Sam pitches four “drunk ideas” — concepts he came up with sober but calls drunk ideas as a cover story. The ideas span a simulated relationship texting service, an oversized luxury bed brand, a TV show for HOA disputes, and a tech all-star hackathon. The episode winds into a broader conversation about whether elite founders are uniquely talented or just lucky in their era and opportunity selection.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host), Ben (guest)
Framing the Drunk Ideas Format [00:00:00]
Sam: I got my drunk ideas. Should we do some drunk ideas?
Shaan: Yeah, let’s do it.
Sam: All right. So again, to frame this — these are ideas that I had that I don’t think are good, but I still want to say them. So I call them drunk ideas, even though I didn’t have them while I was drunk. I was stone cold sober. But that’s my cover story.
All right, so drunk idea number one. And by the way, one gem came out of the last round, which was my Lucky Water brand that I do intend to create. So some gems do come out of this.
Ben, you’re a participant in this one. I need you both to give me your reaction. What should the scale be? On a scale of one to ten?
Shaan: One to ten, all right.
Idea #1: Very Long Distance Girlfriend [00:00:45]
Sam: First idea is called Very Long Distance Girlfriend.
I had this idea because I realized — I’m sitting there, me and my wife like to watch all these dating shows. We watch Love Is Blind, we watch The Bachelor. And there’s this honeymoon period on screen: you see two usually beautiful people living some kind of fairy tale date, and one person’s being dramatic, or one person’s unsure, and the other person’s really into it.
But if you zoomed out from the TV, you’d see a couch with a couple sitting six feet apart from each other because they’re so sick of each other. In their sweats, not dressed up, double chins, eating their popcorn and Cheetos, pointing at the screen like, “She’s not even that hot” or “He’s such a jerk.” Just judging these relationships.
We do the same thing with UFC. Like, “Oh, he shouldn’t have tapped out.”
Shaan: Yeah, “He looks scared.”
Sam: “That’s why I don’t like him, because he’s scared.” There’s a fun in the judging, but I also think there’s a fun in the fairy tale. When you’re watching these shows, you sort of put yourself in the shoes of either the person pursuing or the person being pursued. You’re the damsel or you’re the prince.
So here’s the idea. Very Long Distance Girlfriend is a service — actually I think it’s just a text message. This is a phone number you put in your address book, and we give you the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend you’re never going to meet.
It’s not even the intention. It’s just somebody who’s going to treat you perfectly because they’re paid to do it.
So it’s like — look, a prostitute is somebody who’s paid to make love to you, but that’s a lot of work. This is the lighter version. You know how Tinder made dating easier because you don’t have to go date everybody — you just swipe and you get this little flirting hit without a lot of effort? This is that.
If you sign up for Very Long Distance Girlfriend, there’s going to be a person who pretends to be your partner. They’re going to text you, ask how you’re doing, be emotionally there for you, send you baby photos of themselves, tell you they want you. They’re never going to nag you, never get mad at you, never get jealous — none of the things that real human beings do that are the downsides of relationships. Only the upside, none of the downside.
For girls, you get Prince Charming — complimentary, thoughtful, there for you. For guys, you get the perfect girlfriend. And we’re just going to hire call centers of people who behave as your Very Long Distance Boyfriend or Girlfriend.
All right, ratings. I’ll start with Sam.
Sam: I give that a ten. I think that’s great, to be honest. I mean, surely that exists somewhere already?
Shaan: I have no idea.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, this is brilliant. How many friends do you have who you’ve only ever met via texting? I’ve got a bunch of friends who have only ever texted. Most of my life is people I only text with. I know their personality, they’re cool — they’re my actual friends even though I’ve never met them. Never heard their voice. And in fact, I have no desire to meet them. I’m getting all the benefits I want out of just the text.
So I love them, even though I can’t tell you how tall they are or what their voice sounds like. Because of that, I’m in on this idea.
Ben: I give it a one. It sounds diabolical. Like a nine-zero — honestly, a big slow roll to a ten.
There’s this genre of Shaan business idea that’s essentially: “I watched an episode of Black Mirror and said, ‘Actually, that’s a good idea.’” This is one of those.
Shaan: But those are great ideas! Where do you think Black Mirror gets their ideas? They take a great idea and then push it to a logical extreme where it turns bad.
Have you seen that old Disney movie Smart House, where the smart home becomes the mom? It’s kind of like what we’re describing. Or what about Her? The voice assistant he falls in love with?
Sam: I haven’t seen Her, but it’s not even falling in love — it’s just fun to get certain types of text messages. It’s fun to get a funny text from a friend. That’s kind of what The Hustle does — it just sends me some interesting stuff every morning. The Milk Road tries to do that for crypto. We’re your friend, but I’m not really your friend. I’m just sending you cool stuff.
That’s for the work side of life. What about the personal side?
Ben, you’re telling me you would not want to be getting texts from a woman who’s so into you? And it’s not cheating. You’re never going to do anything. It’s not even a real person. Especially if you’re single. I know we’re all married, so it’s not for us — this is for 25-year-old me. 34-year-old me.
Ben: Obviously we’re not the target demographic. But having said that — I already have actual friends I don’t text back. The last thing I need is another thing that’s literally just a person to not text back. I don’t need another one of those in my life.
But as a business idea? Of course it’s a good idea. Of course this has money-making potential. As a thing that is good for humans — that’s why I gave it a one.
Shaan: Oh, I’m not in the “good for humans” group. I just felt like one person had to be the conscience here.
Sam: You’re the angel on the shoulder, I’m the devil. We’re yin and yang. That’s how it works. Yeah, you know, if you want good things you should eat your vegetables, work out, wake up and pray — do all the right things. And don’t invest in Russian companies. Don’t have the Very Long Distance Girlfriend for $19.99 a month. Don’t use TikTok. Don’t do any of the things you probably do.
Idea #2: Big Ass Beds [00:09:15]
Sam: All right, next idea. It sounds related but it’s not. It’s the Huge Beds Company.
I’ve been thinking about the luxuries of life that I care about. We all know what I do — private chef, personal trainer at my house. I live like a king. The one thing I don’t live like a king with is my bed, which is only king-sized. But a true king would not have a king-sized bed. True kings have what’s called an emperor-sized bed.
Have you ever heard of these?
Shaan: No.
Sam: Athletes have these. I saw them because there’s a woman who has this business — she makes beds for NBA athletes. Shaq has a 24-foot bed. A bunch of other players have 12-foot, 18-foot beds. It looks ridiculous, but the whole family can sleep on there and still have their space. Just to get to your spot on the bed, you kind of have to crawl there like a small child, because there’s such a long runway.
I’ve always looked at these and thought they look super comfortable. And I realized I wouldn’t know where to go buy one. So my idea is a DTC brand called Huge Beds — name TBD.
Shaan: No, keep it. It’s like the company Big Ass Fans.
Sam: Big Ass Beds. Okay. That’s the name. Big Ass Beds — for badass people.
Shaan: Marketing slogan included with the drunk ideas.
Sam: So Big Ass Beds — it’s basically a DTC brand that sells you this. These run for like $20,000 on average. That’s why athletes buy them: NBA players are already very tall, plus they have a lot of money. Sweet spot. And this one woman sells them all through her Instagram. A player posts a picture, tags her, people find her page — she has an Instagram full of huge beds — and they go buy from her.
So I think somebody could go own this niche. Athletes is one market, but we need to find a new niche. Maybe it’s business nerds trying to optimize their sleep.
Shaan: You’d have to make up some mumbo jumbo about why a big bed makes you sleep better. Unless you’re eight feet tall, a huge bed probably isn’t going to improve your sleep.
Sam: Maybe it’s like free-range chicken — when you’re not confined, you relax. Maybe you have anxiety all night because you might fall off. Maybe just being able to stretch out is nice.
Shaan: “Definitely maybe is, but definitely probably isn’t.”
Haven’t you been in a California king-size bed before?
Sam: I have a California king.
Shaan: A California king is basically the same size as a regular king — just longer instead of wider.
Sam: It’s not the same overall size, but yeah.
Shaan: Is it just you and your wife, or do your kids sleep there too?
Sam: My kids sleep there sometimes. And my dog. So we’ve got a full house in the bed.
Shaan: I think there’s something else that should be addressed before making it bigger — like maybe don’t let the kids and the dog in the bed.
Sam: I could create a little kid bed company, or a dog bed company. Actually, those are also good ideas.
Ben: Sam is so wrong on this. I have a king-size bed — I don’t want to be anywhere near my wife when I sleep. I want to have to shout for her to hear me. There’s always some little toe poking me in the middle of the night. If you could guarantee I’d never have to worry about that again — yes. And you’re right, it probably won’t give me better sleep. But will it be an amazing experience to crawl onto this massive piece of luxury? Yes. I want it.
You spend a third of your day on this bed. Eight hours on this bed — why not? The second you said “20-foot wide bed,” I just knew I wanted it. My heart knows. When you see the pictures, you’re like, “This looks lavish as hell.”
Sam: All right. One more thing — do you guys sleep with a pillow between your legs?
Shaan: Of course. I sleep with the maternity pillow.
Sam: Same. I have a body pillow. I basically spoon the pillow because I need my knees to be — I can’t have them together. That’s just straight ergonomics. That’s not even us being weird — that’s us being scientists.
The reason I use my wife’s pregnancy pillow is science. My buddy told me about it. He goes, “Congrats, you guys are pregnant — get your phone out and go to this website. You’re going to buy this Swedish pillow. It’s $200 but trust me, best pillow ever.”
I was like, “Oh my God” — never been so intrigued by a sales pitch. Took out my phone, ordered it right there. I was in an Uber in Las Vegas when this happened. It said five weeks to ship, and I thought, “This must be fantastic if it’s such a painful wait.”
It arrives. My wife uses it. She’s like, “It’s good.” I was like, “Only good?” He really built it up. Let me try it. I try it for a nap — so good. I ordered myself one. Now she never uses either of them. I use both.
Shaan: What’s it called?
Sam: I’ll look it up. It’s some Scandinavian name. Here it is — bbhugme.com. BB then hug me. Designed in Scandinavia. Just look at it — it looks like it’s going to be good. And then it is good. Really great pillow.
Shaan: I’m going to buy one of these.
Sam: It’s like $200 for one pillow, which is a lot, but I bet these guys crush it.
Idea #3: HOA Court / Petty Court [00:20:30]
Sam: All right, next drunk idea. HOA Court.
Do you guys have an HOA?
Shaan: No.
Sam: Ben?
Ben: Yeah, and I kind of hate it. My HOA has been harassing me lately. I’ve been getting letters.
I rent my current place, and there’s some Karen in this neighborhood who just hates me. She keeps complaining that I leave the trash bins out an extra day, that I work out in the driveway — apparently no exercise equipment is allowed — and we get water delivered in those five-gallon jugs, and they’re tucked behind a pillar where you can barely see them unless you walk halfway up the driveway. Somebody keeps complaining.
My landlord lives in another state and he’s like, “Dude, what’s going on? Can you just handle it?”
Shaan: When you’re working out in the street, is it just you and your trainer? What are you doing — throwing a medicine ball?
Ben: We’re doing lunges. I’m doing lunges in the street. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or we have a battle rope in my driveway — that’s my driveway, I can do what I want there.
My neighborhood is mostly really old people who don’t do much, so I get it. But I’m not disruptive. Anyway.
So I had two choices: I could quietly resolve everything — move the trash cans in, keep the battle rope in the garage, pull the water jugs inside. Or —
Sam: No. No. Nothing. Those are not options.
Ben: Correct. This is war.
So I decided to fight the HOA. I demanded names. I demanded to speak to someone directly. I put my number out there, I said call me next time. Then I started taking photos of other houses and filing my own complaints. Children’s swing in the front yard — violation. Someone’s garbage cans outside — violation. Someone riding their bicycle on the street — exercise equipment violation.
And then I started asking: is it because I’m the only brown guy in the neighborhood? I can only wonder what’s so different.
Shaan: You had to do that.
Ben: I see violations all around me, and yet my complaints are falling on deaf ears. I’m wasting a bunch of time. I need HOA Court.
Sam: It’s a Judge Judy-style show streamed on Netflix or YouTube, where you can go present your case. A place for petty people to do their thing. That’s my pitch.
Shaan: This is actually a show — it’s a TV show.
Sam: HOA Court, or maybe it’s Petty Court.
Shaan: Petty is the right word.
Sam: But isn’t there already something — before you go to court, you can hire an arbitrator? Mediation? What do you do with an HOA? How do you know who wins?
Ben: You can’t win. That’s the problem. The HOA is this ambiguous force that controls you even though you paid your hard-earned money to live here and buy this land and live free. The freedom’s not there. That’s why we need Petty Court — to put these petty people back in their place.
Sam: Do you have any idea who’s actually making the complaints?
Ben: No idea. It hurts me because I know there’s somebody who walks by smiling at me while I’m working out in my garage with the door open. Just getting some air. That’s allowed.
Shaan: You can’t change your behavior. You have to keep doing it.
Ben: I’ve already bent — I brought the water bottles inside, I moved the trash cans.
Shaan: You should buy lawn chairs and sit in your front lawn without a shirt. Consistently. I think that’s the move.
Sam: That’s a gift to the neighborhood.
I want to dig deeper on this, because I think the fight is not worth your time. These HOA fights — they’re definitely not worth your time.
Ben: It is worth my time. This is what living is for. I love fighting with neighbors, trying to win, rubbing their face in it. I love this.
Sam: Is there a way to set a trap and figure out who it is?
I’d put a unique letter under the doorstep of everybody in the neighborhood. “Listen, I heard about the complaint. I understand — in fact, I’m sorry. I would love to make it up to you. What’s your favorite flavor — chocolate or vanilla? I’ll send you a treat, because you were right and I was wrong. Just text me your favorite flavor.”
Then you see who responds and you’ve got them.
Ben: That’s actually pretty brilliant. You could do it a couple of ways — different question to each house and see who responds with which answer.
Shaan: Or even better — you contact everybody and you’re like, “Hey, have you guys seen this guy who keeps putting his trash bins out? I think we should escalate this. He’s not listening. I believe it was you who made the complaint — but maybe I have that wrong. If it was you, I’d like to discuss how we might escalate this to make sure that jerk goes down.”
Draw them out, bring them close, then put them away.
Ben: I would love for you to do this. How many houses are in the neighborhood?
Sam: 60 to 100 houses. That’s a lot of time and energy — you may have to shut down one of your businesses to pull this off.
Ben: I have no idea who’s doing this. I know there’s somebody who walks by smiling at me. I’ve already bent on the other stuff, but working out in the garage with the door open — that’s my home gym.
Shaan: You have to continue doing it. You cannot change your behavior.
Sam: You should buy lawn chairs and put them in your front lawn and just hang out there without a shirt consistently.
Idea #4: The Business All-Star Game [00:32:00]
Sam: Last idea. The NBA All-Star Game just happened. Every sport has its thing — baseball has the Home Run Derby, football has the Pro Bowl, the NBA has the dunk contest and the All-Star Game.
Why doesn’t this exist for business? Why don’t we have the Tech All-Star Game?
Bring together the who’s who of tech, honor them, get them to compete for our entertainment, make a weekend out of it. Why are we not treating this like the sport that it is?
Here’s how it might work. The Tech All-Star Game is basically a hackathon. I get Zuck, I get Larry and Sergey, I get founders of different mega companies. They’re going to perform live-streamed on YouTube. They get 24 hours to build something.
You have an all-star designer — Jony Ive working with Mark Zuckerberg. Brian Chesky working with Sundar. You pair them up in random combinations, they have to build something, demo it, and somebody wins a trophy for building something cool.
Because you’ve seen that Dharmesh loves to hack and build little projects. I remember when COVID happened, Kevin Systrom — the guy from Instagram — built this dashboard measuring the viral spread because politicians were just making statements and there was no source of truth. No dashboard showing how this thing was spreading per city. He built it. And I just thought: what would happen if you unleashed these types of brains in their own little competition?
Shaan: If it’s an awards thing, I think that’s the worst idea you’ve ever had. If it’s a hackathon, no one will ever do it — but it’s an interesting exercise.
Here’s my question: if you took Zuck, Bezos, the Google guys, and had them do a hackathon, do you think any of them are actually still capable of building anything on their own?
Sam: Well, each team would also have an all-star engineer and an all-star designer.
Shaan: Even so — take Bezos. Can he actually build anything? He might go build a blog.
Sam: Zuck, though — when Snapchat came out, he recognized the threat so early and created Facebook Poke. He literally wrote code for it. They released it in nine days or something ridiculous, and he was one of the lead engineers on the project. He doesn’t normally do that, but that was the story. I think he could do it. Very few others could.
I remember Michael Birch — who built Bebo, was a programmer’s programmer, built four or five successful startups. We did a hack week and I invited him. I said, “Michael, come hang out. Don’t just be Mr. Investor far away — live with us for the week.” He came.
I said, “You want to build something?” He goes, “Well… I don’t exactly know JavaScript. The languages I know aren’t really used anymore. I haven’t coded in years. My machine isn’t even set up. I don’t know what I could build at this point.” So he cooked us dinner instead.
Later he got back into programming — got his machine set up, started learning Python, new languages. Now he loves it and codes all the time. But when I put him on the spot without preparation, it was tough for him.
Sam: Let me tell you something real quick. I didn’t own a tech company exactly, but I owned a company that made tens of millions of dollars on the internet. When you use words like Python and JavaScript, I have literally no idea what those are. For real. I don’t know what you use them for.
When people talk about Ruby on Rails — is there a Java on Rails? I literally don’t know what the words mean.
Shaan: Try to guess. What is Python?
Sam: It’s like a language, but I don’t know what you use it for or what it does. When people talk about CSS and HTML, I’m like — is one of those the exterior siding of the home? I still don’t know what they mean. It’s like when I go into Home Depot and they’re like, “Is it drywall?” and I’m like, “It’s not wet. Can you show me four or five types of walls with some photos and I’ll point to which one looks most like mine?”
The way I worked at my company was: I’d sit with the engineer, draw on paper what the website should look like, write the words for each screen, draw the second screen that appears when you click this button. I’d hand it to them and it would somehow work. To this day I have no idea how any of those things actually work.
Shaan: Who needs to? I used to say, “Oh, I wish I knew how to code — I’d be so much better.” I’m still actually taking some Udemy course on Python at night. But our buddy Suli was like, “People say that, but who cares how to code? I used to know how. You could pay somebody in India, tell him what you want, he’ll do it.”
Sam: I actually totally disagree with him. I think it’s valuable to at least know how it works, even if you don’t want to do it anymore. Because there’ve been times I’ve talked to my developer and in my head I’m like, “Well you just have to click this button,” and they’re like, “Actually you don’t even need a button — the technology can do it automatically.” And I’m like, “That’s a possibility?! I didn’t even know.” I wish I knew enough about coding to know what’s possible, because not knowing makes me think inside a box I don’t need to be in.
Shaan: I agree and disagree. I agree in the sense that I used to think if I knew how to code I’d be able to do so much more — and I don’t believe that’s actually true. I can get the same result by hiring a programmer or using a no-code tool. It’s not holding me back.
The part I disagree with is: I think it’s really awesome to be able to have an idea in your head and make it happen yourself. There’s a huge lossiness in trying to explain something fuzzy in your head to somebody else. They download your fuzzy picture, and they output it in an even fuzzier way. It’s like a telephone — it comes out very different a lot of times.
When I write something, if somebody says “can you help me write this email?” I need the keyboard. I don’t just think of the email first and then type it — I write it and while I’m writing it I figure out what to say. I create content while I’m doing it, not before. And I think most great things that get created are like that. You’re building it and while you’re building it you’re figuring out what you want to build.
That’s what gets separated when you’re not the builder yourself.
Sam: Let me ask one more question. Let’s say we took some of the big founders — Evan Spiegel, Zuck, the Google guys. Let’s say they’re the same people but they’ve just been insurance agents their whole life. Do you think in that scenario they could still accomplish something great?
And then on the other side — let’s say when Zuck was 19 starting Facebook, instead of Facebook he decided to focus on a music app. Still tech, just a slightly different version. Would he be even remotely as big and successful?
Shaan: The second question is easier. I think all of those people would be very successful by any objective measure — but would they be people we know their names? Would they be hundred-billionaires? No. I don’t think so.
I think luck plays a part in the magnitude of success, but not the probability of success. The probability of success for those people is 90-plus percent. They’d be good at what they do, make millions of dollars, be top of their field. The magnitude — becoming worth hundreds of billions — that I think is much more luck of the bounce on which opportunity you took.
Sam: I agree. There’s this guy named David Karp — you know who that is? The Tumblr guy. Tumblr sold to Yahoo for a lot of money, then they shut it down and it’s totally non-existent now. I’ve seen him talk, read his writing — he’s pretty brilliant. And I think: if Tumblr had never sold, or if he was working on something else, he could have been way bigger.
Another one: Scott Heiferman, who created Meetup. He’s amazing, but Meetup wasn’t that big. I think if he had worked on something else, he’d have been significantly more successful.
It’s like they’re Lance Armstrong riding the Tour de France on a mountain bike with a flat tire. You could have been way better.
Level 10 hustle, level 10 skill, level 6 opportunity. Meetup was a level 6 opportunity — a really hard space to go into. He did the best of anybody who went into that space. We know the name because of that. But Meetup just wasn’t as big as Facebook. Facebook was a far larger opportunity.
And I don’t think Zuck knew that from the start. There are texts that leaked from him early on where he was still debating whether to do Facebook when Facebook was already working. He was like, “I think this stuff is really going to help us when we do Wirehog” — this file transfer protocol he thought would be bigger. At some point he recognized the opportunity, but it’s not like he analyzed 100 ideas and identified the one with billions of users. I don’t believe that’s true at all.
These guys were born in the tech wave. If they were born before it, they might have just been the best blacksmith in town — no leverage available to become a hundred-billionaire. There was no leverage a hundred years ago.
Would Gladiators Thrive Today? [00:55:30]
Shaan: By the way — Michael Chandler and Justin Gaethje fought a few months ago. Both known for being big meat heads who just stand in the middle and bang. And Gaethje at the end — having just gone through a three-round war where they were hitting each other as hard as possible — he says, “What just happened? I love it. I feel like I was born in the wrong era. I should have been a Roman gladiator, because I would have loved to fight to the death in front of all you people.”
And it gave me chills. I believed him. You and I are not the same. You’re built to be a warrior.
Sam: Sometimes I think about that. Who today would have thrived in a different era? If you put Alexander the Great in today’s world, would he just be too brutish? Would we be like, “You’re an idiot, get out of here”? Or if Napoleon came into play nowadays — like, what is this, a dating app? What would the gladiators of that era be working on now?
Shaan: Let’s ask our historian Ben. What do you think? If you transplanted Alexander the Great or Napoleon into this era — or Edison — would he be into dating apps? Would he think, “I wish I could have done this”?
Ben: I doubt Edison would be into dating apps. But on my Alexander the Great episode, one of the points I made is — I was reading this book about Alexander, and it talked about a contract he negotiated with one of his suppliers to move their baggage train from one area to another. And I thought: this is not that different from today. He had contracts, he had suppliers who provided weapons, he had logistics he contracted out — basically the same organizational structure CEOs have.
So I think Alexander the Great would be a CEO. His personality lends itself to that.
Edison would be like a technical entrepreneur who eventually moves out of the building role. Like a Zuck type — technical at the start, then transitions.
Sam: That’s interesting. I think about that all the time — what the people who dominated hundreds of years ago would be like today. And vice versa. If Zuck had never learned to use a computer, would that guy have just been a dork in the 1800s? Could he have even survived the plague?
Cool, guys. I gotta run.
Shaan: All right, end of episode.