Moiz Ali, founder of Native Deodorant (sold to P&G for $100M), returns to share how he manages his portfolio using a Google Sheet, breaks down his current allocation across bonds, real estate, and stocks, and fires on wealth managers, real estate Twitter gurus, and the fraud he’s seen firsthand as an LP. The conversation also covers several business ideas — a liquid market for residential real estate, a founders discount card, Shopify for large e-commerce brands — and closes with Sam and Shaan pushing Moiz to start his next company.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host), Moiz Ali (guest, founder of Native Deodorant)
Introduction: Texting Moiz’s Brother [00:00:00]
Shaan: I texted your brother. I said, “Hey, I’m about to record with your brother.” And he got progressively more truthful. He goes, “Tell him I said hi.” Then he goes, “Tell him I said honor the Ali name.” Then he goes, “And tell him to stop.” That was his advice. So yeah, I’ve delivered the message.
Shaan: All right, we have Moiz Ali here. You’ve been on the pod before. People know you because you created Native Deodorant, which is sold everywhere I look — in Target, online, in my wife’s bathroom, it’s there everywhere. So congrats. You built that, you bootstrapped that business yourself — literally like off of a kitchen table — to a $100 million exit to Procter & Gamble. You spent a couple years there. You currently invest in a bunch of commerce things and non-commerce things. You have a podcast called Limited Supply, which is great. And you and your brother are sort of like business sharks. So if I just say, “Hey, there’s a hot dog stand going out of business over here,” you’d be like, “Let me get my jacket, let’s go.” You own real estate, you own a bunch of random things — always fun to have you on, man. Thanks for coming.
Moiz: Well, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here. Is that the intro you want, by the way, or do you feel like I didn’t do you justice in one angle?
Shaan: No, that sounds like more justice than you deserve.
Moiz: Well, you’re also good with one-liners. You’re very good with language. You’ve said a few things — you said my two favorite words in the English language are “distressed asset.” And then one time we were talking to this person, it was you and me and this other person, and they were explaining what they do. It was like a supplement company, and how great it was going to be, and how they’re raising all this money. She — or them, or he, whatever — walked out of the room, and you said, “That person’s business is one Google away from me ruining it.”
Shaan: Yeah, you have a couple other classics. I read an interview with you where you said, “I was put on Earth to do one thing: raise earnings per share.”
Moiz: That wasn’t me who said that, actually. It was the founder of some other company — I forgot what it was. It was such a great quote I loved it, so I stole it.
Shaan: Yeah, you’re like, “I killed him and now it’s mine.” That’s right.
Story Time: The Check-Cashing Business [00:02:00]
Shaan: The other one I attribute to you — I wasn’t there for this story, but I’ve told it to like hundreds of young entrepreneurs and they get a kick out of it every time — which is: yeah, Moiz started Native Deodorant, it’s super successful now, and when he first had the idea, he told people, “I’m going to create a natural deodorant brand.” They’re like, “Moiz, do you know anything about deodorant? Do you wear deodorant?” And you said, “Yeah, I know nothing about deodorant today, but in six months I’ll know everything there is to know about deodorant.” That attitude to me is like the core of what we do on this podcast.
Moiz: I don’t even know if that’s a real story, by the way, but I’m going to keep telling it.
Shaan: That’s a real story?
Moiz: That’s a real story. I remember it was in San Francisco. I was with one of my law school classmates and her boyfriend at the time — who’s now her husband — who told me that. He worked at Pinterest and he’s like, “What the hell are you doing starting a deodorant business? I’ve never heard of anything so ludicrous.” I still remember the bar we were sitting at.
Shaan: All right, so let’s do a little segment I’m going to call Story Time with Moiz Ali. What is the worst way you’ve ever made money?
Moiz: This is a great story I think my brother and I don’t tell enough. When we were growing up, we owned gas stations. And one thing we did was cash checks for people as a service. If you brought in a check — like your payroll check for $200 or $2,000 — we would charge you a percentage of that check and give you cash. We’d take the check and deposit it at the bank.
By the end of our gas station careers, we were doing this at massive scale. One of our stores would cash $250,000 worth of checks on any given Friday. A quarter million dollars of cash going through our hands. We’d have Wells Fargo coming over to give us cash. We had this crazy scene — a bus full of Hispanic immigrants who were roofers would come to the store, the door would open, and it felt like 40 immigrants just came out to cash their checks.
But early on in our check-cashing careers, this guy named FM Porter came in with a check for his business — about $2,000. We charged 5%, gave him $1,900, and we were going to deposit the check and make $2,000. He endorsed the back, we gave him the $1,900, we deposited it, and it bounced. We were like, “What the hell?” This was a ton of money for us. We were poor immigrants working at this gas station, probably in 1997, earning $40,000 a year with all five of us working.
Shaan: How old were you?
Moiz: I was probably like 12 or 13 at the time.
Shaan: I just imagine 13-year-old Moiz pacing around. Is that what it looked like?
Moiz: I mean, I feel like I was the same way as I am now, but I didn’t have as much confidence, so I couldn’t order people around. Anyway — the check bounced and we all freaked out. We tracked this guy down. He lived locally in the community. We knocked on his door and we’re like, “What the hell, FM Porter? This check bounced. Give us our money.” And he was like, “Relax, guys.” The check was made out to his business instead of him personally. So it took like 45 days to sort out all the rigmarole to get the check reissued to him directly. Then we cashed it and deposited the money.
I remember when it went through the second time, I told my brother, “Hey, it went through.” And he’s like, “That was the easiest $100 we’ve ever made.” And I remember thinking it was the worst $100 we’d ever made. We were constantly afraid the checks would go bad. This was early in our career — we weren’t even sure if we should offer this as a service.
It ended up being super profitable. When you’re cashing $250,000 of checks on a Friday, you’re making $2,500 to $3,500 that day alone. But early on, we were taking all these risks and we were like, “What just happened? We might not be able to pay rent for the apartment our family lives in.”
Shaan: That’s insane. Were you just going back to math class after your shift? How did you do this at 13?
Moiz: We’d go on the weekends. When I turned 16 I could drive, and I’d go after class or on weekends. Not every day — even at 16 I’d probably go at least one weekend day.
Native Deodorant Origin Story: The Logo Theft [00:10:00]
Shaan: So let me ask you something I don’t know is true but want you to confirm. Right by our office — the one you and I shared — there was a cafe called Native Juice. It had the same color and the same logo as Native Deodorant. Did you — if I’m imagining what happened — were you on BART, walking around SF, you saw it, and you went, “There it is, that’s mine now.” True or false?
Moiz: That’s false — but I’ll tell the story. We got to put the picture up because they’re identical. I actually think they changed their branding in the last three years, but you can still find old logos on their Yelp page.
So it was actually a block away from where I lived, so I’d walk by it all the time. I’m not sure if the color was the same — I know the font was the same — but we actually didn’t steal the font from them. I readily admit we stole the font from Harry’s. If you look at Harry’s font, it’s the exact same font as ours. And if you look at the colors of our site, it was — and I’m not sure if it still is — the exact same color as Casper.
When I was launching Native, it took me about three days to do the whole website, and I was like, “What I’m not going to do is hire a logo designer and spend a fortune on branding.” So I just took Harry’s logo, which is just their name written out in a font. I’m not going to also steal their colors, because that would be too blatant — so I’ll steal the colors of another website that was doing really well, which was Casper. That’s how the font and colors came together.
But I would walk by Native JuiceCo all the time. I was packing all the deodorants in my own apartment for the first six months or year, and I’d walk by with bags full of boxes of deodorant on the way to the post office. And the post office guys would be like, “Is this from next door? Is this the juice company?” And I’d be like, “This is not the same Native.”
Two and a half years into the business, the woman who started NativeJuiceCo came to our office. She’s like, “I’m getting so many phone calls for your business — customer service issues, ‘where’s my package?’ — people just Google ‘Native San Francisco’ and we don’t have a phone number posted, so she’s fielding 40 calls a day for us.” And she came in several times about it.
Eventually I told the doormen, “Don’t let her up anymore.” But we still ordered juice from her all the time.
Moiz: The reality is, the logo didn’t come from Native JuiceCo — it came from Harry’s. She just happened to also copy the Harry’s logo.
Shaan: That’s exactly what happened.
Business Ideas: Liquid Market for Residential Real Estate [00:15:30]
Shaan: All right, so you said you had some ideas for us. What business ideas are on your brain right now?
Moiz: I’ve thought about these for a while. If I were starting a business today, the first one I’d be most excited about is a stock market for all residential real estate.
The idea: buy residential real estate and sell shares of it that’s rented out. Buy rental homes, sell shares — sort of like a traditional LP would invest — but create a really liquid market on your site. If you buy an apartment building today as an LP, you’re waiting for the GP to sell before you can realize all your cash. You might get a steady stream of income every quarter, but the big payout comes at the sale. I would just create a liquid market for all of that.
And I’d slowly start buying every single house in a neighborhood. You can only buy and sell shares of that house on this platform. Then I’d also empower local entrepreneurs to do it themselves. You live in this neighborhood in California, you can buy a house, put it on the platform, raise money, and other people can buy and sell shares through it. The local operators would get reviews — like Amazon reviews. If you do a really good job, five stars because people are making money. If you do a shitty job, one star. When you go to underwrite new deals, people can see your track record.
I think people have tried versions of this — Realty Shares and others — and they’ve done a terrible job. Partly because they’re not doing good underwriting, partly because they’re betting on commercial properties, and partly because they’re not creating a liquid market. Two hundred years from now, this business should own the majority of real estate in the United States.
Shaan: So let’s break that down. The current models — Fundrise, Realty Shares — you’re saying the problems are: they’re focused on commercial, and they’re not liquid. Why is residential better than commercial for this?
Moiz: Way easier in terms of steady income streams. If you buy a building that Starbucks has a 5-year lease on, when Starbucks leaves, it’s unclear who’s a good fit next. That’s not easy to figure out. But everyone in the world needs a three-bedroom, two-bath house in a neighborhood. It’s a lot easier to re-let residential properties than commercial.
Sam: I invested in a company somewhat in this space — it was called Doorsey. Didn’t work out. But the guy who started it had previously started Stay Alfred. Basically it was an auction website for homes. They had two issues: one was that people just didn’t want to buy a home online, which I was shocked by. And the second was navigating the broker industry — which seems like it has the whole industry by the balls.
Moiz: Yeah, and that wasn’t a settlement — it was a jury verdict of $2 billion against the National Association of Realtors. The broker industry is broken, but the liquidity market for real estate investing is huge.
When you think about it: all these retail investors are now like, “Let me invest in a startup.” That’s crazy. You have no idea what you’re doing, you might get hit by a bus, you might just say, “Screw it, I’m going to Hawaii for three months.” Investing in a startup is way riskier than investing in real estate down your street — a tangible piece of property where if this guy doesn’t pay rent somebody else will, it’s not going anywhere. Retail investors would be way more excited about owning a share of a house in their local community than they would be about investing in some company they’ve never heard of.
Shaan: And why would the person buying the rental property want to do this? Just for the liquidity?
Moiz: Yeah. The GP could be like, “This house costs $200,000, I’ll put in $50,000 of my own money, and I’ll raise the rest.” Just like in private equity, one of the first questions you ask is how much of the manager’s own money is at risk — because that means they care. Similarly here, you’d ask how much skin in the game does the sponsor have.
And sponsors can also sell shares to themselves later. If I bought $40,000 worth of this house 5 years ago and it’s now worth $80,000, I can sell $40,000 of shares and cash out while staying partially invested. So for the same reasons that people invest in the stock market, sponsors here would invest in their own deals.
Ranking Three Real Estate Business Ideas [00:24:00]
Shaan: Moiz, I’m going to pitch you three other real estate ideas in rapid succession. Rank them from favorite to least favorite. Ready?
Moiz: Go.
Shaan: Idea number one: Home Options. A company goes to Sam and says, “Sam, I know you’re not trying to sell your house right now, but I’ll give you $1,200 right now. All I ask is that when you do decide to sell, I own the option to be the broker.” They partner with top agents who don’t want to keep knocking on doors. A home sale at 3% commission might be worth $15,000 to the broker — they’re willing to buy that option today for $1,000 or $1,200.
Idea number two: Pipe for Real Estate. You’re a landlord collecting rent every month. Pipe comes in and says, “Let me turn those monthly checks into one annual check. I’ll take an 8% fee. You were going to get $100,000 of rent this year — I’ll give you $92,000 today.” Instant liquidity for landlords.
Idea number three: Steady Capital — their URL is steady.capital. They’re like, “Everybody knows most millionaires build wealth through real estate, but most people don’t trust themselves to find, vet, buy, and manage a property. We’ll do a Robinhood for real estate — you say how much you want to put in per month, we put it into vetted real estate projects, and every month you see your rental income accumulate.” I actually invested in this one.
Moiz: Okay. I was expecting Home Options to be number three, but actually it’s number one. Then Steady Capital, then Pipe for Real Estate. Here’s why:
Pipe for Real Estate basically already exists — it’s called a cash-out refinance. That already lets you pull cash out of a property. What won’t happen is someone coming in and saying, “You’re already 100% leveraged with debt — let me also give you more cash.” You’re already paying for the debt, you’re already levered up. So I think Pipe for Real Estate is essentially a reinvention of something that already exists.
Home Options I like. The hard part is: right now we don’t know what commissions are going to look like in the future, given the NAR verdict. And you don’t know how long you’re sitting on an option — is the $1,200 in the ground for 20 years? That’s a really long period of time.
But what I would do is I wouldn’t hold the options — I’d bundle them up and sell them to the brokerages. Say, “Hey, you can hold these.” I’m not sure the economics all work out, but I think the idea could revolutionize an industry that’s been the same for 150 years.
Sam: That NAR situation — the $2 billion verdict — what does it change about the broker situation?
Moiz: The allegation was price-fixing: you can’t be on MLS unless you agree to pay everyone like 5-6% brokerage. Once the judgment came in, plaintiff’s firms filed lawsuits in every single state. I read a Wall Street Journal article saying they expect $40 billion in total judgments, which would certainly bankrupt the National Association of Realtors.
The Founders Card Idea [00:32:00]
Shaan: Can you talk about this Founders Card idea? You’ve been tweeting about it for like two years.
Moiz: So there’s a card I’m a part of — I can’t talk about the name — but as a result of paying $100 or $140 a month, I get discounts worth like $800 a month to me. Discounts on SaaS platforms that an e-commerce company might use — Mailchimp, Shopify, all these things. You never cancel the $100 subscription because it’s actually saving you $1,000 a month.
I don’t understand why there aren’t more of these for smaller niche industries. What P&G does is go to Snapchat, Pinterest, and Facebook and say, “We’re going to spend $250 million across our portfolio on your platform — but we need a discount.” And they get it. I saw it firsthand when I was running Native inside P&G. Why don’t smaller businesses organize and negotiate those same discounts collectively?
Shaan: Sorry — you have one of these cards, but you’re saying they don’t want more people to know about it? Why?
Moiz: Great question. I’m not entirely sure, but yes — they’d rather I not talk about who they are. But for $100 or $140 a month, I get discounts to software I was going to buy anyway.
Sam: This is actually something I had as an idea years ago at The Hustle. I had three ideas — one became Trends, another was this founders card thing. I was comparing it to AARP. I thought the card was the best idea. In fact, I might be a few months ahead of you on building it off the MFM audience.
Moiz: Why didn’t you do it back then?
Sam: I couldn’t figure out how to differentiate from existing offerings, and it was challenging to negotiate bulk deals with brands. They’d say, “These companies already spend with us — why give them a discount?”
Moiz: The rebuttal is: your competitors are offering it. You go get the number two in every space and say, “We can move you customers if you make this attractive.” Then you go back to number one and say, “Number two is offering this and people are moving. You should match it.” Every new business coming in is going to use number two instead of number one because they get the discount.
Sam: And AARP is the model. I don’t know what the acronym stands for—
Moiz: American Association of Retired Persons.
Sam: They do about $1.5 to $2 billion a year in sales, millions and millions of members, and they only charge about $100 a year. When you turn 60, you get an invitation in the mail. You get discounted health insurance — they partnered with United Health — and they’re one of the largest lobbying groups in America. Really fascinating company that’s existed for decades.
There are already versions of this. Think about Y Combinator — when you get in, you get $250,000 of AWS credits, free Stripe processing, all kinds of benefits. So when YC is selling you on $120,000 for 7%, they’re also saying, “Here are the other benefits in this package.”
Shopify for Big Brands, and the App Ecosystem Opportunity [00:40:00]
Shaan: All right, you had something about Shopify for high-end brands. What was that?
Moiz: Shopify is fantastic — I’m a big shareholder, I love them, I built my career on e-commerce. But the reality is it’s wonderful for businesses going from zero to $50 million. It’s not good for businesses north of $100 million that are ready to spend serious money on improving their conversion rate, customizing their checkout page, all of that.
The Shopify people would say, “That’s crazy — we have big businesses like Figs and Allbirds on it.” But the reality is there’s so much you can’t customize, especially on the checkout page. There’s room for someone to come in and say, “I’m going to build Shopify for businesses doing north of $100 million.” And there are a lot of businesses that have left Shopify — Away Travel, Ritual Vitamins — because they’ve outgrown the platform.
Sam: Where did they go?
Moiz: Usually a custom-built stack — sometimes with a backbone of an old open-source e-commerce platform called Spree. But they’ll often go to their own custom tech platform because once you’re doing $500 million in revenue, a quarter-percentage-point bump in conversion rate on your checkout page is worth an extra $10-20 million in revenue. It’s completely worth the pain.
And Native was a $50 million e-commerce business built on WordPress. We did it because it was way cheaper and allowed way more customization — post-purchase pop-ups, subscriptions that didn’t charge us an arm and a leg, our own servers, instantaneous page loading. None of that was possible on Shopify at the time.
Sam: You used $300-a-year WooCommerce, which is the steal of the century.
Moiz: WooCommerce is free, isn’t it?
Sam: It’s free. And WordPress controls a third of the internet, and Shopify makes this much money, and yet they’re giving this away. It’s a massive missed opportunity for WordPress. WooCommerce is great — you just need a developer sometimes — but it’s still way cheaper than Shopify.
Moiz: And we had a post-purchase pop-up at Native where, after you clicked checkout, we showed you a pop-up saying, “Buy travel-size deodorant.” We probably sold $700,000 of those travel-size deodorants every single month — made about $400,000 in net profit off those alone every month. And we could only do that in WordPress. We could not do it in Shopify.
Shaan: You also mentioned Shopify apps for India, or something like that.
Moiz: Yeah. Our Shopify app bill — granted, I could prune some apps we’re not using anymore that are still charging us — I think we spend like $10,000 a month on Shopify add-ons.
Sam: That’s insane.
Moiz: Because whatever you want to do, they’re like, “Would you like to collect email addresses? That’ll be $1,500 a month.” And you’re like, “What? This is an email popup. Google Forms is free.” And every little thing — we added a post-purchase upsell and it was $900 a month. All the review platforms are crazy expensive.
If I were a developer in India, I’d hire a team and knock off every single app and charge $20 a month. That would be our entire business model. And the more apps you use, the cheaper it gets — if you’re using five apps, instead of $100 each you pay $75 each. There’s no reason that a Doo popup should be $1,500 a month. There’s no reason that a post-purchase upsell should be a percentage of revenue instead of $30 a month.
I talked to a guy — I tried to buy this one Shopify app that all it did was add a maximum quantity to your cart. Most people don’t even think, “Why would I stop someone from buying more?” But if you’re doing a limited edition thing, you don’t want resellers to go buy everything. These guys have been doing like $2 million a year for seven years — with $1.5 million in profit — on one app that just caps how many units you can buy. That’s got to be like two lines of code.
Sam: And how many customers of that app probably don’t look at their bill? Because it’s buried in the Shopify billing tab.
Moiz: Exactly. You connect it once, Shopify charges you automatically, and it’s buried under everything. Very low friction for racking up charges.
There’s a massive business to be built here: clone the top 100 Shopify apps and charge a flat fee. Every single new business is going to come to you because it’s way easier and cheaper. It’s a longer-term business because you don’t have a sales team going out calling everyone — “Switch from Klaviyo to me” — but every new business will go straight to you.
Controversial Opinions: Data, Real Estate Twitter Fraud, and Wealth Managers [00:50:00]
Shaan: You have a lot of controversial opinions. Data is overrated. Wealth managers are just used car salesmen. You hate real estate Twitter. Let’s start with real estate Twitter. What’s the unpopular opinion?
Moiz: Real estate Twitter is full of frauds. I can’t begin to tell you how many people I’m invested with whose tweets I read and I’m like, “How is nobody calling you out on this?”
Let me give the listener perspective: I own either dozens or hundreds of single-family and multifamily homes, and I’m an LP in dozens of real estate deals.
These people on real estate Twitter are tweeting out their returns — “Here are our returns” — and I’m like, “These are not returns I’ve realized as an LP in your business.” They have the audacity: before interest rates were going up, I’m like, “Do we have floating-rate mortgages? What’s going to happen when interest rates go up?” And these guys are like, “It’s going to be fine.” And now they’re like, “Actually we need more money.”
Real estate is different from startups, where you might need more capital as a business grows. In real estate, once you own the asset you should not need more cash. You’re operating an apartment building. But when interest rates go up and you’re on floating-rate debt, your debt service increases but the rents don’t cover it — rents are going down, interest rates are going up — and these guys who promised fortunes get caught with their pants down.
And then the audacity: they say, “Hey, all the deals you invested in with us over the last five years are bad because interest rates are up, but now we can buy things at a lower price — so invest with us now, it’s a great time.” And I want to kill them.
Shaan: Why isn’t anyone calling these people out?
Moiz: Would you like me to name names?
Sam: We’ve got a great audience here who would love to hear the names.
Moiz: I don’t want to name names because some of these people I’m friends with, I know their wives and their families. I don’t want to see them suffering like that. I just want to kill them. But I’ll name the exception rather than the rule: Moses Kagan. I’ve invested in several deals with him and he underwrites conservatively, thinks long-term, manages his reputation well — “I want people to make money, I’ll make money when people make money.” I would invest with him again. The other deals I’ve done with people on real estate Twitter? I would have to be a heroin addict to invest with them again.
Moiz’s Portfolio: The Pie Chart Update [00:56:00]
Shaan: You did a pie chart last time you were on the podcast — mid-2022 — and you did it in dollar amounts instead of percentages, which I thought was such a boss move. You said: $10 million in private equity, $40-50 million in cash and short-term bonds waiting for bond prices to come up, $25-30 million in real estate you own and operate yourselves, $10 million in real estate as an LP, $10 million in startup investments, $10 million in the stock market. Has that changed?
Moiz: It hasn’t changed dramatically. The $40-50 million in bonds is probably somewhere at $60-70 million today, still in short-term bonds where you’re yielding a lot. I’m starting to get a little bit longer as the yield curve starts to flatten. Right now, if you buy a one-year bond you’ll get about 5.5% interest. A 10-year bond is a little under 5%. A year ago it was about 5% for a year and 4% for 10 years — inverted. As it continues to flatten, I’ll invest in longer-duration bonds.
I probably have $15-20 million in the stock market now, heavily concentrated in Facebook and Shopify — and probably P&G.
Sam: You tweeted out this funny thing comparing your IRR versus the S&P. You quoted Legally Blonde — something like, “What, like stock investing is hard?”
Moiz: Yeah, I was probably up 30% for the year versus the S&P, which was like 10-12%.
Sam: But you didn’t say what you owned. In my head, I was like, “I bet this is literally just Facebook.”
Moiz: Yeah. It’s a lot of Facebook. Facebook and Shopify and P&G.
Shaan: You and your brother kept buying the dip. Facebook was getting crushed — a year and a half ago, up until like six months ago — and every time it went down your brother, and I think you also, were like, “Hey, is everybody insane? Let me go buy more Facebook today.” Psychologically that’s hard, right? Earnings come out, big stock move down, and you’re like, “All right, let’s buy more.” What drives the conviction?
Moiz: Two things. One: literally every single business I know that’s an online retailer is entirely dependent on Facebook, whether they realize it or not. The best businesses in direct-to-consumer are entirely dependent on Facebook. The worst businesses are “diversified.” If your business lives or dies by Facebook, you’re going to have a better outcome than if you think you’re being smart by spreading budget across YouTube, TikTok, and everything else. Diversification means you can’t get the one thing that works for everybody — the biggest advertising engine in the world — to work for you. You’re going to miss out on a ton of opportunity.
Two: when the financial crisis hit, my father — who had been conservative his entire life, probably 70 years old at the time — looked at how cheap houses had gotten and said, “This doesn’t make sense.” He bought one house for $150,000 that had sold for $225,000 just before. Sixty days later that $150,000 was worth about $75,000, and rather than get scared he’s like, “That house over there that sold for $250,000 four months ago is for $75,000. I’m buying it.” He kept going.
One half-duplex he bought for $88,000 generates about $1,900 in rent a month today. Within a year, the rent pays back the entire purchase price. He never lost conviction. “This is a deal of a lifetime.”
Honestly, when people talk about my brother and me having financial success, the reality is that success is based on the foundation my father built — a steady stream of income from real estate that’s very hard to lose. We could fall back on that, which gave us the freedom to take risks. And it gave me the conviction to look at a situation — I’m looking at 25 ad accounts daily, seeing that businesses are still investing on Facebook — and say, “How could Facebook stock be 50% off? This is a buying opportunity, not a selling opportunity.”
Shaan: Of your portfolio now, what percentage came from Native?
Moiz: It’s hard to answer because when Native sold, that was virtually the entire amount — but my net worth is significantly higher now. The cash itself from Native is probably less than a majority of my net worth today. But I wouldn’t own $50 million in bonds were it not for the $100 million I got from the Native sale. All of this is Native money. That’s pre-marriage, by the way. So yes, the bulk came from Native.
What’s Underpriced Today? [01:06:00]
Shaan: What do you think are the underpriced opportunities or assets today?
Moiz: San Francisco real estate, and possibly office real estate in a lot of other cities.
When my father was buying real estate in 2008-2010, I was an attorney. All these wealth managers try to talk to attorneys — so I went to Wells Fargo and said, “I need a loan for $500,000. My family bought a million dollars of real estate and we just want 50% LTV.” They said, “The only way we’ll give you a loan is if you give us a million dollars in cash first — then we’ll give you a million-dollar loan.” I was like, “If I had a million dollars in cash, I wouldn’t come to you for a million-dollar loan.”
So we were strapped for cash trying to deploy capital. What my father did — without knowing this is what he was doing — was dollar-cost average into real estate. He’d get $50,000 from rents and go buy another house. He dollar-cost averaged his way in and was really aggressive.
If I were dollar-cost averaging into office space today, I’d probably start in 2023 or very early 2024. If you’re trying to time the bottom — which is very hard to do correctly — I’d still wait four or five months. There are probably still some deals that need to blow up before the rest of the world realizes that real estate priced at $100 million is actually worth $30 million today.
Shaan: What about some of these DTC companies that got smashed in the stock market? Like Allbirds — market cap around $50 million, revenues over $100 million.
Moiz: I think it has to go bankrupt before you can touch it. Their team is too large, they probably have financial obligations to their suppliers that are really holding down the business — a lot of accounts payable. You need to wipe all of that out first.
I looked at something similar with Honest Company. I was interested in buying it, talked to some serious people. But that business had gross margin problems. If they sell a diaper for a dollar, it costs them maybe 70 cents — when it should cost you 30 cents, giving you 60-70% gross margins. They had 30% gross margins. With Allbirds, I think it’s more systemic — it’s a brand, it’ll need to go through bankruptcy to be fixed.
AI, Bitcoin, and Staying in Your Lane [01:12:00]
Shaan: Do you pay attention to AI? Or are you like — I’m a merchant, I sold deodorant through Facebook ads, I do real estate?
Moiz: I get swept up a little, but I’m more cautious. I want to see how this thing makes money. Last time you asked me how much Bitcoin I had — I said probably under $500,000. Today it’s probably under $200,000. I like to know how I’m going to make money. I’m far more risk-averse than most entrepreneurs.
That risk aversion means I probably won’t invest in businesses unless I have a good idea of how the business makes money, who purchases the business, how we exit 5-10 years from now. If I don’t have a realistic vision for that, I’m less inclined to get behind it. That’s made me shy away from Bitcoin, and probably from AI — probably to my own detriment.
Managing the Portfolio: The Google Sheet [01:14:00]
Shaan: Are you managing everything yourself? What tools are you using — just a spreadsheet?
Moiz: Just a Google Sheet. My brother and I share it. If it’s a fund, here’s how much we committed, how much we’ve invested. If it’s a startup, here’s how much we put in.
Sam: Do you guys still have like one bank account? He told me once it’s kind of just like a family pot of money.
Moiz: A little bit, yes. In very many ways, the answer is still yes. When you see him buying something stupid you’re like, “You’re spending our money, what are you doing?”
Sam: Well, he’s kind of buying himself a gift, right? It’s your money.
Moiz: Exactly.
Why Wealth Managers Are Used Car Salesmen [01:16:00]
Shaan: You don’t like wealth managers. So you manage everything yourself — but that’s basically a full-time job.
Moiz: It is a full-time job if you want to be good at it. If you don’t want to be good at it, it’s less of one. At this point I’m mostly content with: if I’m not making a startup investment, I’m generally going to think S&P 500 or US Treasury. I’m not chasing extra yield. Someone says Uber bonds dated in 2025 are paying 6.2%, but you have to analyze the tax implications versus a US Treasury to determine net yield — I’m not doing that. I’ll just take the US Treasury. The extra 1% yield isn’t worth it. I’ll go make a percent elsewhere.
I’ve been through several wealth managers. Goldman Sachs — they always say, “Consult us before you make an investment, we’ll give you a real opinion.” So I did that for a while, and I was like, “Okay, I thought you were just going to tell me if this is a good idea or not.” But they’re always like, “No, give us the money instead.”
I told my Goldman wealth manager’s boss — I made him come over to the Native offices — I said, “Look, I believe that if I told my wealth manager that Bill Gates was ready to give me a billion dollars tomorrow if I let him borrow this pen, and he signed a contract to that effect and put a billion dollars in a briefcase and handed it to me — you would say, ‘Don’t do that deal. Give us the pen instead.’ You would not let me loan a dollar to Bill Gates if he was going to give me a billion dollars tomorrow. You’d say, ‘Let us earn fees on your dollar instead.’” That’s how I feel working with you guys.
Sam: One of the funniest tweets I ever saw from you was: “Here’s a photo of every 3PL owner I’ve ever seen” — and it was a picture of the Hamburglar. I could not imagine what you went through that would get you to the point where you’re like, “I’m going to tweet this.”
Moiz: Clownishly criminal. That’s how they rip you off.
My last wealth manager, about a year and a half ago, said, “You should invest everything into bonds right now. We think the Fed is going to engineer a soft landing and everything’s going to be perfect. You’ll get a 3% yield if you invest in a 5-year duration — 3% a year, but you have to commit for five years without being able to access the money.”
So I put like $5-7 million into that strategy. Three months later I said, “You know what, I don’t believe in this. Sell everything right now — I’m going to take a loss. Inflation is 9%. The Fed is going to have to raise rates. There is no soft landing.” So I sold, probably lost $125,000-$150,000 over those three months.
And since then I’ve just invested in 3-month, 6-month, 1-year treasuries to take advantage of the yield. These wealth managers — their job is not to understand markets. Their job is to understand how to sell you an asset. They’re just car salesmen who sell financial instruments rather than cars. Just as sleazy, just as slimy, just as charismatic.
You ever see Seinfeld, where George Costanza is in a car dealership and the dealer is walking toward him and he goes, “Stop right there, otherwise I’m going to leave”? That’s me whenever my wealth manager is like, “Let me sell you this asset.” I’m like, “Stop right there. I’m going to hang up the phone if we continue this conversation. Vanguard or US Treasuries. Don’t try to sell me anything else.”
Should Moiz Start Another Company? [01:25:00]
Shaan: Are you ever going to start another company again?
Moiz: Yes. Definitely. I can’t turn $100 million into a billion dollars by investing. I can only start a business that sells for a billion dollars. So yes, I’m certain.
Sam: Hey — what happened to the guy on Twitter who said, “Hey, money is not going to make you happy — it’s your friends and your family”? You had some tweet about this. You have a ghost writer? This is not on brand. This is not the guy who said he was put on Earth to increase earnings per share.
Moiz: It can all be true. You don’t have to do it just to make you happy. You do it because it’s exciting. And it depends on the mood you’re in. I’ll spend time with friends, and this guy will be like, “Yeah, I’m doing $100 million in revenue, $20 million in EBITDA,” and I’m like, “Screw friendship, I need to get that.” And other times I’m like, “Wow, I just want to be a civilian and spend time with loved ones.” I see a therapist and she doesn’t have a good answer for me either.
Sam: There’s a Sun Tzu quote — it’s better to be a warrior in the garden than a gardener in war. You can be this crazy ambitious person and chill every once in a while.
Moiz: Wow. I’ve never heard that before. That’s awesome.
Shaan: What would you tell Moiz to do? What business idea should he start?
Sam: My honest opinion is that you have new advantages now. You could start from scratch, but I really do think you should take a huge slug of capital, buy something that’s already worth $100 million, and take it from $100 million to $500 million. That’s way easier than going from zero to $500 million with a new product in the marketplace.
Or — like Nat Turner, who bought an old trading card company and made it cool again — something like that. You’d be very successful doing that.
But my read on you is that you are significantly more of a creator and an artist than you want people to think. I saw how careful you were about customer service and the brand. You want to act like, “Oh, I just copied this font, I copied those colors” — but there was a lot more thought and care to it than you let on. So if I had to tell you what to do, I’d say start something from scratch and make it art. Let the 50% of you that’s all business come through — but you need to be a little bit more of an artist than you’ve been lately.
Moiz: I couldn’t agree more. I appreciate that.
Shaan: And what I would not do is another DTC brand. Even though you know how to do it in your sleep at this point — you’re just playing the same level of the video game you already beat. You have a certain number of years of peak mental and physical ability right now. Use those years wisely. Either go travel the world and do all that stuff, or if you are going to do a creative project, make it one that puts you to good use and good challenge. If you came to me and said, “I’m starting another DTC brand,” I’d be like, “I’m sure it’s going to be successful, but I don’t think that’s what’s going to make you more.”
Sam: That’s not true — because Native Deodorant, I use the soap. I trust the brand. If he were to create some type of food that’s a healthy option, or baby formula — it starts looking like just another e-commerce brand but it actually has massive implications and could make the world a slightly better place. As long as it’s something that matters to people, like something you put in your body or something that makes your kid healthier — I think that could fulfill you.
Moiz: I appreciate that inspiration. One of the reasons I haven’t gotten excited about anything is because I want it to be ten times bigger than my last business. That’s hard to feel. Hard to say, “I’m going to spend the next ten years building this.” And that’s made me more cautious — and in a way that I think is making my mind less flexible than it was five years ago.
Sam: You better get on it. You don’t want to be a has-been or a one-hit wonder.
Moiz: I think it’s a home run for everyone else but just a base hit for me.
Sam: I’m like every day — “What’s he doing? Is he doing it? I’ll see you tweet something and I’m like, is that gonna be the thing?” You don’t want to be Uncle Rico bragging about how you almost took state in high school.
Moiz: What an amazing reference.
Sam: It’s a compliment. You’re going to do great things — it’s just a question of whether you’re finally going to nut up and actually do it.
Moiz: In fact, my banker from the Native sale texted me yesterday. He’s like, “November 8th is the six-year anniversary of the sale.” Six years. And I think so far it’s been my best opus.
Sam: You want to feel some anxiety today? He’s doing a home option for investment banking — texting you once in a while like, “Hey, when it’s time to sell your next business, don’t forget about me.”
Native’s Current Scale and the P&G Sale Decision [01:35:00]
Shaan: What are Native’s sales now? Two or three hundred million a year?
Moiz: Five hundred this year.
Sam: Five hundred million. Oh my God.
Moiz: Should have — no, I’m joking. I would have sold probably just the same. I don’t think I could have done what P&G has done without P&G. They think about product development, shelf space, brand extension — they think about things in a way that’s really spectacular.
There are things I look at and go, “Ooh, I wouldn’t have done that.” But ultimately the reason I sold was I wanted to learn from people who are masters at growing something from $30 million to $100 million to $500 million. And I learned a lot there.
People always ask if I regret it. There’s not a day where I go to bed and think, “I shouldn’t have sold.” It was always the right decision.
Shaan: Wrap up with this one line you told me — you’re in the sale process, and they’re asking you how you’re going to expand. And you looked at them dumbfounded and said, “Well — can you write the word ‘Native’ on a shampoo bottle? How about on toothpaste? Okay, that’s how you expand.”
Moiz: And that’s exactly what they’ve done. I actually don’t use the deodorant, but I use the soap. The body wash is my favorite.
Shaan: Your smartass reply in the pitch meeting was their entire strategy. And it worked. Congratulations.
Moiz: Like a guy in the back just taking notes.
Shaan: Hey, Moiz — thanks for coming on, man. We appreciate it.
Moiz: Thank you very much.