My First Million: #86 - Why Every Business Should Have an Enemy

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.

So before we get into this, I got to ask the listeners and you something.

So Jack, our friend Jack Smith, introduced me to this guy a few years ago, and I don't

even want to say what the service is yet, but I think I could say a little bit.

There's a ride-sharing service, one of the ride-sharing services, and what this guy does

is, I think this is how he does it.

I don't exactly know, but you can buy discounted credits, so you know how...

I pay 20 bucks and I get $40 worth of rides.

Have you done it?

So he showed it to me years ago.

This was like, I don't know how long, two years ago, maybe he showed it to us.

And I was like, oh, great.

I take rides all the time.

Would love to.

Then as I went through the website, I was like, is this like a scam?

I don't think so because Jack said he's doing it and he recommended it.

I've done it.

But then I was like, is this going to get my account banned?

Like, this is too good to be true.

So my skepticism went off.

I didn't do it.

I forgot about it.

And then he posted about it in our private My First Million Facebook group.

He said, hey, did you guys know about this is a really cool, clever hack and system that

this guy's created.

Jack loves those things.

So tell me more about what's got your high here.

Yeah.

So he has the service.

Now he's doing it for similar things.

And okay, so Jack was like, hey, you should have this guy on the podcast.

And I'm like, okay, so pros, this guy is a hustler.

He's doing amazing stuff.

And I'm pretty sure, I think he's either said it or I figured it out.

I'm pretty sure the way he does it, this guy's in India.

I think what he does is he has a network of like thousands of teenagers and kids and he

just gives them a first ride on a ride service and he gets the $10 back like in referral

and then sells it.

Right.

So he's gaming.

It's not, as far as I understand, it's not like illegal.

There's no like sort of illicit hacking or anything.

He just says, hey, they have a referral, they have a referral system, which is cool.

You get a, you know, every time you refer somebody, you get a certain amount of credits.

And what he realizes is he can do cheaper, maybe shorter rides in India and that will

count as a new customer that's been referred.

And so he can give you in the US, you know, your full credit for a lightweight ride there

and the arbitrage, there's some money.

He keeps some money and we get a saving.

And then the ride, the person who takes the ride gets a free ride.

So it's like a win, win, win for everybody but the service and to add to complexity.

If you pay with Bitcoin, you get a bigger discount, which is what I've done.

And if you like do XYZ, like it's, it's, it looks incredibly shady, long story short.

It's interesting.

It's a cool story.

It's definitely, it's not a scam, but it's questionable about the ethics.

And so do we want to promote this or not?

Um, yeah, of course, I might, it's not promoting it.

I am interested in this guy's story and I think a lot of people will be interested in

it.

You can make your own judgment after you hear them out as to, yeah, I'm down for, for promoting

unethical behavior.

Yeah.

But people will call you off or whatever.

I don't think we're promoting anything.

It's one thing.

Okay.

It's for promoting.

If we say, this is awesome.

Go do this.

Okay.

That's fair.

But that's an opinion, right?

But I think the right thing to do is to say, Hey, here's somebody who's doing something

interesting.

They are, they found a way to hustle and create a, you know, create a business for themselves

as well as value for others.

We should hear them out and then let people judge for themselves.

Is this like past the gray area and not, not cool for them, or is this actually like,

you know, fine.

And so I think, I think that's, we should leave that up to the listener, but our job

is to tell the story.

And also I'm curious, so why not have them on?

Who cares?

J journalists.

All right.

Well, uh, he's met, he messaged you and I will, we'll set it up.

Um, I don't even know if he speaks English well enough.

I guess we'll find out.

Right.

Yeah.

We'll find out.

We'll bring him on.

So I had some other of these, um, um, these are more like actual scams, but I wanted to

talk about them.

I don't know why I wanted to just tell you some things that I've seen.

Okay.

So, um, recently, I don't know if you've seen on YouTube or if it's just in my recommendations,

but all day, every day, there's a live stream of Chamath Polyhapitia, who's kind of like

a known investor, early Facebook guy, billionaire.

Um, it's like Chamath talking about Bitcoin and it has always like 40, 50,000 live viewers

watching it at any given time.

And it says Bitcoin giveaway, Chamath Bitcoin giveaway.

And what they do, so once I was doing, which is just totally a scam, they have a stream

going, they have a video embedded of Chamath talking about Bitcoin from like five years

ago.

It's not Chamath doing this, by the way.

He's trying to get it taken down.

And then on the screen, it says Bitcoin giveaway, send me your address and I'll send Bitcoin

to somebody.

And I think they're just making money off the ad revenue of this live stream.

Um, and it has like 40, 50,000 people.

I'm sure some of that's bot traffic and some of it is real traffic.

Um, but it's hilarious that somebody's doing this like a, what a waste of time and B, it's

hilarious that YouTube allows this, Chamath's trying to take it down.

Um, but a, okay, so that's one little thing I noticed.

Here's another one.

Um, you know, when the U S government came out with the kind of PPP, like, Hey, if you're

unemployed or you're an employer and you have people, you can get access to money.

So, um, of course the Nigerian sort of scammers came out and they actually took out $100 million

from the system.

I don't know if you heard about this.

No, they just filed as either unemployed people or, or employers of unemployed people, uh,

or sorry, employers who qualify for PPP, the sort of Nigerian scam ring.

It's called the, uh, what's it called the 409 scam.

I think it's called.

Is that the name of the, the program?

Is that like the country code of it?

So a lot of these guys are based out of Lagos, Nigeria, I think, and I think, and I believe

that they're there because for some reason it's part of, I don't know how it got embedded

into that particular culture where they, where they, it became a thing.

But I think, um, I also think that there's, uh, not really strict laws around, like there's

a lot of loopholes in law that you can not get punished.

So this guy totally scammed, uh, or these, these group of people scammed out at $100

million, uh, out of the government, out of the US government while the US government

was giving away money for like, you know, really intense two week, three week frenzy.

Um, a Bray who just linked some guy in, uh, from Wikipedia, Emmanuel Nude, I don't know

how you say his name, but he, um, sold an airport for $240 million.

He didn't own this airport.

He just sold it, uh, which is crazy.

Um, so there's that and then here's some other ones that I thought were interesting.

So, you know, super PACs, like the political, um, fundraising thing, which sort of like

gets around the normal, uh, donation limits for, yeah, it's like a, it's like a, it's

like they like form a company or a fund and you give money to the fund and that funds

allowed to, to donate a larger, larger quantity of money.

Right.

So there's super PACs for every cause.

So my, uh, my friend who's, uh, my friend, Jason had this hilarious idea.

Uh, he didn't do this, but he was just like, he's very politically minded and he hated

super PACs cause he's like, Oh God, like it's the super PACs who get behind, let's say

the gun lobby or whoever that like fund these things that I don't agree with necessarily.

And I just think super PACs are kind of shady.

There's lack of transparency, blah, blah.

And then he sort of had this idea of like, if you can't beat up, join him.

So he was like, I know what I'll do.

And I thought this is a hilarious idea.

He's like, for every issue, I'm just going to spin up two super PACs, one taking each

side and I'm just going to raise all the money again for both sides and I'm going to take

a cut of both sides of it for every issue.

Um, he's like, until they shut down super PACs.

And I thought that was a hilarious way to fight super PACs.

Didn't, uh, do you remember at Founders Dojo where I used to work out of, it was like this

office that was kind of like, Erlich Bachman on the TV show Silicon Valley.

I think Dave did something like this where he created a, a donation thing.

Who was running Trump versus Obama, Trump versus Hillary.

And he created like, he like created something where he was like, pledged support to Hillary

and then he also had a pledged support for like, he did both of those things.

Yeah, exactly.

There's all kinds of crazy stuff.

I don't know, I don't know why I needed to bring up a bunch of fake scams.

What, what's the wealthiest person who you know, who got money off of like a shady way?

Hmm.

I gotta think about that.

Do you have one?

I don't know if this is shady, but I have a bunch of friends that have made a lot of

money like 30, 40, $50 million off of what I consider to be borderline on ethical internet

marketing practices.

Like, for example, who have run call centers, like, you know how you get a phone call from

like Marriott hotels?

It's not really from Marriott.

It's like, or you know, if you, I knew a guy who had a company, hold on, so it's not really

from Marriott and then what?

I don't know how the scam works.

I get the calls all the time, but they'll say like, you know, you won this, you won

like, it's basically they're selling you travel packages, like you were picked from

a random drawing to get a discount on a all exclusive trip to sandals.

So that's not on ethical, it's just obnoxious.

And then I know a guy who made a bunch of money off a co-registration company.

So like when you sign up on Expedia, they sell your email address to 18 other travel

stuff.

And he was the middle man and he made like $50 million embedded all on in the stock market

in one day, the closest I, the first thing that came to mind or the closest thing that

came mind, I don't actually know this person, but I, you know, know, know the guy's kid

and, and this is the dad.

So this guy, Naveen Jane, who Oh, I know him.

see of this thing called info space back in the day.

And like during the dot com boom info space was like, you know, riding high and then,

you know, sort of overnight info space crashes, but he had sort of sold out or, you know,

protected his own interest right before the crash.

And was like, you know, everybody lost their jobs in the 401ks and the company.

And this guy was like a billionaire.

And so that was sort of shady.

And then he started this thing called Intelius after the fact.

I think that's the name of it.

Yeah.

And it had a similar outcome.

Yeah.

Intelius is this like shady thing where you would sign up for a free credit check, I think,

or it's like back, you could find information from public records about people or about

yourself.

I don't remember exactly what the, what the product was because I don't spend too much

time, you know, like thinking about the stuff.

But basically there was this tiny checkbox at the bottom, which was like, cool, you got

this free credit check, but then we're going to charge you 20 bucks a month, just kind

of on subscription after that for blah, blah, some bullshit.

And so they were making millions and millions of dollars and people were all like, wait,

what am I, I just paid like $200 this year for Intelius.

What does that mean?

What is this?

And people kind of screenshotted the flow and showed how like, you know, size four font

the fine print was that you're going to get charged for this thing.

And so that was pretty bad.

Yeah.

That guy claims to be a billionaire.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And he's a pretty like kind of crazy charismatic guy and he's now got this like company that's

about going to the moon, like a rockets company and all kinds of stuff.

But he's definitely, you know, behind that smile, there's definitely like some skeletons

or some baggage, like, you know, neither of those two, two stories, info space or, or

I think it's called Intelius, neither of those seemed like the most up and up companies.

Well, let's talk about some legit companies.

All right.

So I'll do one.

So this one actually comes also from Jack.

So this is sort of the Jack episode.

He's the guest, but we don't have him here.

So he was talking a little bit about baseball cards.

And I know baseball cards are hot right now because Gary Vee's been really pumping baseball

cards and talking about baseball cards all the time.

And so baseball cards are like a collector's item, they have value, they've they appreciate

over time.

It's, you know, like many, many goods of that kind.

Now one thing that's a common problem for people who are buying, selling and trading

baseball cards is the actual receiving of the, you know, you receive a shipment, you

have to open it up, you hope it's not damaged, you have to verify that it's real.

And then if you sell it, you got to sort of go through that whole shipping process right

back to the other person and hope that nothing goes wrong in the process.

And so for people who are collecting these as a sort of financial asset in some ways,

um, and they don't, they're not like sitting there trying to carry them with them to school

or something like that.

You don't need the physical card.

He was saying, why is there not sort of a central repository where you can like a, like

a, like a safety deposit, a Fort Knox for, for the baseball cards where basically you

buy and sell it online, but it never moves.

It just sort of exchanges ownership, but it's all stored in the central vault where

it's cooled properly so they don't degrade.

They're all verified by a professional there who's centrally located.

You don't have to deal with any of the shipping costs or potential issues there.

Yeah.

So I think it's a pretty clever idea and obviously it could extend to sneakers, could extend

to art, could extend to other things.

Maybe there's something like this that exists.

I don't do baseball cards or art.

Do you dabble with any of this stuff?

Um, I got into shoes after I learned about them.

We wrote about it on trends about a year ago and I've since gotten into them.

Yeah, but not to the point of wanting to make money off of it, but to the point of like

spending $300 on a pair.

But I did do research on this and it seems as though there's not a great solution.

So jack's on to something we wrote about this actually, um, heritage auction house.

What I would do if I wanted to create this, which I actually think this is a wonderful

idea.

I don't, I don't, I certainly don't have time.

So I'm not going to, but this is a great idea.

And what I would maybe do is contact a lot of the auction houses and be like, what are

you guys doing now?

Right.

What, why can't this work?

And or collectors, you know, high end collectors, people who have a portfolio of these things.

Because I think it is a very small, it's a small, it's a niche community, obviously.

It's a small number of people.

I don't think it's as niche as you think.

My point is that the kind of circle of influence is pretty tight here where the number of people

you would need to convince and that you could go learn from to see if this is a real problem

is kind of small and that's great.

It's like kind of like online poker where you just go get these 15 pros to do something

and now they sway the rest of the casual community with them as like, oh yeah, that's

the best practice.

That's how we do things now.

It's pretty interesting and I love it.

And I like it's, I wonder, I would have to imagine this has significantly better economics

or maybe not in storage.

So do you know how the companies like clutter are doing?

I always assume that those companies are on the verge of failure.

Now I don't know if they, and I think Omni actually, it's like, everything's going great.

We keep raising money.

We keep adding high profile people and we shut down.

That's how these companies tend to go.

Or they break out.

But do you know that Public Storage, you know the company Public Storage?

Public Storage is huge.

Yeah.

It's the most profitable company on the stock market.

Is that right?

That's a pretty cool claim.

By margin, so it like does four billion in revenue and like two billion in net income.

Interesting.

Yeah.

It's like the most profitable thing.

Now, they don't do what, they don't do all this high cost shit that all the new startups

do where they like want to bring you your stuff.

They just say like, here's a room, bring your stuff.

It's yours.

Give us $100 a month.

But it could be, it's a really cool idea.

That's my point.

Also, another thing, I'm sure a lot of people know this, but I was ignorant and I didn't

know this, but these storage companies, they're real estate businesses.

Yes.

It's just a way to get profit to buy real estate.

A great book I read when I was in college that inspired me.

I was like on the verge of going down the real estate track rather than entrepreneurial

track or the sort of startupy track, and it's called Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

It's an awesome book.

If you're a total noob and you're just curious about how the hell do people make money?

It's not about the terms and the tactics and all that stuff.

It's this one guy being like, I wanted to make it real estate.

Then he's like, my first deal, I had no money and I found this warehouse and I negotiated

this and he just walks through deal by deal for like 10 deals of Confessions of a Real

Estate Entrepreneur.

One of them was about storage and the whole game with real estate is you need to see value

where others don't.

Other people look at this 25,000 square foot warehouse and they say, okay, warehouses are

valued at X dollars per square foot, so this building is worth Y.

What you need to say is, hey, if I subdivided this warehouse into tiny storage units and

I added it all up, now it's worth X plus Y dollars per square foot.

It's worth more.

I can go buy it.

I can actually pay more than the AI next to me because I know I can get more value out

of it than that person can because I know how to change use or add value in some way.

That's what we work did.

They took office floors and say, hey, what if we subdivided it and rented this out by

the desk and so that's like a common real estate strategy and that's what storage units

are.

And if anyone listening to this, I think some people will get mad at me.

Real estate has the highest ratio of rich and dumb people.

Right.

Yes.

You know what I'm saying?

I know exactly what you're saying.

It's got the highest ratio of low IQ rich people.

Yes.

That's very true.

It doesn't mean if you do real estate, you're low IQ.

It means there are more wealthy people in real estate who are not superstar geniuses

who, you know, work themselves normal, normal, smart, hardworking people, right?

A normal, smart, rational person who obviously had some skills, took some risks, but there

are more wealthy people in real estate that way.

If you just said, Hey, Sean, you know, in the next 10 years, you die.

If you don't get wealthy, I'd be like, cool, go into real estate.

Like that's that's my best path.

My highest likelihood chance of becoming wealthy is through real estate versus any other sort

of venture.

Yeah.

It's the highest, it's the highest dumb people to rich people job I've ever seen in my life.

I love it.

Okay.

So that's my, that's, that's Jack's, Jack's idea, which is sort of Fort Knox for baseball

cards.

I like it.

What else we got?

Are we going to talk about Hey?

Can we talk about Hey?

I don't think we did.

We didn't go for it.

Okay.

By the way, this, look at what I'm drinking here.

I drink these all day.

You see that it's called Heineken zero.

It's not, not, it's not the same as non-alcoholic beer.

It's zero alcohol beer.

They're awesome.

Wait, what do you mean?

It's not the same as non-alcoholic beer.

What's the difference?

I don't know the legality, but I drink a lot of non-alcoholic beer because I like beer.

The normal non-alcoholic beer says it has less than 0.5% alcohol.

This has 0.0.

And Heineken said that this is their fastest growing category.

And you like it?

I love it.

I drink, I'll drink four a day.

So what's in it that makes it taste, does it taste like beer or it tastes like something

else?

Uh, it's a, it's a, they call it a malt and yeast beverage.

It's a unique recipe.

It has 0% alcohol is brewed with pure malt and special A yeast, just like the original

Heineken lager beer.

Um, it has the same taste, but without the alcohol, that's hilarious.

They sell the same product with, without the expensive ingredient and can charge the same

for it.

This gives you less ingredients, water, malted barley, hop extract and natural flavor.

I thought is so, oh man, I love these.

Uh, I drink them like crazy.

Um, they're awesome.

Okay.

Um, we apparently, we did talk about, Hey, a little bit, but what did you want to talk

about?

Uh, I just wanted to sort of call out the, the sort of marketing side of things, uh,

of what they do.

So have you read the book rework, which is there, the 37 signals book years ago, but

they basically say that like one of the marketing principles that they talk about is like to

have an enemy.

Right.

Yeah.

I think there's a chapter called pick a fight.

Um, and I want to read it.

So let me see if I can pull it up real quick.

Okay.

So here's a section of it.

If you think a competitor sucks, say so.

When you do that, you'll find others who agree with you and rally to your side.

Being the anti blank is a great way to differentiate yourself and attract followers.

For example, Dunkin Donuts positions itself as the anti Starbucks.

It, it's ads mock Starbucks, uh, for using, you know, these fake Italian words, you know,

instead of just saying small, medium, large, uh, or they'll do a campaign like, uh, they

made a site called Duncan beat Starbucks.com where visitors can send e-cars with statements

like friends don't let friends drink Starbucks.

Audi is another example.

It takes on the old guard of car manufacturers.

It puts old and old luxury brands like Rolls Royce and Mercedes on notice by touting how

it's a fresh alternative.

Apple jabs at Microsoft with ads that compare Mac and PC owners, um, et cetera, et cetera.

All these examples show the power and direction you can gain by having a target in your sites.

Who do you want to take a shot at?

You can even pit yourself as the opponent of an entire industry.

Dyson's air blade starts with the premise that the hand dryer industry itself is a failure

and then tells it and then positions itself as faster, more hygienic option.

I can't believe it's not butter puts the puts the enemy right in its own name.

Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell your customers.

Being a stand always stands out.

People get stoked by conflict.

They take sides.

Passions are ignited.

It's a good way to get people to take notice.

What do you think?

Yeah, I'm down.

I, uh, right now my enemy is the New York Times a little bit and basically journalists

who say they don't have a bias button, like they can't admit that they do.

So yeah, I'm, I'm down with that.

And with hay.com, I call it hay.com.

I think it's working well.

I think that, um,

So they picked, uh, who, I think initially they picked just traditional email like Gmail

as the enemy, um, for being like cluttered.

You just keep getting spammed by random things.

It's email.

You don't want it to headache.

Um, and now they picked Apple and it was a way better fight to pick because it's a more

novel story and it doesn't seem as self-serving as when they picked Gmail as the competitor.

And I like that.

I actually like these guys a lot.

And so I'm going to talk shit about them a little bit.

But in general, I've really liked them and I respect them.

But I do think that it's a little lame what they, like some of these moves are a little

bit lame because they also pick a fight with like main mainstream startups about giving

equity when they're like make millions of these guys probably make 10 million, 15 million

a year in profit.

And they're very, very wealthy.

And I feel like it's a little hypocritical.

So they, they, um, on Twitter, people are calling this beef marketing, so just to have

it beef with everybody just to keep, keep your, keep your name relevant and there's always

going to be some people that agree with your side of the story.

So for example, against the startup industry, they are anti VC, don't take funding, be profitable.

Which is weird because they've taken funding from Jeff Bezos.

Right.

But on the whole, they, they don't play this one.

They are profitable and they don't play these sort of raise the A, B, C, D, E, like sort

of get big, big, big, big, big IPO.

So they picked that fight.

They picked the fight of you don't need to work 80 hours a week, 30s enough.

Be productive.

Just be smart.

Don't kill yourself.

You don't have to be a worker.

The other day that they were working through the weekend, resolve all the issues.

Right.

But I'm saying in general, they've, I'm not saying these are correct.

I'm saying these are the fights that they, they easily trigger people just like they triggered

you just now.

Then there's, uh, then they also do like they take summers off, which is part of their kind

of like, don't be a workaholic thing.

And they have one more, which is sort of like, don't depend on any platform.

Um, so like, don't be, don't be dependent on anybody and these, I get it.

And I like a lot of their philosophy.

I just think it's stupid when you make rules, you know what I mean?

Like when you make rules around something, it's like, dude, not everything has a rule.

Like a lot of times, like you can't say that you are anti VC.

I'm not anti VC at all.

I'm just like pro like, let's be logical and let's look at a variety of options.

Right.

But that doesn't sell.

Right.

So, so if you just looked at it in terms of like, if they, if you just said they're

doing all of this for marketing purposes.

Um, if you, if you believe that to be true, then what they've done is incredibly effective.

It's sort of like buffer, right?

Maybe you don't agree that you should transparently put all your company salaries and revenue

and, and, and losses out there publicly.

But if you looked at it like marketing, it's been undeniably effective at marketing the

company.

No, I'm on board.

I think, look, uh, it's working for them.

I just think that some of their opinions are bullshit, but, uh, I like them a lot.

And I think that it's incredibly effective for them.

So why don't you pick more fights?

That was kind of my takeaway when I saw this, I feel like you guys could do way more of

this.

I think we should.

And so like, let's come up with the game plan right now.

So I just picked a fight with a guy today.

Did you see my Twitter?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm looking at your Twitter right now.

So you picked a fight with this two VVVLDI.

Is that the person?

Yeah.

So what, what is this?

Tell me what happened.

They copied my landing page.

They copied trends completely and I just, they're full of shit.

And I emailed them and told them to fuck off and they like try to justify it.

I'm like, no, you're lying.

Like I just looked you up a web archive.

You just copied our page.

Like I see when we launched and then when you launched, you word for word ripped us off.

That's a, okay.

So you picked a fight with them, but that's actually, uh, if you look at like what the

rules are of this game, that's actually a bad fight.

You don't pick a fight with people a little over the new, you got to make a fight.

So who should I, what should I do?

You think?

Well, you said New York time.

So first I was thinking, uh, cause you guys have, uh, as a competitor, like a morning

brew, right?

So like they pretty similar, pretty, they're kind of similar in size.

And that's one that could be more like PewDiePie versus T series where the feud actually would

help both sides grow.

So that's more like wrestling where you could be like, cool, I'm going to attack you.

You attack me.

This is just going to generate a bunch of buzz.

It's sort of like the barstool color daddy thing where it's like both sides end up more

popular and, uh, through the, through the drama.

So like that's one that I think you guys could do.

The other one would be more like against the mainstream mainstream media, which could be

New York times.

Now there has to be some level of authenticity to it.

Um, so it's got to be something you genuinely do believe.

Like it could be the thing that like, why are you guys pretending like you're not biased?

Um, but that doesn't tell a great story about you guys and what you do.

It's not that you guys are like, it's not that the value prop of the hustle is to be

opinionated clearly and be subjective, not even try to be objective.

I don't think that's like what y'all do.

So I think you got to pick a fight that A makes sense, B is polarizing, uh, and C somehow

tells the story of what the hustle is all about by being the opposite of the thing you're

hating on.

I thought about making fun of the scam because I think they're like a joke, but then I was

like, I don't know if I would win that fight.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think there's something here because I think in general, you do have strong opinions

about things, um, but I don't see that come through via the hustle, maybe intentionally,

maybe you've censored it.

Maybe you haven't, but I think you guys, no, I'm not a favor of censorship.

Um, how about this?

Um, let me, let me, let me a small tangent, something that I'm, we're testing and I'm

thinking about launching is I'm pretty obsessed with the idea of expert opinion as opposed

to journalist opinion.

And one thing I'm testing is I've built this network of like a thousand experts and every

day we're emailing them stories and getting their opinion and we're going to just publish

their opinion.

And we're not going to touch it.

We're not going to edit it.

We're just going to say, here's exactly what they said.

Right.

And that's interesting to me.

And I'm going to get people to pay money for it.

Yeah.

I think that's actually pretty dope.

Um, I saw a private Twitter, I saw the, um, like mock-up you guys did.

I didn't love that, but I love the idea of this because when I think about it, this

actually what I care about, I care about what did the people who actually know their shit

think about this and not the journalists with their opinion, the editor with their agenda,

the journalists talking to an expert and then like siphoning off one quote and having that

be, you know, that fitting into some narrative.

I just like, let's say it's the, like right now the NBA is about to resume and there's

a big debate.

Should they come back or should they not come back?

Um, some of the players don't want to come back because of coronavirus.

Some of the players don't want to come back because it takes away from the black lives

matter movement, um, and there's all these ESPN talking heads that talk about this.

Like there's literally this guy, Brian Winhorse, who's like, you know, the opposite of a basketball

player.

He's like a short, fat, white guy who's never played basketball and he's always talking

about what should happen, what shouldn't happen.

And I'd rather just be like, cool, the, the, the ping goes out to all the NBA players and

here's the 80 responses we got back LeBron said this, I don't know if it's anonymized

or if it's with their name, but that would be way more interesting to me.

It's like, here's what they actually think.

Yeah.

So that's what I'm thinking about building or this is what we're, we're attempting to

build.

And, and in that case, the enemy to me is clear.

It's like journalism as a whole journalism because if you think about it, like, we don't

need you.

The phone is a journalist and I hate when I hear, I hate the fact that journalists, journalism

is a circle jerk on Twitter.

Like they only want to impress each other.

They don't want to impress their audiences.

Like you have to like, what I tell our team, I'm like, guys, we don't serve each other.

We serve our readers.

Like we are their waiters, we are their servants, we exist to give them information.

And my team who has worked at a variety of places are like, well, that's so different

than other places because it's all about how do we win awards or how do we do this or

that.

And I'm like, yeah, that baffles me that that is the thing.

So that's our enemy for that.

Yeah.

Okay.

I like that.

I think that could be good.

Let's fight.

I like it.

Okay.

I have another random idea or thing to talk about.

So we both like this comedian, Chris D'Elia, and he was a funny guy.

We thought he was great.

The best.

I'll speak for myself.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know how you felt, but we thought he was hilarious.

Whatever.

He's a comedian.

I thought he was the best.

I've seen him live a couple of times.

And I listened to his podcast a bunch.

That's one of the few podcasts I listened to.

Anyways, last week gets exposed as sort of like a creep.

And so a bunch of people come out and say, hey, Chris D'Elia was messaging me when I

was, you know, 17, 16 years old and asking me for nude pictures and all this bad stuff.

Right.

So a whole bunch of people come out at once.

Turns out Chris D'Elia is creeping around or allegedly creeping around.

And so this comes out.

He's sort of getting canceled right now.

So two questions for you.

Or a question for you.

What was your reaction when that happened?

And then I have an idea based on that.

My reaction was if I was even bummed that he was accused and the evidence was strong.

Pretty damn.

And so I believe it to be true.

And in my head, I think, well, fuck you, like you're, you're the worst.

So I feel pissed off because I was a huge, huge, huge fan and I, I don't know.

I'll still listen to his jokes, but I will not like support him financially.

Yeah.

So that was my other question.

Well, if you're listening to him, you're still supporting him in some way.

I guess so.

But I don't know if I would pay money to go see him.

Right.

So that's kind of my other question is, and nobody really talks about this.

It's sort of like, cool, I'm a fan or you're canceled.

But I think in reality, you know, as so many people, this is, you know, two of my favorite

comedians, Louis CK and Chris D'Elia, both came out to be doing really creepy messed

up behavior, but there's also people who are clearly still fans of Lucy K. They're probably

not fans of what he did, but they're still fans of him.

They'll still listen to his stuff.

They'll go to his shows.

And I was wondering how do you deal with that kind of like being torn between like, well,

you don't like what they did.

And maybe you don't even like the person, but you kind of like their art, you know,

like, I don't know, do people still watch the Cosby show or, you know, yeah, I still

watch the Cosby show.

I listen to R Kelly.

I love Michael Jackson music.

Here's my logic.

Right.

Here's here with great people, people who achieve greatness, who are like world class

at the craft are nine out of 10 times fucking weird and hopefully only weird.

Sometimes they're also bad people.

And I just accept that like the people who I like are also good.

There's a great quote where it says like every great man's a bad man.

And in this case, it is incredibly true where like he's with all this great stuff.

He just has also done a ton of bad shit.

So I still like will absolutely listen to his stuff, but I won't, I think he's a piece

of shit.

Right.

Isn't that weird?

That's I'm sort of in the same boat.

I don't know how to feel.

It's just why I brought it up because I'm not weird.

I mean, if you like surely like, I don't know, I don't even like it in political, but maybe

like chick, like Chick-fil-A it's like, dude, my taste buds don't know that you hate

gays.

Right.

Right.

Right.

So it's like, I couldn't, it's hard.

You know, I could, I could disagree with you, but still enjoy your stuff.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think, I mean, with, with all, with all that's coming out, everybody's going to

have to figure out how they're going to deal with this because your favorite something

musician, athlete, comedian, politician, one of your favorites is going to go down for

being a total either asshole, creep, criminal, bad guy, you know, something's going to come

out and I think everybody's going to have to ask themselves, cool, how am I going to

deal with that?

Am I going to still consume their stuff that I like?

Or am I going to protest it?

Am I going to think their piece of shit?

Am I going to be conflicted?

What's going to happen?

It's like, it's like, you know, Martin Luther King is one of my heroes, but he also cheated

on his wife a lot.

Right.

Or that's like the rumor.

So it's like,

Yeah.

I had heard about that.

That's really crazy.

Apparently, I just learned about this, but like the FBI was tracking him for a while because

he was seeing a sort of like a potential enemy of the state and they like bugged his hotel

rooms or whatever.

There's reportedly no one's seen this, I guess, but it's, there's reportedly tapes of

him sleeping with like 40 different women, you know, outside of his marriage and participating

in, you know, some sort of sexually deviant activities, but he's Martin Luther King, right?

And he's got like, you know, a day, a day named after him and everything else.

Yeah.

So that's what my opinion is just like everyone who's great is also bad in another person's

perspective and you just, you just got to take the whole person.

Right.

Okay.

So the idea I had off this was actually a wiki leaks for creeps because one of the things

that was really disturbing that came out of this was not just, oh, this guy I thought

was cool.

I liked, turns out to be not so cool and I don't like what he did, but it was like a

lot of these text messages were from like 10 plus years ago.

And so, and same thing with like a lot of the people that get canceled, like the Bill

Cosby stuff, a lot of that stuff, I think was happening like in the nineties or something

like that, and it takes sometimes decades for the stuff to come out.

And I think that's a shame because, you know, a, the person sort of gets away with it and

continues to harm other people or sort of, you know, be a, you know, a medicine society

is out on the loose as long as these things stay secret.

But I understand why people don't expose things as in they get tied up and wrapped up in it.

And, you know, you could see the girls who came out and said something about Christalia,

their Twitter, they're getting attacked by his fans who are like, you know, well, why

do you, why'd you send them the picture and like stupid stuff like that?

And so I think there needs to be sort of a WikiLeaks for creeps where there is a, there

is a way to dump anonymously evidence and claims against people.

And then there needs to be some sort of like verifying function, like a set of journalists,

kind of like the people who went and studied the Panama Papers and like dug into it and

try to figure out which, what's real, what's not.

Like a guaranteed sort of anonymity layer so that, you know, information can get out

faster.

What do you think of that?

As long as there's a trustworthy third party to verify, I've been to it.

It's just so easy to accuse people of doing bad stuff.

Totally.

And that's the reason this can't be a company because you'll just die of sort of libel and

slander, you know, like, because anything that turns out not to be true, you get, just

get sued out of existence.

I think there was like a, there was an app that used to rate guys.

I think it's called Lola or Lala.

I remember that.

I remember that.

I, my roommate was rated on it and it said, like, she did on me and like small dick.

And I was like, oh, dude, that sucks.

I was like, I'm sorry, right?

I mean, that sucks.

So yeah, like, I think you can't really do this as a company, but I think for society,

it would be good if there's a way for people to be able to come forward about bad behavior

better for a whistleblower network to come forward.

And not just about like how WikiLeaks is about sort of documents around certain things, but

actually around, you know, racism, sexual harassment, things like that.

I think there needs to be something like this.

And obviously I haven't put a lot of thought into this.

I'm not an expert about this stuff, but when I saw that it takes 10 years to come out,

I'm like, something's broken.

Yeah.

And it is crazy that like Hannibal Burris joked about that Bill Cosby thing and his

joke was something like, what?

Everyone knows this.

Right.

Everyone knows this guy.

Harvey Weinstein.

Everybody knew that.

Like everyone, we all talked about this.

We all know this.

And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

I didn't know this.

This is crazy.

Like I wish I would have.

I agree with that.

I also think that there's a lot of room to deconstruct Wikipedia.

I think Wikipedia is, I'm like, I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore libertarian, but I'm libertarian

or I tend to be on a lot of topics.

And I think that Wikipedia should actually be a nonprofit or some type of like owned

by the government and should be like a national treasure that.

Yeah.

The Department of Education should just own Wikipedia and fund it through, you know, what

is the, look up the Department of Education funding.

And I bet that would cover, you know, easily what Wikipedia needs to stay around.

And it's doing a hell of a lot more than the Department of Education probably is.

Wikipedia already in a nonprofit.

It might be a nonprofit, but I want to make sure it never goes out of business.

I think that Wikipedia is a treasure and same with Wikipedia Reddit.

I'm like Reddit, don't make money.

You don't need to make money.

Well, just ask, put a little donation thing and just let us see your expenses and I'll

just give you a little bit and everyone will.

It's like one of the few things where I'm like donation or government funded is the

way to go.

Right on.

Okay.

I want to give people in the last four minutes, oh my God, Department of Education, 68 billion

in funding.

Yeah.

They can afford to fund.

How much do you think Wikipedia?

I don't even know.

Like five billion page views a month.

How much?

Well, they say on their thing, we need this much to survive.

I don't know what it is, but it's like, I don't think it's above 2 billion.

I don't think I don't even know that what do you think Twitch costs to run?

Like if you know, so I can't say, okay, if I are just for the hosting, like I'm ignorant.

I know nothing.

Does it cost more than 10 million?

Do you think it would cost more than 10 million a month?

Yes.

But I can't say about Twitch, but I would just say I'm no Wikipedia.

Sorry.

Do you think Wikipedia costs more than $10 million a month just in hosting?

I think it's probably about that.

That'd be my guess.

So they need $200 million a year.

AWS could just fund it and be like, hey, this is powered by AWS.

It could be on every page powered by AWS free hosting that way.

Wikipedia's funding is around 100 million a year.

There it is.

Okay.

So let's give them one more idea before we go because we talked about a bunch of random

topics today.

Okay.

Business idea.

So I just got my new house and I'm renting this place and as part of it you need renters

insurance and so I'm like, oh, fuck.

Here's a task.

I don't want to go do.

You got to go get lemonade.

Yeah.

I got to go do whatever.

Then I was thinking about it.

I was like, and the guy who's telling me I need renters insurance is the broker, the

agent who like rented me the house.

And I was like, why isn't this just part of the lease where like, you're like, hey, by

the way, check this box because you need renters insurance to just do it through me.

And you have your renters insurance done.

And so obviously this guy is not an insurance company, but what I think you could do is create

a back office insurance company where the storefront is actually just all the rental

agents and brokers that already are talking to the customer just signed a deal.

They're the ones trying to enforce these terms and force you to have insurance.

Why aren't they empowered?

So I'll give you an example of this.

I have a buddy named Guy Gal.

Great name.

Fucking top five name.

Guy Gal.

Guy Gal is his name.

Oh, that's great.

Guy has this company called Rise, I believe is the name of the company.

And what he does is he's like, hey, you know, all these, when you go to sell a house and

the sign goes up and it's like Caldwell banker or like, yeah, whatever, KB homes or whatever

it is, it's like always the brokerage name.

And then like the agent is kind of like a very secondary footer thing.

He's like, dude, the world is shifting where the agents really want their own brand upfront.

The agents are the one who go do the marketing, the sales.

So what he did was he's like, he go and the brokerage takes a huge fee.

So when an agent gets their fee, I think the brokerage would take 50%.

And so he was like, look, through technology, I can make a more streamlined brokerage.

And what I could do is I can be a hidden back office for any agent.

So you're the agent, your name is Alex, you know, Alex Rompero.

Well, you could just be the Rompero group and you could build your brand as the as the

storefront.

Forget Caldwell banker.

You don't need those guys.

I will be the the back office.

I'll take care of the legal compliance and paperwork that the brokerage normally does.

And I will only charge you X% fee.

And it's less than the 50% that isn't this exactly what Caldwell banker does?

Caldwell banker does it, but they are the back office, but they put their brand first.

And a broker can try to like kind of put their own marketing front on top, but it's not their

core model and they take a huge cut.

So what this guy did, what he did with rise is really smart.

He he targeted the top 1% of agents in every market.

He goes to them.

He said, dude, you're a top 1%.

You don't need Caldwell banker.

You are the brand.

And he said, bring your book of business to me.

I'll do the same work that they do for you with the lower cut.

And I'm going to, and look, you push a button, your website gets spun up automatically.

I'll take care of all your sort of technology needs.

And I take 15% instead of 50% or whatever it is.

And so I think it's really smart model.

He's doing really, really well.

How much money is he doing?

I can't say, but the company's doing well.

And I think it's a really smart model attacking a very big space, which is this

back end brokerage thing for home sales.

I think you could do the same thing for insurance.

I think you could build an invisible insurance company and have the brokers or the agents

be the storefront and just say, Hey, you should just offer this to all your clients when they

rent from you or buy from you.

I know that Compass kind of did this in the real estate space, but there's someone doing

this for business insurance where they where they're trying to be a back office as a service.

I've seen that.

I think there's more that I think there's more companies that can do this that are not

doing this today, where you empower the agent who is already at the point of sale and you

give them a thing to upsell that gives them a little bit of money and it makes your customer

acquisition free and you just need to provide the back end service for it.

So I think there's a whole class of businesses like this.

Yeah, I need to go and research all this.

This interests me a lot.

I'm going to go look up Caldwell Banker.

I don't even, I see their signs.

I don't even know what they do entirely.

Yeah.

Deep dive it and deep dive Compass because they kind of disrupted this.

Yeah.

They crush it.

All right.

I got to run my computer batteries at 1%.

Cool.

I'm going to shut my computer.

I got to go.

See you.

Me too.

Okay.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.