Sam and Shaan react to the week’s tech news: Meta’s stock is up 43% in a month and both hosts reveal they bought it months ago. They cover Jack Butcher’s Checks NFT project surpassing Bored Apes in trading volume, a viral Kickstarter shoe that lets you walk at 7 mph, and a clip of Edward Snowden calling out a Ponzi schemer live on a webinar. Sam closes with a story about his sister forgetting to play Tooth Fairy twice in a row.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host, co-founder of The Hustle), Shaan Puri (host, founder of Milk Road)
Facebook Stock Up 43% — Did You Call It? [00:00:00]
Sam: I called the broker up. I said, “Griffin, buy.” He said, “Buy what?” I said, “You know what to buy — buy Zuck.” He says, “How do you spell that?” I said, “Z-U-C-K.” He said, “That’s not the ticker.” I said, “Griffin, call Zuck and tell him I want some shares.” And so we bought some shares, and I think we’re gonna double from where we bought.
Shaan: It’s Friday, we’re reacting to the news. Welcome, fellas. Let’s go through the stories.
Shaan: First of all, Facebook stock is soaring — it’s up 43% in the last month. Sully’s getting rich off of it, fellas.
Sam: Did you call it? Did you know that Facebook was gonna rebound?
Sam: Right now, Facebook — I haven’t bought ads on it recently, Shaan, but I was talking to some of my folks who worked with you on the Milk Road, and I was talking to some of the people who worked on The Hustle at HubSpot. Facebook ads are killing it. They seem like they’re working really nicely. When I was running it, we were acquiring users for like three or four dollars, and then nowadays it’s back down to like a dollar fifty — when we first started it was that low. So it’s kind of easy to see, I guess.
Shaan: Yeah. I bet on it. I took — I don’t know — $250,000, like three or four months ago, and I bought Meta because I was like, why is everybody down on Meta? Did they forget the number one rule? You don’t bet against Zuck.
Shaan: To anybody who’s like, “Oh, but the metaverse, blah blah blah” — I just send them the video clip of Mark Zuckerberg doing MMA. And I’m like, this is who you’re trying to bet against. The guy that since age 18 has just been dominating everything he’s tried to do. The guy who created the biggest social network ever, then bought all of his competitors and killed everybody else who tried to compete with him — including Google when they tried to compete with him on social. And now he trains MMA, and before that he learned to hunt and speak Chinese fluently. You think this guy’s just gonna lose money because Apple changed their cookie policy or whatever? Get out of here. No way.
Sam: Griffin calls me up — “tell him I want shares.” I’m up — let me actually check the number so I don’t misquote myself.
Shaan: Did he say, “Are you sure, Shaan?” or does he just go, “Yes sir, go do it”?
Sam: He texted me the other day, he goes, “Great call on Meta.” And I go, “Thank you for the compliment, because I’ve lost a lot of money this year.” That’s why I sent this to you.
Sam: Okay — not quite double, but close. We will be double. We’re up 50%.
Shaan: Only 50%. A little bit less than I thought.
Sam: 50% in a couple months — still not bad, dude.
Sam: Sarah started working at Facebook — Sarah used to work there in 2012, or sorry, 2014. And I was doing the math on where she would be if she just stayed there. And it was like, well, you probably would have gotten fairly wealthy. Her job there was like, “How do I make a sticker emoji that gets people in Brazil to share more selfies?” So it’s like, you’re gonna want to kill yourself — it’s bleak and lame — but they pay for your lunch, you get your oil changed, and that stock back then was only $47. At its peak it was $372. That’s pretty sick.
Sam: But yeah, man — Facebook’s killer. Never bet against them, dude.
Shaan: When we were going through our sale process, Facebook was one of the potential buyers.
Sam: No — this was 2019, 2020?
Shaan: 2019. Back then it was a $200 stock, so it’s good that the stock is down from when we would have gotten acquired, because stock was a significant part of the deal.
Shaan: But the difference in talent quality — we talked to YouTube, we talked to Twitch, where we ended up going, to Facebook, to Discord, to a bunch of other players. And Facebook was so much more impressive. I was like, okay, you know, if I was going off of what talent I’d be around, it’s not even close. The math of the difference of these offers is not even close, but I was yeah — optimizing for a lot of other things.
Shaan: A lot of people who’ve hit Facebook — they’re sharp as hell. I remember walking around that campus. It felt like I was at the UN. There are so many different types of people, ethnicities — they just Cherry Picked the best from all over the world. That was Menlo Park, right? Walking around that campus I felt inspired.
Shaan: One of the guys who would have been reporting to me there — his intro project, when you get there as an engineer or product manager, you do like a hackathon project to get onboarded. He created basically Facebook Marketplace in that hackathon, and they ended up running with it. His prototype was like one of the original genesis things.
Shaan: Another guy — I said, “What’d you do before this?” He’s like, “Oh, I was at Microsoft.” I’m like, okay, boring. He goes, “Yeah, I invented Microsoft 365. I was like, we should go to the cloud and make this a subscription, and nobody agreed with me. So I just kept working on it for two years. I literally had a separate machine under my desk where I was like, I’m gonna build it on this machine.” And I was like — okay, you guys are smart, man. If I come here, I’m gonna have to work hard, because you can’t just be lazy around these people. They’re great.
Jack Butcher’s Checks NFT Surpasses Bored Apes [00:14:00]
Shaan: All right, which one do we go to now?
Sam: Let’s go Jack Butcher. Jack Butcher’s NFT project — it’s called Checks VV4 — it’s a bunch of art around the check mark, and it’s recently become the top trading NFT project by volume, surpassing Bored Apes.
Shaan: I didn’t realize it was that big.
Sam: I think that’s probably on a this-week basis.
Shaan: Yeah, that’s correct — not all time, but in terms of active trading volume, either this week or in a single day.
Sam: What do you guys have to say to our boy? Buddy Jack’s getting rich — love it, dude. So I’m biased: Jack’s like a close family friend. Him and his wife — I’m very close with those folks. They are awesome. And Jack is more of an artist.
Shaan: Close enough that he sent you some of these NFTs?
Sam: I got a T-shirt that says “internet” on it that he sent me, and a $30 coupon code. I got a T-shirt, Jack.
Sam: Dude, Jack’s punk rock, man. Jack’s more of an artist than he is a businessman. If you go to his website — Visualize Value — and you read the copy for the check mark, it is, as we like to say, beautifully done. It’s tasteful. It’s classy. It’s delightful. He’s done a good job, man.
Sam: I think it’s cool. I’m not an NFT guy, you know — cornrows, neck tattoos, NFTs — not for me. But cool that other people have them. That’s kind of how I feel about NFTs still. But if I were gonna do an NFT, it’d be his.
Shaan: Yeah, it looks like the last seven days it’s done $15 million in sales volume, and it’s the fourth ranked one in the last seven days. Really impressive.
Sam: Is Nike just a swoosh? Look, I’m not saying it that way. What is it — I didn’t actually look. Is it like you get a different color check?
Shaan: So it went from $8, which was the price that Elon was trying to charge for a blue check on Twitter — that’s the political statement he’s making. It went from $8 to closer to $4,000 per NFT now. Incredible surge.
Shaan: He’s kind of like an internet Banksy a little bit. Like, he does commentary on what’s going on in the world, and the guy just hits. I have yet to see him do anything that isn’t dope. He has hits-only status. He’s one of the few people with HO status.
Sam: He makes hits. So Jack’s a good buddy — if you don’t know Jack, follow him on Twitter. He started out at an ad agency, then he started his own ad agency, and it was going okay. Then he created this course called “Build Once Sell Twice” — hilarious, amazing name — and it’s about how to productize a service. He starts selling that course, and basically had the year of his life in 2020 or 2021.
Sam: If you go to his website, visualizevalue.com — the reason I love him is you see his background, his courses, but he also has this tab called Visuals where you can look at his artwork. And then he has a merch store, and his merch store is actually awesome. He has these sweatshirts that say “college” — but it says “internet” — he just does things like that that are actually awesome. When I go to his site I’m like, oh, I’m like this dorky internet guy too, but he has merch. I’m inspired to be like a lot cooler, like he is. He’s badass.
Shaan: I’m a big Jack fan.
Sam: Me too. We’re big fans.
Moonwalkers: Roller Skate Shoes That Go 7 MPH [00:22:30]
Shaan: All right, next up — Moonwalkers. It’s a new shoe that’s like half a roller skate. It allows you to walk, but you go seven miles an hour — roughly three times as fast as a normal person walks. It’s on Kickstarter, raised $300,000. The shoes cost more than $1,000.
Sam: Oh God, you gotta see the video. These are so stupid and so awesome. They’re basically just Heelys for dorks who work at a startup.
Shaan: Heelys for people with no balance.
Sam: Which is crazy. This video is hilarious. It’s really dumb but kind of awesome.
Shaan: If we did an award for the person most likely to have started this that I know — Sam, I think you would have been the guy.
Sam: Me? Dude, this is like the Snuggie of shoes.
Shaan: Tell me how you feel about boosted boards.
Sam: Well, boosted boards are dope, right? It’s the same thing — one for each foot.
Shaan: Oh my God. You’re never gonna be late again if you wear one of these.
Sam: Bro, you have a BMW for a reason.
Shaan: I saw this on TikTok and it had like two or three million likes on the video. I could see why — it is visually stunning. You can’t tell if it’s a joke or if it’s serious. The ad for it literally looks like something from Silicon Valley, the HBO show. The founder — this Asian guy is talking about, “As humans we’ve always been stuck at two miles an hour, and finally we’ve broken the barrier — we go seven now.” He’s sitting in front of these three huge MacBook screens. Like, dude, what are you programming? It’s a shoe with roller skates.
Sam: It’s gonna revolutionize the way that people get hit by cars. That’s what this is gonna do.
Shaan: We’re changing the world. If you look at the Kickstarter backers, it’s only personal injury lawyers who are like, “Oh yeah, no brainer — business expense, write this one off.”
Sam: This is just Segway 2.0. Really stupid, but also kind of cool.
Shaan: This is like guys who wear their cell phones on the outside of their pocket, or who wear a Jawbone 24/7. That niche. Not for me. I’ll give it to Andrew Tate — I’m out.
Sam: Yeah, I’m out.
Tooth Fairy Fail [00:29:00]
Sam: Let’s do one more. You want to do the Tooth Fairy thing?
Shaan: Yeah. Okay, I got a new story for you. My sister has three daughters, two of which are losing their baby teeth. I was talking to my niece the other day and she tells me she lost a tooth. I said, “Wow, fantastic — you’re gonna put it under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy.” She goes, “No, I threw it away.”
Sam: She threw it in the garbage can?
Shaan: Yeah, she threw it away. I said, “Why?” She goes, “Well, my last tooth was under there for two months and the Tooth Fairy never came, so I don’t want to even try anymore.”
Shaan: That’s the first story I hear, and I’m looking at my sister — she’s making eye contact like, “I’ll tell you later.” Then the younger daughter loses her tooth yesterday, puts it under her pillow with a note. Here’s what the note says — I’ll send you a picture of it — but basically it says something to the effect of: “Dear Tooth Fairy, you didn’t come last night, but that’s okay. I’m leaving it here again. You don’t have to leave any money — just draw a picture of yourself. I want to see what you look like.”
Shaan: And she didn’t do anything again.
Shaan: So the question, fellas — does my sister need to just check herself into jail for bad mom of the year?
Sam: What the hell? What’s your deal? Just give like a few dollars! How do you forget that?
Shaan: She texted me — she said that herself. She goes, “Should I just send myself to jail because I’m such a bad mom?”
Sam: That’s crazy to me. That’s my new story of the week — that’s what I pay attention to.
Shaan: What’s a tooth go for nowadays?
Sam: Five dollars? I don’t know, dude. Back in my day it was like five dollars, or if your parents get cheeky they’re like, “Here’s a two-dollar bill.” It’s less than the going rate, but it’s rare. I got a five-dollar one once and that was like a huge deal. I don’t know what a tooth goes for now. I feel like people do more than that.
Shaan: What did you get when you were growing up?
Sam: I got a quarter. I don’t feel like I grew up — actually now I feel like I grew up poor. I would get like a quarter or a dollar, but then one time I got a tooth knocked out and I got five bucks for it.
Shaan: That’s some guilt money right there.
Sam: Blood money. I fell and got it knocked out, so I got five bucks for that one. I don’t know what a tooth would go for now.
Edward Snowden Calls Out a Ponzi Schemer Live [00:36:00]
Sam: Do this other one — you have the Snowden one?
Shaan: Yeah. So Edward Snowden goes live on a conference. The conference is called — I don’t know, it just screams fake Zoom conference. It’s called something like “Private Investor Conference” — the most generic name of all time.
Shaan: This guy is interviewing Edward Snowden for his private investor conference. Snowden shows up and immediately pulls up an article that says “Man busted for $4.4 million Ponzi scheme.” He says, “Is this you?” The host says, “Yeah, that’s me.” Snowden goes, “All right, well, I think it’s important to tell people this kind of stuff.” And hangs up.
Sam: He got paid to come do a keynote, and he screen shares the news article that this guy who’s hosting the event is a former Ponzi schemer — and the chat is just going: “Wow.” “Wow.” “Boom.” “Oh my God.” “Wow.” It’s the best.
Shaan: I don’t want to go to many webinars, but I wish I was at this one. Shout out to Edward Snowden. Whistleblower’s gonna blow.
Sam: Have you ever seen the subreddit — watch people die inside?
Shaan: Yeah, I’ve seen that one.
Sam: This is gonna be on the top of that.
Shaan: Yeah — watch people die inside. This video is on there. You see the rate — you’re watching the guy’s reaction. He goes, “Yes, that’s me.” And then Snowden’s like, “Well, I think people should know who they’re getting into business with. I don’t feel good about this, I’m not doing this.” So he leaves.
Shaan: And the guy doesn’t know what to do and he just shrinks. He just goes, “Um… okay, I’m gonna — we’re gonna take a break, and I’m gonna come back.” He just doesn’t know what to say.
Shaan: Like, man, if there was ever a time to be like, “Hey, I know that looked bad, but I’m happy to explain what happened, I can do that right here right now, no problem” — and instead he just shrinks. And there are people in the chat saying like, “Hey Edward, are flying saucers real?” And people on Reddit are like, “Yeah, no wonder why these people fall for this guy.”
Sam: Private Investor Club. Oh my gosh. This is crazy.
Sam: Dude, I’ve been following some of these Ponzi scheme guys. There was this Twitch guy with dreadlocks — loud and cocky, very punchable guy — a crypto company paid him to do an ad, and he forgot he was recording. He says something like, “Dude, I can’t believe people are gonna buy this crap.” And people were like, wow, disgusting.
Sam: The amount of Twitch and YouTube audience that buys this stuff — it is crazy to me, man. I cannot believe people do that.
Shaan: How did this guy even afford Edward Snowden, dude?
Sam: You know how Ponzi schemers work — they know how to build the shell game. The appearance of legitimacy.
Shaan: That’s crazy to me. It’s the Private Investment Club — the largest real estate club in Canada. That’s his shtick.
Sam: That’s crazy to me. Anyway, that’s a good video, I’m gonna have to watch that.
Shaan: All right, that’s it. We’re out of here, boys.