My First Million: Binge On Business Ideas For 2023

So when somebody doesn't accept your job offer, the service would

dig in and find out the real reasons why phenomenal when

somebody leaves the service digs in and finds the real reason

why. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. That is a really

good idea. Wow, that's a that's a solid one.

Alright, we're live. I've got some fire today seems like you've

got some as well. Yeah, dude. But I feel like I haven't seen

you in a while. You got any like, you know, gold stories for

me. You were on fire in the group chat today. You thought I

was on fire? Oh, you were. You know, you're on fire. You might

not know this phrase. Have you ever heard the phrase? Oh, man,

he's in his bag right now. No, it's like kind of a basketball

thing. But you were in your bag today. That's one of those

phrases you can misuse. Like I'm bagging today and everyone's

like, what's he saying? My my love language is feedback. Like I

just I constantly need feedback. And I was getting no

compliments off off my jokes in our group chat today. So I was

getting no, I told you, I said save it for the pod. Save the

heat for the pod. That was your that's as good of a compliment

is one guy's gonna give to another. So the background for

the listeners, Sean and I have a group chat. It's me, you,

Greg Eisenberg, Sahil Bloom, Austin Reef, Nikita beer, Nick

Huber. Who else? And a few guys we lost along the way.

Yeah, RIP. But that chat is kind of game changing. I like I

like it's so funny. I get most all my entertainment from that

chat. Yeah, we lost a lot of money due to horrible

investment tips from that chat last year. But I think it was a

net positive because the jokes are just amazing. And you get

people's real personality, not their Twitter personality,

which is which is great. It's awesome. Do you want me do you

want me to tell you one topic? Yeah, yeah, let's do it. But

before I do that, I forgot to remind you these last few

times, you being the listener about our gentleman's

agreement. So like, have you ever? Yes. Like, have you ever

gone to 7 11 and you've seen like, like in Alzheimer's or

like a sick children's bowl and you like leave a quarter and

you take a piece of candy? Right. That whole thing works.

And they use this thing called an honor system, a gentleman's

agreement where you put down a quarter and you take a piece

of candy and it's just, it just works. That's kind of what

our podcast is like a little bit with subscribing to our

YouTube channel. So Sean and I spend all this time. We talk

about stuff constantly about what we're going to do on the

pod. I live an epic life actually just so I can talk

about it on the pod. I dedicate my life to this and all I

want in exchange is not even a quarter. It's just for you to

click subscribe on YouTube. So if you're listening to this on

iTunes or Spotify, whatever, just go to your YouTube and

just click subscribe. That's all we want because that helps

the algorithm. We get a little bit higher and it helps our

ego. I mean, that's really at all. Today, if you're making

the choice between Alzheimer's children and us, make the

right choice. Choose us. Yeah. It's crazy. 60% of our

YouTube views come from people who don't subscribe. That's

crazy. And all I can ask them is, are you not entertained? Do

you not want more of this? Click subscribe. All right. So

that's that. Gentleman's Agreement Reinforced. And

everyone's been doing it lately. So if you don't do it,

you're gonna, you'll look silly. So I think you should do it.

All right. So here's, I'm gonna tell you about something

that's interesting. There's a guy who I love and his name's

Anand. He started CB Insights. Do you know him? Yeah. Listen

to the pod. Love the guy. Yeah. He's a great guy. He's one of

my good friends. And I was thinking about this. So there's

a lot of things that second time or third time

entrepreneurs think about that mostly first time

entrepreneurs don't think about. One of them being

distribution. So they'll think like, oh, I'm just gonna

make a cool product and it'll somehow get into people's

hands. That's false. You gotta have marketing baked in or

like it's gotta be part of like the ideation phase

marketing. The second thing is pricing. They think, oh, I'll

just charge $5 a month and I'll get like millions of people

to buy this. And then you actually start doing it and

you're like, wow, this is incredibly challenging to

get thousands or tens of thousands, let alone millions

of people to buy something that's really hard. And so I've

been thinking about that pricing thing. So things that

fit my wants and my needs and my skill sets. So for

example, content. There's industry dive, which probably

only has five or 10 million people a month reading their

website, but they make shit for like people who own

grocery stores like content for people who own grocery

stores versus Buzzfeed, which makes stuff for stay at home

moms who like cat videos. Buzzfeed worth 100 million.

Industry drive does the exact same thing. Way smaller

audience makes or sold recently for $500 or $600 million.

So like I've been thinking about like those that price

just like that that the different ways of packaging.

And so a nod from CB Insights. He's got this company

that's brand new. It's only 90 days old. It's been way low

key and under the under wraps and I recently discovered it

and I asked him. So it's called yardstick. So go to

yardstick.com and tell me what you see. It's called yardstick.

So it's the word yard like a backyard and then stick is

S-T-I-Q. He's getting a little cute on us. Learn what

software buyers really think about their vendors.

Great title. Great headline. And then it says access

thousands of analysts led conversations with software

buyers to quickly understand pricing, competition,

evaluation, criteria and subscription and satisfaction.

So basically they interview software buyers and they

get the scoop on how do you really feel about X tool

and then they summarize it so that you can you can see

how other people think about this tool before you buy it.

Exactly. That's it. And they charge like something like

30 or 40. Really smart by the way. They charge. Yeah, it's

really smart and I'll explain how this works but they

charge like 30 or $40,000 a year for this and I think

this could be $100 million a year business and they're

just I'm downplaying but right now the MVP is just

interviewing people and showing transcripts. Eventually

I'm sure they're going to ask. This is really smart. I

remember you talked about this back in the day because

there's that website. What is it? G2 Crowd. Yes, exactly.

And there's basically like software is a massive

category and people are like, oh, which CRM should I use?

And it's like, oh, you know, it's HubSpot fighting with

10 other people to try to be the answer to that question.

And so reviews is always this thing that people are

trying to like. I think people in general want the

idea of a review but it's hard to trust reviews

nowadays. You don't know if they're from people like

you who have the same problems as you and the

website like, you know, G2 Crowd and these other

ones, they're pretty bad and I've seen it. I've seen

several people try to create a new software review

site to compete with them and they have to do two

things. One, they have to actually be better at the

reviews and two, they have to rank higher in SEO

for when somebody searches for, you know, whatever X

tool alternative or what's the best, which is hard,

you know, sales tool for me to use and it's really

hard to beat their SEO. And so they're fighting a

very uphill battle. This I think is smart for two

reasons. One, they already have a bunch of customers

that they could just sell into with this. Two, the

idea of instead of saying, okay, well whoever

reviews it, hopefully they're good reviews, they're

like, no, we're just going to hire people to do

these conversations and like the math works out.

If we get these brands to say what they think about

these tools, you know, we might only need to

invest, I don't know, $200,000 into the collection

of that data and that gives us like a better

review, a better content system.

And you've nailed everything and there's a third

thing though, which is basically G2 or

software reviews.com or a lot of these websites, the

way they typically work is they give an affiliate

fee or some type of like advertisement fee.

They collect that from the brand who wants to

advertise on the website, which means they have to

go and get traffic and they've got to convince

these brands to give money. Whereas this business,

yardstick, it does exactly what I said before.

It changes the way they package it. And so they

just go, no, you're the customer, you're going

to read this and you're going to get value from

this, you're giving us 30 grand a year. And so

we're just going to make sure for you and it's

just, that's our exchange. And so that's what

we're going to do. And so basically the background

behind this business is this is something that I

didn't know about until recently and probably

you didn't either because we both had small

companies. And so a small company in this

definition is anything that's below a billion

dollars in market cap or value, meaning typically

the people who buy this shit have 500 employees.

And the reason that's important is when you buy

a software provider, picking the wrong software

if you are a 500 person company, it will cost

you like so much money. And so you have to do

actually a fair amount of research, including

like who invested in this company. So I know

they're not even going to go out of business.

And I never even a million years thought about

that. I'm like, dude, I'm just going to Google

like what's better, Gusto or Xenofits and like

we'll just pick one and then we'll switch if it

sucks. And so what yardstick is doing is they

actually have just, it's a non and seven other

employees are the early people starting this

company. And they basically just ask like seven

questions to people who have bought software

in the last two years. And they say like, who else

did you consider? Who'd you pick? What price did

you pay? Would you renew? What's your customer

satisfaction? And then the people who purchased

this yardstick product are either investment

bankers. So people who are like making investment

decisions for the public markets or private

markets and they want to know what the customer

satisfaction is or people who are going out and

buying software and they could see these other

reviews. And it's just like a really interesting

business because there's there's a companies

like GLG, you know, GLG.

Yeah, of course. I've done some GLG calls back

in the day. Yeah, you get paid two grand an hour

to like answer questions, but that's one to one.

And so what they're saying is like, no, we're not

going to do one to one, but we'll just make it

so you can just read like dozens and dozens

of interviews. So anyway, interesting company

for all everything I said. But secondly, it's

an interesting company because this business is

only 90 days old. And I think if you go and sign

up for their email list now, it's kind of like

you can watch like a big business being built

and read real time. Yeah, this is really good.

Like I'm jealous. I didn't think of this idea.

I kind of wish he had just done this outside of

CB Insights. I feel like this could have been

his next hit. I think it's going to be as big

as CB Insights. So I think there's a slight, you

know, although it's good to be able to sell into

those same customers, I think it would have

been worth it to, you know, spin this out.

But, you know, that's a that's a more complicated

decision. By the way, this guy Anon, he has

a giant list of startup ideas. Have you seen

this? No, where? I'm trying to find the list.

I remember seeing it on Twitter one day, but...

Here, well, look for a second. The background

behind Anon is he started CB Insights.

They're close to 100 million in revenue.

He's kind of a shithead in a really good way.

For example, he signs, he writes their daily

newsletter and he signs the newsletter with I Love

You. Or in his Twitter profile, it says,

please sign up for CB Insights. I owe people money.

And like he is like kind of like a cheeky,

mischievous guy and very, very likeable.

And that's and his content's amazing.

And so that's Anon's really interesting.

If you if you want to know what speaks to our heart,

you got to be somebody who's trying to do

something. So you got to be ambitious or

successful in some way. And the second thing is

a little bit of a shithead. I don't like to eat

my wings without sauce. You got to have a

little dipping sauce to your personality if

you're going to if you're going to get me on

board. Yeah. And he's got the sauce.

All right. So let me tell you some of these

ideas. So I don't have the full list. I remember

seeing this like a year ago or something like

that. We should get them on the pod. But let

me just read a couple of the ideas that were

tweeted out from this list. Okay. So first one.

Tough Mudder for Kids. So here's what he says.

Really any sort of manufactured adversity for

semi affluent or affluent kids. Parents talk

about wanting their kids to have perspective,

resilience and reduce their entitlement and

get them off screens. Tough Mudder for Kids.

Super high margin. Unsure if you know,

unsure exactly how it worked, but money to be

made for sure. Okay. That's one.

Barton Races. I'm signing up for one. They

actually have a kids version right now.

Tiny Spartans. I don't know if his house was

called, but you know, we can pretend.

That's a good name. Startup idea. Duolingo for

teaching finance or accounting. Teach the

principles of accounting or finance via a

gamified Duolingo style app. What do you

give that one? Yeah. That's cool.

Okay. Next one. Hosted buyer meetings on a

plane. B2B decision makers get a free

vacation if they agree to have X number of

conversations on a flight. It's like the

timeshare idea. It's like, so you get a free

flight, but it's going to get on a plane,

a full of vendors. It's like that movie,

Snakes on a Plane, but instead of snakes,

it's just B2B software vendors just waiting

to just barrage you for the next seven

hours on your way to Maui. It just turns

a coke and just everything that like a

45 year old guy named Todd who wears

type blue jeans and brown shoes, whatever

they need to like feel live on a weekend.

This is Jennifer. She wants you to call her

Jenny and she happens to like you. I think

you actually could build a business that

way. If you sign up for a free trial, you

get to go to first class, that'd be great.

Yeah. This is actually a kind of a genius

idea. Okay. Here we go. Buyable Google

Doc travel itineraries. So friends often

share their travel plans via Google

Docs. You know, here's what I did in

Iceland. Since they're friends, I chest

her judgment. You know, the idea would be

let me just buy the whole itinerary with

a buy now button. My vacation plan is

done. Awesome. Quick reaction. Okay.

That's a small business, but cool.

Win loss reporting for employee

hiring and attrition. So when somebody

doesn't accept your job offer, the

service would dig in and find out the

real reasons why. Phenomenal. When

somebody leaves, the service digs in

and finds the real reason why. It would

maybe anonymize or synthesize the

insights over time. Today, the process is

very ad hoc. That's a great idea. That's a

great idea. That is a really good idea.

Wow. That's a solid one. Okay. Here's a

not so solid one, but more fun. The Nike

of baby diapers. So create high

performance premium diapers. Use sodium

polyacrylate to make them super

absorbent like astronaut diapers. Other

tech to increase comfort, make cleanup

easier. Why? Because parents spend a

super amount of money under kids. Okay.

Anytime you say it's a Nike of

something, it's like when I see a

restaurant on the side of roads, it says

world's greatest coffee or like the best

pie in town. I automatically buy it.

That's my rule. If it says it's the world's

greatest, if you're just bold enough to

think that, I'm going to try it. I bid.

Dude, I had the same realization

yesterday where I was listening to some

talk where Johnny Ive was talking. And I

knew somebody who met Johnny Ive, like

used to hang out with Johnny Ive

regularly. They like lived near each

other in San Francisco. And I was like,

oh, what's Johnny Ive like? For those who

don't know, he's basically the head

designer at Apple for like all the

great products, iPod, you know, whatever,

Macintosh, you know, iPhone, all that

good stuff. So this guy's like basically

the greatest product designer in the

world. He's the guy Steve Jobs trusted

the most at Apple. I was like, what's he

like? And they're like, oh, you know, he's

kind of like you would expect. He's like,

you know, he's got a sort of a dry but

funny personality. He's a pretty focused

individual. Like he's not like effing

around a whole lot. You know, he works

really hard. And they'd be like, yeah,

they'd come to me. They'd be like, yeah,

Johnny had an idea. I was like, oh my god,

what's this Johnny Ive idea? Now, I don't

remember the specifics. This was like

eight years ago. But they just set up for

every idea. But it'd be like a closet

that's beautifully designed.

What does that mean? And then I realized I

started using this. I'd be like, you know

what you guys should do? Like I was

giving somebody advice the other day. I

was like, you know, in your when you guys

is an econ brand. I was like, when you

send your package, you should put in

there just like beautiful pamphlet. Just

super well done. That just will make

somebody they'll read it. They'll know

your story. But just just a beautiful

pamphlet. And then I realized I was like,

wow, if you just say like a beautiful

thing, a beautiful and then just like

generic thing and say just super well

done. The idea goes from like a whatever

idea to like, that's a great idea. Yeah,

I could see that. And honestly, it's not

totally BS. There is something to it. If

you said like, you know, let's just make

like a really like just a hilarious

YouTube video. It's like, actually, that

is the correct strategy. You know, but

there's not much work to it. It's just a

question. Can you can you do something

that's actually beautiful or really

well done or really funny? But honestly,

that's not a bad business plan for most

things to just say just a beautifully

done. Just all the details nailed.

It's like Andrew Wilkinson. Super smart.

Andrew Wilkinson says, we try to buy

wonderful companies and like our

beautiful businesses. We want to buy

beautiful businesses. Buy like a job

board. Yeah, like wonderful. You're

right. That is, it's wonderful.

Right. He's like, okay, we're gonna bake

this cookie, but it's just gonna melt in

your mouth. And you're like, okay, all

right, all right, I'm in. It's like, you

know, otherwise it's just a cookie. And

so I think there's something to this,

but I'm gonna keep going. By the way, I

feel like I'm reading this guy's diary

and just, you know, I feel, I feel wrong

just taking all these startup ideas

here so rapid fire. This could be like

12 episodes of content for us, but I'm

gonna kind of burn through it. Let's just

steal it. Well, I know, but I'm like, I

want to just use them all now on a binge

eat this whole like double ice cream

right here. Let me give you a couple more.

Let me find one. Okay, how about this one?

Happy Cam. A highlight reel of the best

moments of your life. How? A wearable

camera that records audio and video

only when you're laughing after the

conversation who you're with and great

moments. All right, fictitious. Even the

great ones are gonna miss once in a

while. Yeah, just to show a little

balance here.

Okay, how about this? He also wrote bad

startup ideas, I think, so bad but sexy.

So startup ideas that suck you in, but

they're actually bad startup ideas. Here

we go. Yeah. Personal CRM. Always a bad

one. Reach into the choir. Yeah.

Curated news recommendations. Well, in

most cases it's bad, but hey, look, that's

what you be at Austin. We gotta do it.

It's something gonna be like a college

campus like Craigslist and then like

laundry on like delivery laundry. Here's

one. What are my friends up to right now

apps? These apps that promise you, hey,

what if your friend was two blocks away?

You didn't know this with this app you

could have met up with them. No, wrong.

Dude, by the way, did you know that girls

share their location on their iPhone with

other girls? Like my wife does this with

her friends. Did you know people do that?

Like safety purposes? I don't know why

they do that, but like I was out with

like my wife and a bunch of her friends

and they all did the same thing with

themselves, like that group of friends

and other people. Like they know

where their real-time location is at

all times. Hold on. Honey, why are you

going to the car? My friend's going to the

restroom and she wanted somebody to go

with her. Dude, it's crazy.

I don't even know how to use that feature.

I don't even know where that feature is

on a phone. I don't know. You click a

thing and it says like share location

for an hour or share indefinitely.

Yeah, seems like a trap. Yeah, not going

to happen. All right, here we go. To do

list software. Yep, that's one classic

story by Glassdoor for VCs. A website that

rates VCs. Nobody really cares very much

about VCs. They're infrequent decisions

for most entrepreneurs. They'll take

money from who they can get in most

cases. Founders are lucky enough to have

a good choice. They probably already know

who's good. Or they'll take anything. So

those are some of his bad startup

ideas. But he's got a bunch here. We

should have him on. The guy is

interesting. He's pretty funny. He's earned

his spot for sure. Okay, I want to

talk about a different little trend that

I've seen on Twitter. And I call this

the guy mafia. I saw that line. I thought

that was really funny. I mean, I would

have called the guy mafia just the

mafia. But the guy mafia.

Well, so what am I calling the guy

mafia? You've probably seen this trend.

I feel like it's kind of new. But it's

basically a whole bunch of Twitter

accounts that are branded like car

dealership guy, mobile home part guy,

strip mall guy, self-storage guy, right?

There's like, and they're basically just

saying it's an anonymous account so you

don't know who's behind it. The promise

is basically, hey, I've been in this

space for a while. I've been doing

this for 10, 20 years. I will share

insights but also kind of like industry

secrets about the way our industry

works. The dirty laundry. And these

accounts are blowing up. They get really

big really fast. I just bought a car

from car dealership guy. Did you really?

I don't know who this guy is. I just

I almost bought a car from him too.

I almost bought a car from him too.

Tell people who he is. Well, I don't want

to say his identity. He did eventually

tell me his identity. I know who he is too.

So, he's car dealership guy on Twitter.

Basically, he's always just tweeting

out about like, you know, insights into

the car market, right? Which I like

following, right? Because I want to know

about the car market without doing any

work. Here's one that he just tweeted.

He said, the market is literally flooded

with Buicks. They're rotting on car lots

like trash. You could score a deal on

these if you're willing to suffer the

embarrassment of being seen in one.

Buicks are at 121-day supply. For

context, Toyota is less than 30-day

supply. Ridiculous. The simple people

terms. Day supply means the number of

days it would take to deplete the

current new car inventory at the

current rate of sales. And so,

immediately I went, let's go look at a

Buick.

Yeah, these guys are very influential. I'm

telling you, I spent a lot of money on a

car through this guy that I never saw.

So, what he's doing with his like

what did you buy?

service. So, okay, let me give you the

full idea then I'll break it down. But

here's, we'll use him as an example.

So, it creates the car dealership guy. And

I don't think he's been at it for very

long. So, let me pull up kind of the

December 21.

So, December 21. So, that's one year

basically.

He added 93,000 followers in the last

30 days.

Oh my god, he's at 225,000 now.

Literally, when we wrote this thing like

you know, two days ago, we did the

research for this. He was at 219. So, like

two days he added 6,000 followers. This

guy's

blowing up. And what he's doing is

tweeting out insights. Like, okay, you know,

here's what they use car prices are

doing. Here's what the market is. Here's

which models and makes are

hottest right now. Here's why G wagons

are selling for this. And here's where I

think that's going.

Here's what's happening with auto loans

and here's what that means for the

industry. All that good stuff.

Okay, so he gets the following because

he's tweeting out interesting stuff.

Secondly, he then says, okay, well, what

do I do with this? What do I create a

newsletter, paid community? You know,

people are like the Sam and Sean play

book. You know, they open up their little

like red

red book and they're like, is this what

I want to do?

But actually, he got some good advice

from a buddy of mine who said, screw

that, don't don't make a newsletter and

then try to find ads and sponsors are

paid. He goes, just help people buy

cars. Yeah, you're building up a load of

trust on Twitter.

People will buy cars for you. In fact,

they'll buy me a car. So my buddy is

like, I want to buy a Toyota Sequoia.

And I think there's like Toyota Sequoia

who's telling me is like some crazy

things where

it hasn't been updated in like

15 or 18 years or something like that.

Like the last update was like in 2004

or some shit like that.

And there's like 100,000 person waiting

list for the Toyota Sequoia. So like

crazy number like that.

And he's like, yeah, but I bet there's

got to be one somewhere in the country.

You know what, I'll get, I'll buy in any

color, any goofy color.

And this guy, because car dealership

guy is

has a background as a dealer, he can at

least we think

access the car dealership, the car

dealer network. So basically they can buy

cars.

They have like their own little MLS system,

right? So they can buy cars out of

auction and that's how dealers acquire

cars and then they can sell those cars

at a retail markup.

And so what he's doing is he's just

buying cars out of the auction,

not really applying the retail markup

and just charging a flat fee as a

concierge

for purchasing the vehicle.

Which we talked about before.

We talked about negotiating a

negotiating car price as a service

from a guy who like knows the in and

outs of car dealerships and he knows the

time of month, who to talk to, what to

say, things like that.

This is like that, but more in depth.

And so I told the guy, I was like, hey, I

want an Escalade.

You want an Escalade?

I said, I want an Escalade. By the way,

hilarious thing.

I go, I was like, you know, let me just

I was like, I'm not going to go test drive

these cars, nothing. So I was like, let me

just go read the reviews online real

quick.

But if you search for like reviews, you

get these like, it's like, dude, is this

just like some SEO optimized website? So

I go, read it. Let me go to read it and

see what people are saying.

Let me tell you how people on Reddit

feel about car dealerships. The same

way that people in prison feel about

pedophiles. Like people on Reddit do not

like escalates. They are like, dude, I've

never met a non-jerk in an Escalade,

right? Like, yeah, you're going to start

smoking cigars, like drug dealers and

desperate housewives. And then I was

like, hey guys, category number three,

Indian podcasters.

Here we go. And so are you getting the

hybrid one or the electric one or

something like that?

No, no, no, you got to go full on.

But they have good cell. You know, they

have great self-driving technology. I

actually looked at one too.

I didn't do that much research, to be

honest with you, but just got the big

one. So the extended version. So anyways,

the, my point is, a lot of trust, but

anyways, bought a car with this guy.

So, dude, you live in the suburbs of

San Francisco and you drive an Escalade,

you are warping into something. I don't

know exactly what it is, but there's

definitely a stereotype that you're

fitting it to. You're like the Tony

Soprano Danville. I can't believe that.

Let me tell you some of these other guys.

So we have strip mall guy who you know

he's basically buys like little strip

malls or like, I don't know, I don't know

what you'd call it. Like these little

like B-class shopping centers.

There's the franchise wolf.

Franchise wolf is a guy who talks about

buying franchises and what franchise

is doing. Oh, crumble cookies exploding

like crazy. Here's what's going on with

that franchise. That's a great,

that's a great niche to be in because

interested franchise buyers are super,

super valuable. That's that customer, a

lead who's interested in buying a

franchise is worth tens of thousand

dollars to these companies.

Secret CFO. Another great name. I didn't

go with the guy, but I like Secret CFO.

So I like franchise wolf. I like Secret

CFO. These are great names, great brands.

And I think they work for a couple

reasons. Wait, what about the watch guy?

I talked to him. I almost bought a watch

from him. He just will post. I didn't even

know about him.

Yeah, it's a watch guy. It's called,

I think just watch guy actually.

I see a new one like every day right

now. And by the way, this whole tactic

is going to get flooded. It's already

getting flooded because people see it

now that we're talking about it and

breaking it down. Everybody who's like,

I am a dental hygienist, dental hygienist

guy, you know, like there's going to be

like just like a ton of these coming

out. And they all use cartoons as

their avatar. By the way, I sent you in

the Riverside Chat, the luxury watch guy,

and he does the exact same thing. He

goes, here's what I'm seeing. This

Rolex retails for $20,000. It's an

eight month wait. And so therefore what

we're actually seeing is people are

buying it for $35,000. Or this month,

mostly because of the crypto guys, this

particular model of Rolex is going way

down because they're selling it because

they need to afford rent.

And by the way, if anybody wants to do

the NFT guy, you know, for crypto, you

know, we'll hire you for the bill card.

We'll pay you to build this account if

you're good. So basically, this is the

trend. Okay, so why do I think this

works? Number one, the value proposition

is in the name. You don't even need to

click to the bio. They're a walking

billboard for what value they're going

to provide to you, what they're going

to teach you about. I think that sets

them apart from just like, oh, this is

Steve, you know, Steve Irwin. You know,

you don't know that he's the nature guy,

right? Like, you don't know that you have

to, there's still a leap of faith. You

have to click in, read the bio, then you

get the, then you understand the value.

Here, it's right on top. Second thing,

they promise basically data, insights,

and industry secrets. And people really

like industry secrets. And so you can go

viral with some of these, like, here's

the dirty little secrets about buying a

used car or go about what happens when

you walk into a car dealership.

I sat in these rooms for 30 years. I know

what conversations the seller is

having when you walk in like a fish.

And it's like, I got to click this, I got

to read this. And at the end of it, I'm

going to trust them as a niche expert.

So I think those are the two kind of

like core reasons that it works. It's also

just a focused feed. So versus my account,

sometimes you're going to hear me talk

about sports. I'm going to crack a joke.

I'm going to complain about my kids.

Sometimes I'm going to tweet tech stuff.

And in reality, people just kind of want

you for one of those things at up front.

Up front, a focused feed is going to do

better. So I think that's why these are,

these are working. And I think all of

these people who do this are going to

make at least low millions of dollars.

And a few of them who've really learned

how to capitalize on this are will

make tens of millions of dollars of a

business that basically the core of

their business is just this Twitter

account where they are the gas station

guy. Like I saw one yesterday, it was

mobile home park guy, tweeted one

interesting thing about mobile home. I

insta followed. I have no real desire to

buy a mobile home park, but I kind of want

to know about it, be smarter about it.

And then it turns out the guy DMs me,

it's my friend. I'm like, you, you do this?

He's like, yeah. What the hell's going on

here? And so, you know, you never know

what's going on. Your dad, your dad's doing

the side hustle. I think this is a

really, really good insight that you've

had. And I completely agree. I think

someone like the car guy, I think could

make tens of millions of dollars. Give

you, now let me give you the, so what,

what I do about this? Let me add to it,

right? So by the way, another good thing

about this, you can have ghost riders

or contributors because you're just

under this anonymous umbrella brand.

So that's another benefit here. Okay, so

what can you do with it? So first, I think

avoid the, you know, let me do shoutouts,

let me do paid ads in a free newsletter,

let me do a community. Like, if somebody

says the word community, you should

stiff arm them in this, if you're doing

these. You got, like, you want to do it

where you actually, you actually get

towards the transaction. Maybe a high

ticket course can work, but like, I do

think you want to be more like the car

dealership guy who's actually doing

this, or you want to be the strip mall

guy and you want to raise a giant fund

off of this. Well, dude, have you asked

why? Because I'm the same way. I would, I

almost sold my car recently and I had

him give me a quote on it to tell me

how much they're selling for. And then I

go, oh, and I made a hundred thousand

dollar plus decision because of his

advice. Have you asked yourself, why do

we trust us, these guys? Like, they don't

even, they use a cartoon.

But I do. It's the same reason people

trust us from this podcast or from

Twitter, which is that I think when you

get to see somebody think out loud,

which is what writing is, or talking on

a podcast, and they're not talking to

you, you're overhearing them. And they're

not selling you anything. They're just

giving, give, give, give, give, give, give.

Right? This is the Gary Vee playbook,

right? The jab, jab, jab hook is give,

give, give, ask. And so that's what

they're doing right now. They're just in

give mode. And I think that's the

absolute right way to be. Give, give,

give, give, give, give. Insights,

insights, insights. And then there's a

surprising number of wealthy people who

will say, hey, can you help me? I want to

do this. I want to buy one of these, or I

want to get your opinion on this. And

they will come to you hat in hand, like

me and you did to these suckers, like

suckers to these guys. Okay, so that's

the first thing. Secondly, I think that

I would get away, I called it the guy

mafia, but I'm calling it right here.

It's time to start the gal mafia. We

need, we need car dealership lady.

We need strip club queen. We need,

we need the female versus MLM queen.

Yeah, exactly. We need the, it's called

network marketing or some shit like

that, by the way. That's how that, it's

like, when you meet somebody who's proud

of being in an MLM, you're like,

wait, you know you're in MLM? They're like,

yeah, I'm great at network sales.

What the fuck is network sales?

If you can say the word, I have a

downline, like if those words have come

out of your mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's what the, that's what the, that's

what the Twitter profile should be,

like this, just the word downline make

you weak at the knees. If yes, you're at

the right place, my friend. Right. If I

presented you the shapes circle, square,

and triangle, and you immediately

gravitate towards triangle.

It's like those like psych tests, the

Rorschach tests, whatever.

Okay, so I think you should brand it as a

woman, whether you're a guy or a girl, to

be honest with you. I think, you know,

catfish away. Go, I think, I think that's

the first opportunity. Second, you got

to go find all, all the valuable niches.

So luxury watch, sneakers, cars,

gas stations, real estate. I mean, what

else? This franchise is, there's, dude,

but our women using Twitter, I surveyed

my audience and I go, select if you're a

male or a female. And it was,

it was 93% male. It was all dudes.

There's probably all dudes looking for a

father figure. Like it was all young men.

Our, our, our, like, have you, me and

Sahil did the meetup. It was like,

literally a hundred to one men to women.

It was crazy. If you're a single woman,

you got to come to our meetups. You will,

do you have any women followers you think?

Like, it's, or is all Twitter this way?

No, I think it's more us than it is all

of Twitter. I think Twitter probably

skews, but not to the 90%. That's like,

that's kind of a crazy ratio there.

But okay. By the way, so here's, here's

my crazier ideas. Okay. So first of all,

I think Twitter is the wrong place to do

this. I think it works on Twitter for

sure. But I also think LinkedIn. I think

that there are other networks where you

should probably be able to do well with

this. But the second thing is,

honestly, I think there could be a whole

social network that's basically just,

yo, you join here and there's just

verified like people who are industry

insiders that you get to read their

content from and subscribe and follow

them. I think you could literally like,

it is not likely to work, but it's more

likely than a lot of stupid social app

ideas because it has really clear value

problems. So anyways, that's my like,

long shot idea around this.

Yeah. I think this is a really, really

good insight that you've had and I

completely agree that there's a massive

opportunity here. I tried to make the

argument this summer that there's going

to be a billion-dollar empire started

on Twitter, just like there has been on

YouTube and all these other things. And

I think one of these people,

it's not out of this world that one of

these folks could be that person.

Another thing that I've noticed on

Twitter, and I didn't entirely plan

this, but because you brought it up, I'll

bring it up, have you noticed people

doing affiliates for agencies? So

basically who, a question that you and I

probably get asked a lot is like, who's

a good accounting firm or who's a

good growth marketer for newsletters?

Or, you know, there's like eight questions

that you and I get asked all the time.

And I did this with my body tutor. So my

body tutor, they were like, hey, do you

just want to like earn money every

person you send to us? Because you're

already sending tons of people. I go,

hell yeah, give me a link. Yeah, I feel like

you're tweeting a bunch of shout outs. I was

like, are you getting kickbacks here or

what's going on? I feel like you've

tweeted a couple of these. No, I haven't.

I just started doing it for my body

tutor because they're like, dude, you

send us so much like, we'll just give

you some money if you want. But no, I've

not. Who have I tweeted out lately? I just,

I just call out cool shit. It was them and

it was one other one that I saw that I

was like, oh, you're, it was your,

your YouTube cut guys. Yeah. No, no, I,

no, I just like, I'm just like, fuck it,

dude, you're done. Well, what I told him

was I go, hey, if you're good, do it.

He doesn't do it for free for you, right?

I go, do it for free for me. And if

you're good, I'll tell people about you.

And so I made him do it for free for me

for six months. And so, and so I was

just like, I'll just share you with you.

But then you and I have friends and I

see people do this and I think they're

making hundreds of thousands of

dollars a year by referring people to

certain agencies. And the right way to

do this is to find a product or a

service that you're already a fan of

and ask for an affiliate or go and

start the thing with someone and just

be an affiliate. And I think that

there's like this world, we had Neil

Patel on the pod and he basically

founded an agency and the reason why

he was considered the founder was he

did start it, but he wasn't running it.

But a lot of the early leads and

probably a lot of the leads to this

day came from NeilPatel.com because

people were using his website to

search like SEO stuff and we haven't

seen people do that on Twitter, but it

actually is really good because Twitter

unlike the other social media platforms

is ideal for link clicks and that makes

it really easy to attribute growth.

And I think that there's a lot of

people making a significant amount of

money referring people to these high

ticket products and I think we can

continue to see that and it might be a

lot pretty, quite, quite big. I've

thought about doing this.

So one thing I've been thinking about

doing is post Milk Road, okay we sold

the Milk Road, got some time, what I

wanted to do next. I kind of want to

focus on the pod, make the pod bigger

better, all that all that good stuff.

But the pod, you know, the pod itself

is free. If you're listening to this

right now, you've paid me, you know,

0.0 dollars. So how does this ever,

you know, become something that

that you could justify saying I'm not

going to go build another business, I'm

going to do this instead.

And one way is that can the pod

basically provide some kind of win-win

value for people. And so this one thing

I was thinking about was like I kind of

want to buy a bunch of businesses that

like of people that I've worked with

like either you know like go to my

accountant or go to my lawyer or go to

my estate planner and basically buy

the majority stake in their firm. And in

exchange be like cool, there are a lot

of other founders like me who also want

estate planning, who also want legal

help, who also want trademark help, who

also want accounting and basically just

build a MFM style like back office set

of businesses. And instead of an affiliate,

like actually own them, make sure that

they're great, like trust in them, and

then drive a bunch of value to the, to

those businesses. And then in return,

there's a bunch of people founders like

me who are constantly asking for

recommendations about like yeah, I'm

trying to find a good blank. And I've

burned through seven accountants before

I found one I like. Same thing on the

estate planning side, same thing. And so

it's like, not everybody should have to

redo that work. And so that's one thought

I've had as to like a cool business to

build that just kind of helps kind of

founder, entrepreneur, you know, types.

And yeah, just like own those, own a

collection of those businesses and then

have people in this audience who want

that, want those same services, be able

to just go find who we use.

Yeah. And the cons are like, can you

possibly vet the right people and have

like actually quality, but the pros are

like, this is pretty much what

Richard Branson did with Virgin. And so

it's definitely possible. I often wonder

why like more celebrities like the

Kardashians and stuff, like why don't

they own an equity stake in more things

than they do. It doesn't seem like they

do for a lot. They have done for one or

two things that ended up being quite

big. And so I wonder like, what's the

strategy? Like where's, where does, because

every celebrity has thought about this

too. And so I think like, well, where's

the down, where's the, where's the

mistakes? I think you just focus like,

you know, how much, how many, if you're

going to take equity stakes, you know,

how much, how many things can you promote

and how many things can you, you know,

you're better off basically in those

cases, like you're better off finding

the one or two product categories that

you can own a large chunk of and go big,

right? This is like skims for, for Kim

Kardashian. This is Kylie's lip stuff.

This is Conor McGregor's whiskey, Irish

whiskey. It's like, you know, he took the

Irish whiskey thing and was like, oh, I'm

just going to put this on blast. I'm

going to own a chunk of this. I'm going

to put this on blast. I think they

sold it for 500 or 600 million within

three years, something like that. So,

you know, that was like worth a lot more

than like affiliate linking out to

20 services or trying to own tiny

chunks of 20 businesses and then have

to use your clout to promote 20

different businesses. That's kind of

exhausting. So, I think that's why.

Well, let me brainstorm. Or do you want

to go to, is your pain-furtainment

really good? Both of my things here I

think are pretty good, but I can say

we're getting to the end. Go, go, go, go.

Which one do you want? Pain-furtainment?

Yes. Or the Katana store.

The Katana store is a horrible name.

So, what is that actually? Oh, I see this.

Is this the guy who keeps tweeting about

his YouTube page? Yes.

Yes, I thought that was beautiful.

I'm like, wait, Katana, is this a joke?

Like, you literally just sell swords?

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I see this guy.

I've been seeing this guy for a while now.

Same. He sells, I think his website's

called minikatana.com. So, it's mini

katanas. But what does that mean? Like a

tech deck? Like a, like a, like a tech deck,

but a sword?

What's a tech deck? I don't know.

You remember the mini finger skateboards?

Oh, no, no, it's not that small. It's like, you know, like

two feet in length. Instead of like a full

samurai sword, it's like, you know, five feet

or whatever. This is, this is, you know,

like half the size of a normal thing.

Maybe, you know, two feet in size.

I didn't know the, I didn't know the

standard size of a katana if I'm being honest.

Yeah, I realized I said that and like, you know,

the Katana guy is going to come after me

here and that's not who you want on your bad side.

All right, so if you go to this website,

you'll see that it does about one to two

million monthly visits, which is a lot.

That is a lot of traffic for an e-com store.

I, I, he tweets about their revenue sometimes,

but let me, let me see if I can find.

Wow, the website is actually awesome.

It's like the supreme of like swords.

Yeah, actually, that's a good, that's a good thing.

So I think this business does, it does, he said eight

figures. It does at least 10 million a year

in revenue. I would get way more.

So I think it's probably closer to 20 based on

the traffic. And one of the main ways that

they do it is through YouTube.

Okay, so really there's two kind of like

hardcore takeaways that I have out of this.

So this I'm calling my, I'm calling this my new

theory, my updated theory on what it takes to have

a great e-com brand.

By the way, these are dope.

I'm finna buy me a fucking sword.

These are sick.

Yeah, you went from making fun of this to

add to cart in like six seconds.

Yeah, I'm gonna buy me a gold sword.

Who doesn't want that?

So I call this the stranger things law,

which is basically, if you want to make it an

e-com, one of the things you got to do

is find people who are strangely and

unapologetically obsessed with a certain

lifestyle and then you just need to sell them

things.

So, so you know, that's, that's the whole

model, right?

So here's an example, Katana store, right?

So it's like, you have this people, you have

people who are just obsessed with Japanese

culture for some reason and they're always

like, you'll never find an Indian guy who

loves Japanese culture, right?

Like you're finding white people who are

super into Japanese culture, not Japanese

people.

And, and so you're like, um, and, and there's

people who are really into something that's

kind of irrational.

And I remember one time I met this guy who

was the first product guy, first product

manager at Twitter.

He joined when Twitter was maybe like 10,

15 people total and I was like, I remember

talking to him and I was like, so was it

obvious at that time Twitter was gonna be

huge?

He goes, no, no, no, like Twitter was, it was

like basically nothing at the time.

It was very small.

It was just kind of this thing that tech

people were doing, but even the tech people

who were using it kind of felt like

well, this is stupid, right?

Like we're all just text messaging what

we're like, what we're having for lunch

right now.

Like that doesn't seem like the next big

thing.

And he goes, but luckily I had learned a

very valuable lesson, which is anytime you

observe a weird behavior, people doing a

phenomenon where people are in mass just

doing this thing that makes no sense.

I first, your first reaction is say that's

weird and you kind of judge it because, but

I've learned you got to lean into that

phenomenon.

If people are doing video games, there's a

reason.

Exactly.

This reminded me of my experience when I

was in college.

I remember freshman year of college, I

walk into my buddy Tophieck's dorm room and

I was like, I see him playing video games

and he's got his back to me.

He's playing, I don't know, Starcraft at

the time, I think.

And then I'm like, oh, Toph.

And then he turns around and I'm like, oh,

sorry.

I didn't like, I didn't realize you're in a

game and because he took off his headphones,

he turned around and I noticed that the

game is like still going and he's not

touching the mouse anymore.

And I was like, what are you doing?

Are you just like a demo mode?

What is this?

He goes, oh, no, I'm not playing.

I'm watching.

You're watching this 2007 or something like

that, 2008.

And I'm like, you're watching somebody

play video games?

And he goes, yeah, I always do this.

And I'm like, you woke up.

I was like, it's 8.30 in the morning.

You woke up at 8.30 in the morning and

started watching somebody play Starcraft.

Why don't you just play?

He's like, no, this is like one of the

best players.

I just want to watch him.

And I was like, nerd, I was like, hold on.

Let me go get four friends so we can make

fun of you together.

Because this is not going to be fun alone.

And I literally went and grabbed my roommate

and I was like, come see what Tophie's doing.

This guy's literally, I was like, do you know,

is this your friend?

Well, you start like making fun of him,

but you actually like sit next to him.

You're like, well, hold on, hold on.

Let me like.

I'm like, why are you doing that with his dragon?

You know, like.

Wait, well, why don't you go left?

You should have gone left.

You should have gone left.

You went right.

He's like, this guy is the best player

on the Korean server.

So they, they played this match last night,

Korean time, whatever, I'm watching it now.

And I was like, you are the weirdest nerd.

And this guy is the weirdest guy.

He does like many, many weird things.

This was wonderful.

And I remember just laughing at him,

making fun of him fast forward 10 years.

I go and I'm like announcing in our LinkedIn or whatever,

like, hey, we sold our company, Bebo to Twitch,

super excited, joined the exec team at Twitch.

I get this call from Tophie.

Tophie calls me twice a year.

Twice a year, I get this call from Tophie.

I pick up, I'm expecting correct congratulations.

He just goes, you little bitch.

And I'm like, what?

And he's like, you used to make fun of me for this shit.

And now you're Mr. Twitch.

And I was like, oh yeah, that's right.

I forgot about that.

Dude, you were way ahead of the curve.

I should have listened to you.

Like I could have created Twitch.

If I had like, if I had leaned into this insight

that people want to watch other people have video.

I love a guy who holds a grudge for 10 years, by the way.

Dude, he was right.

I like the cut of your jib, guy.

I'm about it.

And so anyways, that's kind of the learning of,

if you see people doing this strange behavior, right?

Like I remember seeing people wear those

vibram five-toe shoes, where you're like,

you're going to run barefoot?

Why do you do that?

Like, you know, and they're like super into that lifestyle.

I saw a video of Joe Rogan talking about people who hunt

white bucks or some shit like that.

Like, you know, with some certain type of deer, I guess.

He goes, dude, people don't realize

how crazy this lifestyle is.

And he started explaining that people will build

fields of like food and like lounge areas

to try to attract these bucks in to hunt.

They like spend months building these like, you know,

man caves for bucks just to attract them.

And then they hunt them, right?

And I was like, that's crazy.

That are people who spend a lot of money.

People getting cold ice baths every morning.

Ice baths every morning, just like you.

People who, I met a guy yesterday, makes $5 million

doing a woodworking course.

Woodworking.

And it's like, why?

Because people who are into woodworking

are not just kind of into woodworking.

You can only be really into woodworking.

So this is crazy.

If you see the strange obsession, that is the basis for a store.

So that's the first thing.

Second thing, these guys are crushing it

with YouTube organic content.

They built their YouTube channel up to 2 million subscribers.

Oh my God.

And I think this is one of those like really cool growth acts.

I think it's worth going and looking at where

they just do these unboxings.

They got like, you know, like cute girls who are into katanas,

like nerding out about katanas as they unbox them.

And it's like, yeah, I can see a bunch of dudes

are getting really into this channel.

That makes sense to me.

Like I think that's going to be like,

I think there's a lot of people who are going to like this brand

and like this content there.

And so I think they're just doing a really good job.

I think it's a really good execute,

like 10 out of 10 execution at like a 5 out of 10 opportunity.

But like, you know, still nonetheless,

a lot you can kind of learn from this.

Dude, I'm looking at the YouTube.

I don't understand a lot of these references

because it's like anime based,

but they don't do that many videos.

It looks like they do one or two a month.

And they all kind of hit.

This is crazy.

They also do, I think, a lot of TikToks maybe.

So I think they do, they do TikToks.

They basically just move their Facebook ad budget

into hiring a full-time female creator

to do this content and that sort of thing.

And so, yeah, I think it's a really cool brand.

So I just wanted to show you.

Give the guy a shout out because I forget his name,

but on Twitter, he's like showing all the back end.

Like he's taking screenshots of their YouTube

and he's a really, really good follow.

He's really been fascinating.

What's his name?

I forget his name too.

He said something like they got something

like two or 300 million views in the last year

and they only started this past year.

And he's like, we're getting $80 million a month, Isaac.

What's his whole thing?

So his name is Isaac, he's the Isaac Med, M-E-D.

And his bio says, scaling a sword brand to nine figures

with organic video marketing.

Well, if that ain't exactly what we just described,

like perfect description.

Yeah, he did a really good job.

He's really cool.

Also, I like his profile picture a lot.

He kind of looks like a madman.

He did like a good, clear headshot,

but he kind of looks like a madman instead of like a tryhard.

And I just appreciate anybody that's not a tryhard.

By the way, pet peeve.

I feel like all of Twitter is so cringe and tryhard.

And I don't know if anything changed or I changed,

but do you feel this way?

Like I feel like 90% of tweets and including my own tweets,

I'm like, is there a tweet that's not cringy?

I think that we were the tryhards and now we're over it

and we're making fun of people that are doing

the exact same thing that we did.

Yeah, I love that.

You use the ladder, climb up,

and then you pull the ladder up behind you.

Yeah, I think that's what we're doing.

When I did it, it was cool,

but when you do it, that's small boy stuff.

I think we're just being haters, which is cool, which is fine.

It's a natural thing.

Let me explain.

I'll wrap up with one quick thing.

I posted a researcher job.

So basically, I don't really have a researcher.

You do.

And I'm envious of that.

I want that.

I need a little help because you always come with fire.

I need a little help coming up with good content for the pod.

And by the way, if you want to see the job,

just go to my Twitter and scroll down.

You'll see a Google form.

But so I tweeted this out.

I got like 300 applicants.

And in order to apply, I was very specific.

I was like, if you screw up one thing on these directions,

I'm not even going to consider hiring you.

I was like, you have to put your link in here.

The most samplar job application.

Well, yeah, because I was like, dude,

if you're not going to sweat the details on this,

then you're not going to.

That's what I said.

If you don't do a good job on this,

I don't believe you'll do a good job on anything else.

And I made people, I was like, I was like really simple.

Come up with three ideas and make it in a Google doc

and put the Google doc link in this form, make it so it's readable.

So I can just click it.

If it's not readable, I'm not even going to ask to like,

I won't even look at it.

And I got hundreds of applicants, about half of them followed directions.

And about a good chunk, 25%, were actually pretty legitimate.

What do I do with like these hundred, like decent people?

You know, it's kind of like an interesting,

this is like an interesting business problem

or an interesting problem.

If you have people, so we did this with apartments.

So our, my first business that was an online company

was basically, look, in San Francisco,

an open bedroom for a $1,200 a month apartment,

an open bedroom in a three bedroom house,

that gets like 500 applicants.

And all 500 are interested in living in the same neighborhood.

They're all interested in this ad,

so they clearly have similar interests,

which is just group them into their own thing

and move them into their own apartment.

And that was the premise of my first company.

With this, I'm like, man, I got like 300 people,

100 are somewhat qualified.

What do you do with this group of people?

If I can, it kind of seems like such a waste

that I'm just using one of them.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, unfortunately, not a lot of people need a researcher like this.

So I think you just need to translate it to like something,

like most people don't have a podcast

that requires researching random business stuff.

So what could these people do that's,

what's a job that's more common

that these people would be really good for?

Is it like chief of staff type roles?

Is it like something like that, you think?

I don't know.

I just started thinking about this ahead of time,

like right before we started recording.

But I did think this is like the application process is,

and this is just a little small thing.

Imagine if you're a Burger King or something,

or some huge company,

and you get like a million applicants a year.

It's like kind of interesting where if you,

you can only hire a couple of them,

and so you're like are wasting 98%.

You know, in the same way that Ford decided to make charcoal

out of their burnt wood that they were using

to heat their furnaces when they were making iron.

Can I, what can my charcoal be of these 299 applicants

that I don't actually hire?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I don't have an answer.

I don't have an answer.

Sorry.

Yeah, sorry people.

This is the let down, but it's an interesting question.

The thing to do would be like,

what common job do these skills translate to?

And then you have now a cohort or a pool of people

that are, you know, somewhat vetted

that you could create like a job board

or some sort of like matching marketplace or service

where people could just hire people like this

for that common job.

Well, I wonder like the people who have enough

probably don't care, but like the people who,

like the engineering companies,

or someone who's getting like a startup

that's getting an engineering company,

or getting engineers to apply,

what they should do is just like,

be like, hey, I'm sorry, you didn't get the job,

but here's like five other gigs that are kind of cool,

and just take like the $30,000

referral fee.

Do you know what I mean?

So our buddy, Ryan Hoover kind of did this.

He was hiring a researcher or like an analyst for his fund.

And he's like, dude, I got like hundreds of applicants.

I interviewed them and he's like, these,

I forgot how many, let's call it 30 just for an example.

He's like, these 30 were really good.

I just, I can't hire 30.

I only needed one.

And so he emailed me and a bunch of other people who had funds.

He's like, do you need an analyst?

Like here's our kind of vetted analysts

that we thought were good.

If you need one, like I'd love to help these people

get a job.

Like he wasn't asking for any money

because Ryan's a nice guy and you know,

this is not how he's looking to make money,

but like it was kind of great.

At the same time, I was sort of like,

I'm not looking for the sloppy seconds.

Like these, these people weren't good enough for you.

Why are they good enough for me?

There's a part of me that's like that too.

So I think you have that challenge.

If I'm a tech company, I'm looking for engineers.

That's fair.

And I hire these people and you didn't hire me,

but you know, Facebook didn't hire you,

but Google should.

I think Google's got a little problem with that.

So you have to find some way around the signal problem.

Same thing with investments.

If I send an investment to you, I'm like, hey, great deal.

Not doing it though.

You should.

Yeah, you should invest in this.

It's like, those are the worst emails

because it just, sometimes it's true.

It's like, oh, this is just your niche

or it's your stage or whatever.

But a lot of times it just adds like a negative flag to it

for no reason.

Well, and the answer to this might be,

there's nothing I could do.

Fuck them.

Sorry guys.

Like you gave me, you did all this work for me

and you just not, you're not going to get the job.

And there's some guys who have applied

for like eight jobs that I've had throughout the years.

And I feel so sad.

I'm like, sorry, not if you missed again.

We're just, we're not hiring that many people, right?

So it's just a hard, hard thing to do.

All right, let's wrap it up there.

Good episode.

We'll see you guys next time.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.