Steph Smith (writer, researcher, former Hustle employee, now at a16z) returns to share five internet “goldmines” — research tools and databases she uses to spot emerging trends and business opportunities. The conversation ranges from patent expiry databases and sci-fi idea banks to air quality data and sports industry reports, with detours into a friend’s GLP-1 pharma investment, Suburban Triathlons, and a debate about how Steph should price her upcoming “internet pipes” resource. Ends with a candid discussion about imposter syndrome, salary negotiation, and what it means to hire people smarter than you.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host), Steph Smith (guest, writer/researcher, a16z)
Intro: The Finger-on-the-Lips Moment [00:00:00]
Sam: Dude, I was at dinner and somebody said something as a joke, and I put up my finger to my lips and I said, “I need to write this down,” because it was an incredible idea. The guy goes, “You put your finger on his lips?” And I put it back and forth — first on his lips, then my own — and I was like, “Say no more. I need to write this down. I don’t want to lose this idea.”
Shaan: So today you’re going to talk us through a bunch of research tools you use — a bunch of pipes you call them, right?
Steph: Yeah, internet pipes. I called it research tools. You said that was dumb.
Shaan: Well, it just sounds boring. It’s more accurate, but it’s boring. I call them goldmines — basically, some people come back and show you a little piece of gold, maybe a piece of jewelry. Steph shows you where the mine is, so you can just keep going back to the mine for more and more gold over time.
I think people wonder, you know, if they see your tweets or read your blog posts or hear you on our podcast, they’re like, “Where does she come up with this stuff? How does she find this?” So today you’re going to tell us exactly that.
Steph: Yeah, exactly. The internet is such a special thing, and we often rely on something like Twitter to surface the information of the day. But I feel like these tools are — like you said — the goldmine. There’s so much information that tells you exactly what people want, or aggregates a bunch of opportunities for you.
Goldmine #1: Patent Filings and Patent Expiries [00:01:30]
Shaan: Steph, tell me about the patent one, because there are actually a handful of really good examples with this one.
Steph: Okay. So there are two parts: patent filings and patent expiries.
For patent filings, there are probably some databases that track these, but the newsletter I like is called Patent Drop. Every issue they break down three or so patents from big tech firms — FAANG, but also companies like Nike. By the way, I think Nike is one of the companies with the most design patents.
So you can track what big companies are betting on, what they think is interesting, what they want to retain IP around. And then there’s patent expiries, which I think is equally interesting. We covered the company Hims before and how they leveraged a patent expiry to build their company, or at least their first products. There’s a website called PatentsExpiringToday.com which aggregates these. It takes some sifting because there’s a lot of things you don’t care about — “I don’t care that some shindig is expiring” — but I think the combination of those two can definitely result in business ideas.
Sam: Have you guys heard of BlueChew? You know what BlueChew is?
Shaan: BlueChew? Yeah.
Sam: So about six weeks ago I went to their office and met the two founders. One is a doctor, the other was a commodities trader. They worked together and asked, “What can we start?” They saw that the Viagra patent was going to expire in 2017 and just plotted and plotted. Hims gets a lot of credit for doing this, but BlueChew is actually more interesting to me.
What BlueChew does — I think they also own Meds.com — is basically a telehealth business where you call in and say what your issue is. Their main thing is the pill for erectile dysfunction. I didn’t realize it, but the customer base for that is like 150 to 200 million people in the world, and it’s projected by 2030 to be 400 to 500 million. Massive amount of people.
They bootstrapped the company, started in 2017. I don’t know exactly how big they are, but I’m pretty sure they’re between $100 and $200 million a year in sales, entirely bootstrapped, and it was because of that patent expiry. That’s it.
Shaan: It’s a one-chart business. All you had to do was show, “Here’s the business plan. This is the expiry date of Viagra. We’re going to make the DTC generic version.” And they just do it through Instagram ads. They own Meds.com for the telehealth side and BlueChew for the product — Cialis, Viagra, and one other that are all expired now.
Sam: I went to their office and we were playing poker, and they had a sample — instead of breath mints, you could just reach in and take one. I was like, “My wife had a baby two weeks ago. I don’t think I need this, but what happens?” There was also a padded room you could just go stand in to see the effects, and nobody will look at you, then come back when you’re done.
Shaan: I was like, “I don’t know if this is going to be in use anytime soon in my house.” But I looked at their numbers on SimilarWeb — two million people a month to their website — and I was doing back-of-the-envelope math like, “I’m pretty sure this is a massive company.”
Hims gets a ton of credit because they’re publicly traded and based in San Francisco with all that press. I think this company is probably almost as big, and the two guys own most all of it. They haven’t taken any financing.
Steph: And I haven’t gone through the stuff happening in 2024, but another quick callout is the public domain stuff. Every year new things go into the public domain, and we’re hitting January soon. That’s another thing to flag.
Shaan: I think a few years ago it was like Winnie the Pooh or something?
Sam: Yeah, and Ryan Reynolds took advantage of that. He did something in partnership with one of the phone companies — “Winnie the Scrooge” as a commercial.
Mini Brands Tangent: Why Tiny (and Giant) Things Win [00:09:00]
Shaan: By the way, another one of these trends you called out a few years ago, which I thought was so stupid at the time — and I’ve since spent probably $500 on this — is you did the miniature thing. My wife loves this stuff.
Sam: Like mini cooking sets?
Shaan: So the one she liked was called Mini Brands, I think. It’s like any famous brand you know of — Coca-Cola, Kit Kat, any snack, different products like a shoe box — they just make miniature versions. You open up this small ball, baseball-sized, and inside there’s a variety of like eight different mini things. People just love looking at them. I don’t even understand the appeal, but children—
Sam: It’s weird. Steph seems like someone who’s into this mini stuff.
Shaan: By the way, this is ZURU — that same guy Nick Mowbray that we talked about on the podcast, the toy mogul. He wants to come on, so we should hit him up. But they’re the makers of Mini Brands.
Sam: Are they edible or are these fake?
Shaan: No, it’s just like a Kit Kat bar but the size of a penny. That’s all it is. Just small.
I’ve had this theory for a long time that anything mini just works. I remember in science class there was a mini beaker and everybody fought over it, and I was like, “That holds less!” And nobody wanted to hear me. There’s something to it — either overly large or completely tiny is just one way to make a product more interesting.
There’s a YouTube channel called Jenny’s Mini Cooking Show that I remember from years ago where I was like, people will just watch this person cook these “meals for hamsters,” do the whole thing — tiny knife, cut the pizza, serve it on the tiny plate.
Sam: I can’t make fun of these people, because one time I ordered a birthday cake that was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup the actual size of a birthday cake. So I like bigger things, but I understand the appeal.
Which sounds awesome, right? I should make a tiny Cybertruck — just a really tiny Cybertruck that can park in your garage. That’s it.
Shaan: Yeah, it’s weird man. We’re freaks.
Goldmine #2: Sports and Fitness Industry Data [00:13:30]
Shaan: What’s the sports one?
Steph: So there’s a website that aggregates a bunch of reports on sports. Americans love sports. They have things like a “State of Pickleball” report, a “State of the Industry” report — these cost money. But I found an article that aggregated some data from SFIA Research, which is the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, on the 25 fastest-growing sports. What do you guys think the top fastest-growing sports in America are?
Sam: I already opened it and I could tell you. I wouldn’t have guessed one of them.
Shaan: I already opened it as well, so the game is over.
Sam: I would have said Pickleball, and I would have said Padel — isn’t there another game that’s like Pickleball but for people who want to say, “No, Pickleball’s old, this is the new thing”?
Steph: It does seem like Pickleball is number one, but number two I would have never guessed: Alpine Touring. I don’t even know what that really is.
Sam: I think it’s just off-trail skiing.
Steph: And then — I have never heard of this — Winter Fat Biking.
Sam: It’s awesome. It’s like fat tire bikes are really popular right now. It’s basically a bike with a really fat tire. They are sick-looking. You see them ride by.
Shaan: Yeah, it’s mountain biking but the tire is particularly fat. Imagine a bicycle that could drive on a beach.
Steph: Number four: Off-Course Golf. I think it’s just those machines — like Topgolf — but I guess they’ve turned that into a competitive sport. And number seven is Trail Running. I can definitely see that. I get so many trail running videos on Instagram.
The Suburban Triathlon Idea [00:17:00]
Sam: Dude, I was at dinner and somebody said something as a joke — I put my finger to my lips and said, “Sh. I need to write this down.” The guy said, “Yeah, I do the Suburban Triathlon.” I said, “What?” He said, “Yeah — you walk a half mile to a bar, drink two beers, then go play nine holes of golf.”
I was like, “What?” He said, “Yeah, it’s the Suburban Iron Man,” or Suburban Triathlon. And I was like, “This has legs.”
I really think if somebody created some kind of event for out-of-shape middle-aged guys to do, they’d do it. You brand it as the non-fit person’s triathlon and it’s got to have some version of eating and drinking as one leg, a couple holes of golf as another, and maybe Pickleball as the third. Dude, that’s the next Tough Mudder. That could be a massive trend.
Shaan: That’s beautiful branding. We’re working backwards from the brand — we don’t even know what goes underneath. It’s just the idea of the Suburban Triathlon.
That deserves you putting your finger on his lips and just kissing him. Like, “I love you, that’s beautiful.”
Sam: Like — you bike to the grocery store, chug a beer, run an errand. That’s the Suburban Triathlon. You’ve got to do it on Saturday mornings.
Goldmine #3: The Sci-Fi Idea Database (TechNovelG) [00:20:00]
Steph: Gotta give a shout-out to Packy McCormick. He aggregated this from a site called TechNovelG, which is one of those sites where I’m like, “I can’t believe someone created this.” I think the guy’s name is Bill Christensen, who basically took all the sci-fi novels ever written — thousands of them — and put them on a site called TechNovelG. What Packy did was take this very outdated HTML site that’s hard to navigate and put it into a database.
If you click the link you’ll see a page that is just Sci-Fi stats. It takes all the ideas — not just the books but the ideas within these sci-fi novels — and asks: Does it exist today? Were these ideas in bits or atoms? It also breaks down things by author. Asimov, for example, had maybe 99 ideas. How many of those actually came to be? So you get a sense of how grounded a given author was.
Shaan: So I’m on the Idea Bank — row 194. In 1911, author Hugo Gernsback predicted “telemotor coasters” — powered skates for personal transport.
Sam: Wheelies, basically. Or like that one viral video of people walking but with power skates making them go way faster.
Steph: Exactly. They basically break down thousands of ideas, say whether each one was created, and you can see what year it was first realized. You can see Google, credit cards. For example, the credit card was first referenced in 1888, but Visa and Mastercard weren’t created until the 1950s. Live news was in 1889, and 24-hour live news didn’t happen until the 1980s.
It’s interesting because now you look at those things — credit cards, live news — and think, “Of course that exists.” But you can extrapolate that many things that sound like sci-fi today likely will follow the same pattern.
I like going through this database because there are still many things that fit in the category of “not yet created, but dreamed up.”
Shaan: Yeah, we could create electric rollerblades that revolutionize the way we get hit by cars. What are examples of things you’re interested in on this list?
Steph: Some are certainly becoming real. In 1897, someone dreamed up a non-alcoholic beverage similar to wine. Electric bicycles were also from that era — now becoming way cheaper and way more important. Vat-grown meat in 1984 is another one coming online.
But I think what’s equally interesting is to consider major tech trends — AI, stuff happening in biotech and space — all intersecting. Some things that sound way more sci-fi than an electric bicycle may actually become real.
A company that maybe fits this bill is Varda — they’re manufacturing drugs in space.
Sam: What’s Varda doing? They’re manufacturing drugs in space? Why?
Steph: Great question. My understanding is that the way some drugs are manufactured, the physics on Earth — due to gravity and other forces that don’t exist in space — means you can’t create certain chemical structures. That impacts how drugs can be ingested or administered. So there’s the immediate function of creating drugs that exist today but in different structures, and then the obvious future opportunity of creating entirely new compounds that couldn’t be manufactured on Earth.
Shaan: Did those guys raise a lot of funding?
Steph: I believe so.
Sam: That’s wild. That’s beyond my IQ. That’s just pretty amazing.
Shaan: Whenever I see these lists I think of — you know, I’m not into Wizards or Game of Thrones — but I do appreciate that one woman sat down and created this entire world. We talk about Quidditch like it’s just a small part of a universe this lady thought up. It’s actually crazy to see some of these predictions. In a weird way it’s inspiring to think that imagination can do this — and it makes me feel like I’m thinking way too small and not far enough into the future.
Sam: I just spotted row 300,543: in 2003, “smart wallpaper.” So maybe that’s coming your way, Shaan.
Shaan: Yeah, so I’ll look less pale.
Goldmine #4: Our World in Data [00:31:00]
Steph: All right, I love this one: Our World in Data. People may have heard of it — it’s a website that tries to aggregate data reflecting what’s really happening in the world. Things like data on poverty, but also really niche things — I found a graph about the day of the year with peak cherry tree blossoms in Kyoto. When I checked this website a few years ago, I want to say there were maybe 200 graphs. Now there are thousands of different data points.
Shaan: I just clicked on one — “adjusted net savings per capita from 1970 to 2020” — and you can see how much per capita a variety of countries are saving. Congo and Portugal: not saving much. Germany and France: great savers. Literally thousands of different charts.
You know I talk about one-chart businesses. Some of these charts you can see something and just spot interesting things.
Steph: One of the charts I wanted to call out is the population age distribution — how many of all people in the world are young (under 15), working age (15-65), and elderly (65+). The shocking thing: the elderly curve goes from under one billion today — by far the smallest line — and by the end of the projection it crosses over the young population to 2.5 billion. The working-age one flattens out, the young one goes down, and the elderly one has this huge spike.
Shaan: That’s the one-chart business right there. If you’re building anything in elder care that you’re going to own for 10 to 20 years, you have this immense tailwind. The customer base is going to grow from under one billion to over 2.5 billion. If you own senior living facilities, occupancy is just going to go up over time. Technology may upend things, AI and all that, but it would take a whole societal shift to change the direction of these lines.
Sam: Did you see the video of Kim Jong-un? He was delivering a speech where he was pleading and begging his people to start having babies because the population is just dwindling. You see tears coming down his face, and the rest of the audience is crying. Begging them: “Please have babies.”
Shaan: I mean, just light some candles and put on some R. Kelly and it’ll get done.
Sam: It was crazy. I didn’t realize how big of a problem it is. But looking at this chart and seeing his video — it all makes sense.
Steph: I just linked another one that I think is another one-chart kind of thing. This one’s hard to get involved with, but it’s lithium production. You can see it’s concentrated in just a few countries — a lot of it in China, a lot in a few countries in South America.
But the one I wanted to dive into is air pollution. If you click the stat in here that says “air pollution is one of the world’s leading risk factors for death” — when I think about what I’m afraid of, air pollution is not at the top of that list. However, I also stumbled onto Patrick Collison’s pollution page. He’s got this page just full of questions, one of them on pollution. He says the World Bank indicates that 3.7 billion people — about half the world’s population — are exposed to PM2.5 at about five times the level correlated with a bunch of problems: lower GDP, lower stock market returns, people making worse decisions, chess players making more mistakes, politicians using less complex speech.
And there’s another stat from a newsletter called Charter: India’s capital recently breached the 450 mark on the air quality index — over four times the healthy level, akin to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes a day. That’s an outlier, but I think air quality is something people are going to care about a lot more. One product from the last year that a lot of people made fun of is the Dyson headphones with a mask — basically an air purifier attached to headphones.
Sam: Yeah, I never saw those. What are those?
Steph: They’re headphones that have basically a mask and air purifier attached to them. They’re $700. When they came out, people made fun of them. If you Google the images, it’s like a white guy in the New York subway wearing it — a little off-brand considering the actual pollution problem is in India and a few other countries, not necessarily the New York subway. Kind of a misleading ad. But it’s fascinating.
Shaan: Are these taking off?
Steph: I think they’re in that zone of a lot of people making fun of them. But the reason I’m calling this out is there’s this growing understanding — and I think it’s going to take a marketer for people to care. Just a marketer and a product design that puts it in your face, educates you, scares you, and then says, “Don’t worry, there’s a solution.” That’s how a lot of things get done.
Sam: Have you guys ever used an air quality monitor in your home, or a CO2 monitor?
Shaan: Yeah, I have. Multiple times. I bought air purifiers that also measure air quality, and it’s shocking when it turns red and it’s like, “There’s something going on here.”
Sam: Yeah, same. Air quality changes over time. I’ve been noticing more days in San Francisco where people say, “Have you checked the air quality?” And a lot of people aren’t doing this yet, but I think that’ll change. If you go to bed with your door closed and check a CO2 monitor when you wake up, it is wild how high it is. All you need to do is open a window.
Shaan: You know something I’ll mention about the air quality stuff, Steph — I feel like one missing gap is that it’s not obvious. Most people would be surprised to learn they inhale this stuff with these adverse effects. It doesn’t rank high on people’s list of things to be afraid of. With GLP-1s, people see themselves every day and are constantly trying to improve their image. But with air quality — there may be some middle ground where a company effectively gives people that “aha moment.”
Steph: Exactly. It’s going to take a marketer. They’ll put it in your face the way those water filter salespeople do — going into your home and saying, “Did you know you’re drinking this much lead and sediment? Can you believe it?” and showing you.
Sam: Rob Dyrdek said he bought a good chunk of a company doing water filters for showers. My friend Justin Mares is a health freak. He wanted to install a Berkey filter for his whole home so his shower water would also be completely filtered and went through this whole ordeal. And Rob invested in this company that’s basically making a showerhead that’s a filter — simplifying the entire process.
I think that’s going to be a pretty big company. I imagine it’s going to be like the boxed mattress trend — nobody has them, then suddenly everyone does and there’s tons of competition. I’m pretty much on board with what he said. And I think you have an interesting insight with the AC vents — a product that literally everyone has in their home, you replace it two or three times a year, and it’s a really easy Instagram ad to make.
Air Quality Products: Jungle Scout Numbers [00:44:00]
Steph: There’s one product that has to do with an AC furnace air filter. Guess how much this thing sells every month.
Shaan: What is it exactly?
Steph: An AC furnace air filter — it’s like the filters you put on the vents of your home — but it’s a smart one with a monitor and an app. This thing costs $250. I’m looking at four entries in Jungle Scout, and they are $17 million, $12 million, $8 million, and $8 million.
Sam: That’s over $40 million per month. Take it with a grain of salt — I’m not sure how they measure — but they tend to be pretty accurate. That’s a growing business.
Shaan: I want to point out another thing. This chart of causes of death — in the United States, the top ones are: smoking number one, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and obesity. I have a crazy story.
I can’t say his name because he prefers to stay under the radar, but I have a friend who is a very different kind of investor. On Twitter you see investors who are loud about what they do, spray and pray, lots of deals, angel checks in 50 things. My friend is very different. He says every year there’s one thing that matters, maybe two, and his job is just to find that one or two things.
I’ve known him maybe ten years. At one point it was like, “It’s Bitcoin.” This was 2013, 2014 somewhere. “It’s Bitcoin right now.” Then he was the one who said, “Only Fans. I’m all in on Only Fans.” I was at Twitch at the time and he said, “Only Fans is going to be bigger than Twitch.” I said, “No, Twitch is like one of the biggest internet sites on Earth.” He said, “Trust me.” And he basically called it each year.
Then he texted me — maybe nine months to a year ago — “GLP greater than GPT.” He’s like, “I think the GLP stuff is the thing for the year.” He said, “I think GLP is bigger than GPT.” And he was trying to figure out the right way to invest — all the makers are public stock so the upside isn’t exactly there.
Then yesterday he sends me an article: this pharmaceutical company, Carmot, got bought for $3 billion, and they’re a maker of GLP drugs. He was an early investor, like seven years ago. I said, “How did you get in on this?” He said, “Well, at the time it wasn’t all clear. But these guys were drug makers attacking obesity in a different way, the charts showed obesity is a massive problem, there aren’t that many interesting bets on who’s attacking it differently. I liked their team.”
What do you think his return on that was?
Sam: I don’t want to say, but three billion is a big number and he got in fairly early.
Shaan: What I’ll say is that he looks at mega trends. And this is kind of what you’re showing here, Steph — if you understand how big the wave is, it simplifies life. You can ignore all small waves if you know what the mega trends are. Then you just figure out what’s the best way to surf one. And even if you don’t figure out the best way — even the fourth best way to surf a mega trend is going to work in your favor.
Mark Zuckerberg said something like this. We were working on some messaging app, maybe 2015, and Zuck came out and said, “There are only a few mega trends. Mobile was the last one. The new one is video. Everything is moving to video — people are going to communicate through video, watch more and more video, short video, long video, scripted, UGC, it’s all going to video.” I had never heard anyone frame it that way. When Zuck said that, I started paying attention.
We ended up pivoting our company into video streaming. That’s the company that got acquired by Twitch — we were just partially in the right space. Live video kept growing at this really fast rate. It was smart to get out of the text game and onto the right mega trend.
Goldmine #5: Gadget Flow and the Accessory Play [00:57:00]
Steph: Next one is Gadget Flow. It aggregates trending gadgets. I want to call out two things. First, if you look at the most popular gadgets, you might think, “I’m not going to create a drone like DJI, I’m not going to create the next AR/VR device, Apple’s doing that, Meta’s doing that — there’s no opportunity.” But I want to point out that every time a new device penetrates a lot of people’s homes, there’s almost always an opportunity for accessories.
A good example is AirPods. Sam, you had a crazy stat on that.
Sam: Way back early in the AirPod journey — I think I said AirPods, if they were a standalone company, would be in the Fortune 50. Or your stat was like AirPods make more revenue than Spotify, Snapchat, and Airbnb combined.
Steph: I think it was Twitter.
Sam: Yeah. That was maybe 2019 or 2020. And now 70% of all U.S. teens have AirPods. Early on in that trend, it was like — okay, there are cases, keychains, simple stuff.
Steph: Exactly. What you can take away from Gadget Flow is: what are the newest devices that are going to have scale — not hundreds or thousands of people using them, but millions or hundreds of millions — and what are the adjacent accessories I could create?
How do I use Gadget Flow? It’s not as searchable as Jungle Scout, but I’d first look at the “Most Popular” dropdown — that’s where you see the big devices. Then the category dropdowns. The one that caught my eye was pet accessories.
Remember, Gadget Flow is all tech devices. So if you go to pet accessories, there’s a bunch of different things. Have you guys heard of Fluent Pet?
Shaan: No. What’s that?
Steph: It’s this really interesting trend of buttons — Fluent Pet is a particular brand going pretty viral because of one account: this dog called I Am Bunny, which has I think a million followers on Instagram. It’s basically these buttons where you can teach your dog to communicate with you by pushing them to indicate what they want. Imagine a twister pad, and each color has a button — one button means bathroom, one means food. You train your dog to press a button to tell you what they want.
Sam: That’s actually really cool. We trained our dog to do something similar where I could tell what he wanted based off of a handful of activities.
Shaan: My dog is way too dumb for this, but this is awesome.
By the way, yesterday I took my kids to gymnastics and we brought the dog. All these kids love to come pet the dog. This kid comes up, probably seven years old, and says, “Oh, your dog’s so cute.” I say, “Thank you, you want to pet her?” He says, “What’s her name?” I say, “Her name’s Busley.” He goes, “Why didn’t you give her a better name?”
Sam: You got owned by a seven-year-old.
Shaan: I didn’t know how to respond. What are you supposed to say to that?
Sam: Shaan, did you name the dog?
Shaan: I did name her. I just thought it was a very regal-sounding name.
Sam: Your definition of regal and everyone else’s definition is a little different.
Steph: Shaan, what are you doing all day — just clicking through all these? You probably have a hundred different links here.
Shaan: Are you just clicking through all this stuff all day?
Steph: Many tabs open right now. I want to say 35.
Shaan: Are you going through those or are you just a hoarder?
Steph: There’s an order. The Jungle Scout tabs grouped together, the SimilarWeb tabs grouped together. I’ll spend time every so often going through these websites and scouring for ideas, but there are also a few newsletters that surface ideas I then go check in SimilarWeb or Jungle Scout.
What Category Will Steph Build In? [01:06:00]
Sam: I know you’re at a16z now and I presume you’re happy, but inevitably one day you’re going to start a company. I think you have it in you. What do you think it will be? Which category — because you’ve seen all this data.
Steph: I don’t want to share the ideas I actually want to pursue soon. But, you could say games, or I like the idea of — you know, if you remember Neil Agarwal, NealFun.com — part of me, we talk about these big ideas like AI and biotech, and it’s all very interesting, but part of me just wants to create things that I wish existed on the internet. Things that aggregate these ideas or get people to learn things in ways they never thought of before. I kind of just want to be — this is too silly a term — an internet artist, if that makes sense.
Sam: You work at an investor now. Is this something you’d raise money for or do on your own?
Steph: Do it on my own. I wouldn’t raise money. It’s not the kind of thing a VC would invest in anyway — “internet artist” is not exactly their category.
Shaan: Peter Levels is like the Banksy of internet art right now. He’s kind of one of those guys.
Steph: Exactly. I think you will do that. I’m eager to see when you finally do.
Sam: Well, they have her trapped. I saw her do something yesterday that made me shake my head. She tweeted, “Who’s got the best company swag in the world?” and posted a photo of a backpack, a koozie, and a water bottle all with the a16z logo. No doubt they were beautiful products. But that’s how they get you.
Shaan: The two most addictive things in the world: heroin and a monthly salary. The third is free swag.
Sam: You don’t even have golden handcuffs. You have a black umbrella. That’s what they gave you.
Shaan: The internet artist I want to follow — they do not fall into the traps of company swag. They reject it. When I saw you post that, I was like, “Oh no. She’s in too deep.” It’s like Inception — she’s on level three and we need to snap her out.
Steph: Well, I am human. I am convinced by free stuff.
Sam: It looks like they got you with a book bag, an umbrella, and a poncho. So for all the people who have previously tried to convince me of anything — that’s all you need. Just send me a backpack and a poncho.
Pricing Steph’s “Internet Pipes” Product [01:12:00]
Shaan: Steph, where can people get more of this type of stuff? You have this very unique method to your madness. You know these nooks and crannies. You’re like those people where you go to a city and you just know what tour traps to avoid, what good places to eat, the hole-in-the-wall where you enter through the chef’s kitchen. You’re like that for the internet. How can people get more of that?
Steph: Yeah. So this is my seventh time on My First Million, which is kind of crazy. And ever since the first few times — where I’d come with these docs and you guys would hype them up and say, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much info in here” — I constantly get people reaching out asking for those docs, for an aggregation of all the websites I visit and how to use them. How to internet sleuth. I like the term “internet pipes.”
So I’m putting together something — I don’t know what to call it, maybe you guys can help me — that aggregates these internet pipes and shows people how to use them. The only thing I’ve done so far is aggregate them and buy the domain internetpipes.com. But by the time this episode goes live I’ll probably have some sort of pre-sale up.
Sam: What are you going to charge for it?
Shaan: Don’t call it a “course.” You have to call it something else. Like a “research resource.” Something involving the word “research.”
Steph: I don’t like the idea of it being a course anyway. I want it to just be a resource people go to. Not a teachable course. But what do I charge for something like that?
When I did my book, I did a tiered pricing scheme where it started at $10 and went up every 30 or 50 sales. I feel like I’m going to end up charging too little. You always say I undercharge.
Sam: So Steph worked at my company, and she was talented. Someone came to me and said, “Do you care that Steph is launching this content book?” And I said, “No, why should I care?” Steph, you made great money on it. You maybe made more from that book than I was paying you.
Steph: Yeah, maybe in the first year.
Sam: Shaan, what would you have said if your employee was doing this? Would you have been pro or anti?
Shaan: Yeah, I would have been pro. It’s fine. I’d want to have a conversation to understand where it lives in their life — is this a fun project, or is this actually what you want to do? If it’s what you really want to do, maybe I can help you do that in a more deliberate way. Stars get more rope to go do things. If you’re doing a mediocre job and then have this side hustle, that’s the final straw. But Steph was crushing it, so we were pretty encouraging.
Sam: This was pre-Twitter blowing up like it has. I think in the future I might not have encouraged it the same way, which is kind of messed up.
Shaan: That’s what I mean by wanting to know where it lives in your life. If this is what you really want to do, let’s just be honest. We could figure out the right pathway forward. If you just want to make a little extra money, maybe you can do that here without starting a separate business. And if you’re using it for serendipity and networking and just like putting stuff out there on nights and weekends — that’s your hobby. Some people are like that. You’ve got to let them spread their wings.
Sam: I think also it depends — is this an ongoing thing, or a contained project? Steph, you said you intentionally compressed the book into a six-week thing. This is all the time I’m going to allocate to this.
Steph: Exactly. And this new project is the same thing. I don’t want to be doing a course forever. I just have this little burst of creativity, I need to get something out there, and then that’s it.
Shaan: As for what to charge — I don’t think this is going to make a ton of money, because the type of person who wants to buy this is somebody like you. And there’s not that many people like you — people who have disposable income and want better internet research tools and like to lurk and find interesting things. Those are awesome people, but it’s not mass market.
So you either charge a bunch, or you go the other way and charge very little but get the value in a separate way. What I would do: use this as a honeypot to attract the kind of person that would pay $99 or $100 to have access to this database. That’s somebody you’d want to go hang out with for three hours. The value isn’t going to come from direct monetization of the asset — it’s going to come from the little community you build, the interesting investments or introductions you get out of it, or the company you start with someone from this community.
Sam: But it’ll pay her monthly expenses. Between this and everything else, she’ll make $25,000 a month. I think we’ll see.
Shaan: One thing I think about a lot is: more of the same keeps me at the same level of the game. If I keep doing things that maintain where I am, I’ll never have the bandwidth to do whatever it takes to get to the next level.
I had a course I was teaching maybe five to ten days a year — not much — making over a million dollars a year. Amazing effort-to-payoff ratio. And I stopped. Because for me, making an extra $1 million a year is not going to get me to the next level of the game I’m trying to play. I want to get to, let’s say, $20 million a year. To do that I need empty space on my plate that forces me to go create the thing that gets me there. Or I might give things away for free, if that creates the serendipity needed to open up bigger opportunities.
Steph: Totally. One of the biggest learnings from the book was — some people said I was totally undercharging. But how do you deliver a product at a price point where people are so happy that they go share it, talk about it, want to work with you, actually digest the information — and it requires no customer service? It just runs itself, markets itself. That’s what happened with the book. So I’m leaning in that direction. But I was expecting you guys to say “charge more.”
Sam: Tim Ferriss said something that changed my thinking on this. He said his strategy was Ultra Free or Ultra Premium. Give away 99% of what you do for literally free, treat it like it’s a paid product, deliver it to the masses. Then on one day, charge a premium. He was doing his blog and podcast for free, and then he did a two-day in-person workshop — “open the kimono” type thing — and I think he did $2 to $4 million in sales in like 30 minutes. Because people were like, “I will pay $10,000. You’ve been over-delivering for years. This is expensive, I don’t expect everyone to afford it, but I’m doing this one thing.”
And he said: if I’d been trying to charge along the way — a little ebook for $9, a monthly subscription for $20 — I would have had a smaller audience and less money. Same with his podcast ads. He said, “I’d rather have no ad or charge Ultra Premium to a premium brand, because there’s always a market for luxury. There’s always a market for the absolute best.”
Alex Hormozi does a similar thing. He’s like, “I could make a little money here and there — a course, a seminar, whatever — but no. I’m going to be really in-your-face that this stuff is normally paid, and I’m giving it to you for free.” Builds goodwill, builds a big audience. When he’s ready to charge, he makes all the money back and more. In his case, it’s Acquisitions.com — “I’m going to buy equity in your business at a sweetheart deal for me” because he’s built up so much goodwill. Or if he does an in-person event, he’ll charge $25,000 per person and make $10 million in one day because he’s built it that way.
Steph: I don’t think I could charge $25K for anything. But we’ll see.
Sam: You actually can. You already get paid more than that.
Steph: That’s true.
Sam: You definitely can. I think you will, eventually.
Imposter Syndrome, Michael Scott Syndrome, and Salary Negotiation [01:27:00]
Steph: Someone, by the way — I read the comments, and on one of the episodes I was on ages ago, someone wrote, “Wow, Steph has a really intense case of imposter syndrome.” And I was like, “Oh. True.”
Sam: I’ll tell you something — when I was negotiating your salary when you first joined, you asked for a number. I don’t remember exactly what I did, but in general, I’d say a number back or just give them a number, and they’d accept it. And I’d be like, “Hey, you should negotiate with me.” Women in particular were horrible at pushing back on salary. My company was small, maybe 75 people total, but I noticed a clear trend: women did not push back nearly as hard as men. There were many men that would push back to a laughable degree — I’m like, “There’s not a chance I’m paying you that, but I guess I’ll meet you somewhere in the middle.”
But with you, Steph — you started way too low. We gave you a lot of bumps over time, but you started way too low. I’d encourage you, maybe not for this product, but definitely to elevate what you demand for pay. I think you’re doing all right at a16z, but I’ve noticed that with very smart and qualified young women in particular.
Steph: It took me from 21 to 28 or 29 to actually learn to negotiate. Seven years.
Shaan: Can I tell you an embarrassing version of imposter syndrome I have? I call it Michael Scott Syndrome. I felt this for like ten years — I always hire people that are really smart. Great upfront, but the downside is sometimes you just feel like Michael Scott. Like, “I’m the idiot in the office. These people are kind of looking at me the way Jim Halpert looks at Michael Scott.” Have you ever felt that?
Steph: Yes. All the time. And then I realized — that just means you’re good at hiring. Get out of the way.
Sam: Exactly. I felt that way too. I remember hiring people who were older and smarter than me, thinking, “What the heck? Did I really just trick this person into joining me?”
There’s one woman in our e-commerce business who is so fast, so hyperproductive — she gets three people’s work done in the same day. She Michael-Scotts me all the time. I’ll be in a meeting saying, “Let’s follow up next week on that,” and she’s like, “I already sent it out.” While I was talking. I was like, “But I was giving you such a good anecdote and metaphor — oh, you just finished it. I guess I could have shut up five minutes ago.”
Shaan: I realized this is actually a great thing. You said it: that’s not a sign that you’re not great at hiring. That IS the bar. I only want to hire people that make me feel like I’m Michael Scott. That’s how it should feel when you’re doing it right. You did the hard part. Now just get out of the way.
Sam: You’re funny too. That’s the other thing.
Shaan: I don’t know about that.
Wrap: Where to Find Steph [01:34:00]
Shaan: All right, let’s wrap it up. Steph, where can people find more of this?
Steph: I’m putting together the internet pipes resource. I’ve bought the domain internetpipes.com. By the time this episode goes live there’ll probably be a pre-sale up. I’ll figure out the price. We’ll see.
Shaan: All right, that’s the pod. Steph, thank you for doing this.