My First Million: Part 2: Pomp On His Businesses, Young Rock Star Employees, And The Internet Entrepreneur Hero

And so Ben goes, Billy, you got a raise and you quit?

Like this guy's a conundrum, man, what's going on?

He goes, what's the plan?

And he just finds a pen and a text and he goes,

do I look like a guy with a plan?

And that became the most badass thing I've heard all week.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

Put my all in it like no days are on the road.

Let's travel never looking back.

All right, we got an episode here with Pomp, Anthony

Pompliano, who you may know as the Bitcoin guy.

He's huge all over YouTube, Twitter, everywhere else.

He came on.

We're actually going to do this as a two part episode

because at the beginning it was all business.

We were business in the front.

We were talking about this crazy million dollar

biology bet where he's betting that Bitcoin is going

to a million dollars in the next 90 days.

We talk about that, why biology thinks it,

what we think about the bet.

And Pomp does a, you know, I don't know,

Econ 101 where he explains what's going on

with the banking system from his perspective.

That was good.

But here's the thing though.

In that episode, the whole episode is about

something that's going to happen inside the next 90 days.

So if you're going to like,

it is a little fearful listening to it.

And so actually listen to the whole thing

because, and do it now,

because we're talking about something that's happening

in 90 days.

And then go ahead, the second episode was way more fun

and it was pretty wild.

Go ahead.

We talk about his business empire, you know,

what he's building and why he's building it that way,

why he gave back all the money from his fund

and shut that down, why he's-

It's huge.

He turned off all his advertisers,

millions of dollars of advertisers,

what he's doing instead.

And then it went off the wall

and the pod got a little crazy, but in a great way.

I think people are gonna, you're gonna love part two.

He broke down like all of his businesses

and how they work.

It's very impressive.

It was pretty wild.

And he told some pretty funny stories,

which Pomp is usually, he's pretty buttoned up

on his main channel because he's talking finance,

he's talking serious,

but he told some pretty funny stories.

So the second part two is the more fun episode.

Part one is the more serious episode.

I think you'll like them both.

And we have to remind you guys

that our episodes, we work really, really hard.

And unlike every other type of podcast out there,

our stuff's not free, but you don't pay with money.

All you have to do is go to our YouTube page.

We call this the gentleman's agreement.

What is it?

The ladies understanding.

The ladies understanding.

You go to our YouTube page.

And the reason it's called that

is because it's an understanding.

It's an agreement.

We can't be there behind your screen to check this.

Otherwise we would, but everyone's doing it.

So just go ahead and do it

and click subscribe on YouTube.

And then just go ahead and do that on Spotify and iTunes

because Pomp ain't gonna come on to episodes like this

if we don't have a big listenership.

Same with all the other guests.

All right, enjoy.

Can we talk about instead of value ruining,

we talk about value creation?

Because Pomp owns like four companies, I think,

that I wanted to ask him about.

And my fight or flight mode is like too much right now

that I need like a rags or riches story.

I need something interesting.

I need Pomp to tell me how he makes the paper now

because I need to calm down.

I need to meditate by Pomp telling me how he makes income.

So Pomp, from what I understand,

you have four or five different companies

and you have this office in Miami

and you have like, it feels like you have,

at first I was gonna call it a mini empire,

but it doesn't sound so mini actually.

Medium empire?

Medium empire.

Yeah, maybe big empire.

I don't know.

Can you explain what are like the things

that you got going on?

Yeah, so from my career, if you really think about,

there's kind of three stages to some degree.

At first it was like, hey, how do I build companies?

And I basically had enough success where I was like,

okay, maybe I'm not like horrible at this,

but I definitely don't know how to like build companies

to scale, et cetera.

That led to Facebook where like,

that was kind of my equivalent of like an MBA, right?

I literally was with all these super talented people

in 2014, 2015, I was put on a number of different projects

where I got exposed to Mark Zuckerberg and Charles Sandberg

and a bunch of the leadership of the company.

And I just learned a lot.

It was like the best learning experience possible.

And shortly thereafter, I started investing.

And when I started investing,

it was kind of like I didn't have an idea

to start a company.

So like, oh, let's try this investing thing.

And I really enjoyed doing it.

I ended up building two different asset management firms.

And like, it's fun, but like the product is kind of money

and you get to work on a bunch of different ideas.

But I think that I keep coming back to an idea

like venture capital is such a slugging percentage game

that what you end up doing

is you end up actually playing an access game

almost more than you do playing a business game.

And what I mean by that is outside of the maybe

the big five or six venture capital funds,

once a company gets de-risk, it is all access, right?

It is literally, who do you know?

How do you get into a deal?

How do you actually get an allocation?

Whatever.

And like, that's fun.

But that to me is more of like a kind of a status type thing

of like, oh, what do these people think of me?

Will they invite me into the deal?

And like that maybe is like an underbelly

of the venture capital industry.

And so simultaneous to building those asset management firms,

I started creating content on the internet.

And in hindsight, like it was optimized initially

for learning, then it kind of switched like,

oh, there's a lot of deal flow that comes from this.

And so I like took it a little bit more seriously.

And then there was this like final transition to like,

oh, these are like businesses, right?

And I think the big aha that I had was

historically you built a company by building the product

and then going and looking for customers.

Now you can find the customers and then build the product.

And so that's essentially what we've done

is we've built this very, very large audience.

You know, the podcast is 25 million downloads last year,

YouTube's half a million subscribers.

One day, I think you guys are going to pass me.

So keep going.

The email is big, Twitter's big, et cetera.

A quick break to let you know that today's episode

is brought to you by the Side Hustle Pro podcast,

a podcast hosted by Nikela Matthews Akome,

which is also on the HubSpot podcast network.

So the Side Hustle podcast is focused on people

bringing their side hustles into making them,

their full-time gigs, making them big businesses.

And so she's got a bunch of really interesting episodes.

Her most recent episode is about a woman

who was popular on Instagram and created a bunch of products

and brought it into Target and got it into retail stores,

which is really, really hard.

She has a few other episodes on changing the relationship

with money and building a healthy emotional relationship

with money, which is something we talk about here,

which is definitely challenging, mastering self-talk,

and then also how to have a plan for the year

and put it into action and much more.

So go check it out, Side Hustle Pro,

wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, everyone, on the podcast about last year,

one of the best guests we ever had was this guy named

Neil Patel.

It was kind of controversial because he said

that he was spending $200,000 a month,

which is a ton of money.

And the truth is, even though it was controversial,

everyone was asking about him, and if we can get him on again,

well, I've got good news because he has a podcast.

And today's episode is brought to you by his podcast.

It's called Marketing School,

and it's a daily marketing podcast brought to you

by Neil Patel, the guy we had, and his partner Eric Sue.

So they share all types of stuff

about marketing, business, investing,

and your friends will think you are a marketing genius.

So check it out.

You can just search Marketing School

on your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube.

So search Marketing School on YouTube and check it out.

Is your podcast, are you bigger than us right now?

Are you trying to flex on us, or are we already bigger?

I think you're still bigger.

How many are your downloads?

Ranges from 100,000 to 150,000 per episode.

So the RSS feed, the actual pod is in the 100,000-ish range,

and then the YouTube videos, 20 to 50,000.

So that's what we say, 100 to 150,000 downloads per episode.

So you guys will do more than me on individual episodes,

but I have like this crazy power law.

Like, we just put up an interview on YouTube.

It's got 100,000 views in the first 12 hours, right?

So it's like very much concentrated on like the long tail,

which is like also interesting, right?

Like, would you rather have the consistent

50 to 100,000 YouTube and podcast,

or would you rather have the breakout,

like million views plus every month or so?

Like-

Yeah, so maybe you'll catch up to us one day.

I don't know.

So the general idea has just been like,

how do you build those businesses?

And then really it's like,

once you know who the audience is,

you can go and build products.

But like, I very much look at it as a game,

and it goes back to the whole idea of like,

I don't have hobbies, right?

Like this is what I do in my free time,

and I really enjoy doing it.

And so we've built a number of different businesses.

Some of them have been bigger than others,

but really it's like, if you have distribution,

then you can build companies in the 21st century.

And we see, you know, really, really big creators doing this.

I tend to think of anyone can do it.

And then I guess-

What are the businesses?

So there's the media company itself.

Then we have a, with two aspects-

Yeah, let's just listen.

So number one, media company that has advertising.

Is that a substantial sized business?

It used to have advertising.

It was a very substantial business.

It probably was one of the best monetized podcasts

in the world based on the audience to revenue.

It was a big podcast.

And so both on the revenue side and also the downloads,

I turned all the ads off.

And I think there was really two things that fit into it.

One was when you have an advertiser,

usually you just go and you find companies

that you like their product.

You then say, hey, I use this product.

You guys should check it out.

And that's like fine.

If you're doing like a bar of soap

or you're doing like liquid death

or you know, like whatever the normal product is.

The problem in finance is like people put their money

into a product that you then share.

And so you're essentially like renting your reputation

to someone else, right?

And you have no control over the business.

You don't know what they're doing.

And then it's not like, oh, I bought this chair

that got recommended or I bought this sweatshirt

that Sean and Sam said was really cool.

I don't like it.

Idiots, right?

But like, I'm not that worried about it.

When somebody puts their money into a product,

then all of a sudden it's a whole different game.

And so I just didn't want to be in that world anymore,

especially when a lot of them are crypto companies

and crypto companies kept blowing up, et cetera.

But the second thing that I realized

from a business opportunity standpoint is

when I got rid of all of the advertising,

I knew that we would take a massive hit.

We have a team, we've got an office, like all this stuff.

And so I had to commit to personally covering everything.

So like, once I made the decision,

I've been losing money every month,

but I'm doing it because the bigger opportunity

is to actually own the products and services

that you put through the distribution.

So think of it like you guys will get paid

as a podcast host for an ad,

they might pay you $1 to read the ad,

but they're making $3 to $5 on the backend

as their return on advertising.

Now, if you can cut out the middleman

and you can just own the product or service,

that's a way better deal.

The reason why most people don't do it

is because they don't have the skillset

or the interest in actually building

the product or the service.

And so I basically just was like,

look, we kind of like figured out

how to do advertising-based content.

I want a hard challenge.

I want to do something that is going to be,

by most people's accounts, stupid

to give up all this revenue and go try this.

And like, it's one, it's actually stimulating,

but two is if we figure it out,

it'll be a way bigger business

and it'll be a much more sustainable resilient thing

over the long run.

It's just you got to be able to weather

the kind of bumpy transition in between ad-based

to owning the products and services yourself.

So we have fund, we have media company,

which sometimes does,

sometimes doesn't actually make revenue.

Then we have-

Hold on, hold on.

The fund, didn't you give all the money back?

Aren't you no longer in the fund?

So there's two different asset management firms.

One was a joint venture with Morgan Creek Capital,

a hedge fund.

We invested all the capital and invested in companies

like Coinbase and we had Boston Bitcoin,

those types of things.

And you get a cut if it ever does well.

Correct.

And then I had a second asset management firm.

I was one of the first people to do a rolling fund

on the angel list,

which I found was an incredible product

for somebody who has a small team

and kind of wants to punch above their weight.

And so I think we grew it into like maybe the third biggest

rolling fund on the platform at the time,

made a bunch of investments.

And then I just got to the point

where I started to do the math

and I was like, what do I enjoy investing in?

I enjoy investing in like the pre-seed seed.

I actually don't like doing like series B, series C stuff

again, because it's more of like this like status

and access game.

I enjoy meeting someone who's like, I have an idea

and like talking to them and trying to figure out,

like, is this a viable idea?

What are the first steps?

And so if you actually look at the math,

if you can afford to personally invest in those deals,

a lot of times it's actually better economically

to personally invest than it is to invest out of the fund

because of the way that the carry works

and kind of the management fees, et cetera.

And so it was like, if I invest personally

rather than do the fund and also now I don't have to

spend time on LPs, on the updates,

like do all the things that go into managing a fund,

I get time back plus I could make more money,

like I'll always pick that.

And so I gave back all of the uninvested capital

out of that fund and then now just do

all of my investing personally.

And do you do big checks or is it like the normal

like 15 to $30,000 angel check?

No, I'll do bigger than that.

But what I've over time started to realize also is like,

it goes back to kind of why we want to start

some of these companies.

Investing in other people's companies is great

and obviously the power law takes over

and when that occurs, it's amazing

and angel investing can be really profitable.

But actually you're much more likely to be able to take,

you know, $50,000, $100,000, start a business

and get to like a million dollars in revenue

and throw off $500,000 to $700,000 in profit

year after year after year and do it

with like a very high degree of probability of success.

And so in some way, like what's better than angel investing

in other people's ideas?

It may actually be just like angel investing

in your own ideas or your own companies.

And so that's really where I've been focused is like,

yes, I will still on occasion invest in other companies,

but now I want to start these businesses

and I look at it as, what is the competitive advantage?

We have capital, but we also have distribution.

And so if you have capital and distribution,

you basically just need like a decent idea

and you need an absolute killer operator.

And if you can find those two things,

combine it with the capital and distribution,

you got a good chance of being able to make some money.

And so you have, and by the way,

what's your biggest angel investment?

Or we'll end up be so far the most successful one, you think?

Some of the big, I mean, Bitcoin obviously is probably

the one that will end up making the most money,

both in terms of the amount of money I invested,

but also kind of just the aggregate dollar value

it'll be worth.

I tend to be in Sean's camp,

like the dollars aren't going to matter.

It's going to be the Bitcoin.

I think that some of that people will find interesting.

I don't know the exact math on all of them.

And one of the things is when it's your own money,

you probably pay less attention than when it's a fund,

right?

Cause you're kind of just like, oh, I invested,

that money's gone.

Hopefully I get some back later.

But I invested in Varta,

Delian and a bunch of those guys.

They're doing kind of space manufacturing.

I find that really fascinating.

A friend and I, we invested in something called Everly Well,

based out of Austin actually.

They do like at home diagnostic testing.

I invested in Howard Lerman's new company, Rome.

They're kind of building like a workspace for remote teams,

kind of a zoom and slack type killer

that seems to be doing very, very well.

But a whole host of other ones.

So all right.

So we're, and then you've got,

so you got the fund and investing,

you got that thing, media company.

You also have crypto Academy.

You have crypto jobs,

which parlayed now into like a proper recruiting service.

Those three.

So you can basically think of the inflection points business,

business called inflection points.

You can think of that almost as like,

it's become a holding company for all these different

products and services in a specific vertical.

So I'm fascinated with Mark Leonard.

I don't know if you guys know a constellation software.

He basically buys these like vertically,

vertical specific software companies.

Well, what happens if you don't have a holding company

that ends up buying across the different verticals?

What if you just have a holding company

within a specific vertical?

And so that's basically what we've built.

We have a job marketplace that companies can go,

list their open roles, they pay for it.

We then use the distribution to drive traffic.

People can go get a job.

We also have-

And that's popcryptojobs.com, right?

That's that thing.

Correct.

Okay.

And that's like a pretty basic business.

It's just a job board.

Think of a job board, right?

That's how we got started.

It was just a job board, got it.

We launched it.

It got to like $50,000 in monthly revenue,

pretty much in like the first like four weeks.

And it was like, okay, we have a business here, right?

We can go and we can try to scale this thing.

We then bought a recruiting company,

kind of traditional headhunters,

proof of talent is the name of that business.

And so you can do like self-serve.

You can go and list the jobs and people will come to you

or you can go and you can work with the recruiters.

They just take a percentage of the first year fee.

Then we started doing corporate training.

So there was a very large company that came to us

and was like, hey, can you train our people?

And so we got into that business,

ended up growing that to seven figures in revenue.

And then we just started a research business.

The research business, think of it as like buy side research.

So you pay a subscription fee

and they deliver research kind of a couple of times a week

called reflexivity.

Can you say what that was called?

So that one's like a perfect example, right?

So reflexivity research is within that holding company,

but I think is a perfect example

of like what I wanna do now over and over and over again.

So if you have an idea,

please reach out to myself, Sam Orshawn.

But Will Clemente is a young guy

in the Bitcoin crypto world,

has done really great analysis.

I've worked with him for about a year.

I know that he's hardworking.

How'd you find that guy?

He was like in college, right?

Where you found him?

That guy was great.

He was working at Target.

He was working at Target, literally?

He was literally working at Target

and he would go in the back.

This story couldn't end either way.

This is gonna end wonderfully or not.

I mean, please.

So the leading Bitcoin researcher was working at Target.

All right, this is either a great underdog story

or it's gonna be how could you guys trust this guy?

So.

I don't remember every single detail,

but he had like, I don't know, a couple thousand,

maybe a thousand followers on Twitter.

He was going into the bathroom at Target

and like tweeting like Bitcoin charts and stuff.

And so I met him because of the stuff he was tweeting.

And then was like.

In the bathroom?

No, online.

That's something being like,

hey, you know, like put your background.

What do you do?

And he's like, I'm literally like in the bathroom

at Target tweeting on my lunch break, right?

Or whatever.

I was like, all right, like that's pretty cool.

And so we just started to, you know,

kind of interact online.

Then I started to bring him on the podcast.

And just like, I got to know him and was like, okay,

like this kid is smart.

He's young.

So he doesn't have a ton of experience,

but like his compounding rate of learning

was like off the charts.

He would like read a book in two or three days

and then like send me,

hey, here's all the things I learned from the book.

And then he'd like read another one and do it again.

And it was just like, all right,

the trajectory of this is not linear.

This is very much like compounding or exponential.

Like this is a young person I wanna spend time with.

Why is a guy who's this smart at this into learning,

working at Target in the first place?

Like was he just not interested in school,

but only interested in blockchain?

Why does this happen?

He was in college.

This was like his like job while he was in college was like,

you just go to like the local businesses, right?

He got a job at Target.

So he ended up dropping out of college

and kind of like bet on himself.

He got a job.

Eventually we're like,

hey, maybe we should like start a company together.

And so we figured out kind of the structure of the business.

We put some money into the business.

And we, in the first six months got to, you know,

a hundred K of ARR and I think that we will be at maybe

three or 400 K of ARR after the first, you know,

call it nine months.

And then I think that maybe we can get somewhere

around a million dollars in the first year.

And so it's like, if you can do this product,

by the way, this product, I'm looking at the site.

So I used to own this thing called trends, trends.co.

And we got that to be a good business,

but you guys are doing very similar,

but you're making not, I made a mistake of being broad.

You're doing just crypto.

It's $2,500 a year.

And what is it?

Just a weekly newsletter?

No, you get like anywhere between

four to six different research reports per week.

And then there's a weekly,

what we call like an analyst call.

So we've got a bunch of these young people

who are like crypto native kids, right?

I'll use kids cause they're like under the age of 25,

most of them.

And they're super, super smart.

They're like in all the discord channels

and they really understand like

what is happening in the community.

And then you take someone like me

who can help them wrap that

into something that can be consumed

by large family offices, hedge funds, you know,

large asset managers, individual investors, et cetera.

And so not only do you get the research reports,

but you also get that weekly call

where you get to get on and just ask them questions.

They're like, oh.

And they're, they're, they're writing their report.

Jason here from JPMorgan.

Just quick question for come squat 69.

You mentioned that you were.

I would love, would love to hear you expand on that.

And also whoever's vaping,

can you please mute the microphone?

They just call everyone bra, like, it's not bra.

Yeah, it's good.

We literally, we literally have like

public company CEOs who are subscribers

and they get on the call

and they're like trying to like, you know,

learning all this stuff.

And when you have these businesses,

I think that there's like pros and cons to these

like internet native businesses that are started,

especially with young people who want to work,

who kind of have this desire to kind of push forward.

The good thing is like they're young.

They're like too naive to know all the things

that would stop someone else from doing it.

They have a lot of time on their hands

and like, frankly, they're willing to make mistakes, right?

They don't get embarrassed because they did something.

You're just like, hey, don't do that.

And they're like, okay, like thanks.

And they just go and do something else.

The downside to it is like,

at one point we literally had to have like

a little bit of an internal session.

I'm like, hey, here's how you write, you know,

like a grammar and like,

here's how to like use punctuation and spacing

and like all these types of things.

And so you go into these businesses understanding

that like it's all about momentum.

And then you have to look for the rate of,

or the compounding rate of learning.

And if you can set it up correctly,

these businesses can grow to be pretty substantial,

they can be profitable.

And also the thing I enjoy the most is like,

if I could go back and be 22 again,

like I don't want to go get a fucking job, right?

I want to like kind of bet on myself

and use this internet thing and try to make money

and make more money than I could make at a regular job.

And so in many of our different businesses,

we have people who have made enormous amounts of money

compared to what they could make

if they went and got a normal job doing the exact same skill.

But it's all comes down to incentives.

And so in every business, what I try to do

is I try to create upside

where we take a portion of revenue or profit

depending on the business, we put it into a pool

and then we try to split that among the team.

And so if you have a profitable business

and you're able to incentivize people

and you're like, hey, when you win, I win

and when I win, you win,

people will do incredible quality and velocity of work

because ultimately the capitalistic incentive takes over

and they just simply want to make money

and they want to do good work to make that money.

And so it ends up aligning interest

and these businesses can absolutely explode.

But why do five things instead of just one thing

that could maybe like just grow a little bit faster

or have more of your focus?

I am doing one thing.

So I think this is like a different way of looking at it.

I'm providing capital and distribution.

That's the only thing I do, right?

When I start the research business,

Will and the people he has hired,

they're doing the research,

they're doing kind of all the different things.

I'm really, really good at putting together the deals

and the capital and then pushing a high quality product

through my distribution.

And hopefully that'll grow to not just be my distribution

but be other people's distribution.

But I couldn't run the recruiting business.

I couldn't run the research business.

I couldn't run a lot of these different businesses.

I have to kind of stay within that circle of competence

and it's just like provide capital, have a huge megaphone

and I guess maybe pick correctly, right?

Pick the people that you're going to do it with correctly

and then just like get out of the way

and let them be great at what they do.

And if you have the stars aligned,

like they can become pretty big businesses.

Sean and I are kind of in like a similar spot as you.

And the thing I keep asking myself is like,

yeah, this is awesome.

You know, and Sean and I each separately are doing,

it's very similar to things as you.

But I think to myself,

but when are people going to stop listening to me?

When am I not going to be cool anymore?

Do you get that fear of like your clout won't matter?

Well, I think that I've now been on the internet long enough

where like I've gone through peaks and valleys.

Like 2021, I could have literally tweeted sup

and it was going mega viral

during like the Bitcoin bull market, right?

Like literally I could just breathe on the internet.

Everything went viral.

But like that's not me.

And you have to be grounded enough to understand

like that's Bitcoin bull market, you know, product.

That's not, cause I'm some genius.

Now, when that stuff crashes, you know,

I have this saying of like,

if you get the praise on the way up,

you got to eat the shit on the chin on the way down.

And so like you naturally-

You've eaten a lot of shit

because you're so charismatic

and you make all these bold claims.

I mean, you get a lot of crap.

Yeah, but like if you view that

from the perspective of like these people are attacking me,

like you'll be super depressed

and you'll like run away and be quiet.

And a lot of people do that.

When the Bitcoin, you know, bear markets come

or other asset markets come,

like there are people who just disappear, right?

Instead, I look at those opportunities

as kind of a defiant way to say like,

it does not matter what happens, I'm not leaving.

And so, you know, in this last one,

when FTX blew up and all this stuff happened,

I went on national television

and was grilled by a reporter for 20 minutes

and in a completely unscripted thing.

He like, he wasn't friendly.

But to me, like that's where my skill set shines

is like, I will debate anyone at any time

on topics that I think I understand.

And it's even better if it's on live TV.

Because guess what we did?

I went on television, I did it.

I got off, Twitter was like on fire.

People were like, that was the greatest segment

of all time.

I just went at it.

And I emailed them and I said, send me the video.

I took the video and immediately uploaded it to YouTube,

the full thing.

And I said, title,

Pomp Destroys TV host on Bitcoin.

And published it.

And so like, why go on television?

It's to get the clips, to get the content

to then post on your own stuff, right?

So I think that the hate you have to also realize,

like, oh, like that's the president of my marketing team.

That guy, there's a guy yesterday.

True story, who created an entire thread of hate.

He had videos, he had tweets.

He literally filmed himself unfollowing me, right?

Like he filmed his phone screen record unfollowing me.

And I almost DMed him and said, thank you, right?

But I was just like, dude,

do you not understand how the internet works?

The more you attack people, the bigger the audience gets.

And I don't want to be attacked.

Like I'm not seeking controversy.

I'm not seeking to be attacked.

But what ends up happening is if you have that view

of that lens, the haters are actually on your team,

they just haven't realized it yet.

And so like, let them do their thing,

let them keep hating,

and naturally the audience gets bigger and bigger over time.

What distribution channel is gonna be

the most effective to you?

And the one that you're,

when you talk about this distribution,

and if you only had one of them,

let's say Twitter, email list, podcast, YouTube,

which one would you say this is the most powerful

and this is the one I'm focused on growing?

So the one that I wouldn't give up is the email.

But I don't necessarily think

that's the one I'm most focused on growing.

I think that audio is a really interesting medium

where you're basically whispering in someone's ear

for like an hour, like it's super intimate.

And people really come to trust you and things like that.

And so I think probably someone out there,

like just doing reps at the gym

and just grunting right now

and listening to us right now.

We get that a lot.

So you're wearing people's ears as their bench pressing.

I mean, somebody's bicep curling right now,

but also someone's like literally at the bottom

in their deep squat.

And they're like, damn these guys are calling me out

right now, right?

But like you're basically just you're in people's ears

or in email, you have direct communication

and also you can write.

Like if you understand what your best quality is,

some people is writing, some people it is video,

some people it's just audio and talking.

I know people who have podcast

who script out every single word of the episode.

I don't think you guys do that, right?

And like if you guys did do that,

one, it would take you guys forever,

but also two, like it wouldn't be as entertaining,

it wouldn't be as fun.

And so it's kind of trying to figure out

like what is the match between like the participant

and the medium.

So like if you guys were sending an email

and like you two wrote it, you didn't hire anyone,

like sorry, but it probably suck, right?

It would just be like, eh, there's no magic here

because actually what makes this so magic

is that like there's the serendipity

and the like iterative nature

that you guys have back and forth.

And so I just think that as people start to get onto

the internet and try to build these audiences,

you gotta really question like where is my advantage

and where do I actually have something

that can cut through the noise?

Because now there's so much noise.

If you don't cut through,

then you might as well not get started.

I'm exhausted.

I'm just exhausted.

I hate when you end the episodes that way.

I just like, that's how I feel.

Like imagine watching a TV show

and they're putting on a show

to try to have a good time.

And at the end they're like, fuck man.

You'd be like, well, if he's down, I'm down.

Sam, people will follow your lead.

If you had a good time, they'll have a good time.

You gotta have some, as we say, showmanship.

A showman wouldn't be tired at the end of his episode.

Dude, I'm not down, I'm amped.

And it's like, I got to go and like,

it's like, I just got done working out.

I gotta go like rest for a minute

and then get up and like implement all this stuff.

I feel like I need to go and like,

maybe I'm into crypto now, I don't know.

I'm like, he's just Malcolm Gladwald, my ass.

Like I just, I just got got.

You're just, you're full of energy.

Do you nap?

Are you a napper?

You don't nap?

No, hell no.

Why would you nap?

You don't nap?

Just to do.

I'm team nap over here.

Yeah, I think a 30 minute nap every day.

Do you guys both take naps for real?

Yeah.

I nap every other day.

It's 99.

I'm trying to shoot for it every day.

Once I get to every day, I know I made it.

Yeah, I nap every day.

How many hours do you guys sleep at night?

Seven, normal.

Same.

Oh, man.

I don't think I could nap during the day,

but I also drink coffee in the morning.

So like that might screw it up too.

I gotta tell you guys a hilarious story before we go.

So some pompous talking about his like analyst team

was like, you know, the high quality analyst team

that's all like, you know, two years out of undergrad.

And we at Milk Road, we basically had a super lean team.

It was me, Ben, but I wasn't active day to day really.

I was, you know, just kind of guiding.

Ben was running it.

And then there was our lead writer, Diego, who's awesome.

And then we hired one guy.

We were like, maybe we should do social media.

And so we put out a thing being like,

hey, I don't know how to use TikTok,

but if you do, come work for us.

And so this guy, Billy, uploaded this incredible video.

It's on the internet.

You can go look on Twitter.

Basically, he uploaded this video.

Chugging milk.

I'm just chugging milk shirtless.

And just like doing, it was just like a ridiculous video.

He's like, he would find somebody like,

hey, can you hold this phone?

I'm trying to get a job.

And then he would chug the milk and they'd be like,

what is this?

And so anyways, we hired Billy.

We tried to do the TikTok thing.

Didn't fully work out, but it was okay.

But Billy's a great guy.

He ended up helping write the newsletter.

So two hilarious things just happened.

First, they did a milk road team offsite.

Like something we never did.

Cause my whole ethos building the milk road was like,

I'm not trying to be a CEO anymore.

Like I'm not trying to like stand up in front of the company

with a t-shirt with our name on it

and tell everybody how great everything is.

Like I just don't want to even have to do all that stuff.

But the new guys who bought it,

they want to do the company building.

So they invited everybody out and I asked Ben,

I go, how was the offsite?

And he goes, he had one, one insight from the whole thing.

He goes, Billy showed up in a wife beater,

but not as a joke.

He just, that's just what he wore to the event.

And no one said anything.

And I was like, no one said anything.

I go, wow, that's incredible.

I can't imagine not saying anything.

And then let's fast forward three weeks.

Billy, they offered Billy a raise and he quit instead.

And I was like, it's a Ben goes,

Billy, you got a raise and you quit, like this guy's a conundrum.

And what's going on?

He goes, what's the plan?

And he just provides a pen and a text.

And he goes, do I look like a guy with a plan?

And that became the most badass thing I've heard all week.

Do I look like a guy with a plan?

But Sean, I tend to think that we over index a lot.

People want to always hang out with their heroes, right?

They want to hang out with the older people.

They want to hang out with the people who have done the thing

that they are trying to do.

And there's a lot of value you can get from that.

But I do think that we drastically under index

on like, go find the young energetic person who you're like,

you are literally an idiot,

but damn, are you going to be an awesome idiot

who's going to run through 20 walls

and eventually find something on the other side?

And what it does is it like, it forces you to up your game.

Like, have you ever talked to like a 21 year old

and you're like, okay, so let's get this done by Wednesday.

And they're like, okay.

And then they send it back to you like two hours later.

And you're like, damn, why do we wait till Wednesday?

Like this kid is actually correct.

We should just get it done now.

And so I do think that the internet companies

or these native companies,

that's one of the big advantages they have.

Like, you know, you guys had Nick Huber,

you've had Andrew Wilkins and like a bunch of people

who were doing this, when you find the right person

who can just like get shit done,

you are unstoppable with the internet now.

And I think that that is something

that more and more people are going to wake up to.

And like, it wouldn't surprise me

if we like bankrupt Main Street businesses

because they all move online.

As people just realized like,

why am I going to have like a physical store

that people have to walk into

when I can just do this online thing.

And it is a big concern for these local communities.

But at the same time,

like there's way more economic opportunity online

for people who want to do that.

One of the other guys we tried to hire at Milk Road,

he was a young guy, 21 years old.

He was working at Main Street at the time.

And I love this guy's tweets.

I thought he was interesting.

And he would tweet out these like little random websites

he was making on the weekend that were like,

just super simple, like kind of like,

it's either going to go viral

or this is the dumbest thing ever.

There's no in between.

There was no like kind of core product service.

It made no sense.

Nothing he did made any sense.

And I was like, dude, I love this guy.

I told Ben, I was like,

hey, we should hire this guy.

He's like, what's he going to do?

I go, I don't know.

We should just have him do what he's doing now,

but without his full time job.

Like, what if we just gave him more time

to do the stupid shit he's doing on the weekends?

Monday through Friday instead.

And so I talked to him.

Just an attack dog, he'll figure it out.

I talked to him and I was like,

hey, you know, do that.

I think this milk road thing's going to work.

It was super early.

We were like, I don't know,

four weeks into it or something.

And I was like, I think this thing's going to work.

You should join.

He's like, same thing.

What am I going to do?

I go, just do weird, you know,

Rohan stuff that you do.

Go just go ahead and do that.

And he's like, all right, cool.

Let me, he's like, when do you want to start?

Like tomorrow?

And I was like, no, no, no, like I got like I'm traveling.

I'm going to be back on Wednesday.

Let's talk on Wednesday,

which was like four or five days away.

Fatal mistake, classic 34 year old mistake thinking that,

that the world's not going to change in four days.

This guy's entire, he, in those four days,

he ends up launching an NFT project that goes super viral,

ends up making so much money.

He goes and becomes this anonymous account, Frank D. God's.

And he created the D. God's project.

I can talk about it now because he's like out publicly,

but for a while I was like, what the fuck is this?

And so I kept trying to hit him up.

Be like, what happened?

I didn't know he was the guy behind D. God's.

And so I was like, dude, what, you ghosting me?

Like we were, we had such a good idea.

He's like, hey, man, like three weeks later,

he just resurfaced.

He's like, sorry, bro.

Like, like it was like no time had passed

between our conversations.

It's like, oh yeah, about that.

I don't know, man.

Now I'm doing this other stuff.

I got to do this.

And I was like, tell me about it.

So he, he screen shares and he shows me how he's growing it.

And one thing I'll ever forget that was like the classic,

like this guy's an idiot.

This makes no sense, but I, I'm down

and I want to be in this car.

And so he shows me the site and I go,

how do you stop people from just selling it like, you know,

right away?

Like what are you getting?

Cause nothing holds value unless the,

the people who buy it hold.

It was just why like for Bitcoin,

the genius meme is the, the hodled meme, right?

Because it became culturally the normal thing to do

to just hold the thing.

And he goes, oh yeah, I had the same thought.

So I created something called the paper hands bitch tax.

I go, what?

He goes, basically if you sell at a loss,

if you sell for less than the mint price,

not only do you get just like, you know,

you take the loss on the principle,

but we also apply a 25% tax because you had paper hands

and we applied the bitch tax to you for selling on the dip.

And I was like, he's like, people loved it.

And I was like, what the fuck?

And it totally, it totally worked.

It became like, again, he created a meme

and it was a monetized meme in his case.

And I just thought it was awesome.

So yeah, I'm totally down to hang out

with these guys.

Sean, while all this was happening,

I just looked at my DMs.

So I have like another perspective

on the exact same situation,

which was one of the hacks that people have figured out

is if they post something on their Instagram story,

like a lot of times people with bigger audiences

would just like share it.

But in the DMs, it looks like they like message you.

So now there's like, they posted something,

then you posted something.

And so he did that.

And he posted something, I reposted it.

And then he followed up with,

he's gonna kill me for reading this all out.

He goes, if you have any ideas for some more fun tools

for us to make that you think would be helpful,

would love to chat, man.

And he said it like we were like boys, right?

But he just like was kind of like saying it like,

of course, like you're gonna engage.

So I didn't respond.

Maybe I didn't say it or whatever.

And so I guess I went to LA for the Super Bowl

and then he follows it up with, yo,

we got a ticket while you're out here.

Like again, like we're like boys.

And I'm like, who is this like 20 something year old kid?

Right? And so then he just keeps messaging me

until finally in July, he just starts DMing me things.

And he just keeps saying, yo.

And so I met him in person at Miami.

And I was like, who are you basically?

And he's like, oh, I'm into Bitcoin or whatever.

But like, I have this secret to tell you.

And he told me about the NFP thing.

And I was like, what is going on?

And he was showing up to conferences

with like handkerchiefs over his face.

And like I saw that guy identity.

And I was just like, do you understand

how you cannot have like any degree of success

or reputation or anything to be willing to like

go to the lengths of success that he went to.

And I think that's why like young people

are so empowering to be around.

It's just like that kid was willing to do

a bunch of stuff no matter how cool

we think the three of us are.

We would never do 50%, 60% of the things that he did

because we're like, ah, I can't do the paper hand bitch tax

because then everyone's like, pump, fuck you.

You know, like yelling and screaming or whatever.

And this kid's just like, dude, this would be hilarious.

Watch this, implement and it works.

And so I don't know.

It's just like, how do we find more of those?

If you're like a young kid who has an idea

of like paper hand bitch tax, please DM us.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you where I messed up.

So I had met, I think I told store,

I've told stories in the pod about like four people like this.

I basically had four people that I kind of like

either did hire or we're trying to hire

as like a really junior kind of like intern mentor type

situation that have all gone on to become like multi-millionaires

done super interesting things.

And I was like, how do I have more of this young energy

in my life because these people are awesome.

They're flawed for sure.

They do a lot of dumb shit.

But the things they do do are all, it's always interesting.

It's never boring, right?

It's like, you know, it's reality TV in a way to me.

So I'm like, all right, I want to be,

I don't want to just get older.

And as you become more successful,

you start hanging out with older and older people

than you become old.

And so I'm like, no, no, I'm trying to fight that.

So I did this dumb thing, which was I tried to recruit.

I tried to like put out the call for people like this.

I was like, hey, if you're young, you're smart,

you know, like joint, like, I just want to hang with you.

I'll invest in your stuff or I don't know,

I'll mentor you, I'll do something.

I put out a type form and I got all these smart people

applying, but they were all the wrong people

because I had done it in a way that was like,

it was like the high achiever path.

It was like, here's an admission form.

And they're like, ah, a test.

I know how to apply for things and get picked and be like,

and so they just said all the right sounding things,

which was here's my background, here's my pedigree,

they're well spoken.

And I recruited like 20 of the wrong people

and I just had to like abandon ship.

I was like, okay, I need to find a way to get like the shitheads.

And they're the wrong type of nerd.

Exactly, like I don't want high achiever nerd

that's used to ticking all the boxes

and getting good scores on all the standardized tests

and getting picked for the thing

that their parents wanted them to do

or school wants them to do.

It's like, you need the person who's gone off the path,

will in the bathroom at Target who's doing out

like reckless Bitcoin stats and shit like that.

You need somebody who's a little bit off the path

because they're the ones who do more interesting things.

And so I don't know, I haven't figured out how to recruit that

except for like referral, basically.

I'm like, who do you hang out with?

It's Marshawn Lynch, like his famous quote of like,

I'm about that action boss.

I'm all about that action boss here.

And like, there's a young person I know,

I won't use his name or what he built,

but people may be able to figure it out.

He, I think he like moved to Miami or something

or like was visiting Miami maybe.

And I saw him on Twitter.

He was like tweeting some interesting things.

I just DM'd him.

I was like, basically like, what's your deal?

Right?

And similar to Sam's like, let's fuck.

I was just like, what's your deal?

And no, I usually say, what's your story?

Tell me your story.

The let's fuck it for friends.

When I was in Austin, we were texting and he was like,

should we do dinner?

And I responded with let's fuck.

And he was like, God damn it.

But so this kid, he like comes to the office

and I don't know, he's probably like early twenties.

And he's literally like, yeah.

So me and my friend, we like built this app

and it's been downloaded 75 million times.

It's like making like millions of dollars.

And I was like, what are you doing?

Like he's like, yeah, I'm gonna like figure out

a new thing to do.

And I was like, well, what about the thing that's working?

He's like, oh, it's like on autopilot.

Like I'm gonna like figure out this new thing.

And I was just like, man, you are so cool.

I hope that you are so successful.

We need like a hundred thousand of you in the world

because he literally could care less about the money

and like all that stuff.

He just was like, how do we build cool shit?

And so I was like, man, imagine if one of us

had built an app that it's 75 million downloads.

We'd be talking about it nonstop.

Like that'd be our main purpose.

I retire.

Ben, I'll take my LinkedIn.

Endorse my skill.

Dude, I have the craziest version of the story.

I know we're way over, but I gotta tell the story.

It's too good.

So that guy, Rohan, I'm like,

how do I meet more people like him?

So my strategy was, let me just hang out with him.

And I told him, bring a friend.

So he drives from LA down to San Diego

to where we're hanging out at this house.

And he brings a friend.

Of course the friend is, you know,

the 24 year old version of the Doseki's guy.

He's the most interesting man in the world.

So the guy comes in and I'm like, all right,

what's your deal guy who like, you know, has curly hair

and maybe still has pimples?

Like, you know, you must be the best.

And he of course was the best.

So he, he's like, yeah, my name's Luca.

And I'm like, what's your story?

And he goes, so I went in reverse order

cause he brought in these guns, like nerf type guns,

like gel blasters.

I don't know if you've seen this,

but like the gun called the gel blaster.

It's basically like, they're everywhere.

Yeah, it's everywhere now.

I didn't realize this.

It's like a $50 million a year business.

So he basically was like, oh, right now I'm working

on this like DTC product, this like, you know, thing.

Oh yeah, we just, we're in Walmart's nationwide.

Or, you know, I don't know, some shit like that.

Where basically it's like, if you're 13 years old,

this is your like number one thing you want for Christmas.

It's like this, it's kind of like less painful

than a paintball gun, but like cooler

than a nerf gun where it's just a foam thing.

It's like this little pellet that's like a gel pellet.

And it shoots like a machine gun.

So already he brought two over.

The party became way more fun.

People are shooting each other.

It's great.

So I'm like, all right, you're doing this.

That's crazy.

He's like, yeah, you know, I was trying to do this,

but then we got ripped off.

We got sued by this one thing, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, all right, what'd you do before this?

He goes, oh yeah, I'm into crypto.

That's why I know, you know, why I know you guys.

You know, I bought Pudgy Penguin.

So he did like a hostile takeover slash buyout

of Pudgy Penguin's this NFT project, which again,

it's not what you're, you know, you don't usually think

I'm going to go spend millions of dollars

to buy Pudgy Penguin's NFT IP.

But he decided that that was a good use of time.

I said, how'd you get millions of dollars?

And he goes, well, before that,

I started this online e-commerce brand

where I was selling gold chains, you know, like rappers,

gold chains and grills and shit like that.

And I go, what?

He's like, yeah, I just like, I just realized

that you could just buy these like kind of crazy

blinged out rapper gold chains and like, and I sold them.

And then I sold my company to this company shop GLD,

which was like 300, 400 million a year.

I was like, I think it's 300 or 400 million.

I've seen these people like sponsor, you know, like kind

of like, you know, random Instagram influencers

and stuff like, wow, this is all crazy.

I go, how'd you get started doing that?

And I got one level deeper.

He goes, I had to like, you know, for family reasons,

you know, me and my mom were like homeless for a couple

of years and I had to like, I just quit school

in high school and I had to go make money.

So I went down the street and I started knocking

on doors, trying to get a job.

I got rejected everywhere.

The last door I knocked on was a startup called Ring.

And the guy Jamie was, was there's a tiny office

and he's like, who are you?

What do you need?

He's like, I need a job badly, like to help pay you

like for family stuff.

I'll do anything.

And he's like, okay, well, I got like, I got to box

up all these orders.

Can you just help me with that?

And so he like started boxing up the orders.

He was like the first employee at Ring.

And then it was like with Jamie for a few years

before going off and doing his own thing.

And I was like, and now he is 24 years old.

So this was all before like 25, he was like 24, 25

when I met this guy, you know, a couple of months ago.

And I'm like, you have lived three lifetimes

in a career epicness and just really interesting things.

I can't wait to see what this guy is going to do next.

But like that to me is the future, right?

Is like all these young people who have that skill

says not for everyone.

Like some people just want to go be the accountant

or go be, you know, kind of a mid-level manager.

And that's their career aspiration.

That's fine.

But for the people who want to do this, like that guy

literally knows more about business and like IP

and you know, physical store distribution and like all

these things, then most people coming out of MBA schools,

right?

Like good for that kid.

100%, 100%.

And I was like, hey, I'm trying to think about influencers.

And I just, I literally felt like someone being like,

it's like when my grandfather comes to me,

they're going to start calling you Graybush.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, it's like, it's like I've helped my grandfather

like set up FaceTime, you know, just so he can see his

grandkids and it's like, and it's like, I don't know,

just push the green button.

Like that's all that's as far as you're going to get here.

Like that's how I felt by the end of talking

to this guy about how to like, how to do online marketing

through like influencers on Instagram.

Like by the end of it, he was like, you know what,

just like send me the link, dude, I'll take care of it for you.

You're not going to be able to do this stuff.

Dude, that's crazy.

These are, these are some good stories.

I'm back.

The energy is back, baby.

Should we just go forever?

Like just do like a 10 hour rip?

This would be like 30% of Palm's morning show.

He would still be sitting there with his brothers

and still have like two hours of airtime to fill.

You want to know the craziest part about the morning show

is the greatest thing I ever did

and the worst thing I ever did

because it took so much time to your point.

But man, there is no better thing than just hanging out.

Like imagine if we, every single day,

just live stream for two hours

about whatever the fuck was going on.

You had never had more fun than doing stuff like that.

The problem is you start to just say

what's actually on your mind and like

get a little loose, real dull later.

One time I was on,

one time I was on your show

and I like totally ruined it for your sponsor.

Do you remember that?

No, what'd you do?

I think you had SoFi on as like a sponsor.

Yeah.

And something wasn't going well with him

and I was like, SoFi, more like so fucked.

And then I saw your face,

I saw your face freak out and I go,

oh wait, SoFi marketing people.

If you're listening to this, this is me, Sam.

I'm saying this, not pomp.

So don't yell at him, but you guys suck or something.

They were incredible.

And it was like they had the stadium and the whole thing.

But like, you know how it is, right?

There's probably people who have said things about sponsors

or like maybe a company you're an investor in or whatever.

And you're always like,

and I wish you hadn't said that, but like, here we go.

And that was definitely one of those moments where I was just like,

well, there's a lot of worse things that Sam could have said.

So like, I guess on the grand scale of like, what is possible?

That was like not great, but still, you know,

we'll just keep moving here.

You've got the Donald Trump thing where it's like,

if you're crazy from the beginning,

if you just say wild shit all the time, there's no penalty.

It's only like, pop, you're a little too smart and like responsible.

If you slip up even a little, people are going to get on you.

But like, if you're just wild all the time, there is no penalty.

You somehow get out of jail free.

And I think I've been trying to steal that from Sam now,

how to just keep it, keep it loose and somehow like, Sam does it to guests.

They'll come on to be like, you know, you're really good looking for like an ugly tech guy.

Like they're already their head spinning or he'll just be like,

he'd be like, you're not rich, but you have a little bit of money.

And they're just like, what did she say to me?

Sean, I do appreciate this.

Whenever people nag them, now, whenever people are like,

hey, I want to start a podcast and I'm like kind of talking through with them

for a few minutes in terms of like what to do.

I use Sam as an example.

So I'm like, well, you can have like, you know, a show where you just talk yourself.

You can have like an interview show.

And then like within those different categories, like, you know,

you can have a really serious, intelligent podcast where you ask really smart questions

or you can be like really blunt, like, you know, Sam, Paul,

like he'll just have guests come on and just be like, how much money is in your bank account?

I always think of like, man, 50% of people are like, I'm good.

I'm not going to answer that.

And then 50% like literally tell you the answer.

And I'm like, what a genius way to get great content.

It's just like, ask the questions that no one will answer.

And then he'll follow up with something that's like,

and the reason I ask is because I want to know.

It's like, there's more justification, but there's just none.

Because I'm always curious, like, you know, I've been following you for years

and I just, I was always curious, like, what is it?

Well, in that book influence, they say, they say, if you, if you,

if you give someone a reason for why you're doing something,

they're more likely to do it.

And so I got in the habit of saying, like, yeah, and I'm asking that

because I'm curious.

Right. It doesn't matter what comes after, because it's just a magic word.

All right. Can I ask you guys one question before we break here?

Yeah.

Can each of you point, who's the one person that's like on the internet?

So not like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or whatever.

Who's like the one internet entrepreneur that you're like, man,

that person seems to have figured it out.

And like, I can't wait to see what they continue to do over the next 20, 30 years.

And like, extra points if it's somebody that no one really knows.

My obvious one is Huber, but Nick Huber.

But let me think about, let me think about.

Well, why is it obvious?

I don't think that would have been obvious.

Well, why is it?

Well, everyone knows them.

I also think that if I had a bet money on like one operator,

I think it would be Austin Reef at Morning Brew.

Like, I've gotten to know him really well.

And he's one of the few people where I'm like, I'm like afraid of him.

Like, if I hears that I'm going to compete with them, I would be like,

shit, it's on. So he, he, I would say those two.

But let me try to think of someone who's a little bit more anonymous.

What about you, Sean?

Let me ask you a different question, Pop, before I answer, what would be the,

what would be the type of answer that would be interesting to you here?

Just somebody who like either nobody knows or somebody who's been like

successful, doing something that isn't like, oh, I set up a newsletter

and now I have a bunch of like ad revenue, like the, the pellet gun,

you know, is like fascinating, right?

You're just like, man, who even knew that was a market?

So like somebody who's out, kind of out of the mainstream.

All right, here's one.

We have this, we both have a friend, but I'm going to hurry up and say it.

So Sean doesn't, there's this guy named Mark Jenny, who started this company

called RV share and he sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now he owns like $50 million worth of Airbnb's and we'll like message them.

Like, Hey, do you want to come on the pod?

He's like, Oh, I can't for the next three months.

I'm traveling the world with my kids and their homeschool, their homeschooling

teacher talk later.

I think he's, he's kind of one of the guys who I look at who's just kind of one

life. And then the last one is the guy who started WP forms.

What's it called, Sean?

It's called Saeed.

He started this company that owns maybe a hundred million dollar years,

a hundred million dollar year business where he owns all these WordPress forms

and he or WordPress plugins and he says he works five days a week.

So one day a week, one day a month or one week a month, he takes a meetings

with all of his CEOs.

And then besides that, he's giving away a lot of his money and he's like 30 years

old, married with kids, super low key.

That's a great answer, Sean.

I'll give you a couple of names that come to mind.

So I think, so Amjad from Replit, I think he's sitting on a monster

business that is kind of hidden in plain sight.

Like people know about it, but it's not yet considered to be big just because

they haven't come out with a really flashy headline of being worth X billions

of dollars. Like I think when they raised their last round, it was at almost

like strategically shy of a billion number. It was like 800 and something

million instead of a billion.

I'm sure they could have negotiated it out, but I actually really liked that

he didn't. And it's one of these things that's just like, I think it's a,

I think it's just going to be a really important company.

And I think it's going to be different than, I think it's going to be different

than the previous winners looked like.

Because, you know, like what happens is Amazon takes off, then you think

the next big thing is going to be e-commerce.

But no, it's actually Google.

Then Google takes off, then you think the next thing's going to be search

and information. No, it's actually Facebook.

It starts off as like a college social network thing.

Then you think Facebook's the big thing.

And then actually turned out to be Uber.

It was like, you know, Uber and Airbnb.

It was like real world shit that you can use your phone as a magic button to do.

So it's kind of like the next interesting thing is not going to look

like what the last interesting things look like.

And I think that what replete is, which is this like coding environment

for oftentimes beginners, teenagers, I think is like a stealth really,

really big deal, but it's kind of boring.

So I wouldn't say like, I wouldn't say he's the one I'm looking at,

because I kind of know what he's going to do for the next 10 years.

I almost don't have to look.

It's like, I could just check in in 10 years and be like, yep,

the hockey stick kept going.

And like, you know, obviously that had big implications.

Well, I'm an investor in replete.

And I think that you're spot on of like, it's way bigger than people realize.

But also the most important thing is like, they capture new coders

and then they try to keep them in that environment.

And so like, if they get you early on, it's like kind of like going to like the

source. Yeah, it's just like, that's your lifetime infrastructure.

It's a fascinating business.

I'm an idiot and should have invested so much more money because I completely

agree it's going to be a massive, massive company.

So who are your other ones, Sean?

The other ones.

So I would have said a couple of years ago, Sam Altman, but now I think that's

obvious. So I'm going to say somebody who I think is on par with Sam Altman,

but doesn't have the same shine and doesn't have the clear like open AI type

of like interesting bet, which is Daniel Gross.

So Daniel Gross is one of the most interesting and impressive people that

I've met. I think that he fits your category because he's still young enough.

He's ambitious, super, super ambitious like Sam Altman, but he's free.

He's not like currently committed to like one company for like a really long time

or like in the middle, you know, hasn't like picked one path that he has to stay

in. And so I just can't imagine that in the next 10 years, Daniel Gross doesn't

do something that is like just epic. And I think it could be in some field that

you don't that maybe he's not even working in today.

It could be like longevity or some biohacking thing.

So I think that you need people who are willing to go into these other spaces

that pull off some impressive shit.

I think bio and like sort of this longevity space is really interesting.

And there's going to be some tech entrepreneur that's like, forget,

like, you know, forget the newsletter, podcast, Twitter, forget software with

VCs, forget investing.

I'm going to go and do something else with my time.

And I like people who just choose to play their own game and ideally a game

that not everybody else is playing.

I think Daniel Gross is going to be that guy.

That's a great one.

And he is kind of like hidden in plain sight, but I think that Sam was at the

same time.

Like he came on our podcast really early on, like at the Hustle's office.

He's, I don't even know how we got him on.

We just, I don't even know who knows him, maybe me or you, Sam.

I don't remember, but he just walked in.

I don't think he had any idea what we were doing.

I'm pretty sure we like shared a microphone.

Like we did the thing where you're like, I think we are on our iPhone.

I'm going to pass it to you.

Like we were definitely down one mic.

It's like, we've only never done two people episodes.

It was this tiny room and we're sitting at the little table.

Like, you know, like it looks like Lunchables should be on top of the table.

Like it was that baby of a table.

And our show is not for everybody.

It's not like you could sit down.

Most people would be like, cool, let's brainstorm.

Like what's, what's an interesting startup idea you have?

What, what are some spaces you think are cool?

Why do you think this is going to work?

And this guy was able to riff for like two hours on everything from like running

to why somebody should create a new Apple competitor with creating a new laptop

to his investing strategy, why it's different, like how he's going to beat YC,

all these different topics.

And he just went for like two hours effortlessly.

And I thought, okay, that's impressive.

That's, you know, the type of person I like to follow and be around.

But is that like a signal you actually should surround yourself with one young

people, but two is like the most interesting people you can find.

Like I hate going to dinner, Sam and I were talking about this when we went to

dinner, like I hate going to like the classic business dinner where I was

like, oh, what do you do?

What's going on at work?

Whatever.

Like I love the person who shows up to dinner and they have some wild thing

that makes everyone disagree and argue and, and like debate what's going to happen

in this and that and whatever.

And then you find like the person who has that usually has like a whole bag of them.

Like they literally are like, oh, okay, we're done talking about this one.

Like, here's my next, you know, ace out of my back pocket.

And those people somehow always figure out how to be successful.

Like very rarely do you find the like most interesting man, kind of like the

kid with the gun, right, that ends up not figuring it out.

They may fail a hundred times, but eventually they do it.

And is that just like they think differently?

And that is kind of the prerequisite to actually finding true success.

Yeah, an independent mindedness.

Like Jack Smith was the other guy I was going to say, because he's like this.

I don't know, pop, do you know Jack?

No, who's that Jack Smith?

He started Vungal, which was like a big ad network, but he's a kind of young

British guy who is sold that company for $900 million when he was 20 years old.

And, and, and so he, but if you talk to him, he'll never mention it because

it's not because he's being humble, like he is humble, but it's because it's

just not interesting to him.

I don't know, even though if it was interesting, he left like a few years

before it sold because he's like, cool, I'm going to do whatever.

And anytime you talk to Jack, he's up to a new as Sam would call it, a new

caper. And it's like, it's not like usually for profit, like sometimes

it's for profit, but it's more like, dude, Jack, you don't care about this

money. He's like, but I'm trying to beat this game.

And so like one time you'll talk to him and he'll be like, he spent the last

two months in his garage trying to build the perfect computer chair.

It's like the, like, like the thing is zero gravity, like floating on your

back chair and he tried every product he's tinkering with it until he gets it

right. And then next time you talk to him, he's like really into the world

of collectibles. And he's like, got this arbitrage going where he's buying

and selling baseball cards. And you're like, Sam, you're like, Jack, do you

even know about baseball? He's like, couldn't tell you the first thing about

baseball. But I could tell you that this card right here is undervalued.

And my like team of the Philippines is like flipping them right now for

profit. Then the next time you talk to him, he made, he made like a list where

he put in a spreadsheet, all the companies that you can buy a pair of

clothing from and you could return it within 365 days. He was like, I want to

see if I can like live for free for a year off these clothes, off this

clothing and return it or, you know, just like weird schemes. He just loves

like, he had a baby and then he didn't name the baby. They just called it

baby for the first year until the baby could pick its own name by crawling

to like one of the names. And it's like, this guy's not going to do anything

in the like just standard version. And he's not doing any of these. Like, he's

not talking about them. We are the ones who talk about them. Maybe he doesn't

even want to. Maybe we should take that out. But like, he doesn't do it for

the effect. Like, he just does it because he just got curious about that

path or wanted it like just thought that makes more sense to him than the

other way. And then he'll do it. And he's not like, what you don't want is the

guy who's at the dinner to immediately say the crazy thing because they're

like trying to see him a little bit out there and like they're trying to build

their brand. Like that's the worst. You want the person who's almost aloof to

the fact that it sounds batshit crazy. And you're like, dude, do you realize

what you're saying? And they're like, what? What's wrong with that?

Well, by the way, the baby thing was like the I made fun of him. I go, Jack,

for once in your life, be normal. And then like, I, you know, like the time

passed and I was like, that's actually a great idea. Because he said he goes,

why would I name my kid before I even know them? I should like see like what

type of name fits. And I was like, Oh, yeah, you're actually right. It is weird

that like we don't get to know them. And so anyway, he does things all the

times where at first glance, I'm like, this is the stupidest thing ever. Just

be normal for once. And then he'll like, I actually think he's right a lot of

times. But I think that there's like somebody who has that proclivity of

like always doing things in a different way. One, it isn't necessarily

different to them. But two is that those individuals are the ones who actually

end up figuring out like, what is the best chair? Or they're the one who like

they'll convince a whole friend group to like not name their kids for a year. Or

you know what I mean? Like, there's almost this like lack of importance we put

on the courage to be different. So like even in friend groups, like do you ever

notice like everyone thinks something and then once one person says something

else, then a bunch of people like flip. And they're almost like this like kind

of like, Oh, where's the magnet, right? Like, Oh, this viewpoint is popular.

Like they just kind of mosey on over here. And then like, this other person said

this, they mosey on over there. And so I do think that we need those people in a

society. But also like, man, what a boring friend group it would be to have

where like everyone just gets together on Friday night. And like, what'd you do

this week? I don't know. Went to work. Right. Right. Like, what are you doing

this weekend? Like, I don't know. Gonna like just watch the games. Like it just

would not be fun. And so I think that a lot of people who listen to this podcast,

but also just like our quote unquote on the internet, they're escaping what

could be like their local life of that. And they're trying to find other

interesting people. They're trying to find other ideas. And it's like

exhilarating for them. And so like this jack guy sounds amazing. But like, how

do you find a hundred of them? Well, it's usually you find one. And then you

just realize that they're going to do this forever. Like there's this one Russian

guy who started this social network back in the day called Kube. I don't know if

you ever saw it, but like Kube was tick tock before tick tock. It was amazing.

It was only in Russia, Ukraine. I only found out about it because I randomly

met up with this group from Ukraine that was touring the touring Silicon Valley.

And I was like, Hey, come to our office. I'll give you a talk. And I, at the end,

I asked him, I was like, what's the hot shit in Ukraine that I should be knowing

about? I don't even know why I asked this question. Turned out to be a great

question, but I didn't really expect them to have a good answer. But they're

like, this thing called Kube blowing up. And this was like two years before

tick tock. And, and so anyways, he built that thing. It didn't end up going huge.

I think because of other reasons, like with Russia and the way they control

things, but I'm like, this guy's going to always do interesting things. So last

week I checked in, I was like, what's that guy Anton doing? Of course, he's doing

the craziest shit. So he now is doing, he's like, I'm trying to change the way

people eat fruit. He's like, you ever seen someone eat a mango cut a mango?

Disgusting. I mean, what? He goes, the way Americans eat mangoes is terrible.

A mango is, he's like, it just goes on this. He's like, mangoes are beautiful.

They're the most delicious thing. And he, his product, you can, I'll show you, I'll

put up a picture of it on the, on our YouTube channel.

It is so delicious looking. Basically, he did this. He has some process that cuts

like the juiciest part of a mango into a perfect little ball.

And so you get, you look at it, you're like, that looks delicious. And basically

his mission is to make fruit more fun and delicious to eat by just cutting it

better. And you cut it better and you package it that way. You, you, you

store it in a certain way. He's like, I'm going to reinvent the way people eat

fruit. And I'm like, of course you are. Of course,

guy who created Tik Tok two years before Tik Tok is now going to change the way I

like mango. But like, you know, sure enough, like he's going to just keep doing

interesting things. He can't not. That's an investment thesis. Weird

shit that makes money. It's amazing.

Pomp, you were messaging me before this and you're like, it's only an hour, right?

And I was like, yeah, give her take and give her take an hour.

This is now our longest episode ever, I think. Hopefully you didn't miss any

meetings. We're going to, we're going to break this up into two episodes, I think.

I think we have to. Two episodes.

I think, I think, because the first thing was awesome and the second thing was,

was awesome. This is, I don't want people to miss the, the second half. The second

half was maybe better than the first half. Well, you guys are too kind.

I listen every week. I always enjoy listening to you guys give each other

shit and then having the guest. It was funnier.

Well, see the whole thing about humor is that you guys have your moments, but I

just enjoy what I enjoy when the, uh, when the guests come on and then you both,

you can just feel it. Like one time I heard Joe Rogan and the ball on the

podcast and I said to my wife, I was like, man, Joe Rogan is super smart,

but like this is like a Ferrari and a Corolla, you know, like literally like

the ball was just like, he was like hitting his A game, right?

And even Joe was just kind of like, hmm, tell me more.

He just had nothing to really go. And sometimes I could feel you guys are

like, man, you guys are just absolutely killing it. And then a guest comes on,

you're like, hmm, tell me more and you just let them ride.

So I appreciate all the work you guys are doing and you give me something to

listen to every morning. Sam, the funnier guy is the one who didn't

have to ask, who's funnier? Just say, you know, general rule.

It's better than who's uglier, which I'm sure is the next question.

I don't know, man. I get texts. I get at least one text a month saying I'm a

hilarious. Have you guys done the analysis of who talks more?

I'm sure somebody in the audience probably could do it.

And then you can argue. It's him. Yeah, they didn't even need data science.

We don't need Will Clemente at Target to know this one.

Talk and interrupt more. Dude, pop, this is great. What were you saying?

You were saying that everybody should subscribe to our channel or they're

going to lose all their money or something like that?

Something was the agreement.

If you don't fulfill the gentleman's agreement, like what's going on? Come on.

The gentleman's agreement and the lady's understanding.

The lady's understanding. Exactly.

What you guys should start telling people is like, help me help you, you know,

is just to subscribe. Yeah, get the video in the feed.

Now that Susan, CEO of YouTube, has stepped down, Neil has stepped in.

He's bringing back all the distribution. He's going to send you guys to the moon.

So don't worry. I wish I could be on a first name basis with these people.

It's like, what are you like? You're like a called Dave Matthews band, Dave, too.

Well, the beauty is you just call them by their first name and then they

similar to Rohan DMing me. You just think that you're boys. And so I'm hoping that maybe they'll

turn our volume up a little bit on YouTube.

It's actually a really funny story. Very quickly.

What is the guy who he used to walk around with the clock?

What is that guy's name?

Like Flava Flaves.

Flava Flaves. So I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I'm like almost 99.9% sure it was him.

I was working at Facebook. Joe Montana came to like do like this veterans event.

And so they need like an escort, kind of like a almost like a babysitter for any guest who

comes on campus. So another guy was going to take Joe Montana and they were like,

Hey, you are going to go with Flava Flaves. And I was like, Oh, that sounds cool.

Like, okay. So I'm like walking around with them, kind of like nervous to talk to him

because he's like a celebrity, but also like, is he cool? Is he not? Whatever.

Do the event. And at the end, he goes, Yo, before I leave, where's that Instagram dude at?

And I was like, what? And he was like the Instagram dude. And I was like, and he was like,

the Instagram guy, where is he? I know he works here. And I was like,

do you mean like the founders? And he was like, yeah, the tall one. I met him. I know him.

And I was like, Oh boy. And so he was like, I was like, Kevin. And he was like, yeah, that one.

So I'm like, I genuinely, I generally know where the Instagram team sits. I'm like,

walk through the whole campus, right? We get there. And I'm like, please don't be at your desk.

Please don't be at your desk. Please don't be at your desk. Right. Never talked to the guy before.

And then sure enough, he's like there. He's like taller than everybody. You can see him,

the second you walk in the door. I got Flavor Flav with me. And I walk over and I go,

excuse me, Kevin Flavor Flav. He knows you. He's like, say hi. And Kevin turns and he's like,

Oh man, what's up? Like whatever. And he's like, super nice to him. And Flavor Flav just goes,

what's up? Yo, you need to turn my volume up on Instagram.

And I'm like, I'm definitely being fired. Like, holy shit, this is so bad. And Kevin was like a

consummate professional. He's like, let me go like introduce you to our partnership team,

like, whatever. And I remember like, on my way out, I was like, hey, man, sorry about that.

Like, did you know him? He was like, I think we met like one time, like five years ago at a party,

but like, sure. And so I always just think about like, yeah, if you ever get to talk to the leaders

of any of these products, like that's the question that you got to ask. You got to shoot your shot.

It's like, yo, turn my volume up. That's so good. That's my new phrase.

Do I look like a guy with a plan? Those are just, those are just epic.

All right, fellas, appreciate it.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.