This episode of My First Million features a deep dive into Shaan Puri’s professional journey, tracing his path from early startup ventures to his time at Twitch and Bebo. The conversation explores the strategic lessons learned from high-stakes business acquisitions, the importance of timing in entrepreneurship, and the personal philosophy behind building and selling companies.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Acquisitions, Business Strategy, Career Advice, Twitch, Bebo, Hubspot, Venture Capital
The Philosophy of Focus [00:00]
Shaan Puri: I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely.
The Studio Setting [02:21]
Sam Parr: We are in San Francisco, we’re outside of San Francisco. We’re doing a live pod, first time in a while.
Shaan Puri: We’re in this studio. What is this? Is this a music studio? Is that what this is normally? Music studio?
Sam Parr: Did the instruments give it away?
Shaan Puri: All right, people were asking online. They said they want us to do a pod. We already did my story, it’s the second episode. Now we’ll do one on you.
Sam Parr: All right, let’s do it.
Shaan Puri: So, how old are you now?
Sam Parr: Good question. Uh, 34.
Shaan Puri: Um, and you’re from everywhere.
Sam Parr: Everywhere.
Shaan Puri: Where?
Sam Parr: I was born in Oklahoma, believe it or not. And then, what part? Tulsa. Uh, Denver, Texas, China, Indonesia, Australia, San Francisco. Yeah, that’s it. And maybe a little bit of London, too. Two months.
Shaan Puri: And you’re living in Australia in pre-college, or right, right college age?
Sam Parr: I studied abroad there, and then also after college, I started a company with a guy who, uh, a like, kind of a well-known entrepreneur in Australia.
Shaan Puri: And that was pre-college?
Sam Parr: That was after.
Shaan Puri: But, and you went to college in Duke, too. So you went from Duke to Australia.
Sam Parr: Yes.
Shaan Puri: And at Australia, you did the sushi thing?
Sam Parr: No, I did that at, just at Duke. Like, that’s where it started.
Shaan Puri: I thought the sushi thing was in Australia.
Sam Parr: No, no, no. That was here, and then we moved to Denver because, um, basically, you know, like people move to Silicon Valley because it’s like, that’s the tech hub. And like, people move to LA when they want to be an actor. If you want to start a restaurant, Denver is the place to go. So, Chipotle started there, the first Chipotle started there, Noodles and Company started there, Quiznos started there, Smashburger started there. There’s like seven or eight.
Shaan Puri: There’s probably amounts of like open-minded white people.
Sam Parr: Yeah, people who love lunch. Lunch is a really big deal there. But they, uh, like, so all the talent, the people who know how to like pick locations and like roll out restaurant operations, all that stuff, they’re all still there. So when we were like, where are we going to start? It was like, uh, because Denver is kind of like a big suburb. Like, this is how dumb we were. We were like, we want to be the next Chipotle. How do you do that? Well, where did Chipotle start? Let and so literally, we found the location across the street from the original Chipotle to open our restaurant.
Shaan Puri: That’s a great plan.
Sam Parr: And so we were like, yeah, and like, I guess we’ll just do the exact, and then we were like, who rolled out their real estate? Are these two brokers? Okay, we’ll, we’ll go talk to them. And then, who did their this? Okay, we’ll go talk to them. And that’s basically, that was our whole plan, um, of like figuring out how to start this restaurant. And so we just moved to Denver because, and it was, it was funny. My two co-founder, my two, two best friends at the time, Trevor and Dan.
Shaan Puri: You’re not really a co-founder of a, of a sushi, of a restaurant.
Sam Parr: Yeah, co-owner, maybe.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s a good point. That should have been signal one that this was not a great idea. It was like, founding what?
Sam Parr: You know, like, like, like my, my father-in-law owns a moving company. He doesn’t call himself like, the founder of the moving.
Shaan Puri: Creator. Yeah. The creator. Yeah. He’s just the owner.
Sam Parr: Yeah, that’s fair. So, me and my two friends were trying to eat sushi and we basically started this thing. And they were like, we were at Duke, so they were just trying to find a location near us. And, uh, I had gone, uh, I had actually quit the startup. I didn’t really tell people this, but I basically, when we graduated, I got a really good job offer. And it was $120,000 in Indonesia. And so, and my sister was working at the place and the guy wanted to, my sister was doing a good job, so he was like, okay, I’ll hire, you know, we need more.
Shaan Puri: What the guy who ended up going, went to prison?
Sam Parr: Went to prison. So, uh, I take the job and I’m like, I tell my friends, again, like, stupid. I was like, I’m going to go learn a bunch here and then, dude, when I come back, think about how smart I’ll be. And they were just like, okay, I guess we’ll just keep working on it over here. Like, total jerk move. I just like moved and took this job. And a month in, I, yeah, in a month or two.
Shaan Puri: And you were working for like a mafia guy who like did like junk bonds, or what did he do?
Sam Parr: No, he just, he basically, what he had done was, he, he’s like a dropout of second grade or something like that. So he like, he basically didn’t speak English. So my boss never spoke English to me. Um, only like broken words. Crazy guy. Like, um, you walk into his office and there’s four, uh, like executive assistants or EAs or secretaries or whatever, and each of them have a giant TV screen and it’s just his email, because he can’t read or type. And so they would say out loud his email. Uh, this person emailed you saying this, and he would just dictate. He would be pacing around, he’d just say, tell them we’re not doing the deal unless blah, blah, blah. And then one would be typing it. And then the next one would be like, hey, you got a another email from this person. So there’s just four screens like that, and they were He’s just like the brain.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, he’s just talking out loud. He literally can’t read or write.
Sam Parr: And the people are just like his hands. And then when, and so what he was doing was, what his, his genius plan was, he was like, he recognized this arbitrage opportunity that was illegal, which is why he went to jail, which was that US companies wanted to do business in Indonesia. Indonesia is like, I don’t know, maybe the fifth largest population in the world. It’s got a ton of natural resources like coal. And they, so ExxonMobil, uh, BP, all the ConocoPhillips, they all wanted this coal. But if you go there and you try to get the rights, you go to the auction and they’re like, uh, actually, that guy owns it. My cousin owns it. And they’re like, what? Where was the process? They’re like, yeah, the process was done in the middle of the night. You don’t need to know about the process. Basically, you got to bribe somebody to get something. So what he was doing was he was like, oh, they want this. So I’ll just go and bribe all the local officials, get the prop, I’ll get the leases, and then I’ll just sell it. So he bought up for $2 million total, like this huge amount of coal, and then he sold each piece for 20 million. And he amassed $500 million over the course of like three years, just doing that.
Shaan Puri: And so when, but so Like liquid, so he was liquid.
Sam Parr: He was uber liquid. Like if you, if you did something, if you like did a good job with the negotiation or a meeting or a contract, you’d come into work and he’d just hand you keys to like a, a BMW or a Mercedes or a Rolls-Royce and then you’d, he’d be like, that was your bonus. Like there’s no, like But did he have paper? Who’s, whose, whose name was on the title?
Sam Parr: Of the car? Yeah. Everything’s his. Like, we lived in this like four seasons resort, but it’s his apartment. But you get to live there. Everything he owned, and then he owned it under 72 shell companies. So you’d be like, hey, what’s this name? And then there’s like this one woman who owns the file cabinet and she’s got all these companies inside. And so that’s what this guy’s gig was. And so he was basically, he, he was like, I don’t need to know, he’s like, he would just talk to engineers and technologists and be like, what would you do with this coal? He’s like, great. Um, then when, when he would get a like, he had like all these geologists on, and he’d be like, do a survey, do a report that says this is fit for that purpose. And they’re like, well, it’s kind of fit. He’s like, make it very fit. And he just like, basically fudged the whole thing. That’s my, my impression of how it got. What do you think made him special? He was just bold and willing to, and willing to cheat and lie and steal. Yeah, he was. And he wasn’t cheating like, he was just like playing a, That’s how business is done in Indonesia. You don’t get, like, that’s how the property process is done. If you don’t want to do that, you cannot play.
Shaan Puri: So you think that he was playing by the rules of the game, or was he on the edge?
Sam Parr: He was playing by the unspoken street rules of the game, um, on that part. And then on top of that, he was like smart and ruthless. So for example, I met him because he met my dad. My dad worked at BP for like 30 years. And my dad was known as an expert of this one technology to get value out of coal. You do this process, you turn coal that’s not that valuable into something pretty valuable. So he meets my dad and my, he’s like, tell me about this. And my dad’s talking to him and my dad’s like, do you understand like these things that I’m saying? He’s like, I understand that BP will want my coal, basically. He’s like, I understand that like companies will believe this thing. You’re saying there’s potential here? That’s all I need to know. And my dad was like, but like, should we test it or like, he’s like, no, no, no. Why would we test it? Let them test it. They’re buying it, they can test it. And like, they can see for themselves. Like, you know, if it works, it doesn’t work out. Why would I add risk into this by like doing this? And my dad was just talking to him and then my dad one day goes, I think I told this story before, but he goes, he’s like, he’s like, I probably am like a top five expert of this one coal like technology in the world. You know pretty much nothing about coal. Yet, I’ve worked my whole career and I’ve been making 100,000, 150,000, 200,000 a year, and you’re going to make like 300, 400 million this year. You’re going to make more money than me and I know more about this than you. And he goes, yeah, of course. And he was just like, he’s like, yes. And, um, You idiot. Yeah, like, do you think that that’s relevant? Basically, he was just like so matter of fact about it. And so I was like, oh, wow. So my job when, when I worked there was, a company comes in, he doesn’t speak English. So he needed an English speaker to do the meeting, and then he would just do the pleasantries and the food and the drinks and all that stuff and like, you know, just like with a translator, make that work. But he’d rely on us to like go over the presentation and like do all that stuff. What, what, what was his name?
Sam Parr: Cocos.
Shaan Puri: You’re like, all right, gentlemen, Mr. Cocos would like you to feel welcomed here and let you know that he’s not here to play any games.
Sam Parr: Yeah, it would be like, Mr. Cocos and these two young women will now go to dinner with you guys and I hope you have a great night. You know, like, and it’s like, again, that’s how business is done there. It’s like, you go to karaoke. I don’t know if you know about all this. Like Asian culture, it’s like, you go to these karaoke rooms and there’s like, why are there all these like cute girls here? It’s like bottle service at a club. Were they prostitutes or something or just? I don’t know. I’ve never like gotten that far into the, the lion’s den, but like, there’s something going on, like, you know, there’s some service or I don’t know if it’s just flirtation or there’s more. I, I don’t really know, but like, all I know is this guy was getting mad deals done using this like workflow where during the day, I’m presenting at night, they’re singing songs. And so, and so that was, but that was a wild experience for me.
Shaan Puri: So, how long did this guy go to jail for?
Sam Parr: Well, he died in jail. He’s dead. So, uh, Wow. Why do you think I’m sharing all this? Because I’m like less afraid now that I, like, I’ve never really talked about this stuff. How much did he get sentenced for?
Sam Parr: I think he got like 20 years or something and he died a few years ago, got cancer, died. Oh my god. He was a nice, he was a, he was really good to us. He was really nice to us. I mean, I So you think he was like a, again, I asked this before, like He was not evil. He was just doing business by the way that that game was done. Whoever was going to own that land was going to do that. He just decided, it’ll be me. And he got fabulously rich off of it. And all the things that seem really crazy to me was also like kind of standard practice in India and in China about like how business deals are done. Yeah, you drink a lot, you go out to the bars, you with the with the clients and like you, you, you know, yeah, you you have to grease the the the the the guy who’s doing the deal. Not necessarily so that you can win, but you won’t get it if you don’t tip everybody basically that’s involved in the process. That’s actually the that’s the first time of two times that you’ve buddied up with a billionaire who says like, here’s my playground, you can run it. So you, the sushi thing like was only mildly it wasn’t a success. Was not a success, though. But you moved to San Francisco and you got a job with Michael Birch, right?
Sam Parr: That’s right.
Shaan Puri: And who, who, who was he at the time?
Sam Parr: He, uh, by the way, Jonathan, the, uh, hot wings are here. Would you mind getting them? Uh, so I don’t, I told you this when I got here. I was asking people, I was like, yeah, me and Sam are in person, we’re going to just hang out, we’re going to have a, a good conversation. How do we make, how do we take advantage of the fact that we’re in person? And two, the two first two people I said, they go, get a bunch of hot wings. It’ll make it hilarious. Try to have the same conversation while you’re eating hot wings. And I think Hopefully there’s milk. Yeah, there’s not. There’s no sides. Um, so I moved to San Francisco pretty quickly. I’m like, God, this can’t be it. Like No, dude, it sucks. Every day I’m waking up at 5:00 in the morning, I’m driving to like the fucking fish market, picking up the fresh tuna for the day, and like the business was actually working. Like we were, we did it as a cloud kitchen and it was basically making money. I was like, this can’t be it. Luckily, at that time, my dad had met a guy in Australia who had sold his company. And in passing, Did your dad is like this hooking it up? A king. He met this guy and he was, he was like, in passing, he’s like, you know, what are your, what are your kids do? And he’s like, oh, my daughter does this and my son is doing this like, you know, sushi startup thing. You should, you should check it out. They’re, they write this blog that’s really entertaining. It’s like, I was, we were creating a WordPress, we had a WordPress blog that was really just for our own amusement, but like, we used to do a lot of stuff to make content that in our mind was like somehow going to help the sushi thing. It didn’t help the sushi thing at all, but what it did do was anybody who found that really got behind us. They like, kind of started rooting for us. Or they thought, these guys are good hustlers, they’re entertaining, blah, blah, blah. So this guy, who had just sold his company for like 450 million, and he was looking for his next thing to do. He had a non-compete, uh, with his current, with the business he knew. So he knew he needed to do something new, but he didn’t know what. And he read our blog and he was like, oh, yeah, I want to do business with you guys. Like, so he flew us out to Australia and we interviewed for a job with him and he was like, Uh, this guy’s Nathan Mitchell. So he’s, uh, he’s based in Brisbane. And, uh, his family had a drilling company, sells a drilling company. And so he wanted to do business with my dad, he wanted to do business with us, and he was like, okay, let’s put a team together and let’s do this. Like Dude, that’s such a cool way of saying that. You just, I want to do business with you. Yeah. Well, that’s what I told myself. I don’t know what he, I don’t know what he wanted. I can’t put words in his mouth. But he, um, all right, here we go. So there’s three, there’s three flavors. There’s like a, a sweet, spicy, a spicy, and then what they called, very, very spicy. Which one’s the very, very spicy one? I’m not touching that one. You think it’s that one? No, I think it’s the sweet and spicy. Yeah, yeah. The six and the buffalo. All right, I’ll get the buffalo in a minute. So, basically, if, uh, if we ever answer a question poorly or something, we got to eat. I don’t know. We’ll make up a game. I’m going to eat them because I’m hungry. Um, so basically, he’s like, all right, um, I got a bunch of like smart engineers, but this will be so academic unless we get some hustlers. You guys are hustlers. Join me and let’s make this happen. He gave us a job offer. I was just happy to live in Australia, so I was like, great, I’ll do this. And so we started that company together, it’s a biotech company in Australia. As that goes on, it gets to a point that I thought was, you know, like kind of the transition point where it’s like, oh, we signed this deal, it’s like ready to like change hands or whatever. And I was like, all right, I’m going to move to Silicon Valley because I don’t know about sushi, I don’t know about biotech, but I know I like this early stage stuff. So I applied to two jobs. Stripe, and then this place nobody’s ever heard of called Monkey Inferno. Stripe would have been pretty sick. It was probably 30 employees at the time. Oh my god. So, if I joined even as just like what I was joining as like a biz dev manager or something like that, I probably would have made like 10 or 20 million dollars if I just stayed there. You think 20? I think so. Yeah, because I, I, I kind of, I went back one day and I did the math and I was like, I can’t, I don’t know, there’s a bunch of assumptions like, will you vest out? Would you get a promotion? Like, you know, some bunch of things like that, but based on when it was like 20, 2012, early 2012 at the time. Which like, a lot of people, I tell people the story about me and they’re like, oh, you would have gotten fired. And I actually think they’re probably true. In your case, I think you wouldn’t have. I think you actually No, I would have played that game. I like that. I’m good at that shit. Yeah, like you would have seen because that that shit was exciting and you seem like you would have gotten, I don’t know those guys, but you seem like you would have got gotten along great with them. Yeah, like you’re more you’re more of a cowboy. Yeah. Like, but I think you legitimately would have made tens of millions of dollars. I think so, too. Uh, but it all worked out in the end. Like I have less than that, but I was able to like got myself into a position where I was able to do more. So basically it was like, either like self-development or just like getting lucky with those shares. Um, and not entirely lucky, like I only applied to Stripe because I thought that was going to be a winner, but like it still would have been lucky that it got to be such a huge winner. Could you tell early on that it was going to be a huge winner? Yeah, I don’t know why. I think I was just like, at the time I was reading a lot of Paul Graham essays, I was looking at Y Combinator companies. Within Y Combinator, those founders, I watched some of their interviews. I’m a big like you bet on the person type of guy, like, you know, the person who who builds all the value, the founders. I never talked to the founders. I I basically I I had one interview with this guy, Ben, and, um, he and I blew it. Like, I had the strongest warm introduction. That guy’s mentor was also my mentor. And the mentor thought so highly of me. He was like, How did you blow it? Were you just cocky? No, they did a a sell me this pen type of question. Oh, that’s a bullshit. But it wasn’t a pen. He was like, he told me, he’s like, I’m not going to do a sell me this pen type of thing. But I am. But I’m going to do sell me this software. And I was like, okay, what, uh, what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’ve done, I’ve seen some of the way some of our other friends have done. I’m like, there’s tons of ways to get things done. Um, what was the final thing that sold? The final thing that sold was we after pivot after pivot after pivot, we got to a thing that was like a esports app. So basically, esports is this like trend where people are playing video games competitively. And back then it was just starting. Uh, it’s like it’s it’s still just starting. It’s like it was around, but whatever. But it was really just starting. I mean, Twitch was like only six or seven years old at the time. No, no, this uh yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Twitch was Twitch was around. Twitch was big, but it wasn’t that wasn’t really the thing. It was basically the the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We basically built an app that was like the way a high schooler could go and play, you could sign up for basketball or soccer or whatever, like some game, you could go play in a league for it. And you would pay your league dues and like there’s little league baseball and then there’s like, you know, AAU sports. There’s all these youth leagues. Youth sports is a big deal. There was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. And so we had had a bunch of technology, we’d already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming and so we took that all that tech and we made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was like Fortnite was ripping. And there were more people that played Fortnite in the world than played basketball. And so we were like, that’s crazy. This has more players, but there’s no organized league. There’s only the pros. There’s no like amateurs. Um, and so we created the high school Fortnite league and we had an app that you would sign up, you’d make your team, you could invite friends, and then you would compete against other teams and you get like ranked, you play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it would make it turned into like a spectator sport. And how big did that get? It it was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe six or nine months into that version of it. It maybe had 10 to 25,000 players, active players at the time. Um, which was big because it like in youth like, you know, in theory, those people would pay us like you if I go take my daughter who’s three and put her in a soccer league, I’m going to pay 99 bucks or whatever for her to be in that league. So same thing, if we charge if we started charging for it, it would have this like SAS business that was going to generate I thought millions of dollars a year, but maybe 10, it’s probably never hundreds. And so that was the problem. I was like, oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, um it’ll get to maybe like 10 million a year, maybe 20 million a year in revenue, but never really beyond that. And Dude, isn’t that fucked up? That’s not what we signed up for. It’s not the way that the game is played. I know, but that sucks. It’s not it doesn’t suck because I agree that that well, that’s just the game. That just sucks at that because That’s not enough. Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a sim, maybe, a similar-ish amount of wealth as Michael Birch. Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, but it wasn’t structured that way. And I know, that sucks. And so once once I kind of got that feeling and I was six or seven years in to the whole Monkey Inferno experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, let’s sell this and let’s shake things up. You know, I had a I was lucky, a friend, Suli, like like on the outside, everything was amazing. Office was amazing. Dude, when I met you, product was cool. You were like, I’m making 150 grand a year and I’m like, oh my god, you’re like the wealthiest person I’ve ever met. It’s like, you have $150,000 a year. That’s crazy. And you’re only in your 20s. I remember you told me that and I was like shocked. I was like, and you have this sick office. Like, you’re set. It felt that way at the time. And then over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, better, and you’re like, oh man, 100 I was making 160. 160, that’s nothing. Like, I’m way underpaid and and in general, I was just like, I I just wanted to get a win. I don’t think you’re underpaid. Well, for a startup founder, I wasn’t underpaid, but if I just worked at a job, I would have Correct. Right. So it’s all the equity. The the equity was what mattered. And so, um, I own 20% of that of that of of the business. And so, anyways, we decided to sell and then that was, you know, a crazy process and so Life changing? Yeah, for sure. Um Financially life changing? Yeah, cuz go from no millions to millions is, you know, that’s life changing. And you actually stayed there. Am so Amazon bought the company and you stayed there for two years, right? Yeah. Would you and are you happy you stayed? Um, like I don’t really think about the past. Like what’s like, am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. Like, you know, fine with it. In retrospect, if I could go advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two. Um, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. Like I popped out two kids and was able to like spend time with them and didn’t have to stress about my my own business. Yeah, you collectively had like 10 months of paternity leave. What’s that? I mean, you had like 10 months of paternity leave. No, actually, stupidly, I only took two weeks with the first kid. What were you thinking? I did I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like at a big company, it’s like, oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares and now’s the critical time and and also being at home, honestly, as a like, being at home is harder than being at work. So it was like actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But like I should have taken more time and I just sort of like didn’t. And I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don’t take it’s like the company has unlimited time off, you don’t take it. Uh you you could take this much for paternity, maternity. It’s like, oh, you feel pressure to kind of short because you want to get back to your team or your whatever, stupid. Um, but the second year, I was way more chill and basically When did When did you start the e-com thing? Um, somewhere around that time. And you we don’t talk about it on purpose. Yeah. So we won’t talk about it much. But what do you want to say anything about it? Uh, It’s a big business. I think I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll start talking about it soon. Um, maybe that’ll be a special episode. You want to say how big it is? Yeah, it does like 15 million a year, profitable. Damn, dude. Bootstrapped. I remember you told me you were doing it and I was like, why would you ever do that? And are you happy that you did that or not? Same thing. In retrospect, I would go advise myself, don’t do this path. Because you already had like clout a little bit. And now, so during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast, and then that’s when the Hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. But this podcast, people ask me how to grow a pod and I’m like, I don’t know because Sean like started doing it right away and it kind of worked the day one. Like, we got like, I think the first episode was 60,000 downloads. The first one was just, hey, there’s a new thing and people will go check it out, right? This is different. Yeah, but it still was a good start. But it got to a good start and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It like took off in a better way. And then just time, time like time is basically. It’s been three years. Yeah. And so the thing I’ve learned, so so why do I say I would go back and do it differently is because I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely. So for example, um, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn’t want to throw my all into that. Um, that wasn’t like going to be my my my baby, my future was to be an employee at Twitch. Uh, I wanted to earn out the deal and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So there was like a desperation to secure the bag. Which by the way, is the right move, I think. Maybe. Like I think selling out is the way to go. I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time and I was like, what would you do if you were me? He’s like, I would quit on day one. I was like, I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy and then I would quit on day one. I go, why? Like, it’s so much money. If I just stay even one year, one year, no big deal. And he’s like, uh, he goes, the surface area of opportunity is too wide. Who said that? Suli. And That’s so smart, man. Cuz I went, I remember we went for a walk and we walked for like an hour and a half in the mission. We just walked back and forth through the mission on the streets and it was like everything’s closing, mission’s ghetto as hell. And we were just like, imagine like pacing furiously. We were doing that and we were just talking through what’s next. And I said, I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast. He’s like, a podcast? I was like, yeah. I was like, I think if I could just be in a million people’s earballs every morning, that’s like that would be the most fulfilling thing for me and it would be awesome. That would just be like 20% of the way there, maybe. Yeah, like I don’t know. A million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning. That aggressive. But like, you know, if you just keep going for five years, it could happen. Like that that that’s realistic now. But I remember thinking, that’s what I want to do and I couldn’t explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it. Which is in retrospect, it’s a really good signal. Like that’s the type of stuff you should go do. And I did that. Um, but then the other thing he was just like, yeah, I would just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide. And I looked at it and like, uh, and I was like, well, what would I do if it wasn’t this? And he’s like, again, the surface area is so wide. Anything. And I was like, give me an example. He goes, all right, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I’ll co-found this with you. And he told And he totally sold you into it. Because the Suli was all he had just sold an e-com business that he had just No, no, this is a different idea. Not even the e-com business. This is a different thing. He goes, he goes, in e-commerce, there’s this company called Klaviyo. They’re uh email sending company. They’re like worth billions of dollars. Yeah, and they were really taking off. He goes, Klaviyo for SMS. And I go, doesn’t Klaviyo do SMS? He goes, no. I go, won’t they? He goes, yeah, they probably will. Uh, aren’t there these other companies? Yeah, sure, but he’s like, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I’m telling you, I’m in e-com and SMS is like, it’s like email, but better. People open it. And he’s like, It’s like a 90% open rate. He’s like, you just need to build like, if we just build SMS for e-com, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter and this will be a valuable company. And I was like, okay, what uh what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’ve done, I’ve seen some of the way some of our other friends have done. I’m like, there’s tons of ways to get things done. Um, what was the final thing that sold? The final thing that sold was we after pivot after pivot after pivot, we got to a thing that was like a esports app. So basically, esports is this like trend where people are playing video games competitively. And back then it was just starting. Uh, it’s like it’s it’s still just starting. It’s like it was around, but whatever. But it was really just starting. I mean, Twitch was like only six or seven years old at the time. No, no, this uh yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Twitch was Twitch was around. Twitch was big, but it wasn’t that wasn’t really the thing. It was basically the the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We basically built an app that was like the way a high schooler could go and play, you could sign up for basketball or soccer or whatever, like some game, you could go play in a league for it. And you would pay your league dues and like there’s little league baseball and then there’s like, you know, AAU sports. There’s all these youth leagues. Youth sports is a big deal. There was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. And so we had had a bunch of technology, we’d already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming and so we took that all that tech and we made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was like Fortnite was ripping. And there were more people that played Fortnite in the world than played basketball. And so we were like, that’s crazy. This has more players, but there’s no organized league. There’s only the pros. There’s no like amateurs. Um, and so we created the high school Fortnite league and we had an app that you would sign up, you’d make your team, you could invite friends, and then you would compete against other teams and you get like ranked, you play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it would make it turned into like a spectator sport. And how big did that get? It it was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe six or nine months into that version of it. It maybe had 10 to 25,000 players, active players at the time. Um, which was big because it like in youth like, you know, in theory, those people would pay us like you if I go take my daughter who’s three and put her in a soccer league, I’m going to pay 99 bucks or whatever for her to be in that league. So same thing, if we charge if we started charging for it, it would have this like SAS business that was going to generate I thought millions of dollars a year, but maybe 10, it’s probably never hundreds. And so that was the problem. I was like, oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, um it’ll get to maybe like 10 million a year, maybe 20 million a year in revenue, but never really beyond that. And Dude, isn’t that fucked up? That’s not what we signed up for. It’s not the way that the game is played. I know, but that sucks. It’s not it doesn’t suck because I agree that that well, that’s just the game. That just sucks at that because That’s not enough. Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a sim, maybe, a similar-ish amount of wealth as Michael Birch. Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, but it wasn’t structured that way. And I know, that sucks. And so once once I kind of got that feeling and I was six or seven years in to the whole Monkey Inferno experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, let’s sell this and let’s shake things up. You know, I had a I was lucky, a friend, Suli, like like on the outside, everything was amazing. Office was amazing. Dude, when I met you, product was cool. You were like, I’m making 150 grand a year and I’m like, oh my god, you’re like the wealthiest person I’ve ever met. It’s like, you have $150,000 a year. That’s crazy. And you’re only in your 20s. I remember you told me that and I was like shocked. I was like, and you have this sick office. Like, you’re set. It felt that way at the time. And then over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, better, and you’re like, oh man, 100 I was making 160. 160, that’s nothing. Like, I’m way underpaid and and in general, I was just like, I I just wanted to get a win. I don’t think you’re underpaid. Well, for a startup founder, I wasn’t underpaid, but if I just worked at a job, I would have Correct. Right. So it’s all the equity. The the equity was what mattered. And so, um, I own 20% of that of that of of the business. And so, anyways, we decided to sell and then that was, you know, a crazy process and so Life changing? Yeah, for sure. Um Financially life changing? Yeah, cuz go from no millions to millions is, you know, that’s life changing. And you actually stayed there. Am so Amazon bought the company and you stayed there for two years, right? Yeah. Would you and are you happy you stayed? Um, like I don’t really think about the past. Like what’s like, am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. Like, you know, fine with it. In retrospect, if I could go advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two. Um, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. Like I popped out two kids and was able to like spend time with them and didn’t have to stress about my my own business. Yeah, you collectively had like 10 months of paternity leave. What’s that? I mean, you had like 10 months of paternity leave. No, actually, stupidly, I only took two weeks with the first kid. What were you thinking? I did I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like at a big company, it’s like, oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares and now’s the critical time and and also being at home, honestly, as a like, being at home is harder than being at work. So it was like actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But like I should have taken more time and I just sort of like didn’t. And I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don’t take it’s like the company has unlimited time off, you don’t take it. Uh you you could take this much for paternity, maternity. It’s like, oh, you feel pressure to kind of short because you want to get back to your team or your whatever, stupid. Um, but the second year, I was way more chill and basically When did When did you start the e-com thing? Um, somewhere around that time. And you we don’t talk about it on purpose. Yeah. So we won’t talk about it much. But what do you want to say anything about it? Uh, It’s a big business. I think I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll start talking about it soon. Um, maybe that’ll be a special episode. You want to say how big it is? Yeah, it does like 15 million a year, profitable. Damn, dude. Bootstrapped. I remember you told me you were doing it and I was like, why would you ever do that? And are you happy that you did that or not? Same thing. In retrospect, I would go advise myself, don’t do this path. Because you already had like clout a little bit. And now, so during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast, and then that’s when the Hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. But this podcast, people ask me how to grow a pod and I’m like, I don’t know because Sean like started doing it right away and it kind of worked the day one. Like, we got like, I think the first episode was 60,000 downloads. The first one was just, hey, there’s a new thing and people will go check it out, right? This is different. Yeah, but it still was a good start. But it got to a good start and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It like took off in a better way. And then just time, time like time is basically. It’s been three years. Yeah. And so the thing I’ve learned, so so why do I say I would go back and do it differently is because I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely. So for example, um, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn’t want to throw my all into that. Um, that wasn’t like going to be my my my baby, my future was to be an employee at Twitch. Uh, I wanted to earn out the deal and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So there was like a desperation to secure the bag. Which by the way, is the right move, I think. Maybe. Like I think selling out is the way to go. I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time and I was like, what would you do if you were me? He’s like, I would quit on day one. I was like, I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy and then I would quit on day one. I go, why? Like, it’s so much money. If I just stay even one year, one year, no big deal. And he’s like, uh, he goes, the surface area of opportunity is too wide. Who said that? Suli. And That’s so smart, man. Cuz I went, I remember we went for a walk and we walked for like an hour and a half in the mission. We just walked back and forth through the mission on the streets and it was like everything’s closing, mission’s ghetto as hell. And we were just like, imagine like pacing furiously. We were doing that and we were just talking through what’s next. And I said, I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast. He’s like, a podcast? I was like, yeah. I was like, I think if I could just be in a million people’s earballs every morning, that’s like that would be the most fulfilling thing for me and it would be awesome. That would just be like 20% of the way there, maybe. Yeah, like I don’t know. A million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning. That aggressive. But like, you know, if you just keep going for five years, it could happen. Like that that that’s realistic now. But I remember thinking, that’s what I want to do and I couldn’t explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it. Which is in retrospect, it’s a really good signal. Like that’s the type of stuff you should go do. And I did that. Um, but then the other thing he was just like, yeah, I would just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide. And I looked at it and like, uh, and I was like, well, what would I do if it wasn’t this? And he’s like, again, the surface area is so wide. Anything. And I was like, give me an example. He goes, all right, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I’ll co-found this with you. And he told And he totally sold you into it. Because the Suli was all he had just sold an e-com business that he had just No, no, this is a different idea. Not even the e-com business. This is a different thing. He goes, he goes, in e-commerce, there’s this company called Klaviyo. They’re uh email sending company. They’re like worth billions of dollars. Yeah, and they were really taking off. He goes, Klaviyo for SMS. And I go, doesn’t Klaviyo do SMS? He goes, no. I go, won’t they? He goes, yeah, they probably will. Uh, aren’t there these other companies? Yeah, sure, but he’s like, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I’m telling you, I’m in e-com and SMS is like, it’s like email, but better. People open it. And he’s like, It’s like a 90% open rate. He’s like, you just need to build like, if we just build SMS for e-com, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter and this will be a valuable company. And I was like, okay, what uh what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’ve done, I’ve seen some of the way some of our other friends have done. I’m like, there’s tons of ways to get things done. Um, what was the final thing that sold? The final thing that sold was we after pivot after pivot after pivot, we got to a thing that was like a esports app. So basically, esports is this like trend where people are playing video games competitively. And back then it was just starting. Uh, it’s like it’s it’s still just starting. It’s like it was around, but whatever. But it was really just starting. I mean, Twitch was like only six or seven years old at the time. No, no, this uh yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Twitch was Twitch was around. Twitch was big, but it wasn’t that wasn’t really the thing. It was basically the the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We basically built an app that was like the way a high schooler could go and play, you could sign up for basketball or soccer or whatever, like some game, you could go play in a league for it. And you would pay your league dues and like there’s little league baseball and then there’s like, you know, AAU sports. There’s all these youth leagues. Youth sports is a big deal. There was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. And so we had had a bunch of technology, we’d already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming and so we took that all that tech and we made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was like Fortnite was ripping. And there were more people that played Fortnite in the world than played basketball. And so we were like, that’s crazy. This has more players, but there’s no organized league. There’s only the pros. There’s no like amateurs. Um, and so we created the high school Fortnite league and we had an app that you would sign up, you’d make your team, you could invite friends, and then you would compete against other teams and you get like ranked, you play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it would make it turned into like a spectator sport. And how big did that get? It it was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe six or nine months into that version of it. It maybe had 10 to 25,000 players, active players at the time. Um, which was big because it like in youth like, you know, in theory, those people would pay us like you if I go take my daughter who’s three and put her in a soccer league, I’m going to pay 99 bucks or whatever for her to be in that league. So same thing, if we charge if we started charging for it, it would have this like SAS business that was going to generate I thought millions of dollars a year, but maybe 10, it’s probably never hundreds. And so that was the problem. I was like, oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, um it’ll get to maybe like 10 million a year, maybe 20 million a year in revenue, but never really beyond that. And Dude, isn’t that fucked up? That’s not what we signed up for. It’s not the way that the game is played. I know, but that sucks. It’s not it doesn’t suck because I agree that that well, that’s just the game. That just sucks at that because That’s not enough. Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a sim, maybe, a similar-ish amount of wealth as Michael Birch. Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, but it wasn’t structured that way. And I know, that sucks. And so once once I kind of got that feeling and I was six or seven years in to the whole Monkey Inferno experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, let’s sell this and let’s shake things up. You know, I had a I was lucky, a friend, Suli, like like on the outside, everything was amazing. Office was amazing. Dude, when I met you, product was cool. You were like, I’m making 150 grand a year and I’m like, oh my god, you’re like the wealthiest person I’ve ever met. It’s like, you have $150,000 a year. That’s crazy. And you’re only in your 20s. I remember you told me that and I was like shocked. I was like, and you have this sick office. Like, you’re set. It felt that way at the time. And then over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, better, and you’re like, oh man, 100 I was making 160. 160, that’s nothing. Like, I’m way underpaid and and in general, I was just like, I I just wanted to get a win. I don’t think you’re underpaid. Well, for a startup founder, I wasn’t underpaid, but if I just worked at a job, I would have Correct. Right. So it’s all the equity. The the equity was what mattered. And so, um, I own 20% of that of that of of the business. And so, anyways, we decided to sell and then that was, you know, a crazy process and so Life changing? Yeah, for sure. Um Financially life changing? Yeah, cuz go from no millions to millions is, you know, that’s life changing. And you actually stayed there. Am so Amazon bought the company and you stayed there for two years, right? Yeah. Would you and are you happy you stayed? Um, like I don’t really think about the past. Like what’s like, am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. Like, you know, fine with it. In retrospect, if I could go advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two. Um, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. Like I popped out two kids and was able to like spend time with them and didn’t have to stress about my my own business. Yeah, you collectively had like 10 months of paternity leave. What’s that? I mean, you had like 10 months of paternity leave. No, actually, stupidly, I only took two weeks with the first kid. What were you thinking? I did I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like at a big company, it’s like, oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares and now’s the critical time and and also being at home, honestly, as a like, being at home is harder than being at work. So it was like actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But like I should have taken more time and I just sort of like didn’t. And I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don’t take it’s like the company has unlimited time off, you don’t take it. Uh you you could take this much for paternity, maternity. It’s like, oh, you feel pressure to kind of short because you want to get back to your team or your whatever, stupid. Um, but the second year, I was way more chill and basically When did When did you start the e-com thing? Um, somewhere around that time. And you we don’t talk about it on purpose. Yeah. So we won’t talk about it much. But what do you want to say anything about it? Uh, It’s a big business. I think I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll start talking about it soon. Um, maybe that’ll be a special episode. You want to say how big it is? Yeah, it does like 15 million a year, profitable. Damn, dude. Bootstrapped. I remember you told me you were doing it and I was like, why would you ever do that? And are you happy that you did that or not? Same thing. In retrospect, I would go advise myself, don’t do this path. Because you already had like clout a little bit. And now, so during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast, and then that’s when the Hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. But this podcast, people ask me how to grow a pod and I’m like, I don’t know because Sean like started doing it right away and it kind of worked the day one. Like, we got like, I think the first episode was 60,000 downloads. The first one was just, hey, there’s a new thing and people will go check it out, right? This is different. Yeah, but it still was a good start. But it got to a good start and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It like took off in a better way. And then just time, time like time is basically. It’s been three years. Yeah. And so the thing I’ve learned, so so why do I say I would go back and do it differently is because I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely. So for example, um, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn’t want to throw my all into that. Um, that wasn’t like going to be my my my baby, my future was to be an employee at Twitch. Uh, I wanted to earn out the deal and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So there was like a desperation to secure the bag. Which by the way, is the right move, I think. Maybe. Like I think selling out is the way to go. I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time and I was like, what would you do if you were me? He’s like, I would quit on day one. I was like, I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy and then I would quit on day one. I go, why? Like, it’s so much money. If I just stay even one year, one year, no big deal. And he’s like, uh, he goes, the surface area of opportunity is too wide. Who said that? Suli. And That’s so smart, man. Cuz I went, I remember we went for a walk and we walked for like an hour and a half in the mission. We just walked back and forth through the mission on the streets and it was like everything’s closing, mission’s ghetto as hell. And we were just like, imagine like pacing furiously. We were doing that and we were just talking through what’s next. And I said, I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast. He’s like, a podcast? I was like, yeah. I was like, I think if I could just be in a million people’s earballs every morning, that’s like that would be the most fulfilling thing for me and it would be awesome. That would just be like 20% of the way there, maybe. Yeah, like I don’t know. A million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning. That aggressive. But like, you know, if you just keep going for five years, it could happen. Like that that that’s realistic now. But I remember thinking, that’s what I want to do and I couldn’t explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it. Which is in retrospect, it’s a really good signal. Like that’s the type of stuff you should go do. And I did that. Um, but then the other thing he was just like, yeah, I would just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide. And I looked at it and like, uh, and I was like, well, what would I do if it wasn’t this? And he’s like, again, the surface area is so wide. Anything. And I was like, give me an example. He goes, all right, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I’ll co-found this with you. And he told And he totally sold you into it. Because the Suli was all he had just sold an e-com business that he had just No, no, this is a different idea. Not even the e-com business. This is a different thing. He goes, he goes, in e-commerce, there’s this company called Klaviyo. They’re uh email sending company. They’re like worth billions of dollars. Yeah, and they were really taking off. He goes, Klaviyo for SMS. And I go, doesn’t Klaviyo do SMS? He goes, no. I go, won’t they? He goes, yeah, they probably will. Uh, aren’t there these other companies? Yeah, sure, but he’s like, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I’m telling you, I’m in e-com and SMS is like, it’s like email, but better. People open it. And he’s like, It’s like a 90% open rate. He’s like, you just need to build like, if we just build SMS for e-com, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter and this will be a valuable company. And I was like, okay, what uh what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’ve done, I’ve seen some of the way some of our other friends have done. I’m like, there’s tons of ways to get things done. Um, what was the final thing that sold? The final thing that sold was we after pivot after pivot after pivot, we got to a thing that was like a esports app. So basically, esports is this like trend where people are playing video games competitively. And back then it was just starting. Uh, it’s like it’s it’s still just starting. It’s like it was around, but whatever. But it was really just starting. I mean, Twitch was like only six or seven years old at the time. No, no, this uh yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Twitch was Twitch was around. Twitch was big, but it wasn’t that wasn’t really the thing. It was basically the the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We basically built an app that was like the way a high schooler could go and play, you could sign up for basketball or soccer or whatever, like some game, you could go play in a league for it. And you would pay your league dues and like there’s little league baseball and then there’s like, you know, AAU sports. There’s all these youth leagues. Youth sports is a big deal. There was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. And so we had had a bunch of technology, we’d already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming and so we took that all that tech and we made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was like Fortnite was ripping. And there were more people that played Fortnite in the world than played basketball. And so we were like, that’s crazy. This has more players, but there’s no organized league. There’s only the pros. There’s no like amateurs. Um, and so we created the high school Fortnite league and we had an app that you would sign up, you’d make your team, you could invite friends, and then you would compete against other teams and you get like ranked, you play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it would make it turned into like a spectator sport. And how big did that get? It it was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe six or nine months into that version of it. It maybe had 10 to 25,000 players, active players at the time. Um, which was big because it like in youth like, you know, in theory, those people would pay us like you if I go take my daughter who’s three and put her in a soccer league, I’m going to pay 99 bucks or whatever for her to be in that league. So same thing, if we charge if we started charging for it, it would have this like SAS business that was going to generate I thought millions of dollars a year, but maybe 10, it’s probably never hundreds. And so that was the problem. I was like, oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, um it’ll get to maybe like 10 million a year, maybe 20 million a year in revenue, but never really beyond that. And Dude, isn’t that fucked up? That’s not what we signed up for. It’s not the way that the game is played. I know, but that sucks. It’s not it doesn’t suck because I agree that that well, that’s just the game. That just sucks at that because That’s not enough. Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a sim, maybe, a similar-ish amount of wealth as Michael Birch. Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, but it wasn’t structured that way. And I know, that sucks. And so once once I kind of got that feeling and I was six or seven years in to the whole Monkey Inferno experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, let’s sell this and let’s shake things up. You know, I had a I was lucky, a friend, Suli, like like on the outside, everything was amazing. Office was amazing. Dude, when I met you, product was cool. You were like, I’m making 150 grand a year and I’m like, oh my god, you’re like the wealthiest person I’ve ever met. It’s like, you have $150,000 a year. That’s crazy. And you’re only in your 20s. I remember you told me that and I was like shocked. I was like, and you have this sick office. Like, you’re set. It felt that way at the time. And then over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, better, and you’re like, oh man, 100 I was making 160. 160, that’s nothing. Like, I’m way underpaid and and in general, I was just like, I I just wanted to get a win. I don’t think you’re underpaid. Well, for a startup founder, I wasn’t underpaid, but if I just worked at a job, I would have Correct. Right. So it’s all the equity. The the equity was what mattered. And so, um, I own 20% of that of that of of the business. And so, anyways, we decided to sell and then that was, you know, a crazy process and so Life changing? Yeah, for sure. Um Financially life changing? Yeah, cuz go from no millions to millions is, you know, that’s life changing. And you actually stayed there. Am so Amazon bought the company and you stayed there for two years, right? Yeah. Would you and are you happy you stayed? Um, like I don’t really think about the past. Like what’s like, am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. Like, you know, fine with it. In retrospect, if I could go advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two. Um, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. Like I popped out two kids and was able to like spend time with them and didn’t have to stress about my my own business. Yeah, you collectively had like 10 months of paternity leave. What’s that? I mean, you had like 10 months of paternity leave. No, actually, stupidly, I only took two weeks with the first kid. What were you thinking? I did I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like at a big company, it’s like, oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares and now’s the critical time and and also being at home, honestly, as a like, being at home is harder than being at work. So it was like actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But like I should have taken more time and I just sort of like didn’t. And I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don’t take it’s like the company has unlimited time off, you don’t take it. Uh you you could take this much for paternity, maternity. It’s like, oh, you feel pressure to kind of short because you want to get back to your team or your whatever, stupid. Um, but the second year, I was way more chill and basically When did When did you start the e-com thing? Um, somewhere around that time. And you we don’t talk about it on purpose. Yeah. So we won’t talk about it much. But what do you want to say anything about it? Uh, It’s a big business. I think I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll start talking about it soon. Um, maybe that’ll be a special episode. You want to say how big it is? Yeah, it does like 15 million a year, profitable. Damn, dude. Bootstrapped. I remember you told me you were doing it and I was like, why would you ever do that? And are you happy that you did that or not? Same thing. In retrospect, I would go advise myself, don’t do this path. Because you already had like clout a little bit. And now, so during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast, and then that’s when the Hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. But this podcast, people ask me how to grow a pod and I’m like, I don’t know because Sean like started doing it right away and it kind of worked the day one. Like, we got like, I think the first episode was 60,000 downloads. The first one was just, hey, there’s a new thing and people will go check it out, right? This is different. Yeah, but it still was a good start. But it got to a good start and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It like took off in a better way. And then just time, time like time is basically. It’s been three years. Yeah. And so the thing I’ve learned, so so why do I say I would go back and do it differently is because I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely. So for example, um, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn’t want to throw my all into that. Um, that wasn’t like going to be my my my baby, my future was to be an employee at Twitch. Uh, I wanted to earn out the deal and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So there was like a desperation to secure the bag. Which by the way, is the right move, I think. Maybe. Like I think selling out is the way to go. I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time and I was like, what would you do if you were me? He’s like, I would quit on day one. I was like, I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy and then I would quit on day one. I go, why? Like, it’s so much money. If I just stay even one year, one year, no big deal. And he’s like, uh, he goes, the surface area of opportunity is too wide. Who said that? Suli. And That’s so smart, man. Cuz I went, I remember we went for a walk and we walked for like an hour and a half in the mission. We just walked back and forth through the mission on the streets and it was like everything’s closing, mission’s ghetto as hell. And we were just like, imagine like pacing furiously. We were doing that and we were just talking through what’s next. And I said, I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast. He’s like, a podcast? I was like, yeah. I was like, I think if I could just be in a million people’s earballs every morning, that’s like that would be the most fulfilling thing for me and it would be awesome. That would just be like 20% of the way there, maybe. Yeah, like I don’t know. A million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning. That aggressive. But like, you know, if you just keep going for five years, it could happen. Like that that that’s realistic now. But I remember thinking, that’s what I want to do and I couldn’t explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it. Which is in retrospect, it’s a really good signal. Like that’s the type of stuff you should go do. And I did that. Um, but then the other thing he was just like, yeah, I would just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide. And I looked at it and like, uh, and I was like, well, what would I do if it wasn’t this? And he’s like, again, the surface area is so wide. Anything. And I was like, give me an example. He goes, all right, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I’ll co-found this with you. And he told And he totally sold you into it. Because the Suli was all he had just sold an e-com business that he had just No, no, this is a different idea. Not even the e-com business. This is a different thing. He goes, he goes, in e-commerce, there’s this company called Klaviyo. They’re uh email sending company. They’re like worth billions of dollars. Yeah, and they were really taking off. He goes, Klaviyo for SMS. And I go, doesn’t Klaviyo do SMS? He goes, no. I go, won’t they? He goes, yeah, they probably will. Uh, aren’t there these other companies? Yeah, sure, but he’s like, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I’m telling you, I’m in e-com and SMS is like, it’s like email, but better. People open it. And he’s like, It’s like a 90% open rate. He’s like, you just need to build like, if we just build SMS for e-com, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter and this will be a valuable company. And I was like, okay, what uh what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’ve done, I’ve seen some of the way some of our other friends have done. I’m like, there’s tons of ways to get things done. Um, what was the final thing that sold? The final thing that sold was we after pivot after pivot after pivot, we got to a thing that was like a esports app. So basically, esports is this like trend where people are playing video games competitively. And back then it was just starting. Uh, it’s like it’s it’s still just starting. It’s like it was around, but whatever. But it was really just starting. I mean, Twitch was like only six or seven years old at the time. No, no, this uh yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Twitch was Twitch was around. Twitch was big, but it wasn’t that wasn’t really the thing. It was basically the the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We basically built an app that was like the way a high schooler could go and play, you could sign up for basketball or soccer or whatever, like some game, you could go play in a league for it. And you would pay your league dues and like there’s little league baseball and then there’s like, you know, AAU sports. There’s all these youth leagues. Youth sports is a big deal. There was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. And so we had had a bunch of technology, we’d already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming and so we took that all that tech and we made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was like Fortnite was ripping. And there were more people that played Fortnite in the world than played basketball. And so we were like, that’s crazy. This has more players, but there’s no organized league. There’s only the pros. There’s no like amateurs. Um, and so we created the high school Fortnite league and we had an app that you would sign up, you’d make your team, you could invite friends, and then you would compete against other teams and you get like ranked, you play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it would make it turned into like a spectator sport. And how big did that get? It it was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe six or nine months into that version of it. It maybe had 10 to 25,000 players, active players at the time. Um, which was big because it like in youth like, you know, in theory, those people would pay us like you if I go take my daughter who’s three and put her in a soccer league, I’m going to pay 99 bucks or whatever for her to be in that league. So same thing, if we charge if we started charging for it, it would have this like SAS business that was going to generate I thought millions of dollars a year, but maybe 10, it’s probably never hundreds. And so that was the problem. I was like, oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, um it’ll get to maybe like 10 million a year, maybe 20 million a year in revenue, but never really beyond that. And Dude, isn’t that fucked up? That’s not what we signed up for. It’s not the way that the game is played. I know, but that sucks. It’s not it doesn’t suck because I agree that that well, that’s just the game. That just sucks at that because That’s not enough. Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a sim, maybe, a similar-ish amount of wealth as Michael Birch. Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, but it wasn’t structured that way. And I know, that sucks. And so once once I kind of got that feeling and I was six or seven years in to the whole Monkey Inferno experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, let’s sell this and let’s shake things up. You know, I had a I was lucky, a friend, Suli, like like on the outside, everything was amazing. Office was amazing. Dude, when I met you, product was cool. You were like, I’m making 150 grand a year and I’m like, oh my god, you’re like the wealthiest person I’ve ever met. It’s like, you have $150,000 a year. That’s crazy. And you’re only in your 20s. I remember you told me that and I was like shocked. I was like, and you have this sick office. Like, you’re set. It felt that way at the time. And then over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, better, and you’re like, oh man, 100 I was making 160. 160, that’s nothing. Like, I’m way underpaid and and in general, I was just like, I I just wanted to get a win. I don’t think you’re underpaid. Well, for a startup founder, I wasn’t underpaid, but if I just worked at a job, I would have Correct. Right. So it’s all the equity. The the equity was what mattered. And so, um, I own 20% of that of that of of the business. And so, anyways, we decided to sell and then that was, you know, a crazy process and so Life changing? Yeah, for sure. Um Financially life changing? Yeah, cuz go from no millions to millions is, you know, that’s life changing. And you actually stayed there. Am so Amazon bought the company and you stayed there for two years, right? Yeah. Would you and are you happy you stayed? Um, like I don’t really think about the past. Like what’s like, am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. Like, you know, fine with it. In retrospect, if I could go advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two. Um, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. Like I popped out two kids and was able to like spend time with them and didn’t have to stress about my my own business. Yeah, you collectively had like 10 months of paternity leave. What’s that? I mean, you had like 10 months of paternity leave. No, actually, stupidly, I only took two weeks with the first kid. What were you thinking? I did I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like at a big company, it’s like, oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares and now’s the critical time and and also being at home, honestly, as a like, being at home is harder than being at work. So it was like actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But like I should have taken more time and I just sort of like didn’t. And I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don’t take it’s like the company has unlimited time off, you don’t take it. Uh you you could take this much for paternity, maternity. It’s like, oh, you feel pressure to kind of short because you want to get back to your team or your whatever, stupid. Um, but the second year, I was way more chill and basically When did When did you start the e-com thing? Um, somewhere around that time. And you we don’t talk about it on purpose. Yeah. So we won’t talk about it much. But what do you want to say anything about it? Uh, It’s a big business. I think I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll start talking about it soon. Um, maybe that’ll be a special episode. You want to say how big it is? Yeah, it does like 15 million a year, profitable. Damn, dude. Bootstrapped. I remember you told me you were doing it and I was like, why would you ever do that? And are you happy that you did that or not? Same thing. In retrospect, I would go advise myself, don’t do this path. Because you already had like clout a little bit. And now, so during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast, and then that’s when the Hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. But this podcast, people ask me how to grow a pod and I’m like, I don’t know because Sean like started doing it right away and it kind of worked the day one. Like, we got like, I think the first episode was 60,000 downloads. The first one was just, hey, there’s a new thing and people will go check it out, right? This is different. Yeah, but it still was a good start. But it got to a good start and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It like took off in a better way. And then just time, time like time is basically. It’s been three years. Yeah. And so the thing I’ve learned, so so why do I say I would go back and do it differently is because I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely. So for example, um, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn’t want to throw my all into that. Um, that wasn’t like going to be my my my baby, my future was to be an employee at Twitch. Uh, I wanted to earn out the deal and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So there was like a desperation to secure the bag. Which by the way, is the right move, I think. Maybe. Like I think selling out is the way to go. I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time and I was like, what would you do if you were me? He’s like, I would quit on day one. I was like, I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy and then I would quit on day one. I go, why? Like, it’s so much money. If I just stay even one year, one year, no big deal. And he’s like, uh, he goes, the surface area of opportunity is too wide. Who said that? Suli. And That’s so smart, man. Cuz I went, I remember we went for a walk and we walked for like an hour and a half in the mission. We just walked back and forth through the mission on the streets and it was like everything’s closing, mission’s ghetto as hell. And we were just like, imagine like pacing furiously. We were doing that and we were just talking through what’s next. And I said, I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast. He’s like, a podcast? I was like, yeah. I was like, I think if I could just be in a million people’s earballs every morning, that’s like that would be the most fulfilling thing for me and it would be awesome. That would just be like 20% of the way there, maybe. Yeah, like I don’t know. A million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning. That aggressive. But like, you know, if you just keep going for five years, it could happen. Like that that that’s realistic now. But I remember thinking, that’s what I want to do and I couldn’t explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it. Which is in retrospect, it’s a really good signal. Like that’s the type of stuff you should go do. And I did that. Um, but then the other thing he was just like, yeah, I would just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide. And I looked at it and like, uh, and I was like, well, what would I do if it wasn’t this? And he’s like, again, the surface area is so wide. Anything. And I was like, give me an example. He goes, all right, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I’ll co-found this with you. And he told And he totally sold you into it. Because the Suli was all he had just sold an e-com business that he had just No, no, this is a different idea. Not even the e-com business. This is a different thing. He goes, he goes, in e-commerce, there’s this company called Klaviyo. They’re uh email sending company. They’re like worth billions of dollars. Yeah, and they were really taking off. He goes, Klaviyo for SMS. And I go, doesn’t Klaviyo do SMS? He goes, no. I go, won’t they? He goes, yeah, they probably will. Uh, aren’t there these other companies? Yeah, sure, but he’s like, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I’m telling you, I’m in e-com and SMS is like, it’s like email, but better. People open it. And he’s like, It’s like a 90% open rate. He’s like, you just need to build like, if we just build SMS for e-com, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter and this will be a valuable company. And I was like, okay, what uh what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’ve done, I’ve seen some of the way some of our other friends have done. I’m like, there’s tons of ways to get things done. Um, what was the final thing that sold? The final thing that sold was we after pivot after pivot after pivot, we got to a thing that was like a esports app. So basically, esports is this like trend where people are playing video games competitively. And back then it was just starting. Uh, it’s like it’s it’s still just starting. It’s like it was around, but whatever. But it was really just starting. I mean, Twitch was like only six or seven years old at the time. No, no, this uh yeah, I guess, I don’t know. Twitch was Twitch was around. Twitch was big, but it wasn’t that wasn’t really the thing. It was basically the the last idea we had, the one that we got acquired for. We basically built an app that was like the way a high schooler could go and play, you could sign up for basketball or soccer or whatever, like some game, you could go play in a league for it. And you would pay your league dues and like there’s little league baseball and then there’s like, you know, AAU sports. There’s all these youth leagues. Youth sports is a big deal. There was no youth esports. That was the whole idea. And so we had had a bunch of technology, we’d already been doing stuff in streaming and gaming and so we took that all that tech and we made an app that let any high schooler sign up and play in a Fortnite league. Fortnite was the big game at the time. It was like Fortnite was ripping. And there were more people that played Fortnite in the world than played basketball. And so we were like, that’s crazy. This has more players, but there’s no organized league. There’s only the pros. There’s no like amateurs. Um, and so we created the high school Fortnite league and we had an app that you would sign up, you’d make your team, you could invite friends, and then you would compete against other teams and you get like ranked, you play in tournaments, and all of it was streamed, which was cool because it would make it turned into like a spectator sport. And how big did that get? It it was the biggest esports league, but it was small overall. We were only maybe six or nine months into that version of it. It maybe had 10 to 25,000 players, active players at the time. Um, which was big because it like in youth like, you know, in theory, those people would pay us like you if I go take my daughter who’s three and put her in a soccer league, I’m going to pay 99 bucks or whatever for her to be in that league. So same thing, if we charge if we started charging for it, it would have this like SAS business that was going to generate I thought millions of dollars a year, but maybe 10, it’s probably never hundreds. And so that was the problem. I was like, oh, if we do this really well and we succeed at this, um it’ll get to maybe like 10 million a year, maybe 20 million a year in revenue, but never really beyond that. And Dude, isn’t that fucked up? That’s not what we signed up for. It’s not the way that the game is played. I know, but that sucks. It’s not it doesn’t suck because I agree that that well, that’s just the game. That just sucks at that because That’s not enough. Yeah, if you owned 100% of that, you could have made a sim, maybe, a similar-ish amount of wealth as Michael Birch. Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, but it wasn’t structured that way. And I know, that sucks. And so once once I kind of got that feeling and I was six or seven years in to the whole Monkey Inferno experiment with creating products with that same team, same group, it was like, let’s sell this and let’s shake things up. You know, I had a I was lucky, a friend, Suli, like like on the outside, everything was amazing. Office was amazing. Dude, when I met you, product was cool. You were like, I’m making 150 grand a year and I’m like, oh my god, you’re like the wealthiest person I’ve ever met. It’s like, you have $150,000 a year. That’s crazy. And you’re only in your 20s. I remember you told me that and I was like shocked. I was like, and you have this sick office. Like, you’re set. It felt that way at the time. And then over time, your expectations change. You meet other people who are doing better, better, and you’re like, oh man, 100 I was making 160. 160, that’s nothing. Like, I’m way underpaid and and in general, I was just like, I I just wanted to get a win. I don’t think you’re underpaid. Well, for a startup founder, I wasn’t underpaid, but if I just worked at a job, I would have Correct. Right. So it’s all the equity. The the equity was what mattered. And so, um, I own 20% of that of that of of the business. And so, anyways, we decided to sell and then that was, you know, a crazy process and so Life changing? Yeah, for sure. Um Financially life changing? Yeah, cuz go from no millions to millions is, you know, that’s life changing. And you actually stayed there. Am so Amazon bought the company and you stayed there for two years, right? Yeah. Would you and are you happy you stayed? Um, like I don’t really think about the past. Like what’s like, am I happy I stayed? Yeah, sure. Like, you know, fine with it. In retrospect, if I could go advise myself now, I would have stayed only one year. I stayed two. Um, but I also got a bunch of other benefits. Like I popped out two kids and was able to like spend time with them and didn’t have to stress about my my own business. Yeah, you collectively had like 10 months of paternity leave. What’s that? I mean, you had like 10 months of paternity leave. No, actually, stupidly, I only took two weeks with the first kid. What were you thinking? I did I fell into all the traps you could fall into. Like at a big company, it’s like, oh, they put me on this special project and the CEO really loves it and cares and now’s the critical time and and also being at home, honestly, as a like, being at home is harder than being at work. So it was like actually kind of easier to go back to work in a way. But like I should have taken more time and I just sort of like didn’t. And I think a lot of employees fall into this trap in companies. They don’t take it’s like the company has unlimited time off, you don’t take it. Uh you you could take this much for paternity, maternity. It’s like, oh, you feel pressure to kind of short because you want to get back to your team or your whatever, stupid. Um, but the second year, I was way more chill and basically When did When did you start the e-com thing? Um, somewhere around that time. And you we don’t talk about it on purpose. Yeah. So we won’t talk about it much. But what do you want to say anything about it? Uh, It’s a big business. I think I think we’ll yeah, I think we’ll start talking about it soon. Um, maybe that’ll be a special episode. You want to say how big it is? Yeah, it does like 15 million a year, profitable. Damn, dude. Bootstrapped. I remember you told me you were doing it and I was like, why would you ever do that? And are you happy that you did that or not? Same thing. In retrospect, I would go advise myself, don’t do this path. Because you already had like clout a little bit. And now, so during the sale of the first company, you started this podcast, and then that’s when the Hustle and this podcast kind of collaborated. But this podcast, people ask me how to grow a pod and I’m like, I don’t know because Sean like started doing it right away and it kind of worked the day one. Like, we got like, I think the first episode was 60,000 downloads. The first one was just, hey, there’s a new thing and people will go check it out, right? This is different. Yeah, but it still was a good start. But it got to a good start and then when we switched it to this format, it got even better. It like took off in a better way. And then just time, time like time is basically. It’s been three years. Yeah. And so the thing I’ve learned, so so why do I say I would go back and do it differently is because I now realize something I already knew, but I didn’t have the guts to act on, which was that at any given time, you’re really only going to get to throw your all into one thing. And so, why not throw, like, if you’re going to do that, like, choose really wisely. So for example, um, when we got acquired by Twitch, I didn’t want to throw my all into that. Um, that wasn’t like going to be my my my baby, my future was to be an employee at Twitch. Uh, I wanted to earn out the deal and I was feeling like I needed to get that check, right? So there was like a desperation to secure the bag. Which by the way, is the right move, I think. Maybe. Like I think selling out is the way to go. I had asked a buddy who was more successful at the time and I was like, what would you do if you were me? He’s like, I would quit on day one. I was like, I would sell so that your team is fine and your investors are happy and then I would quit on day one. I go, why? Like, it’s so much money. If I just stay even one year, one year, no big deal. And he’s like, uh, he goes, the surface area of opportunity is too wide. Who said that? Suli. And That’s so smart, man. Cuz I went, I remember we went for a walk and we walked for like an hour and a half in the mission. We just walked back and forth through the mission on the streets and it was like everything’s closing, mission’s ghetto as hell. And we were just like, imagine like pacing furiously. We were doing that and we were just talking through what’s next. And I said, I really want to do this pod. I want to create a podcast. He’s like, a podcast? I was like, yeah. I was like, I think if I could just be in a million people’s earballs every morning, that’s like that would be the most fulfilling thing for me and it would be awesome. That would just be like 20% of the way there, maybe. Yeah, like I don’t know. A million is now I realize like very aggressive of like every morning. That aggressive. But like, you know, if you just keep going for five years, it could happen. Like that that that’s realistic now. But I remember thinking, that’s what I want to do and I couldn’t explain why. I was just sure I wanted to do it. Which is in retrospect, it’s a really good signal. Like that’s the type of stuff you should go do. And I did that. Um, but then the other thing he was just like, yeah, I would just quit from day one. The surface area of opportunity is too wide. And I looked at it and like, uh, and I was like, well, what would I do if it wasn’t this? And he’s like, again, the surface area is so wide. Anything. And I was like, give me an example. He goes, all right, I got a company for you. We could do right now. I’ll co-found this with you. And he told And he totally sold you into it. Because the Suli was all he had just sold an e-com business that he had just No, no, this is a different idea. Not even the e-com business. This is a different thing. He goes, he goes, in e-commerce, there’s this company called Klaviyo. They’re uh email sending company. They’re like worth billions of dollars. Yeah, and they were really taking off. He goes, Klaviyo for SMS. And I go, doesn’t Klaviyo do SMS? He goes, no. I go, won’t they? He goes, yeah, they probably will. Uh, aren’t there these other companies? Yeah, sure, but he’s like, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I’m telling you, I’m in e-com and SMS is like, it’s like email, but better. People open it. And he’s like, It’s like a 90% open rate. He’s like, you just need to build like, if we just build SMS for e-com, I think we can go get like 100 brands that matter and this will be a valuable company. And I was like, okay, what uh what’s the software? And he’s like, you pick. You pick. And so I’m like, it’s my first job interview ever. I’ve never interviewed for a job and I go and I’m like, basically dating a Angelina Jolie. Like, Stripe is my first job interview. And I’m like, not prepared at all. And he’s like, what’s a piece of software you like? And I’m like, uh, I don’t know, like, um, so I’m trying to think of what software other people like rather than what I like. So I was like, uh, Basecamp by 37signals. I knew that was like a popular, those guys were popular, so I thought You didn’t even use it, though. And I didn’t use it, though. So I didn’t know what to say. But now I’m pot committed. I didn’t, and I didn’t want to admit that, hey, I just picked a random company that I don’t actually use. Like, that didn’t make any sense either. And so I’m like, fumbling and stumbling. And I No, the the the way I got messed up was I started to explain it like I would I’d be like, you know, so what I would say, if I was selling this, he goes, no, ring ring, hello, go, you’re selling this thing to me now. And I was like, oh god, and I just like I suck that. Dude, I think that’s a bullshit way to interview someone, by the way. I think that’s I think those games are stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. Like I guess, yeah, I guess I would agree. I don’t want to say it’s stupid just because I sucked at it. Like that’s not a good reason, but No, I tried doing those when I’ve interviewed people. The best way to the the best way I found interviewing someone is I just want to know if I enjoy being around you. And the only way I’m going to judge if like you’re qualified is by just looking at your history. Yeah, that’s that’s fair. Like I just want to see what you’ve done in the past and I’m going to talk to your old coworkers and then I’m just here to decide if like this is a good culture fit. I uh I heard of a somebody got this guy Kyle Samini, he’s like a a VC. He’s he put out a post or he put out some interview or whatever where he said, he’s like, yeah, there’s only one way to apply to my firm. Uh I don’t look at any resumes or reference nothing. He goes, just take one of our existing blog posts and write it better. Like write a write a better blog post than we have on our blog. You can take the same topic or a different topic. Just write an amazing blog post. And I was actually like, that’s kind of a good test as a good initial filter. I would still want to talk to the person, but like that’s a really good initial filter because when you see someone write, you see how they think. Yeah, and how how how good they are at like how good they’re writing a blog post is actually a pretty good test for a lot of things. Um, so so I’m kind of into that as a test. What was Oh my god, he’s brought milk. Is that milk or it’s a tinted glasses so it almost makes it look like eggnog. Should we uh should we start with uh with the medium or do you want to start with the light? Yeah, but do you want buffalo or sweet? Well, that’s the should we go I want buffalo. I don’t want sweet. Okay, here’s the buffalo one. We’ll do we’ll start with the buffalo. The sweet can be our like uh palette cleanser. Ugh. Nothing like eating on microphone, by the way. Yeah. Hot wings are the worst. You have any paper towels? You can hear me gnawing. All right, this is the hot ones episode of my first million. Thank you. Dude, I’m doing no milk for a while. What brand? I mean, what what restaurant? Shout out to our sponsor, Wing It, providing these wings today. Dude, I used to live in an Asian neighborhood here in San Francisco. The in the Chinese and like Hong Kong restaurants would make hot wings. They are the worst at making those hot wings. Cuz they put like bread It’s too crazy. It’s too breaded and they uh put like sticky shit on it. You know what I’m saying? You know, I don’t know what that that crack. You know that sauce that like I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dude, have you ever had a uh like lunch or dinner at like one of the Chinese restaurants in the inner Sunset? Yes. Like it’s like their hot wings are like breaded like fried chicken, but then dipped in like sticky sauces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what those are going to be. I think that’s the I hate that sticky shit. All the Chinese restaurants I go to, I was like, I was like, I don’t know what that sticky crap is, but don’t give me that, please. Like I want to know Also, I went wing in because I knew you would not want a boneless wing. Yeah, I’m not an idiot. I would have done boneless. Dude, that’s such a because I’m such a domestic cat. No, this is this is you’re like a feral cat. You know the right way to eat these is you just, well, it’s easier with the other ones, but you got to stick the whole thing in your mouth and just pull it out. Yeah, that’s like I’ve seen so many TikToks of that. Everyone who shows that is fat. 100% of people who have a strong opinion about how to eat buffalo wings are fat. It’s a healthy thing to eat. What? Wings? Mhm. This is good. This one’s not too spicy at all. What was Monkey Inferno when you applied? So I, um, I apply and it’s basically, it’s a startup studio or an idea lab. I forgot what they called themselves at the time. Basically, it was like 16 engineers, a designer, one designer, and then Michael and Zochi Birch, who were the like, the owners and the the the husband and wife couple that was married. And they were They previously sold their company for like $850 million. They sold Bebo for 850 million. This is how I do it. Dude, into the camera. Wow. Clean. Clean. Yeah, it looks like you’re having fun over there. I’m going to stick to just nibbling on the outside. It’s all good for me. I like I like my I like my my wing bones like I like my women. Clean. I thought you said in your mouth. I was like, where is it going with this? Oh, wow. Um, yeah, so Monkey Inferno was basically like, this guy’s done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him. Again, like, well, how did Chipotle start? I don’t know. Or how should we be successful like the next Chipotle? Let’s just go where Chipotle started and follow their footsteps. Same thing. I was like, this guy has built several tech companies, like maybe three or four companies that have gotten millions of users, millions of dollars, and one huge one for 850 million. And when he sold that company, that company is considered I read this article where they said, here’s the top 10 worst acquisitions of all time. Number one was Mark Cuban’s thing where he sold to Yahoo for two or three billion. Right. Number two was Bebo, which sold to AOL for like 850 or or whatever. And when he was doing that deal, he must have seen the numbers and been like, oh, Facebook’s way better. We have like three weeks to get rid of this thing. Yeah, he told me that story. Basically, he was like, yeah, Facebook was just growing super fast and they were just better. Like they were just better at what they were doing. And he’s like, we were just getting swamped with like we had all these like spam bot problems and then we had uh like, you know, this other problem. And then like what VCs wanted us to make money and this this our, you know, I heard this president, she wanted to expand and make money doing these like deals with, oh, Eminem is is doing a takeover of the homepage and like, wow, we made like half a million dollars doing that. He’s like, but The candy or the rapper? The candy. But they actually did have other stuff like they they started a reality TV show called like, I forgot what it’s called, like Joanna or something like that. Yeah, that ain’t going to work. But like at the time, MySpace was like, MySpace was one model. They were like the media company. They sold for 400 or 500 million. Bebo was looking at that, was like, okay, we can do that like Hollywood Yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, big advertising, big marketing thing. And Facebook was like, blue website, no ads, just focused on photos, engagement, growth, like all that stuff. And they were just growing like crazy because of that. And they had a more controlled growth because they were doing college to college first. So they were able to like not have all this like spam and all this other problems because they were gated by you had to have a university email address for a while. And he sells this company and he has all How much do you think he was worth after he sold? Well, they owned like 70%. So, you know, no public math, but you know, 70% of 850 million. 70% of 850 and then half to taxes. So hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. And he comes to America and he basically hires like, but he was already in America the whole time. He was he was here. He was in the literally this part of the Bay Area. Oh, I didn’t know that. So he was here. He buys a place in San Francisco and he hires 10 engineers and then they’re all just working on crazy shit. He buys seven condos, smashes down the walls to create one huge office. And it was the same office that the Beats by Dre headphones were designed in and stuff like that. So that was one part of the office. The rest were just condos. And he builds he leaves one as a condo that was there. You saw that the bedroom that was there. Upstairs. And then it puts a bar in there. He puts a like a a whole ping-pong kitchen, entertainment area, and then huge office space uh where we all worked. So day one, I get off a plane from Australia. I come straight for the airport to the office to interview and I get there a little early and right across the street was a Burlington Coat Factory. So I walked to the I walked to the Burlington Coat Factory and I’m just standing there in the Burlington Coat Factory with this with a suitcase. Yeah. And they’re like, what is this guy doing? You had a suit on? Suitcase. But what what Oh, a suitcase. What were you wearing? Yeah. I was just wearing like, you know, tech casual, you know, hoodie. Look at that like trench coat and Burlington Coat Factory. Just walking around. I’m just standing there for like half an hour. And then I walk across the street and I ring the doorbell and I go inside and I’m just like, wow. And the walls were mirrors that were one way. So you could if you were inside the restroom, you were looking at a mirror. If you were outside the restroom, you could see into the restroom or something like that. No, the other way. If you’re looking at the restroom, it looked like a mirror. If you’re inside, you could see out. Yeah, the non-weird way. Look like people could see you, but they couldn’t. So like this guy had a good sense of humor and sense of style with different things. So I’m just like, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. That place probably has like a few million dollars worth of furnishings. Yeah, it was crazy. That was a crazy place. Um, and then I interviewed with him and it was the easiest interview I ever had. Most chill interview. It’s just like, tell me your stories, kind of amused with my story. And then he’s like He’s like a cheeky guy. And he’s just like, I he had already decided. That’s what he told me later. He’s like, you had I had applied with this like website resume where I was like, oh, why I’m the guy for the job. I wrote this email. And then I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, um, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could be improved here and here and here. So I was like trying to make an impression. I was I didn’t do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I’m going to zone in on it. Search versus hunt. And I’m going to go like hunt for that and I’m going to try to capture that job. That’s exactly what I did, too. And so it that had worked. Basically, by the time I got there, he was already into interested. As long as I wasn’t a weirdo, I think I wouldn’t have blown it. And uh, so chill and I got the job working under him. And then like six months later, he was like, hey, um, you should run this thing, basically. And you guys started uh three or two or three products. Um, more than that. We did like maybe six or seven products. The two or three that were like It some would only last a month. Some would last But what was the two years. What was the MO? He said just, all right, here’s $2 million a year, or how much budget did you have? We had a business that was already making about $2 million a year, but it was declining. Birthdayalarm.com, right? Birthdayalarm.com, and then we It was like a business. So one project was just maintain it, and then at one point, as it was just declining, cuz it was like you’re just fixing bugs. It’s like, let’s turn this around. So we did a turnaround, then that got back up. And that was a website where like my aunt would pay you $10 a year and you would be reminded when it was someone’s birthday. Yeah, she’ll never forget Sammy’s birthday. And then when it’s Sammy’s birthday, if she’s paying, the reminders free. If you want to send a card, you pay the subscription. Like $14 a year or something like that. And it made between two and $3 million all profit almost other than hosting. Exactly. Um, and so that was the cash cow that funded the whole lab. And then on top of that, if we, you know, if we needed more expenses, they would just invest money into it. So I think it funded I think it funded half and he put half uh just cash. And his his mandate was like, uh, we don’t do B2B, and we don’t do real world like t-shirts or Uber, things like that. We don’t do like physical world stuff. Did he learn that from Bebo, probably? He was just like, yeah, like, whatever. You got to pick a lane, and like we’re pretty broad. Like it could be any idea, but like of the lanes, let’s not, let’s do only consumer and let’s do only software. How many engineers did you have there? It was like 16-ish, 18. When I went there, I was like, oh, this is a tech billionaire’s country club. That’s what it felt like. Yeah. Not even a country club, cuz nobody else was there. It was just like his play, it was like his man cave. Yeah, playground. It was like, yeah, a man cave is a better word. Because you had like old Mac computers as like uh art, and he had like really nice actual real art. And like it was just like, oh, if I’m a billionaire nerd in San Francisco, this is exactly what I would do as well. So instead of like owning like old Ferraris, he just hired 16 engineers to make dumb shit. Yeah. He had those two extra. He had those two, he just didn’t keep them in the office. Oh, he had those two, yeah. Uh, and so all right, so He had all the he’s got an island, he’s got cars, he’s got, you know, his own projects, he owns his own hotel, his own private. You think he was happier than you? Do you think he back then He’s happy, for sure. Do you think he was happier for back then when he was a, you know, billionaire, he was probably in his late 30s at that point, maybe early 40s. 40s, yeah. Do you think he was happier than you are now? He’s definitely more at peace. So I think I’m pretty joyful, like on a day-to-day basis, I’m kind of bouncing around, and he’s more stoic than that. Like he’s he definitely has a good sense of humor and and laughs a bunch and that doesn’t take stuff too seriously. I get I’m more easily excitable. So I’m excited about this random stuff, anything. I can get excited about anything. And probably still want to prove yourself. But I have this inner not peace. I’m not just at rest. I’m like trying to do something, prove something, be something, make something, earn something, win something, and like I he just didn’t have that that same Because of the acquisition? Because of that, and I think just wisdom. Like I think he saw, okay, you know, his whole cohort of friends mostly became super successful. They were they were the who’s who of Silicon Valley. And so he told me once, he’s cuz I was like, I was like, how come you don’t blog? Like, I feel like all the VCs are blogging. At the time, that was like the big thing. And I was like, why don’t you like, he’s like, well, I just don’t feel like I have anything like that interesting to say. And I thought that was the funniest answer because I was like, I could have heard him say, I should, I or I do. And then or he could have said, no, I don’t want to do that because of this. Like, I play the game this way instead. But it was so humble to just say, I just don’t feel like I have I have the like, if I don’t have something interesting to contribute, why would I just blog in your face? Like, that would be rude. Dude, today, Darsh Shah, uh the founder of Hubspot, he’s, you know, this billionaire guy, he’s like uber successful. He told me he was, yeah, I’m speaking at Masters of Scale, Reed Hoffman’s thing, his conference. And uh he was like, yeah, it’s like, um, you know, the founders of Stripe, Bill Gates, uh the CEO of Uber, whatever, like kind of the who’s who of all these big shot. He’s like, I’m so humbled and honored and I can’t believe like they’re having me. And I was like, I I I said, I go, really? Can you really not believe that? Like, it seems like it seems like pretty believable. Like you’re like uh like that seems like a very believable thing. I just evidence, yeah. Yeah, like I I I don’t I don’t like from an outside perspective, you’re like a billionaire, you’re Hubspot at some I don’t I don’t know what the cutoff of a Fortune 500 is, but like it’s definitely there or right around there. You know, at times it’s worth 20 to 30 billion dollars and you made it. I mean, I I I can believe that you’d be there. And he’s like, well, you know, they’re just uh I’m just honored and I just and and like I uh, you know, I I I’m cannot believe I’m actually going to be there. And I was like, well, I don’t I don’t even know what to say. That’s just so hard for me to grasp because from the outside, you guys all seem like the same thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally. Uh, but I thought that was weird. So, you’re the I’ll give you I’ll give you an example of a way where I saw that he was more at peace. Like, uh we had a product that was launching and the press was covering it. TechCrunch was covering it and it was like, oh sweet, TechCrunch wants to do an article and they sent over they they either sent over the draft or they sent over like some bullet points or whatever. Shit. No, no, no. It was good, but it was like, um, they’d said something that was like more than it was like they had said 200,000 and actually it was 20,000 users or whatever, like whatever. Some number was inflated. And I was like so happy. I was like, yes. This is great. Like they’re just going to say a great thing about us, even greater than reality. Like, but I was sort of like, I wasn’t going to correct the record. Like that’s on them, right? You know, like I in my mind, I was like, this is a good thing. They’re over giving us credit. They’re like, they’re giving us more credit than we deserve and he was like, he’s like, well, we should just correct it so it’s the real number. And I was like, but then it’s like worse for us, right? He’s like, yeah, but like, you know, we don’t need to we don’t need to do that. And that was the first one. Then the second one, he was like uh he was talking about um I think he had a bad experience with his VCs at Bebo and when and we had some VCs interested in funding us at Blab. And he was just like, he was sharing some stories and he had told me he was like, um I was like, do you think that they’ll follow through? He’s like, oh, they’ll follow through. Like Silicon Valley, he’s like, he’s like, I he’s like, I would never not follow through. He’s like, I if I commit and Even if there’s not a contract. And then I realized that, oh, it’s not going to work out for this. I committed. I’m in. He’s like, because this this is a town where you play the game for like 30 years with the same people. And if you make a move that’s like self-advantageous now, um like your reputation is worth more than whatever that’s whatever that is. Yeah, that was that I did. That was his approach. And like actually, I there’s many examples of people who are like, sure, my reputation is bad, but like I banked 40 million or 80 million or 100 million. There’s like all these examples of that in Silicon Valley too. And you You know what? Like they won in their way, but when he’s like he was just so high integrity and I was not as high integrity and I realized the reason why I wasn’t high integrity is not because I’m evil, not because I’m a bad dude or because I’m like I just don’t have morals. It’s like short-term thinking. I was just short-term oriented and I was I was afraid of failing. I was like, you know, so it was like, okay, um, what can I do to like increase my odds of winning? Where he was just more confident. He was just like, we’re going to win and we don’t need to we don’t need to play the game in any way other than the the straight way to win. And like I hadn’t really internalized that, but once I saw that, that was really sick to see because then I was able to like adjust my knob and be like, oh, yeah, I’m just never going to lie. Like I just don’t want to lie. Even though my instinct was to exaggerate or my instinct was to not correct if somebody else believed something about me that wasn’t true. Like whereas, you know, he would just he was just totally comfortable in his own skin. So is he happier than me? I would say yes, because he’s more comfortable in his own skin. He’s more comfortable with where he’s at. He’s more at peace with where he’s at. He’s not like at this like inner inner fire or war to whatever. Not at the same time, I’m sure he misses like the adventure and the thrill of like building something and having it succeed and having that mean something. Cuz now, no matter what he does, like it’s very hard to have it mean something unless it’s like intrinsic motivation, like I just love the product or it’s helping impact people. But like the thrill of winning is kind of gone because he’s already won at like such a high You know, if you go to the arcade machine and you set the high score and it’s so out of reach, you know, like you can play and have a good game, but like you’re still going to never touch that that high score again. And I think he knows that. You guys like launched two or three things, but the last thing was the last thing was Blab, which I remember, so that’s where we we became friends when you were one or two years into being the CEO, I think. Yeah. Uh and I was like, what do you do? And he’s like, well, we’re launching this thing and then you kept jumping from thing and I would criticize you. I’m like, dude, you just got to stick to this one thing. Right. You’re you’re probably right. Well, who who knows? I I think now I I used to firmly believe that was the way. Then I’ve seen some of the things you’