My First Million: #80 - The Guide on Generating Startup Ideas

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.

Sam, what's up?

What's going on?

Let me pull up some of our documents.

Okay.

A couple of things that I thought were interesting.

One, you posted something about this thing called MowPoint.

What is that?

Well, Mow, it's my friend, Mow, him and Ramon grew up together, and Mow is from Afghanistan

by way of, where's Ramon from, another one's, and then moved here, and they used to have

a business, it's shut down now, so I could talk about it, where they would buy and sell

airline points, and he became an expert on how to maximize points, and so I'm getting

into this now.

For example, if there's all these ways that you can, if you're spending money on advertising

on this, on that, you can maximize your points and fly for free forever for years, and so

he would teach me how to do it myself, and I was like, Mow, turn this into a course,

and so that's what it is.

Let's pip him out though, is it MowPoints.com?

MowPoints.com.

Yeah, I checked it out because I was pretty interested in this.

In the same way that you want a tax guy to help you save money on the back end, whenever

you do pretty significant credit card spending, and a lot of times, if you own your own business,

you can rack up a lot of spending on credit cards.

I hate going and figuring this stuff out.

I just feel like it's a waste of my brain, and it's a waste of my time to go optimize

my spending and buy points so I can travel free and book all this stuff, but I know it's

valuable, and so I was hoping to get like, what's the shortcut?

What's the like, either you do it for me, or what's the 80-20?

Give me the few things I can do that will give me the highest return on my time and effort,

because I know I'm sort of wasting this opportunity, and I don't want to go become an expert in

this stuff, but if you're an expert, fantastic, so I signed up for it.

Points are interesting.

I just got into them recently, so I earn 300,000 to 400,000 points a month, and that translates

to 1% of that in cash value.

Right.

If I spent a million dollars a year on through my credit card, which sounds like a lot if

you're just an individual, and that is a lot if you're an individual, but if you're business,

that's nothing, I get $100,000 cash back.

Now here's the cool thing, that cash back in most cases is tax-free.

Interesting.

So, if you live in San Francisco, that's the equivalent of getting a salary of $100,000.

That's a full-time job.

Yeah, and so it's great, and so I've actually met some entrepreneurs who, I think you can

get up to $360,000.

Some accountants are going to like tweet at me and say I got it wrong, but I'm almost

positive, and it's controversial, I'm almost positive you can get up to $350,000 in cash

back.

And so I know this one lady who's got this flower company, and she gets $350,000 in cash

back income a year.

Yeah.

That's great.

I have a friend who, he basically negotiated with his investors, he's like, I'd like to

pay the AWS bill for my company on my personal credit card.

And so he earned like whatever, Amex, double black platinum gold, whatever it is, like

the highest tier for life, because they were spending like, you know, $3 million a month

on AWS or something crazy.

And so like, he's like, oh, if I ever want to fly, I fly first class now, oh, I get like

free equinox, I get free this, I get free that, because that's the perks of like the

highest tier of Amex.

And he's like, yeah, I got lifetime, because during my company, I just asked, can I just

put this on this card and keep that, you know, tied to my name?

And they did it.

And I was like, that's pretty amazing.

And so that's what Moe's trying to do.

And now it's just like a course and hand-to-hand combat like consultation where you're trying

to help people.

But that is kind of interesting to like log in to a portal and or like technology and

it does it for you.

That is pretty amazing.

And your transaction fee is either upfront fee or you take a skim a little.

That is incredibly interesting.

I like it.

Okay.

So I have another random idea I want to talk about.

So I have a friend, a shout out to my friend, Mike, who he went to Duke where I went to

school, he was Duke's best football player at the time.

Like he was like, I think he led the nation in tackles or something like that.

So he's an amazing linebacker.

His football player goes, he's a little undersized, but he gets drafted or he gets a tryout with

it with a couple of teams.

And he ended up getting cut after a year, I think, from the Indianapolis Colts.

And that was sort of like the end of his football career.

But he built a ton of connections and still has connections with athletes in the NBA and

NFL.

So I was talking to him about it and I was like, you know, what problems do these guys

have, what stuff are they trying to do because these are often a class of people who have

a lot of money, have specific problems to people with money, fame and specific lifestyle.

What are some ideas that, you know, problems that they have that I've just never seen,

but I could solve because I understand them.

And so one of the things he had mentioned, not even as a problem, but I was like asking

how they did it was, many athletes start their own foundation or charity.

You've probably seen this like, you know, oh, you know, random wide receiver, it's not

just like the top of the top.

It's like random wide receiver.

Yeah, I have a foundation back in my city.

It's for kids who blah, blah, blah, kids and books.

It's for Dustin Poirier, one of my favorite fighters has one.

And so I was wondering, I was like, A, why do they do this?

And then B, like, how do they do this?

Could you like build a business around this?

And so on the Y, you know, there's some interesting things.

And again, the accountants are going to be sort of out in full force correcting me on this.

But it seems like basically the, you know, there's some tax advantages to a foundation

in addition to like, obviously wanting to give back, because often athletes come from

pretty rough, you know, backgrounds.

And so they do feel this pull of, Hey, I've made it.

I won the lottery.

How do I give back?

So there's the, there's the emotional pull to give back and create a foundation.

But then there's the financial pull as well, which is there are some tax advantages to

doing that, to doing it this way, where you basically are, you're able to give and you're

able to give today and reduce your taxable income.

And that money goes to the foundation, which can then over time spend that money long after

your career is over even.

So you can separate the time of giving and then the time of spending, or you can separate

the tax of it from the giving timeline.

Yeah, that's, I forget the name of it, but you and I have a friend who had a large exit

and what he did was he put away a significant amount of money, I think, a very significant

amount of money.

So he put it into this charitable account and over the next, I'm going to butcher this,

I think over the next five years, he has to spend that on, what's it called?

What's the nonprofit called?

A 4-0?

5-0-1-3-C?

Yeah, he's got to, he's got to, he's got to get rid of it.

So whenever I see like an interesting charity, I'm like, Hey guy, and there's other things

like a DAF, which is a donor advised fund, which is what Jack Dorsey said, I'm going

to give a billion dollars away and he did it via DAF.

So there's other ways, but I guess my idea was cool.

So there's reasons that athletes want foundations.

They're clearly doing this, but I know athletes, athletes are not excited to go figure out

the paperwork to start a foundation, to make sure they're reporting on time, all that stuff.

So I was wondering, is there a stripe atlas for foundations?

Is there a push a button, get your, get your foundation spun up without having to get on

the phone, without having to print out a piece of paper and go mail it some, but somewhere.

Because I think you could build a pretty niche, but potentially pretty lucrative subscription

business where, you know, these foundations, there's a spin up fee and then there's an

annual maintenance basically to keep your foundation in good standing.

I think there's a business there.

So let's talk about atlas for a second.

So atlas is a thing with stripe and it's a click of a button set up in a LLC, a C Corp

or LLC in Delaware.

Why?

Why does that make money?

Well, it makes money.

So it's strategic for stripe because if you're doing that, you're probably going to stay

in the stripe ecosystem.

So they're like, cool, how do we get more customers?

Let's get new businesses to get created and then they'll use stripe.

So it's kind of like when Facebook gives away internet to people who don't have the internet.

It's like, cool, we'll give you the internet and then guess what you're going to do with

the internet?

Use Facebook.

So stripes doing the same thing.

It's like, how do we increase the rate of new startups because startups are who use

a stripe.

And then if they grow, they grow with us.

And fantastic.

We got them all their young type of thing.

So then how would this make money?

They do charge a fee.

So like when I did it, I use Stripe Atlas to spin up my company.

And I don't know what it is, a couple hundred bucks.

But it's great.

It's like, I don't want to talk to a lawyer.

I trust that this will get set up properly.

They do all the filing and documentation.

They just email me, hey, here's your tax ID.

Here's your entity.

Here's the articles of formation, et cetera, et cetera.

And so Stripe Atlas was great.

It took me three weeks and I don't know, $250 or something like that.

And I got my company set up.

And so why did you do a C Corp?

I did an LLC for me.

But if I wanted to do a C Corp, like if I was going to do a startup that was going to

raise money, I would do a C Corp and I would have used it for that.

Let's talk about the Sam Altman thing.

All right.

So Sam Altman, who's the guy who runs Y Combinator, or doesn't run it anymore actually, but he

was the president of Y Combinator.

And kind of one of the more well-known guys, Silke Valley, he put up this blog post called

Idea Generation.

And he said, one of the most common questions I get is how do you get ideas for a new company?

How do you get new startups?

A lot of people want to do startups, but they don't quite know the idea or they don't have

a lot of conviction in it.

And he says something interesting.

He goes, YC wants to try an experiment to fund people who we thought would be good founders

but with no ideas.

He goes, and I think every company in this no idea track failed.

And it turns out that founders have a lot of ideas about everything, like great founders

actually have a lot of ideas.

If you have a founder who can't think of an idea, they probably shouldn't be a founder.

It's kind of his takeaway.

But then he starts to explain, all right, so how do you get ideas for startups?

So he says, thing number one, you want to be in the right environment.

So you want to be around the right kind of people.

So he said, who are the right kind of people?

He goes, you want to be around people who can have a good feel for the future.

They will entertain improbable plans, they're optimistic, and they're smart in a creative

way.

And he says, they have high idea flux, which is pretty good for our podcast.

I consider both of us idea machines.

And that's what he says, that's what he calls idea flux.

So the sort of rate of ideas coming in and out of their body, these sorts of people tend

to think without the constraints that most people have, they don't have a lot of filters

and they don't care too much what other people think.

He says, this is important because the best ideas are pretty fragile.

Most people don't even want to start talking about them because they sound kind of silly

up front.

And like take the hustle, for example, we want to be this big bad media company, we're

going to do an email newsletter.

And an email newsletter actually sounded quite silly to people who are traditionally in

media.

You know, if you rewind several years.

So you want to be around people who won't make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad

idea.

And they certainly don't feel stupid when they mention bad ideas.

And he basically says, stay away from people who are like, the world has beaten them down

or they're the type that belittle your ambitions.

And unfortunately, this is most of the world, they hold on to the past.

And if you want to live in the future, you don't want to be around these people.

And then he says, okay, so here's the sort of next thing that would help you get good

ideas.

So first is be around those types of people.

The second is identify a tectonic shift that's happening right now.

How is the world changing in some fundamental way?

Can you identify the leading edge of that change and the opportunity that unlocks it?

For example, mobile phone comes out in 2007, 2008.

And then you get all these companies like Snapchat, Uber, Airbnb, et cetera, that were

launched in that time on top of that core fundamental shift.

When a big shift happens, the big companies usually get beat by fast-moving and focused

startups.

So you want to ask yourself a question like, what's something that's possible this year

that wasn't possible last year?

And pay attention anytime something like that comes up.

There's probably a lot of good ideas in that space.

The last thing is, if you ever feel like something is like, if you can say the statement, I'm

sure this is going to happen.

I don't know if we'll be the ones to do it.

That's a good sign.

He's like, Uber was like this for me.

The first time I used it, it was clear I wasn't going to be hailing a cab any longer or calling

the dispatcher, but it wasn't clear to me that Uber was necessarily going to win the space.

And then the last thing he says is, it's important, sorry, this is kind of long.

It's important to think about what you are well suited for.

So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're

good at, he goes, I believe that founder company fit is as good as product market fit.

And he goes, lastly, you can test a good idea if you can articulate why most people think

it's a bad idea, but what you understand about it, that makes it a good idea.

So that's a final test.

All right.

So I thought this was a pretty interesting post.

Anything in there?

Yeah.

I think it's crazy interesting.

And I didn't break this up because I don't even care about promoting this.

But so Gaggenbiani reached out to me about three months ago and for trends, we did this

thing where he just gave a talk and people signed up and it was neat.

And he was like, Hey, I'm thinking about maybe I want to launch like a school or something.

Can I like partner with you guys and you promote this course I want to do?

And I was like, yeah, that sounds interesting.

And so me and him just started riffing more and more.

And I really got fascinated with this idea of ideas.

Like why is it Sean that you are good at finding ideas?

And I was like, I don't know why, but I wonder if I could like give frameworks behind it.

And so he's kind of leading the way and I'm just kind of tagging along a little bit.

And so we were hosting this thing.

It's mostly him hosting with a little bit of me and it's called the ideation boot camp.

And I put together what I thought was all these frameworks on coming up with ideas and

a few of them that I have coincidentally, I've never read the same article until you

just told me are similar.

And so a few of them are like, I like to do reverse engineering.

And so what I look at is I can go to like a website and see like how they do it.

Because to me, if I can see how someone does it, it helps me realize what's possible.

Another one is unbundling.

So I like to look at like really big things like eBay or Craigslist or Reddit and being

like, okay, if usually if something's huge, it becomes a victim of its own success and

they can't move fast enough to adapt from an early like interesting change.

And so we talk about like, I just made up ways to figure that out.

And then let's see, is there anything else that's interesting that is related to that?

Because I didn't realize that he kind of actually discussed that.

Oh, and then another thing that I like to do.

And coincidentally, the things that I'm talking about is what he's talking about.

We just go into like tactically.

And it's like, how do you look at like, he talked about something that's growing quickly,

but and you like hop in on it.

Right.

And that's actually quite hard.

And tell me what, what I'm missing here.

The things that I'd really love to do is I like to look at forums and comments and article

comments and user reviews for apps on iTunes to hear like, what, what about how are people

using this shit that's like, makes them love something or makes them hate something.

And that's what I used to come up with ideas.

So what Sam Altman said was, get something that's growing quickly early on that like

you think is going to be the future.

How else do you discover those?

So there's two ways.

So one is you're, you discover a platform that's growing really, really fast and you

go on top of it.

I'll give you a perfect example of this zoom is growing like fucking crazy right now.

I think it went from like 10 million users to over like 250 million users during just

the COVID crisis.

You know, my mom and my auntie use zoom now because that's how we celebrate birthdays

during COVID.

And they, you know, zoom used to be this enterprise thing.

So zoom's growing like crazy.

I have this friend Victor, I don't even remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, but he

created this thing called zoom URL, basically ZM URL.com.

And it's basically event bright for zoom.

So he noticed the problem of like, Hey, cool, everyone's using zoom to meet up, but zooms

like kind of invite and like, you know, the sort of like a splash that page doesn't exist.

So there's not a cool way to like make an invite for a zoom event.

You just send this ugly link and you say, join this zoom.

That's where we're going to do this conference or this birthday or this whatever.

And so he just made a really pretty auto generator.

You put in your zoom link and then you can upload a photo.

You can put the details, blah, blah, and you make this little landing page for your event.

And he's growing like crazy because he's just growing.

He's piggybacking on top of zoom very opportunistically on the platform.

And he's doing something that, you know, zoom probably isn't going to get around to doing

for a little while.

So he's got this opportunity to grow, solving a new problem.

And so the other way, which is that this is, I think where I see you do this less is about

technology shifts.

And I think this is where Sam Altman is actually talking about more, which is, you know, when

you grow on the back of an existing product or platform, it kind of sucks because you

end up with this platform dependency and then they can often kill you or clone you or you

just get stuck on that platform and you never get off.

Whereas technology shifts like, oh, shit, we couldn't do this before, but now machine

learning is good enough that this is now possible.

Or for example, my friend told me about these little NFC stickers, do you know what that

is, Near Field Communication?

Yeah.

So basically I bought these on Amazon.

They're like these tiny little stickers that cost like, you know, 10 cents each or something

like that.

And if you get these in bulk, they're very, very cheap.

And you just program them so that like, if somebody just moves their phone into this

thing or touches, taps this thing, it's like Apple Pay, it will fire something open on

their phone.

It can open up a website.

It can open up whatever.

And I'm like, dude, this is great for marketing.

Like I should just put these on products or, you know, this could be in my shoes.

It could just say, is this a real Jordan or is this a fake?

These little things can be embedded everywhere because the cost has come down and the reliability

has come up and the core platforms like iPhone and Android now, you know, by default will

react to these NFC things just like they do QR codes.

So there's like, so technology shifts is I think the one that most people don't understand

because they don't have tech like technical literacy.

So they don't know what's going on and they don't know when something before that was

impossible is now possible because it was like actually just a subtle shift over time

or the cost of this chip has dropped.

And now it's really economical to do something that before that would have been ridiculous

or now the chip is small, it used to be so big.

So how do you identify this?

So for example, I have a meeting every week with my former CTO for my startup because

he lives in that like bleeding edge of technology and I have an hour a week that it's called

the cool shit hour.

It's on our calendar and he just shows me cool shit.

And I just told him, look, when we're usually in meetings, I talk 90% of the time you talk

10% because I'm the kind of talker sales guy.

But in this meeting, you're going to talk 90, I'm going to talk 10.

And the cool shit hour is just you demoing to me cool shit that I don't know about because

I don't understand cryptocurrency the way you do.

I don't understand VRAR the way you do.

I don't know about these other technological shifts that are going on.

So we've been doing this for a month now and it's fucking awesome.

I basically got a front row seat at this.

And all I had to do was just ask a smart guy who is in that world.

But the more generic way of doing that is just to hang out with those guys.

So again, it's sort of like what this post was about is like, who do you hang out with

ends up being what's in front of your eyes?

And so we hang out with a bunch of business people that figure out different ways to make

money.

Because how do you make money is just a question of which way do you want to make money?

I know 100 paths and I have a five examples of each of those 100 paths.

I have 500 different examples of how to make money.

I just got to choose one that fits me.

Whereas people who are in the world of technology, they don't really know exactly how to make

money, but they can tell you 100 interesting things with technology.

And so sometimes you got to hang out with them and eat lunch with them, you know, three

times a week.

So that you're hearing those things.

Put yourself in that position.

Yeah, it's like you just got to hang out like in the fringes.

And I think that like a great places, great places to hang out in the fringes are Reddit,

Reddit, Hacker News, just like telegram groups, the way that you have to look at user behavior

and you have to find this fringe behavior that's growing quickly.

Right.

You know, a couple podcasts ago, I went off on this random tangent about DeFi decentralized

finance and it was just like, you know, I'm speaking gibberish.

I don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about, but it's because I discovered this

fringe where I saw all this activity happening and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't

even understand this, but I know enough to know that this is unusual and this is a phenomenon

and I need to know more.

And so like, boom, save that, I pin that tab open in my brain and I'm like, come back

to this.

You got to know more about this.

This is unusual.

This is new.

This is interesting.

Well, I think that's what you have to do when you have ideas, which is you have to actually

steal from a lot of different places to take like, wow, at a restaurant, I only have to

pay for what I order or something, or with Uber, I don't actually have to have, I don't

have to own the cabs.

Right.

I'll give you an example.

So two ideas, if you do a little idea sex with them.

So Cloud Kitchens, we've talked about that on the podcast before, so creating a virtual

restaurant, selling on top of Postmates, Uber Eats, et cetera.

And then in the world of e-commerce, I was thinking about upsells.

Upsells is obviously critical to e-commerce.

It's like, you're buying one thing.

It's like, hey, do you want fries with that?

Right?

Hey, do you want this extra thing?

And it increases the order value by 20%, 30%, 40%, whatever it is.

Upsells are critical in e-commerce.

In the world of food delivery, they basically don't exist.

So I was thinking, like how many times if we were ordering Chinese food or Mexican food

or whatever through some restaurant, why doesn't Uber Eats just do a sort of have a

cloud dessert company that's always just like, do you want to add some ice cream on

top of that or, hey, we just made brownies, whatever.

And like, I bet they can increase the cart size and it shouldn't be another restaurant.

It should be a upsell across all orders of all restaurants that day.

And so like, I don't know, you can sort of mishmash ideas if you see something that's

interesting or critical in one area and another area, they don't do it.

That's usually, you know, makes for an interesting thought experiment.

I completely agree with this.

What I'm wondering is, do you, can you teach people this or you got it or you don't?

No, no.

I don't teach people this.

I would love to say you either got it or you don't.

That would make me feel awesome because I got it and other people don't.

But the reality is, I didn't have it and now I do and I know exactly what I did to get

there.

I hung out with people who have a bunch of interesting ideas and I got thirsty for that.

So I started hanging out with them either in person or my Twitter feed is just full

of those people.

Like I don't have, you know, I don't put sports into my Twitter feed as much like I surround

my feed with that so that even when I'm just browsing, that's what I get.

The second thing is like, start to come up with these frameworks.

So for example, one framework I have, you should steal for your thing is like you, if

you imagine this two by two grid on the left side, you have what type of problem is this?

Is this a new problem or an old problem?

Right?

Old problem.

People trying to meet their mates.

They want to date somebody.

That's an old problem.

New problem.

Hey, I'm trying to throw a zoom event and I don't have a good way to share that.

Right?

That didn't, that wasn't a problem that existed five years ago, but it exists now.

And so new problem, old problem, and then you have new solution, old solution.

So it's like, cool, old solutions to things can be applied to new problems.

So that's what the zoom URL thing is.

He's taking an old solution, like Eventbrite or Splash that or like these proven methods.

He's just saying, cool, I can specialize and tailor that to this new problem, which is

zoom events rather than in person events.

And then you take new solutions, which are things like, oh, wow.

So crypto lets you have trust or like a digital contract, so I don't need an escrow person.

So maybe, you know, I can take an old problem, like, you know, escrow in a home, in a home

sale, but I can do it, I can do it in a new solution.

Notarizing.

Yeah.

Notaries.

Okay.

Cool.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So a new solution, push a button, somebody has GPS on their phone and they come to you

and they solve your problem for you.

They either pick you up and take you somewhere or whatever.

Cool.

Maybe I can apply that to this old problem.

Notary.

And so you just take that two by two grid and you say, cool, what are all the new solutions

that are interesting to me?

And the other one is, what are all the new problems that are interesting to me?

You just keep jotting those down anytime you see one, you know, whatever that is.

And so that's a framework you can use to understand ideas and figure out, is this idea actually

something novel or not?

Well, it's novel whenever you cross old problem and new solution or old solution and new problem.

Those are the two boxes that the new ideas come in.

If it's an old problem, old solution, there's nothing new there.

Don't do it.

You're blowing my mind.

I don't understand how you come up with these, like, you know how people used to say Obama

talks and like quotes, like he always like, he just has these one letters that are like

really great.

You talk in frameworks.

Yeah, it's weird.

I don't know why, but I think it's because I like frameworks.

So I'm studying them and then I just naturally start thinking that way.

Another, another way to practice this, if you want to become an idea person is like James

Alcher shared this, but he was like, every day I write down 10 ideas doesn't have to

be good, bad.

It's just a daily practice of idea generation.

Because if you think about it like, oh man, I wish I was better at ideas, cool.

Do you do that?

Do you practice coming up with new ideas every day?

Oh, you don't.

Okay.

You know, I also wish I was fit, but if I don't go exercise, then what, what do I expect

is going to happen?

I'm not just going to magically get fit.

So same thing here.

I have two that I do.

I don't do the James Alcher one, but the two I do.

One is this podcast twice a week.

I get up in front of a, you know, you know, a lot of people and I try to come up with

new ideas.

That's a practice.

How do I prepare for that?

I have these documents on my phone and in my laptop.

One's called the biggest idea in my head.

And I have every month and I just write down this month, what is the biggest idea in my

head?

And I just put it there.

And so like, I'll go to my document right now, I'll read you one of my biggest idea in

my heads.

Sean, everyone has asked that you share this shit and you never have.

Yeah.

You know, these are, I don't know if I want to share these things.

Some of it I want to share, some of it I don't want to share.

So like in April, I refinanced my home and the biggest idea in my head was like, holy

shit, that was so much work and such and so painful.

Biggest idea in my head is turning refinancing into a five minute online process.

I don't know how, but if there was a new solution, that's an old problem that I would

want solved.

When we were doing the weight loss challenge, the biggest idea in my head was, holy shit,

everybody needs a little monitor in their body that tells them how their body's reacting

to the food they eat.

If we want to change people's diets and not have half the country be obese, we need to

have real time feedback loops so that when you put that piece of chocolate in your mouth,

you pay a price immediately and not like five years down the road.

And so the biggest idea in my head was, how do we make these glucose monitors so cheap

and readily available that everybody gets feedback for everything that they eat, it'll

help the country eat better, it'll help the whole world eat better.

That was the biggest idea in my head for one month.

And so I just write these ideas down and then I basically have a place to put them.

I'm like being a listener right now.

I am thinking about this.

But I think it's great what you guys are doing.

If you guys are going to release these courses or classes.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Really, the truth is, is that we don't have HustleCon revenue in June and he had done

all the work and I was like, no, okay, well, I'll work with you to do it as a business.

Our business, like we have an ambitious goal to build a really large company.

I think courses will not be part of that.

I think that it was simply like a thing to like, well, let's just try it and it actually

covered our HustleCon revenue or profit.

So I will not do this.

I will not do it ever again.

I hate the course business.

I think it is not fun.

It is great for a solopreneur.

It's not great for a company.

No, I think it's shit.

I think that if you're Reforge, which is a $5,000 thing for companies, that is interesting.

But I still think it sucks to host.

I don't think it's like, maybe it makes some profit.

I don't know if it does, but it definitely does.

But I personally don't like it.

I don't think most people even finish this shit.

Yeah, most people don't.

I think that like Guggen who created, he created what, Udemy, right?

Yeah, Udemy.

I think they were the ones who came out and said less than 5% of people finish these,

you know, at one point in time, MOOCs massively open online courses were all the rage.

Everybody said MOOCs are going to revolutionize education, it's going to change the university

system.

They're shit.

And then they came out and they were like, look, we made a Harvard education free and

open to anyone.

All you had to do was click a button and enroll, and then you got to show up and take it.

And you could have a Harvard education for free online from the comfort of your own home.

And less than 5% of people, I think, finished the course.

And I think that tells you a lot about like why people do a thing.

You know, people don't go to university to learn, that's a sad truth.

People go to university to get credentialed so that they can get a high paying job.

So if you want to compete with a university, you should actually create a credential that

gets you a high paying job that gives people confidence that if I get this credential, I

will get a high paying job.

That's, I think this is what you needed.

This is what you, your next thing will have to be.

This is the area I'm most interested in.

And if I could just figure out an angle, I'll do it because there's this other great talk

that came from the YC Mafias by this guy, Richard Hamming, and it's called You and Your

Research.

You should go read it.

It's a speech he gives.

And I didn't know who this guy was, apparently he's like a kind of technologist from back

of the day.

And he talks about his time at Xerox Park, and Xerox Park was responsible for like some

of the biggest.

What's it called?

Richard.

Richard Hamming is his name.

Hamming.

I'm pretty sure it's Hamming.

I don't know if this person is Richard.

Maybe I just inserted generic white name.

But Xerox Park is where like, you know, the visual graphic user interface like Steve Jobs

went to Xerox Park and was like, oh, mouse points at item on screen.

That's how computers should work.

And he like stole the innovations basically from there because they were just doing R&D

and he was like trying to bring shit to the world.

So anyways, he talked about Xerox Park and he used to, he said, he tells the stories

like I was at launch one day and I asked the, my coworkers, these brilliant people, you

know, all the brain in the world is stuffed into these guys' skulls.

And he's like, I asked him, what is the most important, what is the biggest idea in your

head?

What is the most important problem in your space, in your industry?

What is the most important problem?

And then they would say a thing.

He's like, what are you researching?

And they would say a different thing.

And he's like, why aren't you working on the most important, the most burning question

in your space, the most interesting thing in your field?

Why are you not working on it?

So his, his message is basically ask yourself that question.

What is the most, the biggest thing in my space?

What is the biggest challenge or opportunity in my industry and why am I not working on

it?

And then you should go work on it.

The answer is, you have to ask yourself, do I have a novel angle at how I'm going to

attack that problem?

Because if I just go back, if I like, the big problems are kind of known, but you need

a new attack vector of how you can solve that problem.

If you don't have a new attack vector, you're just going to waste your time and energy.

You're going to get the same result as everybody else.

But if you have a new attack vector, then it is your responsibility as a smart and talented

person to go do it.

So that's how I think about this university thing.

For a long time, I already knew the last project I do, I'm going to do is I'm going to teach

a bunch of people, but you need a new attack vector.

That's bullshit, dude.

That's bullshit.

That is only one way to do it.

Because if you think about it, a lot of great restaurants aren't particularly novel in

the solution.

Well, I mean, they're like novel and branding, or they're novel in that Sean is making it.

Do you know what I mean?

So I think that is a little bullshit.

Yeah, but I think restaurants are bullshit, right?

No, they're not.

You're wrong.

I think restaurants are terrible businesses.

You're wrong.

One of the...

Tillman Fratida owns...

He owns casinos, but he also owns some restaurants.

Yes, he owns some chains, but he owns the Golden Nugget and he owns a whole bunch of other

stuff too.

Yeah.

And like some steakhouses and like bubblegum shirts, just like fast casual stuff that regular

people go to.

And it's like one of the most profitable privately owned companies in America.

So for example, the best restaurant chains all had a new attack vector, right?

McDonald's realized the new attack vector and they productionized fast food and that

they had a real estate model and a franchise model to back it up.

Chipotle came out and they did the same thing, but they realized sort of the fast casual

model, which was different, which was people are crazy.

There are many cases where the amount of success they have is not into proportion to the amount

of... their new novelty is not in proportion with the amount of success they have.

Yeah.

So, okay, here's what I think.

If you're talking restaurants, the analogy there is like, I'm going to create an online

course too, right?

That's me opening up my restaurant just like everybody else has a restaurant, but my restaurant

is run by me.

I think I'm a good cook.

I think some people will like my restaurant.

What I'm trying to do is sort of change the restaurant industry, right?

So like when I talk about education, it's not like I'm just trying to create a course.

I'm trying to make it so that, I guess, here's the analogy.

I don't want to build a car.

I want to build a road.

So roads basically are new platforms that anybody can create a car on and you can get

a lot more leverage if you build roads versus if you're just trying to build a car, if you're

just trying to be a car driving on the existing road system, you know what I mean?

Got it.

No, I understand.

So this podcast is a car.

It's us getting on here and entertaining people.

We're going to reach a certain set of people given a certain amount of effort and it can

scale pretty big because we're using the internet and it's awesome and it's free.

That's good.

It's better than the cars of old where we would just go to an event and we would host

a meetup and 40 people would show up and we would talk.

That's the old way.

This is a much better way.

It's a much better car, but it's still not a road.

A road is podcasting.

Create something like podcasting.

Boom.

You've changed.

You've really changed the world and that's more exciting to me.

We're on the same page on that one.

I think we had an interesting podcast.

Yeah, this was fun.

All right.

Let's get out of here.

Hey, guys.

This last part is actually me and Sam talking a little bit about the protests that are going

on right now and not really about the protests.

Really it's about how we have experienced it so far and what we've been feeling, what

we've been thinking, the emotions we've had.

I wanted to know what was on Sam's mind.

He's traveling right now.

He was in Texas.

I was in California.

We contemplated taking it out because, A, this is a business podcast.

We try not to get political or anything like that.

B, we're definitely not experts on this and it's pretty easy in today's age to just get

ripped to shreds for saying the wrong thing or not having the right most smartest woke

take you can have about something, but it was a conversation we had.

I wanted to know how Sam was doing and he wanted to know what I was thinking and so

we chatted a little bit about it.

We're leaving it in here.

I hope you guys enjoy this part of the conversation.

It's really hard.

It was really hard to record this podcast and be like, hey, let's think of those brainstormed

new awesome ideas, new products we could build, new businesses we could run.

It was really hard to do that given what's going on.

We tried our best to put out some content.

We hope can take people's mind off things for a little bit.

A lot of people, it's very heavy and it's not necessarily good to keep your mind occupied

with such a stressful or sad or emotional topic at all times.

We wanted to put out a podcast episode today, but we also wanted to talk about what was

going on.

This last part is just talking about our lives right now and how we've been experiencing

what's happening.

Hope you guys enjoy.

I'm in Austin still.

What's the world like in Austin right now?

Crazy.

Everything's crazy.

I don't think it's as bad as San Francisco, but the world is crazy.

I decided to, we got a new office down here and so I rented a house to see everyone.

It's cool.

Austin is a great city.

What do you think is going to happen to San Francisco?

Do you think it's going to be the end of San Francisco being the place?

I think so.

Yeah.

I think so for a couple of reasons.

Right now, I'm selling my house.

Yeah.

I was going to say, your house looks different.

You're decorating it to sell, aren't you?

Yeah.

I am trying to sell my house right now, so it's about to go up for sale and I'm trying

to move to the suburbs of the Bay Area.

Right now, because I'm doing that, I'm in the middle of the market and listening to

people and hearing what are they, what's it like?

Is the market hot to sell?

Am I going to get a good price?

When I try to go look for something else, is there a lot of stuff available or is it

a bidding war?

Just like you would expect, there's a flight to space right now and not like the SpaceX

kind.

I'm talking about physical house space.

People are leaving this-

Deurbanization.

Yeah, deurbanization.

People are leaving cities.

They're leaving San Francisco for sure.

A lot of people in San Francisco are here because of the career opportunities and now

that the tech companies are saying, either we are already remote or we're going remote

or we're way more remote friendly and your work from home for the foreseeable future,

there's basically no reason to be in a city paying the premium, the extreme premium, like

one bedroom for four grand a month, two bedrooms, six grand a month type of rents to be in the

city.

When a studio condo is a million dollars in the city, if you don't have to pay that,

you're not going to.

People want space.

People want more affordability and people want to be away from a whole bunch of other

people from this virus and so that is driving a lot of people out of the cities.

Some people say, oh, that's just temporary.

Personally, I don't think so.

I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle.

Once the companies start letting you be remote and it doesn't matter where you're physically

located, why would you live in a more expensive area?

Only if that lifestyle really appeals to you, which it will for like 20-something-year-olds

to be in cities, but right now, you get the 20-something-year-olds and the 30-something-year-olds

because the 30-something-year-olds are there for their career and that's going to go away.

I feel like I've been in Austin for a week now.

I'm going to stay for another week.

Maybe I'll stay one more week.

Down here, it is definitely happier.

The way of life is for me and for many others, I understand why you'd be happier here.

Dude, my new house, I got a pool.

I'm like, yeah, a swimming pool.

What is this?

This is amazing.

It makes me happy just looking at a swimming pool.

I like it too.

My thing though is I miss San Francisco.

I want to come back.

I do miss a little bit of a struggle.

I also miss the people.

San Francisco is like, I hate the people and I love the people.

San Francisco has like actual real problems with crime and homelessness and stuff like

that.

I don't think anybody wants that and where they're living and so I think there's part

of it that's the energy of a city.

I love being in New York.

I love being in San Francisco.

I'm around all these energizing, interesting, ambitious people, a bunch of single people,

but then there's just like crime and homelessness and like extreme expenses that put a burden

on you and I think that's, nobody likes that.

I almost feel like, and not a real way, but just because I can't think of a better word,

a little homeless where I'm like, well, where the fuck is my place now?

Where's my, like, you're wondering, you know, because I'm, yeah, you and I, we're not quite

similar.

You've done it more than I have, but me too, in a lesser extent, have lived in many different

cities and I finally felt like I had a home in San Francisco and now I'm like, shit.

Right.

It's like, it's way, like, damn, it's way different.

And so I'm pretty sad about it, to be honest, like I've been like depressed over it.

I'm also sad, obviously, about all the other shit's going on.

Is it, are you seeing unrest and protesting and looting where you lived?

I'm seeing it because I'm just glued to Twitter and, you know, just scrolling and I can't

believe my eyes and it is, it is so sad.

There's so many different things going on at the same time and then the shitty part

about that to me is that everybody pulls a different meaning away from it.

So like, if your bias going in is, you know, you know, if you're racist in one way, you're

going to look at this and say, oh man, they're rooting and they're looting and rioting and

this is awful.

What did those small business owners do?

Why are they, why are they getting the store smashed?

And then if you're somebody else and you're looking at this and you're like, dude, people

are sick of it.

They've hit their breaking point because it's been going on for so long, this police brutality.

And I totally understand what's going on.

And then other people are looking at it and they're sort of like, hey, what's like, why

are these other malicious groups kind of hijacking the movement and just inciting violence and,

you know, Antifa or some people believe, you know, Russia, China, whoever it is, who's dropping

these pallets of bricks off, trying to bait people into violence and some people are just

trying to make the world burn.

And so there's all these things mixed together and I think whoever you are, you're going

to select the evidence that supports your feeling.

And you're just going to get stronger, you're just going to see more evidence towards your

view and it's going to make people more divided.

My friend shared something and it was like four circles and it was like, I'm pissed off

about the racism in our country and Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter has a point.

I'm pissed off that businesses are getting ruined.

This is not the right way to do it.

I'm pissed off at the police because I think most of them are good, but a few bad cops

ruin shit for everyone.

And then I forget the fourth one and then it was like, at the center, all the circles

had a little bit of everything and like, you can be here.

And I was like, that's how I feel.

I'm angry and sad.

What was the fourth one?

What's the fourth circle?

I don't know what the fourth one was.

Let's see.

It was really great though.

Did you happen to see that?

I didn't see that.

But no, that explains like exactly how I feel, you know, and how many people feel.

And, you know, I think it's really great.

There's a whole bunch of things that you hear or you learn from these experiences where

you're like, oh, you know, that is a sort of a nugget of wisdom or a bit of empathy

that I didn't have before.

And so, you know, when you see people that are, you know, one great quote I saw was,

when you have a thousand good cops and 10 bad cops, but the good cops don't police the

bad cops, then you have a thousand and 10 bad cops.

And, you know, I believe that and then that sort of applies to my life, too, like in what

any time I sort of stand by and do nothing, well, an injustice is happening.

That makes me sort of complicit in my own way, right?

And, you know, I think about little minor examples of that in my own life.

And then, you know, it was George Floyd's George Floyd's death was murder and the police

should be held responsible.

I think most cops are good, but police departments are corrupt and there are some bad cops looting

businesses and destroying properties immoral and it hurts the cause.

I empathize and I agree with Black Lives Matter protestors and believe in them and they're

right to be heard.

And then right in the middle was like, I am here and this is sad.

Right.

Yeah, it's really crazy.

And I know people don't listen to this podcast to hear like, you know, talks about socioeconomic

issues and racism and whatnot, but, you know, this I think affects everybody is very different

than anything that's happened in my lifetime where you have riots breaking out across the

nation all simultaneously and things really do feel like they've hit a breaking point

for many reasons.

I think also the fact that people were pent up at home for the last three months, I don't

think that helps necessarily because that's a sort of a bunch of, you know, just water

boiling over, you know, at a certain point as well.

I agree.

I don't even love discussing this stuff because I don't think about it a lot and I also tend

I try to like talk about the positive, but let me bring something up that I don't think

I have brought up and I want to hear your opinion.

So I don't, this doesn't matter and it doesn't change.

I don't think it should like validate or just not about validate anything I say.

So like my wife's black, my family's black, I'll have black children.

And this was the first time or half or partially black children.

This was the first time that I was at my house with Sarah, my wife, and like she broke down.

She was like, I don't, I don't know how she's like, I don't know where I fit in on this

because she's like a successful black woman.

She's like, I haven't had a lot of racist stuff happen to me or if any, like I, and

it was, and she's like, but I, yeah, it was, it was, it was just a total mind fuck because

I'm like, fuck, what am I supposed to, how am I supposed to, I don't, I didn't know what

to feel.

And I was like, I don't, I don't know what to do.

And it was incredibly exhausting.

Do you, you, you're Indian, do you consider yourself white or not white or what?

Definitely don't consider myself white.

And nor does anyone who sees me thinks I'm white, but well, I don't know.

Like, I get what you mean in the sense of like, in some ways, like, do you feel that

you're privileged or prejudiced against?

I think that's a different way of looking at it.

And like, you know, my sister, so we, I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is like, you

know, not the most open-minded and racially friendly place.

And so my sister, when she was in kindergarten, you know, students would, would draw a picture

of a pig and then write her name on it and cover the pig and mud and brown mud.

And then they would give it to the teacher and the teacher laughed and my sister always

remembers this.

Like she was, I don't know, six years old and she vividly remembers the teacher sort

of looking at this and laughing and saying, no, no, no, put it away, but like being, you

know, involved in it.

And I never experienced that myself.

I don't understand that.

What's the pig have to do?

It's like brown, brown, dirty in the mud, you know, that sort of thing.

And, and, you know, I remember, you know, when she went to my mom and was like, why

can't we be white type of thing?

Whereas like, you know, asking questions as a kid, just trying to understand why am I

different?

What does that mean?

Why do other people think we're worse than them?

That sort of thing.

I personally never experienced that because I luckily moved out of Oklahoma when I was

really young and went to different places where it was, it was less so or just got lucky

in sort of my experiences around who I was around.

But I guess I would say like, you know, when 9-11 happened, you know, it's not fun to be

a brown guy in America, right?

Are you are you any religion or Muslim?

No, I'm not religious, but I would be Hindu, I would be Hindu, but, you know, just that's

typically what most Indian people are.

But yeah, you know, I'm not religious, but, you know, I do grow a beard pretty quick.

And so like, yeah, you know, like, when you go to the airport, I don't think you think

about how do I look today, whereas I think about that because I'm like, look, I'm not

trying to get hassled for no reason here, so let me shave before I get on this flight.

Or like, you know, I had friends who like are Muslim who had like keys, their house keys

take it away from them in TSA because it was like, this is, you know, potentially a dangerous

thing.

And they're like, this is my apartment keys.

What are you talking about?

How does that make you feel?

So the fact that you have to shave, are you angry or you, where do you, what's that make

you feel like?

I'm not angry about it, you know, I, I sort of have this opinion that my, my, my personal

philosophy, if you're going to boil it down to any one thing is the only thing you have

control over is your attitude towards the present moment.

And so, so that's empowering and disempowering, right?

Disempowering because it's like, shit, I can't control anything that's going on.

I can't control how other people feel, how they're going to act.

I can't control the results I'm going to get in my life.

But it's empowering.

It's like the one thing I control is my attitude towards the moment.

So that sort of is a superpower because then no matter what the situation is, no matter

what the moment is, I can decide what my attitude about it is going to be.

So for example, when something shitty happens to me, someone says something shitty or, you

know, I, you know, get that extra sort of, hey, come into this room while I go through

TSA clearance, you know, the meaning I put on that is of my choosing.

And if I put the meaning of it that, you know, I'm less than I'm being wronged.

That doesn't help me.

It makes me feel like shit.

And so I just decide not to feel that way.

But I know that like on the grand scheme of things, I get off pretty light.

It's very different than never feeling safe, you know, going for a jog in your neighborhood

or something like that.

I think, you know, there's levels to it.

And I haven't experienced those levels where it would be very, very challenging to put

a positive meaning on what's going on.

Yeah, it's a, it's just a confusing time because you feel so many different emotions

and some of them are opposite.

And I had to like talk to the whole company today, which were small, let's say 20 or 30

people.

And I was like, I don't know what to say other than you guys like ever feel out of place

somewhere like our company, we're going to, we're going to make you feel safe, like we'll

hire all types of people.

We like, and I wasn't sure if that felt like weak or like, like, oh, like, like a barely

anything right to be done.

But I was like, I don't know what I was like, I don't know how to fucking handle this other

than you're safe here.

But yeah, you know, I think that's the right approach because it's not about having the

answer or the wisdom or the most heartfelt thing in the best speech.

But like, I think it is important if you're the leader to show up as a decent human being

in that moment and just say, look, I understand I'm also feeling this crazy mix of emotions.

I just want to do my best with this, anything, you know, we're going to, we're going to try

to do our best with this.

And I think it goes a long way to just be a decent person and try to be present and

visible there versus kind of shying away from it, which is what a lot of people do.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And I have a feeling once I have children, my opinion is going to change a lot, like

or not my opinion, but my, I think I'll learn a lot, like having black kids or part black

kids.

I think we'll, maybe I'll see something that I didn't previously see.

Did you watch the Trevor Noah thing that he posted on YouTube or whatever?

I did not.

I'm typically not a fan of his.

I think that a lot of the times he says is the wrong take.

So I tend to avoid him, but I would watch it if you suggest it.

I avoid him because he, I don't think he's that funny, but I did watch this thing.

And you know, he brings up like what's going on.

He's like, yeah, a lot of people are looking at what's going on and saying, well, this

isn't right either.

Right.

Of course, police should not murder citizens.

That's wrong.

But also rioting and looting and destroying things is also not right.

And what his point was, which I think made me better understand what was going on.

His point was like, you got to think about this.

What is society?

And the society is essentially a contract.

It is an agreement amongst a group of people of here's what's right and wrong of how we're

going to act.

Here's the behaviors that are tolerated.

Here's the behaviors that are not tolerated.

He goes, so what you're seeing is that one side of contract, you know, if we're, if we

go into contract together and you're just breaching your side of the contract regularly

and without recourse, and I just see, wow, this guy just keeps breaching his side of

the contract.

Then I also have no, um, no desire or incentive to uphold my side of the contract.

He goes, you'll see somebody that's homeless.

And you know, they don't go and just murder necessarily, um, because, because they're

in a bad position.

They say, look, these are the rules of the game.

I'm losing in the current game, or I have not been able to sort of get to an advantage

position in this game.

But like, I still respect that we're in a game together and there are rules of this

game.

He goes, what you're seeing now is that a group of people, you know, black people in

America feel like the contract has just been breached over and over and over again, uh,

where they're, you know, unnecessary and, um, unjust violence against us.

And so now we're going to breach the contract too.

And we're going to sort of make it very known what it feels like when the contract is being

breached for apparently no reason.

And it doesn't seem like a positive thing.

And so that made me look at, you know, when somebody is either protesting, whether it's

peacefully or not peacefully, when somebody's rioting and they're creating a sort of unsafe

environment for all, it's sort of, I don't know, it's sort of, um, explained to me

why somebody would behave that way.

It's cause if you feel like the other party is just terminally breached the contract and

then there's no recourse, then it's like, I'm going to terminally breach the contract.

And we'll see, we'll see how it feels.

And now both sides feel what it's like when the societal contract gets totally breached.

And let's see if that gets your attention.

I feel it.

I feel it.

I feel it definitely feels like, uh, like almost like the end of the world a little bit.

It's like there's, it's like a small, it's like in the same way of having a new puppy

is just like a small taste of having a baby.

It's like, that's how I feel right now.

I'm like, if like the world, if like everything that I believed in is going to come to an end,

it's going to like a little, a little like this.

Right.

And for every sad story, there's also an inspiring story where people are, you know, waking up

the next day and going and cleaning up the city and people standing together.

And you know, I think there's a lot of really positive things going on too.

And I think that's the, you know, that's the, I don't know, silver lining or that's the

other side of the coin here where, where, um, is progress being made.

And I hope so.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.