Sam and Shaan kick off with two announcements — MFM merch and a new clips channel — then riff on Samir from Colin and Samir’s framework for creator merch: collectibles vs. consumables. The bulk of the episode is a deep dive into billion-dollar businesses hiding in plain sight: CLEAR biometric airport security (how Karen Coufinhal bought it out of bankruptcy for $6M and built a $3B company), Cricut home crafting machines ($1B revenue, $100M free cash flow), the Etsy-to-brand pipeline (Native Deodorant), and Aunt Flow hygiene dispensers. They also cover iCracked’s rise and sale to Allstate, Cloud Poker Night (Anthony Martin’s new venture), and Shaan’s pitch for a gamer dating app — which leads into the real story of Dil Mil, an Indian dating app that sold to Match Group for $50M.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Opening Announcements: Merch and Clips Channel [00:00:00]
Shaan: There are stories of her raising funding where a guy leans over the table and says, “So why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company?” And she leans back over and goes, “Because I’m a complete and total animal.” The guy leans back and he’s like, “All right, I’m in.”
Shaan: Okay, what’s up. We are here and I’ve got two little special announcements for you. First one: we got merch. The boys got merch. We’re a little late to the game, a little slow. Most people start selling merch as soon as they get a following. Took us four years, but Sam, we figured it out — you’ve got to sell t-shirts on the internet, and hoodies. That’s all we have right now. We’ll add more stuff, but we have a few things.
Sam: It’s pretty stupid that neither of us are wearing it today.
Shaan: Mine’s in the dryer at the moment. Again, slow and stupid.
Sam: Yeah, but it’s pretty cool. We have stuff with some of our favorite sayings, and dude, “there’s no small boy” — shockingly caught on in a big way.
Shaan: I’ll tell you something. I don’t know if you heard, but I did an episode with Samir from Colin and Samir. They’re YouTubers who study other YouTubers, so they’re always studying creators. He handed me two things when he came to the interview. First, he handed me a newspaper — did I tell you about this?
Sam: No.
Shaan: He handed me a newspaper. They made their own newspaper edition — one special edition — for when they hit some milestone. So they printed this newspaper and it had all the content and interviews from their show, like a monthly magazine for their stuff.
Sam: Dude, let’s do that. That’s a great idea.
Shaan: It looked like a normal paper, but they made it using their content. I loved it. He gave me one — he’s like, “This is the last one we have.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but man, you know how to make a boy feel special.
The second thing he handed me was this hat — a dope hat that says “press published.” This blue hat, super high quality, and I was like, “Oh, this is much higher quality than normal merch.” He goes, “Yeah, here’s how I think about merch.” He says if you’re Logan Paul or Mr. Beast, you make consumables. Think Prime energy drink — it’s a consumable. You’re gonna drink it, use it, whatever. Mr. Beast chocolate, Mr. Beast merch, just t-shirts — all consumables.
Shaan: He goes, “We don’t make consumables. We make collectibles.” He says if you’re a creator you should pick one of the two paths. I love the collectibles idea. He’s like, “You don’t need to make a fortune through your merch” — which is why we’ve never done merch, because I’m like, do we really care about making a couple thousand bucks on t-shirt sales? That’s never been a motivator for us.
Sam: Because we’re rich. If you missed that part.
Shaan: The collectibles thing made total sense to me. He’s like, you want the people who are your thousand most devoted fans — the people who actually give a damn about what you do, who think the way you think, act the way you act. For them, it’s a collectible badge of honor. So make a limited edition number of units. When it’s gone, it’s gone, it never comes back. And on top of that, it’s a signal. Anytime anybody else sees them with it, they know: you’re part of the tribe.
Ben said this to me the other day. He loves to go meet people who come through our DMs or email us. He goes, “The reason I like it — normally I don’t like talking to strangers — but if you like MFM, there’s a 95% chance we’re gonna be friends.” Because it filters in people who think the way we think and act the way we act. You’ve got a sense of humor. You’re a total business junkie and nerd. If you don’t like to nerd about business, you’re not gonna like this podcast. And if you like everything buttoned up and serious, you’re also not gonna like this podcast.
Sam: Like when I see another grown man drinking a glass of whole milk for dinner — you know what I mean? At dinner? Oh hey, we probably have similar values. Cheers. Good Catholic. What’s up.
Shaan: So yeah, if you got a favorite flavor of Skittle…
Sam: Sam knows you’re his guy.
Shaan: What’s the second announcement?
Sam: The second surprise is the clips channel. We should have done this a long time ago. If you go to clipmfm.com — this is our new clips channel. It’s a YouTube channel for only the clips of the best bits from the pod, clipped out so you can watch them in three or four minute bursts. For every episode we’re only pulling out the one to three moments that actually mattered — where somebody told a great story, had an amazing idea, or shared something about the way their business works and broke it down in satisfying detail.
At first I wanted to outsource this, and then I was like, no, I’m going to hand-curate these clips myself. I want the channel that I would want to watch, because this is how I consume a lot of podcasts. If you’re like, “Oh do you like Lex Fridman?” Yeah, love the pod, great pod — I never actually watch the full ones.
Shaan: What do you search to find it?
Sam: Go to clipmfm.com or just search “my first million clips” on YouTube. I tweeted it out, it’s got like 700 subscribers now, but I need this to get into the tens of thousands, because if you listen to this podcast, why would you not want to get the best stuff faster? So yeah, that’s my sales pitch for both the merch and the clips channel. Merch: collectibles, limited number of units, a way for our tribe to signal to each other. And on the other side, the clips channel.
Sam: How did I do with my sales pitch?
Shaan: That was a great pitch. And the Skittles joke was very funny. You made me feel very guilty, because my wife’s birthday is this Sunday. I was gonna surprise her with a pinata — hopefully she doesn’t listen to this episode. I’ve hidden the pinata and bags of candy from Party City, lots of Skittles, unfortunately. I’ve got to go back to Party City today because I’ve eaten all the bags.
Sam: You nailed it. They’re all empty.
Shaan: There’s a whole bunch of empty Skittle bags. It looks like a raccoon went through there.
Sam: That’s not even a small hole. Why did you need a face-sized hole in that bag?
Shaan: Because when I do nighttime eating I go into bear mode. Like a bear getting into a beehive — just using fists instead of fingers. That’s me at night.
My sister invented something for her girls called “nighttime sister playtime” so they’d feel excited about going to bed. They go to their room, play together, and fall asleep. So I created “nighttime Daddy playtime,” which is just when my kids are gone and I get to eat and be on the internet. I celebrate it every single night.
Sam: I wake up and there’s like bear claws all over the place.
CLEAR: The $3 Billion Biometric Airport Monopoly [00:09:30]
Sam: So listen, I want to bring up a topic you put on your list. You put it on your list and I did a ton of research on this topic — it’s incredibly fascinating.
Shaan: All right. We’ve got to give credit — there’s a reason we both have it on our list. Someone tweeted at us. They said, “You should break down this particular company.” That’s one of the very few times where I go, that’s a great idea. We’re gonna do that.
Sam: Let me tell you how it got started. There’s this guy named Steven Brill. You have no idea who he is, but I bet you know Court TV — he started Court TV, one of my all-time favorites, the predecessor of Cops, my favorite show of all time. That turns into a huge success. He also starts American Lawyer Media, a six or eight hundred million dollar lawyer media company that he sells.
His next company is called Verified Identity Pass. It started in 2003, after 9/11. The idea was to make getting onto a plane easier and safer — a credit card you could swipe to prove you’re cleared, basically. It gets a little bit of traction, he raises a hundred million dollars, gets 200,000 people to sign up. It flops. Doesn’t work out.
Sam: So there’s this woman — her name is Caryn, spelled C-A-R-Y-N —
Shaan: What are you laughing at?
Sam: Anyone named Karen… I just always think, damn, what a sideswipe they got in life from that trend that started in like 2022. All of a sudden their name was never the same again.
Shaan: She spells it C-A-R-Y-N, which somehow makes it better, to be honest.
Sam: I would too. A slight rebrand. Like how I call La Quinta hotels “Laquita.” Just a slight rebrand.
Anyway, she has this hedge fund, very successful, and she hears about this company going out of business. She’s like, you know what, this is actually interesting. I think they made a mistake — they didn’t brand it correctly. I think this should be more of a luxury goods company. So she buys the business out of bankruptcy for six million dollars, raises 50 million dollars, renames it, and calls it Clear.
Shaan: Clear is that thing you see at the airport. They’re at around 53 airports. It’s kind of confusing at first — there are two lines, a TSA line and a Clear line. What the hell is going on?
Sam: Turns out this company is crazy successful, and it has a lot more implications than I ever imagined. Clear does something like $600 million a year in revenue, market cap of $3 billion. What they do is they built this technology at that stand where it looks at your eye — biometrics — to figure out who you are. Fingerprint too. They fast-track you through that line.
But have you ever wondered how they get these contracts at airports?
Shaan: It’s like a monopoly. I don’t know how they do it.
Sam: They give away 10 to 13% of their revenue to the airports. In 2019 they were doing around $350 million in revenue and gave out $35 million to airports. The most popular airport was LAX, which made them around $25 million in subscriptions, of which they gave $3 million back to LAX. So they’re kind of in bed with the government a little bit. They took funding from Delta, they have Delta employees on their board, the former head of TSA security on their board — it’s crazy fascinating.
Shaan: Wait, but I was doing bad listening because I was looking it up while you were talking. How did they get in? What was the miracle that she pulled off?
Sam: They promised airports a percentage of revenue — a new revenue stream. And they took funding from a couple airlines and added people like the former head of TSA to their board. Some old-fashioned gentleman’s agreement.
Shaan: Yeah, so it’s pretty fascinating what they did. But what’s even crazier — they have 17 million users. Here’s where it gets really interesting: you can now sign in to LinkedIn using Clear. You can go to certain stadiums and buy beer using just your eyes. Her whole theory is: we start with the airport, but eventually you’re not going to use a wallet anymore. For something that involves your identity, you won’t pull out your license — we’re just gonna look at your eyes.
Sam: And I kind of thought it was a douchey company at first. Like, this is $50 for TSA PreCheck for five years, this other thing is $150 for one year — why do I need this? But people still buy it. I think I was with you one time when you bought it, right? You didn’t even know what it was.
Shaan: We were about to miss a flight to Miami —
Sam: So I was like, let me MacGyver this line. How do we do this? Let me sign up for Clear real quick and see if we can jump the line. And it worked. You had TSA, I didn’t, and I cleared my way in. We got on the plane. It totally worked.
Shaan: It saves you a little bit of time. And yeah, their vision is huge. It actually is a super interesting vision for how this business can be much bigger. But I’m not sure I’m a believer in the rest of it. The amount of effort it would take — you’re at a ball game, you want to buy a beer, and now each beer vendor has to buy hardware to scan retinas, and I have to stand still for seven seconds just to verify my age? That doesn’t feel like the right payoff.
The airport one makes sense because it’s high stakes — you might miss a flight, it’s important for business travelers. I wonder where else that tradeoff actually exists, where you really need to verify your identity on the spot.
Sam: So last summer, a new law was enacted. In Virginia, if you go to certain adult websites, you have to verify your identity to prove you’re over 18. It brings up a camera to check your identity. Shame you.
Shaan: Game of Thrones style, like the nun holding a bell —
Sam: Yeah. “Shame!” But there are a few instances where this is actually interesting. And the most crazy thing about Clear is that this is a total monopoly they have in airports. I’m shocked they’ve sustained it. I don’t know anything about public valuations, but it seems potentially like an undervalued company. What is it valued at and what was the revenue again?
Shaan: In the five or six hundred million dollar range. They claim 90% retention, so not quite as good as software, but the trailing 12 months they’ve done $530 million in revenue. Market cap as of today is $3 billion.
Sam: That’s kind of amazing — a $3 billion company doing such a simple thing, only in 53 airports. Such a small footprint. Simple product. Very impressive.
Evolve Metal Detectors: The Smarter Checkpoint [00:19:45]
Shaan: Here’s a random related startup. Did you ever see this company called Evolve? They make metal detectors.
Sam: No.
Shaan: So one of the meta takeaways of this podcast: all the businesses are hidden in plain sight. They’re right in front of you. Once you start paying attention, you’re like, “Oh, this didn’t just get here. Who put this metal detector here? There’s a company that does this. How do they work? Is this the same company at all of these places? How did they get that contract?”
Metal detectors are at every big venue — stadiums, concert halls, airports. There’s a company that raised money from Lux Capital, which does kind of hard tech or slightly-hard tech. Their actual demo is pretty cool. It’s a metal detector that lets you walk straight through without taking everything out of your pockets. The flow of traffic is way faster than a traditional detector. And that’s kind of just crazy to me — it’s such a simple idea. If somebody just made a better metal detector, they’re going to win a bunch of contracts.
Cricut: The $1 Billion Home Crafting Machine [00:22:00]
Shaan: All right. I want to tell you about one of the great joys of my life. I’m not a cars guy, I’m not a watch guy, but there’s one thing that gives me a lot of joy: having a virtual assistant.
Here’s the scenario: I’m running my companies and even though I’m supposed to be this CEO, we all know I spend 20 to 30% of my time just doing random stuff that’s not high value but is tedious. Stuff that has to get done but doesn’t require my creativity and doesn’t add a bunch of value. That’s what a virtual assistant does. Just this week alone — I lose my wallet, she goes to the DMV website, fills out forms, gets me a new license. Every morning I have my morning metrics — all the business metrics compiled from different sources, put in an Excel sheet, screenshotted, texted to me — so when I wake up I’m looking at what the numbers are and what I need to do. I’m not going on Twitter, I’m focused on the right things.
Sam: Ari, our new producer, is here for his first episode. If you like how this episode’s going, credit to Ari. If you hate it, blame Ari.
Shaan: All right, so — have you ever heard of a Cricut machine?
Sam: No. What is that?
Shaan: It’s spelled C-R-I-C-U-T. It’s a DIY home crafting machine. 20 years old. This company makes a billion dollars a year in revenue, $100 million dollars of free cash flow a year, Sam. How does that sound?
Sam: I like the sound of that.
Shaan: It’s basically a cutter. You put in some material — plastic, sticker paper — and it cuts a shape for you. Die cuts. Stickers. Whatever.
Sam: I’m looking at it now. It looks like a printer but it’s more for cutting.
Shaan: Yes. A way to cut different shapes. You want to put something on a water bottle, make a label, you can cut it with your Cricut at home.
Sam: Is this an invention they made, or is Cricut a style of machine — like Kleenex is a tissue?
Shaan: It’s more like… when Steve Jobs or Bill Gates said every home is going to have a personal computer. These machines existed before for industrial applications. A company called Provo Craft was making them for craft shops — you’d take your design to the craft shop and they’d cut it for you. These were expensive machines on the countertop.
What Cricut did was make them smaller and more affordable so people could have them at home. And if you go on Etsy, a lot of those sellers know all about the Cricut machine because they use it to make their goods. How do they cut your name out in that cool font? They have a Cricut machine.
Sam: Just an incredible business. We were looking at an investment — some of the original guys who were early there spun off and they’re doing a new, better version of the Cricut machine. I was like, I don’t know how big this space can be. He’s like, “I think it’s going to be bigger than Cricut, which does a billion dollars a year and is spinning off $100 million in free cash flow as a public company.” I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. My bad.
He was telling me some pretty incredible things about the crafting community. He goes, “Michael’s” — the craft store — “if you go read their earnings or talk to their leadership, Michael’s believes that every single person who walks through their door is an Etsy seller.” Their default assumption is that if you come to a Michael’s, you’re going to sell on Etsy. And because it’s more the majority than the minority — which is kind of amazing. Etsy is the marketplace to sell your goods. So if that’s how you sell, how do you make them? That’s where Cricut and companies like it come in.
Sam: I am very tempted to invest in this space because it is such a big space.
Shaan: What’s the product?
Sam: I don’t want to give it up because it’s proprietary, but it’s something like Cricut, but better. It does more things. Cricut just cuts — this does other things in addition to cutting.
This came through our buddy Al Doan. If you go back and listen to that episode — Al and his mom start a company in the quilting space. And then we had Patrick Campbell on the podcast, who runs a payments company called ProfitWell. We were like, “Any cool trends in the payment space we wouldn’t have thought of?” He’s like, “Quilting.” And we’re like, “What?”
He’s like, “Quilting is enormous.” The grandma hobby? Enormous. There are companies doing hundreds of millions a year. So he told us about it, and then I get a DM from Al Doan — he’s like, “Hey, I’m one of those companies. We make hundreds of millions a year. My mom, Jenny Doan, started this business, and I joined her.” They sell craft materials for quilters — the packages, the squares, the fabrics — they do a daily flash deal. “Here’s the quilting thing of the day.” That’s how they do it.
They built this huge thing to the point where he bought a small town and turned it into the Mecca of quilting. A Disneyland for quilters. If you’re a quilter and you want to take a trip to indulge in your hobby, this is where you go. And so he introduced us to this deal — he’s like, “Yeah, I’m investing in this because I’m in the craft space and this is one of the best concepts here.”
I’m just scratching the surface on this space. I know nothing about it but I’m very fascinated by it. I wanted to share that with you.
Shaan: By the way, these Cricut machines are awesome. I’m thinking I might get one of these. They’re sick. They’re expensive — like a grand. But it’s a good find. It’s not some rare, hidden thing, but it’s rare to us I guess. It’s out of our bubble, for sure.
Sam: For sure.
Shaan: Dude, the Etsy platform is wild. Have you looked into how big some of these sellers are? My mother-in-law started an Etsy store and she’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars selling pillows. One cool thing about Etsy is you can see on every store profile how many lifetime sales they’ve had. And you’ll look up something very obscure and see they’ve sold 50,000 versions of whatever they have. It’s wild how powerful Etsy is.
Native Deodorant: Finding Billion-Dollar Products on Etsy [00:31:00]
Sam: By the way, I believe this is how Moiz started Native Deodorant. The public story is something like “my sister got pregnant and I was concerned for her health and wanted her to have aluminum- and paraben-free deodorant.” I interviewed him about this — the real story is basically he was just looking. He was maybe thinking about mattresses, since this was right when Casper was getting going, and then he was like, mattresses are heavy, this is hard to ship. I don’t know if there’s a lot of repeat buying on this.
Then he randomly came across a lady selling chemical-free deodorant on Etsy. He ordered that and then ordered five or ten others, asked everyone in the office to put them under their arms — how does this feel? Some were good, some were bad. He found one that was great. He goes, “Hey, can I slap a Native label on this and resell it?” That’s how it starts.
Eventually he gets big, gets traction — he’s like, all right, now we’re going to make our own. He bought the formula from the Etsy seller. She helped him formulate it but couldn’t keep up with the demand. She was like, “I’m not trying to scale to this level. My fingers hurt.” They brought it to a manufacturer, scaled it up. Two years later he sells the business for $100 million in cash. The business probably does $200 million a year in sales, so you could argue it was early, but I think he turned out all right.
Shaan: One of the insights here — and I think this is true of many businesses — is that the touching origin story is often reverse-engineered later. These businesses often start differently. This is not like he started it and then many others do this, where the business has this wonderful backstory — but these are often reverse-engineered.
One of my fun things is just being honest on this podcast. I started the Milk Road because I was interested in crypto. I saw what you did with The Hustle and I was like, I get it, I could do that — and I just did that with Milk Road for crypto. My goal was to make a business. I made a bunch of money. That’s the thing. And I thought, oh cool, doing this I’ll learn a bunch about crypto. That’s the transparent story. There wasn’t some origin story where my cousin needed it.
Sam: “And then it hit me — I should just write this email for my cousin. You’re all my cousins.”
Shaan: Exactly. And so I think you could do that again on Etsy. Go back to Etsy, look for top-selling products, use that as inspiration. I’ll put a guess out there: Moiz had a checklist. What is under one pound for shipping? What is a recurring consumable purchase? What has a clear differentiator against a big market — like natural deodorant that’s chemical-free versus Old Spice and the big guys. Lightweight, repeat purchase, clear differentiator. Got it.
Aunt Flow: Hygiene Dispensers as Airport-Style Monopolies [00:36:00]
Shaan: I invested in this company that does women’s hygiene product dispensers for bathrooms. They make tampons and pads that go into a vending machine installed on the wall — a better version of what used to be there. The old ones looked like something a janitor designed. They made a really beautiful version that’s easier to use, looks more hygienic.
And then what happened is every state started enacting laws saying hey, every women’s restroom needs to carry these products — just like you need toilet paper. So state by state this is rolling out, and they’re going into stadiums, schools, universities, getting multi-million dollar contracts for installing their dispensers. Once they’re installed, they’re not going to be taken out and swapped for a vendor with a slightly nicer design.
Sam: Is that company working?
Shaan: Yeah. I can’t share their numbers, but it is. Her name is Claire Coder. She’s a very strong leader, very active on LinkedIn. The company is called Aunt Flow, which is a more friendly name than what was there before.
What she described — the experience before versus after — you’re like, “I get it, and I get why nobody else has attacked this space.” Most VC funding goes toward men. Most founders trying to start venture-scale companies are men. They’ve never even been in that bathroom. They wouldn’t even know the problem exists. But she’s done an amazing job identifying it and building a likable brand. If you could choose between the default alternative or this, you’d obviously pick this.
Sam: That’s cool. I got pitched on a bunch of those, I passed on all of them. But it sounds good. When I first saw it I was like, I don’t know, man — selling two-dollar items in the bathroom, can that be a big thing? But you said they’re getting million-dollar contracts. Who pays for it?
Shaan: The facility. They need to stock the product — it’s a recurring purchase. They install the dispenser for, let’s say, $500, and then every month or quarter you do refills. That thing’s gonna sit on the wall forever. It’s not going anywhere.
To me this is like owning a piece of real estate in all these facilities. I don’t know if this becomes a $10 billion company — that’s different, next-level stuff — but it’s clear this is a defensible business. Clear that it’ll have recurring revenue. There are a lot of facilities out there, they all have women’s restrooms, multiple per building, and each one needs to have this in it. It adds up pretty quick.
iCracked: The Phone Repair Startup That Sold to Allstate [00:42:00]
Shaan: So, you know these guys much better than I do — I only know it secondhand — but I’m a fan of this story. Back when you were doing The Hustle, one of the very first things you created was this infographic about a business called iCracked.
Sam: Yeah, I was trying to sell tickets to a conference, and instead of just saying “come to my conference, buy tickets,” I released these stories about interesting businesses. One every week. And by the third week I was like, damn, I love these stories — all right, I’ll go to this conference.
Shaan: So I went to HustleCon when I met you. You know how that story ends.
So these guys, AJ and Tony — they realized smartphones are taking off, so they decide: everyone else is building apps, let’s just fix people’s cracked phones. There’s more cell phones, there’s more cracked phones. They made this on-demand service — same day, they’ll come to you, grab your phone, fix it. Crazy NPS score, starts scaling. They only raise $500K and get to $7.5 million in revenue.
How did they scale? They scaled through colleges. They figured out: on one college campus, we need these runners, we can cover this radius. Then just copy-paste to other campuses. They taught college kids how to repair phones, iCracked sent them the leads. “You go show up at this guy’s house, charge $300 — you get $100, we get $200.” They blitzed 28 college campuses in 30 days. They got into YC — one of the only non-technical teams to ever get in. The hustle was obviously very appealing.
At one point they bought like 200 smart cars, wrapped in the iCracked logo, gave them to their techs. These guys were running around San Francisco fixing iPhones. It was pretty cool.
Sam: How did they scale from there?
Shaan: They started using SEO and press. They realized the press loves this headline: “24-year-old making millions doing relatable thing.” Started out of a college dorm room, doing something everyone needs — repairing your cracked phone. So they did it at the local level: this Cincinnati guy grew up in Cincinnati, he’s making millions. Whatever college they went to, they did it locally, then nationally. They stacked it so that when you searched “fix cracked iPhone,” they’d show up organically at the top through SEO, from high-authority publications writing puff pieces about them.
Sam: Love it.
Shaan: These guys are great. Now here comes the problem. They’ve only raised $500K, at $7.5 million, profitable, growing fast. They go raise $50 million to scale the business. That $50 million gets them to go international. At peak they’re at $36 million in run rate. But it just keeps getting harder and harder to keep up with the growth monster. The growth monster is demanding they get to $100 million because you raised $50 million — you’ve cut off your options. They just couldn’t scale beyond that.
They end up selling to Allstate. One of the guys stays for three years, earns out his deal, then quits to start his next company. Which takes us to Cloud Poker Night.
Cloud Poker Night: Poker as the New Business Sport [00:49:30]
Shaan: I used it for Hampton. Did you do it?
Sam: Yeah, we tested it. I was a beta user. Didn’t quite work out at the beginning.
Shaan: You were a beta user?
Sam: I am beta. They called the right guy.
Shaan: We need a beta tester? Yeah, it was a little rough when we first started — only a few weeks in. But I think now he’s nailed it and it was really fun.
I want to show the homepage because I love the copy. Have you been to it?
Sam: It’s so good. Read it off.
Shaan: It says: “Poker is the new sport for business minds. Golf is yesterday’s news.” Then a photo — a cute dealer dealing to… that’s Anthony’s wife, the founder’s wife — and then, “Request access.”
Almost everybody would say: “Online poker night,” or “Cloud-based poker software.” That’s the generic, shitty way to market this. But instead they don’t just say the benefit — they go even bigger. They say: big picture, golf is the old way, poker is the new sport for business people.
That’s the “we don’t sell Saddles here” mantra. When Stuart Butterfield created Slack, he wrote this great memo — if you’ve never read it, go read it, it’s called “We Don’t Sell Saddles Here.” He’s like, look guys, we made Slack, now our job is to teach the world that this is awesome. Here’s the problem: most people who run a company are not in the market for chat software. They’re not even looking for it. So even if we say we’re the best team chat software, they don’t care — they’re not shopping for that.
He says Lululemon made you want to do yoga — want to live the yoga lifestyle. We need to do the same thing. Sell the joy of horseback riding. Once they fall in love with that, they’ll say “where do I get a saddle?” And we’ll say, “We sell the best saddles.”
Same thing here. Poker is the new sport for business people. That’s selling the dream. Then: how are we gonna go play poker? Use our software.
Sam: And they have all these quotes from successful people who’ve played poker — Warren Buffett, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel. And look at that, there’s the chairman of the Milk Road out there.
Shaan: That’s you on there?
Sam: I had no idea. I’m on page two of the carousel if you swipe.
Shaan: I never got that far! But what they did was: “Business minds love poker.” Then it’s a quote — “Which leader said this? Warren Buffett, Chamath, or Paul Graham?” And you’re like, “Oh, that sounds like Chamath.” Nope, it was Paul Graham. So they use the people you already trust to say poker is great — not that Cloud Poker Night is great. Then “why poker’s so great,” and then “why you should use our software.” I think this landing page is amazing.
Sam: So how does it work?
Shaan: I’ve used it. It’s almost like Zoom meets poker. They have a professional setup. In my case it was Anthony, the founder — he’s got a card table at home, a camera on him. You see him dealing, talking to you, interacting. You can see all your other teammates playing. He puts your cards over another camera that only you can see. It’s really like live poker, with a dealer who’s joking around with you. It’s really fun and very interactive.
I think it’s a great business idea for a bootstrap business. I love this idea.
Sam: Yeah, I love poker. I think there’s a cool idea. I’d love to do an MFM version of this.
Shaan: Hold on, I think they’re already making one for us. I asked the guy this morning: “Hey, this would be amazing — the live shows we did were cool because we got to meet people who listen to the pod. But I don’t like traveling, I don’t like leaving my house. This is great because we get to play poker, be on camera, meet listeners to the show and host our own tournament.”
I think he’s gonna set up cloudpokernight.com/MFM so there will be a page to RSVP for it. If anyone wants to play in a poker night, we should do that with people who listen to the pod.
Sam: That’d be kind of amazing.
Shaan: By the way, the other co-founder of iCracked is AJ. He’s one of my great friends, a crazy person. His new company — one headline called it “the Tesla for chicken coops.” If you go to coop.farm, it’s a smart chicken coop. He’s into beekeeping, chickens, animals. So he made a smart chicken coop that opens the doors automatically and feeds the chickens automatically.
Sam: I almost invested in it, but one of the reasons I got nervous: right before the round closed, when the Ukraine thing happened, AJ went to Poland for like a month as a volunteer helping Ukrainian refugees. Is he Ukrainian?
Shaan: No. He just does wild stuff all the time. Like, I’ll be hanging out with him and — you know he used to boat to work?
Sam: Yeah, I remember you told me that a decade ago and I still remember it.
Shaan: He lived near the iCracked office in Redwood City, but it was across this little bay. He would take this little boat to work. Every once in a while, if they had offices in SoMa, he’d ride this small boat — fit two people — 20 miles up the bay to SoMa and dock it there. The guy is crazy.
Sam: Actually, “boat” is not the best word. Better to describe it as a jet ski you stand up on.
Shaan: Yeah, it had a motor. He would jet ski to work, basically. Like Kenny Powers. He’s a crazy person. He raised money from Peter Thiel for the chicken coop.
Sam: “Peter, I see you’re crazy, and I raise you: Peter chicken coop.”
Shaan: It’s a weird business, but I think it could work. And I actually want to invest in it. I want to own a piece of it and just host poker nights.
Viral Growth: Word of Mouth vs. True Virality [00:58:00]
Shaan: One of the great things about businesses like Cloud Poker Night is the virality. I’m very interested in products that can grow virally, and most people get this wrong.
Products that grow virally are not products that succeed through word of mouth. If you talk to a normal person they say, “Oh yeah, it spread virally — people went and told their friends because they loved it so much.” No, no. That’s called word of mouth. Viral is literally like the word sounds — it’s like a virus. You’re not even trying to get it on other people, but it gets on them. They catch it from you.
The classic example is Hotmail. At the end of every email: “Sent through Hotmail — get your free account today.” You weren’t trying to tell somebody to start a Hotmail account, but it was almost like a little virus attached to the email. People started signing up and it had this crazy viral coefficient.
Products like Cloud Poker Night have a different kind of virality — I don’t know what you’d call it, but group virality. Similar to how Eventbrite or Meetup.com grows: an attendee becomes a host. A host creates an event, naturally invites a bunch of other people. Then you might be one of 100 people at that event, and if you liked it, the next time you’re hosting an event you’ll use that same product because it was incepted into your brain through somebody else.
I think the same thing will happen here. You host a bunch of these using the MFM community for fun. Then the MFM community, when they have a good experience as a player, hosts one for their own team, for a corporate event, for a sales event. That’s how these businesses grow.
Gamer Dating App: The Drunk Idea That Grew Up [01:04:00]
Shaan: So — what do you want to do next, Cricut/Cricket cut or gamer dating idea?
Sam: I’ll do the gamer dating.
Shaan: Okay, so, Sam. Here’s why you should date a gamer. I know you’re married, but if you could go back — here’s why you should have dated a gamer. Me too, by the way. My wife doesn’t play any games. I just bought a PS5 hoping that maybe that would sway her. She instead just got upset. So here’s why you should date a gamer. You’re not a gamer, are you?
Sam: I’m like the least gamer-gamer. I’m in the club but just barely. I’m by the exit door. I played Call of Duty last night for the first time in a year — it’s impossible. These kids are insane.
Shaan: All the popular games now are like PUBG where you jump out of an airplane, land, and then just walk around for 20 minutes not seeing anybody while collecting supplies. Then when you do see someone you get shot in the head and it starts again.
Sam: That’s the problem. You just get shot in the head.
Shaan: I played Call of Duty last night — it was me and two guys who were clearly friends, talking to each other in Spanish. I was so bad that the only words I could understand from what they were saying were “bot.” Then “vamanos,” and they quit on me.
Sam: That’s not bad — “vamanos” isn’t bad.
Shaan: I thought being called a bot was a good thing. I was like, “Oh, aimbot — they think I’m on lock.” And then I realized: no, this is NPC. They’re saying I’m an NPC.
All right, let me do my bit. Here’s why you should date a gamer. They’re smart. You’ll never have to worry about where they are on a Friday night — they’re just gonna be in the room playing, not at the club. They’ll fight for you — they’re used to going to war. They’re easy to trick into doing things because you just give them a badge or a level or some sort of medallion and they’ll grind for that prize. They’re tech-savvy, they can set up your internet. And they’ll always give you space, if you’re someone who needs space.
But here’s the problem: you may want to date a gamer after that great sales pitch, but there’s no gamer dating app. And that’s my idea.
Sam: Wouldn’t it be a sausage fest? How many gamers are women?
Shaan: All dating apps are a sausage fest — that’s the trick. The guys only see the girls, the girls only see the guys. The ratio will be 30-to-one, which is expected. That’s normal for a dating app.
Here’s why I think it’s cool: gamers have a lot in common. It’s a pretty big market — hundreds and hundreds of millions of gamers. Gaming makes more money than Hollywood. But there’s no easy way to meet a gamer, and if you do meet a gamer you might have things to do in common.
One of the hard parts about dating apps is they’re all profiles and flirts and not really dates. A lot of companies tried to solve that by getting you on a date, but getting people into the real world is high friction.
Gamer dating would work because you matched, you’re both interested — you have games in common as part of your profile. “What games do you both already play? Go squad up, play a game together.” In doing so you’re gonna be talking, doing something together. It’s like going bowling but more fun.
I was gonna save this for a Drunk Ideas episode and then it kind of grew on me. I was like, no, no, this could actually work. Let me remind you: there’s a dating app called Farmers Only. There are apps called Black People Meet. If you think those can work, gamer dating can definitely work and can definitely be big. And you could sell it to Match Group for like $75 million in three years.
Sam: Is Farmers Only still a thing?
Shaan: 700K in monthly visits. So not bad.
Sam: What’s your name for it?
Shaan: Working title TBD. Open to suggestions.
Sam: I think it’s a pretty bad idea. But you sold it pretty hard.
Shaan: Dating apps suck — that’s the worst business there is. It’s like a winner-takes-all market.
Sam: Who’s the winner that took all? Tinder?
Shaan: No. Bumble? No. Match? eHarmony? OkCupid? There’s no clear winner. It’s like social media — there are hundreds of platforms but like four that matter.
Dil Mil: The Indian Dating App That Sold to Match Group for $50M [01:12:00]
Sam: I remember when I was at Monkey Inferno, a guy came into the office — it was KJ — and he’s like, “I’m gonna make an Indian dating app.” There’s Jewish dating apps, farmer dating apps, black people dating apps — I’m gonna make an Indian one. I was like, all right, I guess. Do you have any background on this?
He’s like, “I’m Indian and I’m trying to date.” I was like, okay, super qualified.
He’s like, “Here’s what we’re gonna do differently.” I said, what are the features, how do you differentiate? He goes, “I told you — it’s an Indian dating app. The app is for Indians trying to meet other Indians.”
Shaan: He’s right. That is actually the main feature. You curate and filter for people who want to meet other Indians. For farmers who want to meet other farmers. For Jewish people who want to meet other Jewish people. If you’re an Indian person, you’re going to get 100% hit rate here versus maybe a 5% hit rate on a generic dating app.
Sam: I was like, okay. How do you make money? He’s like, “Do you know how much people pay for dating apps? I’ll do the same business model.” I was trying to poke holes and he had everything covered. But I said, what do Indians care about more than others? He goes, “That’s where I’m gonna do something different.”
Here it is: what’s the big feature, the big tech breakthrough?
Sam: “Your mom is your co-user.” He goes, “You log in with LinkedIn.” I said, what? He goes, “Yeah. Because in Indian culture, it’s like a big deal — there’s this checklist thing that stems from arranged marriage, where literally you marry on a checklist. The pickup line when you’re around other Indians is ‘So, what do you do?’ That’s basically the opening. So you’re gonna log in with LinkedIn — we know you have a legit job.”
Shaan: Whoa.
Sam: So he builds this app. It’s called Dil Mil — D-I-L-M-I-L — which means “hearts mate.” He builds it and he just starts going into all the niche communities, newsletters, blogs, YouTubers, running ads. The message: if you’re an Indian person who’s tired of striking out on dating apps — because Indian people, according to the OKCupid match data, have like the worst success rates on normal dating apps. I think Indian males were ranked the least desirable in the free market of dating, with Asian males a close second.
Shaan: And you know what the highest was?
Sam: I think it was an Asian woman was number one.
Shaan: Yeah, exactly. Getting attention from both Asian guys and white guys.
Sam: There’s this weird stereotype and some weird stuff going on there. Anyway — Christian Rudder wrote about this, the founder of OkCupid. Their blog posts were a great strategy.
So KJ, five years later, sells Dil Mil. I think he sold it for $75 or $100 million to Match Group.
Shaan: No way.
Sam: Yeah. Match Group is a collection of dating apps — the generic, mass-market apps like Tinder and Match.com, and then they have like 20 niche apps. If you just fill one of those verticals that they don’t have a winner in, they’ll buy you at a preset multiple.
Shaan: How much?
Sam: I think it was $50 million. And I met up with him the other day and he was like, “You didn’t believe.” And I was like, “You’re right, I didn’t believe. And I was kind of rooting against you, in a way. But you proved me wrong. I’m sorry about that. You absolutely did a great job. Congratulations.”
Arranged Marriages and Shaan’s Mom’s First Flight [01:20:00]
Shaan: Have you seen the Indian Netflix show where it’s like your parents are setting you up with a matchmaker?
Sam: At first I thought that’s the worst — your parents just telling you what to do. But when you think about it, it’s kind of like the paradox of choice, right? They’re like, “This is it. This is the one.” You’re kind of forced to find happiness in that. Maybe the worst arranged marriages aren’t so bad? Are they bad, or is it kind of…?
Shaan: They can be and they can’t be. The stats show it’s about the same divorce rate as in America — but what that doesn’t show is people who don’t get divorced but are suffering in an unhappy marriage rather than get divorced and have society know they failed. So I don’t think there’s a way to really know how successful or unsuccessful it is.
Sam: By the way, me and Neville were out to dinner with Dharmesh at HubSpot, and Neville was saying how he goes back to India and it makes him grateful to be in America. Not insulting poor Indians, but like — it’s a pain in the butt to be in that situation. And Dharmesh was like, “Yeah, that was me. I was that guy. I had nothing and I came here.”
Shaan: India sounds like a wild place, man. A lot of people describe it that way. It’s just like — what do you even say? You can only agree. You can’t really disagree. “X is a wild place” — same thing as our business pitch of just beautifully done. “That’s a wild place.” Like — what? The food, the culture, the crime — what are we talking about?
Sam: Here’s the story you told — I don’t know if you were joking or not — you said when your mom came to America, she had never used utensils. And you said when she went to hang up the phone, she didn’t know how to hang up the phone, so she just let it hang on the bathroom wall. It made me love your mom, is what it did.
Shaan: I did say that. And she told me the story. It was unbelievable. She’s like, “I got on the plane. I’d never been on a plane before. My parents just dropped me off at the airport. I’m 17 years old. I’ve never been on a plane before — don’t even know what a plane is really. I just get shuffled along. I show somebody my ticket, they send me here, send me there. I get on a plane.”
She’s thinking it’s going to be like a train — that’s all she’d ever seen as a train. She’s just thinking this is gonna be a train ride. And she’s flying 14 hours.
Sam: Her parents didn’t know either?
Shaan: They’d never been on a plane either. They were just like, “This is how you get to America,” and she was like, “Okay. Don’t ask too many questions.” So plain seat belts are kind of funky — she’s like, “I did it, I just pushed it and it went in on the first try somehow miraculously.” The person next to her looked at her and said, “Oh, you’ve flown before.” She was like, “Oh my God, I don’t even know what I’m getting myself into. No, I have no idea what I just did. I have no idea how I’ll get this off.” She figured she had a few hours to work out how to unbuckle it by the time she needed to get off at her stop.
So for 14 hours she’s flying and she stays awake because she’s like, “I don’t want to miss my stop.” She’s thinking, “This thing’s not stopping — what’s going on?” She didn’t know how planes work. The whole thing was insane.
Sam: Doesn’t that make you feel soft? Your mother is so much braver than we are.
Shaan: It makes me feel incredibly lucky that she did all the hard stuff so I don’t have to. It’s like bird moms — they chew food and just spit it in their baby’s mouth so the baby doesn’t have to chew. That’s what I feel like she did with life. She just chewed life for me and then spit it in my mouth. And I just have the easy life.
Sam: And on that visual — all right, well, thank you. That’s the pod. mfmpod.com for the merch. And clipmfm.com or search “my first million clips” on YouTube — please subscribe. When there’s only 500 subscribers we don’t have a lot of incentive to do the work of picking the perfect parts, trimming them down, titling them, making them available. Because sharing an hour-long podcast with somebody is like asking someone to help you move on a Saturday — it’s a tough ask. But sharing a clip is doing somebody a favor. Go subscribe so we’re motivated to keep doing that.
Shaan: All right, check it out. That’s the pod.