My First Million: Wait, My Intern Became a 21-Year-Old Millionaire??

I remember at one point, you're telling me in Slack, you're like,

these people just offered me two million bucks for this.

Yeah. I'm like, holy shit, you didn't do this.

We started the podcast, my first million, you just made your first two million.

Congrats. Like, I can't believe this worked out.

You're like, I'm not going to sell, though.

And I was like, wow, this guy's insane.

And I was like, that's an insane story.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like days on.

All right. So I can't tell you how many times I hear this.

People will DM me every single day and they'll say, hey,

I'm just calling my shot right now today.

I'm a small boy in three years from now.

I'm going to be on MFM. I'm going to be on my first million.

I'm going to make my first million, do an XYZ.

Yeah. Every single day I get a message like that.

Here's somebody who actually did it.

This is Sean. He was my intern,

turned guy who's made millions and millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars

and had crazy journey in between.

You were the guy who I created this podcast with.

Yeah, you were the guy who the cover of our podcast.

He created it.

The intro song originally, the original intro song, he created it.

You know, I didn't even know how to record it audio at the time.

This guy did all of it.

You went from behind the scenes to now you're on the stage here in my house.

And we're going to review this episode.

So I've made it.

You made it. That's the teaser.

All right, let's tell the story.

We're going to be back in a second.

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All right, let's get back to the pot.

All right.

What's up, man?

Yeah, what's up?

I so people don't know this.

So you are Ishaan.

You I've known you since you were 18 years old.

You still are kind of like 18 years old.

Oh, yeah, I still look like you have any as well.

Yeah, you're 23 now.

Yeah. All right.

So I'm thinking this episode is kind of like

your title wasn't intern, but it's going to be good for you too.

So we're going to be like intern.

My intern became a millionaire.

And it was like, yeah, I was a glorified.

And like my type of fishtail is cheaper stuff.

But just like kind of like in time.

And by the way, I got a good track record with this.

I don't know if I'm doing anything, but I'm good at picking people

because I worked with you at age 18.

Yeah. Steve Bartlett, 19, maybe 20 years old.

There's a guy, another guy named Ishaan, who just tweeted out today

that he's like, those four months I worked with you were super influential.

He went from like guy, just work in some place.

Now he's got an eight figure agency.

So that was cool. Yeah.

Danny Miranda works with me for a little bit.

People know him in the podcast game now.

He was with us for a couple of months before he started creating content.

So I feel like those two Ishaans and maybe getting people that like sound similar

to your name. Yeah. The closer, the better.

Actually. All right.

So you've had a crazy run, but let's do, let's do the history.

So how did we meet?

Well, I followed you on Twitter when I was like 12, 13 years old.

I was tweeting.

My whole strategy was let me get my like, like profile picture.

If you afford to do that, I'm going to re-intro the one part, which is one thing

that people don't know is this podcast was started actually, not with me and Sam,

me and you.

I hit you up on Twitter DMs.

Yes. Yeah.

And I saw that you were doing a podcast editor for somebody else I knew.

I think Corey or Angel List or something like that.

Yeah, Corey Levy.

And so I had this idea, all right, I want to do a podcast.

I hit you up.

I didn't know how old you were, but I was like, hey, do you want to produce for me?

Then we got on a call like, oh, man, this is like a kid somewhere.

You were at school at the time.

And I was like, well, you do you know how about how audio works?

And you're like, yes, I got you.

So that if people see the cover art of the podcast, you made that the initial

like, you know, 20 episodes or whatever, all those intros and all the audio.

You made that. Yeah.

Then we started doing business experiments together.

This was at a time where I was kind of like, I think I want to build an audience.

Yeah.

And I also want to just launch some businesses.

We launched econ businesses.

We launched a bunch of shit together.

And then we all went off our own ways.

And then you had a crazy journey after that, where you made millions of dollars,

lost millions of dollars and all the rest.

So we're going to talk about all that.

Let's start at the beginning.

So I DM'd you, but you were actually were on Twitter when you said you were what,

13 years old, 13 years old.

I followed you.

I was trying to just get my face like on all these people.

And I'm from Australia, right?

There's no there's no Silicon Valley.

There's no like VCs and cool angels and all these people.

So I was like, let me this is my avenue to get to these people.

And then let me just like, even if it wasn't like a lot of value add up,

let me just tweet random shit.

Are you guys.

And I was doing that.

So if you just go on my Twitter, you'll find tweets of me, you know,

tweeting off to Sean, random shit and your respond here and there.

But yes, I was like, when I was literally like 13, 14, whatever.

And then a couple of years off later, when I was with the podcast with Corey,

is when you DM'd me and I was like, yeah, I already know who you are.

And let's do this.

I think your name was, I think I found you because your name was also Sean.

And I was like, this is this is it to me.

But yeah, so you talk about the start.

So when we were working together, tell me some of the things you remember.

Because I remember only where everyone's got their own version of history.

Yeah, I remember in my head, like, you know, what we were thinking back then.

But I'm curious, and this is our first time catching up in person

because you live in Australia, but you're just in town.

And you used to live it where I lived.

I was living in Brisbane.

You also like way back when I lived in Brisbane.

Yeah. So what's your version of history?

What do you remember?

The first thing I remember, well, I think the first thing I remember is

when we were doing the podcast, like cover art and stuff, I sent you over some,

like, you know, like his version A, version B, blah, blah, blah.

And then you're like, hold on a second, you should add your name to the cover art.

Yeah, I thought I thought that was really cool.

That I gave like me a lot of confidence.

Like, oh, OK, yeah, this is I'm like, I'm, you know, a part of this as well.

I remember that was that was a cool thing you did.

Because I think maybe there's some learning there with people that are higher.

Yeah, give people a shot.

Make them feel special.

Yeah, yeah, you make them feel special, do that.

So that was also a really cool thing I remember.

Also, I'm just like the kind of craziness of like,

let's start a crystal store today and then like a few weeks later,

let's start this other D to C thing, like make up, make the store 72 hours,

go off and and do it.

It was like, it was it was like some variation of like an incubator,

but it's just like guys.

At this time, I'm working at Twitch.

I'm hurting out by deal.

We sold the Twitch.

I'm now earning out.

And I know, OK, in a year, I get this vesting check.

Yeah.

But in the meantime, like, frankly, I was pretty bored inside of a big company.

I you know, it's not.

I knew that's not my long term.

And I was like, you know, on the side here, what can I do to entertain myself?

The podcast was one cool thing I'd always wanted to do.

And then the other would be like, I would meet somebody and I'm like, oh,

this person's killing it in Ecom.

Yeah, Joey Sean, I'm making an Ecom store.

And I remember for the crystals thing, I was like,

I read some article and I saw some magazine.

Like, I always try to look outside of like, I don't look at tech crunch

to get tech ideas or like business ideas.

I look at several of these.

I remember reading like a People magazine and it was like Adele

was saying she won't go on stage unless she has her like Rose Quartz crystal.

And I was like, what?

Like, that's insane.

Like, who believes in this crap?

And I googled it and I was like, after Kim Kardashian got mugged,

she had like a four million dollar ring.

She got mugged and it was like, how did you recover?

She's like, well, my crystals really grounded me.

And I was like, and then you see all these celebrities.

I'm like, if again, I just think people are sort of like, I have this tweet

that's like, the economy is just smart people paying beautiful people to market

to to sort of like average people.

And I was like, if all the celebrities are doing this,

then there's got to be a bunch of other people that believe in this.

And so I remember calling you and you're like, the best part about you is your game.

That's my favorite thing is like, if you hire somebody with no experience,

there's a bunch of bad things like I'd be like, dude, like,

I haven't heard from you in two days.

Where'd you go?

Yeah. But then on the good side, it'd be like, it doesn't know any better.

So I could just be like, hey, we're doing this and it's going to be

we're going to launch it in two days.

And you're probably just like, I don't know, is that normal?

Maybe that's normal, right?

Like, yeah, besides, it's like, I never I've always been working for like

into that people.

I have never had like a traditional go to an office.

And right. And like, I was I remember at the time, I was like,

I'm like, I'm going to finish uni.

Should I go and be a consultant for like some bank or whatever?

Yeah, you asked me that.

So because yeah, I just didn't know what the other I guess I was just gay

because I didn't know what the other world was like.

I was like, all right, this is kind of right normal and doing this.

So it's crazy stuff like just yeah, creating different

e-com stores with different experiments.

We did like a newsletter, the good, terrible, bad, very bad.

And then I was like, that one top five.

Milk Road became a successful newsletter company.

But I guess before that, I didn't even remember that.

We did launch a newsletter called the no good, very bad, terrible, something,

something, something newsletter.

Yeah, I don't know what it was, why we called it that.

But we basically were launching a bunch of experiments.

And I remember at the time, one of my takeaways from that is that crystal store,

for example, I didn't even know what winning looked like.

So one problem with an experiment is easy to use this word experiment.

But the way a science experiment works, you have a hypothesis.

You're like, I believe this.

Then you run the test and then either confirms it or doesn't.

Yeah.

But I was using the word experiment wrong, which was like, I'm just going to try

a bunch of shit without actually knowing like, what is the win condition?

Yeah.

What is the success or failure condition of this?

And so like now that I look now that I actually have an e-commerce bit,

like are you commerce business now?

Yeah, it's doing very well.

It's an eight figure e-commerce business.

Now that I know what an e-com business looks like,

I can go back and think about our crystal store actually was doing very well.

Like I just didn't know.

So for example, we were running Facebook ads and the key metric for

all e-commerce businesses is your ROAS, your return on ad spend.

And I think we were getting like 1.7.

Yeah.

Well, like the rocks, we're selling these rocks like 50, 60.

They don't go in the rocks.

They're crystals.

Yeah.

And I remember like the first few hours we got that Shopify ding.

Yeah, it's like amazing.

Like that was, I mean, most people start up a store that didn't have sales

for like a couple of days or whatever, or weeks.

And so, yeah, I think our problem was like, just didn't continue.

We didn't continue exactly.

Because now that I look back, it was like 1.7 to 2X.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking, oh, it's supposed to be three or four X, I think.

I had heard some idiot saying that somewhere and I just thought that's what it is.

And so I was like, oh, I guess this is bad.

Turn it, like shut it down.

Let's do the next thing.

You know, in retrospect, maybe I'm glad I'm not running a crystal store.

But at the same time, like there is a lesson there of, I mean, sticking to it

is obviously like you can't win without the stick to it-ness.

But one of the things that makes you stick to it is not just willpower.

It's like knowing your win condition.

So like you, do you even know what to look at?

And do you know what winning looks like?

Do you know what the benchmark should be so that you can actually assess

a successful versus unsuccessful experiment?

So that was one of my learning, one of my things I remember from back then.

The other one I remember is like with the pod.

We kind of like, we called our shot a little bit.

Like we made this Google doc of the plan, the one page plan.

And now I call that my kickoff doc.

But it was like, before we started it, I wrote this out.

Do you remember that doc?

Yeah, I remember.

And it was, well, the first thing that you helped them was like, you need your

a thousand true fans.

Like that was the very, very first thing that you're like, if we just got this,

you can build a pretty big business just with a thousand people.

That was like the first thing I remember.

And then you had a few things like we need to get to a hundred thousand

listeners and get a bunch of other, other, like maybe build a business of all

like, you know, these ancillary businesses, adjacent businesses across it.

And I mean, you did all that.

That's one thing you kind of step back and it's like, I'll share the doc.

I'll put the doc if you're on YouTube.

I'm going to put it on the screen so you can see literally like word for word

what we wrote back then.

And it's not that it, it wasn't all right in that it all happened, but it

definitely didn't happen on the timeline.

I remember thinking, we're going to hit, let's get to a hundred thousand

downloads per episode.

So that's the thing, like per episode, I want a hundred thousand downloads by

the end of the year.

So it's like 12 months took me three years.

So like, you know, now we do that.

But like, you know, it took three years for us to ever hit that mark.

So it's kind of this old phrase, like don't confuse a clear view for a short distance.

It's like, I feel like we had a clear view.

I just thought things would happen faster.

I overestimated kind of like what could be done in one year.

But with that one, because it's so fun, I just kept going and like, sure enough,

like, you know, at all, we, we, we, that was like the right thing to keep going.

There's a lot of other things, shiny things.

And that was like the right one.

The one that was making no money, actually costing me money.

Because one of the things I wrote in that doc is I plan to lose ten

thousand dollars a year doing that.

Oh, yeah.

But it'll be worth it because I thought, you know, creates like some serendipity.

Yeah.

And you kind of talked about that too, like content creating serendipity or like

just being online and being like in the mix.

Yeah.

Just like a portion.

Liking a post or applying to something or putting, putting yourself out there.

Who cares if someone is like, when you, I mean, it's different for you.

Now, if you post this, millions of people are going to look at it.

But like just for like a regular person, when you post like a tweet and it says

like a hundred and sixteen impressions, it's going to be like, that's all like,

that's still some people that have looked at it and you don't know who it is.

But, you know, it laid it down the line and that could, that could come in.

Hey, when we talk about some of the stuff I'm doing now, I can, I've gotten all my

opportunities, every single one of them has been like through Twitter or like

through some like LinkedIn or some email or thing I've sent and late years

later down the track, it's all come.

Well, tell the story about the billionaire.

So what happened there?

That's it on Twitter.

Yeah.

Well, that was a, that was me just like saying, I need to, I just made this

like kick ass investment and let me like, I want more people to know about it.

So I was like talking to like journalists and stuff like that.

Like, hey, write about the story and no one was really taking the time.

But there was one dude that was actually on Twitter.

He, I just, he wasn't responding to anything.

Else I went on Twitter, I started active there.

I was just like, I just kept lacking his post.

I didn't actually say anything.

And then like, he checked out my LinkedIn profile and we started talking.

He's like, okay, yeah, let me write about the story.

Right.

And it was like, it wasn't like a Forbes or anything.

It was like a pretty small news site that it's, it's so weird that they

posted that article a few days later, a billionaire, read that article and then

reached out to you.

And then we'll, we'll tell that story in a sec.

So even that is like, um, there's this praise that I read once.

I think Mark Seuster, the blog post about this called lines, not dots.

Basically the idea is like, a line is just a collection of dots.

Like, right.

Mathematically, that's what a line is.

It's multiple dots just all connected.

And so what he says is like, you know, and he's like, what people think happens

is they see on TV that you go in, you meet this investor cold, you blow their

socks off with this pitch and then they write you this check and say, you know,

here you go, son, go, go on.

And it's like, that's not what happens.

Like that's movies.

That's Shark Tank.

That's not real.

And the real thing is dots.

And so he's like, you know, many interactions that stack up that when you

look back later is a line, um, and he's like, investors invest in lines, not dots.

Meaning they're not just going to, like, it's not the very first interaction,

typically where it's all just going to happen for you.

And so it's following the person, liking the post, replying to something.

They noticed that this person said something smart, not the first time,

but the third time.

Yeah.

And then after that, they follow you back.

And then because of that, they see this other blog post you wrote that you

don't even realize that one of your 98 views was this person who's actually

legit and then go, you know, like, and then so those dots stack up.

And ultimately that's how trust gets built.

That's the framework.

This is the, the framework King.

Yeah.

Watch me cook, baby.

That's what I do.

Yeah.

So that's, I think, you know, what you've done really well.

So, all right.

So let's get to the part where we break up.

So at some point we break up, we worked Taylor for a while.

I got a year or two, I think it was like a couple of years of like knowing each

other and like doing stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we get to some point where, um, you're like, you come to me one day, you're

like, I want to day trade or something like it.

To be fair, you were actually kind of good at this.

I remember one time we were on a call and, uh, I was like, telling you like

some instructions or something like some action items.

And then like, there was like no feedback.

And I was like, yo, are you listening?

Like, what are you doing?

What happened?

Where did this thing on?

And you were like, oh, hang on.

Um, Bitcoin just crashed to $3,500.

I'm like, this motherfucker's looking at the Bitcoin price while we're supposed

to be working on our very important crystal store or whatever we were doing,

whatever, you know, scheme we were in at the time.

Yeah.

And I remember really like, like two reactions.

One, like annoyed, like, dude, this guy's like, not paying attention.

Two, wait, Bitcoin crashed.

Like, shoot, you know, he's buying shit.

I buy, you're like, cause you told me, you're like, they're going to crash.

I'm trying to, I'm trying to place an order real quick.

It was down like 60% on just that day.

And everyone, everyone in crypto like knows that day.

It was a very like, it wasn't in March or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was, and like, it was like, you just never see it happen.

This is like, this is not some altcoin.

This is like the coin.

This is right.

This is Bitcoin.

And so when that happened, I was like, I've seen a few of these.

And I just wasn't a part of it.

As I was like, this is my story.

I know I should be working and listening right now.

I was like, I need to act right now.

And so, yeah, I mean, I grabbed all the money I had.

It was a couple of thousand dollars.

And I, well, I didn't just buy the coin.

I was like, the, the generate in me.

I was like, okay, let me try and maximize the opportunity.

So I went on people know Bitmex, I went leverage lung on Bitcoin.

So I took all my money, did that.

And when I went and leverage long means what here in this case?

So if you buy a thousand dollars with a Bitcoin and you buy, you know, 20X leverage,

that means you actually buy $20,000 worth.

But if it goes down by even a little bit, yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll wipe out.

You'll have your experience.

I think called liquidation, right?

So getting liquidated is like your worst nightmare.

And I remember you were like, what, four or five grand?

Yeah, I was like, girl, grand, that was my collateral.

I was 20X or 25X leverage.

And when I clicked the button to buy, like everything went frozen.

And I was like, I was like, oh, shit, is this me?

Or like, I'm kind of freaking out.

And I go on Twitter.

That's why I was, I was, I was like, not really talking.

I went on Twitter and everyone else is like, Bitmex just froze.

And I'm like, okay, it's not just me.

It's, it's like the actual exchange.

And I was kind of freaking out because I thought, all right, it's gone.

I've already clicked buy and bit.

And I mean, when you, when you were looking at the chart,

if you look at the one minute chart, it was just going down,

like it went down, down, down, down.

And it just stopped.

Yeah, you'd assume that when it like unfreezes, it would have just kept going

down because who knows, this was like a black spot event, right?

So we don't know what's going on.

And so that's why I was like frozen for a while.

Cause I thought I just, I'm an idiot.

I just saw my money.

But when it unfroze, I saw I was up like $40,000.

I was like, I was like, oh, it's like my heart was.

And yeah, I think you want to coin base.

You'd be able to, when he told me, I was like, I was like, come on, man.

I was like, wait, what?

What's the price?

And I went and I went and bought 25k that day too.

Yeah.

And so, which was actually an amazing trade.

Like we made more money of that.

We made more money in that one minute than we did, like, you know,

six months of experiments together, you know, whatever, you know,

three months of experiments that we were working on at the time.

And there is a lesson there, which was like, um, you know, the best kind

of like ideas don't all just come from your head.

Like, you know, you're at the time, I like intern chief of staff, but you were

like, this is a buy right now, I'm going to do this.

And by following you, I kind of like got the benefit of that at the time.

And you know, Bitcoin would have traded up to like 70 grand or whatever

since then, and then just come back down to earth.

But my take away from ten X from that day.

Yeah.

My takeaway was, uh, there's like, there's a very few moments where you

can make all the money versus like trying to make a little bit of money

every single time.

I think like I'm not a day trader.

I don't think I'd go back to being a day trader or whatever.

But I think all the money is made when there's like a few key decisions

that happen maybe once a year, once every few years, once every few months,

whatever it is.

Um, and you just have to act on it with like, it's a bit degenerate.

You have to like, there wasn't a lot of thoughtful planning around.

I'm going to buy Bitcoin because of this mathematical equation.

That's full.

It was just times like this doesn't happen every right all the time.

So let me act on it in the moment.

I was like, this guy's a fucking degenerate.

Right.

Like 20.

I didn't even know exactly how an option trade worked.

I was like, okay, this is crazy.

But at the same time, you're right.

Like if you go read that Buffett quote, where he's like, you know, there

are moments or seasons where, you know, the, the, the, the, the clouds

fill the sky and it's about, it's about terrain.

And he says in that moment, let us not come out with spoons, but bathtubs

to sort of like make, Hey, there's also, you know, Neval has a quote that's

similar to this, which is, he's talking about luck.

Is it one of the versions of luck is being able to recognize that opportunity.

Yeah.

So it's, uh, it's the version of luck.

It's like he goes at level two or whatever, or he's not the inventor of this.

I just heard it from him.

Um, but you know, the, the original guy who wrote this, he basically says, you

know, it's sort of luck favors the prepared mind.

So anybody could have seen that price.

And most people, when they see something going down, they get scared.

You were like, this is Bitcoin, Bitcoin, flash crash, blink decision that this

is a good bet for me, like whatever risk reward adjusted.

Yeah.

And, uh, you know, you were correct in that later.

I'm going to tell a story.

So you come to the States, we fly you out.

And, uh, I remember we go to a restaurant and we invite my buddy Suley and

we're talking and it's always like, okay, Sean, like, you know,

tell me like, what, what are you excited about?

Yeah.

And, uh, you go, I'm excited about this company called Annie Mocha.

And you had told me about this company three times at this point.

And you were like, oh, I love the stock Annie Mocha.

I like the stock.

It was like, you were like the GameStop guy, right?

You're like, I like the stock.

And I was like, Annie Mocha, I've never heard of this.

Sounds like a yogurt.

Um, and then I was like, why do you like it?

And then you told me something that I didn't really ask, but I was like, what

does it do?

And you're like, oh, they're making these like bubble games or something like that.

Okay, whatever.

Later, when we're at this lunch, I was like, Hey,

I sully built a mobile gaming company and sold it for whatever,

a hundred million bucks more.

Um, tell them about that.

What's that mobile gaming company?

And you started telling them.

He's like, okay, interesting.

So I had heard it like four times from you and never took action.

Cause again, I was not at that time listening and probably the way I should have.

That's an investment you made millions of dollars off of.

Yeah.

Tell the story of how after we stopped working together, you go from intern

to multi-millionaire in a very short, like how long?

Yeah, it's a very short amount of time.

So at, so I've known about Anamaka.

It was a Australia, the listed company.

So it was on the stock market and initially bought like a few thousand

dollars worth and it did well.

It went up like four X something like that.

So I was like, okay, great.

That's, you know, I've done, I've done my, done my thing here.

And I, I was looking at it as an investment.

So I didn't sell it.

And then the Australian stuff exchange, they came after it.

And they were like, Oh, you guys are dealing with sweet crypto stuff.

We're going to have to deal with you.

Well, they weren't crypto initially.

They pivoted to.

Yeah.

So about the time when I bought, so I bought them initially

because they had an announcement and they were like, we're going to do

a thing called crypto kitties and we're going to work with them.

And so I saw that as like, this was before like a pretty boring

robot company.

Now it's like a sexy crypto.

Yeah.

It's like a sexy crypto thing.

It's like, how do you value a blockchain game?

Like this is like things that are like hard to value is kind of what I like

because then nobody knows what the price is.

And so like, as a degenerate, I like that.

And so, yeah.

So anyway, it did well.

By the way, none of this episode is financial advice.

This is actually NFA me just laughing at the craziness of the story.

So let's let's tell the story.

So you buy more.

So yeah.

So I bought it.

It got delisted.

So I'm like, holy shit, my money is gone.

How much money were you in at that point?

It wasn't a lot.

It was like $25,000.

That became, yeah.

But to you, that was a lot.

Oh, that was, yeah.

That was everything.

Yeah.

So you put everything you have, which is 25 grand at a time.

It gets delist off the stock exchange.

Because the exchange is like, you guys now do crypto.

We don't know.

We don't like crypto.

We don't know what crypto is.

Yeah.

Now you're a liquid stock.

You can't even sell.

Yeah.

I can't sell it.

And so this was like, tell me this, I'm laughing at you.

I'm like, yeah, I remember you told me this.

You're like, dude, I got fucked on Animoka.

And you're like, it's delisted.

I'm like, wow, I thought you'd probably just lose money

because the stock goes down.

I didn't think you would lose money because you just can't sell it anymore.

Yeah.

But you did something even crazy.

You double down on crazy.

So tell sir throughout that year, I did a few things.

I learned about secondary markets.

That's something I didn't, I wasn't really exposed to before.

I learned about that.

I did a lot more research into what they were doing.

And I've always been in the, and I was the perfect person

because I had a Minecraft server when I was a kid, so in high school.

So I understood how if you turn these in-game items into something

that you could sell, this is a win-win for everyone.

So there's that.

I was a gamer at heart.

So when you, and I was in Bitcoin way long before we got 2016.

So when you mix all of that together, I was like,

the perfect person to see the white.

I was like, OK, what they're doing is actually something

that I want to get more exposed to.

And, you know, why buy a bunch of different tokens and companies

but I can just buy the, get exposed to the people

that I think will be the overall winners here.

And so once I, you know, got, had that conviction, I was like, OK,

well, how do I, I can't market by the stock, right?

So I was like, how do I actually buy this thing now?

And this was like a year, it's been delisted.

So in that time, I was working for you and another guy.

And I had a few other bets that did really off to pay was one of them

that ended up being you told me about that one too.

Yeah. We were talking about buy now, pay later.

Yeah. And I had met Max Electric from a firm.

Yeah. I was like, oh, this was a great startup idea.

And you go, oh, we have actually after pay is better.

Yeah. I was like, bro, your little Australian version is not better.

You're like, no, look at these numbers.

It's better. And that stock just went.

That went from how you told me like really early on that one.

So I. Yeah.

Yeah. So I did.

Yes. I did really well with that.

I also have a pretty crazy story there where I followed one of like,

like I didn't have a lot of edge being like a kid from Australia

investing in a public stock.

So I followed, you know, all the C-suite people on Strava to see where they're at.

And one of them was like near the square offices and they never like.

So that's when they ended up acquiring.

So I got like the little edge.

They were like billions.

So that was that was like a little hack.

You're like, I don't have satellites to track cars, but you that's legit.

You follow the guys. Yeah.

And I thought he was at the square offices.

You're like, they might get bought.

So as a guy from after pay, the C-suite was at.

He was in San Francisco and he was like pretty close to the square

offices doing his right. And I was like, this there might be something.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

I'm like, I feel like a partnership would happen within, you know,

square came in and bought them for like 30 billion or whatever.

And, you know, the stuff go away crazy.

But anyway, I made a bunch of stuff.

I met money from doing trades like that and working for you guys.

All right. So how do I buy animal?

I want to buy more.

And, you know, the way I went to like Facebook groups initially,

we told me you were like, there's a Facebook group of people just like

commiserating it. We're wailing.

Yeah. Recovering animal costar holders.

We're just there bitching and moaning.

Like they were just gruntled.

Like they were talking about I want for doing like a class action

against animal or whatever, like all this stuff.

And so I was like, OK, this at the time when they were listed,

they were worth like 80 million or a hundred million dollars.

I was like, OK, I could get a huge discount on that.

And so, yeah, I went to Facebook.

I got a few people and they're like small trades.

I was like, I need bigger.

How do I get like people that have the big money?

So I got the list of the top shareholders.

You can request it publicly in Australia.

Might be the same here in the States.

But I got the top holders and I was like, let me go through each one of them.

Which one of them is disgruntled?

And there was a few that I still could

like the Australian press wanted me to like name these people.

Yeah, I think one of them is a republic.

But they're like pretty big time people that I mean, they're already rich money.

Yeah, they're smart money.

They're already rich.

They had this because they invest in some fund.

I had some allocation and blah, blah, blah.

So they were like just willing to get rid of it.

They're like, it's de-listed.

They don't know.

They probably don't know that they were in crypto or they're gaming.

It's just one of the things in their portfolio.

That's, you know, right.

And so they are buying it for like what discount?

Like 50 percent, 80 percent.

It was more like 80, 90 percent discount to what the law.

And I remember when you told me, I have the slack messages.

When you told me I'm buying it for, you know, ten cents on the dollar.

Yeah.

And I'm like, bro, you're just lighting money on fire.

Like you're going crazy.

Like what's going to like that's a insane reaction to the bad news bears.

Yeah.

Well, as I'm going to like double down.

But it worked.

So I did.

I think I like more like the way the drill down.

Yeah.

I put everything I had is about a hundred K that I just like this.

This should work out.

Well, it's also like if I lose all this money, all right, I'm in my 20s.

Oh, like you told me that you know, you're like, I'm 20 years old.

Yeah, I'm just going to I'll just like get a job and I'll save up again.

And I'll just I've got this is the time to do every take all these crazy bets.

I don't have kids.

I don't have anyone that's had some me.

So, yes, I made the bet.

I did all the transactions that itself was like a bit of a crazy thing

because they take some time to do to do private transfers in Australia.

Like the documentation for that, the people that they were handling the

transactions, they were taking a long ass time.

So one of them, actually, the biggest transaction

after Adam Walker, you know, announced they're now worth a billion dollars

that did a raise.

I was like, do I even have these shares?

Because it was still it was still taking time to process.

I'm like, I put the money in the escrow account.

Like, I obviously ended up getting the shares.

But yeah, it was like the this whole new world of, all right, I couldn't

like I wasn't like an angel investor before.

I didn't understand how to do this.

I had to just like sort of claw and do they even know you're like,

do these guys know they're dealing with like a 20 year old counterparty?

And they actually had like, they had no clue that they were.

Yeah, that was yeah.

It was pretty like these are these are like pretty serious, legit guys that were.

I mean, they thought they were, you know, shoveling dirt onto me.

And then, right, I was they're probably laughing.

Yeah, their perspective was let me give dirt to this person.

And I thought I was buying a gold mine.

And so I was like, all right, let me let me do this.

But I remember I and a lot of this there's a lot of luck involved, obviously.

And so when I bought it, you know, I thought this was like a very long term play.

Like after five years, there might be something here.

But it was only after about three months.

So I bought it.

The valuation I bought it, that was like 30, 40 million.

And a few months afterwards, they raised it a billion dollars.

And I remember getting a call.

It was like this Hong Kong fund that reached out to me.

And because, you know, I was I had to like flex a little bit to people.

And I don't lie that, you know, I bought this company.

So you're up 50 X. Yeah, I'm up.

Yeah, it was it was worth like, I think two million dollars.

And I was like, holy shit, let me like, let me like, I'm not.

Let me like have a think of what to do here, because people want to buy it.

And I had a Hong Kong fund that reached out.

I was like, we'll buy all of it.

We'll give you two million dollars today.

You're twenty twenty one years old or something.

This was actually right before they actually announced

they're raising it a billion dollars.

Some fund probably heard they were going to raise it a billion dollars.

Then we're trying to get it off me at a like at a discount.

So it was like, I think they initial off was like a million dollars or like whatever.

And I remember calling my dad.

I was like, holy shit, like this is worth a million dollars.

And I was like, brown parents, you know, this is a million dollars.

You took this to Jared, but they're like, take the money.

Like, what are you doing?

Take the money right now.

And so like you said, I was like, just wait a few months.

Maybe this will be more.

I was like, I was like, I don't think that like this is it here.

And especially because I was tracking all the numbers, especially NFT, like volume,

like entity volume sales.

And I've been tracking this every single month.

And like it was like a flat line is like someone was dead here.

And then in this month, there was a little uptick.

So I'm like, this these little upticks don't just like start and end here.

There's there's some like praise that goes on here.

So I was like, if this is worth a billion dollars now and this this the hype is just starting now,

let me like ride this way.

At the peak, Animoca was worth what?

At the peak, they raised the latest round was six billion.

Six billion.

So yeah, we're buying in effectively like a twenty thirty million dollar valuation.

Yeah. It runs up to six billion.

I remember at one point you're telling me in Slack, you're like, these people just

offered me two million bucks for this.

Yeah. I'm like, holy shit, you did it.

We started against my first million.

You just made your first two million congrats.

Like, I can't believe this worked out.

You're like, I'm not going to sell though.

And I was like, wow, this guy's insane.

And I was like, that's an insane story.

So you hold it.

What's it at now?

Who knows?

No, no one knows.

I mean, I was with us.

I met, I met Yad and I met the board.

It was a few weeks ago in Sydney and that the real thing here is I forgot who set up.

But they were like, never count your winnings unless it's like cash in bank.

It's realized.

And so I was like, hey, you have to exit this.

And the way to exit it is either I sell it privately.

All these unicorns, they're at massive discounts right now.

So it's like, I could do that.

Yeah. I like, you know, at its peak, it's worth eight figures.

Do I sell now for seven figures and cash it in?

That's always like a decision that plays in my mind.

Right. Otherwise, you know, they have plans to list into an IPO.

And what you told me at the time, because I was like, dude, this is insane.

I was like, hey, man, listen, as your pseudo father figure here, you should sell this.

And you were like, I see what you mean.

But you were like, what do I need two million dollars for?

You were like, I don't have something I'm going to go do.

I'm not going to change.

I don't want to change my lifestyle.

Like I like my lifestyle.

Yeah. You were like, I'm just going to look to invest it somewhere else.

And if I think this is still the best place to invest it, I'm just going to do that.

And like, you know, if I lose it, I'm so young that like, whatever, I get the story

and I'll just keep going.

Like, you know, I'm not.

And the way you said it, like my meter went from, oh, my God, this guy's insane to like.

Honestly, I see his perspective, which is that two million bucks changes most people's

lives, but you were like, I don't think that that doesn't get me where I'm trying to go.

Yeah.

And in fact, you know, if I still believe in this, I just want to see where this goes

in for, you know, for a while as crypto as NFTs, you're right, like became the thing

that year. Yeah.

You know, there was sort of like a peak moment in that where it became worth more

than 10 million dollars, right?

So yeah, I would have played out very well.

Timing is always very, very tricky.

Do you look at this as I was trying to try it?

I was trying to time a bubble, or do you look at this as I believe in this company

and I still believe in this company?

And that's why I have to stop believing the company.

And also, I was kind of seeing this as like, there's there's like a few people

that have like these life holds.

It's like, you know, you hold these, like this is a lifetime hold.

This isn't like you buy in, you sell out, whatever.

And also, I was convincing myself of that.

It's like, I'll buy this.

And, you know, when this becomes like the next 10 cent, I'll have a couple

hundred million dollar stake.

And that's how, and I didn't have to do it.

This was like the only investment I had to do.

I didn't have to make all these other investments.

There's still some like part of me that believes in that.

It's like, I still see a pathway where like in the next 20, 20, 30 years,

whatever, this is like 100, 200, 300 billion dollar company or whatever.

And it's like, I have, I've got a pretty decent, you know, stake in that.

And so, yeah, that's what I was like, convincing myself of that is a bit

less now during times like this.

But I still have some thing here where I'm like, OK, it may be hard to

not just get attached, like identity wise to like, I don't want to be wrong.

Yeah, I'd made that mistake before.

Like, I think, you know, especially this is such an extreme case.

It's one specific thing.

You were so right.

You were boy genius.

Then it crashes.

But you're like, am I now boy idiot or am I boy genius?

Is this the moment where I held through the tough times?

Or did I just fuck up and I need to learn that lesson?

Like, yeah, really hard.

Yeah, I will deal with that.

Well, I think, well, I went into let me just like do something.

So I was like, I was still investing some money on behalf of other people.

And I was going around and meeting meeting founders and stuff like that.

And that's why I'm like, I'm doing something else right now.

Well, OK, yeah, you have other bets.

Yeah, I've got other bets.

So that's what got me through it.

I was like, if this goes away, I need to make sure that this is the next big bed.

I don't need to be like, I don't need to be right on this one.

Like, look, you know, if it ends up the way it's going, I could I've got time

to make more bets and be really right on something else.

Hey, guys, let's take a quick 30 second break to tell you about another

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Yeah. And also you had done so much degenerate trading that, like,

you don't emotionally mood swing, like most.

Yeah, the money is all actually becomes plain money in a way.

Well, aside from Adamaka, I had a bunch of other token investments,

especially when when Facebook renamed to Meta.

Remember, I was buying up all the MetaVest coins, Decentraland, Axi, Sandbox.

And so I experienced, you know, making millions of dollars like liquid cash.

I also, I learned a lot of lessons that I also lost a lot of that money when I

didn't manage my risk, but I experienced like the numbers just became

like you're looking at on the screen, I have no attachment to it.

They'll be like those days where I'd be up a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

Like, obviously, I spent a lot of it.

I was like, you know, all my boys are treated well, we went out.

When I, we all, it was like, I was a pretty shy, nerdy, nerdy guy, right?

So I didn't really know how to talk to girls.

But if you want to let her talk to girls, get rich.

I have, it's like a, it was like a huge confidence boost.

I was, yeah, I was, it just gives you the confidence, it's just the confidence for you.

Which, yeah, I think it was a confidence.

I was like, even if she rejects me, I'm still, I can go look at my MetaBasket later

and feel good about myself.

Yeah, it was, it was more like, yeah.

And also for me, like having two million dollars in a bank felt like a billion dollars to me.

Of course, yeah.

I'm like, I'm spending a lot and it's just like, it's not going down because I'm like,

I don't have kids and I have family.

I don't have any, I have no obligations whatsoever.

So even a lot didn't put a big debt.

Would you, would you do anything stupid?

So, yeah, I got an apartment.

I got, I got a Tesla.

I spent like, there'll be weekends where I get like limers out for me.

My boy would get like, like, I'm like, my birthday.

We got like three limers.

We drove down to the Gold Coast, which is like, you know, with Gold Coast, isn't it?

Yeah, Australia.

Do I still have to hear this?

Because when I like, I don't know what I was paying you back then.

It wasn't much.

The very first thing was a 30K a year.

I think it was.

Yeah, we started at 30K.

I think it went up after that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To maybe like 80 to 100, something like that.

That's what I was paying you then.

And I remember at the time being like, oh, this is not going to work.

This guy's getting like super rich doing these like crazy investments on the side.

Like, yeah, it's not going to make sense for him to have a job at some point,

which is great.

Like, my goal wasn't to have you work for me for 20 years.

It was like, here's a young entrepreneurial guy.

Come get some reps with me.

Come like, just get you off the traditional path.

Yeah.

And then like, I hope you go do big shit and like, you know,

I could be your biggest fan and all that.

That's kind of what's after.

And I'm, I've had my popcorn, you know, watching, watching you do this stuff

and it's being totally entertained the whole way.

Yeah, because you definitely like had like a roller coaster.

You're kind of like those like Wall Street Bets kids, basically.

Like, yeah, I was on Wall Street Bets like since I was in like high school.

Like I was, yeah, I was always on that farm.

There's the equivalent in Australia.

There's a thing called hot copper, which is like the equivalent of

Wall Street Bets.

And on that, I was like the most active person I'd got.

And my nickname was Mr. Silicon Valley, because I was just investing in tech stocks.

Right.

And I'm like, if you go on, like everyone can look at my profile.

It's like, I'm, oh, I'm tweeting about Adam Walker.

I'm like talking about Adam Walker on that platform.

And there's another company called Brainship that ended up becoming

like a multi-billion dollar because the AI craze and stuff like that.

I was constantly looking at anything to do with what is like the next 100X stock.

Because for me, it's stocks, right?

I kind of invested.

You tell us some story.

A billionaire takes you out to lunch and it's like, what's the next

Andamokia?

He reads the article and he's like, I got to meet this whiz kid.

Takes you out.

He's like, what's the next one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You shit your pants immediately.

You're like, I don't know if I can know.

Yeah.

Because during that time, like, I'm, I mean, this was that era, right?

So I'm like everything I'm telling people to invest in, it's going up and up and up.

And, you know, I'm a genius.

Yeah, I'm a genius.

And so I was like, oh, shit.

But I truly believe it.

I was like, Andamokia just raised it a billion dollars.

I was like, you should, you should invest in Andamokia.

Andamokia is the thing.

That's that is the next thing.

And he was like, OK, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

And in the next few days, I didn't say, God damn, I love that confidence.

Yeah.

Next few days, he ended up becoming like the top 10 shareholder in the company,

bought out tens of millions of dollars of stuff.

And then obviously, you know, Andamokia didn't stop at a billion.

Yeah.

So he made, you know, over nine figures in that.

So that then tipped you a little bit on the on the way out or took the dealer.

And there's that comment.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

So all right.

So you go through that crazy journey.

One of the things that comes out of that was you were then on behalf of this guy

plus other people, you were doing other investments.

Yeah.

One of them is shuffle.

Let's talk about shuffle.

So you had flacked me a while back and you were like, Hey, crazy story.

I think on the pot, I was like, can't say who told me this.

Right. Yeah.

Now it's all now it's like way more public.

But at the time you were like, Hey, there's a company called Steak.

Yeah.

That is making unbelievable amounts of money.

You were like, they had like a whatever, $800 million dividend last year.

Like that's just the profits they took out.

You're like, this guy, one of the owners, I don't know how old are they?

They're like, they're not like late 20s, mid 20s.

Yeah.

Like 27 years old, about a $50 million house in Australia.

Yeah.

And then the other guy bought like a whatever, $100 million house.

And it's like, that's how you know, someone's like rich, by the way,

when they're buying like a look at the real estate.

Yeah.

That is like, you know, when they're buying an asset like that, like

because people didn't know it, the articles are basically like mystery,

you know, mega millionaire buys $50 million home.

And then it was like, they had two companies.

They had like a software company that makes like

it's like makes like the gaming software to go play like the games.

And then they have Steak, which is the casino, the like basically crypto casino.

And they're like, you know, intertwined companies or whatever.

Yeah.

Little Alameda, you know, FTX, you know, I'm getting some vibes here

as I describe it all out.

But either way, like Steak has been, you know, it's become like huge.

You know, they have Drake playing and then whatever gambling and shit like that.

So you meet these guys who are doing a competitor to that in a way.

Yeah.

How do you describe Shuffle and tell us about like this crazy space?

Because I only know what you told me about the Steak thing at the time.

Yeah.

And then since a bunch of news has come out, like kind of validating

what you said, tell me about the space and tell me at the time.

So I was so I was traveling around just Australia meeting other founders

and I was at this dinner and at that dinner, the guy, there was a guy

that was like pretty good friends with the Steak co-founders.

And he would like say these numbers.

This is before the articles and stuff like that.

So he would say some insane, bad shit, crazy numbers.

And I'm like, if these numbers are true, this is the fastest growing

tech startup in Australia in history.

Like this is maybe in the world, like this is like very, I mean,

they were founded in 2017 and they're going to do a couple billion

dollars in revenue.

This is like some kids in their twenties, right?

So I initially heard of that.

I was like, OK, and already at that time, I wrote a message in

your about I want to start like a crypto trading, like let people do.

Like I want to start a I titled the document.

I want to build like the world's largest casino.

Right.

And I remember this document.

Yeah.

And the way that that product is actually like a huge product down.

I don't know if you've heard of Rolebit, but yeah, they have like a

crypto trading thing.

I was looking to do that, but that's like regulatory, just like a nightmare.

It's like an unlicensed thing.

And and so I was like, OK, but I see this gambling stuff.

It's huge.

Stakers, you know, they just did a billion dollars in that profit in a single year.

How do I get some exposure to that?

And this going back to like how I find these opportunities, I just remembered

there was another like hidden uni that lived in a whole different city

to me in Australia that posted his research on afterpay.

And this was like a couple of years ago.

And I don't know why he popped out in my mind again.

So I went looking for that article.

I found his name and I hit him a message on LinkedIn like, hey, like, you know,

what are you doing these days?

Let's catch up or whatever.

And yeah, we caught up.

And then that's when he started telling me about like these other crypto kids

in Australia that have like made it pretty big, doing all this degenerate stuff.

And they're starting a crypto casino and it's going to be a competitor to not

just stake, but there's like, that's the thing.

The market is so huge.

There's I could, you know, there's a few other competitors are also doing

a billion dollars and this is not really reported on, right?

It's kind of like a, yeah, kind of shady industry.

So I was like, OK, for me, you know, coming from pretty small town in Australia,

when you meet other people that are kind of like you and we all had a

like success in our own domain, I'm like, if we just come together,

we're going to hit something big.

And I just wanted to be around those people.

Right. And so it was more like a bet on this group of yeah, just like also

ambitious, smart, slightly degenerate or very degenerate, autistic.

Yeah, like 20, young, 20 year olds, basically.

Yeah. And these old people and we've all we've all kind of been through

the same thing of making a lot of money, losing a lot of money.

So we can kind of like lean on each other in that way.

Like they we understand each other in that.

So by the way, this happens in like it's happened in online pover.

I remember it like the rise of online pover and the kind of poker kids

who all made it and they all kind of lived at houses together.

And yeah, figured out how to like each like beat the game together, basically.

Same thing happened with social media.

So like the tiktokers of the Viners who all went and lived in the same building

in Los Angeles, right, collabed with each other, plus traded tips,

plus like got brand deals for each other.

And they all like rose up way faster than the people who were on their own

or didn't have the kind of connection.

Just was like Juntaugur.

Yeah. So yeah, so that's how I met them.

And I was like, we all kind of agreed a lot of the background of the shuffle team.

They come from like the big exchanges, FDX is one of them, BitMEX, Crypto.com.

That's all their backgrounds.

And so we all had the hard-earned standard of the sketch world.

And so I was like, we all and you know, obviously I've traded in all of them.

And we all just had like, we all agreed on this macro thesis

of every single cycle, there is like this one clear big winner,

which is the exchanges, right?

They, their business model is every bet, every degenerate bet you take,

they have a little fee, right?

It's called transaction fee for them.

For us, it's called house edge, but it's the same exact thing.

Same model.

The same model struck the legal structure is actually really similar as well.

They will like get a license out in Seychelles or, or, you know,

FDX was Bahamas, CryptoCastino is out in the Dutch Caribbean and Curacao.

So it was like, there's all these similarities.

What is that?

There's like some place that's like, they just made it their business,

some, some country, country, right?

That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Curacao.

Yeah. That's the, that's where the hell is Curacao?

What is Curacao?

It's just a place where you can, I mean, anyone,

if you want to get a license to do like an online CryptoCastino,

you could probably spin one up in like six weeks.

And that's their model.

They are, they're like, we're open for business for Casino,

for online Casino's basically.

Yeah. And like, that's where everybody goes to get their license.

We're like in the same structure as Steak and, you know,

all the other guys work all under the same license.

And there's some risks to that.

Obviously, like, what happens to our license?

How long can you sort of play this game?

And you have to sort of calculate what, what amount of risk you want to take there.

But yeah, that's, that's, it's exactly the same as these exchanges

that were out, out, out, you know, in the Seychelles or, or Bahamas.

And so we saw that and we're like, OK,

here's a clear difference between exchanges and Casino's though.

Exchanges are raising at tens of billions of dollars

and that they've got all the fame.

Whereas, you know, if people just understood,

if this was more public on how profitable these Casino's are

and how they're very similar businesses to, to exchanges, then, you know,

there would be some re-rating evaluation for these, for these, for these Casino's.

And so that was like, that's the.

But a lot of these investors and funds, they have like a no vice clause, right?

Yeah, they just can't invest in lead.

They can't invest in gambling or porn or whatever.

Yeah, even though there's money to be made there.

So I think like that's one of the other reasons is like, yeah,

some people just either themselves individually morally say that

or their fund charter basically prohibits them from doing those things.

So they're just like out on.

Yeah, even if they know it's a great business.

I mean, who doesn't think a casino is an amazing business?

We, we re, we raised the seed route and that was like the hottest.

Here it is.

I don't know, I guess regrets was not investing.

I tried to invest and then it goes like, oh, it's like one entity here, here.

And I was like, oh, God, like if I have other people's money,

but that's my own money, fine.

But when I have other people's money, you know, I have to like, you know,

think twice and just in that time they're like closed or whatever.

Yeah, but anyway, like that's, we all agree that in this like next cycle,

whenever it is, could be five years down the line, who knows?

But in the next cycle for crypto, we believe that there will be one,

two or three casinos in the top 20 of all the coins.

And that's billions of dollars of value that we think that, you know,

we could, we could do.

And a big difference with us is like, like I'm on this podcast right now,

like we're not anonymous, like we're not like these people that all these

crypto casinos, usually they're like very anonymous people.

And I mean, you should put your money into a platform.

You want to know who's behind it, right?

You want to know who these guys are.

But how do you, like all the, if that is you follow all the FTX stuff

going on right now, I'm like really into this trial.

It's like my showbopper right now that I'm paying attention to.

It's your Roman Empire.

That's there's my Roman Empire.

Exactly.

Do you, have you been following it?

And I'm so like, how do you feel about that?

And how do you think like, because it seems like crypto casino is like risk

times risk in that sense of like, I don't know, something between, you know,

malpractice to like, you know, the craziness that comes with, with just

that amount of money flowing through something.

Yeah.

And you said you have people that worked in some of those places.

What did they, I guess, what stories have you heard?

And I guess, I don't know, like, not like Ishaan spokesman, you know, like,

not you professionally, if we can't, it's like my friend, like how do you

think about that stuff?

Yeah, it's like, it's, I mean, being in crypto already, you already have

like an appetite for speculation.

And so anyone that's already in the industry, it's like, you're, you're

taking some that you're taking some risk on.

Okay, there is some like regulatory risk already that one day this license

might close down and your business is like, you know, screwed up.

Like, and so you have to be kind of smart and calculated about that.

It's like, okay, what are the other licenses?

Can we start building it up?

Like we have to build our entire platform, like in a modular way.

So if something happens to one license, we can split off, let's say our

casino and then put a license to the sports book and offer it in the

different regions.

So it's just like lost.

It's like, we had to move the island.

Yeah, yeah, we had to last, we moved it.

So, so some regulatory risk, there's some like, it's funny, like products

have most startups have product market fit risk.

Like, we don't know if anybody wants what we have to offer.

Yeah, you have no market risk.

Then the second tier is technical risk.

It's like, if we can make a whatever self-driving car, right, people are

going to want it, there's no market risk, but there's technical risk.

Can you even build a self-driving car?

Yeah, but there's no technical risk either, right?

That's like, I mean, obviously you have to do technical work, but it's not,

that's not the risk in the business.

It's all regulatory, it's all regulatory risk in this, which is so

different than like 99% of the other startups I look at.

Yeah, very few times do you just get regulatory risk.

There's also just like actual risk that you have to manage of your book,

like limits that you like, we will sweat sometimes, like, because we

have to start upping the limits, you know, there's some high rules that come

and go like, I want to do a 10k blackjack hand.

I want to do a 25k blackjack hand.

And you're just like, okay, holy shit, we have to, you know, if they

have a few good runs, it could be all of a sudden down a couple hundred

thousand dollars, and SEO revenue is not always guaranteed.

That's also like the biggest difference in this, in the case of this year.

Talks about the traction.

So you guys launched, I don't know when, in February of this year.

Yeah, what's the, what can you share attraction wise?

So, you know, we're probably going to do a half a billion in volume, like this

month, and, you know, this is generating a few million in revenue a month.

And hopefully this month will be a few million in profit a month.

And, you know, we, this is also another thing that like these businesses

are built to strip out the cash flow.

It's like, you, you, you build the business and then you pay this out.

This is not like, you're not praying for some exit.

We all went into it knowing that no one's going to buy a crypto casino.

You build it to make a lot of money and then, you know, strip, strip the,

strip the money out and pay it out to all the holders of the business.

So that's also like, yeah, it's a very like, yeah, it's great.

Yeah, it's a good problem to have.

So yeah, we've, it's only been a couple of months, but, you know, it's,

yeah, probably 50 million run rates, probably where we're at right now.

Super impressive, crazy.

Any good stories about like, I don't know.

How did you bootstrap it?

Where'd you go get your first customers?

How did you, you know, because that was your job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you'd be like, I'm in fucking Asia right now, you know, meeting people.

I'm like, what are you doing in Asia?

You're like, I'm building the brand.

I'm figuring out how to get this thing out the ground.

Well, this is like a really, the first thing that I, I don't know why I didn't

really know this, but the people that come and play on your site, if they like

to gamble, you know, they probably also have some other vices and like, they're

probably not, some of them are probably, you know, can get very angry, very easy.

The whole thing is about either you make money or lose money.

So when they make money, obviously they're happy.

Or when they lose money, you know, right, especially beyond like, I'm going to

find out where you live and I'm going to find out like, so that was like the,

when you talk about your first 10 customers, like your first 10 customers

are pretty rough people that you have to do.

So, I mean, the first thing we went to was we're all a bunch of crypto kids

that made a bunch of money and we gambled it ourselves.

So like, we already had a lot of other crypto kids that made a bunch of money

and, you know, like to gamble.

So we went to those guys first and like, Hey, come, come, you know,

plan our website and, and test it out.

And we would, you know, there's little tricks and stuff of like stuff

with like deposit bonuses and like, yeah, like standard kind of standard,

like sports play motions and stuff like that.

One thing that I think we did that was, oh, that, that's pretty interesting

that we found out was, okay, we should stop spending so much time trying to

get thousands of people who will deposit like 10, $20 or whatever.

Cause they'll come on, they'll come on your side and it's good for them to,

you know, play, but they will lose $5 and then, you know, spend 48 hours

in your support, you know, I'm going to kill you.

Where, where do you guys live?

I need my $5 back versus like, okay, let's, let's maybe try and find customers.

That, uh, you know, not like that.

And we got pretty lucky in some parts of Asia, especially Japan, right?

Like they, uh, they are people who bet really big and they're very respectful.

And they're very like, they don't waste any of that time.

Like they will lose money and play with honor.

Yeah.

So it's like, okay, these are the customers we want.

Now we know the customers that we want and that's good for the business.

Um, and yeah, we started making some pushes there and, and trying to find,

uh, you know, this is a pretty heavy like affiliate business.

You want to find, you want other people to go out and do the work?

Cause you can't do Facebook.

We can't do Facebook ads.

We're prohibited from doing Google.

So you can't do PPC.

So you have, you have to find really creative ways of trying to acquire customers.

And yeah, that was, yeah.

Well, this is why like steak, I think bought, or they created kick.

Yeah.

And they're basically like paying Twitch streamers, you know, jobs and money.

Reportedly like $50 million, $100 million contracts to come play.

Cause they're like, oh, these are popular people.

One of the things they'll play is we'll give them money to gamble on our platform.

They gave Drake like tens of millions of dollars of like, go play, show people

that you're doing a $20 million bent and are gambling $20 million one night.

It makes you look like a baller.

It creates great content that's going to go viral and get you likes.

And all those people are going to see that gambling on steak is fun and Drake does it.

Right.

Like that's like their, is that accurate?

That's my perspective.

So steak pie needed that.

Like they're like, we can't bid on these other channels with all these other

crypto like other casinos.

And so let's try and find other ways.

And the streaming model, like they pioneered that.

They worked really easily.

The thing that's genius about it also is that instead of like an influencer

posting a picture, say, hey, come play on steak, they're playing the product.

They're showing you how it works.

They're seeing their reaction.

They're seeing the reactor in picture.

Yeah.

Like the whole thing.

So it's not only educating people about how to play it and how to like this

like next level in terms of, um, I guess, like play of value as well.

Like, like they will deposit and, you know, they'll play, they'll lose.

And they're watching the favorite streamer play again.

They're like, all right, time for me to also deposit again.

So we found out like the affiliates or the influences that are really like

they have a discord channel or they, yeah, they have a, you know, they're constantly

live streaming.

Right.

They're going to make a mess.

You told me something you said, like, uh, we would not like, rather than have

you have a million followers, we want you to have.

You know, 2000 people like active in a discord that you talk to all the time.

That's more valuable.

Right.

Like, and I think this doesn't just, this isn't just for like casinos.

I think like for ecom and they're like, there's people that do Facebook groups

and right anywhere there's like a concentrated, like you have like those

thousand, you know, loyal fans, whatever.

Um, those customers are worth.

Yeah.

All the money we did a influencer campaign.

We spent a hundred thousand dollars on influencers.

Probably the first like paid influence campaign we've done.

Yeah.

So we put out, I was like, let's try.

A hundred thousand dollars.

And we're going to spread that across these.

Like, I think we did, um, seven influencers, I think.

Right.

And so these people who have like, you know, let's call it 250,000 to like three

or four million followers on Instagram.

And I should you not, some people, some of those people who have a lot of

followers literally had zero conversion, zero.

Like, dude, I could post on Facebook, you get one conversion.

Like it's crazy.

Some people kicked ass.

And as like, what's the difference?

And I've noticed that, you know, the Instagram has this one feature, which is

like when, um, not everybody has it, but like you can broadcast.

So like, I don't know if you've seen this, but like Instagram has this like

almost like one domain group chat.

Oh, yeah, you can send a message and they can only emoji react.

They can't like, it's not like your fans can chat back, but it looks like a chat.

Right.

And I noticed that the people who have active versions of those where they'll

just be like, Oh, you know, my favorite mug.

Yeah.

It'll get like 3000 lights there.

Right.

That's a way better signal for who actually converts versus like just a

generic post or story or follower count, which is like, you know, neither here or

there.

And I think so that really moved product.

You can tell like the difference in that.

It's also just about, uh, hot than being like very high intent.

And so I think about the people that would go into that broadcast channel in

the first place, it'd be like a small percentage of like that person's like most

loyal, like fans or whatever that are active.

And, you know, right.

Yeah.

So I think, um, for like that, that could be applied everywhere.

Uh, wherever you can get, like, who cares about trying to get, you know,

four million impressions.

I just want to get, I want my product in front of like the thousand most.

I keep using the word degenerate, but not degenerate.

I'm like, you know, whatever the thousand people that are, by the way,

I use degenerate positively too.

When we were hiring, we used to, uh, you know, companies have like corporate values.

Yeah.

It's like integrity and, uh, honesty.

And like everybody has the same values.

It's like, don't tell somebody or something.

I don't know.

Ours was degeneracy.

Yeah.

And people were like, why does it say you should be a degenerate to work here?

And we were like, what it is.

Like, that's what we want.

We want people who were, who like, when they work on something, like there's

just two people types of people.

There's some people that like, you know, they work to live and some people live

to work, right?

Like, right.

We are the types that when we do a project, we go all in.

We love doing it.

We obsess over making something fucking awesome.

That's going to take a lot of work.

And late nights, we don't want to feel like we're, uh, like asking for a favor

every time we try to go above and beyond to do something cool.

Like, right.

And it wasn't about working hours only.

That was just one aspect.

The other thing we used to say is like, we noticed that the people who were the

best earlier in their life had a degenerate, like obsession with something

that wasn't like the thing your parents would reward you for or the school would

reward you for.

Right.

So for a lot of people it was gaming.

It's like, Oh yeah, I just spent like an ungodly amount of hours in, in

Ultima 4 or like, you know, RuneScape or something like that.

That was such a strong signal to us that like, this person's going to be great

now with us because they have that switch where once they get really into something,

they practice to like, to master it and they get obsessed.

They want to beat the game and like, they're not doing it for the, because

people told them to do this.

They're, they're doing it because they can't not do it.

Yeah.

And so we found that people who had early obsessions in life were the best

people that we wanted to work with.

You also want that in customers or an influencer who's got people that are

diehard fans, like, why do people love Taylor Swift?

Like Swifties, they just, they identify in that tribe is what you want.

Yeah.

And I think that like, whether people like the idea of a crypto casino or that

makes them feel like really crazy or whatever.

I think that the marketing lesson about how these guys market themselves is

like one of the best, like marketing hacks that created a multi-billion

dollar outcome was this one realization that, hey, let's pay these influencers

and celebrities just specifically do live streaming on Twitch, which was not

the main marketing channel for 99% of other brands.

And let's give them money to gamble so that people can watch the, the sort

of thrill of victory and the agony of defeat live in real time.

And that is the best marketing for our product.

So you may know this, but my beginning in business was being a copyright

on me.

It just basically means figuring out what motivates someone and how to use

the written word to take an action, get them to take an action or to think a

certain way.

And the way that I learned how to copyright was I did this thing called

copy work and copy work is this famous technique that's not really popular anymore,

but it used to be really, really popular.

And you basically take writing that is great writing that you love and you

write it out by hand and you copy it and you make notes of what particular thing

that, that writer is doing that makes it special.

That's how I learned how to write.

I locked myself in a room for six months and I just did this for many hours a

day.

I created a program to make it easy so you can do that.

It's called copy that copy that dot com.

You can go there and you can check it out.

It's a 10 day exercise to make it really easy to learn how to write.

If you want, you can just go do this on your own.

You can find great writing and just literally copy it by hand.

I know it sounds crazy, but it works really effectively.

But I made something that makes it a little bit easier.

So check it out, copy that dot com and back to the pod.

I respect that.

I also think for those guys, I think they're really they're like one of

most like fascinating entrepreneurs to come out of Australia because I think

for cake, it's not, it's actually, I think the goal here is.

All right, they've now made this five to ten billion dollar like crypto

casino. It's like, where's this?

They want to go more now.

They say, you know, Twitch was valued at 40, 50 billion.

I think these guys legitimately just want to go in and, you know, although

they want to use the money to beat.

They want to use money to like, this is their next thing to get them to like,

I think they want to leverage.

They were already working with all these streamers paying them, you know,

millions of dollars to gamble.

It's like, well, let's actually just also pay you guys a million dollars to

stream. But on our platform, it's like, I think they saw a sort of gap

here. They came at the right time.

But yeah, I don't think it's just for gambling.

I think these guys truly, you know, love.

There's no way that works because streaming doesn't make that much money.

Yeah, there is no way that that works in the sense that, you know,

they would really have to be betting that they could.

And, you know, OK, so I don't think it could work.

But here's the case where maybe could.

So I remember to TikTok now is obviously massive.

Yeah, you remember when TikTok came out?

So like, yeah, it was musically.

And then they did like a musically and musically was doing good, but then like.

Make it to like the full mainstream.

And it was kind of still seen as this like kiddie lip syncing kind of.

It wasn't like TikTok today. You can go learn shit.

Yeah, you can. You know, people make you laugh.

You can promote your business.

You can sell products. You can do anything.

But musically was literally like tween girls lip syncing, right?

That's like all it was, right?

There's like more of what the more of what the product was.

So then they rebranded.

It's like they get bought.

They rebranded TikTok, which I remember laughing about the name.

Like, what is that name?

And they literally spent a billion dollars

marketing that app to make sure every teenager has it installed on their phone.

Yeah. And like, I, we had a kid who was working for us at the time

that was in high school, but he would come and work at our office.

I was like, dude, what do your friends think of TikTok?

He's like, oh, it's like the joke.

But he's like, you got to say, like, everybody knows TikTok.

He's like, there's no one fillet person in my school that doesn't know TikTok.

He's like, we don't think it's cool yet.

But like, I got a given to him, like 100 percent of every kid in my school

is aware that there's a TikTok app that they want you to download.

Yeah. And like, they actually brute force, like created the network effect.

I guess there's a world where a kid could do that.

But it's also I think that banking on maybe they do something

where the friction to buy something on live streaming is lowered.

And yeah, that's a whole new like avenue.

I think there's I think they know that the traditional model is not going to ever work

and that let's just get all the eyeballs and then maybe they can flick some switch somewhere.

And you know, like Instagram Reels makes like 10 billion dollars a year.

I don't know how.

Like you've got some plugged into the world's greatest ad engine in the world.

Facebook's ad engine is the greatest ad engine.

Maybe Google's one or two.

But like it's the Reels based out much money

because it's plugged into one of the greatest money makers ever.

And live streaming is live streaming commerce is like a pretty huge thing in Asia.

And so if it can if it can somehow work in Western markets, I think like

there's something I think there where they could flick the switch.

And then, you know, this is this is how they go from we're already worth a couple of billion dollars.

How do we get to 10, 20, 50?

And maybe they don't care about how much they're worth.

But what's like the biggest game?

Yeah, what's like the next they've already won one game is like, how do we how do we get to the next?

So I think, yeah, that that's super like,

I think more people should probably know about those guys.

And are you like, I'm going to be a degenerate forever?

Or do you like, you know, I'm just going to do this for this period.

And then I'm going to do something else.

Well, I'm I'm just I really want to be a part of something that could be huge

and that could grow really fast.

And so I I want to do that with shuffle.

And yeah, right this wave, like, will I do another thing in sports betting

or gambling or whatever?

I don't know, you know, maybe not.

But I like, like I mentioned to you earlier before, it's like, you make

you not and go to your noble mission.

But I think I think I might just a mayor's quote, love that quote.

I love that quote, not because I think it's right, but because so many people

when they hear that, they're like, that's what I'm doing.

Yeah, because it's such an easy out to like, just point anything that you're doing

in the moment, because you're like, I'm going to do the noble mission later.

And so I love it because it's hilarious how much people love that quote.

I don't know if it's good wisdom or bad.

I was like to tell, but what, by the way, what ideas do you have?

So yeah, if you know MFM, you know, that's what we do here.

I'm going to I'm going to get out of my notes up really quick.

That's OK.

And we might have already talked about some just really quickly.

There was before we talked about kids that were playing

RuneScape and stuff like that.

I literally have already one in here.

I had incubator around kids who are building businesses within games.

I like that because I think every loss and yeah, every.

So I guess during my era, I'm a bit older now.

During my era, it was kids that were building Minecraft servers

or I know for the guys that did stake, they were RuneScape kids.

They they built a casino in RuneScape first and then they did their own thing.

So it's like RuneScape, Minecraft.

I think now it's like Roblox or like maybe like Fortnite

creator maps and stuff like that.

Like if you're building business within games, every single person I've met

that's done that they're all like super successful millionaires.

I think I tweeted this out.

I go, what people think of the like winners, backgrounds looks like.

Yeah.

And you know, what the world tells you, it's like, you know, good grades.

He goes to a good school, yeah, has good internships and like, you know,

after school activities, runs for student council.

But it's like what I've seen is like what the real winners are are like

the kid, the guy who's running his own gaming server when he's 14.

Yeah, kind of because he just wants to be able to buy games

and not like even running it as a business, right?

Like the sneaker head, like sneaker flippers, basically, you know,

people that are like hardcore gamers that are like.

Become best in the world at a video game that's like super competitive.

Yeah, that in like, you know, which requires skills, strategy, communication,

like like obsession, those are pretty translatable skills.

Yeah, you know, speech and debate is another one.

Like there's these like unorthodox backgrounds.

RuneScape is one that's crazy.

The RuneScape mafia.

Yeah, a number of rich, young people I've met that the common denominator is.

Yeah, we used to be like, I didn't play RuneScape, but they're like, yeah,

RuneScape has like the the marketplace of the Plaza or something.

Yeah. And they were like, yeah, we used to run the Plaza or the marketplace.

And I was like, geez, this is something I have an idea around that, which is.

I was like, I want to create kind of like the outcast conference.

So basically what I want to do is be like, these are actual hotbeds of talent

that nobody's really talking about.

I want to invite like the people who do that.

It's like your point of entry is like you you need to hit one of those criteria.

You run in gaming server or like, yeah, you're like elite at this.

Like, you know, I found this one thing called mind sport.

It's like some place you go that you play.

It's like Olympics, but for nerds.

So you don't do you don't run.

You play chess and then you play backgammon.

And then you play like you play like this like advanced version of chess.

Like, you know, you play go.

You play like all these games and whoever's like the best across these like

10 really hard strategy games is like the mind sport champion.

Yeah. And you know, that guy's a freak.

You know, they're all going to be amazing as soon as they decide

like, oh, OK, it's time for me to have a career now.

Yeah. As long as they just get to like funnel in the right place

and don't just go be a McKinsey drone.

Like, yeah, you know, those people are going to kick ass.

So I'm like, oh, I want to make things which free for them to attend,

but you got to be the best of the best.

And I want to just be able to like curate that talent and be like,

I'm going to place my bets on these people now.

Like, hey, if any of you ever start a company,

just remember this goodwill of me bringing you here,

paying for all of this, because I want to be your first investor.

Like, I genuinely think that's going to be like one of the highest

ROI things that I could do.

Well, I think a lot of them.

So a lot of them get lost to like banking or something like that.

And then there's a lot of them as well, that they just don't have

guidance coming out of the first thing that they do.

And so they fuck around for maybe like a few years.

And then like that's what I'm going to outcast.

Because like they probably feel like I'm kind of like crying a little bit.

I wasn't doing all the shit that the other like achiever kids were doing.

But it's like, no, no, no, trust me, let me show you 10 other people

that are like you.

And then they're like, oh, I see myself in them.

Like I can do it too.

This is the basis of like a lot of sports.

Like you see a guy that's from your hometown

and now you start to believe you can do it too.

Why do you like Australian entrepreneurs so much?

Like what do you care?

It's like because they're from Australia.

I'm from Australia.

If they made it, I can make it.

Yes, that's cool.

But had you never heard of any, you would probably also be, you know,

banking somewhere, you know, on that.

And also like, I think a lot of them, when you spend your time

where you're tired or whatever, like in a room, doing all this stuff,

you're whatever, you're making money or like you're learning business skills.

But then you start lacking in other areas, maybe.

So then like that's setting up, setting yourself up for failure

to waste some time, whether it's then afterwards, you know,

you have some girl troubles or afterwards you don't know how to do

something with family or whatever, blah, blah, blah of that.

Yeah, I think that that's why.

Oh, that's a great idea.

I'm just going to have a kissing break.

I'm not going to have a hot girl.

It's like, yo, if you have an edge, your first kiss, just let's just do it now.

And we're going to get that all out of the way.

We're going to kill.

We're going to crush these like lingering

for a dump in your head.

Yeah. But yeah, that was one of them.

I mean, what was your idea?

It was I thought the idea was like just like a like a like a

idea of giving these kids like mentorship and like just like again.

OK, that's what I'm like.

A little Y Combinator thing for for these weirdos.

When I see there's a I was just at a conference.

I was just really surprised.

I mean, something within conferences where I think maybe more people should

make conferences for like cashed up niches

because especially if you do like the exhibitor model where it's like,

oh, my God, like that, you know, and some of these people

the one I just went to, they're paying a couple hundred thousand dollars

for for a boost.

So maybe that starts off as you do your newsletter,

you do like the the low effort thing first, the low price,

low effort thing of newsletters, whatever, build that audience

and then just immediately go into I was surprised

you guys haven't done a conference yet because I feel like that would that would

make like an MFM one. Yeah, like an MFM.

Yeah. Yeah.

Another one that actually kind of related

I think is kind of boring, but like a CRM for again, like cashed up niches.

So where right now looking for like a new CRM platform

and, you know, everyone goes to like Salesforce or whatever.

But they operate in like a hundred different verticals, right?

And so who's going to get out 10 K a month?

It's going to be the one that is still

yet built specifically for I gaming, which is our niche, whatever.

So right now, like we're making a decision

and we're going to go with some other smaller

when I've gone with Salesforce, we're going to this other one.

They're going to get out, you know, 10 grand a month, whatever,

because they're specifically that specifically for I gaming, right?

So that's like another one that's a little bit boring,

but it's like if you just find like some niche

that are these other cashed up niche.

So like one, for example, I think is like farming.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, any real estate is another one, right?

Yeah. Within that, you could even be like senior living or age back, you know,

like things like that, where you know that everybody there can spell EBITDA.

It's I think for anything that where the interactions

or the behaviors of your customer is very, it's very high value,

but it's also it's very different to like maybe like an e-commerce or like

just a transaction like on our one, it's like you have a bunch of games that you

like and you spend, you know, we want to know exactly

if you've lost this amount of money in the next few hours,

we want to like make some contact with you and stuff like that.

We can't really do custom behaviors like that with like a Salesforce or whatever else

here on platform because it's it's very tailored to a very broad niche.

So anything that has like

you're saying high value customers and then basically figure out like

first principles, what should this look like for this niche?

Yeah. Yeah. I think something like that.

That's pretty good. I like that. That'd be a good idea.

I think that's a very like

that's a very good sandbox for somebody that wanted to explore.

And we just worked as before.

They could be someone that does like

sort of in the gaming biz, there's, you know, VIP like VIPs make up your whole

type of business that we're talking about.

There's actually other verticals as well where VIPs is like your thing.

You should actually every single business probably has VIPs

that they're just like not interacting with.

So maybe like VIP medicine software for Ecom, right?

For whatever, you know, even for like retails, businesses or whatever.

Like you probably have.

Yeah, you probably have like customers that will come in.

Let's say I started getting into like the hot, cold exposure therapy stuff.

So I started going like how tech bro of you?

I started going into these places like, you know, three, four times a week.

But, you know, if these guys just would have

know that like I'm paying this much money, right?

Come up, sell me on something else or do something else.

Like, I think that even like retail businesses, like just if you were to

focus less of your time on trying to, you know, broaden and like getting

really paying on these Facebook ads to get the next thousand customers,

what about the 10 that's going to spend like, you know, you know,

whatever five, 10 times more on the business?

So that's probably I think some VIP management software for that guys.

That would be I think it's sit on top of whatever, whatever niche you choose.

It could just sit on top of the current software and just be like, yeah,

but this one is all about your VIPs.

And we're just going to extract the data that we need and then give you

the actions or the recommendations or the triggers in order for you to like.

When should we reach out?

What should we give them?

What do they like?

It's that could that could be one.

This is probably not so unique, but I think I don't know if you've used these

used people like this, but like agencies for content that do it's like full

service of like thumbnails and editors and I like, I don't know how hard

that is to find like people that really know this shit about, you know,

creating online content because it seems like every single person wants

to like, you know, be a personality or brand right now.

And so people that I mean, a lot of these are like uni kids that know how to do

this, but it's like exactly how to connect those middle.

Yeah, they'd be the middlemen for the unit is like done for you.

So D F Y.

Yeah.

So like people who do this become now, honestly, I think they're pretty scammy,

but they're like, hey, we will just hand you a D commerce business that makes

cash flow, right?

Yeah.

Like anytime someone promises you passive income, just like run away.

Yeah.

But like that's what they're promising.

And a lot of people, like these companies that are promising this are making

a ton of money.

And one of the reasons why is it's tempting to instead of just saying here,

we'll teach you Facebook ads, but now you got to go figure out the rest.

What product?

What's the supply chain?

What's what's Google ads?

They're like, we're just going to give you the whole thing.

Yeah, Turkey.

And so, you know, there's a version of that.

Like there's video editors and content there.

There's, you know, copywriters, but like, you kind of want the whole thing

that's sort of like done for you package.

Yeah.

I think like a full service agency for all that sort of stuff might, might work out.

So I think of what else?

You see.

Oh, this one's kind of related to like maybe what you did with Shepard.

But so recently we like weeks, we had to expand to Japan, right?

And that is like none of us speak Japanese.

We don't know how to scale in that country.

And so, well, what we had to do was like, first, let me recess what other companies

have done.

And I remember reading, I think maybe it was like a Tamar video when he was

at Facebook and he was like, we hide some MBAs and they flew over to Japan.

They came back and, you know, a few months went by, we weren't growing.

We're like, what's going on?

We fired those MBAs.

We got this like young woman from that who was actually living in Japan.

And within the first month, we were seeing growth and we're like, wait, what,

okay, what are you doing that these MBA people haven't done?

She's like, well, you know, on the Facebook profile, like, we don't care

about your relationship status.

We care about your blood type.

And it's just like stuff like that that you would only know to do localization,

localization and to find those people was like, yeah, it's pretty hard to do that.

So maybe if there's some like agency where like, so we hired uni kids that

are that speak native, like fluent English so we can communicate with them.

But also they're fluent, you know, in Japanese.

And doing that, like, you know, our growth has been like 10x of just like,

they know the market in terms of they think that none of them knew anything

about like gambling.

They don't need to know that we can teach them that.

Right.

They see to know, like, what are the people like?

How do you communicate with them?

How do we, you know, localize all that content, do everything to cater to this

market where and it's in certain markets, very important that you are respectful

and you appear like you're not, you appear like you're not a foreign company

that's trying to attract the customers.

You appear like you're born out of that country.

Right.

So so doing that whole process for me was very hard to find like the right

people that spoke English that also was native in Japanese and knew all that.

So maybe if there was some like shepherd like agency to help you, OK,

you're expanding into this country is like your, you know, growth assistance

that I naive that language and can do all these things.

That's cool.

I like that.

Yeah, there's two crazy things on that.

One, if you look at the Facebook growth chart, like one of the key things for

Facebook was getting the site translated and localized across like, and they did a

they had to do some crazy Wikipedia like shit to get the whole site translated.

There's so many different.

I mean, the Facebook site was kind of complex at the time.

And so I remember seeing that that was very impressive to me.

Second is there's a subversion of this, which is just to do business in certain

places, you have to establish an office like China.

You can't do business there unless you have a local office.

You can't do business in certain places.

Can't pay you can't pay local people unless you have a thing or whatever.

And just that can take like a year.

Yeah.

And so like I remember with when we're at Twitch, it's like, oh, yeah,

we're trying to put our servers here.

We're trying to do this here.

We're using that we had to use Amazon's people to do international expansion

because like Twitch, even as a multi-billion dollar company,

didn't have like that expertise in house.

Right.

And they would be like, yeah, it's going to be 12 months.

And they'd be like, we're finally live in whatever so-and-so country with our

office.

And I'm like, what?

And like, and they're like, this has been a year of effort.

Yeah.

That's insane.

Like that seems like, can we turn that to software somehow?

Like the way that Stripe Atlas did for a company corporation?

Right.

Like, is there a Stripe Atlas for the world in that way?

I've got a little funny story about the localization stuff.

So like everyone probably listening is probably thinking like, oh, but

why don't you just get AI to translate your stuff?

And it's, it's not there to the point because we were using just chat to

BT, a bunch of guys that were non-Japanese speakers and chat to BT.

And, you know, we're talking to like very high-value customers, right?

And, you know, the AI hasn't really caught up in like tone or like so.

And like nuances.

And so apparently, like, you know, we were talking to a VIP, like they were a kid,

like we're saying, good boy.

And they're like, and yeah, well, yeah, I'm not sure if people are into that shit.

Yeah, these people, like, and then, yeah, yeah, definitely, these people definitely

were, they were like, they still play with us.

Yeah, yeah, like, disrespecting the evolved loss.

So, yeah, so getting like native, yeah, getting like, well, especially languages

like that, like getting like native people to know how to speak.

Yeah, no way.

So one of the, one of the projects I worked on when I was at Twitch was like,

we were trying to grow like crazy in Brazil.

And so I was like, all right, luckily we had a group of people, like there's

four people in an office in Brazil that like, no one was even talking to really.

They were like, yeah, they were so at arms length from headquarters.

And I was like, hey, I'm here and you guys are like, like key people.

They're like, oh, awesome.

We have so many ideas.

Like, can you help us do them?

Well, yeah, where I was like, what sorts of ideas?

And they were like, well, you know, our, everybody here uses YouTube.

And so subscribe is like how you follow people on YouTube.

But on Twitch, subscribe is you cost money.

So everybody here, they open the Twitch app and they click subscribe

to follow the, some of the find interesting.

It says pay five dollars.

Right.

They're like dollars.

First of all, five.

That's a week of groceries.

Yeah.

And secondly, this slide, you have to pay to watch people screw this.

They don't even know that it's free to watch.

Right.

And they're like, can you just change the text on that button?

And I was like, oh, damn, how many more of those are there inside this app?

And another one was like, we were like trying to come up with like this

marketing campaign, like marketing, like our marketing experts

like coming up with these ideas.

I asked the local team, they're like, hey, can you buy this?

Can you just like give me your credit card?

I want to buy five iPhones.

I was like, iPhones, why?

He's like, in Brazil, an iPhone is like a gold bar.

This is like, he's like, we're just going to give these away.

Trust me, you'll get like 20,000 people watching the stream.

I'm like, what?

And he's like, this is a gold bar.

Imagine somebody just giving out like golden bars.

He just kept saying that and he did it.

And it was exactly like all of a sudden was just number one most watched

guy on Twitch that day was the guy giving away one iPhone.

And he milked it for like four hours.

He's like, I'm not giving it away until we get like 30,000 people in here.

Yeah, he's like, and it worked.

It was insane.

Yeah, stuff like that, that way that we find out like every week of like,

oh, shit, you guys actually do it this way.

And by us, have you heard about what Mr.

Beast does with this?

Oh, is it like the dubbing of videos that so first he exploded his growth

by just being one of the few American YouTubers to like

create his Brazil page, create his Philippines, create his Indonesia page.

He created separate accounts for all those, localize them,

hired somebody who speaks the language and like, you know, like when we were over

hanging out with some lady watch and speak of Portuguese.

And I was like, yeah, what the hell's going on?

And he's like, oh, yeah, she manages like my whole page for Brazil.

You know, like you have to have somebody who speaks the language and knows it.

And then what they did was I was like, so do you dub it?

He's like, yeah, we dub it, but we hire like voice actors.

I'm like, why don't you you can use AI?

I'm like excited to be like his AI.

He goes, yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can.

But like he's like, what we do is we go and we find the guy

who did the Spider-Man voice in Brazil and he does my dub for like pretty cheap.

And then every comment is, holy shit, it's Spider-Man.

Yeah.

And like, he's getting crazy engagement because they're like, that's Spider-Man.

And he's like, yeah, it costs me like an extra five grand.

But like, look at what it did to my page.

I think they turn that into like a agency where they like, they do it for other people as well.

Like it's yeah, they do the done for you thing.

They're like, yeah, if we did this for growth, we should do this for 20 other YouTubers.

And I was like, dude, of all your businesses, like Beast of Bulls or whatever.

Yeah, this is like the most underrated one because I'm like, this is genius.

It's selling your sawdust, your byproduct stuff.

You already built in the house.

You're just making it available for others.

Like that's a no.

And you're Mr. Beast.

If you just said, hey, every YouTuber, like you can use what I use.

They'll all sign up, right?

So it's like instant customer acquisition, paying.

And they take like, they're like, dude, you don't even have a page in the Philippines.

We're going to run.

We're going to create it.

We're going to run it for you.

We get half or whatever.

We get 30 to 50 percent, right?

So it's like, they don't just take like a monthly fee.

They own like, you know, the majority, you know, with like a huge chunk of that channel.

I'm like, that's a really good model.

Yeah.

I wonder if anyone's done like a roll up of YouTube channels and brands or whatever.

Like that seems like, it seems like every niche ends up being like, you get rolled out.

You get rolled up and do that side of the knife.

I don't know.

Is this a spotter?

No, I haven't noticed.

So they're kind of doing it.

What they're doing is they go to the creators and they say, we'll buy your back catalog.

Right.

So they say, we'll give you $2 million today.

You can invest that in your videos.

Now, to make better videos.

And they're like, we can just see with AdSense, we'll make our money back in two years.

And then after that, like forever, we profit off your back catalog.

That's like the equivalent of like Taylor Swift selling exact mosses, whatever.

Exactly.

So they, this company is like, I don't know, raised a lot of money.

I don't know, the key is underwriting.

It's like, I don't know if they correctly underwrite these deals or not.

Yeah.

But like Mr. B sold a bunch of his back channel of that catalog, a bunch of other people have.

So I think they've like either raised at a billion dollar valuation or close to doing that for YouTube.

I have a friend that I work with who manages speeds.

I, you know, you speed the kid.

He manages his IP.

I don't want to call it like, whatever, there's a video of speed going viral on YouTube or TikTok, whatever.

They will claim it and then they make revenue off.

No, they'll actually, they'll run ads on it.

And I think, I think very quickly, like just speed a lot and that's generated like a million

dollars so far.

And he's like, we should just be doing this for like, not just speed, like all these different

creators, they'll put it down as a, yeah, create like a big business that might be also like another,

like within that because the way that works is if your video, if your IP is being played by

somebody else, you can claim it and either they take it down or you get all the ad revenue.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And I think you should just do, yeah, a lot of like do that.

So because they found like, they were like, just like, well, people create is like speed.

A lot of the eyeballs that is on him is not on his videos.

It's on the millions of compilations and stuff that that's that's going unclaimed.

Like you're just like, easy money that you could be claiming and getting.

So, yeah, that's probably another thing that people should look into and do this.

This is so good.

This is great.

These are some, these are fun ideas.

I'm glad we did this, man.

This is awesome.

And yeah, Sean, where should I follow you or go?

What can they do?

Yeah, you can follow me just like Twitter, Sean, but the last few letters of my

name is cut off, so this is H-A-Q.

So you're S-H-A-A-N.

I'm I-S-H-A-N-H-A-Q.

That's that's my Twitter.

Nobody else has H's in America.

H, exactly.

But yeah, follow me on Twitter if you're all linked in or you just look me up.

Put it in the description.

Dude, amazing.

I'm proud of you.

You know, this has been so amazing to I've done the validation.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I'll say it.

I am super impressed.

And I just I'm so glad you kind of you've you've taken, you know, the ball,

you just run with it and you're taking just such interesting shots on goal.

Yeah.

And like, whether any of these work or not right now is pretty secondary.

Like, yeah, by the time you're 30, your scoreboard is going to be filled up.

You're going to have made all the successes.

You, whether it was this or that, I don't know which one.

Yeah, by the time you're 30, you're going to have it all done in terms of,

like, you know, the achievement side, but you're also just going to have had so

much fun and like, you know, these lessons you're learning about like hiring

these kids in Japan because of this.

Yeah, those are the real lessons of business.

And so I'm so glad you're you're getting them.

And this is so cool to see.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

I've got one last question.

Yeah, yeah, I read you said, so I felt like your one life goal was like, I

think it was like you want to educate was a one step of the world or whatever.

And what I saw at it said at the time was I want to be like one percent of the

world would be their favorite teacher.

Yeah, like, you know, which was at the time, I think like 60 million people or

something like that.

I was like, if if 60 million people thought like, because like, for me, I'm

like, oh, like I learned so much from Tony Robbins or Tim Ferriss or

Naval or these people, like, I'd love to just be that for people.

I think that's like, yeah, I know what they kind of have done for me.

That'd be so cool if I was that for other people.

I think that would be like the highest calling for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And do you think so?

Is that A, is that still the case?

And then B, like, do you still want to do that?

And B, like, what do you think will be the what do you think will be like the

avenue that way you achieve that?

Like, is it because you're already in the ears of all these people, whatever

those stats are now.

Yeah.

Very different.

So that's where I stop it.

Yeah.

But it's not actually that goal.

That goal, I think, was arbitrary.

Like, who cares if it's $60, who cares if it's one percent.

It was ambitious.

It's like it sounded good, but I'm like, I only need to say this to myself.

Like, I don't I need to believe it for myself what this what this actually means.

And that's not something I like needed to die to do.

You know, like I didn't like feel like it was do or die to be to be able to pull

that off.

It was something that like sounded better than what I really meant.

It was also kind of virtually like, you know, I don't even have like teachers

the right word.

But I guess the thing that I think about now is almost like the D I stripped

the ambition out of that and just made it really simple, but more true for me,

which was I want to be somebody that if I was 21, I would look up to this person.

Like, I'd be like, that is what I want to be.

That guy's awesome.

And that's a combination of things.

So for example, part of it is making content being out there.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have even known that this guy existed.

Part of it is do cool shit.

So that like stuff that like I respect more, I think is cool in some way.

Some of it is like build a cool business.

Some of it's like, you know, this outcast conference, like, that's cool.

I'm like, I like his reasoning behind that.

I like that he went and did it or like, you know, you know, just giving somebody,

you know, a bunch of money because you believe in them and like my version of

philanthropy, it's not like donating to the cause and going and sitting on the

board of some nonprofit.

But like, if you see somebody who's got a dream like funded and like make that

happen, so I want to do cool shit that like I would respect.

And the last part is the way you come across.

Like, I know that my favorite people were charismatic storytellers.

They were funny.

They were likable.

They didn't feel like they were bullshitting you.

They had moments where they were honest and like they could have just not

shared that or they could have said a sanitized version, but they chose to just be real.

So I'm like, those became my like scoreboard is like, would I at age 18 to 24?

Like, would I have thought this guy's the man?

And like, I know, even at that time, I was like, if I saw some of that was awesome,

like Elon Musk, oh, he's amazing.

I remember watching some documentary about him on the plane before he even started

like Tesla, I think it was like a long time ago.

And I remember thinking this guy's awesome, but he had like had four marriages at

that point.

I was like, that's not winning to me.

Yeah.

I like that he's an outlier in this one domain.

But like, I didn't want to replicate these other three.

So like, you know, to me, I'm like, the thing I would have respected is somebody

who's like, just like, they're a really great dad.

Like, for example, one of the things I want to do instead of instead of doing

another business or write a check is like, I want to go coach like a high school

basketball team, like Mighty Ducks style for a year or two years or something like that.

Yeah.

And if I remember if I had, if old me, if young me had heard that some guy was

doing, some rich guy was doing that, I would have been like, I don't care if

he's not the richest or most successful.

That guy's awesome.

And so I just kind of want to be the person like it was like, well, like be

who you needed when you were younger.

Yeah.

Not needed, but like be who you would have admired when you were younger.

Right.

And that's the goal.

Yeah.

Not the like exact goal I had before, which I don't know if it's better or worse,

but like it's more true for me.

So I remember, I think you'll say on some part, you're like, you, I think you

went to LA or something.

You met a bunch of like rich people.

And at this point now, I've met a bunch of billionaires and other cool people.

And the most part, like a lot of rich people are like miserable.

And they're like we mentioned before about the kids that stay in their

room and build their businesses.

They lack other right components of life.

And I see that reflected throughout all these people that are, yeah, they've made

a bunch of money or they've done this one cool thing, but they've neglected

every other part of their life.

And it's like, okay, it's, there's, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, you know, trade.

I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to be in those shoes.

It's a little bit like, I forgot who it was, but some guy talked to the

Instacart.

So yeah.

And he was like, uh, how old are you?

And he was like, I'm 33.

And he's like, I would be, and this guy's worth billions of dollars.

He's like, I'll do anything to be 33 again.

And like, I hear trade, trade all these money.

So it's like, I see that a lot more now.

And, you know, I'm hopefully maturing a lot more because before I was like,

yeah, I just want to get all this and get the money and stuff like that.

But yeah, I think that's something cool.

And one thing that, one of the, probably the most important thing, not important,

but like effective things that I learned working under you was, I mean, everybody,

maybe it was, maybe you're talking to Sully or Sully taught you this was like

aggression, like just being like aggressive and like getting, getting things done

and what you want.

Like I think most people don't, don't do that.

Like they don't follow up or, you know, they don't, they don't be annoying.

Like they don't try to be annoying.

When I, when I started applying that, I was like, okay, things are moving away, way, way faster.

Yeah.

I remember probably like, because I used to kind of, you were like my dear diary.

It's like, I'm going to come home and I'd be like,

I don't even know what time it was, your time.

You know, I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, three AM.

And I'd be like, hey, I'm ready to work.

And like, I'd be like, I met this guy or I noticed this thing.

And I would like kind of like, use you as my sounding board to like,

play some of these lessons back.

Yeah.

So it's cool to hear what like stuck.

But yeah, that, that idea of like intensity is the strategy.

Meaning like, yeah, this guy's not smarter than me.

He's not, yeah, more knowledgeable to me about this.

He's not like, there's no special aura around this person.

What is it that's made this person so successful?

And what, what do I, what's the difference between me and them?

And I just noticed, I was like, oh, he doesn't have these like imaginary walls

where it's like, you stop here.

Right.

He's just like, no, like, okay, we want to do this.

Left like, I remember one time we wanted to do a deal.

The guy who, we wanted to invest in this company.

And he was like, yeah, I was kind of on the fence.

And he was like, what if we just wire him the money?

And I was like, $2 million.

And he's like, he's like, yeah, like, let's wire him the money.

He's the honest guy.

Like we met the guy.

He's like, not like a crook.

Yeah.

Um, he's like, let's just wire him the money.

And then like, I feel like that'll tip the scale.

Once the money's in his bank account, he's not going to like,

want to like wire it back.

And I was like, this guy's insane.

And like, we had another moment like that where we were working on a,

one of the founders was like, oh, I really need to raise this round.

And they're telling us this urgency.

I really got to do this.

We're running out of money.

The pitches are not going well.

The first few pitches didn't go well.

Can you guys help?

We're like, yeah, we can help.

We can help.

Right now, sounded like an emergency.

I was like, oh, we got a thing.

I'm like, you got a thing?

You just said this is like so important.

Okay.

Whenever you can, they get on, they get on a call with us.

We go through the deck before we, we said send the deck in advance.

There's like 40 minutes before the call.

What do most people do?

40 minutes before they call this.

We'll talk about it in 40 minutes.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

So he was like, by the time the call happened, he'd already emailed back like

slides nine through 13 suck, eliminate them.

Slide four is backwards.

Put it in slide one, slide one needs to say this.

It already given them the full first round of feedback.

Yeah.

They were like, what the hell?

So they were like looking at it and we're like, cool,

let's just make these changes right now.

And they're like, no, no, we don't want, we want to be respectful of your time.

He's like, the thing that's respectful of my time is like showing that you're like

full force going for this.

Not that you're not going to use my time.

I'm here to help.

But like, let's do the thing.

Yeah.

You want to make this awesome?

Let's make it awesome.

So they start working on it.

And they're like, okay, we, we know what we need to do next

because we need to go pull some data and do whatever.

And so we'll check back in with you whenever he's like,

you know, it was like noon.

He was like, cool, like let's check in at 6pm today.

And they're like two calls in a day.

And even I was like two calls in a day.

I've never done that with somebody.

Yeah.

Have you ever scheduled two calls in one day with somebody?

Like it never happens.

It's not that it's so crazy.

It's not like running into a burning building,

but it's kind of the business equivalent of running into it.

It's like, whoa, that's unusual.

That's like a highly intense way to do this.

Yeah.

And you can tell they were kind of shipped by it and then they did it.

And at 6pm, it was like still not,

not like exactly where we needed it to be or we realized something.

And we're like, cool, not in tomorrow.

Let's do it again.

By the third day, we were like, this deck is in great shape.

But these guys were like worn out.

Yeah.

And Sulu was like, dude, I'm just getting warmed up.

This is a career.

This is like what I live for is find the thing and laser in and go for it.

And like, who says we can't meet twice in a day?

Who says that they said no to the first proposal?

Well, let's, you know, there is some number they'll do this at.

What's that number?

And like, you know, he'll just think about it differently.

Yeah.

That stuff with me.

I'm glad that kind of that idea stuck with you.

I say it out loud so that somebody out there listening will be realized like,

yo, my intensity knob is stuck at six.

Yeah.

Like 10 isn't more hours.

It's just like more focus and it's more intensity at the main issue and not

self-limiting and sound by fake imaginary walls that don't exist.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to bring the energy.

Uh, nice little boy stuff.

That's why there we go.

All right.

That's it.

That's the pod.

Let's travel never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.