My First Million: #45 - Drones Washing Windows, Airpod Guided Tours & Mario Kart VR with Furqan Rydhan

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.

Furcon is here in the house.

How's it going, guys?

What's up?

So, background, who's Furcon?

Furcon is my co-founder, CTO at Bebo, before we sold, and we've been working together

I don't know, five, six years now.

Maybe six, seven years.

Yeah, he's getting towards seven, I think.

It's one of those things where you just keep saying five years, you know, no matter how

long it's been.

But he has an interesting background before that.

Very good background.

You want to give us like the...

Give the highlights.

All right.

The highlights.

I grew up here in the Bay Area.

I got started just programming as a kid, and so I had a unique experience where I worked

at a dot-com when I was 15, and that was kind of like...

Were you going to high school at the time, or did you drop out?

I was going to high school, I had just finished my sophomore year, and I was really into computers

and my dad was like, hey, I know this guy, they need to hire some people, they're looking

to make like a website at the time.

They had a router for hotel rooms, so it was like hotels wanted to put in DSL and kind

of like good internet.

And they're like, oh, you got to...

We needed this interface, like the, you know, links this interface for your router now.

Just the HTML side of things.

Yeah, and HTML at the time was really nothing.

It was like, you could put some stuff.

And I showed my dad how to make a menu, and he was like, wow, this is like groundbreaking.

There's no JavaScript.

How much were you getting paid at 15 to do this?

If I had worked the whole year, it would have been about 120K.

Wow.

Pretty ridiculous.

So this is dot-com boom.

Dot-com boom, probably, because they're hiring 15-year-olds, but you know.

And then that happens, then you did an e-commerce thing.

Yeah, and so that company didn't work out, obviously, spending money.

Paying 15-year-olds, 120K.

Exactly.

And so I kind of was back at high school, and then I'm bored, and I'm really into computers

and gaming, and you know, I had this idea that like, hey, people like to kind of trick

out their cars.

Like they like to put lights and, you know, fun things in their car.

Like, why don't people do this with the computers?

People are really passionate about it.

And so I looked it up, and I found some forums online, and people were doing this, it's just

there was nowhere to buy things.

There's nowhere to do things, especially here in the US.

So I started an e-commerce store kind of accidentally.

I was like, oh, like, these things are really expensive, if I buy them in bulk, I just get

them cheaper.

I'll sell awesome.

I'll have some more cash on the side.

And I think we started 800 bucks of stuff in the corner of my garage, and then within

the first year, we did a million dollars of revenue.

Wow.

And it was like...

How old were you?

Oh, 17.

Holy shit.

In high school at the time.

And so that was pretty crazy because it went from, you know, one corner of the garage to

full three car garage to living room, family room.

Like there's boxes everywhere.

My parents were super supportive of this, obviously.

And so that was kind of like the early days, I would say.

And then we'll fast forward because there's a lot more to the story, but we'll do the

highlights.

So if I'm listening to this, you know, whenever I ask people with their background, really

what I'm trying to say is give people a sense of who you are.

And also, it's kind of just like credibility.

It's like, why should you be interested in what I have to say?

You're trying to impress people.

Yeah.

It's like, this is the time to basically brag.

So I'll brag for you because you're a pretty humble guy.

You don't brag a lot.

So the other interesting parts are, took a couple of years off, played poker professionally,

kind of in Europe, traveling around, that was fun.

When you came back, did your own startup failed?

But then the next startup, which you started with Adam and a couple other guys, you guys

tried and failed on a bunch of ideas.

I think probably nine ideas.

Yeah.

It was about nine ideas across two or three years that we tried.

Kind of, you know, one idea would say it was real serious.

We tried that for about nine months.

And then you're going through like three month chunks of like really bad ideas and attempts

and then.

And my favorite anecdote of this whole time, because I think this is very, very, you don't

hear people talk about this was sometimes when you guys were in between ideas or you

just were, it wasn't working.

What did you do?

You'd come to the office and do what?

We would just play FIFA all day.

I mean, literally.

That's what you guys did at Monkey Inferno.

Yeah.

We would do it for like an hour.

These guys would just like, that was the day.

Yeah.

It was like eight hours of FIFA.

Oh man.

That was a tough day.

Let me get back home and kind of get back to it.

And did you think that was weird?

Like Adam and those guys had had success.

So if part of you was probably like, look, if, if these successful guys think this is

all right, this can't be too bad, but like I would be anxious if we were doing that.

There was some anxiety, but they were super calm and collected.

So that kind of was like, well, why am I worried?

Well, so Adam was pretty wealthy.

I mean, yeah, he'd previously worked on a couple of ad tech companies and they had grown

to be pretty big.

I would say like, you know, one was worth maybe 50 million and you know, the one before

that might have been in that range too.

And so he had done some stuff.

John, who is the other co-founder there, had worked at like VMware early and he had worked

at ad products like that got bought by.

And they were self-funding the company?

Yeah.

They were self-funding.

And so I cannot believe how I would be like, no, we're getting to work.

I'm self-funding my fucking buddy.

And I think we worked hard.

I mean, the cool thing was you sat around, you talked about things.

How many people?

We were probably like five or six people.

Got it.

So it was pretty small.

It wasn't, I mean, we had a good office in Palo Alto bigger than we needed, but you could

tell they're not worried.

I shouldn't be worried.

You sit around for a week, you get some ideas, then you go and work on them and it all felt

pretty natural at that point.

And the outcome of this was what?

Yeah.

So you cracked the nut finally.

Yeah.

So we had, you know, they had a previous background in ad tech.

We had made this product called Apple Oven.

That was an app where you could see what apps your friends were using.

It was like a social network where if you're playing Candy Crush, oh, it says, hey, Sam's

playing Candy Crush and you should play too.

Or we're like, wow, this is pretty interesting.

People really convert with this.

This should just be an ad product.

And then that kind of drove it and said, wait, we should just make a real network out of

this.

And then we sat down, we built that for a couple of months and then it kind of skyrocketed

after that.

And how big, how big is it now?

They're really massive now.

It's been a while since I've been over there, but you know, a couple of years back they

had a big liquidity event over 1.4 billion.

And I think they've probably grown in multiple since then.

Yeah.

I mean, I heard that it sold like only three years after it started.

Yeah.

It was really fast.

And it was doing like six or 700 million in revenue, like some crazy number.

Yeah.

It was magical to see what product market fit really looks like.

Like I always thought, oh, these things are working now.

They weren't working.

And this is what working looked like.

And it was probably one of the best versions of it.

So maybe my views a little skewed on that, but the first month it was like, man, we just

jump up to like 10,000 plus in revenue a day, and then you just kind of keep skyrocketing

up from that.

And like, it's pretty crazy as an engineer too, because now your servers are being hammered.

You're like running around all night, like pulling all nighters just because money's flowing

and you got to kind of keep it up.

And so that was kind of crazy, but fun.

So the Apple oven story is four million bucks in self funding initially, then they raised

a small strategic round or I don't know exactly what the total is, but about five million

bucks total funding, right?

Yeah.

I think that's exactly what it was.

And then the first liquidity events, they sold a portion of the company to a Chinese

company for over 1.4 billion.

And so that's like massive capital efficiency.

You were, you know, CTO kind of co-founder there.

So we met after that.

We started working together, became, you know, you know, really good friends and have built

a bunch of stuff together.

And what I like about you, which is why I wanted you on the podcast is not necessarily, we're

not even going to talk too much about Apple oven, that's just establish who you are.

You are like me, you're an idea guy.

You always have a bunch of ideas.

You see interesting stuff, but you're deeply technical, but then get the business side

and the product side too.

And there's very few people who do that.

I'm definitely going to ask about app 11 and a little bit before we even get to the

ideas.

Let me, I got to tell you something real quick because this is related.

So my best friend started Bungal, which was app 11's competitor.

They raised $16 million.

When they got acquired, they had a hundred million in cash.

What did it sell for?

750?

Half of what you guys sold for.

Very successful.

Yesterday, Jack was, this was after you left.

It's okay.

So we have to apologize a little bit.

Yesterday Lance Armstrong popped in and our episode got ruined, kind of ruined or, or

made, or made whatever it was hectic.

And we did this thing.

It was cool.

And Sean, you left Jack was here.

It was me and Lance and Adam and Jack just chilling right here.

And Jack's kind of savante.

Like he's like real smart, but he doesn't pay attention to a lot of things.

And we were talking about the podcast and I was saying Lance, how big is your podcast?

He said it's like whatever a hundred thousand listeners, he goes, it took me a long time

to build that up, you know, after I got cut out or cut off.

And Jack was like, what cut out?

What do you like?

What happened?

Like Apple shut you down or something?

He goes, no, you know, like from the incident that happened seven years ago, like I, like

everything dropped off.

And he goes, Jack was like, what, what do you mean?

And Lance looked at me and he goes, he's like, is this guy serious?

I'm like, yeah, dude.

He's like a business of ours.

What happens?

You know?

And he goes, this is awesome.

Sam, you got to bring more people like this around me and he goes, Lance goes, Jack,

I basically went from hero to zero overnight.

Like I lost everything.

And Jack was like, oh, okay.

And he's like from, you know, like it was hilarious.

That's amazing.

That's awesome.

And if you, Jack did a whole episode and you can kind of tell he's like, and the stuff

he cares about, he's so deep in the rain, man.

And then other stuff he's completely oblivious to, which is awesome.

Yeah, it was, it was so funny.

And Jack started, your guys is maybe they're first, I don't know, but your competitors.

So it reminded me of that.

So what do you want to do?

I want to hear some ideas.

You said you have a story.

Was that the story or you?

No, I'll tell it tomorrow.

Okay, cool.

So we want to have guests that come in and bring their ideas, stuff they find interesting.

So either little phenomenon they've observed, ideas they've been cooking up, something off

their list they have on their phone, whatever it is.

So do you have stuff like that?

Do you have a list of ideas you do or no?

I wrote down some ideas for this.

I usually just keep them up here and like, you know, the important ones make their way

out.

Let's talk about the process.

Where do you get a lot of like, where do, when do ideas come to you?

Usually when I'm not trying to come up with an idea.

Like in the shower or whatever shower, driving, just kind of around, not really thinking about

anything.

And then something pops up.

The second one I would say is like, when I'm reading online, like if you read something

interesting, you're like, wait, that's cool, but it would be cooler if it was.

And then like, that's kind of where my mind wanders.

I think that the best idea is you just steal, right?

So like, it's kind of like that you're like, oh, but what if you applied it?

Like the way this restaurant industry is, this restaurant's working, they should actually

apply that to like Indian food and it would be way bigger.

Right.

Yeah.

It's like remixing, right?

It's like, I want to sample some ideas real quick and then I want to turn it into my own

idea.

Right.

So what you got?

What's interesting to you?

Okay.

So I'll start with one that we went go carding a couple of weeks back.

And so I'm really into kind of VRAR.

I mean, you know, this have kind of gave you an Oculus just so you can, you know, feel

my mind.

You gave him one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I gave him a great gift, right?

That's awesome.

Yeah.

I was like, John, you got to do this.

You're never going to buy one on your own.

You're going to be a skeptic forever.

Here you go.

Are you using it?

Yeah.

Because he was telling me he's like, there's this one thing you're because I was skeptical.

I was like, is there any good games?

Like, what am I going to do with this?

And he's like, dude, you got to try this poker stars thing.

And I was like, okay, what a VR poker.

Why do I need that?

It is fucking amazing.

It is like, have you tried this thing?

Well, I've done boxing.

I've played all the games, but you've got to try the poker one.

It's incredible.

I'm going to go buy an Oculus.

Just to play.

Yeah.

Seriously, you should.

They're sold out.

So it's going to be tough.

But, you know, maybe we can get you one too.

You really can't buy one?

Right now they're out, dude.

They're totally from Christmas.

They just completely sold out and then they haven't been able to refill it.

They said it was January, then February and now it's March and then they're talking about

all these delays from China.

That's a good sign for VR.

Yeah.

I mean, they totally, it's the first device where I looked at it and I said, I can

give it to somebody that's not a VR junkie and they would actually get excited about

it.

And I think the poker one is great because you actually, people want to build these

really immersed experiences like boxing, but actually you don't really want entertainment

like that all the time.

I actually want more sit on the couch experience.

Yeah.

And so, you know, some of the things I've been thinking about in VR is like, what can I build

while I'm on the couch?

Yeah.

And so this idea had is not about that, but that was the 10th VR, but we went go karting

and you know, when you go go karting, it's really about how quickly you make these turns,

how fast are you, how good of a driver are you, you know, how aggressive are you, you

know, things like that.

And afterward, we're just kind of talking about some ideas and I was like, dude, it'd

be cool if we could, you know, go to a go karting place, but it's like Mario Kart instead,

where you have these AR goggles over your head and it's not about quick turns and it's

like a longer track where you can kind of like have some space.

But I, you know, would digitally go over this box and I now have a weapon that I could shoot

at your car.

And if I hit you successfully, your car kind of shuts down for a second and you're stuck.

So the real life Mario Kart.

Is this like the sandbox thing?

So this would be like sandbox or like museum of ice cream, it'd be a place you go, put

on this thing and play with a bunch of friends.

I'm big on sandbox.

Like laser tag.

It's like modern day laser tag.

Do you think that sandbox is a big business?

I think sandbox is fantastic.

I mean, it's hard to see if it's going to be successful or not because retail has all

these problems and having space has all these problems.

But that's not retail.

Well, yeah, it's not retail, but they're, they kind of have retail spaces, right?

Like they want to be brick and mortar, right?

Yeah.

They want to be like in a spot where there's a lot of.

Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just an activity.

It's just like escape room or something.

It's like escape room, but it escape room and I know, I know guys who own like 200 escape

rooms.

Are they awesome?

It's an amazing business because escape rooms are super lightweight.

You don't do anything.

You just have a room.

You have one person, you buy the kit and you just keep like reassembling the room and you

have these like very small.

How big is that company?

Well, it's not one company, but it's, it's like, like you can just own a different franchise.

But yeah, but like you can own a McDonald's franchise, but they still report revenues

as one.

I've never been in, I would, I will never go to an escape room.

That's my fear.

I don't want to get that claustrophobic because I'm really claustrophobic.

I don't like flying.

No, I will never go in general VR or AR experiences are going to be, I think, fantastic.

And you could see theme parks going to this.

Like I heard about a theme park that has a roller coaster ride in VR where they give

you goggles.

You're in this kind of mechanical thing, but then you're actually in a dungeon and there's

lava and like it's a totally immersed experience.

And I think that people are going to experience it first like that.

And I could totally see you coming up with all kinds of different content types and whether

it's Mario Kart or escape room.

That's a great point.

So here's a cool model of this.

I have a buddy who worked at this company called two bit circus.

We ever heard of them?

No.

So the guy, the guy, the founder, his dad started Chuck E cheese as Nolan, whatever the guy's

name is.

Atari guy started Atari started Chuck E cheese.

Now his son started the thing called two bit circus.

And I love the concept.

And I think the son kind of, I don't know the guy, but like my read on the situation

is just sort of like ADD wants to do a million things, not really like executing on this

business as he should.

But the concept is amazing.

They go city to city traveling circus like Cirque du Soleil or whatever.

And they pop up this thing and it's like a weekend thing where parents bring their kids

and all the attractions are like digital wonders.

So it's like VR thing, a hologram thing.

And they were doing really well.

Every city they were going to, they're selling out like crazy, but he was also getting

distracted and they were doing things like a company would be like, Hey, we'll give

you half a million dollars to do our company retreat.

And then boom, the whole company, Nick, the CEO comes in and says, Hey, we had to go do

this corporate retreat.

And the company's just like, dude, we need like one direction.

Okay.

Quick break.

And I'm going to tell you a little bit about my Saturday morning routines.

So every Saturday I wake up in the morning and you know, some people watch cartoons,

some people read the newspaper, some people check the mail, some people exercise.

I go to quiet light brokerage.com and I check out what's for sale.

So if you don't know, quiet light is a platform where you can buy and sell online businesses.

So if you don't want to start something from scratch or you don't know if your idea is

any good, you can go on here and you can see ideas that are already proven, they're already

working to some extent, and you can either sell your business or you can buy a business

off here and try to grow it and improve it.

And so if you've been listening to the podcast, you know, one of our most popular episodes

was with Ramon, Ramon Van Meer, who, you know, sold his soap opera blog, even though he'd

never watched a soap opera in his life.

He built one of the most popular soap opera blogs for 9 million in cash on this website.

He has bought multiple businesses off quiet light as well.

And we had Paul on here.

He sold his FBA business for seven figures on quiet light.

So it is a fantastic place to sell your business.

It's a fantastic place for me to look for businesses.

Like I'm on it right now and I see a kid's monthly subscription box.

It started in 2018, so it's fairly new, asking price is $149,000.

So you could buy this on a SBA loan.

You don't have to put too much money down.

And you know, it makes 50k a year in profit.

And there's ones that go all the way up to millions of dollars in profit per year.

So whether you're looking for something small or something big, quiet light's got a great

little selection.

And it's not just like everything that's for sale.

They curate and they qualify only certain businesses get in and get on here.

And when you're interested in something, they have all the financials in a folder organized.

They have interviews with the founders that will tell you, you know, what, how they run

their business, how many hours a week they put in, that sort of thing.

Very good business.

All right.

So for any listeners for the podcast, they're offering a 25 point checklist to see how sellable

is your online business.

So if you have a business right now that's making money and you're interested, you would

love to sell it someday.

Check out this thing, check out what the 25 point checklist is to see how sellable your

online businesses to get the free guide, it's at quietlightbrokerage.com slash myfirstmillion.

Again, that's quietlightbrokerage.com slash myfirstmillion.

Can you look up Dave and Buster's revenue and look up Chuck E. Cheese's?

I bet Chuck E. Cheese is owned by private equity.

Chuck E. Cheese probably makes a killing.

And if you've gone to a Chuck E. Cheese, Chuck E. Cheese has gone to shit.

Well, where I'm from in Missouri, they were probably popular.

It's like we're like, like trashy poor people go.

I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty wack like, like I wouldn't go there because it was famous

for like the parents would fight, get drunk and fight.

Go get divorced.

Yeah.

Like Chuck E. Cheese, it was like Pee Wee Hockey and Chuck E. Cheese, that's like where parents

get drunk and fight.

What's the number?

Dave and Buster's $332 million and $896 million for Chuck E. Cheese.

Annual revenue.

So Dave and Buster's $330 million Chuck E. Cheese, almost a billion dollars annual revenue.

But definitely ripe for like doing something new because these things are stale.

It's Chuck E. Cheese public.

It just needs a public company.

Trying to buy stock?

Well, I want to see what the income is.

Trying to buy Chuck E. Cheese, you know?

No, I'm into this.

I think that these things are cool.

I think I'm terribly into it.

When I tried Oculus, I was like, I'm going to quit my company and only do this.

By the way, random story.

I found this YouTube channel once that was talking about all these old brands that are

just gone to shit like a Chuck E. Cheese.

And he was like, this guy just short stocks.

And he was like, my short pick of the year is Tootsie Roll.

And he was like, you ever met anyone who likes Tootsie Roll?

I love him.

He's like, people who like Tootsie Roll are all 35 and up.

He's like, no kid wants Tootsie Roll.

They go out for Halloween.

They're a public company.

If they get Tootsie Roll, they throw that shit away.

He goes, Tootsie Roll has no other products.

It's just Tootsie Roll and their population is dying.

He goes, secondly, the owner is like some 76 year old woman who will never sell the company.

So nobody can turn it around.

Nobody can change it.

That company is just going to die.

Tootsie Roll is its own company.

And so he was like, you should short the stock.

So I watched his two minute YouTube video and I was like, I took out a short position.

It did great.

It's been awesome.

That's badass.

Is it public?

Is it public over here?

Yeah, this guy.

No.

They try to go public and it collapsed.

So another thing that I would do, I love this, I would also, Six Flags has had a hell

of a turnaround.

A positive turn.

So the guy who, there's this guy named Bob Pittman and he was one of the inspirations

for me starting the hustle because Bob Pittman was, he created MTV when he was in his 20s

and then he went and started the thing called, this thing called the pilot group, which launched

a loads of different email newsletters, including Thrillist, which is like a huge thing.

It's like a billion dollar media thing.

Anyway, Bob Pittman is now the CEO of iHeart Media and formerly was also the CEO of Six

Flags and he turned it around and it does, it's really good.

It's been around forever, you know, and it ebbs and flows, but it's good.

Yeah, I think entertainment can always level up and when you're leaving the house to go

do something, the more immersed and more exciting it is, it like, that's what you want.

Like I can get all the rest of the stuff at home, but like, that's why I think Sandbox

is fantastic.

Like the only negatives I've heard is, hey, I've gone to a twice, it was similar content,

but they're going to work that out.

They're going to keep growing it.

I think it's going to be amazing.

I love this.

The spin off of this idea for the lazy people that I have, so I was like, okay, you got

to go to this place and go go car, I'm like, all right, what's the other, yeah, why can't

I stay at home?

Correct.

So if you replace the carts with drones, you let people sit at home on a controller

and control these drones, real life drones, flying around this warehouse and I'm fighting

you.

And again, same thing is all digital so I can hit something, shoot you your drone just

like flies and breaks.

You got to go and start over again.

So there's a pit of people who just go pick up the drones.

All right.

I have, I can add to this.

There's this guy, I know, I don't know if they're public, so I won't, I won't talk

about him yet.

But anyway, he's got what he, what they did was in Vegas or in Nevada where it's really

cheap.

And they bought something like a hundred or a thousand, a significant amount of claw

machines, you know, claw machines, like for arcade machine.

Yeah.

And you download the app and you pay a certain amount of money and you can, you control the

claw machine remotely and it picks up the item and drops it down to the thing.

And then you just get huge in Japan.

You just get emailed like a gift car.

I don't know if they, I don't know what the mailing system is.

I don't know if you actually get mailed that thing or if it's a gift card that you get

sent.

But I saw my friend doing this on his phone.

I was like, what are you playing?

What game is that?

He goes, oh, there's an arcade in Japan and I'm controlling the claw.

So it's like what?

Yeah.

This is crazy.

We had talked about it at some point.

Okay.

But here's how my buddy's building this business.

He's building it to be like, like H, he's building it to where it's going to take off

and they're going to capture all the value and it's just going to slowly die.

He's a known fad basically is what you're saying.

Like he knows it's a fad.

Yeah.

Which I love.

I like that.

Those things.

I do it on like wish products because they're so cheap that you could kind of like have

a prescription thing where it's like, hey, you have to get one random wish product.

That's what we should do.

You're browsing wish and after two minutes, it's like, enter bonus round.

You have the claw in our warehouse.

Pick something up.

I'm into this.

I think it's cool.

All right.

What else you got?

Okay.

So have you guys used?

Wait, hold on.

Here's what we'll do.

Actually, the next couple of days I'll come prepared with some Six Flags and Chuck E. Cheese

numbers.

Okay.

Cool.

I'm interested in this.

I want to hear these numbers too.

Yeah.

For Sandbox VR.

And I'm curious, tweet at us if you like, because we nerd out on like, I wonder how

that business does.

And we go look up the numbers and figure out who this guy is, who's Bob Pittman and how

much income do they make.

I don't know if we're unique in that, but if you like that stuff, like either in the Facebook

group, just my first million or on Twitter, tell us if that's like, just be like more

of that or less of that.

Just be honest.

Yeah.

That's great.

You know, you're going to get your listeners tell you what they want.

We'll see what happens.

Yeah.

Because that's the weird thing with podcasts.

You don't know what they want.

What else?

Well, in general, like I look at themes, so it's like, okay, Apple releases a bunch of

random devices.

So I'll call them AirPods, not really random, but it's Apple pencil.

I don't know if you guys have seen this.

I have one.

Yeah.

It's what's 125 bucks.

It's expensive.

And like the iPad Pro is expensive, but then I'm like, great, this new capability is there.

What product exists for it?

And so, you know, recently I've been kind of playing around a lot with the iPad and I'll

kind of try to show you guys this.

I can hold the mic.

Do you use a, are you one of the like computer, you get rid of the computer only use iPad?

Um, I'm.

I think that's weird.

I think it's fucking weird.

It's like, I like this in certain cases, like when I'm traveling, it's a lot better than

me lugging around my laptop.

Did work pay for that?

No, this is mine.

So I just for kind of the like to submit expenses reimbursement, like when we sold people, how

many un-reimbursed things, how much dollar amount did you have?

I bet it's like the tens of thousands.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's definitely in the five digit range.

I should be better at that.

But you know, Adam did that.

I had to pay him five grand because he didn't like submit shit.

Life has been good to me.

So I'm not really going to.

Not stressing anything.

Yeah.

Um, but.

The general theme is like new hardware comes out.

What can I do with this?

Yeah.

That's the general theme.

And so one of the things I've been playing with is this app called flow and it's basically

like this kind of whiteboard app, right?

And so, um, it's kind of hard to show obviously, but the idea for me was, you know, you sit

in a meeting room, right?

And you, you love the whiteboard.

You love getting up and moving.

Yeah.

He does that shit all the time.

I don't.

You like getting up.

I like it.

I like to get my Steve Jobs on.

Well, he always has like analogies over shit.

He's like, we're trying to build the race car, but let's start with the bicycle.

Yeah.

That's the analogy.

And so the idea was, okay, you take this kind of experience with the iPad and pencil,

but this whiteboard over here should just be digital, right?

So if I want to show you something, I just.

And it just shows up there.

You're like, no, no.

And you want to kind of feed off of it and like we could just have a.

Okay.

So for those who can't see what he's saying, so he's basically saying, you got a little

iPad in front of you, a little tablet.

You're in a big meeting room.

If you, you should be able to quickly sketch something or write something or draw something

and it just use the whiteboard as a display, like it's a TV, basically.

Correct.

And then it's remote friendly.

So everybody can get the same whiteboard experience because I mean, what happens if

you're remote?

That happened to me yesterday.

I was remote conferencing and the guy gets up, he's like, here's what, here's what this

really means.

He drew something on a whiteboard.

I can't see.

And everyone in the meeting was like, oh yeah, that makes total sense.

And you're.

I'm just.

So I talked to a bunch of people.

So do you know, uh, this guy named Wayne, I forget his last name.

He sold something to Twitter.

Uh, yeah, they're doing digits now.

Ma, or is it Ma?

I think it's Ma or Ha.

Anyway, I was talking to him, he said they're 100% remote.

And I was like, how do you do that?

Cause we're struggling with this whole whiteboard thing.

And he was like, man, there's this one app that they never update.

And that's kind of what we've hacked together to use.

This is a problem that.

Yeah.

I think people are going to remote work both cause there's really good talent elsewhere

that you're like, man, this is a perfect fit, but you're not here.

And that's not a good enough reason anymore.

Uh, and then the second thing is just cost, if you're in the city, like people, they kind

of don't like, you know, they don't want to pay that much for their house.

So just basically making the whiteboard to work for remote workers.

Yeah.

And also, or even if you're here, yeah, yeah, like, I still want a big view of it.

If I'm here, like if we're all here, we want to get that bad ass.

I'm into it.

So the pencil and the iPad, I think is a good combination to set to where people will have

that around.

I think it'll become more common.

Now you can kind of connect all these groups together.

So last podcast I was saying, meeting tech stuff that makes meetings more effective and

efficient because all like so many billions of dollars are spent in people's time in meetings.

Do you know how cheap, I mean, it would cost way less than anything to make this.

You know that?

Okay.

This is a screen.

This is a 55 inch.

I think out there we have a 65 inch TCL 4k or no, we didn't get the 4k 1080p.

You know how much that costs?

It's like 399.

No, no, no, it was like 250 or 180.

It's like probably cheaper than this whiteboard.

That's the retail price.

Yeah.

That's what I was on.

I bought it for, I think for sure less than 300, maybe less than 200.

Yeah.

I believe it.

Screens are really cheap.

And so where else can you put screens?

And I think you can actually enhance the meetings if somebody puts up slides, I want to write

over the slides.

Like I, I think you unlock more capabilities than just supplement what you have today.

And I think that that's where this will become superior than us going to the whiteboard with

you know, those expo pens and kind of writing there.

Right.

So.

Meeting tech.

Yeah.

Meeting tech.

I didn't get it yesterday.

Yeah.

I didn't have good examples.

He said a meeting in a box.

Yeah.

It was, it was bad.

It was bad.

I liked your other idea of the meeting.

You know, the A.R.

I was trying to get to that, but then I, I fumbled the initial thing I said meeting in a box

and it sounded stupid to me.

And then Lance Armstrong showed up.

Yeah.

Lance Armstrong showed up.

I felt like a chump.

It's a meeting in a box.

That was fucking stupid.

Yeah.

Fuck that guy.

The other one I like is, uh, so everyone has AirPods on now, right?

And I think AirPods did one thing like Apple does really well is nobody wanted to walk

around with a Bluetooth headset.

Right.

I think we all agree.

You didn't look cool.

You look like tacky.

It was a known douchebag thing.

Yeah.

It was like having the cell phone on your belt.

Yeah.

Like great analogy.

Perfect.

And so I was like, great.

People have AirPods now.

And so what else can you build with this?

Again, Apple's unlocking capabilities and hardware.

So what software can you build?

And so there's two ideas.

One's mine to want somebody else's, but I'll take it as mine.

Yeah, exactly.

Whoever says it, it's theirs.

Yeah.

Apple or AirPods.

What did, how much?

10 million units.

Uh, there's a last X amount of time.

So what's that?

10, is that 10 billion in sales?

Yeah.

Just multiply by let's say a hundred.

Just to be roughly.

Plus in sales, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It would be a Fortune 500 company.

Yeah, I agree.

It's fantastic.

And so one of the things that I was thinking about was great.

If I have these on all day, can I just have this on kind of connected to like my wife

or like somebody?

Right.

And so whether you do it for work or for a personal, you always have it on.

There's no audio flowing.

But then if I'm like, Hey, Sean, what's up, it knows, do you have your AirPods on?

If it doesn't, it tells me, Hey, he's not there, but you can record a message.

You'll get it later.

Right.

But if you're there, you'll just hear my audio and you still aren't on yet.

You kind of opt in again to be like, yo, what's up, man?

Like, right?

It's like, how do you take the phone call away from like that?

And you're like, I'm not going to give this capability to everybody.

There's a couple of people in my life, like my wife that I'm going to be like, great,

I just want to have this on and this capability that's there.

And so it's like, uh, in the office, they do this in the TV show.

Oh yeah.

Jim and Pam have their thing.

Just constant.

Yeah.

This is good because it's not, uh, it's not on when you don't want it on.

So let's say I have my AirPods in, you have yours in and I'm walking around.

I'm at lunch.

I have this idea for the podcast.

I basically just say, yo, Sam, what we should do is we should do this.

And then you basically receive, but you're not sending back, um, unless you say whatever

the keyword, like, you know, like how Alexa works, right?

Like it's like Sean or whatever it is.

And that's way more lightweight than me picking up my phone and starting to type.

Or phone call.

Like who wants to do that?

Right.

So phone calls feel weird.

100% right now.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm, I'm less bullish on that than the first two.

Okay.

Okay.

We'll do that.

The second version of this idea with AirPods was, um, you know, Forza, right?

Yep.

What is it?

Oh, your homie.

Yeah.

One of our friends and, uh, we're doing a small hackathon at the house and he's like

coming up with this idea again for AirPods.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

You're doing a hackathon at your home, like for fun?

Yeah.

Just for fun.

Damn.

Yeah.

Like, so what do you guys do?

Like Jake's here.

Jake.

Did you go to the last one?

Yeah.

We just kind of sit around a table.

We're on our laptop.

We're talking about ideas.

We come up with something and we just kind of try to make it.

Uh, usually you don't end up finishing on the first one, but then the second one, you

try again.

The third one, you try again.

Fucking nerd.

What'd you build?

What'd you build at the last one?

You want me to talk about it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Jake, Jake was making this thing where he was like, it'd be cool if you could test

your website from like locations around the world, but it would like video record what

it looked like and how it loaded.

So not only do you get this like technical not a number.

Yeah.

And then you could show people this is how crappy our website looks like from some random

country or in the US and what it looks like for other people.

And so that's awesome.

Yeah.

That's really awesome.

Everyone's kind of testing numbers, but I mean, we're a visual.

Yeah.

What you care about is, oh, look how long that took to load.

Look how shitty this look.

Have you heard of user testing?

Is it user voice or user testing?

You know user testing?

Yeah.

I'm that's like a hundred fifty million dollar a year business shout out to my mom works

at user testing.

Really?

Yeah.

It's that it's huge, right?

It's big.

It's it's they're trying to go public.

You know, so that means they're at that scale where they're doing a hundred hundred million

plus.

Yeah.

And all they do is there's someone in the Midwest who's cheap.

Who's green record.

All right.

Well, let me look at your website.

Okay.

I'm scrolling down.

I don't really know what that's about.

That's about like confusion.

This is more about performance.

No, but they but they but they they're they're similar.

They're similar.

They're similar issues.

Yeah.

And I think today he's looking at it like a performance tool like how do you kind of

make it load?

I think you could totally look at it and apply some machine learning to it where it's like

this doesn't seem to work well.

It's below the fold on these devices, right?

Like some of those things when you design it and then you like put it together, you're

not thinking, oh, what does it look like on the iPad?

Right.

And then you kind of just show it like that.

And then you have a video, but also it could detect and say, man, this is like your main

button that's showing up down here.

And you know, you could.

What are you going to do with this?

Good job, Jake.

I like that project.

What were you saying?

What was the other project?

So this idea was around cooking and you're like in a kitchen and you're like, oh, I want

to like hear these recipes and things like that.

And so again, your hands are dirty in the kitchen.

Yeah.

What do you do?

You pull out your phone, your laptop doesn't make sense, right?

And so the idea was you have your AirPods on.

It kind of walks you through the steps and you can go next, go back and it's like, you

know, a little recipe thing.

I don't know the name that you came up with for it, but I think you could come up with

a better name for it.

Kitchen in a box.

Kitchen in a box.

There you go.

I think he called it like kitchen pods or something and I was like, God, that doesn't

right.

I have you.

Okay.

So this guy's name, Andrew Mason, you know, you know that name, he started Groupon.

He, um, a few years ago, his second act, he started this thing.

Detour.

Detour.

There it is.

They shut it down and he pivoted to, uh, the script, the script, a podcast thing.

Look at us.

Yeah.

There we go.

And, uh, anyway, what was the first detour?

It was awesome.

It was so cool.

And this was before AirPods.

So did you do one?

So, oh, I used to do them all the time.

But I understand how it wouldn't be huge, but I was a power.

Cool product.

Not a great business.

Yeah.

And so what it was is, you know how when you go to a museum and you have a guided tour

that says like, all right, when you get to this point, press this thing and then, and

then you press the button, you're like, all right, tell you about it.

You see this painting.

You see, there's a small little smudge that you'll see up left that will happen when you

got angry.

He did whatever.

So what they do this, but they do it for cities.

So it's guided walking tours, but you know, you know, this American life, like, you know

how it's like really highly produced podcasts where you can like hear noises and they did

that, but it was GP.

It was worked at your GPS.

And what they would do is they would say, all right, walk past the street, past Bush

Street, keep walking.

And then it would play music and then it would tell when you got there and it would say,

now look down to your right.

You see that hole that was there that actually came here from this time.

And it's awesome.

It's so cool.

He shut it down.

Anyway, what you're describing is almost like the cooking version of that, the utility

version, which would be significantly larger than the detour version because the detour

because you cook all the time.

The detour version.

I would do it on like a, when my wife was out of town, and it does suck to have your

hands covered in food and then be like, oh, let me go to my iPad or my phone and like

try to like scroll and click and zoom and like figure out this recipe.

How many tablespoons was it supposed to be?

Has there ever been a big business built around recipes other than an ad based media

company?

Not sure.

There's a problem with a lot of these ideas.

You start thinking too far ahead.

Like, I don't want to go do this thing because what does it turn into?

But I think generally the concept, if you took guided tours like that concept and you

said, what else in my life could be guided?

That's interesting.

I think there's a couple of very interesting businesses there or at least interesting

products.

Right.

Totally interesting products.

Maybe interesting businesses too.

Totally interesting product.

I think there's a workout version of this that's doing all right, which is like you go

to the gym and it's like in your ears and it's music app telling you what to do.

I use it all the time.

I'm active.

You know what that is?

No, I haven't seen it.

It's similar.

It's a regular basis.

I pay $100 a year for Ethan, Spokane, HustleCon, tens of millions in subscription revenue.

It's what you're describing, but it's for working out.

So I think if you have a great product in a space where a lot of people are doing it,

you can come up with a business plan like a hundred bucks a year that matches some...

I agree with you.

So people cook, people go to the gym.

What else are they doing day to day?

I think guided meditation is another one that...

Oh, yeah.

There's the model.

Right.

And so there's probably five others in that space, but I think AirPods made it different

than Bluetooth headsets and headphones, you know?

So here's a little guided meditation one.

I think he's on fire.

Yeah, I know.

That's why we bring him in.

That's why he gets the seat.

For guided...

For meditation, a lot of people don't like to sit and meditate, like it just doesn't

do it for them.

They're mind races, all this stuff.

And like the answer right now is like, no, that's the point.

Do it.

And like, sure, that might be true, but for a lot of people what it means is like, fuck

this, I'm going to do something else.

And so there's all these other types of meditation like transcendental or whatever where you're

chanting.

Like a little more active.

And then there's all kinds of meditation.

Hiking is meditation.

Exercise is meditation because you're controlling your breathing in a certain way.

You're clearing your mind space and you're freeing your mind.

And so I'm curious if somebody can do this sort of detour version that's about walking

and it's basically guided meditation, but it's active, not sit down on a pillow and

do nothing for 30 minutes or whatever it is.

Yeah.

You do those detours, you did them, right?

I never did one.

Well, we did.

Well, I did one where I went to the Castro and it was all about the AIDS epidemic.

And you got to know Harvey Snow or Harvey Snow.

What's Harvey?

Harvey Milk, you know, the gay activist that was like killed, whatever.

He was a gay activist that was murdered and it was during the 80s when the whole AIDS

thing was going on.

And the guy talking, he was like, now this is the last time that I hugged Harvey before

he died.

And then he's like, now this house up here, like these guys lived here and on top, these

guys lived here.

They all died.

And I was like so emotionally right.

Okay.

That gets me thinking, you know, I think this would be not.

I don't think this would work.

But like, you know, yesterday, you and Lance Armstrong were both like the podcasts I like

best are these true crime ones.

What if you did a true crime version of the detour thing where it's murder mystery kind

of creeps you the fuck out as you walk around?

That's cool.

Real crimes from your city.

Yeah.

Or you have to.

So we did on Trent's.

We did a report on this.

These app.

What are those?

What are those calls again?

I'm talking about, uh, give me real, uh, no, uh, like these serialized video apps, uh,

that, uh, fucking the lady who started it, she sold her thing to Songify.

Uh, man, I've got to remember what it was.

Anyway, uh, you, you, you get, it's like choose your own adventure app for thriller

novels.

Watching things.

Okay.

Basically we did a report on it.

Our hypothesis was that actually the erotic novels, romance novels is the biggest segment.

You're talking about hooked.

Hooked.

Yeah.

Hooked.

Right.

Anyway, I think it's a, I don't know if it's a great business, but it's a okay one.

They scaled up revenue.

Hooked was doing, I think, 20 million plus in revenue.

If I remember correctly.

Yeah.

But I think churn was stupidly high.

Yeah.

Anyway, what we're describing is, and when we did the report, it was romance novels

and, uh, thrillers had the highest performance.

Here's the general principle though.

Like hooked is the modern day goose bumps.

So when we were growing up, we would read goose bumps books and that was what hooked

us as a kid and you love to read.

And hooked said, well, now every kid's got a phone.

What if we delivered this through this kind of SMS format, but it's these like scary

stories goose bump style and, um, and what you were talking about earlier with like,

you know, Chuck E cheese, modern day, if you're trying to brainstorm ideas, this is one format

to think about.

What did I love as a kid?

What's the modern day version of that?

And because that's a great framework.

People's desires tend to stay the same.

Yeah.

It's the tools of technology that updates and opens up new opportunities.

That's a good framework.

Can I ask you about app loving?

Yeah.

I have one more idea.

Oh, go for it.

Go for it.

Um, I'll kind of plug a company I invested into.

So I invested in this company called lucid drone.

I think I told you about it.

They have, uh, they basically created a drone that can window wash big buildings.

And so instead of sending like a five person crew and a scaffold and whatnot, where did

you find that?

Uh, they were a YC company.

So, you know, YC produces still fantastic companies.

Uh, I like these guys cause it was like, uh, we got this, you know, it's not just drone

tech and then God nowhere, but it's like, that is awesome specific application, specific

application, and then you think about, you're like, yeah, five people hanging from a building

or one guy working the drone from the bottom and washing it.

Are those legal?

Yeah.

And so they, they're out there in a couple of cities.

I think there's going to be small regulations.

They're going to have to go, but this makes sense.

It's a lot safer and a lot better.

When did they go come out of what saves you money if you're the building owner safer than

having humans up there trying to wash windows?

Sad way to lose a life.

What a bold idea.

Great idea.

And what they did is they actually stopped.

So they try to go to the building owners and they were like, oh man, the building owners

are like, well, we have a service like, you know, it's too complicated.

So they went to the guys who were servicing the building and they're like, hey, I can

make your business more efficient.

Instead of sending five guys out per job, you could do five more jobs instead of running

this crazy scaffold, you just lease our drone.

And it's like, you make their business more valuable.

You're not taking their business and then you don't have to go do all the building to

building sales.

Oh my God.

I love this.

One way of looking at it was, oh, we're going to put those guys out of business instead

said, no, you're my customer.

Correct.

We make you more efficient.

Exactly.

And I think that's some of the best tech I see is that it's not about real estate.

It's about replacing the whole workflow.

It's like, how do we make these people more efficient?

How do we allow them to have more capabilities and then they can do more, they can do a better

job and that's kind of like, I think what I look for in the emerging tech, especially

lucid drones, lucid drones.

The other genius thing about that is if you wanted to do this, you would either have to

go sell every building and that's a lot of sales.

Or if you go to the company, like you said, the company that already does the window washing,

they might have already 50 clients.

So now one sale gets you 50 men, that's badass.

Maybe, I'm big fans of boring things like window washing.

I think that would be right at my alley and to add this thing to it would be neat.

If you told me that someone had that idea, I'd be like, what?

No.

It's really interesting.

So my spin off the remix of their idea was probably you guys, I don't know if you guys,

you have a car, right?

Yeah, I have a car.

Great.

You guys both have cars.

I thought maybe none of you guys would have cars out here in the city, but I never wash

my car.

I never go to a car wash.

Me neither.

I don't have a drone that sits in my garage that can come up, wash my car for me every

so often.

Or if you're in a place where it snows, how do I pour some water in the windshield so

I don't got to go do that and I can get into the car?

Like that's what I want.

Oh, that's a good joke.

I like that.

You know this was like a huge failure, cherry.

But that was humans.

Yeah, so that's this is a Roomba.

Yeah, no, I'm not saying.

Roomba that washes your car.

Totally.

That failed.

But I looked at like the background of why I was like, that's so stupid.

Who would on earth think that was a good idea?

That's a big thing in a lot of different countries that and check this out, bringing

gas to bring gas to you in foreign markets.

That's like the way that gas works.

So car washes.

I say wash funny.

I always have to correct or tell people I say funny, get prepared car washing.

Can you not say wash?

I can't say.

It's a Midwestern thing.

Wash.

I was like, it's easy.

It's easier.

Car washing.

And giving the disclaimer.

No, I can't say.

I can't say car.

Why?

I know.

I can't say.

I don't.

My mouth is like L now.

You have your interview questions.

Car cleaning.

You know, if somebody says like, what's your greatest weakness?

It's like, I can't say.

Why ours?

Rogue ours that just make their way into my words.

It's a Midwestern thing.

A lot of people say it.

Anyway, that's interesting, but I never would have thought I'm I that's kind of cool.

But how on earth could you build a machine that does it?

I mean, that's the thing.

Does the drone need to be pretty smart to do that or no?

You know, I think the thing I like about this technology space right now is a lot of the

research work is done.

And so people have made drones that can fly that can follow you.

Like there's literally Skydio.

Yep.

It's a thousand bucks.

You go running in the woods.

That's their like demo video.

And it follows you.

If you haven't seen this demo video, search Skydio.

Is that bullshit though?

It's amazing.

You literally go, you like throw the camera.

I see the there's the other one failed.

Yeah.

These guys say they can do it.

I don't know.

This go on YouTube and look up the users who are doing this and they're recreating it.

And you can see it works.

Okay.

And so it's like snowboarding and skiing and stuff.

Yes.

Snowboarding is another one.

I mean, GoPro was like one step up, but now if you got this drone that can follow you

around.

I love this shit, man.

Drones and VR just we need a drone filming this.

That's just whoever's talking.

It just turns to them.

And just does the cut.

It just picks up the right mic and the right right.

I had one of the first DJI ones and it fell out of sky at a thousand feet ruined it happens.

But a lot of this technology, there's been so much research work done that's moved it

forward.

And I think it's at the spot now where it needs application engineers and not that same,

you know, you don't need to be a PhD with computer science and all these math degrees

to go create this technology.

You know, you take the work that Dave built and they've kind of established and then apply

it to these things.

And so drone flying a drone is trivial now, building the drone is trivial now.

And then the software is easy to program a drone to fly object recognition and computer

vision is easy now.

And so you combine these two, let's call it easier technologies now because of all the

research work that was done.

And then you can kind of create this product from it.

And so I built these small drones are like these little four inch drones, they're up

there.

You have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I program my own flight controller.

That one didn't work as well.

I use the pre program flight controller.

That worked a lot better.

But I get really excited about these technologies when I without a college degree without a,

you know, deep technical expertise can go and learn about it.

And I really just use Google.

Like that's my source for everything.

How old are you?

I'm 35.

You're one of the more interesting people I've ever met.

Okay.

Great.

Wow.

He's blushing.

Look at that.

He's not interesting.

He's cool.

I mean, he's interesting, but he's what he's interesting to you.

He just my interests align with yours, but he's more intelligent and more technically

savvy and he could actually make the things that I think I wish I could make.

Yeah.

Can you talk about app 11 because you said something.

So the other day I was talking to someone about businesses and I'm like, when it's working,

do you know what's working?

What's that feel like?

And you made a comment earlier, like it's the first time I've ever seen where just this

is what working feels like.

Right.

What, what, what, what was that like?

It's the feeling of like, uh, like when you, when you're, you know, slamming on your brakes

in the car and the car is kind of doing its own thing and you're like, I'm not controlling

the car.

It is just flowing on its own.

It's like, it's that feeling where, you know, you build all these products and even at Apple

and we did nine ideas before that I've done this for a long time where I'm just trying

idea after idea, I try to get people to use it and you're looking for these good signals

and you're trying to spot it.

And then when it's really working, it's not about spotting it.

It's so obvious that there's no question that it's working.

And so it's all the charts are flying up, but then every day you're not even like, man,

is it working?

Is it not?

It's so obvious.

I got to do X, Y and Z to solve, you know, these problems that are coming up kind of

day in and day out and so it's definitely a feeling where the pull from the market is

so strong that there's no middle ground.

I always thought it was like, oh, I'm going to kind of realize when I'm close to it, but

it's actually very binary.

It's like, you're here and it's not working and you're trying to push into the market

what you need to do.

But when it happens, it just kind of takes off and, you know, I just, I don't have really

good analogies for it yet, except for that, like it just, it's like the loss of control.

The market is in control almost and you're just like trying to catch up and like, you

know, get into that mindset of like, okay, great, this is working.

We're going to keep like pushing whatever we need to do to kind of support this case.

What was the revenue grow?

I mean, you guys read zero, then was it like one month that could have been like 20 grand?

The next month there was like a million.

I mean, was it that substantial?

It wasn't that crazy, but I think the interesting thing that I learned was there, you know,

there were a lot of players in the market where you'd go to this weather app, right?

And the weather app would do like, you know, you never realize the scale of some of these

apps even at that time.

It's like, man, this thing is doing 200 million, you know, impressions per day.

And I'm like, a weather app, like really, like, why is it so big?

And then you're like, great, if we get this customer, these things can happen.

And so I think the weather, the weather app does how many impressions?

I think I forgot which weather app it was, whether it was weather bug or the weather

app, but it was like 200 million impressions a day.

And I was like, I was really surprised at some of the scale of some of these apps.

And like, you know, yes, we had the best ad platform.

Yes, we made, you know, we made all these small tweaks to the product to like make it

work better.

And we made our server scale and we did all these things.

But I think to me, the fascinating thing was there were all these major players.

You didn't actually realize how big some of these opportunities were and kind of working

at Apple oven.

I was like, wait, I want to go do this.

And like, when I left there, it was like, I'm not like a huge fan of like ad products.

Like naturally, that's not the product that I get excited about.

I love money.

So I like, great, it's a fantastic business.

I like that.

And I was like, oh, I'm going to go make these apps and games that are going to go do this.

And actually that's how I ran to Sean.

I think he had checked out one of my games after I think we connect to an angel list.

Was that right?

Yeah, I saw him on angel lists.

And I was like, something doesn't add up.

Either this guy's full of shit because who would leave this company that's crushing it.

Like most people, when you finally hit a grand slam, you want to do the victory lap and people

stay for seven years and then they write this cheesy letter about how great the journey

has been.

And they're finally ready for their next chapter.

He basically left after three years.

You weren't even fully vested.

Right.

Yeah.

Left a little bit on the table.

Again, I'm not complaining because everything's been fantastic.

But it was something counterintuitive.

I was like, why would this guy leave either?

He got kicked out.

He got fired.

He's not good, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, or this guy's amazing.

He really just does love the history was like, I just love startups.

I want to build something that consumers use, not really an ad tech platform.

And he was like, I was interested in mobile because I saw how big these mobile apps were

on our ad network.

So he locked himself in his bedroom and it's like, I'm going to learn mobile in the next

six months.

And he just built a bunch of Android games.

And then I saw him on Twitter tweeting back with people who played his game.

And I was like, dude, none of my developers, all the developers I have in my company that

are great, none of them would ever go tweet at a customer and be like, hey, you know,

I'm going to fix that bug.

You know, I can make this better.

Hey, what do you think about this?

So I was like, there's something different about this guy.

What apps were you shocked at that?

How big they were?

Why their apps is 200.

The casino game apps, I mean, that's not shocking.

Is it the size of it was definitely shocking just because you always assume they're big

and they're addictive, but then that and then Candy Crush and their initial rise was the

first time in the industry where I heard like, man, like, this thing is a money printing

machine.

It's like, you know, they would, you know, and not all this was an app love and it's

like, once you're an ad tech, you're like learning about the industry, you're meeting

other people and you're like, hey, these guys are really just blanket pay eight bucks for

a user in the US.

And I'm like, okay, well, that seems pretty expensive.

Like, why are they doing that?

And like, how much are they making?

Eight dollars is what they're spending.

Yeah.

And I was like, hey, if we're like a male, you know, 18 to 35 or something, they might

be eight bucks or something like that.

And then on the other side, I talked to somebody over there and I'm like, they're like, yeah,

dude, we make like 20 bucks on them, like in like seven days.

And I'm like, maybe those numbers are slightly off, but like, they were making a multiple

to where you were like, wait, so you just have this machine where you just press this

button and you put in money and you know, seven days later, three times more money come

out.

And I'm like, wow, like, how do I get that every single day to go do that?

Well, you guys had that a little bit with that.

Yeah.

Apple oven had that.

I mean, I didn't have that.

Right.

Like I don't have the same mechanic.

Obviously you're at this company, you're vested, you have a shared interest in the long run,

but you know, me being me, I was like, I want that.

Like I want the ability to have that and then the freedom to work on things that I'm really

excited about.

And so I tried that.

Obviously it's a lot harder than just, you know, one person in their bedroom doing it.

But what did Adam at Apple oven say?

Was he like this?

Just we had no idea or was he methodical enough to see Adam is so fantastic at execution

that it's just like, he's like a machine.

It's like, you know, when, when the thing I really loved about him and the things I learned

the most from him were like, when you wanted to go do something like, you know, sometimes

you're like, oh man, man, this situation isn't working.

And Adam's the CEO of Apple oven CEO of Apple oven.

And you know, you have these situations where it's like, I got to go do X or you really

feel like you got to go make this move.

This deal is bad.

Maybe this hire was bad or this hire was good or something like that.

I feel kind of weighed on it a little bit after deciding and you kind of create some

time.

What's a good time to do it?

Like, okay, we'll just go do this now, like we'll stop in us and then, you know, the other

things like that were, you know, I started there as kind of an engineer and then very

quickly he was like, oh, you could run this team.

You could manage the whole team.

I was like, great, we talked.

And then that's kind of always been my experience that like that never really gets communicated.

And then it feels like, oh, I'm like the manager, but not like, I think a lot of people end

up in that situation, especially in companies.

And then like the next morning is like a meeting with the whole team.

He puts the org chart up.

And then every time we changed it, it was the same situation happened.

He was so clear and effective with his communication and execution that I was like, like, I really

need to be like that.

Like that's what like, I think A plus execution looks and feels like day in and day out.

And it's like, it's not emotional.

It's very logical.

It's very quick.

And I think speed in these situations helps create clarity because when you are the other

way around, clarity helps create speed.

Yeah, we're both, right?

Like, you know, and I think clarity in the sense that if you delay it, your team becomes

unclear and then it gets a little muddy and then you're like, wait, what is what's going

on here?

Why is this guy kind of acting like that?

And that person not.

And I think just being very fast and quick in that execution, once you decide, you should

go and execute it.

And I think that that's, that's the thing that I learned is like, how quickly can you

do that and how effectively can you do that?

Whether it's an email, and I'm really not good at this is kind of one of the reasons

I point at it because I see myself kind of like, oh, wait on this a little bit or send

this email tomorrow.

I don't want to open up this kind of work like, and then it's actually that's the exact

opposite trace.

Just go have a bias for action and kind of go do that.

And so from him, I learned just just an amazing amount and like, how do you operate at this

level?

And I mean, since I've left, they've grown so much that it feels like I was only at

the 1% of it.

Like, I feel like I don't know 90% 99% of the story anymore because they've grown well

beyond that.

They've expanded into other areas.

They're really big now from the revenue side.

They're really big now from, you know, what their marketplace is and they're very well

known and, you know, I kind of get all the benefits from being there a long time ago,

which is great for me.

But, you know, I'm sure there were more learnings that I missed along the way.

This whole monologue on app love and that's going to be our clip.

Nice.

That was a good one.

Cool.

We should wrap for today.

That was awesome, man.

Awesome, man.

For conversing me across the street.

So any time we want to do this again, we can do it again.

So we'll have people, we'll put your Twitter handle in the buy in the notes of this.

And so people can get, you know, follow you get, you know, tweeted to you, whatever after

this as well.

I don't know.

I'm still uncertain as to how many listeners we have, but I do know that last time I asked

for reviews, we got a few hundred of them in a handful of hours, 24, 48 hours.

So if you liked this one, tweet at him, you can say your handle in a second and then let

us know and we'll, we'll figure out what, what, what next to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My handle is a Furcon R on Twitter.

That's F-U-R-Q-A-N-R.

Awesome.

Thank you.

That's F-U-R-Q-A-N-R.

you

you

you

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.