gonna does this I've already get a snake to share. Yeah. It's already a swing at a miss. I mean, I called my company the hustle. Like, everybody would be good at maybe not on the spot.
19:24
So
19:25
I mean, this podcast is called my first million. Like, we're not we're not exactly good at this.
19:30
I told Sarah, I wanna name my our kid Buck.
19:33
And, she she wouldn't feel in it.
19:37
Dude. That's so funny. I had told my wife. I'd been saying this since college. I wanted to name my kid jumper.
19:44
And then even I was like, that's a horrible name. But at some point, I was committed because I had told, like, twelve people that I was doing this. And those are, like, my twelve friends. And it made no sense, but I, like, had to stick with it. So my wife was like, what are you what are you saying? This is not even close to what gonna happen. Yeah. I've suggested Biff and Buff and,
20:03
she's not into it.
20:05
I these are, like, you know, in Batman comics where they, like, punch, and then it's like, pow. It's like biff.
20:11
Fuck. That's like the sound effect of a little cartoon fun. I have, a feeling like that first name Chuck, middle name steak is not gonna pass either, but but TBD.
20:24
So I'm not good at naming anything. But, yeah, I mean, if you could pull this off, dude, one thing that I learned when I was running my company was I thought, like, oh, it's a privately held business. I can do whatever want with the shares. Like, I could just you get a share. You get a share. I can give this to you. I didn't realize that it's, like, it's not I guess it's I don't know if it would technically considered regulated, but there's like rules. Right? Like you can't, for example, if I give if I sell you a share for a dollar, I can't then six months later, and I'm like summarizing this, which means I'm probably a little bit off. I can't then go and give, like, another employee that same share for fifty cents. You know, that's,
20:56
I guess, I don't know if that'd be considered illegal or just against, like, certain rules that where you can get trouble, but it's like you can't do whatever you want. Yeah, if you could but if you could figure out how to, like, operationally pull this off, I think it's bad ass.
21:09
Well, there are, like, secondary markets where actually sell them, but I think this would have to be some you'd have to create some
21:14
some, you know, financial contracts, some some some derivative product that basically says
21:19
I pledge or assign my shares
21:22
to this portfolio, basically. And then in in exchange, I receive shares of the portfolio,
21:28
And there has to be some sort of like consequence for trying to, like, you know, renege or whatever. Let's say your startup hits it huge, you're like, don't wanna do that. So I don't know the
21:37
you know, I'm gonna wave my hands in the air right now. That what I'm doing right now is legal
21:42
financial
21:43
magic. Like, alright. It's done. That's done now. And now we just need to, like, you know, start the company and, have it take off. Yeah. I mean, it's I don't know. But that's how I actually run my businesses. I'll go talk a lawyer or the account. I'll be like, I don't know. We don't have the, we don't we don't know what the contract says. Like, you know,
22:01
you
22:01
got it.
22:03
Out there. So just giving them good vibes. And I'm like, hey. I already agreed to this deal. You gotta figure out how that works. Like, they're like, what?
22:11
Why didn't you just talk to me first. There's, like, this leadership principle that you're supposed to, like, give people autonomy and, like, let them figure out and empower them. And I always just see, like,
22:20
you're empowered, dude.
22:22
I'm empowering you to figure this out. You're welcome.
22:26
Yeah.
22:27
Like, on me, I've given you two. Your ashes got empowered, my friend.
22:34
Congratulations.
22:34
Yeah. You're welcome. Thank me later. Study show. This makes you happier. Yeah. Study show.
22:40
It's so sad.
22:44
Yeah. I mean, if you could figure that out, I think down. Just a powered drag.
22:51
Just empowered your ass. Yeah.
22:54
You wanna move on my part. You like that?
23:00
Like, on that Harvard. So, sir,
23:02
speaking of, like, investing, I was, reading about the Figma thing.
23:06
So Figma is like the design thing that just sold for twenty billion. So have you heard of O'Reilly Media?
23:13
Yeah. They, they published, like, books and the conference. Right? Like Yeah. Basically, what's the guy's name who started? I had dinner with him one time. What's his first name?
23:22
So he's, like, they call him, like, he had this title, like, the Oracle of Silicon Valley because he's been in the game since, like, the seventies and eighties. And,
23:29
originally,
23:30
started writing books on programming. And his mission statement for his company was actually really cool. It was like, work on interesting stuff with interesting people. And he's like, We'll try books for a little while. And then he's like, oh, well, just let's just stick with books. That's fine. But, like, he didn't actually necessarily care about books. He just wanted to, like, fund his ability to work on cool stuff. Anyway, they're famous for writing these books. Now they make like two or three hundred million dollars a year,
23:53
with the combination of books conferences
23:55
and,
23:56
like, you can pay, like, fifty bucks a month and, like, get access to, like, a bunch of their, like, technical content. So it's content for engineers and shit like that. Anyway,
24:04
They started a little fun using the profits of their business, and the profits of their business were was big, but their fund wasn't necessarily big compared to, like, a a full time, you know, proper fun fun. And I was looking at some of the stuff that they did, and they were in Figma's seed round.
24:21
And I was doing some math, and this doesn't account for dilution,
24:25
and if they sold early. So these numbers actually could potentially be off by a by a lot. But assuming
24:30
that isn't the case.
24:32
If they if I don't know what Figma's Figma's seed round was, but I think they raised three million dollars. So if you assume that it was around a fifteen million dollar cap,
24:40
it's sold for twenty billion. That means it went up by around thirteen hundred times. So a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar check is something like three hundred million dollars.
24:51
And it's crazy that
24:53
this is one of those examples where the main thing didn't even make the main money. You know what I mean? Like, the or sorry. The main the the not main thing made more than the main thing.
25:06
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25:09
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25:15
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25:19
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25:21
Dude, there I mean, there's so many examples of that, that I leads me to another topic I had. But, like,
25:26
the remember that when we did camp MFM, we stayed in a house. And I don't know if you saw it, but Did you see on the stairway up to the guest bedroom, those plaques on the wall? Did you walk to that staircase? Like, the back staircase, by any chance? Yeah. I thought they were just, like, kids
25:42
trophies,
25:43
like basketball codes. I didn't even look at them.
25:46
No. They were adult trophies.
25:48
Basically, what those were so the guy whose house we were staying in, he's a venture capitalist. Oh. And he's a venture capitalist who lives in North Carolina. And that on that stairway up, I was walking up there and I was like,
26:00
Wait. Beyond meet. And it's basically what he was framing
26:04
was a share certificate. It's like,
26:07
this guy, you know, whatever his name was, owns, you know, forty five thousand shares priced at point o one dot you know, a dollar, like, basically one cent a share.
26:16
And then it's like, beyond me, going public at eleven dollars a share. And I was like, wait. I was just like, literally, took out the calculator app. And, you know, it doesn't go up to a billion or whatever. I was like, unless you're tired. This is gotta turn the phone. Oh, really? If you turn the phone, you could yeah. That's a fun little fact. Wow. Jamchanger.
26:33
I've been, just like, you know, I'm like, what do you
26:37
mean?
26:41
Exactly. That's fine. That's my goal not to be a billionaire to get an e in
26:44
my network. Yeah.
26:46
The the
26:48
the but the guy basically had like twenty of these on his wall and they were just like Yep. Issued shares at twenty two cents a share. Now going public at twenty two dollars a share. And I'm like, wow. That's like, you know, these are crazy run ups, and it's like, Okay. You own ten thousand shares, twenty thousand shares, one five thousand shares, fifty thousand shares. And you just do the math. You're like, this is a staggering amount of money that's being generated by this. It is really mind boggling when you get these investments. Right? And it is also really funny how some of the
27:15
really successful people made their wealth
27:18
not out of the main thing that they did, but in a way out of the main thing that they Tim Ferris is another example. Somebody was asking me the other day. They go, how much do you think Tim Farris makes a year? And I said, I, you know, I don't know. I don't probably keep maximizes, like, what he can do. Like, he doesn't sell out, you know, fully. Probably five to ten million bucks.
27:35
Yeah. I said I that's exactly. I said five five to eight million dollars a year probably of just like cash flow,
27:40
at this point from, you know, podcasts, sponsorships,
27:43
newsletter, whatever,
27:45
But, book royalty, something like that. I said, maybe five million dollars a year. I said, they're like, oh, okay. That's that's really good. But, you know, I guess that's not that big. I go, yeah. But, like, He also because he was Tim Farris got to invest in Shopify
27:59
and Uber,
28:00
and, like, probably made hundreds of millions of dollars off of his Uber invested over a hundred million dollars, my guess. I would bet that his net worth is north of one fifty, maybe north of two hundred liquid.
28:12
Yeah. Which is, I mean, insane. And, obviously, like, What that means is that ninety plus percent of it probably has come from not his if you described
28:23
you might say, I'm an author. I'm a self experimenter.
28:26
I'm a podcaster.
28:28
But then all his money came from, like, you know, four angel investments or whatever.
28:32
And, and I think that's really, really,
28:36
that's, like, really, really impressive, but also more common than you'd think. Do you know other people who had this? Otherwise, I have example that I wanna go into anyway. Yeah. Just like a few famous people. Just like, you see, like, like, NaaS, the rapper, like, on all these cap tables. Like, yeah. You, you know, the guy who started Figma,
28:51
in one of the articles, it said that he had made ten million dollars because he owned the most expensive
28:56
crypto one of those, like, big ones.
28:59
And he bought it for nothing, and he sold it. And he had ten million before he even sold Figma. But, what are the other ones?
29:06
Well, I wanted to do was thinking about, okay, who do I do as Billy of the week? And so my Billy of the week that I came up with was
29:13
Roger Federerer, the tennis player.
29:20
A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?
29:23
A billion dollar.
29:26
So the US Open was on, got me thinking about tennis,
29:29
and,
29:31
and a that Roger Federer was one of he's he's part of the, the Billy athlete club. So there is five athletes
29:40
who have made a billion dollars.
29:42
Tiger Woods,
29:43
Floyd Mayweather,
29:45
LeBron James,
29:47
Ronaldo,
29:48
and I think Michael Jordan may be messing So that might be six. I think it's five.
29:53
And now Federal is in that club. Did you give a micro three hundred million dollar bump though? Cause he married Brooklyn Decker.
30:00
No. I that's not even included. That's that's just bonus points.
30:05
So how does this work? So he he has the same thing where Okay. He's had a great career, right, considered, I think, the goat in terms of tennis tennis players. So he's he's the greatest tennis player of all time, but
30:15
less than basically
30:17
ninety percent of his money came not from winning tennis tournaments.
30:21
So he he's made a hundred and thirty ish million dollars from
30:25
official prize money from tournaments.
30:27
And he's got twenty grand slam wins, but most of the money he makes is off the court. So just for example, like, is he retired?
30:34
Yeah. So Roger Federer who just announced literally yesterday that he's retiring. You know, in his last year, he bay, like, I don't know, three hundred thousand of prize money, but ninety million from sponsorships off, off court off the court, which is kind of insane. But his story is kind of cool. Like and when I was studying these different athletes, I'm actually gonna do a whole episode
30:51
that's just a deep dive on each of these athletes. The moves that they made that made this happen.
30:56
So
30:57
one of federer's big moves
30:59
was that early on, he was not getting paid jack shit. Even when he was the best player,
31:04
they, you know, they would pay, like, Andy Rotic more because they're like, oh, Andy. He's American. America is a bigger market.
31:10
Federer Swiss,
31:12
the Swiss market, you know, that's the tiny population.
31:14
He's kind of this, like, clean-cut sort of boring guy. He doesn't have this big personality.
31:19
And even though he's really good, he's not as marketable. He's not as sellable. And this is what they used to tell him. So he was getting, like, very small. Like, Nike was paying anti erotic more than they're paying Roger Federer even though By the way, There was no rank number one. That's the guy who married Brooklyn Decker.
31:32
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. That's right.
31:35
So, so anyway, so Federal goes and he's like, he's making so he's making, like, very little money from Nike. Then
31:42
He, you know, he carries on and he goes and he gets to a ten million dollar, a year deal would like it. And it's sort of like, well, you made it, you know, you should be happy. You got this ten million dollar a year deal. You know, you're set, your your family's set, whatever.
31:56
But
31:57
He made two decisions, which, really, one decision led to two things that made him an extra six hundred million dollars. And here's what those two were. So the first is
32:06
his contract with Nike is coming up.
32:09
And the expectation is that he's going to, just renew with Nike. And he goes to Nike and says, hey. This is now or then.
32:15
This back then. He's like, I'm one of the, you know, I'm one of the best, tennis players in the world. Like, you know, what can you do for me? And they're like,
32:23
Raj,
32:24
we we we put so much marketing behind you.
32:26
You know, the reality is you can't compare yourself to basketball players or to
32:31
or to,
32:33
soccer players, like, you know, tennis is just a different thing. Here's the best we could do. And they gave him a deal. And the deal was basically, like, every year that you're playing, you get x amount of money. And he's and, you know, something similar to what he was making right then. But
32:46
he starts he decides You know what? I'm gonna pause here. I'm not just gonna take this deal. I'm gonna go shop around a little bit more and see what I can do.
32:53
And then Uniqlo
32:54
comes Adam with this hue crazy offer. And so Uniqlo, who's not even in the, like, sports apparel game, really, but they kind of had this, like, tennis vibe. They're trying to come they're trying to come to the west. And,
33:06
And so uniquely comes out of him, and they offer him a ten year deal worth three hundred million dollars that that pays him even when he retires. So this is twenty eighteen. He's retired now.
33:16
I think he's retired now. Check that. He he is retired now, right, guys?
33:20
But basically, he,
33:22
he signs his deal knowing that he will retire during this deal. And he's gonna get paid thirty million dollars a year, doing this. He goes back to Nike. He tells Nike, hey, guys. I got this offer. Can you also give me an offer like this? It doesn't even have to be as much. And they're like,
33:36
no. We'll we'll throw in this, like, you know, here's the extra free t shirt, but, you know, you know, no. You're not getting a new deal. Give you a part. So he's like, alright. He leaves, but there's one key thing that he'd kind of knew here, which was that Uniqlo doesn't make shoes.
33:47
And so he signs the new UNiqlo deal. He starts wearing Uniqlo, But he's still wearing Nike shoes. And they ask him at the press conference. They're like, Roger, I noticed you're still wearing your Nike. He's like, are you allowed to do? He's like, oh, yeah. I don't have a deal with them.
34:01
You know, I I'm shopping around. Let's see what's out there for me. You know, it's exciting. I wanna see see what's out there. And so for three years, He keeps wearing Nike's essentially for free because he's just playing in them. He doesn't have a shoe deal. And then finally,
34:15
he gets he does a shoe deal with the brand called on running, which I'm guessing you know about on the the running brand. They're they're another Swiss company. Yeah. They're they they they're say kinda taking the world by storm. And you know, what's funny is they were one of our advertisers when we first started. And they started spending a little bit of money, and their spend kept going up each year. And I was like, you guys are killing it, aren't you? And they are. I think they make, like, over a billion in revenue an hour. Maybe they even sold. Did they sell? No. They went public. So so they went public at peak, it was, like, eleven billion dollar valuation. Now with, with the market crashing back closer to six billion.
34:46
But at the, you know, at its peak, so Roger owned three percent of the brand in exchange for he did an equity deal. So he said, alright. I get it. You guys want the same cash these guys can offer. How about a piece of the company? And so he owns three percent of the company at its peak because if stake is worth three hundred million dollars now. So that's sort of like bet on yourself
35:05
And then do an equity deal. Don't don't trade dollars for time. You know, trade your brand for shares. Trade it for equity. And that becomes worth three hundred million dollars. And then he says, alright. What else can I do? So he then takes matters into his own hands. He
35:19
Cuts ties with his current representation company, starts his own player management firm to represent him and other players.
35:25
Then he starts creating his own tournaments. So he's got his own, like, you know, cup That's basically like, you know, the equivalent of the ryder cup in golf where it's like Europe versus America.
35:33
So he wants to do the same thing. And so now he's got his own competition thing. And so he's built this whole empire made over a billion dollars total. Most of it, ninety percent of it off the court. And I think this is kind of amazing. And if you look at it,
35:46
There's a couple, like, like, interesting things here. So
35:50
he,
35:51
he goes upmarket
35:53
So he goes, basically, like, how do I go premium? So his sponsors are Mercedes Benz,
35:58
Rolex,
35:59
lint chocolate, He didn't do what Jordan did, which was Coca Cola and McDonald's. Right? Cause he's like, alright.
36:05
Where's my niche? Where's my market? How do I get paid? Let me go to these, like, you know, go to Rolex, basically.
36:11
The second thing that he did was
36:14
he,
36:16
He, he basically not only did he bet on himself, not only did he take matters into his own hands. He played a very patient game. And so I think most people would have been the during those three years where they don't have a shoe deal, they'd just be counting the dollars that they're missing out on. I I make five million or ten million dollars a year if I just sign this contract.
36:33
And this is a common trait. This is great. LeBron James story where LeBron is eighteen years old. He graduates from high school same day, you know, the day the first day he's legally allowed to.
36:44
Nike shows up, at Nike or Reebok. I think Reebok shows up at his
36:50
at his school or whatever. They take him to a meeting. He's like, and I remember, dude, this is like the longest table I've ever sat at. Like, the longest boardroom table. He's sitting at one end. I'm sitting at the other end. And he's like,
37:00
he slides a check over to me. And I look at it as more money than I've ever seen in my life. And LeBron comes from single mom. Right. She had him at sixteen.
37:09
You know, couldn't pay electricity bills type of thing. Like, came from, like, he was dirt poor.
37:13
And they basically offered him ten a ten million dollar a year contract as a eighteen year old kid. He hasn't played a single game in the NBA yet. He looks at it, though, sign this now and you can become our signature athlete, we will put this money behind you. It's the biggest deal we've ever offered to a kid out of high school. You know, congratulations, son.
37:29
And he doesn't have a he doesn't have an agent. He doesn't have anything at this point. And he basically just says,
37:35
you know,
37:36
appreciate the offer, man. Like, I appreciate it. Thank you.
37:39
Let me get back to you. They're, like, get back to you. This is ten million dollars a year. What are you thinking? And he's, like, and he's, like, he tells a story later. He's, like, in my head, I'm thinking, man, this is more money than I've ever seen.
37:49
But if Reebox offering me this much, I wonder what Nike was offering me. Yeah. That's crazy. Like, he's like, I must be worth something to these guys. Like, I don't have to take this deal yet. And just by being patient, he ended up with a much larger deal,
38:01
out of that just for not, like, immediately grabs the chance. You know what trait that's called? It's called, There's this awesome book by this woman named Angela Duckworth called Grit. Have you ever heard that book Grit?
38:12
I've seen, like, Silicon Valley people talk about it. Yeah. Well, it's, like, centered around this story. It's like a study where they give a whole bunch of kids.
38:20
They send them down a table and they go, hey, look. You can have one marshmallow now.
38:25
Or in a couple hours, I'll give you two. But, I'm gonna set this here. I'm gonna go out of the room for a little on handle some stuff. When I come back, I'll see if you decided to eat it or leave it there. And, that will kind of tell me what decision you made. Sound good. And they leave, and, you know, they just see who does what.
38:40
And they measure these kids for, like, thirty and fifty years, like, for years and years. And what they found is there's a correlation between traditional financial success you know, like our traditional word of success, there was a correlation between how successful they were and the children that chose to not eat that one in exchange for getting two in the future. And the ones who put it off, you know, in eight two, they were more successful.
39:00
And what you've explained to me is, like, the perfect, like, real world, but rare example of
39:06
grit, where it's like, no, I'm willing to, like, not do this thing now in exchange for a better alternative and potentially in the future. And that that's that's the clarification.
39:14
Yes. Laid gratification. That's, like, the best way to describe that.
39:18
I'm a marshmallow eater, dude. Like, saying,
39:20
I would have been that first you know,
39:23
I woulda had it in my mouth while they're explaining the instructions, like, right?
39:28
There's another one coming.
39:31
I always got, like, frustrated when I talked about, like, you know, I told you this. When they talked about Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos, I was talking about patience and having fun, I'm like, dog. You're way too old. Go have fun now. Like, there is no there is no long there is no long term, man. Your long term is like Jeff Bezos now. He's like, you know, he's rushing, you know, it's, you know, a sick app over there. He's turning into a frat boy. He's, like, he's, like,
39:54
he wants to be single,
39:56
do roids, you know, drink beers on a boat. It's like,
39:59
alright. It's cool, but, like, not as cool when you're how old is your base? Not as cool when you're fifty seven. As it was when you were young. Oh, no, man. It looks like it works. I see. It looks like it it looks like it's working for him. Let me tell you about the thing I read right before we started. So, basically, today. I think today, they're gonna announce
40:17
the feds what their,
40:19
rate raise is gonna be. Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna learn how much money we've lost today. And, I don't know anything about that type of stuff. So I'm not gonna pretend I do. But I I read this interesting article, and it was about JP Morgan. You know, JP Morgan is, like, you know, amazing bank that's supposed to know what they're talking about. And I was reading about what their predictions were. And they had this, like, day of scenario where they're like, here's, like, the three options
40:41
or here's the three possible outcomes and, you know, they raise the rate by this much, this much, and this much, and here's our prediction on what's gonna happen. And they weren't, like, being funny. They weren't, obviously, they weren't being funny. They weren't trying to be, like, silly or anything. But I'm gonna tell you the the the range of the three options. So,
40:59
option one was well, I'll just say, like, so what's gonna happen is if they raise it by point seven five,
41:07
we are potentially gonna have a five percent drop.
41:10
Sorry. If it's a full percent, For full percentage point raise, we're gonna have a five percent drop in the market.
41:16
Or if it's a point seven five percent raise, we're gonna have one of the best days on record for the S and P five hundred. So that's basically
41:24
this, like, the the most, like, one of the most prestigious bakes on earth with thousands of people studying this. They say it's either gonna be the best day ever
41:34
or a five percent drop, which is not quite the worst day ever, but it's a really bad day. And it just goes to prove that even the quote experts, they don't know shit. We're all just floating on this rock trying to figure it out. But I saw this I was like, wait, are you kidding me? Is this a serious
41:49
is this a serious prediction? It's gonna be one of the best days ever or one of the worst days ever or something in between. That's basically what the prediction is. It reminds me of those people, but you're like, alright. So, you know, what do you think of the chances that it happens? Like, it's a fifty fifty, man. It could either it's either gonna happen or it's not gonna happen? No. Like, just because there's only two options. It doesn't make it a fifty fifty.
42:10
It's either going to be or it's not going to be. It's okay. And then, like, tomorrow, the statement analyst is gonna be like, well, you know, I saw that going one of two ways, but I did not expect it going that other way.
42:21
And the funny thing is it's, like, they released, like, an eighty two page report, and it just, like, I don't know, man. At the end? Yeah.
42:27
So it just trails off.
42:29
Yeah. What was that? I don't know. I was thinking about it. Like, m m n n m. Not much, you. That's just what the whole report should be because that's basically what they just said. Like, what's your opinion? Not much, you.
42:39
I thought that was ridiculous. That's that's j so I was reading about all these headphones and I'm like, oh, these guys are smart, but turns out, like, when I was reading about these hedge funds, these guys are smart, but they're, like,
42:50
kinda lucky. Like, they, like, just make a bunch of guesses.
42:56
Did this guy?
42:58
This is the hedged opinion, by the way. This is the most hedged opinion I've ever seen in my life. The
43:05
It's like one time I was playing roulette and I was,
43:08
so down on my luck at the casino. By the time I get to the roulette table, that means I have, like, I got bored of poker
43:14
then I lost money in five minutes playing Black Jack. And then I had, like, a absolute roller coaster at the craps table, and now roulette is my, like, come down. Like, my gambling addicts out there will know what I'm talking about. And then at some point, I'm, like, just betting wrong every time. Like, what are the odds of me being wrong on red or black? Twelve times in a row. And then I'm just betting both red and black just to feel a little bit of a win. And it's like, you know, I'm just hoping a green doesn't show up. But basically, like, There's a a tweet that I saw that goes,
43:43
yeah. I never realized my whole net worth was dependent on an interest rate. Like yeah. And so she was like, dude, I told this year. Did you know what the FOMC
43:52
commitment was? Did you did you know that, like, your entire net worth was dependent on point seven five or one percent interest rate hikes. Like, who the where the fuck did this come from? And why did it turn out that they could just No. I remember. So I could just ragdoll my my net worth. I remember, people talking about the Fed. And I was, like, I don't know what the Fed is. It's, like, it's, like, what people like. I have to talk about the FBI,
44:16
That's fun. That's a lot of, like, breaking bad and darkos.
44:20
I had no idea. Like, you know, like, people say, like, well, you know, scientists say, or You know, they say this. I that's who I thought the fence was. It was just they. You know? There's he him heard. Now there's day. You know? I just thought it was the the official pronoun My pronouns
44:33
are are they and fed? Yeah.
44:36
Dude, I saw a guy on Twitter, and he for his pronouns, but we, dash, damn, dash, boys.
44:43
It's that's it's the best one. It's the best one. It's that guy, Jack.
44:47
Jack r, Rains. Raden boys. That that was his It's it's too fucking good. Yeah. That one will always make me laugh. Alright. I have something interesting.
44:56
So in I found this video on on YouTube. If you'd Google on YouTube like Figma seed pitch,
45:04
So I watched that this morning, dude. Awesome. Let's talk about it because, basically, the story is, I believe it was in this video was filmed, I think, in two thousand thirteen.
45:13
So the video the video was posted in two thousand twenty, but the way looking at it, he looks pretty young. Maybe not two thousand thirteen young, but he looks young. But regardless, he's going through his pitch. And, basically, so Figma,
45:26
recap sold this week on Monday or Friday or something like for twenty billion dollars, one of the biggest exits ever for a venture backed startup.
45:34
And the guy who ran it started the business when he was nineteen. And there's this video on YouTube of him pitching this guy named Daniel Gross, who was actually on our pod early on, who had a fun. And had a few takeaways from this pitch. And so it's like a twenty or eighteen minute or ten minute video of him pitching. My five takeaways were a,
45:53
He's a kid. He even if it even the video is like new, he looks like he looks like he's eighteen, but and he looks so young, and he talks kinda young, but he's really wise. Like, you could you you hear him speaking and you're like, it's very impressive hearing him talk. The second is that the pitch was basically videos of the product. It a prototype, like a demo of the prototype, not as much of a deck. And oftentimes throughout the pitch, it was pretty fun. And he, like, used the product to Photoshop
46:20
the guy he was pitching. Daniel, he photoshopped his face and made it he made him look like another person. And Daniel, the guy being pitched was like, oh my god. This is hilarious. This is awesome.
46:30
And Dylan, the guy pitching was just like having fun and showing him the product, and that was so much better than just showing a deck. And the last two things were
46:39
tech skills. So the guy is like clearly technical, and we often talk about how, like, it does you don't need this stuff. And technically, you don't need it.
46:47
But goddamn, it helps. This guy is clearly, like, they built something that, like, was actually working, and that is such an advantage. I do think you need to learn that. And the last thing is that it's an MVP
46:57
it does not look good at all. It it's pretty ugly and it's and it's mildly
47:02
effective, but it's effective enough that you can see
47:06
the future.
47:08
Yeah. Exactly. I watched this thing. So you could find it. If you go to YouTube, it says it's, his name, Dylan Field, pitches seed stage Figma to Daniel Gross. That's the name of the the YouTube video. It's got,
47:18
what, thirty thousand views. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
47:24
So he's pitching,
47:26
and my observations are very much like yours. First of all, it doesn't doesn't feel like a pitch because,
47:32
most pitches are like
47:34
Hey, here's our company.
47:36
We're going after this really big market. Did you know we have a TAM of you know, three trillion dollars a year or spell spent on health care. And they're like, oh, wow. Okay.
47:47
Three trillion dollars. That's cool. What are you doing? And they're like, you know,
47:51
you know, we like We sell weed.
47:54
Yeah. Like, we help your we help you do squats with using phone camera, like, with better form. It's like, I don't think that's the three trillion dollars of health care spend, but, okay, yeah, like, I'm not sure what the what the world is about. And they always have, like, a stupid quadrant thing with them in the top right. Right. Everybody else, you know, the the the y axis is if you're, you know, stupid or smart, and then this one is if you're hardworking or or lazy. It's like, I don't know if this is lazy or dumb, and we're hardworking in smart. It's like this twenty billion dollar company. Are you sure you're better than this?
48:26
I think it's good. Yeah.
48:28
They're, like, you know, poor product. It's like, I don't know about that.
48:35
You're a poor product.
48:36
It makes me mad.
48:40
Irritated.
48:41
What they should do is put themselves in the bottom left and be like, but one day, this
48:45
because
48:49
We can move, like, we're gonna move somewhere around. Six weeks ago when we met. And then now we've moved up and, like, just imagine the trajectory. And, like, that's actually the reality. That that's actually what's happening. We've already moved an inch on this screen. Imagine if you give us five years.
49:04
It's not to scale. But
49:07
so so he's doing this pitch. It's basically literally the first slide. It's a picture of him on a boat.
49:13
Here's me
49:14
on my boat, and I used to work at Flipboard.
49:17
Twenty he goes, I worked at Flipboard twice. And then he goes, yeah, this is my cofounder. He was my friend at school. We dropped out. Okay. He goes, then he shows this video, this talking. I was really inspired by talk by Brett Victor inventing on principle. By the way, this same talk, I think, is the one that the webflow guy
49:34
said was, like, his inspiration for building webflow was the same grainy ass video of this guy explaining, you know, like, how to build, like, a, like, a real product. Well, I think that I think the takeaway from the talk is or or or he says something to talk about how
49:48
it's morally right to help people to create or something like that where he's like, your goal as a business builder is just help people create or something like that. And so the webflow guy, like, the the demo he's doing in this is, like, the difference between, like, imagine you have to you have to choose a bunch of options from a menu or write a bunch of code and then run and see how it happens
50:07
versus just you see the thing and you could just edit it live, like drag and drop. Like, so what you see is what you get editor.
50:13
And how much more creative you can be when you're doing it the what you see is what you get version because you're just shuffling things around in real time. I think everybody's kind of experienced this in general.
50:23
So anyways, he he's giving us talk. I think he gives a bunch of demos. And all the demos are, like,
50:27
kind of, it's like, oh, look, I, you know, this, like, airplane and look at blends of the background. And then, like, oh, I did this thing. Like, I've I've merged these two people's faces together. And it's like, you don't look at this, and you don't think, twenty billion dollar company someday. Like, it's not, like, you'd have to have a lot of foresight. Really what you see when you see this is, like, the only two indicators that this would be successful is
50:48
This guy seems really smart and really, like, he's a creative builder. So, like, I bet on him and to be successful in life, for sure. And then the second thing was,
50:57
And this is, I think, the underrated part of what people talk about for Figma, which is that there
51:01
was a technology change. There was an inflection in technology, which was web GL had come out. And I remember when webgl first came out. I don't even know what that is. You have to tell me.
51:10
I mean, I but I'm not technical enough to explain it. But basically, what it made what it did was it let you do cool graphic stuff in the browser. Got it. Okay. That you weren't gonna be able to do unless you otherwise normally, like, normally a browser was weak. And if you wanted to, like, play a game with cool graphics, you needed to, like, download the game. You needed to have the application of the game to run on your computer's hardware. Because doing it in the browser was gonna be too laggy, too slow, too whatever. And webgl was just like web framework that let people build things that were like, They were like cool graphic y stuff, three d stuff, like, you know, real time stuff in
51:43
the browser. So that's why when Figmo, you would see people I'm working on the document with you, I'd see your mouse moving around in real time. And that was like a magic trick. You had never seen that before. And at the time, I remember with like, we were building stuff. And when webgl came out, all all of our developers really intrigued by, there was like cool stuff you could do in webgl that you weren't other, like, wasn't possible before.
52:03
And then the the question was now what's the application? And then he where he landed was like, I think we can recreate the whole create Adobe Creative suite. In the browser, and here's how we're gonna do it. And, like, that actually made a lot of sense. He didn't actually pitch it that well. He, like, mentioned those things during the thing, but, like, you'd have to, like, ignore eighty percent of what he said and just be like, oh, that's just fun experimentation.
52:25
This guy's smart, web GL is a game changing tech and this idea of recreating the Adobe suite in a browser, making it free for everybody. That's a great idea. And so, like, you had to sort of see the the the great pitch through the forest here. Dude, so the member how I told you about this guy named Brett Adcock, who's, like, this billionaire guy who created,
52:44
a a bunch of different companies including basically a flying car business. Remember that guy? Yeah. So he tweeted out the other day,
52:50
like, here's I've learned about entrepreneurship. And one of the five things that he said was
52:55
pick
52:56
really, really big ideas because then you could attract more investors, and it's easier to, like,
53:03
get employees and all that and all that type of thing. It's like that make no small plans thing. And that thing has always made me self conscious because, like, every plan I make is, like, pretty small.
53:12
Like, like, you know, the I I want one marshmallow right now, not too later. You know what I mean? Like, I only make small plans compared to, like, that plan. And it's kinda cool that, like, this Figma thing,
53:24
it doesn't seem that grand.
53:26
It was, but it doesn't seem that way early on. And that, like, makes me feel better about my deficiencies. So thank you, Dylan.
53:34
You you know what I mean? When people say, like, grand ideas, and I'm like,
53:38
yeah, but, like, running a newsletter is kinda fun.
53:41
Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know how to make robots.
53:46
Yeah. But I do dream about that, sometimes. I'm like, okay. Me too. And an alternate life, what am I doing right now? And I'm like, why am I not, you know,
53:55
changing whatever, you know, building the the next big thing, you know, the next pixar are making a flying, you know, car or whatever. It's like,
54:02
I could do it. I could. I know that I could do it.
54:05
And,
54:06
and I do think about doing it. Maybe I will end up doing it. But but it is, for some reason, for me,
54:12
I sort of am like,
54:15
I don't know. There's a how hard do I wanna work? Yeah.
54:18
Question.
54:20
Right? Like, you know, if I made my quadrants, putting myself in the lazy quadrant where I'm like, I don't need to do the hardest thing to impress myself.
54:29
So I'm trying to figure out the things that I can do that impress myself, that are also, like, not gonna ruin my life and my
54:38
lifestyle. Dude, Paul. But What I mean by that is just, like, I like being home with my kids. I like that I don't have to, like, freak out. I don't I don't have, like, a a office of a hundred employees that are, like, we're hard charging and we're about to die at all times. Like, I kinda like that I don't do that.
54:53
So I just need to find a way to impress myself that fits in my frame I think that But what about Roger Federer? Do that? Like, who's doing his shit? You know, Roger Federer, I was gonna ask you that. Like, who's doing his stuff? We we had Mark Lori in the podcast, and I talked to people who worked with him, and they're like, yeah. He's really good at raising money, and then he hires people. And then he just kinda like they didn't
55:11
it's exaggerating to say he chills. That's not true. But, like, they're they kind of, like, said, like, well, he wasn't doing the hard work. He did a lot of the work early on, but he kinda, like, got all the leverage by getting the money and having the idea and starting it. And then, like, everyone he did a really good job of hiring them and letting do their thing. So
55:27
but same with Roger Federer. He ain't the one running that running out a lot of that stuff. I wonder how he partners with people. Yeah. Well, the other one that I was looking at was Floyd Mayweather, and Floyd Mayweather has kind of an amazing,
55:38
bet on himself story like this too. Like,
55:41
You you probably know it, but I don't know if most people know. Boxers in general, UFC fighters make basically nothing.
55:48
And, with, like, you know, one or two exceptions.
55:52
And then boxers kinda make more. Boxers can make, you know, ten million, twenty million in a fight. And they could do that once or twice a year. That's great. That seemed like the top. And what Floyd Mayweather did was he was like, Who the hell is making all this money? Cause I see that crowd is full of people.
56:08
And the pay per view number is huge, but, like, where does the money go? And the reality was that the money would go to the promoters. It would go to the cable companies. It would go to all these other people that and so he decided to bet on himself. So he
56:21
buys out his contract. He spent he takes seven hundred fifty thousand dollars out of pocket and buys himself out of top rank, which was the promoter that promoted Oscar De La Hoya and Manny packing and all these guys.
56:31
And he starts, you know, May weather promotions.
56:34
And now his business model is like, basically, it's it's vertical integration. Right? Like, it's to use the business rule term. He's like, okay. I'm not just gonna be the talent. I'm also gonna be the production for the show, which means that I also collect the live gate revenue.
56:49
Which means that I also have to pay the other fighter. Like, I have to I have to write the check.
56:53
I'm also gonna own a piece of the paper view. I'm gonna make a he's like, I'm gonna make money every hot dog sold in this venue. I'm gonna make money on the merch. I'm gonna make money everywhere. And so because of that now when he does a fight, like his
57:06
manny pacquiao fight, his Economy McGregor fights. He's pulling in somewhere between two hundred fifty and four hundred million dollars. That's crazy. Himself on those fight per fight. So he, you know, more than ten x, more like twenty x, what he could make by betting on himself and building that brand. And then then he created all the associated brands. So then he basically created
57:24
He's like, why am I these sponsors are paying me to wear their shit? You know, why don't I just create, you know, the money team clothing line, and I'm gonna, like, own my own clothing line rather than promoting these other clothing lines. LeBron did the same thing. He's like, why am I promoting McDonald's?
57:38
He bought equity in Blaise pizza and was like, cool. I'll just own a piece of this chain rather than just be a sponsored athlete.
57:44
And so there's there's basically a bunch a bunch of people who do this model. And then Floyd, you know, he did a he did a couple things. One was He went nuts on the self branding. So he changed his brand from pretty boy Floyd
57:56
to Floyd Money Mayweather. And he knew that people were gonna hate that. Knew that people were gonna hate it, and he started doing hateable things. Like, he would just post a photo of himself, like, at a dinner table, but there's no food on the table. It's just stacks of cash everywhere. He's like, This is how I eat or whatever. Right? Or, you know, he would,
58:12
you know, just go throw like a, you know, a wad of cash at somebody and just, like, make fun of them because they're poor. Like, they would pick up the dollars because they're like, well, this is, like, ten grand. And so, like, he would do things that would get attention. He would do things that would build his brand. But in reality, he would look like the party, like this party guy. He owns strip clubs.
58:29
Never smoke. Never drank. You know, like, the guy trains at, like, three in the morning. So, you know, he kinda built this brand. Like, he's this kind of, like, badass or whatever.
58:39
But in reality, he's like a he, like, a extremely well conditioned athlete that was, like, extremely disciplined and never, like, ran into those problems. But he hired
58:47
Al Hammond,
58:48
who Al had run, you know, knowing this. He he's, like, We have to do a whole episode on on this because Al Hammond's really intriguing. Al Hammond, if you Google his face, there's, like, four pictures of him on the internet. And he's one of these guys. I think he's, like, famous for, like, you never meet him in person, but he does everything on the phone. And he's always in the background of the most powerful boxers and fighters in the world. And before that, you know what he was doing? No. He was doing the same thing in the music industry. So he represented Janet Jackson, went to Houston, helped build their brands, and their, like, their whole business empires,
59:19
then he taught Floyd how the mus how musicians make their money. And he's like, oh, I need to do that. Basically, my fight is me on tour. I need to own the tour.
59:27
And so I need to own the shows. I need to make the money from the tickets, not just be the fighter who goes on the stage. And so Al became his business guy on that side, and then he has Leonard Ellerby who does it on the on the Mayweather promotion side. And, like, the joke, of course, about Floyd, is that he can't read. And it's like, he's like, I can't read, but I I know numbers. And, like, you know,
59:47
so he's like, you know, he he know, you know, he's found a way to make a ton of money. He understood, like, the core fundamentals
59:53
of a business.
59:55
And do you know how to put put people in place? So he generates a lot of money. Now some people think he's going broke because he spends so much. I think he might be. I totally believe that. That's hard to say. Dude, I I totally believe that. This podcast, we
01:00:08
we are the internet Dork Renaissance. We started
01:00:10
with
01:00:13
Adam Levin cheating on his wife. And then I think we went to, like,
01:00:18
the history of hedge funds. Option shares. Yeah. And then RS huge option shares, then we talked about the Fed at JP Morgan,
01:00:25
and then back to Mayweather at Al Hammond, you can't get this anywhere else. You you just can't. Where are you gonna get all this? Yeah.
01:00:33
You know? We we are the Chinese buffet of podcasts. Yeah. They say that, like, true wealth is created by being like a narrow, an in
01:00:41
uh-uh,
01:00:42
an inch wide, but like a mile deep. Not here. We are we are a we are a rain puddle. We are just gonna cover everything just a little bit. Well, you built your whole life off being four inches long. So it all works out for you.
01:00:58
I mean, comedy at the end of the show, and you get the comedy.
01:01:03
Yeah. Average at best. It and lots of different. If your average at best and just about everything, you're kind of above average, so it works out well.
01:01:13
Alright. That's, that's the show. I'm exhausted. I gotta take a not nap after that.
00:00 01:01:35