My First Million: #22 - Cloud Kitchens, Kava Bars & Religious Products

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app

you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Okay.

Million Dollar Brainstorm.

We're back.

You've been in Hawaii.

Tell us about that.

If you guys Google lobby conference, you'll see it.

A lot of people write about it as if it's this douchey event, which it definitely checks

the boxes from the outside of being that.

Okay.

What's douchey about it?

It's expensive and it's in Hawaii and it's much of tech people.

I don't think that's douchey, but it definitely checks many people's boxes.

And it's like exclusive, right?

I think 50 people.

It's like invite only.

100 people.

Yeah.

Small number.

It's like an invite only thing.

So it definitely checks all the boxes to fit that stereotype.

It's called lobby conference.

So how'd you get invited?

One of my investors, Narendra, he referred me.

Okay.

So it's this, you can Google it to learn about it, but it's this event hosted by David

Hornick, one of the partners at August Capital of VC.

150 or 200 people, invite only.

They've done it for 13 years now.

And the guys who were there on the first year, many of them are still there and it's like

internet OGs like Tony Shea, founder of Zappos was there, Kevin Rose, I had dinner and hung

out most of the time with Tim Westergen, founder of Pandora.

Like all these guys who were like maybe my age now, but are in their forties, who were

still trying to have a hit and have now had some hits.

It was awesome.

It was great.

Two takeaways.

Yeah.

Number one, Gen Z.

Totally, they're fucked.

Okay.

Why?

We talked about like, there's this one.

Were they there?

I don't think they're there.

We had these like little meetups about like, and we were talking about interesting things.

Gen Z, I didn't realize it.

They're having a very little sex.

They're doing a lot of drugs, but they're not drinking.

And a lot of them have depression and mental...

Gen Z is like 21 and younger right now?

Maybe four, 24.

24 and younger.

Okay.

The suicide rate's high.

The depression rate is like astronomical.

A lot of it.

So who was talking about this?

Who was like the Gen Z expert?

There's one woman who runs like a research firm for Gen Z.

So it was very much like, well, here's what the cool kids think.

I realized that at that time I'm like an old guy who's like, well, how did they use...

Yeah, exactly.

Old people talking about young people.

Yeah.

It never fails.

Funny.

I was like the youngest guy there.

People had Gen Z children and they were talking about it.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

Fair enough.

All right.

So that was one takeaway.

What's the second one?

The second thing.

There was tons of like rich ballers there.

Like really wealthy.

And a lot of them seem just horribly like down, depressed and not like that.

If you're young or if you're rich, you're depressed.

That's what I'm learning.

Well, like, and this is something that's kind of like, I can't believe I'm saying this because

everyone who's young hears this and no one believes it, which is that money will not make

you as happy as you think it will.

Right.

I saw this firsthand very clearly.

What made you say that?

So they're at this conference and they were just kind of recluse or what made you feel

this or they were sharing like, look, I'm not feeling great.

First of all, yes.

A lot of people, there was this one gathering, it was like a bunch of small sessions and

people would complain about stuff, like say, here's what I'm struggling with.

And you think that these people who have it all figured out, they definitely don't.

Right.

They're like family.

And you see like the interactions that people have had with their husbands or wives or kids

and it's like this guy on the surface appears like this baller, but he just has, he's going

through the normal bullshit that every family man is going through.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

I have a friend who's, I don't know how wealthy, is close to a billionaire and he basically,

he was talking about this, how he was feeling this way.

And he's like, the problem is no one wants to hear about an unhappy billionaire.

Yeah.

He's like, you will get zero listeners to that like talk.

He's like, so you end up just sort of bottling it up and going on your way.

What you're saying and what happened this past weekend, and I have a few friends that

just sold your friends too, just sold big companies and I was with one of them and we went to

the ATM because he was like wanting to have like a celebratory where he like printed out

his receipt.

Yeah.

$200 million on the ATM receipt.

Wild.

A wild about.

And then we went and had dinner at like a Whole Foods, like really sweet.

$7.

Yeah.

Like we went to a grocery store, I think and just ate on the patio and he was stressed

out.

He was like, what am I going to do with this?

And I was like, dude, when are people going to like chill and see?

There's a Jim Carrey quote where he goes, I wish everybody could be rich and famous.

So they would know that that's not the answer.

Yeah.

It's depressing.

This podcast is like all about building successful businesses called million dollar

or everything.

I feel like half the conversations are like, yeah, money's not the thing.

I think we need to reiterate that, which is that it's not.

It's just like if you're training for an event or training for weightlifting, you are no

different from 150 pounds to 300 pounds in terms of like bench press.

It's just the act of pursuing that is.

Yeah, the act of pursuing is fulfilling in itself.

And the other thing is when you have money, you have freedom.

But you don't need.

You need less than you think.

Yeah.

You need less than you think, but that freedom is very powerful.

Okay.

So let's do it.

Ideas.

What do we got?

We promised the people some ideas talking about different trends, talking about different

ideas that we find interesting.

You want to go first or me?

You.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

I have one.

Have you heard of made bathrooms?

No.

Okay.

These things called made renovations.

All right.

So I saw this ad on Facebook and basically it was like a before and after.

And it says in my opinion, the best sales pitch I've ever seen always, right?

If you split screen on the left, it's like, this is you before on the right.

This is you after.

And so the left and right and this one were left was like a normal, ordinary kind of crappy

looking bathroom.

And on the right was like this really slick looking bathroom.

And it basically said, we will come renovate your bathroom for X dollars and it'll look

exactly like this.

I was like, this is interesting.

Like they're, I've never seen somebody advertise a bathroom renovation on Facebook.

So I clicked it.

And basically what this company does is they have three stock designs and they're all

look great.

And so there's like a super modern one.

There's kind of an old school Victorian looking one.

But again, very clean.

There's like another one that's like, what's the company called made that made.

And so all you do is you say, yeah, I want that bathroom.

Like you don't have to hire a contractor, go through ideas with them, figure out what

you want for the sink versus the toilet versus the walls.

It's like, no, this is the bathroom.

Do you want this in your house?

It's like a Silicon Valley thing or like a, I don't think that they're super Silicon

Valley centric.

They are available here.

I saw.

But I think it's like a new startup.

It's a startup.

It's a startup.

So it's, it's a direct to consumer turnkey renovation.

And so most people who do home renovations want kitchens and bathrooms, clearly they're

starting with bathrooms will probably expand the kitchens.

The second thing, they're taking all the thought out of it.

I love that.

This is a beautiful bathroom.

Do you want this one?

This one or this one?

We have three models.

And then I thought, wow, because they only have three models, they're probably getting

phenomenal prices, you know, economies of scale on buying the materials they need to

do this.

They're training contractors to like deliver the exact bathroom.

And so they're probably training staff that's like, just has to learn this one thing.

And for the buyer, they're taking all the complexity of this kind of tangled project.

Like, oh, do I want to do a home renovation right now?

So like elimination of choice.

Elimination of choice.

Okay.

I think that should work for haircuts, men haircuts, like barbers.

Yeah.

When I go to the barber, I want to choose like I'm at Subway be like, here's the 14.

I'll take the number 12, Marge.

Because everyone gets 80% of people get the same shit.

They say short of the size, a little bit off the top.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm like, just look at it and just make it shorter of this.

Okay.

So what else could that work for?

Where like you eliminate choices.

I think interior design and renovation is like a great idea.

Yeah.

It's just so complicated.

I think travel is another one.

So turnkey vacations.

If you knew not just the flight, the hotel, the whatever people do this, but like flight

hotel and activities, bundle it up, give you a price and be like, okay, you've heard

that the Bahamas is great.

Here's Bahamas.

If you want to just hit the buy button and just email people every week being like, here's

Aruba buy button.

Here's you want to go to Venice.

Here's the buy button.

And I think eliminating the choice and the planning required set up a vacation.

I think that's a cool concept.

I'm going to think about that for a little while of what to start that where you eliminate

choice.

I mean, look, it goes both ways.

Like the more products that company launches, the more money they make typically, but also

a lot of times when you just sell one or two or three things, it makes life better and

you can deliver on that service in a way that you can't if you have this like larger variety

of choice and customizability.

And so it won't work for everything.

But if it does work for one thing, I think it'll work for something like bathrooms and

kitchens.

That's such a high ticket price thing that that could be a really big business.

So I'm excited about this guys.

Okay.

Something we covered on Trends and I experienced this weekend because people were talking about

it.

Cava bars.

Yeah.

What is cava?

I've heard of this.

Okay.

I've done it.

I lived in Australia for a little while.

Fiji is like Australia's Mexico.

So it's like the Caribbean like.

Yeah.

Of course.

Makes sense.

So I went to Fiji for two weeks and we hung out and we drank cava.

It's like a root.

It tastes like dirt and you mix it with water and we would just sit around a circle with

the folks who lived in the Fijians and we would drink it and it gives you a mild high

effect.

If it kind of felt a little bit like weed where you're like chill and people loved it.

Immediately when I went home from Fiji, I wanted to buy some more and it was really hard

to buy it.

But what's the experience?

You said tastes a little bit like dirt.

It's a drink.

It's a drink.

It's a commutal thing.

You sit around.

Okay.

So it's like hookah in a way.

Are you passing it or something?

Yeah, but it definitely gives you a small high.

Gives you a small high.

It's just like smoking weed with your friends.

Right.

So on a scale of like, I don't know, is it like a cigarette?

Is it less than weed?

Is it like molly?

Less than weed, less than molly, more than a cigarette, less than alcohol.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Okay.

We discovered that trend.

I don't think that's going to ever going to be huge, but it's definitely like a niche

popular thing that you could make a business out of.

But hallucinogenics, man.

I met this guy who at that lobby, he was like, I just got back from 30 days in Amazon doing

ayahuasca.

Right.

There's this idea that whatever is popular among elite Silicon Valley people, 15 years

from now will be mainstream because they're like the rich nerds who like have the time

to like try stuff.

Do this experimentation.

I've never done a hallucinogenic.

Right.

Me neither.

I'm super into it though.

Like the idea of it.

I want to explore it.

What stops you from doing it?

Cause you're super into it.

I'm not that into it.

So it makes sense that I haven't done it.

You're super into it.

Why haven't you tried?

Because I don't know who to trust.

Even your buddy does it.

Right.

Yeah.

But he's a weirdo.

And I tell him, I don't know if I can trust you because you're extreme.

So like if I could find like a normal person who could be like, yeah, this one is a little

too much.

Like if you could go into a clinic and you're like, great, under supervision in this cool

environment, if it looked like a spa.

Yeah.

And so I would want that.

Yeah.

I would love that.

And I went to a session where I was, I met with a guy who was going to take me through

the process and I got into an argument with him because he was talking to me about, I

was like, ask him what he did for work and he like was a former venture capitalist, but

then he was talking about how capitalism was horrible.

And I was like, well, that doesn't, so like, why are you charging me?

And so anyway, we got in a fight over like values and so it kicked me out of the group.

But I was almost on the verge of trying it.

So I'm really interested in, we discovered Kava, or we talked about Kava and trends.

I think the ketamine, crazy interesting.

I think these things are going to be much bigger.

And there's a related trend of this like kin euphorics, have you heard of this?

So basically there's a trend of non-alcoholic, so they're non-alcoholic drinks.

And what they are is, I think kin euphorics has like some, I don't know what chemicals

they put in, but it's supposed to give you some kind of buzz without being alcohol.

Yeah.

We cover the non-alcoholic stuff as well.

So non-alcoholic beverages, I've drank non-alcoholic beverages now for about eight years.

I drink non-alcoholic beer regularly.

I like it.

Like what?

Like a ginger beer type of thing?

No.

It's like it's time, has been the only one, but over the past three years, Heineken has

introduced some Japanese brands have come about, it's a little more popular in Japan.

So the Japanese brands have come to America.

There's been a lot of new variety.

And that's a growing trend that we actually have already written a report on.

It's not alcoholic beverages.

And interestingly, Gen Z is drinking significantly less than millennials and...

Yeah, exactly.

I think I've seen that trend firsthand.

And then when I saw you guys write about that, it made a lot of sense to me.

But Heineken, the CEO of Heineken said that the fastest growing category is, they call

it 0.0, that's the name of the brand, is these 0.0 beers.

Non-alcoholic beer.

Non-alcoholic beer, but they even have some that are non-alcohol and no calorie.

And no drink.

Yeah.

You just do nothing.

All right.

I got another one.

All right.

So what if I told you that I could give you some IP, IP intellectual property like Star

Wars, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, whatever.

I could give you a globally famous IP, billions of people recognize this IP and I could give

it to you for free and I could let you build a business around this IP at no charge.

Would that be something you're interested in?

Yeah, of course.

Okay.

Religion.

So I sort of had this realization the other day.

Wanted to buy a gift for my niece and I was like, what did I used to like when I was

little?

I loved Where's Waldo books?

And I was like, Where's Waldo?

And I just went down the rabbit hole of like, who the hell made that?

What is this?

How was this so popular?

Blah, blah, blah.

Sort of thought, what's the modern day Where's Waldo?

And somebody created a new Where's Waldo book, right?

So same premise, just finding pictures in a book because kids love books, but reading

is tough, right?

So this picture book is actually pretty cool because it's like active.

You don't just like flip through the pages.

Who do we think who owns Waldo that probably like, Penguin or something?

So I read about the guy who made it, I forgot his name, but yeah, he, you know, whatever,

a publisher owns it.

Like crushed it.

And they crushed it.

And I was like, what if you made the new Where's Waldo?

I was like, well, part of the magic was that Waldo was this character that just worked and

I was like, what character could you use?

And I was like, what if you did this with religion?

Because the other thing my sister always wants is to introduce culture to her kids in a way

that they like, that this playful, that's fun, that's interesting.

And so I was like, my family is like, Hindu, right?

So they have like, Hindus, like a hundred different gods.

Oh, this would be cool.

You basically have this page with a bunch of different little, you know, drawings stories

and you're trying to find, yeah, you're trying to find Hanuman and you're trying to find

this God.

And you're trying to find that anybody can use God's images, likenesses and names because

nobody owns the religious IP, hence my starter of what if you could use globally famous IP

for free, for profits.

So I believe that there's a set of businesses.

The worst Waldo one is just a goofy version of this, but the better version, the version

I've thought about starting is to do calm, but for religion.

I don't know if we already talked about this, but like daily prayer, daily sermon, daily

Bible passage, daily, whatever, these apps are quite popular.

And so if you use the calm model of audio, premium and freemium audio and every day you

could have five minutes of faith where you would just listen to a prayer or a sermon

from your religion.

So I think this could be a really big business.

I was very close to going and starting this one, but it's not a founder fit for me.

Like I'm, I don't even believe in religion.

So if somebody out there wants to do this, I will help you do this.

I put a lot of thought into how you would do this, how you would grow it.

But I think religion generally as a free source of popular IP is like a untapped opportunity.

That's awesome.

Two comments.

There's this set of Googlers, ex-Google people, they either, I think they emailed me after

our podcast who were Christians and they created like a Christian meditation app.

Have you heard about this?

Yes.

A halo or something.

Someone messaged me after our podcast and they told me the numbers and it was astronomical.

Yeah.

I've seen, I've seen their numbers.

They are really good.

It validates this idea.

They're doing it for Christians.

Somebody else can do it for Catholics.

But is it just a Christian meditation thing?

It's exactly what I just described.

It's a daily Christian meditation, which is basically like a prayer and you hit the amen

button when you're done and you could share it.

People love sharing religious shit on Facebook anyway, so it grows somewhat organically through

that.

So when I think of like business ideas, I like to think of from a distribution first.

So how do you get users?

The advertising rates on Christian and without judgment, but let's just say conservative websites,

stupidly low engagement is stupidly high.

There is a lot.

Because mainstream brands don't want to associate with some of these super popular conservative

publications.

Typically, because I've bought ads on like religious websites and right-leaning political

websites.

Where do you even go to do that?

You just go direct or there's like an ad network for that?

Direct.

Yeah, you can do direct.

But like, so like Breitbart.

Yeah.

They're marketing.

I send them to everyone's emails to understand how they're, what they're doing.

Breitbart has the most aggressive, like they'll let people buy their, their email lists.

They're the most aggressive and the most effective.

Like they sent one email to me that said like, from the desk of Nancy Pelosi.

And it was like a letter written about how, and it said like, we're going to come for

your guns.

So you better donate now.

Right.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, this is going to kill it.

So anyway.

You can get distribution there.

Oh yeah.

Cheap distribution.

I think that there's a lot of undervalued distribution, but a lot of like the young techies who build

this stuff are typically on the opposite end of that.

So they don't even think about that.

But it's there.

Yeah.

I like that.

They don't buy, that's a smarter way to add by, I think that works because again, you're

charging on the other side through people who pay for the $79 a year subscription.

The other thing is, I think through churches, you can get distribution.

So you give the church the ability to make their own group in this thing and, and let

them distribute it.

And then it's like, hey, for the people who are not coming to church on Sundays or who

want it Monday through Saturday, here's a way they can engage.

And the market size for this is like 200 million people.

Yeah.

Like in America and only the Christian one, let alone the other religions.

Right.

So let's start with Islam for this because there's a couple other like specific app features.

There's like four billion Islamic people in the world or Muslims in the world, definitely.

The type of people who start these companies will start with Christianity.

So just start on the other side with like a super popular religion that...

Hindu is kind of cool.

It is.

Because you have more characters.

But I think that, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

For some reason, I don't feel like that's a starting point, but maybe.

Although when it's like Mormons, like how do you go for the most devout even if it's

a smaller number of people, but like very active?

I think Mormonism, though, that's the fastest current religion in the world.

Yeah, I know, but it's like a small base, but...

Yeah, but that could be a good one to attach yourself to.

Exactly.

So anyway, religion.

Okay, what else?

That's not really an idea, but something to talk about.

So ghost kitchens or cloud kitchens?

Are you familiar?

Yeah, Door Dash.

I just saw a photo, someone drove by place in Palo Alto and Door Dash had just opened

up a kitchen.

Yeah.

So for those who don't know, a ghost kitchen or a cloud kitchen is basically a restaurant

that doesn't have the sort of brick and mortar storefront where you can come in and sit down

and get a meal.

You can't go there in order.

It only exists to make food that gets delivered on Uber Eats, Postmates, Door Dash, and all

these delivery apps that are out there now.

And Travis Kalanick raised a, well, I don't know if he raised it, he probably used his

own money, but he allocated something like $500 million to creating ghost kitchens or

services for ghost kitchens.

So the founder of Uber was like, hey, what's the next big thing?

And he was like these cloud kitchens.

And so his new company is all about, he's basically going into a city, he's buying up

this like real estate that nobody wants, but is very centrally located and kind of useless

today.

But what he's doing is converting into kitchens and letting sort of food entrepreneurs come

in, make food, create these little digital restaurant brands that only are optimized

for delivery.

Awesome.

So you would do things differently, right?

So like you would want to make food that is, you know, you'd think delivery first.

Like no french fries.

Yeah, exactly.

You'd make food that is going to travel well.

You'd package it, you'd put a lot more money into packaging because you're not spending

money in other areas.

And you don't need to buy all the furniture for a restaurant.

And you can make money by partnering with delivery companies to say, hey, you should

actually pay us to be on your network because we bring this awesome set of delivery optimized

food to you.

So in fact, you should be paying us per order to be on your network.

We are great supply for your network.

So you know who I originally saw was doing this, was like a Chinese restaurant owned

by a family.

And they were clearly just like hustlers.

And they were like, well, let's offer like hot dogs or like I could tell because it was

like the same.

There was just a bunch of ways that I'm like, oh, holy crap, that's the same thing.

They just, it's like, these are, it's a Chinese family and they're making Mexican food.

Anyway, I saw them doing that.

But what I'm curious about is there one brand that is like, well, like a...

There isn't today yet.

But there will be.

There will be, exactly.

So it's still in that early phase where all the fundamentals are there.

So what's changed?

These delivery apps have spent, I don't know, probably upwards of a billion dollars paying

to get installed on a bunch of people's phones.

And they're training people that, hey, don't go out to restaurants, order in.

And because ordering in is now super convenient, really easy to do on your phone.

And so anyways, they're training people and they're getting installed.

That's your distribution.

They need restaurants that are going to plug into their networks because they want to offer

their customers better food.

And so you have a good value proposition for them.

You say, hey, wouldn't it be great if you had a central pickup point where you could

pick up from all these different providers that were centrally located in the city so

you could provide really fast delivery?

What if we optimize our packaging and our foods that's traveled really well?

Wouldn't we be a good partner to work with over, you know, a restaurant who's doing delivery

as like a second thing or a side thing?

The next thing you could do is you could test different concepts really quickly.

So you could see, should I just make a hot dog only brand or a mac and cheese only restaurant?

And like, you try the brand and if nobody's ordering from it, you just take it down and

you just do a new cuisine the next day.

I had a hot dog stand and what I did was I would like, I don't know what people want.

So I would have an idea going by ingredients for only one day.

Right.

Exactly.

And a lot of people who are great at making food are really bad at running business and

so they don't, they're not great at picking the right location for a restaurant, running

the operations, managing the cash flow and all the stuff.

A lot of them flock to food trucks for this reason cause it's like a simpler kind of business

in a box.

I think this is even simpler.

Yeah.

And way more lucrative.

Way more lucrative.

Because you can be nationwide with like any concept that works in one city you want to

take to other cities because someone who owns the cloud kitchens will say, great, you want

to expand?

I already have infrastructure in 12 different cities.

Just either you staff up or franchise your concept to other people.

I'm incredibly interested in this.

If anyone is actually pursuing this, I would like to know about it.

So there's a few people pursuing it that we know of, but I bet that there's a lot more

and I bet there's other angles to this that I'm not thinking about.

So if anybody's really interested in this, reach out cause we want to talk to you.

So Travis is like the kind of the main one that I know that's doing this.

It's obvious.

If that guy, if he is into this, it's like.

Right.

And he saw the Uber Eats numbers early on was like, oh shit, this is going to be a really

big business.

And so.

And I just saw an interview with Tillman Fertitta, you know, Tillman Fertitta.

And he was saying his restaurants are hurting a little bit because of the, how big delivery

is.

Right.

Exactly.

And I think people love the convenience.

He was like, I was shocked.

People actually are ordering cause he owns Morton's Steakhouse.

He goes, people aren't coming into our restaurants as much, but we're still doing really well

because they're buying it and bringing it home.

Right.

So I actually ran a restaurant like this back in the day.

This is my first start.

Sushi, right?

Sushi restaurant.

And we got famous cause we were the restaurant without a restaurant where we were delivery

only.

But this was before Uber Eats, before Postmates.

They didn't exist.

So we were trying to get people to come to our website to order.

And that was just very hard.

Whereas every night, me or my wife opens up Postmates pretty much and we kind of scroll

through and it's like, ah, do you want to order or should we cook something?

And so if our sushi restaurant had been on there, we would have been getting free customers.

What do you think is the best?

Okay.

So what food is good delivered?

Sushi is actually pretty good delivered cause sushi is meant to be served room temperature.

It's also packaged in a very like tight wrap so it doesn't like sort of get loose and

messy and stuff like that.

But anything potato base is not.

Have you ever?

I didn't notice.

I know someone who worked at Uber Eats and they had a phrase called keep your eye on the

fry and they had a whole team dedicated to McDonald's because of French fries.

So the main one is obviously pizza, right?

So pizza is the most delivered food.

People love pizza.

So you really want to work backwards from that.

Like what do people order the most?

And so the question is like the Domino's pizza huts of today, like of tomorrow, I bet we'll

get started here.

Either those brands will start delivering and make this a big part of their business or

somebody will create a new pretz brand optimized for this.

Maybe they don't sell full pies.

Maybe it's half or I don't know.

You'd have to think through what would, what should pizza be to have to think back from

scratch.

I think this is pizza.

Pizza's the biggest delivery item.

I'm going to post about this in the group.

I think it's actually bigger than I ever would have imagined.

We recently wrote about this.

If you invested a dollar in Domino's IPO versus Google's IPO, you would have made like five

times more.

Yeah, I saw that chart.

You posted that chart.

It was like Domino's is the line that's up into the right.

And Google, Facebook, just because they were valued really high right off the bat or higher.

Do you know what's causing that?

Why is Domino's stock been going up so much?

Are they just crushing it on marketing?

And they are quite innovative for the space.

They do like little cutesy things that is they're like, we're testing this new mobile

oven.

So it's going to show up even hotter.

Right.

Which who knows if that works.

But it makes you want to buy it.

Yeah, they're pretty forward thinking.

Yeah.

I love it.

I had the app and their app is phenomenal.

Yeah.

It's so easy to order.

The tracker is amazing.

Yeah, it is easy to order.

It's in the oven.

It's coming five minutes from now here.

It just left the store.

It's going to be at your door in seven minutes.

Yeah, they're great.

So this is interesting to me.

I'm incredibly interested in this.

And this sounds kind of like a fun thing.

You and I both owned food businesses.

Right.

I found that to be almost more rewarding than traditional internet things.

I found it to be way harder than everything I've ever done.

I don't know about rewarding, but it made the least money of anything I've ever done.

I learned the most, but it was also the hardest.

Yeah.

And I also feel like when we're in this tech bubble, it's very easy to like lose touch

with like reality and how most people's job works, how sausage gets made, all that stuff.

And there's like a different level of respect, appreciation and like understanding because

you know, working in service industry for a bit.

I have a question for you.

So do you use any of these book summary apps or anything like that?

I was thinking about that today.

What were you thinking about?

I think those are stupid.

Okay, tell me why.

What type of apps?

Blinkist.

Blinkist, right?

That's cool.

I think they're cool companies.

They'll do really well.

So what's stupid?

You don't like it as a user.

I'm not like that artistic of a guy, but sometimes I think like you got to read it to understand

like the new like you got to like really read the thing to get it.

But the efficiency part of me is like, oh, it's kind of cool.

So I have mixed feelings on it, but I do think I would invest my time into or money into

something like that because I think it can work.

Yeah.

Because I'm thinking about doing this for fun.

So I started reading more because ever since our company got acquired, there's these hours

of the night that used to be like grind mode that I'm like, well, I don't really need to

put that into my job.

I'll put that into this podcast, I'll put that into like reading and learning and things

like that.

So I'm reading these books that I'm like, if I could summarize this for people, would

that be useful?

And so...

The answer is definitely yes.

There's something kind of like off about it, right?

Like why did you say it's stupid?

Like how do I make it less stupid?

Well, I think there's a few things.

The first thing is so Otis Chandler, the founder of Goodreads, spoke at our event.

Cool company, really cool company.

I think it's actually bigger than they sold for $100 million.

I think it's actually way bigger than Amazon.

And then Bookbub, you know Bookbub?

They advertised with us and they spent a lot of money with us and the results are really

great and what they've done is it's a huge company now or it's a startup.

It's like basically an email for people who like Kindle books and they set out some free

ones, some paid ones and they're just an aggregator of cool stuff and then some publishers will

pay money to get their free book.

Like when a new release can happen, they'll make it free for like a day just to get a

bunch of ratings.

The book space, I think that's growing like crazy.

Anything book related is I would put my name on for sure or want to be part of.

That's one of the things we talked about with the whole Gen Z thing was that they're reading

more than ever.

But it does feel weird.

I found myself whenever I read books, particularly, I've always wanted to look up the characters

significantly more and you told me about what you're doing with Blab, you were trying

to do the same thing where you wanted to create communities around TV shows.

I have found myself wanting to do that for books.

I've not found a solution for that.

Right, right, right.

You read what?

You read like, you read a lot of biographies, right?

I read a ton of biographies.

Do you read anything else?

Yeah, I like to read fiction, like American classics, Catcher in the Rye, things like

that.

I do, but I'm going to do something here because I'm reading these books and I'm like, oh,

a good way for me to even just digest this is to try to distill it down into the most

interesting bits and be able to explain it.

If I can teach it, that means I've learned it.

And so I'm going to do that and I'm going to experiment and I'm going to see if I can

make something that I would want if I was the reader.

To make it or break it though is the model that you choose because there's the affiliate

model, but you're going to be earning 4% on a $8 thing.

That's silly.

I'm not even thinking about the business right now.

I just want to put the content out there and see if people like it.

There's this guy named Nat and I came across his blog.

He's always popping up on my Twitter feed and he just started doing what you did where

he summarized books and then he just said, you could buy all my summaries for $100 and

I think he's selling a ton of them.

Okay, nice.

I'll check that out.

Yeah, there's something to this.

I don't know what it is.

Okay.

That's like a half baked idea, but I'm going to do something there.

Do you have anything else that you've been seeing that's interesting?

No, but follow ups on follow ups.

Yes.

Okay.

So last time we talked about Shopify.

Yes.

So I got a lot of criticism.

The reason why WordPress is, why you could build a theme businesses around WordPress

and software stuff around WordPress is because WordPress makes up 35% of the internet.

They told me in the multiple people side of this, they go, Shopify only makes up 2% of

the Ecom like store market and WooCommerce is actually significant, way bigger.

Which is crazy to me.

Which is crazy to me.

100% crazy.

Yeah.

What is that?

So I got a lot of criticism for that, but I know that's what the numbers say, but that

doesn't sit right.

Yeah.

Something seems off about that.

The second thing is agencies.

We talked about agencies.

So a friend of mine who has a $50 million a year agency hollered and he wants to...

Add agency, creative agency.

Creative agency.

Okay.

Which sounds like a miserable thing to do.

I think that sounds like a horrible company.

So he reached out, he said.

Yeah.

He wants to come and fill us in on all the, on the economics.

And what do you want to know?

So is it...

So here's why agencies are interesting to me.

One, I think they're easy to start.

Like it's like a straightforward thing.

Someone needs a service and you say, okay, I can, here's my portfolio.

I've been able to solve for this.

And they say, okay, we'll give you a shot.

We'll pay you money and then you just go out and find talented people who can execute

on the work.

You're super straightforward.

And it's actually interesting because if you start an agency, you actually will discover

that there's way...

Like I know a guy who has an agency that does $50 million in revenue.

It's quite profitable.

$20 million in profit.

And with all the profit, he invests in cool things that he's discovered with the agency.

That's this guy?

Or there's a different person?

A different guy.

That guy who I'm talking about who invests in stuff.

That's called MetaLab.

His name is called Tiny Capital.

Oh yeah.

And I'm talking about Brendan, my friend Brendan who has...

He sold his company to an agency where he's now a partner and it's called Mechanism.

It's a 300 person agency and it seems hard.

It seems really hard.

We'll get him on.

We'll check it out.

We'll see.

Because it's like...

There's like a few things that everyone starts when they're first getting going.

The first thing is like, they're like, how do we create like roommate matching thing?

Everyone has that idea.

And I've done it.

To-do list.

Yeah.

To-do list.

And then like a college...

Dead simple invoicing.

How do we sell our products to college kids?

Okay.

This is like...

And then it's like...

It's social media agency.

Right.

So...

Common ideas, yeah.

Yeah.

So I want to hear more about those agency stuff.

The other thing that came to mind for me with dogs was I was like, okay, given that

44% of people own a dog, what problem am I having as a dog owner?

Maybe somebody could solve it.

It's not a business I would want to start, but a product I want to buy is I think my

dog for a walk here in the city, city's filthy, dog comes back in, my wife demands that we

wash the dogs, pause.

So what are you going to make?

Socks?

I don't know.

I think it can be a little jacuzzi that I put her feet in to like wash her feet real

quick.

No.

It's obviously socks.

Yeah.

It's got to be some kind of easy thing because I'm so sick of this like mini bath I have

to give my dog twice a day.

What happens when you Google dog socks?

I haven't Google dog socks.

I don't know.

I would like to see what is on top.

Yeah.

And I just want something that's like...

I don't want to put shoes on my dog.

So like, yeah, maybe more like socks or like even just like a really thin like, you know,

transparent little plastic thing that I could put on her feet.

That's hilarious.

So when we're done, I don't know.

I need something because I'm sick of washing my dog's paws.

So you just interviewed the guy, starred bark box.

Yeah.

That's coming out in a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

Okay.

Are there any stats that blew you away?

It's doing 250 million in revenue.

Shit.

Really?

For a year.

I believe they're profitable.

Yeah.

They raised 50 something million bucks and total lifetime and they've been doing this

for a while.

So I think they're probably doing well.

Probably I think at that stage is more of a choice.

It's like, do we have good ideas to go invest in or do we want to optimize for profits?

Well, they own like a bunch of stuff.

They do a bunch of different things.

Yes.

They do these subscription boxes.

They do one-off selling stuff.

I mean, they have a bunch of little...

Yeah.

They're doing a bunch of things.

The other part I really liked from his story was they kind of invented the dog influencer

on Instagram trend.

So he was like, you know, it's kind of unclear, but it was definitely early.

I followed a ton of those things.

Before that was a thing.

Yeah.

I follow a bunch of cute dogs that are like my dog.

My wife cried the other day when one of her dog influencers died.

Yeah.

I've had literally the same experience.

That's crazy.

And so they kind of, they basically started promoting all those dogs.

They were like, hey, you're a cute dog.

We will promote you.

And in turn, you promote our products.

And they started this like affiliate thing early on and it just became great content.

That sounds like the greatest company to work at, to be able to do that all day.

That sounds awesome.

Yeah.

I feel like a pet lover.

They're hiring.

So anyway, so we'll see what that comes out.

All right.

We should wrap up.

Anything you want to leave people with?

No.

Okay.

On that note, we're done.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.