My First Million: Four Ideas For AI, Twitter Empires, and Billion $ Thiel Fellowship Success Stories

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.

I do think that we're going to see like an empire built on top of Twitter.

Arguably you and I have created, I would have to add it up, maybe eight figures, but

a lot.

I think though that there's going to be literally billionaires created on Twitter.

All right, I went out with Hassan last night for dinner.

Can I tell you about it really quick?

Do it.

It was awesome.

So he like admires you a lot.

Do you know that?

I admire him a lot.

So you pronounce his name Minhaj or Minhaj, right?

I think his name is actually pronounced Hassan Minhaj and everybody calls him Hassan Minhaj

because it sounds awesome and it's like Nicky Minhaj and so, you know, whatever.

I don't know what the, I don't know how, how strict he is on that.

Well, we, so basically the story of this is Sean interviewed him last year.

I thought I saw him on the street and I ran up and like went and said, Hey, and it actually

wasn't him and I looked like an idiot and I tweeted about it and he texts me.

I guess he got my number from you and he texts me and we went unhung out.

So this guy is like this, you know, pretty big deal comedian.

He is so smart.

He's so much smarter than I am.

And that's what I learned that in number two, I was so intimidated to be around him because

I didn't know if like, if I was like, can I make him laugh?

If I can make him laugh.

I'm like, this is a way.

And I really didn't.

I didn't make him laugh.

I failed.

I did not.

I could not make him laugh.

And he like showed me these books that he's reading and I wanted to Google like, I wanted

to tweet this out, but I was too embarrassed.

So maybe you could tell me, but I like, like Googled like books on how to be funny because

after I hung out, after I hung out with him, I was like, dude, this guy's got me in a trance.

He could tell me about anything.

He's so funny and good at storytelling.

Like I'm so into it.

And I was like, I want to figure out how to be funny.

And I went on Amazon and I Googled like how to be funny or like how to be clever.

And do you remember years ago when I wrote that article about this guy who games the

Amazon Kindle system to rank really high and it's like shit books, but you like buys reviews.

Dude, it's like six of the top 10 on page one.

We're all him.

It's all this guy.

I know the author.

I know the guy's safe.

So it's all bullshit.

What is there are there good books that I can read you think on how to be funny or how

to be clever?

Like I felt like such a nerd.

Like I was going to tweet this out, but I'm going to look like the biggest virgin on earth.

Just like, how do I like be clever in a conversation?

Yeah, I don't know, dude, that I feel like this is a it's like a it's like a skill that's

only passed down, like, you know, by hand and you can it's only like trial by fire.

Like you have to like learn this when you're 12 and get good at like busting people's balls

and like saying the funny thing in class.

Like Theo Vaughn has this like hilarious, I know you like the other two is this hilarious

story.

He tells, he goes, dude, I was in my like freshman.

I remember the first time I realized I was funny as a comedian.

He's like, I was a freshman year at college and I was going to school in Louisiana or

whatever.

He's like, and my professor said to our class, he was like, you know, look to your left, look

to your right, you know, statistics will say that, you know, one, one of the, one of

the three of you, one out of every three people are going to end up being like a child, whatever,

molester or something like that.

He goes, and I stood up and I just go, not it, and then he's like, he's like, that was

the moment.

And first of all, this is a hilarious story.

And secondly, I think there's some truth to like, you have these little moments where

you get rewarded for being funny early on in life and you're like, ooh, more of that,

more of that.

How do I get more, that laugh is, I want more of that and then you just keep doing it.

Talent's real, but I think it's a, I think just like anything, like, you know, some

people will never be able to dunk, but you definitely can improve.

You can learn how to dribble better than before.

For sure.

Like there's got to be a skill.

There's definitely a skill here.

You know, I think like the best are definitely just born better, but I can be good.

I can be good at least.

There's a YouTube video that you should watch.

So I've gone down this rabbit hole, probably also after I met, and I was like, shit.

He would tell me a story on the pod where he'd be talking and I'm so into the story.

I'm like, you know, what is it, eating out the palm of his hand.

And then he would ask me a question mid-story and I just, I'm like nodding like, I'm still

listening like it's a TV show.

And then I didn't realize that he said something to me like he said, he was telling some stories

like everybody's got that kid growing up like you had that kid.

Who was it for you?

And I was so enthralled by the story that I was just like, yes, and I realized that

I was like, oh, he asked me for a name.

And then I thought about who that would be because I said, now it's said yes, that there

is a kid.

And he's like, who was it?

And I was like, I can't remember any names growing up.

I'm so into you that I've like forgotten who I am and my entire past.

And so, you know, that was what was happening when he was telling stories.

But I asked him afterwards, and I think he gave me a YouTube video that was fun that

he's like, this is kind of interesting.

So it's called Mark Normand How to Write a Joke.

And I think it's like an hour long podcast.

So it's the thing is called Writing a Joke with Mark Norman and Mark Norman is a good

joke writer.

He's a funny comedian.

Yeah, he's great.

And this one hour thing, he like kind of breaks down some of the, the like mechanics of what

makes something funny.

And it's not like, follow this, these three easy steps and you too can be funny.

But it is like, oh, okay, I can see how this like, if I constantly, if I consistently practice

these mechanics, I can take something that's like not so funny and make it funnier repeatedly.

And then like from there, there's more, there's storytelling and there's setups and there's

like tagging jokes and there's other like things that you got to learn, obviously, if

you want to do this well.

But I think that video is pretty good.

I'll watch that.

A hundred thousand views.

There's guys who have this YouTube channel called Charisma on Command and it's a beautiful

name.

They've been doing it forever.

Have you seen these guys?

Yeah, I remember for like maybe five, seven years ago, I was watching those videos.

Yeah.

And they're cool.

They're, it could be a little lame because it's a, it's a little bit more on like nerdy

guys, how to meet women, which is cool and fine, whatever.

But like, you know, I was not trying to, I was dating my wife at the time.

So I was like, well, I just want to learn how to be like more charismatic.

And I remember their name and they like taught a course on it and like they had all this

stuff.

It's like, that's a beautiful name.

Charisma on command.

I'll watch that Mark Norman joke.

But anyway, hung out with this dude last night.

It was dope.

He paid for dinner.

So good first date.

It was awesome.

Did you try to pay?

Did you do the thing?

No, no, no.

For sure.

A lot me.

But I, you know, it's funny.

It's when I go to, he like, liked this.

We went to Gramercy Tavern.

He, and he likes that place, which is, I guess it's like a fancy or kind of fancy place.

And I was like, dude, you come here a lot.

He goes, yeah, I love it.

So I'm not even going to look at a menu, whatever you want to order for me, just, you just do

it all.

And that's, that's how I love, I love going to restaurants like that.

I do that all the time.

I'm like, I don't care.

I eat meat and vegetables, get whatever.

So I was, I was the best.

After they order, then you complain.

You got to do that too.

That's the, the true D bag move.

By the way, you know one thing people liked from the last pod or maybe a couple of pods

ago, I got a bunch of DMs about this.

They were like, dude, I love the homie move that you said.

And I was like, I didn't remember what he was talking about.

He's like, he's like, remember the homie move.

That's like one of the top 10 things you've shared on the pod, which was you were like,

dude, guess how many blah, blah, blah.

And like, when you say that, obviously it's something impressive, but I kind of guess

low so that you can have your, your punchline where you're like, a hundred million.

And I'm like, oh, I only said 10 because I kind of knew it's more than 10.

But let me give you this moment.

People love that.

That's hilarious.

Yeah.

I saw the comments.

People did dig that on YouTube.

All right.

So I made a little vow to myself to bring more specific ideas and stories to the pod because

I personally love the free flowing, just like whatever, wherever our conversation goes,

it goes.

But I want to make sure that, you know, we have the entree, not just top us.

It's not just the appetizers.

I want to have the entree.

So let's jump into a couple ideas.

I got a few too.

All right.

I got one big one.

I'm going to go one and then you go one.

All right.

So we've talked about this a little bit in the past, Dolly and like how much AI is advancing.

And I don't know if it's just like my TikTok feed keeps feeding me these, but every day

I see a new incredible thing that AI can do.

You have to explain what Dolly is.

That has just blown me away.

What's that?

You have to explain what Dolly is.

Oh, Dolly is a program.

It's a artificial intelligence program.

Dolly too, I think is the current name of it, that basically you just type in any word

and it generates images on that.

So you could be like Sam Parr, you know, fishing and it will just generate images that like

look like they're either hand drawn or like a stock photo that are Sam Parr fishing, even

though no such image exists, let's say it will create the image.

So it like flips the whole idea of like creating art or taking photos or painting something

and it kind of like flips it on its heads like no, computers and robots can now do that

almost as good, if not in some cases better than what would be, you know, the real thing

or humans, human stuff.

And so you see that, you see deep fakes, like there's videos where you'll see the Mona Lisa

and then they're like, watch this and they push a button.

And all of a sudden the Mona Lisa starts turning her head and she starts rapping like, you

know, notorious B.I.G. and it looks like the mouth is like in sync with the lyrics and

the thing looks real.

It's like, yeah, they just took it, they can take an image and they could turn it into

a video using AI like AI can basically say, oh, if I have this image, I know where the

eyes and those lips are, I have been trained on what talking looks like, what singing looks

like, what looking around and acting natural looks like, and I can turn any image into

that.

And it's really good.

It's really good.

They could take Barack Obama and they can make him like this happened now with the Ukraine

thing.

You know, as a Russian president, like the way that people can photoshop an image to

make it look real.

You could take Barack Obama and you can make it sound and look like he is saying something,

you know, completely racist or whatever.

So yeah, I think it's like, oh, man, I can't trust videos.

Well, I heard a podcast about that particular one.

I think someone made one of these things to show how amazing it is.

And then they also showed, but here's the downfall and they made Obama, I think he said

the N word or something like crazy, like not cool.

And they're like, he said that and that amazing, obviously he didn't.

But like, it seems exactly like he said it.

This is where it's going to, it's going to get dangerous totally.

And let me, so, so I'll just keep going to some random examples.

So there's another one where you, you can draw like a very basic smiley face on, on

your iPad, on this app called Procreate.

And then you can, it's basically just like eyes, nose, mouth, and you're just like pencil

drawing it.

Then you change the brush to the AI paintbrush and you just kind of like shade in like, you

know, like when a kid would like a shape and it like colors in as if you like painted

this in fine detail with the shadows and the colors that, and all you're doing is literally

just moving your hand like a fool.

And it's like, it knows already what like high quality art looks like.

And it just turns your crappy art into high quality art.

It's amazing.

And so every day there's all these little amazing magic tricks and they're not like

foolproof yet, but the demo is getting ridiculously impressive.

I used it to come up with a logo for a business.

I'm thinking about starting, I use it to come up with a logo and it was awesome.

Oh, I do that all the time.

Yeah.

If you just Google AI logo generator or brand generator, there's like four websites that

you can use and you just say like, uh, I, you know, it's a legal, a legal startup.

The mood is serious, but still sophisticated go and it'll spit out like an infinite number

of logo variations that you could then, and they could be like, cool, print this on business

cards, that's like how they make money is like print this on a business card or like

give me the high quality photo.

You actually used it.

Like I used it.

I used it.

Yeah.

Normally what I do is I go to 99 designs and I have like you, 99 designs is amazing

because you can get like 30 graphic designers to like make up a landing page and you'd be

like, I like details from number one, number eight, number 14, and then someone combines

all of them and they give me the one that I want.

Whereas when you work with just one designer, you got to like a kind of be nice to them

and be like, no, this, this is, you know, this is okay, but can you kind of change it

like this?

And I could be like, no, this sucks, do this, but also be, you can see all different combinations

and with Dolly, I'm excited to use it in that way.

And so let me give you like a couple ideas that I've had based off of what I've seen.

So here's what I, I think these can be very big ideas.

Now the problem with these, I'll tell the problem also is that I think it's so easy

to do that you're going to have a bunch of competition.

So you know, you have to find a way to be defensive, but here, okay, here we go.

Four ideas that you can do with AI like right now.

Okay.

So number one is, which one do I want to start with?

Okay.

So number one is going to be a fake speech.

So I'm investing in this company called Unreal Speech.

I don't know if you've heard this, but check this out.

This guy sends me deep, deep audio of somebody of Gary Vee and Jordan Peterson reading the

milkroads.

I'm going to just play one of these.

Let me hear it.

Let me just.

This is the milk road.

The newsletter that brings you so much entertainment, news and laughs.

It should be illegal.

Yeah.

No.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Here's what's happening around crypto.

Dude, it sounds like Jordan Peterson.

It's just like Jordan Peterson.

Here's Gary Vee.

This is the milk road.

The newsletter that brings you so much entertainment, news and laughs.

It should be illegal.

Yeah.

No.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

You can see it messes up sometimes.

This is what's happening around crypto, the new stablecoin on the block.

That's amazing.

That is so good.

Is that available?

This is off this very little training data and literally just takes my thing.

You could see the places where my written stuff is like casual.

I'm like, you know, blah, blah, blah.

It doesn't do that part very well.

But the other parts, it does pretty dang well for a very small amount of training.

Unreal Speech.

Is it available to everyone?

Yeah.

Well, it's like brand new.

So he was like, hey, yeah, Sean, you want to never do an ad read again?

He's like, you know, you have hundreds of hours of audio of you and Sam's voice that's

on the podcast.

All you need to do is just say the word and I can make it so that you'll never have to

do an ad read again.

Did he do it?

I can make it so that the milk road, it'll auto add a companion audio.

If somebody wants to listen to the newsletter on the go, it'll do it in your voice.

Like I can just do that now.

And I was like, wow, this is incredible.

He's like, yeah.

And the way we're doing it is cheaper, faster and like more accurate than like the kind

of the other models that are out there on like Amazon or whatever.

So it's like, you know, dramatically cheaper to do because this is a little bit expensive

whenever you do this because it's like machine learning, but the cost just keeps falling

every year and then there's techniques to make it even smaller.

And so think about this like a language translation.

So for example, there's a world where we do this podcast and unreal speech could translate

this into another language in our voices with our tones, but just speaking another language.

And so now all of a sudden our podcast is in, you know, is being, you know, done in Spanish

and in French and all these other languages.

And so we could grow without having to actually do extra work ourselves.

Damn, dude.

That's crazy.

All ad reads stuff like that.

So I think that's a great business.

There's also, yeah, there's there's other kind of like use cases for it, but I'll leave

it at that.

All right.

A quick message from our sponsor.

You know, I was thinking about the shortest day of the year earlier.

And while we technically have the same amount of time as every other day of the year, the

lack of daylight makes it feel so much shorter, which is exactly the same kind of feeling as

working with disconnected tools.

Our work days, the same length as always.

But before you know it, we spent three hours just fixing something that was supposed to

be automated.

Thankfully HubSpot's all-in-one CRM platform can serve as a single source of truth for

managing your customer relationships across marketing, sales, service operations with

multiple hubs and over a thousand integrations and an easy to use interface HubSpot lets

you spend less time managing your software and more time connecting with your customers.

Learn how HubSpot can help you grow your business at HubSpot.com.

Okay.

Here's another one.

Student essays.

So I told you about that guy who made a thing called writelikeshawn.com and it like I like

mentioned it in my email and it like blew up and like caused him to have like a thousand

dollar bill on his servers and he was like, you know, oh, shit, like, you know, the side

project now is like a financial burden for me.

But basically this guy trained AI to write like I do.

And it was pretty damn good.

And I shared an example last time, but this is not like has nothing to do with me.

It's just you could take any corpus of text data.

In this case, he just used my Twitter feed as like the corpus of text.

It could train it to write like that.

Well, there's one of the big things that, you know, I don't know if you remember growing

up, but like you get assigned, you have to write an essay in school.

And you know, some people would pay other people to do it for them.

Some people would go find one online and try to plagiarize it.

Well, this is going to basically screw that whole thing up because I'm going to be able

to go on there and say, hey, write an essay about World War Two and Germany's role in

it in the sophistication of a 10th grader.

And it's just going to spit out a full essay or like a thousand versions of an essay.

And I could just pick the one I like and I could just edit it in like maybe five minutes

to like get rid of any like crappy computer mess ups.

Yeah, this is wild.

Remember, turn it in.

You have turn it in.com like it would help you like if you submitted to submit an essay

in high school.

It happened.

So I used to like, I had this website that like would give you free essays and I would

use them all the time.

You know, and like most, well, I don't know if most people do it, but, you know, a lot

of people do it.

Some people out there will think this is okay, a person and a person did it and it was awesome.

You like rewrite it a little bit, but then they came up with turnitin.com, which ended

up becoming like a huge company and sold for billions of dollars, I believe, where you

would turn in your paper essay, but then you also had to submit an electronic copy and it

did a pretty good job of finding out if it was plagiarized.

Frankly, I have no idea how it did it and I don't actually think it's that sophisticated

of technology, but they just sold the schools and they like trusted that it was legitimate

because like if you just Google a phrase in quotations, you could see like where, you

know what I mean, it's like not like that sophisticated of a thing, but like it would

alert teachers like, okay, like 98% of this is copied from somewhere else, but the teacher

doesn't want to like Google, the teacher doesn't want to Google everybody's thing.

So yeah, that makes total sense and that's exactly the case.

I think you're going to have the creation of stuff, of content on the AI, auto-generated

content and then you're going to have the fact checking side to detection businesses

also both are going to boom, you're going to have things that take a video and say

is this a deep fake?

Or is this a real video?

You're going to have another one that's like, is this a auto-generated content or did a

human write this?

Like it's like the opposite of caption, you know, when you go to a website and it says

prove that you're a human, it's going to basically be like prove this isn't a robot is basically

what you're going to have to do in order to trust that this person actually like did the

work that's required for this.

So I think that that's going to be like on both sides, there's going to be businesses.

I'll give you another area that's going to get totally disrupted.

Patterns and patterns.

So people talk about like using AI for stock photos, using AI for maybe like auto-generated

music.

That's all going to happen too.

But here's what I think is like more low key, like when Patrick came on, he was talking

about quilt businesses.

So there's a huge market of just pattern making.

So this is for all like clothing, you know, blankets, you know, curtains, whatever.

Really patterns and prints are everywhere, you know, in apparel and fashion.

And so if you want to go and actually like make clothing, you will often use like websites

that have large libraries of patterns and prints.

What happens is today, somebody hand draws each one of those like, oh, this floral pattern

or this, you know, repeating pattern of, you know, whatever, it could be like fire trucks

for like, you know, some kid thing or whatever.

And then that person gets paid when you go buy that, buy that pattern, you buy it for

whatever $100 and now they get that as their like royalty stream.

Well, this is all going to go AI in my opinion.

Somebody can compete with these because the sites that do this, there were hundreds of

millions of dollars.

These marketplaces that have the creators and they have the search.

Yeah.

We talked about one of them.

I forget what it was called.

I think it had gotten acquired by like 400 million.

Yeah.

Flower something.

Yes.

Flower cloud or something.

Well, they, what that's going to turn into is I'm going to go on there.

I'm going to be like, cool, I'm making a, you know, a galaxy, I want a galaxy themed

repeating pattern.

So I'm just going to write galaxy themed repeating pattern and it's going to generate

galaxy themed patterns and then they will be able to charge one tenth of what the other

sites do because there's no human involved and they'll just keep all of that revenue

for themselves.

So they will become the supply side of the market.

So this is like, you can build a billion dollar marketplace because you now don't have to

worry about supply.

It's what Uber's trying to do with self-driving cars, right?

It's like, Hey, we can make these rides way cheaper and we can like, you know, make this

whole system more efficient.

We just got to get to self-driving and Tesla's trying to do the same with the Robo taxi.

It's like the big idea in, in transportation is getting rid of the driver.

The same thing is going to be the case with artists.

It's like, we're going to get rid of the artists.

We're going to not need somebody to do the photography, the videography, the music, the

pattern making, you know, the voiceover work.

That's what Unreal speech is, right?

It's voiceover work, the essay writing, the 99 designs, every single one of those, they're

either going to have to release this and kill their own supply side or someone is going

to come and do it and eat their lunch.

I think this is one of the multi-billion dollar trends that like, you could be on right now

and I don't say that for hyperbole like literally this is the window.

The tech is just now finally good enough.

It's not quite there, but you need to start now and you could disrupt all of these marketplaces.

Do you ever recognize stock image models on different websites?

Yeah, there's this guy who's in the bachelor who's a stock image and he's like in like

a bunch of like funny, like whatever, random like kids Halloween costumes.

It's like, there's that guy.

And then you see him again on this like a hot sauce commercial, like there's that guy.

And he's just like this generic smiling black guy and it's like they just reuse him everywhere.

I saw like the lady that was on the Google analytics page.

It was two ladies and I saw one of them in public and I went up and got a picture with

there and like I saw her and I recognized her.

And then there's this other lady that was on the Google analytics page.

It's like a lot of times the same person.

It's like a racially ambiguous woman with like curly hair.

It's like, you know, she could be Italian, she could be black, she could be Jewish.

White, who knows?

Like it just represents everyone.

And I see this woman everywhere on all different websites.

I used her a couple of times.

I love this lady.

And I get sick of using the same pictures though all the time.

So for some of my projects, I've been using, if you, you can use Dolly and you can use

a couple of other services and they'll give you fake people.

So I have a couple of websites that have like testimonials and they're real testimonials,

but I don't want to use the people's face because I didn't exactly ask them for it.

It was like an email that they like wrote me.

You know what I mean?

I didn't want to use like their face because they didn't give me permission, but like it's

who cares just a sentence, I can use that.

And I'll use, I Google AI sample faces and you can get all types of faces and you could

say like, make this person this race, make this person happy, make them serious.

You can change it and you can make them all types of stuff.

And I've been using that for sample images because when we were running the hustle every

once in a while, we would like do it the right way where we would like use an image that

was for commercial use.

But sometimes it would get categorized wrong and we would, we'd get like a, what do they

call it?

Like a, I forget what it is.

Yeah, that's right.

And they say like, you know, you have to, in multiple times we've had to pay five grand.

You know, you just like, oh, fuck these guys, like they're going to cause an issue.

We just got paying $5,000 and they're going to go away, but this is, we just, we're going

to get, you know, we're getting screwed here, but whatever we got to do it.

So I've been using them for stock images.

So I don't have to worry about getting sued or get one of these cease and desist letters.

Totally.

It's going to be the case with stock images, you know, like designers always use these

libraries of like icons and illustrations and there's like websites like the noun project

and other things like that.

So what Dolly did was basically they just read all of the text on the internet and then they

used it to create new stuff.

And some people like, dude, that's messed up.

Like GitHub is doing this too.

GitHub basically read all of the code that was on GitHub.

They had a crawler basically index all of that.

They fed all of that, that user data and they fed it into machine learning.

And now they have this thing called GitHub co-pilot, which is I think like, I don't know

how much it is like a hundred dollars a month or something like that.

But it basically is like, you know, if you're a programmer, we will, this GitHub co-pilot

can basically help you write your code.

You're like typing your code and it'll just auto fill like auto complete the line of code.

So it's like, Oh dude, that makes a, you know, this $250,000 a year software developer more

efficient and more effective and less bugs and less mistakes and less thinking.

It lets a less talented person sort of create these functions and write code.

And it's like a no-brainer.

Like GitHub co-pilot is going to generate like hundreds of millions of dollars for

GitHub.

That's crazy.

They create this product flip to switch.

It's going to be a multi-billion dollar product line just because it's generating so much

revenue.

Wow.

And some people are mad about it because they're like, dude, you read my code.

You use my code as the training data and I get nothing from this.

Like that's crazy.

You're going to basically put me out of a job by using my own data as the training data

for this.

And that's the same thing that's going to happen with these like these websites.

By the way, Ben found a spoon flower was the name of the pattern flower.

So all you have to do if you're doing this is like, you're going to go and you're going

to scrape and crawl spoon flower.

You're going to ingest all of the patterns with all of the tags.

And then you're going to basically train it, train a data set so that it says, okay, cool.

This is what a pattern with X, Y and Z keyword looks like.

Great.

Now you give me that keyword again.

I can generate 500 new patterns from scratch and spoon flowers basically going to create

its destroyer in that sense.

Like it is going to, the data from these, from stuff that's already on the internet

is what's going to destroy those, those services.

And I say it kind of like, you know, in a, in a violent way, like destroy and all that

stuff, but it is true.

Like these are going to be very competitive very quickly.

And it's going to be like the same way that the chess programs like got really good really

fast and all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, human cannot beat it.

It's going to be like the game is kind of graphic design.

Exactly.

Like this is going to like enslave and pillage, you know, it's going to go to your village.

It's going to kill the men.

It's going to marry all the women and it's going to put the children to work.

Like that's what's going to happen with this, these AI marketplaces.

That's my, my prediction.

So Ben, go to this website.

I sent you the chat.

Can you share this?

Sam, I think you've used this before too, but it's a cool one for people who don't know.

It's this person does not exist.

Yes.

That's what I used.

And so like, look at this guy.

That looks like you, Ben.

It just looks like a basic white dude.

This guy has a mugshot on daylight.

It takes a quick picture of you from your webcam and it just makes someone like you.

This is a dude.

This person does not exist.

That's an AI composite of a face.

So you can use this face anywhere on your website, copyright free because nobody's going

to be like, Hey dude, that's me.

This is like such a useful, funny website and it shows you in the bottom right.

It'll tell you exactly how the image was created.

It's like, it was imagined by a GAN, which is a type of machine learning thing or whatever.

Here's how it works.

You can use it yourself, blah, blah, blah.

And watch this.

You can use it for cats and horses and chemicals.

It's like, this cat does not exist.

And you can like click a cat and it'll like AI generated cat.

Yeah.

This is amazing.

I usually just take screen shot of those and I use those on like different websites.

And so, so yeah, those are three, three ideas.

I think I said, student essay generation, uh, unreal voices for voiceovers, um, and

never, you know, never having to do, you're basically turning your voice into a programmable

asset and then patterns and prints.

And that's just like, that's not even saying some of the obvious ones that I met other

ones I mentioned, like stock, this is great.

Million dollars isn't cool.

You know what's cool?

A billion dollars.

All right, I have something for you.

Have you heard of John Steinberg?

Is he the guy who did Cheddar?

Yeah.

So let's listen to this story and, and I'm going to, there's a reason why I'm telling

you, but let me tell you the story.

So basically John Steinberg was the COO of BuzzFeed for a long time.

I think when he joined BuzzFeed, it was like 20 people.

So he wasn't quite the co-founder, but he was, he worked his way up to be COO and he

was like the ad sales guy who became COO and he kind of was like pushing it hard and it

was almost like a co-founder of BuzzFeed.

And he's incredibly aggressive, very aggressive.

And he started this thing years ago, like eight years ago, or maybe six years ago called

Cheddar.

And the whole shtick was that it was going to be a live TV station for Facebook live.

And when he launched it, we were just getting started and he like messaged me.

He goes, have we met yet?

Which was just an alpha, like there's such an alpha way to like.

Hey, I forgot your name.

Yeah, he was like, Hey, Dave, I was like, dude, it's, it says Sam Ray, we're on Facebook.

I know you.

Sorry, really bad with names and faces.

Yeah.

What?

He goes, have we met yet?

We should meet.

That's what he said.

And I go, okay, cool.

He goes, I'm in San Francisco.

What's your office?

I'll come tomorrow.

That's what he said.

And I was like, all right.

Your calendar.

Yeah.

So I hang out with him.

This guy, incredibly aggressive, basically told me that like Buzzfeed was great, but

he wanted to sell or something or I don't know if he said this or I read about it, but

like he wanted an exit and it didn't happen.

So like he was like, I'm just going to build this thing and I'm going to have an exit.

And he's told me he goes, what's going to happen is I'm going to raise a little bit

of money, like $30 million.

It's going to do pretty good.

And then a big cable company is going to buy us because it's just going to be cheaper

for them to buy us and to go make one of these cable, like a, like a 24 hour news network

on their own.

And they're going to buy us for like $200 or $300 million.

And at the time, and even at the time they got bought, no one watched this thing.

You would go into the Facebook live and like there'd be like 20 people watching it and

give him point.

It was all on Facebook and like no one watched it.

And I remember thinking like, this guy's crazy.

This is not going to work.

No one wants.

This is, this is nonsense.

This is a bad business.

This is a bad company.

And two years in, he told me he goes in year two or three, we're going to get acquired

for a couple hundred million bucks.

In year three, I think he sold the business for $250 million, 100% called his shot.

If you Google a Cheddar, two cable company also to a cable company to like an Australian

cable company that I never heard of.

I think they're popular in New York.

I think they have like a thing in New York too.

And he sold it and he totally pulled it off and he completely disappeared.

He fell off the map before he was like speaking at all these conferences, but he called this

shot and he nailed it.

And I remember talking to other guys who worked in the media industry and they're like, yeah,

he told me the exact same thing.

And he absolutely called this shot.

This guy is so aggressive, man.

He's a shark, not in a bad way, but like he just bulldozed through this and just put so

much intensity and energy and he pulled it off.

But the reason I'm bringing this up, he did it.

And another woman who were friends with Rebecca, I asked her how she got popular on YouTube.

She was like, well, I just quit my job and I like worked 50 hours a week and I had like

I got up at nine and I like worked till seven and like I studied the data and I just treated

it like a business and it like became popular.

Now I make, you know, seven or eight figures, whatever she makes a year and I'm rich and

famous and whatever it worked because I was talented and I worked hard and I treated it

like a job.

What I think is going to happen and this is a little circle jerky because both you and

I like Twitter.

I think that very few people take Twitter seriously enough to do that.

You know, like five or eight years ago, we'd be like, Mr. Beast, you're going to like dedicate

your life to YouTube.

That's the stupidest thing ever.

That won't work.

Like what are you doing?

This is just a hobby.

This is a joke.

Now it's not, it's not funny.

Like we all know that like that's real.

You can become a YouTuber and you know, you can be like Mr. Beast and make hundreds of

millions of dollars a year.

You can become a TikToker and become like some of these other famous people and do all

this crazy stuff.

No one takes that seriously about Twitter where they think like, well, you know, if you just

like quit and like take this seriously and like build a following and like write interesting

stuff.

And I think in the next two or three years, we might see like a few empires be built

on top of Twitter and it sounds kind of silly now because like, oh, it's just these like

stupid like, you know, Twitter threads of guys talking about X, Y and Z and summarizing

Wikipedia and they're kind of right.

But I think that there's going to be someone on Twitter that treats it kind of like Cheddar

did.

It's kind of like Mr. Beast and they take it really seriously.

And I think there's actually a huge opening and a huge gap in the market right now where

very few people are taking it seriously.

And it's incredibly easy to capitalize on this second right now.

This is one of the more interesting things I feel like you said.

This is, I actually, I don't even think you normally think like this.

I feel like this is like a, this is not your, you say a lot of interesting stuff, but it's

you're, you usually fall into, I found this really interesting diamond in the rough.

You're amazing at that.

Another is, I see what these people are doing and let me break it down in simple terms like

all they're doing is X.

And sometimes you're like, you know, this is a trend or an industry I see.

This is different.

This is like, this is something, something different.

So I like, I like that you're bringing this up.

Let's break this down.

So.

Do you agree with me?

At first when you, I think you tweeted this out and I was like, I don't really understand

what he's talking.

I didn't really understand it.

Then you just explained it and it's, I'm starting to come around on it.

I'm like, oh wait, he's kind of right.

Every big social media platform has like native stars.

So yes, if you're, you know, whatever you're the president and you go on Twitter, you're

going to get a bunch of followers.

That's one thing.

But basically if you take every medium, so podcasting, you have Joe Rogan, you have like

then the people like Joe Rogan, you have to call her daddies and you have like other

tip ferries.

You have other people who like, they become stars on that platform.

And they use that to build a pretty big empire, you know, tens of millions, if not hundreds

of millions that they can make off.

YouTube obviously, there's YouTubers.

TikTok has TikTok stars, people who were not famous on YouTube, but got famous on TikTok.

Instagram also, right?

There's Instagram models and Instagram like influencers that they were nobody and they

became big on Instagram.

Multi-billion dollar companies, we're talking, you know, Kardashians, Rihanna, like these

like huge things.

Well, I think they were Rihanna, Kardashians, they were big off of Instagram.

They were big without it.

Like Instagram also and Instagram had turbocharged to them.

But like there are other people that are, you know, just Instagram, like Instagram made

them famous.

Like Dan Bilzerian is a good example.

Right.

Like he's not famous without Instagram, then with Instagram, he becomes famous.

And then now he does multiple platforms, right?

By the end, everybody does multiple platforms, but you kind of, you're really good at the

medium.

So like, for example, Dan Bilzerian takes photos of himself blowing up cars with hot

girls like in bikinis.

Guess what?

Instagram is a visual, like, you know, put one killer image on there and they're amazing

at it.

And so that worked really well there.

You're kind of right.

Who is that on Twitter?

Who is, who is a Twitter native star?

I don't even know what that would be.

Like, is there somebody who comes to mind?

There's a, there's a few, like, I would say like,

And I'm on Twitter 10 times a day, like, how do I not know this?

Like you and I are like very miniature versions, but we haven't really like, I'm taught in

like Sahel's a bigger version.

So our friend Sahel Bloom, Trung, who used to work for me, he is kind of like that.

But you know, we're still talking like 500,000 followers.

No one has really pushed it towards like, how do I get 10 or 20 million?

You know, how do I become like, how do I build a proper empire as opposed to a niche?

Now the difference is basically between everything you mentioned in Twitter is Twitter is copy

based, text based, whereas the other ones are visual based.

So I think there's one of two routes that's going to happen.

You figure out how to add visuals to your thing.

And videos don't usually do that well on Twitter, but pictures do.

Or you just get really good at writing.

And I was like, well, writing's not that important.

But I'm like, wait, no, I'm an idiot.

Like, you know who Danielle Steele or James Patterson is?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

These people have sold literally.

Like I believe Danielle Steele has sold like 100 million plus books.

I don't know if you know this, but in San Francisco, she's got like the biggest mansion

in San Francisco.

The fattest house.

Yeah.

On Billionaire's Row, her house is like the big fortress.

Yeah.

And then you got James Patterson.

I bet you he's a billionaire too.

James Patterson basically writes like 50 books a year.

I don't even know if he writes a lot of them if he just smacks his logo on it.

But like, you know, I was thinking like, well, that sounds outrageous, but okay, I forget.

But it's maybe a week.

It's like one a month.

It'll say like, you know, what he does is like, it'll be like written by James Patterson

and Bill Clinton.

And then it says like, and also this other name and it's like a duo about them.

It's like a story written about like the White House or something like that.

And he like partners.

It's like this weird thing that he does.

He writes a ton.

He's prolific and a lot of like, like real quote authors, like these like artists folks

are like, oh, that's just garbage, but he's like, dude, I don't care, I'm pumping this

shit out.

But authors like definitely crush it still.

And the power of the written word is very powerful enough to like, you know, get these

people to buy all these books.

And I still think that's possible.

But I do think that we're going to see like an empire built on top of Twitter.

Arguably you and I have created, we've easily created seven figures of personal income through

Twitter.

Maybe you could say even I would have to add it up, maybe eight figures, but a lot.

I think though that there's going to be literally billionaires created on Twitter and it hasn't

happened yet, though.

Wow.

Yeah.

What's, we can't call ours empires.

Like what's a, what's a very, very small, like a Lego like a convenience store.

Yeah.

Like we, we created like a quickie mart.

Yeah.

We own like four Burger Kings, you know what I mean?

You're right.

And I think that Sahill and Trunk are good examples of like they actually try.

So like they like religiously write content, they schedule it, they research it, they like

publish, they like try to amplify it, they have calls to action at the bottom and it

works.

And I've seen them crawl from zero to Sahill's like half a million, maybe more, I don't know.

I don't know.

Dude, a lot of people don't even know that Trunk, so Trunk worked at the hustle.

He wrote the daily email.

We found him when he was working at like a, as a financial analyst, not like it was all

internal reports.

We like, he signed up for Twitter while he worked at my company and we all like shared

each other in this like silly circle, jerk circle.

And now he's got 600,000 followers and he's like a personality and like people know him.

Like they talk about him and how he's funny and all this stuff.

And I think it's going to happen.

And like when I treated out that event thing, a thousand people signed up and I'm like, oh

my God.

Like why aren't you actually see Instagram?

Like you'll see like the Logan, uh, the Jake Pauls and the Logan Paul, they'll like say

like, I'm going to be, when they were starting on YouTube, they're like, we're going to be

at this location, come and they film all these crazy videos of all these people around us.

No one's doing that shit for Twitter and I think that someone needs to just take the

YouTuber playbook and just deploy it here and take it full time and seriously and they

could create tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth.

And so what would you do?

Cause like, I think, well, the guys we talked about, they, you know, Sahill basically does

like kind of like mental model, intellectual like stuff or it's like, oh, you know, either

like kind of what I'll call like the generic life advice, generic business advice or like,

um, you know, hey, let me tell you about this phenomenon in psychology about cognitive biases

and here's 30 cognitive biases you want to be aware of and like, I don't know why these

do so well.

They do incredibly well.

Uh, that's not my cup of tea, but it's definitely other people's cup of tea for that.

Here's what they need to do.

Here's how you cross the chasm.

Here's how you cross this threshold.

So basically these guys are popular on this Twitter medium and Twitter is a, it feels

like a one to one a little bit or maybe like a one to 10.

It's like me and my 10 friends like consume this and we'll joke about it, but I'm not

talking to a guy on the train or I'm not like telling a family member like, Hey, uh, you

know, did you guys see X, Y and Z?

Like we're not talking about that.

So what they need to do is two things.

Number one, they need to meet up with like mainstream celebrity people or like mainstream

people and take pictures with them and show it.

And it's like, Oh man, this guy's like bigger than just my little audience.

Look at this.

Like these people like Arnold Schwarzenegger likes this person and took a photo with them.

That's amazing.

The second thing that they need to do is they need to get off a Twitter and into real life.

So for example, in the early 2010s, when the caspers of the world were coming out, uh,

subways in Manhattan were underpriced in the up for the billboards and a couple of these

companies like Subway, Oscar, they go, let's advertise on these billboards down in the

subway and then we'll actually buy real billboards and people are like, why would you do that?

Like we could track all this on the internet and they're like, well, because if we get

it out off of the internet, it's going to see more than just an online thing and it's

going to feel more like a real tangible thing.

You know, you're going to see like this ad next to like, uh, you know, a Ford ad and

next to this thing is going to feel like this is actually a little bit more legitimate.

And so what they need to figure out is how to do that.

So you do that by having real life events.

You do that by like getting a book that you publish.

You get that by getting a cameo and a TV show and you like get everyone in on the joke.

It's like, Hey, when check this out, uh, they asked me to be a background on the friends

like here, like you could see my head in that hilarious, like you do these things like that

where it's like real life and like bigger than just this one to 10 thing and then people

start taking you seriously and realize that it creates FOMO and it creates, um, social

proof and you start becoming actually culturally relevant.

You know what I mean?

And that's how you should do it.

So you just like take pictures with you and celebrities and then try to, uh, get in more

in person stuff.

So you're off of the internet and I think that would work.

Yeah, I think, I think that's good advice.

Like, uh, people will believe about you, what you believe about yourself and, um, and also

people will believe about you, what they think others believe about you.

So if I see you hanging out, if I see this, why YouTube works, right?

Like people on YouTube will have like, you know, or Instagram, they'll have like, they're

taking a picture, but it's actually the background.

That's the picture.

It's like, I'm just trying to show you that I'm sitting in this car or at this place or

with these people and, um, there's like everything that's said is actually in the background.

The foreground is just kind of like your excuse to say it or when Casey Neistat's like walking

through New York and he has kids coming up to him and goes, Hey, what's up kid?

Say hi to the, you're on the vlog.

Like, you know what I mean?

It's like, Oh, wow.

Like in New York, Casey gets recognized everywhere.

He's more than just what I see on my screen.

And like celebrities do this, they like, they like tip off, you know, the paparazzi to come

like take pictures of them and they're like, they like pretend like they're trying to not

be seen, but then like they actually, it's like a deal like, Hey, dude, I'm going to

be here.

Come, come show up and take my photo.

And then we're going to use that photo for this or they'll like, you know, do stuff like

that.

So, so I think that's a thing.

Like I had a buddy who created a, he's got like an online e-commerce brand.

They opened up their first store.

The store's not going to do that many sales, but just showing that, Hey, we opened our

first store in New York.

It's like kind of like, you know, wherever in New York, some like small place.

And it's like just that makes it feel like this brand is more trustworthy.

It's more established, it's more legit.

And then they had a bunch of friends, like 15 friends show up and they were like doing

a ribbon ribbon cutting ceremony and the friends are all like, Hey, question for you?

Like, you know, like trying to pretend like they're the media and, and, and, and like

if you zoomed out, it's like 10 people standing in a smaller roster, but like from the right

angle, it looked like a mob was at the store.

And again, it's like this perception creates some version of reality.

So I definitely think that helps.

I don't think that's enough to build the empire.

I think you got to do two things.

One, being it for like the next seven years, like Mr. Beast, all these guys, they didn't

start with like, you know, as big as they are.

It takes like five to seven years to build something like really a truly massive.

The second is I would stop trying to jump off Twitter and go to other places and be

like, this is where the good shit is.

I'm going to master this medium and this me, I'm going to make it work here.

The third is I would do some of the stuff that just helps build fame in the first place.

So I think having your lane or your niche helps because it'll attract people who are

interested in that second controversy or collabing with others.

I think it's going to work, you know, and people don't do controversial stuff really

on Twitter right now, but it should be like, oh my God, I called in to like this show and

I got that.

You know how people used to call into Howard Stern and like get him to like say this crazy

shit, like, check this out.

Got him.

You know what I mean?

Right?

Well, some people do it that and it works.

Like there's a guy who's doing this with Zach Weinberg or something like that.

Yeah, he's hilarious.

I love that guy.

He's like basically built and sold like, I don't know, a $2 billion company in like

the biotech space or some shit like that.

But why does everybody know him?

Because he's the guy who just will consistently shit on crypto.

He just is challenging people to fight about crypto and he's just trying to debate them

in public and embarrass them.

That is his whole stick and he's getting so much fame for dunking on people in crypto

and because there's a set of audience that likes to A, watch a fight and B that likes

to that is anti-crypto has some anti-crypto feelings and they're like, he is their champion.

You go debate people because I don't know if I'd be able to.

And so that's exactly our thing like hero got famous, too, by the way.

And on top of that, then you have like Keith Reboy or whatever, people who are just like

a dick to other people like he'll just like respond to somebody like wrong.

And they're like, well, explain like, you know, I'd love to hear your perspective.

And he's like, I don't share my perspective with fucking losers.

He'll like, he'll sit on you once and then he'll even if you try in good faith to come

back, he'll be like, the data is out there.

Go read a book.

And like one time he was like, one time the best thing goes, I've forgotten more about

startups than you'll ever even know.

Yeah, exactly.

Or he'll be like, call me after your sixth unicorn because that's where I am or whatever.

You know, like he's like, you know, obnoxiously just like shitting on people and it's hilarious.

And because of that, like the controversy spreads.

Some people hate him, some people love him and he kind of uses that to grow.

So anyways, I think controversy is also another underrated thing.

There's a bunch of things that people need to do, but I would say the main one is like

find your, your angle, your hook, your niche, like for Casey Neistat, it's the daily vlog.

For other people, it's the explainer videos.

It's like whatever.

You got to find that for you on Twitter and then like do it for five to seven years and

have faith that like, just like it wasn't obvious that being a YouTuber was just such

a big deal back then.

I think it's not that obvious, you know, to your point that you can do this on Twitter

too.

Yeah, I, uh, so that's my, that's my, um, that's my pitch.

I think it could be cool.

All right.

Can I tell you about something that I kind of knew about, but has recently blown my mind.

Yeah.

It's the teal fellowship.

So you know, what the teal fellowship is, Ben, I'm curious, do you know what the teal

fellowship is?

Come off mute for a bit.

Cause I think Sam already knows, I want to talk to somebody who's maybe more where the

audience is, which may, you know, aware, but not familiar.

Yeah.

So I know the teal fellowship is, I'll tell you just my impression of someone who doesn't

know a ton about it is just that it's for essentially high schoolers who are super geniuses

and Peter teal is going to give you a bunch of money in order to not go to college and

do something cool instead.

Uh, kind of your in, it's actually, I think it's actually for people in college to leave

college for a year.

So a hundred K to basically leave college for a year and work on something interesting.

And uh, Ben, if I asked you like, Hey, is it like successful or unsuccessful?

Do you have any idea?

Um, no, except for that.

I know, um, uh, what's his name?

Did it, uh, the guy who did Ethereum, Vitalik.

Yeah, exactly.

Vitalik.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I would say, I still haven't told my Vitalik story on air, which is, I was in Amsterdam

and I saw him and I couldn't think what to say and he's walking right past me and I

just turned to him and you're Vitalik and he didn't like look or say anything.

You just kept walking, but it was him.

I really have security with him.

No, he was walking all alone on the streets of Amsterdam at eight AM in the morning.

It was just us.

Yeah.

I, we need to protect this man.

He never has security with him and he's just like wanders around to random cafes and goes

to events and stuff like this and like, dude, I really hope he's got such good security

that you just can't see them.

That's what I'll tell myself.

Um, so this Teal Fellowship thing is amazing.

The Teal Fellowship was exactly what you said.

Uh, Peter Teal comes out, Peter Teal is the kind of, uh, original founder of PayPal.

He was the first investor in Facebook, put 500K into Facebook early on, which became

hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions of dollars and, um, also prolific investor

in a bunch of other things, including SpaceX and other businesses.

So Peter Teal comes out and he basically says, uh, college education is a bubble.

He says, um, college education is sort of a joke.

He's like, you know, it hides under this, this, this like banner, like it's teaching

you something, like you're getting information, but really what you're getting is some version

of like an insurance policy.

Like I got this degree, so I'm not going to fall through the cracks of society and you're

getting like, you know, some status symbol, like, oh, I got this stamp on my thing.

So it's like a luxury, it's like a luxury product, like wearing a nice bag.

Your Harvard degree is like your Louis Vuitton bag.

And so he talks about college and he's like, it's costs just keep going up and up and up,

but the value and the salaries that you make don't go up.

And so it's just like overpriced bubble, just like the housing bubble.

He says, and he says, I'm going to offer, um, I'm going to offer something called the

Teal Fellowship, which is $100,000.

If you drop out of college and go work on something interesting and a bunch of people

criticize them, they say, uh, dude, how dare you?

You're telling kids, like the normal phrase is kids stay in school.

You're like, we get it.

You're contrarian.

Kids don't stay in school and you're like trying to get people to drop out.

Like what kind of like you're worse than a vape, you know, and so, uh, you know, people

didn't like what he was doing and other people were just like, oh, it's cool.

But like, you know, who knows if this is going to work or not.

Like, all right, you're going to pay this kid a hundred grand to, you know, do a summer

project.

Great.

So what this thing is amazing.

It is produced.

It worked out really well, didn't it?

And nobody talks about it.

So let me tell you some of the things that have come out of this, um, you have, like

you said, Ethereum, which is like a hundred and seventy billion dollar market cap thing

that came from Vitalik.

Probably like this generation's version of Facebook is like, you know, is Ethereum.

So that comes out of this where Vitalik does the two fellowship and, uh, continues working

on Ethereum during that time and, uh, and he launched it.

So that's one super, super, super successful thing.

So Figma, which is like a seven between five and $10 billion closer to 10 company that takes

on Adobe in the design space.

And Dylan, who is, you know, the founder of Figma was in the, was in the teal fellowship.

Uh, another one, Oyo rooms.

So this is in India.

It's like a, um, you know, kind of like a Airbnb-ish sort of thing.

It's like a hospitality, uh, you know, website, Oyo rooms, multi-billion dollar company, tens

of billions, I think, luminar technologies.

Um, most people don't know this.

It's a like LiDAR company that basically, uh, the technology you need for self-driving

cars.

And this thing I think went public in a SPAC.

This guy's like, I don't know, 21, 22 years old, 23 years old, something like that.

And he's worth like a billion dollars.

He's like one of the world's youngest billionaires, if not the youngest billionaire off of this

thing.

Um, that is just alone is crazy.

So polka dot, another crypto protocol valued at, you know, $7 billion, um, like I just

told you basically $200 billion worth of business value that has come from this program.

And it's way more, there's actually like a, uh, dozens that are in like the hundred

million dollar range.

I invested in a company that recently raised another round.

I think it was owner.com, the guy, Adam, he, uh, he was a teal fellow.

And I believe, I mean that, that, that potentially could be a unicorn, but it's hundreds of millions

for sure.

Uh, and there's like dozens more like that.

The reason I got reminded of this was because I invested in Italic and Jeremy Kai is the

founder of Italic.

And he was like, Oh yeah, I was a teal fellow.

That's how I was like, how did we meet eventually?

He's like, Oh yeah, I was a teal fellow.

We came to your office and you gave a talk and I thought it was awesome.

And so that's why we kept in touch.

And I was like, dude, was it Vitalik in the room?

He's like, I don't think he's like, I don't think he was at that event.

But he's like, dude, he used to like crash on our couch.

Like, you know, he was part of the program and he's like, he's, I was like, what was

he like?

He's like, he's genuinely the weirdest person ever.

Like the weirdest person I've ever met.

And like, he's like, yeah, in a good way and a bad way.

Nothing like, he's just nothing like, nothing like I've ever seen.

Just different, different sort of cat.

And I was like, this is, this is too good.

I think, I think you should keep using the word cat, by the way.

You like how I did that?

I've been doing something I'm workshopping right now.

Yeah, it looks good on you.

Yeah, I take it out for a spin.

I take it out of the garage, you know, you know, twice a week and I just see, do people

kind of like flinch when I say that, you know, try it with LIT and that was, I had to put

that one back in storage.

No, you're too old.

That one's not coming back out.

I put that one on eBay, actually got rid of it.

Yeah, no, you're, you're, you're, you're too much of a gray bush for that one.

But cat, yeah, cat was cool.

I would stick with cat, but it is crazy, man.

The Peter Taylor, I thought at first it was real.

It was kind of stupid.

I'm like, dude, this is weird.

Like one of these like little 18 year old nerds, like they're not going to do anything

interesting.

Obviously I was wrong.

Um, I, like, I, when I, when I was like rethinking my opinion on it, I was like, wow, I guess

just like high IQ matters.

Like these guys, they're just, they have more power than I do.

I always say they're just, they're higher, you're higher functioning than me.

You know, that's just the only way I can describe it.

You have more horsepower.

Your oven burns hotter and it actually, it truly matters and it makes a difference.

Your oven burns hotter is so good.

God, I love that.

That was mean.

You know what I mean?

They just got that, they got that, that, uh, heater furnace.

That's how I felt when I was at Twitch.

I was like, uh, I was like, okay, let's see what are the, like, you know, I had kind of

had opinions from the outside, like, okay, at these big tech companies, what are the

people like?

What are the execs like?

What are the average people like, you know, how hard do they work?

How smart are they?

Like, you know, do they have like all these processes that are way better than the messy

stuff I was doing at my startup?

And like, you know, for the most part, I would say it's kind of like, you know, I walked

out a little cockier than I came in and I came in pretty cocky.

And that's what I was, you know, it's just sort of like, oh, okay, like, you know, they

don't have some magic, you know, processes or the people aren't that much better.

Except like two or three people at the company, one of which was Emmett, who's the founder,

you know, we would sit down and he, there would be like, you know, data science would

be presenting some report on like, you know, some trends.

And I'm just sitting there trying to like, it's a six page memo.

I'm trying to like stop yawning because it's like, I'm just like, why do I keep yawning?

I'm having this like, you know, reflex and I'm reading this thing.

I'm just trying to understand these charts.

And like, you just hear this little click and it's like, someone's pen is down and it's

like, you know, if you're taking a math test, like who's done with the test already?

And it would be Emmett, he'd be like, pens down, he'd be playing Hearthstone on his phone.

And you're like, no, he like, he must have already read this or like, you know, he must

just skim.

And then then they're like, all right, yeah, we're ready to start the discussion.

And he would be like, so on page three, you know, this chart, actually, I noticed that

the axes a little wrong because, you know, if this was true, then, but then this other

chart on page seven would show this, I'm like, what the, you know, what is happening?

How is your brain processing this much information this quickly?

And somehow always getting to like, like the heart of the issue.

It's like, we all spent our time and energy, like trying to parse out what's important.

Like he immediately got to what was important and had the conclusion and had like the follow

up question and also identified why this paper wasn't very good in the first place.

And once I saw the brain doing that, I was like, oh, okay, there's just some cars, you

know, have more horsepower.

Like, or as you said, the oven burns a little hotter and like his oven burns way hotter

than mine.

And I was like, oh, that's good to know.

Like, because I have this thing I always say, I like to see what level 12 looks like.

Like, what is, oh, that speaker system is a little too loud for me, but like, I want

to know what volume on 12 even is.

I want to feel, you know, my own chest, you know, like vibrating with the bass.

And it's like, okay, I don't want to be somebody who never sees it.

I want to see it.

What was he like in like real life, like outside of work?

Because have you ever seen some of these people interact in like normal like life?

Like they like, I told you about one friend that's like intense and he literally only

owns a T two T shirts, one pair of underwear, one pair of socks and his laptop.

That's like only thing he owns that he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

And then like, I know a bunch of these guys that are like this and like for hobbies, they're

just all in.

And like, so if they're into like, you know, like fucking their body or something, they've

got like every gadget you could ever imagine in there, they could tell you all about it.

And or if they're into dieting, they've got like their pant, like my friend Jack, he's

into supplements and he's got literally $30,000 worth of supplements in a closet.

And they'd be like, what's this do?

What's this do?

What's this do?

And he just like tests everything.

What was he like in like, like, was he like, if he's into cars, could he like tell you

every single thing about like a Porsche and what year it was from and why it was special?

Yeah.

Yes.

But before I tell you about him, I just read this thing that was like Sergey Brin, the

co-founder of Google.

And it's like, oh, what is it?

Like, you know, because he's in the news because of his wife and Elon, all that stuff.

And some people are like, what is Sergey doing nowadays?

Because he's not, I don't think he's at Google anymore.

And it said, over the last year or two, he's become very into personal fitness.

In fact, he has been trying to master several Olympic sports.

And I was like, what?

Dude, I don't know, I looked at this guy, he went like, what Olympic sport?

Pig Pong?

I don't know.

Sea shooting?

Yeah.

Curling.

Yeah.

The other one is that he's currently writing a physics textbook.

And I was like, of course he's writing a physics textbook.

That's more like it.

Come on.

Yeah.

So anyways, yeah, these guys are wired like that where like when they go in, they go in

like very deep.

And honestly, I don't know him super well because I interacted with him mostly at work.

And anytime it was outside of work, it was really cool, but it was like, you know, limited.

It wasn't like I hung out with him like a hundred times.

It would maybe be more like five times, you know, something like that over the couple

years that I was there.

Um, what I would say is like a couple of little things that stood out.

One, he's like us.

He's an idea machine.

In fact, I need to get him on the podcast because you've been saying that for three

years now.

I know.

I know.

And when I was there, I didn't ask him because I was like, you know, already, you know, me

doing this podcast is not a, you know, you're like, what a bail at noon and go and record.

Yeah.

It's not everyone's favorite thing I do, um, you know, but, but I think now I can do it.

But he would like, like he told me this idea.

He's like, I tell you about his gym idea.

No.

He's like, he's like, Jim's, he's like, Jim's need to be, uh, made like video games.

If I was going to leave Twitch, I might start this, uh, a gym that structured like a video

game.

So he's like, this is how it works.

You show up and you're like, uh, at the beginning character of a, of a game, like you show up

and we give you kind of like your basic uniform and we have a little, little wrist strap that

like tracks your level of like fitness and intensity as you work out and you let basically

level up.

So like every time you come to the gym, you're earning points and like as you earn points,

like we give you like better gear, like we'll give you the, the, the, like the, the more

fitted, you know, clothes that look cooler.

And so you can like visibly see people's different levels as they go to the gym.

You would be able to like go into certain sections of the gym that were previously locked

to you.

You would be able to get like protein shakes and stuff for free.

And he's like, uh, he's like, I think if you gamified a gym, people would come more.

And like actually this is kind of played out with Peloton Peloton is very much organized

like this with leaderboards and stuff like that, gamification, uh, but I was like, this

is a crazy idea.

He's like, yeah, it'd be like the world of Warcraft of gyms.

Like people would grind like years of their life to level up their character to 60 and

they would like work to do it.

He's like, I think you could do that with, with a gym.

And I was like, wow.

Yeah.

I mean, people do that with like karate and, and jujitsu, you know, black belt, brown belt,

blue belt type of thing.

Exactly.

And they stick with it and they keep showing up.

For 10 plus years.

And he's like, but you know, you don't want the increments to be like a year before you

see some progress.

Every time you come, you need to be earning a little bit more and getting a little bit

more unlocked, you know, and see that the next milestone is just within reach.

So I thought that was interesting.

The second one, he was like, uh, he was like trying to plug in the computer to like screen

share one time with me, like, uh, like normally these meetings are like set up by somebody

else, but like if it's just you two, like, you got to do it, plug it in.

And he's like, he's fucking cables.

He's like, you know, honestly, I think I could create like the Apple for like accessories

for computer accessories.

He's like, just like the best connecting cables, the best cable management, the best plugs.

He's like, he's like, nobody, he's like, look at this.

It's like every office in the world has these and look at how bad they look, how ugly they

are, how poorly they function, how confusing they are.

He's like, I think you could just build like a really nicely designed cables and connectors

and accessories company for every office in the country.

And like, you know, people would, uh, people would pay for it.

And I was like, huh, like, why do you think of these things that this is weird?

And so that's what people say about you.

He had a dozen ideas that were like this when I was there.

All right.

That's one thing that I noticed.

We'll wrap this up real quick, but I, um, there's this famous story.

So this guy named Chris Saka was a popular investor and invested in, uh, Instagram and

a bunch of other stuff in Uber.

And he's supposed to be one of the best angel investors of all time.

He told this story somewhere where he is in Tahoe or truckie where he has a home and he's

with his dad and Travis Kalanick, right when he was about to start Uber came over to just

spend the weekend, you know, a family vacation and Travis, um, and, and Chris Saka's dad,

Mr. Saka, they start playing, uh, we tennis and Travis is playing and the dad's playing

and they just like, uh, are being casual and Travis was like, all right, you want to step

it up?

So he steps it up and he just crushes them and he just beats this guy like so bad.

And, uh, Mr. Saka was like, what the hell, man?

And Travis goes, I've got a surprise to show you and he puts the Wii from his left hand

into his right hand.

He goes, I was playing left hand at the whole time.

I'm actually right handed.

Let's really play.

And he goes, Travis goes, all right, but I do have to tell you something.

And they go to the ratings board and he's number two in the whole world at Wii tennis.

And Chris Saka was like, right then and there, I realized I never want to compete against

this guy because his drive and his hobby is winning.

And he just proved that like in his free time of starting this company, he's just going

to be number one in the world that we tennis just cause just cause he has to.

And he just hustled my dad thinking that he was left-handed and it worked perfectly.

This guy is a winner.

And that's why Chris Saka said he invested in like, I just see his intensity and just

walking around.

Dude, a hundred percent agree, uh, Peter Teal is the same way as like a master or grandmaster

at chess.

And like in the PayPal mafia, which is now like the most successful entrepreneur group

ever.

Uh, I think several of them were like very, very high level chess players, um, that have

gone through that, you know, that like we're, we're in that thing.

There's like something to the, the oven burns hotter.

That's like true for some of these people.

It's a combination of intensity and capability.

Um, that is, that is definitely true.

Like, uh, another kind of like Emmett observation that I was like, huh, that's weird.

That doesn't seem normal.

Um, so I guess two little ones.

One was I was like, what do you do for fun?

Like what do you, when you hang out, like what are you doing?

He's like, oh, like I love board games.

He's like, you should come over for like a board game night.

And I was like, uh, okay.

Like what, what, what are we playing?

Like, you know, Monopoly, like Twister, what do we got going here?

And he's like, this is looked at me like we only pay like deep strategy games.

And it was like, we only play Katan on like hard mode or like even Katan is like the beginner

one.

Like name two other games.

I don't even know about that.

Like, you know, or like this, the, the, like the board games that are like actually, you

know, like multi-level, multi-hour strategy games.

And basically it was him and the brothers from Stripe and like the founder of Reddit

and they would just get together and play these games on the weekend.

That's what they did exactly how I want them to spend their time.

Exactly.

So I thought that was kind of funny.

And then the other one was like, um, we were in a meeting and he, we were talking about

like, I don't know, like some policy, like, oh, these, you know, whatever.

Yes.

Some girl streaming on Twitch and like her nipples showing like, is that okay?

But it's like, you know, she lives in Denmark.

You know what?

What are the rules around this?

Should we ban her?

Or like what?

And, and so there was always these policy questions coming up over and over and over again.

And it felt like you can't win because whatever Twitch did, it was like, oh, dude, they're

trying to control us, censor us, like they're inconsistent.

They should have also changed it over here.

Like it was a no win policy.

And then, you know, like he would, he would have these like, he would have these hobbies

which is like reading like old books that nobody would read, like no normal person's

reading these books.

And then he'd be able to connect the dots on to like completely unrelated things.

It's sort of like Ben's podcast stuff where it's like, oh, actually, like, you know,

the Rothschilds similarly set this up in a, you know, set up their will in a weird way

because of this.

Maybe you should do this.

Like, dude, how do you know all this like really specific stuff from history?

He would be like, do you know how the potato farmers governed their like, you know, farms

in the Netherlands during the potato drought?

And then like the head of policy, which is like, no, just tell me what he's like, actually

they had created this governing council that was blah, blah, blah, and like the cool thing

about this rule of law was blah, blah, maybe we should, you know, you should read that

like, tell me what you think about it and they're like, all right, like, where do I

find this like out of print book that you read like randomly and you remember what the

potato farmers did.

And so he would always bring these like really unrelated examples in.

That was one thing.

And the other one was he would debate you over semantics like to death.

So you would be like, you know, like it'd be like an exact offsite.

He'd be like, you know, I just feel like we don't have enough like trust on the team

and everyone's like nodding.

Yeah, you know, like, you know, he's a collaboration is a problem or whatever.

And he'd be like, well, is it trust or collaboration?

Because trust means this and collaboration means this.

Like, well, you know, just like the general like trust, collaboration, just like working

together better.

He's like, but again, define for me what you mean when you say trust, I just want to make

sure I have it right.

And he's not trying to like, it's not a gotcha.

He wants, he's like a hyper literal person.

So he's like, when you say it's failing, I take that to mean it's failing.

Is it failing?

Or is it this other thing?

Like just getting lost in the sauce of this like semantical debate.

But like, he really wanted to be hyper literal about it.

And I've never seen anybody do this in it.

You know, there were upside that we gave a bad example here, but like, I think you understand

the general premise, which is that he really cared about words, what they mean and why we're

using them.

And if we're using them correctly to describe what's going on and everybody else was kind

of hand wavy about stuff, especially like the higher you go up an organization, you

sort of get paid for being sort of high hand wavy like a politician.

And he was the opposite of that.

So these are some of the things I noticed that now when I invest in founders, I'm like,

I can invest in this guy who created this company called Skiyo.

And he's like, yeah, I'm just like, I was like, what'd you do before this?

He's like, oh, it's a professional call duty player.

Like before that, I was, you know, I was grinding and World of Warcraft like it was a waste

of time.

But like, yeah, top three in the world or whatever.

It's like, what?

Oh, you were like a top three Starcraft player like, you know, in this on the on the East

Coast server, like, okay, you're a winner and you're obsessive.

And you are like, you find the rules of the game and then you like optimize to win it.

And sure enough, now, like with his thing, he's just like a wrecking ball with like acquiring

customers because he just find this is the new game.

And he's like finding rules and he's like maximizing his edge and everything that he

can do to the point where he's kind of like a nut job, but like, you know, it works.

At the end of episodes like this, I'm exhausted.

I feel like I just exerted so much energy, both listening and speaking.

Do you have to take a nap at the end of this?

Because you just spoke like with incredibly high energy for, we've done this for an hour

and 17 minutes in.

Do you get exhausted?

I take naps after.

No, not at all.

I leave these on a high.

So do I, but then I need to go to always you.

Well, yeah, you never have water.

I usually drink three drinks while I'm doing these, but like I'm exhausted.

I get exhausted just listening.

Well, that's probably my fault.

So I'm sorry.

No, no, no, it's a good exhausted.

I'm like, God, I just learned so much and I need to get so much better at this, this

and this by hearing this story.

And I was just so intensely listening and enthralled by this conversation that I need

a nap.

I've got to go lay down.

I got to go rest.

This apology went on Tim Ferriss's podcast and do like a three hour podcast and I listened

to it last night.

And like literally while it was happening, I could feel my brain fatiguing, just trying

to like digest what this man was saying.

He's so, by the way, you also hear Tim, Tim Ferriss sound.

I love Tim Ferriss.

Tim Ferriss sounds like an absolutely defeated man on these podcasts with biology because

Balaji would be like, um, you know, on one hand, you have the woke capitalists on the

other hand, you have the anarcho anarcho, you know, the anarcho capitalists.

Do you know what I mean when I say that?

And Tim's like, no, tell me.

And like that happens 40 times in the episode.

He's like, um, are you familiar with the concept of the, uh, you know, the Schrodinger

window?

Tim's like, um, no, but I assume you can tell me.

And he's like, he just does that over and over and over.

Dude, one time when he was with us, he was like, he was like, you know, Bitcoin is kind

of like Battle of the Bulge.

And you remember how the Germans were doing it?

I'm like, dude, I don't, I needed an analogy for your analogy.

Like you don't, please don't reference Battle of the Bulge would try to explain a complicated

topic.

Like, you know, it's like, you know, Bitcoin's kind of like, uh, like neuroscience.

Like you don't have like the chemicals of like this, this, and this interact this way.

Think about the Bitcoin, Bitcoin is the amygdala of the crypto.

You can say, well, what's the amygdala, dude?

I don't know.

Yeah, that's what, that's what was happening.

And I guess I did that to you in this case, but no, you're, you're, you're way dumber.

I could totally keep up with that.

It just was a good story.

No, you just talk more.

No, I thought it was good.

That was a compliment.

I was exhausted because I'm like so into it.

Like I, like, I, I love hearing these stories so much.

We used to do these mastermind, uh, like dinners or hangouts where it'd be me, Sam and like

three other guys and we'd meet up every two weeks or three weeks, something like that.

And it would always be like, you know, each person gets 20 minutes and you'd sort of say,

what's going on in your business?

What's working?

What, and what you want help?

What do you want the other guys to like, you know, basically help you think through?

And then, and those things last, basically, if you just do the math, it's like six people,

20 minutes each, but everybody runs 10 minutes over and like, you know, we start 10 minutes

late.

It's like, this thing is three hours long.

And we would always start it after work.

So we'd started at like seven.

It would finish at 10, 10, 30, uh, we skipped dinner.

Nobody's like gone to the bathroom and basically there was two reactions.

Some people were like fucking exhausted by the end of this and they're like, oh, this

was great.

But like, man, next time let's try to be a little shorter.

Uh, and like, I get that logically.

My reaction, and we used to do some of these at your office.

I remember, uh, at the hustle's office.

I don't know if you know this.

I would leave your office at 10, 10, 30, and I would go straight to my office and I would

just work four or five straight hours because I was like, I can't do that.

I was so inspired.

I was like a combination of inspired by the like, your guys is awesomeness, um, panicked

that like, oh my God, I have so much I need to do that I now realize and like, oh fuck,

I need to do all of this and I'm just going to try to do as much as I can tonight.

Uh, and like, I was, is a combination of like enthusiasm and like feeling overwhelmed by

like the amount of potential and ideas and like stuff I could be doing to make our stuff

grow more.

No, I got to go like drink Gatorade and take a power nap.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I need to fuel up.

I'm going to go eat a cliff bar.

I get worn out.

I'm like, my blood sugar is low.

I could feel it.

I guess that's the episode right then.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.