Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Episode Intro and FTX Drug Use Overview [00:00:00]
Shaan: What’s going on. We have an awesome episode. We’re going to start off by talking a ton about controversy — in fact, this entire episode feels like it’s about controversy.
Shaan: So the first part is on FTX. We talk about the drugs that they were on, and it’s kind of funny actually, how ridiculous it is. The second thing we talk about is LiverKing. You guys have to hear the stories about this jacked guy who’s like this fitness influencer who’s built this $100 million dollar company. Turns out he’s been on steroids the whole time. But in my opinion, that’s actually not the most interesting part. The most interesting part is these emails we got our hands on about him talking about how he was going to get huge on Instagram, and he totally called his shot.
Shaan: And then we talk about buying and selling really expensive real estate — we’re talking like $30, $40, $50 million — and how this one woman, Katie Haun, bought some real estate that kind of sent some signals and how Shaan thinks it’s a little mysterious how she actually afforded that. It’s a really interesting story. Check it out. I think you’re gonna like this episode.
Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Stimulant Culture [00:01:00]
Sam: All right, we’re live. I have two interesting things to bring up to you and I think they’re both pretty hilarious. Hit me.
Shaan: The first one: we talked about FTX, we’ve talked about Sam Bankman-Fried, but something interesting — and the next two segments I completely ripped off a YouTube channel called More Plates More Dates, so I don’t want to take credit for any of this — something interesting is that these guys were doing drugs. Sometimes they call them nootropics, but they’re really just amphetamines, and they were talking about it publicly. Looking back, it’s just hilarious how blatant this was. They were just rubbing it in our face. I want to talk about that. Do you know anything about that with these folks?
Sam: I know what you’re talking about. I know that they were kind of open about it, promoting it but not… like you said, this wasn’t seen as too much of a red flag. It was sort of like, oh man, this is that ultra-competitive nerd thing where they’re basically doing Adderall and making all this money. When you’re making money, it’s not seen as much of a bad thing. When you scam people and lose everyone’s money, then it’s like, these drugs are a problem.
Shaan: Right. So this YouTube channel is called More Plates More Dates. It’s the guy who breaks down what drugs different celebrities are on for different roles, and he goes into in-depth analysis. It’s pretty nerdy but it’s quite awesome. And he did this thing talking about FTX and the drugs that Sam Bankman-Fried was on.
Shaan: So basically, this whole FTX saga boils down to two interesting people: Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s like the leader, and then his right-hand woman — what’s her name?
Sam: Caroline. Caroline Ellison, I believe.
Shaan: So on April 5th, 2021, here’s a tweet she put out: “Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal non-medicated human experiences are.” And at the time, she’s running Alameda Research, which has billions of dollars under management. She’s making huge decisions. And she tweets out — “this morning I was lying on the couch reading a book, then I decided to go for a hike, but it took me like half an hour from that point to muster the energy and motivation to actually get off the couch.” I guess this was when she wasn’t on drugs. “The hike was good, my body had no problem making the effort involved in ascending… but the second dumbest thing I realized is that apparently there’s about 20% of my brain dedicated to food” — so when you’re on amphetamines you don’t worry about food.
Shaan: She’s just tweeting this in the open. This is like — she’s just telling everyone to go screw themselves. Looking back, it’s wild that this was a thing she was just openly talking about.
Sam: And she had a Tumblr where she said she wants to date a guy who wants to conquer the world, wants to dominate and control governments. And I thought — she’s like, “that’s right, that’s what I’m into.” It’s so funny.
The EMSAM Patch and SBF’s Drug of Choice [00:05:30]
Shaan: So there’s this picture of SBF sitting at his computer, and you see like a patch on his arm and what looks like a wrapper on his desk. People start analyzing it and they realize — and this is actually Autism Capital, my favorite source of news — they tweeted this out: if you look closely, it’s a stimulant patch that Sam was wearing called EMSAM, which is a drug normally used to treat depression or Parkinson’s, but for off-label use people use it for alertness and focus. So they go down and they talk about it — EMSAM is the brand name, but the actual drug is selegiline, I believe.
Shaan: And it has fatal effects if eaten with meat products, which is interesting because SBF was a vegan, so that kind of checks out. The downsides of it are that it’s linked to impulse control disorders such as pathological gambling and hypersexuality, which could explain some of the weird things Sam was doing.
Shaan: Here’s what’s even more interesting. In March of 2019, there was this website built for users of this drug, and in 2019 someone left a post. If you do the math, Sam Bankman-Fried was about 19 years old when this post was posted. And I just want to read this — it’s going to be a little long, but it’s really interesting.
Shaan: It says: “First off, I’m a 19-year-old male, about 170 pounds, who is experimenting with nootropics out of curiosity. A few months ago I ordered a bottle with 60 doses of 5 milligrams of selegiline from a research chemical site and I’ve been taking it pretty much every day. The day I started taking it I noticed a marked increase in motivation. For me it was money. There was a huge desire for me to make as much money as possible. I’d never been a material person at all, although I had money I never thought about doing anything with it other than spending it. But the feeling was and is nothing short of complete empowerment. I love doing math problems in my head involving money. From having a bit under $500 in the bank to having over $10,000 in two months since I started taking the drug. Of course I can’t quite disclose how I made this money, but I have to say that I engage in activities that I probably wouldn’t have without it.”
Shaan: And then it says: “I was motivated to use better vocabulary while speaking to people. I used to be pretty goofy and not many people took me seriously, but now when I talk, people listen. There’s a notable increase in strength in my voice. I probably had low confidence before taking this, and now instead of saying ‘may I,’ it’s ‘I will.’ It makes me tend to look down on most people, but not in such a way that it would affect friendships, although a few friends mentioned that I changed because of my general mindset. This probably sounds incredibly cocky, but it’s true. I’m still nice to people, it’s just that now they seem to look up to me.”
Shaan: “Another benefit is emotional numbing. Before taking this I would jump on any chance to be with a decent-looking girl and I’d become attached pretty quickly. On it, I’m completely rational and my emotions are never affected by my thinking. I’m not even looking for a girlfriend until one can rationally show me that she’s really worthy. I’m calmer, without emotional outbursts. When I get upset with people I simply use my enhanced charisma to undermine them rather than losing control.”
Sam: This is awesome. That’s not the reaction I thought you were gonna have.
Shaan: What, like, are you trying to take this right now?
Sam: No! Enhanced charisma, increased desire for money… no patch with my first million in it, dude. I was prescribed Ritalin in fourth grade and I took it for one year and it was the worst. Since then I’ve never taken any of this crap. I hate amphetamines. But this is a pretty good commercial. This is pretty awesome.
Shaan: It’s also like — what if this is him? What if this is actually him?
Sam: It’s probably not him, just by odds. But we assume it is him.
Shaan: Yeah, as far as I’m concerned, it’s him. But even if it’s not him — this person, if you go to the website where this forum is, it’s like a nerdy forum. There’s no evidence, but it adds up to where I could see that this could be him. And even if it’s not him, the way this person describes it makes a lot of sense for how this guy behaved.
Sam: I feel like these are gonna become excuses for his behavior.
Shaan: No, no excuses. This guy did all of this under his own control and volition. That’s where I stand.
Sam: Well, there’s no excuse because they just bragged about it. He tweeted about it.
SBF’s Post-Collapse Interview Tour [00:12:00]
Shaan: Here’s another funny thing: the former co-chief executive of Alameda bought a boat shortly after stepping down in August, only months before the trading firm collapsed, and he named his boat — wait for it — “Soaked My Decks.”
Sam: You can’t write this stuff.
Shaan: Did you know — one of the most damning things about how FTX collapsed — I feel like this kind of gets lost in the shuffle of all the details. One of the truly unbelievable parts is that they just lost track of $8 billion and he called it “poorly labeled fiat accounts.” His explanation, as far as I understand, is that at the beginning when FTX launched the exchange, they were trying to move fast, Scrappy startup thing, they didn’t have their own bank account yet. He was running Alameda before that, so they were like, “Oh, cool, just send the money to Alameda and then we’ll give you credit in your FTX account.” And they never trued it up. They never moved the money from the Alameda account to the FTX account. It just accrued in the Alameda account and then they just used it to trade.
Shaan: So the money literally never even made it to the bank account of the company itself. That’s what he meant when people were like, “Did you loan the users’ money? Did you do this against the terms of service? Did you give this away to your other company?” He’s like, “No, actually I never even got it. It went straight to their bank account. I never even realized it. We forgot to connect the link later.” And so $8 billion of deposits just went straight to Alameda and never even touched FTX.
Sam: Lazy, unorganized, or fraudulent. Pick three as far as I’m concerned.
Shaan: So, you know, these stimulants aren’t so stimulating if you forgot to pick up the $8 billion that your business is generating. But get beyond the fact that people are hurt here — which is a big deal — get beyond that, it’s hilarious. It’s just wild. This is a wild story.
Sam: I want to see like — you ever seen the movie Miss Congeniality where Sandra Bullock goes from this like tough cop to a beauty pageant queen and they transform her? I want to see the version of that for FTX. Like Sam is this normal-looking guy, and they’re like, “You know what, grow out your hair.” He’s like, “What do you mean?” It’s gonna look completely disheveled. They’re like, “Yes — disheveled equals genius.” And they’re like, “Hey, when you’re walking, turn your knees in.” He’s like, “It’s a little uncomfortable.” They’re like, “You need to walk like this.” And they’re like, “Hey, you need to put this patch on.” And, “Hey, can you start saying things like ‘this is a 12-sigma event’?” He’s like, “What does that mean?” They’re like, “Don’t worry about what it means, it sounds provocative.” So they’re training him to be this autistic hero nerd that everybody’s gonna believe in.
Shaan: He’s the type of guy who probably wears a backpack wherever he goes and he doesn’t walk, he runs. He’s that type of guy.
Sam: Dude, did you see the clip of him running through the Bahamas?
Shaan: Was he running? It’s hilarious. Somebody found — I’m sure your boys at Autism Capital have it on their feed — but basically it’s SBF on the run, literally wearing a backpack, running. And he was doing this run where instead of pumping your arms normally, he just had straight arms swinging them like a penguin running as fast as he could, just down the street. And they’re like, “Where is he going?”
Sam: That’s crazy, man. This whole story is crazy.
Shaan: More stuff leaked, too. He did a random interview with some YouTuber with like 10,000 subscribers. He decided to give her the scoop. She addressed each of the concerns. She’s like, “So when you guys reopened withdrawals but only for the Bahamas — where people felt like employees and insiders could cash out while everyone else was stuck — what was that about?” Previously they had said, “Oh, the Bahamas government ordered us to do this.” And then the Bahamas government came out and said, “We didn’t do that.” So that got debunked.
Shaan: And then on this call, he just goes, “Yeah, there was a decision we had to make. It’s funny — you don’t want to be in a country where everybody’s angry at you, so we had to do that.” It’s like — what? You’re saying this out loud? That was your reason? You didn’t want to get beat up?
Sam: How can you — okay, so let’s get beyond the crime. This is the stage of a criminal’s period where you’re supposed to shut up. You don’t talk. You say, “I plead the fifth. Where’s my lawyer?” But he’s going on tour. He’s speaking at a New York Times summit with Zuckerberg and politicians.
Shaan: And both his parents are lawyers.
Sam: He’s incriminating himself. And then he tweets out dumb stuff. This guy — what the hell? You shut up. You don’t say a word.
Shaan: I hope he keeps talking. Keep talking, boy. Build your own trap, that’s fine.
Sam: It’s crazy.
LiverKing: Steroids, Emails, and Called Shots [00:20:00]
Shaan: Can I tell you one more interesting scandal? This might be less interesting but it’s interesting nonetheless. We talked about this guy named LiverKing a while ago. Do you remember that?
Sam: Yeah. The ultimate meat head. This guy looks like a caveman, he’s absolutely jacked, and he’s always eating raw kidneys from a cow, butchering and eating it.
Shaan: So he owns a company called Ancestral Supplements — it’s all liver and meat organ supplements. I think that’s fine.
Sam: I like the people who I follow who are like, yeah, that’s fine. That’s a fine thing.
Shaan: So “LiverKing” is his persona. Instead of Joe Smith, he’s like, okay, Sam Parr is online — how are we going to talk to him, how are we going to get this guy to buy liver tablets?
Sam: Right.
Shaan: So it came out that — again, this is a More Plates More Dates thing — Derek, the YouTuber, got a hold of email exchanges between Brian Johnson, who is LiverKing, and a doctor. This guy looks huge, he has millions of followers, and he makes $100 million a year on supplements. And these emails document him saying, “Hey, I’m gonna get popular on social media in the next month or two, I need to look totally shredded. Here’s the steroids I currently take. I spend $15,000 a month on them. What else should I be taking?”
Sam: Spoiler alert: he’s on steroids.
Shaan: And the reason this is a big deal is that for the past year or two, he’s gone on podcasts and explicitly said, “There’s not a chance I’m on steroids. No, I’m not on steroids. I only look like this because I eat my liver, which you guys should buy too at my website.” So that’s shady, but whatever. He’s on steroids. But here’s what’s interesting.
Shaan: I wanted to call out a couple of things in the emails. He says: “As it relates to my goal — I’m the face of several brands including Ancestral Supplements, and I’ve hired a team to build the LiverKing brand with the goal of 1 million followers by 2022.” When he wrote this, he had like single-digit thousands of followers. And he hit a million followers before March 2022.
Sam: Impressive.
Shaan: He says, “I’ve hired a film crew who’s living at my house and they’re filming constantly. I’ve got to stay in great shape year-round.” And he nailed it. This guy totally called his shot and he hit it. And even though he’s a liar, I respect that.
Sam: I totally get it. I’m the same way.
Shaan: He also says: “I live on 15 acres on the lake and have everyone come to me. My ranch is 500 acres of paradise. I don’t go out to eat, I don’t go bowling, I don’t go to the movies. I stay home and people come to me.”
Shaan: Here’s another funny part. The doctor asked him all these different questions — what foods he’s allergic to, what his daily routine is, what type of foods he’s eating — and then: “What type of food do you like to eat that isn’t bodybuilding-related?” His answer: “None. Even when I eat sushi, I have a sushi chef come over and make it exactly how I want it. If I ever have ice cream, my wife makes colostrum ice cream made out of first milk, egg yolks, vanilla extract, and a little maple syrup.” And then: “You should come over and eat some of this with me, Doc.”
Shaan: Then the doctor asks: “How’s your mood as you go deep in your diet? Can you function and continue with your jobs and deal with friends and family, or does it become increasingly difficult to maintain your obligations outside your bodybuilding goals?” His response: “I can do anything. I’m unequivocally strong in mind, heart, and spirit.”
Sam: And even though this guy’s a liar, I kind of dig it.
Shaan: Let’s get your moral code straight. Proven liar. Borderline scammer for lying about what’s causing his gains. Absolute weirdo. But he’s a real competitor.
Sam: Kind of like Lance Armstrong. Cheated, sued people for saying he cheated, ruined people’s reputations — but a real competitor. Gotta love the guy. My dad used to say, no matter how thin a pancake, there’s always two sides to it.
Shaan: He’s spending $15,000 a month on steroids. He says he’ll spend whatever he needs to get it done. I think it’s interesting that he had a goal, he called his shot, and he nailed it. Was willing to go all in and do it his way. So there is respect. We put respect on his name, even though he was a liar.
Sam: That makes sense to me. Other people might hear that and be like, “What?” But I totally get it.
More Plates More Dates: A Podcast Strategy Case Study [00:30:00]
Sam: You’ve said the More Plates More Dates guy a couple times now. Is that a dog whistle to try to get him to come on?
Shaan: Maybe. Totally it is. I love this guy, man.
Sam: You also tweeted something out the other day about what makes a great podcast. You said something like: to have a great podcast you need either unique/amazing content, unique/amazing delivery, or unique/amazing perspective — like specific knowledge or insights that the average person doesn’t have. And you said you need at least one to have a successful podcast. Two is great. Three would be unbelievable but extremely rare.
Sam: Let’s use Derek from More Plates More Dates as a case study.
Shaan: Perfect example. So — unique content. Before him, there wasn’t a popular YouTube channel with the premise of “I’m going to make videos speculating whether this person is on steroids, and if so, what drugs do I think they’re using.” That’s his entire promise. Nobody was doing that as a content category.
Shaan: And from a non-judgment perspective — Derek says, “Yeah, here’s what I think they’re using, here’s the evidence.” He’s not trying to take anyone down. He’s just trying to speak honestly about what he thinks, with a sense of humor about it. So — unique content, check.
Shaan: Unique delivery: his delivery is actually very, very good. It’s non-judgmental, it’s not overproduced, he’s not trying to sell you something during the video, and he’s just humorous. Other people who do this are either judgmental or going for the dramatic “I’m ripping the mask off this scandal!” He’s just like, “You know, the guy will claim he’s totally natural. Sure, bro. Whatever you say.” That level of delivery — it’s good.
Shaan: He’s got these great phrases. Like, if a guy looks jacked, he’ll say he’s looking “saucy.” Or “sauce to the gills.” He has really funny lines. His delivery is so good that I don’t even care about steroids, I don’t have any interest in the topic, and I will still watch his channel because of how likable he is.
Sam: It’s actually a self-delusion that you think he would be friends with you.
Shaan: The guy just seems like a good hang. Third — amazing perspective. He has that too. He has real scientific knowledge, but also street knowledge. He’s not just straight academic, nor is he just a meathead. He’s got enough science while having enough street smarts about what a dude’s actually using, how it makes them feel, what the side effects are. He’s so good.
Sam: And you want to know another interesting thing? No one knows his last name. I tried to Google it. I only spent five minutes so I’m sure I could find it if I really tried, but he’s done a great job — everyone just knows him as Derek from More Plates More Dates.
Shaan: He records a video every single day. He’s got 1.5 or 2 million subscribers. And what’s really fascinating is that guys like him don’t call themselves journalists with a capital J, but they really are. They’re doing investigative journalism. And it’s quite good — better than a lot of what the quote-unquote professionals put out.
Sam: Totally. He’s great.
The All-In Podcast Discussion and Twitter Tone [00:38:00]
Shaan: Should we continue with the podcast topic? By the way, for that tweet I quoted — I further said, as an example of a podcast that has incredible perspective but the other two factors are merely decent: All-In. Their delivery is decent, which I thought was a compliment. They’re not like a comedian, not like Lex Fridman level of unique format, not like some well-produced investigative show. It’s just four guys on a Zoom call.
Sam: Sometimes through AirPods.
Shaan: They’re quite funny, quite charismatic, but they’re not 10x better at delivery than other people of that magnitude. And their content — talking about current events — that’s not a super unique content angle in itself. But the thing that makes it amazing is that it’s them. Four people who are incredibly, possibly-billionaire successful, sitting down every week and talking about everything in an unfiltered way. That is 10x better than most things trying to become that. That’s why they’re awesome.
Shaan: And Jason — one of the hosts — I think he thought I was insulting him. And I’m like, “No, dude. This is a compliment.” It’s like saying LeBron is great at a lot of things but maybe not the best at blocking shots. It’s not an insult. And people got mad and tried to pick a fight, and that was not my intention.
Sam: I thought you were complimenting them. But you have a way with words where you’ll add a little period after something and it just sounds different. Like — “it’s decent.” Period. You gotta watch the periods, dude. The periods totally change the tone. And then you doubled down.
Shaan: I didn’t double down. I don’t backtrack. I was like, “Dude, yeah, your delivery is like pretty good. You’re not like Theo Von.” I said what I said. It’s decent.
Sam: Sam’s the kind of guy that doubles down on a 17 in Vegas.
The Curious Case of Katie Haun [00:44:30]
Shaan: Okay, so I have one that’s not in the same category. We did SBF — liar, probably fraud, scammer, whatever. We did LiverKing — liar, probably scammer, allegedly, whatever. This is not that. But I am calling this “The Curious Case of Katie Haun.”
Sam: What was that music?
Shaan: That’s my new X-Files style music. We’re getting into a case that makes me say: “Hmm. How does this work?”
Sam: How do you spell her name? I want to Google her while you’re talking. Katie and then Haun — H-A-U-N?
Shaan: So, you probably know of her. She seems like a great person, just to be clear. Her backstory: went to Stanford law, then spent a decade as a federal prosecutor for the DOJ, and at one point created the government’s cryptocurrency task force. We know her because she was involved with the Silk Road case. Silk Road was the website where people were buying and selling drugs — you could buy a lot of crazy stuff on there. They eventually took Ross down in San Francisco, and after the fact they had all this Bitcoin from Silk Road’s purchases. She’s involved in that case.
Shaan: She did a great interview with Tim Ferriss about that story. So I hear about her and the impression I have of her is this awesome civil servant, this person who’s just grinding it out as part of the government.
Shaan: Imagine the look on my face when I hear that Katie Haun just purchased a $41 million home in Atherton.
Sam: $41 million? What’s going on here, Katie?
Shaan: DOJ average salary, federal prosecutor: $94,000 to $150,000.
Sam: Okay, so she worked there for ten thousand years? No. That’s not it.
Shaan: Her property taxes are probably making her DOJ salary in a month. So what happened? She made a switch. She did the decade at DOJ — RICO cases, crazy drug and cartel stuff — and then all of a sudden, she makes the leap and becomes a VC.
Shaan: She becomes a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz in 2018. The year before that, in 2017, she was named to the board of Coinbase.
Sam: That’s interesting. Like, they wanted someone who had a different background — the regulatory side of things. That’s her expertise. So that’s a good person to have on your board, somebody who was part of the government’s cryptocurrency task force.
Shaan: Definitely see the value there. But how much value? That’s the question of the day.
Shaan: On the day of Coinbase’s IPO — April 14, 2021 — her shares were worth $73 million. And she sold pretty much at the top, selling around when it was trading at something like $300-$380 a share. It’s currently at like $41 a share. So she sold the absolute top.
Sam: Wow.
Shaan: What I want to know is: why did this person make roughly $100 million for sitting on the board? Because board members don’t work that hard for the company. I thought board members typically got like $250,000 a year.
Sam: Yeah, that’s the normal board compensation.
Shaan: So why did this board member make $100 million? And I don’t know if you know the answer to this, but that is why it is The Curious Case of Katie Haun.
Sam: You’re asking this like a leading question. It sounds like you have an opinion.
Shaan: Keep in mind — she also founded something called Haun Ventures, which has a $1.5 billion fund focused on Web3, and I believe she’s the only partner. The fees on that alone — two percent management fee, which is typical for VC — is $30 million per year that she takes as management fees.
Sam: That’s crazy.
Shaan: And when she was at Andreessen, the a16z crypto fund was around $7 billion at the time, with five general partners. I don’t know exactly what her slice was, but it’s believable she was making $30 million plus off that. Coinbase was the only one of her investments that had exited by then. There’s Autograph, there’s Royal, there’s a bunch of others, but these are all still early bets — we’re only talking four years in.
Shaan: So kind of crazy that somebody made $100 million-plus off their board seat after working for the government for 10 years.
Sam: And so I don’t know if this is like a very fancy way of buying favor in Washington. Like, hey, we’re going to get this veteran who’s super plugged in, give her really strong comp, and she’s gonna make sure the right people think favorably about Coinbase. I don’t know if it’s that. I don’t know if this is standard.
Shaan: I don’t think this is standard for board members. What did the other board members make? Did you look?
Sam: I looked at the S1. I saw Gokul Rajaram — I think he was another board member — and he had 600,000 shares. Hers was 5.9 million shares. So she got roughly ten times more in her stock grant than he did.
Shaan: Yeah, he was also a board member. So for some reason she got 10x more in her stock grant than him. Things that make you say hmm.
Sam: I don’t know — I agree this is a very curious one. But there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. I’m not owed any explanation. I just think it’s weird that this person who worked at the government for almost their whole career, except for the last three years, is buying $40 million pads. That doesn’t make sense to me. And then I looked at where the money came from and that didn’t make sense either. But that might just be my own limitation of knowing how this stuff works.
The Haun Ventures NFT Angle and Real Estate Fascination [00:55:00]
Shaan: Have you ever spoken to her, or heard her speak?
Sam: I’ve heard her speak. She’s whatever. She tells cool stories. I’ve heard her on a couple of podcasts. She’s co-invested in some of the crypto deals that I’m in, so I’m not saying she’s a bad investor — if she is, I’m probably terrible too. But there was one other funny thing.
Shaan: There’s this guy, Lerone Shapiro — I don’t know if I’m saying that right — but have you seen this guy on Twitter? He’s a fan of the show. He’s also the number-one crypto skeptic on Twitter. His mission is to expose the fallacies, scams, and hypocritical things about Web3. So he tweeted this out four days ago: “Open Sea’s lead investor Katie Haun claims that NFTs have many uses and invites us to check out her latest purchase.” Okay, let’s check. Goes to her profile on OpenSea and it’s called “Wrapped Moon Cat” and it’s just this purple cat. Her account has zero activity since June. “If you’re not using NFTs yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be investing in the space.”
Shaan: Of course she could have other wallets or whatever, but it is a little strange that the lead investor in OpenSea, the biggest NFT platform, doesn’t seem to have much activity on the platform.
Sam: Do you like looking at Zillow and reading the real estate trade magazines — any time someone buys a $50 or $20 million dollar home? I love reading that stuff. Call to action: I want to help start one of these Instagram accounts that just features baller homes that ballers buy. I just want: celebrity or business celebrity homes, who are they, how are they rich, and what does their home look like. I think that’d be a great Instagram account.
Shaan: I love that stuff too. And I always think about the economics — how do people afford $30, $40, $50, $60 million dollar homes? I want to know what the monthly nut is. Do you have to have a full-time staff member? Is there a mortgage? What are you doing — getting a $40 million dollar mortgage? What’s the tax bill? How do they actually care for the property? What’s their liquid position and how do they finance it if they pay cash?
Shaan: And when you have a $40 million dollar home — do you view it like an asset? Like, when I think of owning a home, I don’t think of it as necessarily an asset, more like a store of value, because they typically don’t grow much more than inflation. Do they account for it differently in their net worth?
Sam: Dude, I don’t know any of that. I just want one. Do you tip the landscaper or not?
Shaan: Who cares about all these details. I want to know who bought it, how they got rich, what it looks like, and how can I get one. Those are my four questions.
Sam: I’m about that too, man. But in New York you see it like crazy — people buying $20, $30 million dollar homes, and the shocking thing is how many of them there are. I read this blog called Mansion Global and they always talk about different mansions being bought and sold in New York. There’s just so many. In San Francisco there’s not that many $20-$30-$40 million dollar purchases — in New York it’s constant, and it’s like a condo. It’s crazy.
Michael Birch’s Real Estate Service Idea [01:02:00]
Shaan: I think I told you this once. When I was working with Michael Birch, he put up his house in San Francisco for sale. For like three years I was at his house and he’d say, “Yeah, I’m gonna sell this place.” I was like, “You bought this for like $30 million.” He said yeah — it was the highest purchase price at that time in San Francisco, I think. And then when he listed it, he listed it for $50 million, which it didn’t sell at, but that’s kind of the range.
Sam: And how do you even sell a house like this? Do you just put it on the MLS? Do you have open houses on Sundays?
Shaan: No. And that was actually one of the ideas I wanted to talk to him about. He was like, “What if we made a service for buying and selling only homes that are worth $10 million or more? Because it breaks the traditional model. You shouldn’t pay 6% commissions to an agent when the purchase price is $20 or $30 million.”
Sam: Is that how much they pay? Five or six percent?
Shaan: Yeah, Michael tries to negotiate and they’re like, “Our paperwork already says 6%, it’s gonna be a hassle to change.” And he’s like, “What are you talking about? It’s $1 million on a $20 million dollar home.” So he wanted to make a service for only selling homes that are $10 million or more. A flat one percent commission — because one percent on a $20 million dollar home actually pays for the service being done. Second: one broker, not two, taking both sides. Third: no open houses, because the people walking through your home aren’t serious buyers. Anybody who does an open house tour would need to show that they’re able to buy homes of this caliber to get access.
Sam: I actually toured Michael’s house. I was one of those people. They had finger sandwiches out, I was just there for the free sandwich. I showed up and was like, “No ham? Forget it.”
Shaan: So he had this whole plan. The broker’s commission on top of the 1% would just be a tip based on how you felt the service was — optional. He had the whole model figured out. I did some analysis and found there are somewhere around 5,000 to 10,000 homes like this sold per year. Average home let’s say is $15 million — that’s hundreds of millions in sales annually, so your 1% commission would be significant. And how do you get the first hundred clients? Oh, these are all your friends. We can get the first hundred just out of your network.
Shaan: We never pulled the trigger. I think we should have. I thought it was a great idea.
Sam: I think that’s awesome. I can’t decide if those clients would be a pain in the ass to work with or the best people to work with.
Shaan: Here’s the thing — and this is how I feel about any business based on influencers or people who are famous or wealthy. It sucks doing those businesses because you’re pretty much always groveling at the feet of these people. They should take your offer, it’s in their best interest, but they’re busy and they have too many offers and they don’t care. Even if they say yes, they’ll flake when it comes time to execute. And you’re like, “Oh my god, this was really important to our business.”
Shaan: Of course when it works it works. You build the whiskey brand with Conor McGregor, you do the Honest Company with Jessica Alba, you can make it work. But I hate influencer-based businesses.
Shaan: I remember talking to a buddy who was building something around Twitch. Twitch is basically 100 streamers that matter, and if you can get them everybody else will follow. I was like, “What about this strategy, what about this pivot?” And I’ll never forget this. He goes: “I’m just tired of sucking up to people, man.” And he said this at what was basically a business meeting. And I immediately knew exactly what he was talking about — it’s the thing I had been doing for the last year. Going and trying to get these 20 people who really mattered to just watch our demo, just say yes, just agree to partner with us, just agree to take our money to promote our thing. And I was like, he’s right. I hate this. I really, really hate this. We pivoted like three months later.
Sam: Well, thank you Katie for bringing us to this topic — The Curious Case of Katie Haun.
Shaan: Do I need to play the sound again?
Sam: No. Dude, you’re gonna get DMs about this.
Mark Andreessen, Online Beef, and Being Provocative [01:10:00]
Shaan: Andreessen already hates me, man.
Sam: Why do they hate you?
Shaan: Mark blocked me. He blocked me for the Clubhouse thread — where, by the way, not only did she not block me, I was right. I called that thing. It was a bad investment, it was gonna fail, I called it. So he blocked me. Then he unblocked me for some reason and I got a second chance. And then the other day he blocked me again.
Sam: Why did he unblock you? Just think about that. What was he going through? Like someone from the firm sends him a post, he clicks it and it says “you can’t view this, you’ve blocked this person,” and he’s like, “all right.” That’s the only way I can imagine how you’d show back up on his radar.
Shaan: Or just lying in bed going through his blocks like, “I miss him. The one that got away.” Like, I wonder what he’s doing. Is he staring at the same moon right now?
Sam: He’s looking at everyone around him and he’s thinking, “I just need one more. None of them are right.”
Shaan: I don’t know what happened. He unblocked me and then blocked me again. I think what I did was — I put out that tweet where I said something like, “This year I’ve realized that a lot of the things I thought were smart money, where you could just follow them and assume they know what’s going on — there is no smart money in this space.” FTX: everyone thought they were quant-genius traders. Chamath’s SPACs: these are IPO 2.0, must be great. Nope, SPAC collapse. But I didn’t mention Andreessen specifically.
Sam: You specifically named him?
Shaan: No, no. I said “a16z,” not “Mark Andreessen.” I wasn’t trying to pick on anybody. I was just saying the most prestigious names also make a bunch of bets that don’t work out. That’s part of their business model. You can’t look at any one bet in isolation and say, “Well, if they did it, it must be good, it must be smart, they must know something I don’t.” In fact — trust your own gut, trust your conviction, trust your research. Because you don’t know their whole portfolio, you don’t know the strategy, and they’re going to make mistakes. That’s part of Venture investing. Don’t just assume that because a really smart person you like to listen to invested in something, it’s a good investment.
Sam: Do you think that being… I don’t think you and I are jerks, but both of us sometimes dip our toes in. Do you think being a little provocative online is gonna bite us in the butt, or does it help us? Should we just go the nice guy route?
Shaan: I can think of a few guys — Scott Galloway, Jason Calacanis — both cause a fuss, they get into it with people, and I’d say it’s been net positive for them. And then there’s others where it’s just ruined their reputation. And there are people like Jason Lemkin who I love — disaster on Twitter, but just generally a positive person. He goes out of his way not to disrespect people. Nathan Barry too — nine out of ten times, goes out of his way to be kind. The one time he called someone out, I was like, “Oh, this must be bad, because Nathan never does that.”
Sam: So do you think being provocative has benefits?
Shaan: Both. Being a call-out artist has its benefits and it’s very addictive. You could be right, you could be wrong, it kind of doesn’t matter — you’re provocative, people pay attention, people fight with you, it draws attention. If your goal is attention, it definitely works. Having said that, it doesn’t really generate a lot of positivity in your life and doesn’t add a lot of value, typically.
Shaan: Unless you go full WWE character, which is what I consider Scott Galloway to be. Where you just take super-strong stances, argue them, and if you’re wrong — truth and accuracy are kind of secondary. The more important thing is to have strong opinions that get shared, get read, get commented on, cause debate. That’s what drives clicks, drives followers. Strategically, I see that advantage. Life EV, I think it’s kind of net negative.
Shaan: But I also don’t think you should just be Mr. Nice Guy. We know people who will talk mad trash in text messages to us but then publicly they’ll suck up to those exact people. That is disgusting to me. I judge that the worst. I would rather you just speak your mind — and sometimes realize you’re wrong more often than you’re right, and be like, “Okay, sometimes it’s just not worth the hassle.” You could just kind of go on with your day.
Sam: Is there any time you’ve been rude to someone on the internet and lost sleep over it?
Shaan: That’s crazy to me, that you do that. You feel guilty?
Sam: Sometimes I’ll say something and I’m like, “Oh man, I was too rude.” I’ll question it. “Maybe that was a bit much, maybe I should have just stayed out of it.” But I don’t lose sleep, that sounds too serious.
Shaan: For example, when I wrote that Clubhouse thread — I remember getting a message from someone I respect and admire, someone loosely affiliated with that project. They said, “Man, this Twitter thread — I’m torn. On one hand, amazing storytelling and I think you might be right. On the other hand, I don’t really like tearing down startups. Startups are small, fragile things. We should be building each other up.”
Shaan: And I was like, yeah, that’s a fair point. I have nothing against them. I wasn’t rooting for it to fail. I just thought this is what might happen based on my previous experience in the space, and I wrote it and sent it. And I thought — even though I know I could make it my thing to be the “teardown guy,” I don’t like where that leads me. I don’t want to corner myself in that area.
Shaan: So what I often do is I’ll say something, let it sit, and later I’ll think, “I should have stayed out of it” or “That was too harsh.” Lesson learned. But I just move on from it. I don’t dwell on it. It’s a trial balloon. I do this with ideas all the time too — I’ll say, “I want to do X, anyone want to work on this with me?” and then after a few days I’ll be like, “Actually, I’m not doing that.” And people find that very strange. But for me it’s like an experimental platform. It’s okay to say something and change your mind upon further reflection. That’s okay.
Sam: Like when you tweeted out that you’re putting X amount of your net worth into crypto and then someone automatically wrote an article about it, and you’re like, “Well, it’s a discussion.”
Shaan: People could tell you when they buy, they don’t usually tell you when they sell. People make a whole lot of assumptions. Somebody told me a stock was great and it turned out to be dog crap. I was like, “Oh man, we got busted on that one.” He’s like, “No, I sold at the top.” I’m like, “Dude, where was my message for that? You only told me to buy.”
Wrap-Up and Upcoming Guests [01:22:00]
Sam: All right. I think that was a lively discussion. Is that the pod?
Shaan: You want to do one more?
Sam: No, that’s the pod. Let’s save the other topics for Monday. We have a bunch of cool people coming on.
Shaan: Who’s coming on?
Sam: Austin Rief from Morning Brew — formerly my nemesis, now one of my great friends. People don’t know this, but Austin and I, we make fun of each other all the time. It’s just a competition for who can get the right zing in on the other person.
Sam: We have Austin… do we have anyone else interesting?
Shaan: The founder of Whoop is coming on. We’re gonna do another Millie Early Awards — our end-of-year awards with Andrew Wilkinson, the three-year tradition. That’s probably the most popular episode of the year. And then early next year we’re having the return of Dude Perfect. I think Jonathan booked them. We got in a little bit early on their podcast journey — I take a lot of pride in that. He’s been on Impulsive the other day and I watch all of them, man. He’s inspiring. The guy’s the real deal.
Sam: He’s great. All right, cool. I’m looking forward to it. That’s the pod.