My First Million: #26 - Shopify Spy Tool, Apartment Plants & Lucrative Content Sites

Hubspot Podcast Network Hubspot Podcast Network 11/15/19 - Episode Page - 18m - PDF Transcript

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.

We're here.

This is Million Dollar Brainstorm, Sean here with Sam and special guest, Mike, who's not

miked up, but he's in attendance.

Hopefully he'll be a guest on the podcast soon.

All right.

Let's jump in.

What do you got for me?

You told me some good ideas.

I've got a few.

So what it is is...

The look on your face right now.

Well, it's not an idea, but it's a way to find ideas.

What he did was he went to the site and he found websites that all use the same IP address.

Shopify has the same IP address.

And this website coincidentally has a way to rank websites on an IP address.

So basically what I'm saying is we entered in Shopify's IP address and we found all of

the other sites Shopify is doing.

And it ranks them.

Okay.

So for example, we'll link to this in the notes.

I was going to say, are you going to share the super spy tool or what?

Well, it's like an IP address to even get to the site.

So it's like the address is like 48355.

I mean, it's like a bunch of dark web, straight to the dark web.

And so amongst like the top 100 most popular Shopify stores that are using Shopify's IP

address, it's like all vape companies deals like a site like Daily Steals, which I'll

talk about clothing, but not like single branded clothing, like outdoor voices, like

stores, things that like they sell a lot of products and then makeup.

And particularly I saw one that was on there and I'll tell you three that stood out.

Seed beauty.

Have you ever seen beauty?

Never heard of it.

Okay.

I went down the rabbit hole and I researched a lot of these sites.

Seed beauty.

What they do is they're the manufacturers of a store called ColourPop.

As well as.

I know ColourPop.

As well as.

They make the makeup that Kylie sells.

Yes.

They own 50 other brands.

Right.

This is insane.

If you go to YouTube and search for ColourPop, they have an office tour that they've made

for like hiring.

I watched this thing twice.

It was amazing.

It was this crazy factory in LA.

The story is wild.

It's like there's a brother and sister.

It was like a family business and seed beauty is the incubator within the family business.

Right.

And so they were first just manufacturing other people's makeup, other companies makeup

for them and shipping it.

And then they started making their own brands and now they white label for Jenner.

What?

I don't think for Rihanna, but like, yeah, it's incredible.

No, the Rihanna one I think is done with what's the big French luxury conglomerate.

I forget what it is, but it's a publicly traded company.

You could actually read about their numbers there.

But so anyway, seed beauty.

Killing it on Shopify.

And there's like 50 brands that they own.

And that was surprised.

The second one was DailySteels.com.

Have you heard of these?

I think they're all scams.

Is it a coupon site?

What is this?

Like penny bidding.

Oh, penny auctions.

Yeah.

They're horrible.

They're horrible for you.

Quibitz is the other one.

That's really popular.

Okay.

So if you do this hack that I just showed you, there's dozens of them in the top like.

And what you're saying is these are all been made by either same person or company because

they're coming from the same IP.

They're all well, no, they're all on Shopify's IP.

These are all Shopify.

Okay.

So they're all built on top of Shopify.

But this is a business that I would never would have thought was actually as popular

as it is.

I mean, this was as popular as according to my rankings, it has as much traffic.

Explain what this is for somebody who doesn't understand what you say, penny auctions.

I think it's a scam.

What you do is you buy points to a website and then you use those points to bid on products.

They start at super cheap.

Yeah, the hope is that you can buy an iPhone for like 85 points, which is like, I don't

know, $2.

Yeah, exactly.

And sometimes it does happen.

But most of the time what happens is it's not like eBay where the highest bidder pays

the price.

And if you bid second place, you keep your money.

With this, every time you bid, your points go into the pool.

So you bid four points to see if you can get the iPhone for four points.

Well, you're not going to win and those four points are gone.

And so whoever wins typically gets it for a lower amount of points than the retail price.

But all the bidders together have put in way more than the price of an iPhone.

It's like genius.

So it is genius.

I think that it's all bullshit and it's also built on Shopify, which I would never have

thought.

I wouldn't have thought that either.

Okay.

And the third one, which we wrote about in trends, my prediction was that this industry

is kind of like the mattress industry in 2010.

It's about to change.

And that is the sill, the sill.com, right?

They sell plants, particularly cute, cute millennial plants like succulents, condo plants, apartment

plants.

Yeah.

Like fancy ones.

Right.

And we wrote about them on trends.

We did a report on the indoor plant industry months ago.

Now the site, the sill is one of the, according to this thing, is one of the most popular.

And what do you think of that?

When you guys put out the report, that's pretty compelling to me.

If I didn't have a job and I wanted to make money, that sounds awesome.

I would have joined that.

The hard part, shipping it and making sure it arrives without being all screwed up, but

the margins are fat.

I even went and found a wholesaler of succulents.

Right.

The math works out wonderfully.

Great.

Love it.

So that was a cool find that I wanted to go through.

All right.

The second one.

Mind Bloom.

Have you heard of Mind Bloom?

No.

I was talking to, I won't say his name as Nessan for permission, he told me he invested in

it.

Okay.

So there's this.

The name seemed like it sounded with a J.

Yeah.

Okay.

We got that much.

All right.

Go on.

Okay.

So I have this like weird idea where I'm not like a Silicon Valley hype boy too much,

but there's this idea that like what's popular among rich Silicon Valley people is

going to be mainstream in 20 years.

Right.

There's another theory here that I think Chris Dixon wrote about, which is what the engineers

do on the weekend.

Everybody will do on the weekdays eventually.

Yeah.

So it's like with the nerds and sort of Silicon Valley people do as their hobbies, eventually

they go mainstream.

So what I'm about to mention is not that cutting edge, but psychedelics.

Okay.

But Mind Bloom just launched.

It was started by a guy who started a company that previously I think raised $100 million.

It's called Mind Bloom.

I think they launched within the past few months and they raised money for it.

And what it does is it connects you with a therapist in New York who will do, I don't

know the exact drugs.

I think it's ketamine and what's in mushrooms.

No idea.

Whatever the mushrooms one is.

Super cool.

And so they prescribe this to you or they, they, yeah, it's legal in New York.

And I actually spoke to a guy today in New Zealand.

How do you pronounce that?

So exciting.

That's what it is.

Is that legal in New York?

This is why we got Mike here.

Adding tons of value right away.

I think it's legal in New York, but this company connects you with a doctor, a therapist

who will give it to you.

And I actually spoke to a guy today in New Zealand who we're going to fund a little bit

and he got one of the first grants in New Zealand to do LSD testing.

Totally legal.

You're going to fund the research side of it.

Well, I want the hospital to write about him and then we'll allow people to give money

to his grant.

He needs a hundred grand and I'm going to match it.

Gotcha.

Love it.

So mind bloom.

Okay.

I like mind bloom.

Would you use it?

Cause you've talked to him in the past about.

Yeah.

So I'm, I'm very interested in it.

I'm not in the state of mind where I'm actually, I don't want to do LSD for the people who

are listening.

I don't do any drugs or drink.

I am not ready yet, but I love the idea of it.

And Sam wrote a great post about when he gave up alcohol, you should go look it up on the

internet and read it.

It's good.

I tried to sign up to do ecstasy therapy and I got in a fight with the therapist and she

kicked me out of the group, but like in the pre-meetings.

So that's why I'm interested in this thing so that they can introduce me to another therapist

who will do it.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Okay.

I have one for you that's, I just learned about last night and I don't know if you've

ever heard of it.

It's called VASPR.

Have you ever heard of VASPR?

No, I like that name.

I think it's very new.

VASPR.com.

Sounds like I'm vaping.

So this photo of it, it looks super lame.

So just brace yourself.

And I know it's a podcast so you can't see this, but describe what you're looking at.

So it's a recumbent stationary bicycle that kind of looks like an elliptical with a vacuum

behind it.

Yeah.

It basically looks like a seated bike with like a jet ski butt on the back of it.

So somebody, I know my aunt basically posted about this and was like, this thing is amazing.

Best invention of the, you know, the century.

And I was like, what is this?

So I looked it up.

These are the claims that come with it.

So it's an exercise machine.

You do 21 minutes and apparently it feels like two hours of cardio.

This is testimonials on the website or like Tony Robbins says this, the guy who started

bulletproof coffee says this, they're like, this thing is magic.

And it's a low intensity workout that apparently stimulates your muscles like a high intensity

workout.

Oh, the bulletproof coffee guy says that that's the greatest thing ever.

Exactly.

And it's a, it uses cooling and compression technology along with something else, blah,

blah, blah.

There's a whole science video.

I don't know what it is, but I was like, I heard enough interesting things that I was

going to go try it.

So I'm inviting you to come try it with me.

They basically, they don't sell these machines to you.

They have them at like certain facilities, certain gym.

Yeah.

They have them all over LA.

The USF has one in their research center.

So we should go and check this thing out.

Yeah.

We'll have to take photos along the way.

It sounds too good to be true.

And I like to go check those things out.

Yeah.

The bulletproof coffee guy, Dave Asbury, I think his name is, he says that he does that thing

I think every day or something.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It sounds kind of magical and this is not really a business idea necessarily.

It's just some cool shit.

Something to be able to look out.

Yeah.

Something to be able to look out for.

So in general, like the sort of like the promise of, hey, by this device, it helps you get

fit.

That's a promise that never gets old.

And it's, you know, from Jane Fonda's workout videos to Bowflex to Ab Roller, P90X, you

know, there's all these different sort of like, hey, this device, this is the one.

This was the one that will get you to do it.

Yeah.

And there's guys like me and you might be there as well who just like trying the newest gadgets.

Yeah.

I just like trying the new thing.

Yeah.

I like the promise.

I like to judge it once I try it.

And so anyways, I found this one good.

I've got two more categories, but I'll say the first category then you can go.

Okay.

Someone posted in the trends group, what should I start this weekend?

I need a project.

I'm only want to spend less than a thousand dollars and I am biased, but I'm going to

make an argument that media right now, particularly websites and blogs are shockingly undervalued.

A lot of them are selling for one times revenue because some people don't think that they're

great businesses.

I think they're wonderful businesses.

If done correctly, I'm going to tell you a few examples of them done correctly.

Great.

That's great.

For sure.

They were above a hundred million in revenue.

A few years ago, I think now they're probably at $200 million revenue.

The business model is they write about personal finance stuff and they make, I don't have

inside information, but I think it's a hundred to $200 every time someone signs up for a

credit card through their service.

So I would put it a little bit differently what they do, which is they don't just write

about personal finance stuff.

Yes.

That's true.

The way I would say it is they answer highly Googled questions that have valuable answers,

right?

So people say, which credit card should I buy?

So they go work backwards.

They work backwards from what are these questions and they build this authority around all the

finance questions that people ask.

Yeah.

So their secret sauce is backlinks and SEO.

And they developed that over a long period of time, right?

Yeah, but they got to close to a hundred million revenue with zero funding.

So it's a compelling argument.

Okay.

So I'm going to tell you actually four or five more big businesses in the exact same

space.

The pennyholder.com, that bootstrapped to about $40 million.

What is that one?

I've never been there.

It's the same thing as NerdWallet, but for mostly, I think Midwestern women, bootstrapped

to $40, $50 million in revenue.

Same model.

Write content, monetize a handful of the pages with credit card and insurance offers.

The third one, money supermarket, but you've never heard of that one, have you?

It's a British website, very similar to NerdWallet.

They're publicly traded $500 million in revenue with something like $200 million a year in

profit.

And these are all the NerdWallet types, right?

Writing about finance products, linking to affiliate deals of credit cards and insurance

and stuff like that.

Yeah.

I'm a savings expert, sold for $100 million recently, and then the points guy, which someone

in our Facebook group said that they're at $50 million or so in revenue.

And so when you hear these, I'm like, all right, those are great businesses, can't deny

that.

Do you think you can go start something or is now is it too saturated, too many backlinks?

It's never too saturated.

For example, I wanted to bring up Notion, which is this new software that's out that

is basically like an Asana.

It's a glorified to-do list for your company.

Yeah, it's text edit.

And that is one example of the idea that there is always room for better.

Sure.

But when you're competing against these guys in the Google ranks, how would you compete

with one of these?

Or would you do it not in the financial services?

So I would do it in a different industry.

And so two industries that I am looking at right now, two different companies that are

trying to conquer industries that I think are appealing, or I'll actually say a few.

The first, the company is, well, the first industry, I've said this many times, software.

So there's g2crowd.com, I think they just changed to g2.com.

Rumors are that that's a huge business.

They just raised money at a $500 or $600 million valuation.

The second one is software reviews.com.

That's sold along with capterra.com for $200 million to Gartner.

And then finally, J2global, J2global does the same thing as all these things.

J2global, you've never even heard of that.

They own Mashable, they own PCMag.com, and they own a few others.

It's a publicly traded company with a $4 billion market cap.

So I'm incredibly fascinated by these guys that are doing the exact same thing for NerdWallet,

for technology products, specifically digital technology products.

I think that all the companies that I just named are completely missing the mark on solving

that problem.

So I think that's an interesting one.

Another interesting one is MeetEater.

Have you heard of MeetEater?

I've heard of it, but I don't know much about it.

Okay, they just raised $50 million.

Is this the hunting and fishing one?

For hunting and fishing.

So if I wanted to make money, which I always do, but I have a job now and I'm busy.

So really, if I had time, if I had time, I would copy some of these models.

But I think that the tech niche still has plenty of room.

This guy, MeetEater, I think his name's Steve, the guy who runs it, proved that there's that

for hunting.

And I think that there are still plenty of spaces for something like the points guys,

practically the same thing as NerdWallet, but started for consultants who are interested

in points.

There's also people who do this with travel, because travel is another high value thing.

I forgot what Scott's Cheap Flights or something like that.

That's one of those.

What do you think?

Oil and gas?

We have Mike here from the Oil and Gas Industry.

Oh, Mike, who's with us owns an oil and gas company.

So do you think a content site that's around either equipment or oil and gas or something

around that, and then linking off to buying products is a good way to go?

I think that oil and gas products are going to be more at the corporate level.

So you wouldn't have an individual consumer going that route, but oil and gas news is

one I know that run a pretty profitable one and then like a brokerage house for deals.

I'm a subscriber to oil and gas news.

Okay.

And so I'm going to give you a rebuttal.

There's a company that's publicly traded that is $150 million a year business.

I don't know what their market cap is called Tech Target.

And they do a thing where they talk about like really boring, huge company, like if

you're HP and you're going to buy something for 20,000 employees, they talk about those

products.

And what they do is if you click on those things, you enter their email and then the

company that can buy it from them.

So to your point, if you're an oil and gas company that is going to sell something for

a million dollars, yeah, sure, no one will buy that online or maybe they won't, but you

can sell information to the lead and you would be willing to pay $10,000 for that information

of a high quality lead.

So one interesting oil and gas company in that space, I think is EnergyNet and they

actually are a brokering house for deals.

So they just rate the percentage of the deal fees and set up buyers and sellers like eBay,

but for oil and gas.

Okay.

So I rattled off a ton.

Your turn.

Those are good.

I don't know if I have one.

I also have to run in two minutes.

So we'll see what we can do.

Can I just bring up one thing real quick?

Do it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Something I'm obsessed with, Notion.

Okay.

It's called Notion.

I don't know the URL.

It's Notion.

Notion.so I think.

If you know Asana or...

So it's just competitor.

Ever know.

Okay.

So it's a to-do list, but it's used at an enterprise level.

So businesses are using it, but it's like an Asana, but it's like cute.

They raised recently $10 million at an $800 million dollar valuation, which is like when

I started to hear that, I was like, that's, that's stupid, but who knows?

It's a really good ass product.

I don't like it.

I use it, but I don't like it.

It's cool.

I don't know what's cool about it.

You got to show me.

How on earth can a 25 person company get those numbers?

So what happens is, so my friend Alex did clear a bit, I'm trying to get him on the

podcast too.

So he did the same thing where he just raised, I think a $20 million dollar round at like

a $500 million dollar or something around valuation, multiple hundreds of millions of

dollars, a lot, a different multiple than you usually get on these rounds.

And the reason why is he didn't need to raise the money.

So Notion did the same where Notion charges per seat for their product.

If you use it.

How big do you think they are?

Notion?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I feel like they released some numbers.

I didn't look at it.

They said they had a million users.

I don't know if that means how many people are paying.

It means, but I do know this.

Every company is a buyer of the office suite.

And so a lot of people are trying to unbundle Microsoft Office.

They're going after PowerPoint, Excel, Word.

A lot of people think this is sort of like the new frontier.

Also business apps like this workflow apps are like very in vogue right now.

You have superhuman, which is email for business people.

I don't know if you know superhuman that well, but yeah, I think 30 bucks a month pay 30 bucks

a month.

If you want to have like better, faster email.

And so all of these are very like hot right now.

And so in general, I'm a sort of disbeliever and stuff that's hot.

I think that VCs are just sort of flocking to these apps.

I don't think that Notion is like super special against it, but it is interesting for sure.

I'll give you that.

Yeah.

When I saw that number, I was like, how are these people going to make their money off

this?

Right.

And I don't think they will.

Mike doesn't think they will either.

But if you invest at that, you need to get a markup.

So you're thinking, okay, it's 800.

You're trying to get to 8 billion.

That's the bet you're making.

Yeah.

So I'm like, what?

And so I saw that.

And I went to this in my head, I'm like, well, the people who invested are really smart.

So they must know what they're doing.

And then I'm like, well, this is not like every financial crisis ever happens.

Right.

Right.

Like you're like, well, like Bernie made off this guy is like, he's smart.

Right.

Smart people do dumb things all the time.

Okay.

This was a quick episode, million dollar brand storm, anything you want to leave to people

with any other questions.

We're going to do a meetup on Thursday at the Hustle's office at 251 Kearney.

If you're in the Bay Area or you have access to an airport, get to the meetup.

Yeah.

It's free.

It's free.

How do they find the link to this?

I just posted it in the email and in the Facebook group, we have 50 people signed up already.

So I'll make it like more people.

Great.

20 minute podcast.

Good.

Boom.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. We're hosting a meetup on the 21st November in San Francisco, check out details here: https://bit.ly/354TQ7H. This week these two discuss: the top businesses using Shopify (Check the ranking tool here: https://myip.ms/browse/sites/1/own/376714), millennial apartment plants, science fiction workout bikes, D2C hallucinogenics and businesses that you can start with $1000 this weekend that could turn into a $100M+ revenue biz. 
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