Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en dude that’s crazy that that that mistake that’s a 10 million dollar mistake [Music] um andrew what’s going on dude i’m are you pumped to do this i’m really yeah i’m excited i’ve worked out this morning and phil feel good it’s a nice sunny day we had a big dump of snow here which is actually incredibly rare usually it like never goes below freezing so uh yeah it’s nice what’d you do uh no i actually went on my treadmill i started i it’s weird i was kind of feeling like a little low energy over christmas and i realized this hadn’t worked out and so i was like i’ll take you know am i eating the right thing am i doing the right routines am i doing my gratitude journalism can’t relate what supplements am i taking you’ve never had and then i just worked out yeah i just realized like working out is all you need to do there’s a there’s a great quote it’s in um this book i was reading called the body and it basically said like if we could put in pill form all the benefits that exercise gives you you it’ll be the it would be the most successful medicine of all time right and the whole point of the book was um it was called the body by bill burst and i by bryson i love that book and uh he’s just he’s like basically like sleep and exercise are the cure to most everything yeah it’s crazy i love his writing he’s uh he’s great um do we want to get into this sean yeah let’s do it um we did this last year and uh i think it was probably my favorite episode last year we called it the millie awards we did an awards ceremony at the end of the year andrew came on and we did it in 2020 at the end of the year and i actually went back and i listened to it which is you know it’s cringy to listen to your own voice recorded but it was a really entertaining episode and we made a bunch of predictions i actually even kind of noted some of them down i don’t know if you guys saw that like some of the um some of the things that we had said last year and uh and so we’re gonna do it again and we’re gonna try to make this an annual tradition we’ll see how it goes and uh all right so without further ado here we are the 2021 milli awards we are back and uh we got about the way it works so we got a bunch of different categories the three of us did our research did our thinking about who we think is the winner for each we did not tell each other did not show each other so if we have the same answer it’s just coincidence um great minds think alike and we’re going to react to kind of how each one goes and i have a little side game here which i’m going to play as little notepad i’m just going to kind of take notes of who i think wins each category in terms of their answer so we’ll see we’ll see who brings the heat uh during this thing i got sam i got sean i got andrew and i’ll put a little tally for and i’m the only judge or you guys can chime in on that but i’m just going to keep note of how we do for for this whole episode all right so did i miss anything sam are we good to go yeah and we what i’m i all right so i have up i have two documents i have one document with like my answers and then i’ve got the other document that have last year’s answers and so i think what we should do is you can lead and you could say like the the category and then you could say here’s what last years are right okay so we’ll work all right so we’ll start with uh we’ll start with uh breakout company so uh this is the 2021 breakout company it’s a company that kind of like exploded wait no billy of the year is first sean okay you want to go in the actual order we can go to the actual order all right so billy of the year is number one then we do billy of the week sometimes on the pod so this is billy of the year it doesn’t have to be somebody who’s a new billionaire but it’s just a billionaire who had a hell of a year last year sam said chuck feeney who is um who’s check video he’s the guy from blockbuster and all that stuff or that’s somebody else no he’s just a he was like he started a business where they sell [ ] at airports but he gave away free yeah duty-free but he gave away all of it giveaways we gave away 10 billion andrew had mark leonard who’s i think the ceo of constellation software is that right who’s you know maybe uh yeah you know somebody you respect who runs a similar playbook to you buys great companies owns them for a long time very stealthy secretive guide you shared a bunch of cool stories about how he keeps a low profile and then i had eric yuan who was the ceo of zoom because i thought zoom sort of saved the world during the pandemic and let the world continue to run and um and so i had eric eric you on so who do we have for this year we’ll start with sam billy of the year who you got darmesh the cto and co-founder of hubspot he came on our podcast sucking up to your boss well yeah i mean i guess but he uh he just had the idea outlook on life and i think he had an amazing job like he basically said no one reports to him and he doesn’t report to anyone i think he i don’t know what what’s he worth like two billion dollars whatever hubspot stock is worth i thought he was pretty amazing at a good outlook and what was the outlook that you liked i thought the most interesting thing about dharmesh is exactly what you said that instead of i think so many entrepreneurs are like okay i’m either all in or i’m all out and he kind of said you know what i’m just going to do this stuff i like and he’s kind of a floater like he just kind of floats around within the company and i thought that was really cool and he was nice the thing about darmesh is that he’s nice and he’s friendly and he’s calm and i really enjoy that about him he’s not a type a or he is type a and that he’s competitive but he’s not like trying to alpha people he’s very comfortable in his uh all right andrew who you got billy of the year so mine it was actually a guy i randomly met so i was at this cocktail party at a just a house in my neighborhood and i was talking to this guy and i started asking him what he did and he said he was in the the kind of beverage space and he started saying names that i kind of knew like mission hill winery which is like a big winery up here and anyway it turns out this guy’s worth 8 billion dollars and he owns a beverage focused holding company called mark anthony group this guy named anthony von mandel and his story is pretty crazy so he started a little like wine importing business in vancouver and uh made enough money to buy a winery called mission hill took out a ton of debt the it was like dirt floors had only a few barrels of wine turned it around turned into a real solid business and then he hit it big when he was trying to diversify and he started a company called mike’s hard lemonade which i’m sure you guys have heard of and this is like an insane story like in the 90s people would have fights in the liquor store over the last couple bottles of mike’s heart uh it went into the states uh and sold by the way in america we like make fun of people who drink like it’s like a joke like mike’s heart totally well the idea the idea they had was like men are too embarrassed to drink coolers so like let’s make a cooler they can kind of not be too embarrassed to drink but anyway he ended up building that into a massive business uh he ended up also starting white claw a couple years ago which is like the same idea but healthy and now they do 1.4 or sorry 4 billion dollars of revenue uh last year in 2020 uh and the craziest thing about this guy is he owns i believe a hundred percent of the business and he has no debt because he had been almost in bankruptcy multiple times so it was just totally crazy local entrepreneur who just knocked it out of the park and i’m obsessed with these guys who have just like taken a risk they’ve done it 100 themselves they didn’t have vcs they didn’t have investors uh so just an amazing story wow that’s a good one that’s a good i didn’t realize the mic’s hard the company has mike’s heart also does white claw which is amazing it’s basically a reboot of the similar concept um totally okay all right what about you my billy of the year so i had two all right so i have um i have the eye roll one which is elon musk but it’s not for the reason that most people would think um as you know one of the maybe top three slogans of this podcast is bet on yourself and elon several years ago did a bet on yourself comp compensation plan that you guys probably remember i don’t know if everybody knows about this i’ll summarize it and i’m kind of hand waving through some of the details just to be quicker about it but basically tesla at the time i think it was five years ago was at about a 50 billion dollar market cap and people the rumor was elon’s gonna leave and he might uh you know go just focus on spacex full-time and he had a negotiation with the board and basically said okay i’ll stay but here’s the compensation plan i want and he sketched out a plan he said look you only pay me if i increase shareholder value yeah no guaranteed money and he basically did it where in rough strokes every 50 billion in market cap they added he would get another 1 of the company and so it was at 50 billion so he’d have to get 100 billion to get anything if he got to 99 he got nothing and so he had to get it to 100 to get any more for all his hard work and uh i remember there’s a great clip if you go to youtube and you just go you just you just search for uh elon musk compensation plan uh you know cnbc there’s this clip of the anchors making fun of them because they’re like oh yeah and like you know this plan is it’s unprecedented it has this far-fetched idea that if he could get over 600 billion you know elon would get this huge unlock if he gets to that reward but you know i think we could safely say like you know it’s never going to happen like you know why even include that in there and sure enough this year tesla crosses all that he hits every single part of the compensation plan i think it’s a it’s now a trillion dollar company uh and basically the guy called a shot he bet on himself and uh and hit all of it so i really like that like the betting on yourself aspect of it so that’s why i give it to elon but what was the second one the second one uh again a little bit of a of an expected answer but not not for the reason you think so vitalik buterin who’s the co-creator of ethereum he’s worth himself probably 1.6 billion i think as of the based on the like the value of ethereum today something like that one or two billion dollars but he was uh one of the like there’s all these new projects constantly launching and one of the ways that projects were trying to get hype in marketing is that they would just send some of their project into vitalik’s wallet his public wallet and they would say look vitalik holds our coins so you should too and then the other thing that they would say that was the first marketing scheme people do like and then people fell for they’re like oh vitalik’s investing in this i’ll invest in it too but like he didn’t actually invest in it they just sent it for free just shoved it in his the second thing that people were doing was they were using vitalik as sort of like a lockup they were like look we sent it’s a one one uh coin that came out the shiba inu coin which is like a dog another dog coin like dogecoin they sent i think six five or six billion dollars worth of their coin uh to vitalik’s wallet to essentially lock it up they’re like look that’s all there it can’t be sold um and so yeah you’re not i can’t be sold like it’s there so you don’t have to worry about like you know who owns this thing vitalik owns this thing and um it was partly marketing it was partly their their way of like locking away some of the supply and what vitalik did was pretty awesome india was going through a really tough patch in covid so he got this thing and what he did was he donated a billion dollars of it immediately to india and then he dumped the other five billion and just burned it and just said uh you know so so that like it would so that the price if if he sold it all on the open market it would um it would crash the price so instead he took five billion and just eliminated it from the pool and gave a billion dollars to india kept none of it for himself and helped a lot of people in india out and he did this like overnight as soon as he got it and i just thought that that was like you know a pretty remarkable thing from a pretty you know remarkable guy who he’s that guy’s amazing it’s really cool that guy and the sam bankman guy are some probably the two most interesting people i think in the world at the moment yeah the cool thing about that for those who don’t remember the sam bank but freed guy he’s currently the wealthiest person from crypto um wealthiest known person from crypto so you know nobody knows who satoshi is but sam banker freed is the next one he’s got like 15 or 20 billion dollar net worth from crypto including the exchange he created and um he if you talk if you listen to interviews he’s like not like any other crypto zealot he just is like uh he’s like yeah i don’t care about crypto like i don’t i don’t i believe in it not believe in people want this so i made a product and like that’s his whole mindset and he also is like obsessed with this idea of like i forgot what it’s called there’s some like a philanthropic thing he’s really into like uh sam do you remember the name of this it’s like charitable ambition or some [ ] like that it’s like yeah he basically he was basically uh basically the idea is like i’m just gonna get as wealthy as possible and give it all away to different stuff and it’s okay for me to be incredibly ambitious and do this thing these things i don’t really care about because i’m just giving it away anyway and he’s giving away like during his lifetime said last year’s all right breakout company you go for all right breakout company i have um i have open c so just to give you a sense of open seas crazy growth i had that too by the way started in 2017 and the the bear market hit like pretty much immediately and i know people who were building like their competitors and they ended up folding because it was just like there was no interest and these guys were like you know the cockroaches that just stayed alive and in 20 uh basically they in 2020 so last year they did 24 million dollars in gmv pretty small overall um and they get uh 10 of that uh they have i don’t know what their take rate is something like i think it’s even lower than that i think it’s five percent or something they it’s in that range so it was very small 24 million in gross sales across the platform that’s not their sales that’s what people buying from each other so they just get a small take this year 15 billion so going from 24 million to 15 billion in one year that’s 650x to me that’s uh that’s a breakout company i know we’ve talked about them before so it’s not a big surprise but i had to give it to him so i had that as well but i came with the backup because i actually thought that you were gonna pick that so i had open c as well i think it’s amazing that they basically just kind of created a market and i think that’s pretty badass um or at least they were part of a market that is was non-existent a couple years ago all right so my second one is someone who we talked about i’m gonna botch his first name but his last name is levels what’s his first name peter peter p is it peter is it just peter okay i think that’s peter i thought it was a weird let’s call him pieter just about i thought it was peter to be honest but i’m gonna call him peter all right so this guy is peter like theater that’s how we’re gonna call that’s what i thought it was i thought there was an eye in there in some weird area um all right but we talked about this guy a couple episodes ago but i’ve actually been paying attention to him for like three years and as far as i can tell it’s a one-person business and for the longest time he would reveal all of his revenue and for years it was like two or three hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue and he has a bunch of different products he’s got nomadlist.com remoteok.com workers.co he even has a cool website called rebase which is all about going to uh portugal moving to portugal so he’s got like eight different websites for the longest time only like three four five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue like neat but not that cool this year he got close to five million in revenue and for a one person internet business that’s pretty phenomenal and the remote thing has basically kind of caught up with him and he’s crushing it and this guy’s an artist i love him i think so he’s kind of his own entity and i think that he for me was the breakout person of the year behind opens yeah i think like that guy kind of has my dream life which is funny that i say that because i do own similar businesses but i’ve always i’ve always liked fetishized the idea of being a one-person entrepreneur and being able to do that level of revenue i just kind of got ahead of myself and it’s so interesting i think i have a lot of respect for him because i think he still shares his numbers most of the guys that get to this scale they almost always stop sharing because everyone realizes how much money they’re making i have a story of a guy who’s going to come on the pod soon and he i’ve been talking to him and he made um 10 million a year in profit in the early 2000s from uh a a lyric website that was around for years so i have a one person is it maloon maloon tesovic no but he is a similar similar story he’s a he’s a russian jewish guy that guy a russian jewish guy didn’t didn’t yeah i also make like a dream i don’t know he’s not a drinker eastern european oh my god no okay that guy balloon didn’t he do something else that’s really remarkable now like he did the lyrics thing and isn’t he doing some other interesting stuff he works at expo right he’s a partner at expo gotcha uh all right andrew who do you have uh sam has this like weird indie breakout company that’s not a company it’s just bro i chose open c that’s the most obvious one i chose that i chose that one too so i had to get used to so far i’m mr obvious sam’s mr suck up and uh let’s see if andrew’s got something good here so i wasn’t trying to be better i was just trying to be different so so if there’s one thing i really really don’t like it’s middlemen realtors uh investment bankers that kind of stuff so i love this company microacquire for a long time if you wanted to buy a tech business you were going to these crappy listing websites with really like really sketchy sites with really low quality businesses uh and this guy andrew basically came along and started this company called microacquire and it’s for uh generally like profitable sas businesses uh on the web and he’s just done a really really nice job of doing it i’d say it’s kind of like zillow for buying a tech business um and i i you know he kind of replaced flippa and all these other kind of crappy websites so i’m a big fan of what he’s doing and fighting just raised like 10 million bucks or something like that we’re all investors i think right i am i didn’t invest but but uh i think it’s a good one well i invested a small a very small amount like five thousand dollars or one thousand dollars or something like tiny but he uh he’s picking fights with people online too he’s kind of making himself to be a kind of a villain to a certain group of people which we’ll see if that ends up being uh a good idea who’s he going after i forget the funny thing is i think he’s going after like uh he’s basically saying like he went after two groups so he’s like first like bootstrappers need like some love like you know if you’re a profitable company like why is that getting no attention and then the second thing is he’s going after techcrunch because they don’t cover those types of companies they just they basically work for the vcs it’s kind of like his angle it’s like he’s a good angle he created a rival publication i think called the bootstrappers to just take a shot at techcrunch um i’m like i will cover these companies if you guys aren’t going to but then the only hypocrisy is that he’s raising a bunch of venture capital so i think you know that part you know breaks down a little bit uh but i think he’s doing a good job of picking a fight and there’s this general’s twitter strategy which is if you like totally sell out to your mission which is like both a good and a bad thing you could just like there’s a guy who um uh i i was friendly with chris heard he created a company that’s around remote work and they help basically like manage companies like laptops and desks your desk setup when you work from home they’ll help you as a company manage your workers desk setups and uh so he just every tweet is just about how remote work is taking over and how everything else is gonna die and it’ll just be he’s just that’s the propaganda machine and you just keep beating that drum every day every day he just keeps talking about how the office is dead remote work is going up but he cannot be wrong and yeah and it’s just like you know a total like brainwashing of content but you know it’s it’s pretty effective when people do do that i can’t really bring myself to do that exactly but it works okay so who um i would give it to open c oh i’m getting it okay great i love it right yeah great microacquire is cool but open c is just there’s levels and micro honestly i would do yours man i think um yours is the most unique right i think open c had a big win but it’s like you know i think venture-backed kind of like of the moment crypto stuff mine i think everyone knows about but i think what peter’s doing is very unique um and it’s just when you think about lifestyle i think he has the best possible lifestyle of any of the people here what’s a story where a guy goes to a party hosted by whoever like you know some rockefeller type it’s like you know his friend is saying this guy’s the richest man in the world he’s got everything he’s got this he’s got that he’s got cars he’s got servants he’s got everything and then the guy who’s the guest goes uh yeah but i have something he’ll never have enough enough and um yeah that’s the kurt vonnegut yeah it was kurt vonnegut and joseph heller i think right so that’s the version of you know andrew you had peter levels but you you didn’t have enough and so you kept going and there’s a part of you that envies that lifestyle still uh all right we’re giving it to you and once you start once you start once you get in office once you have employees you have this beast to feed whereas peter could just check out right one of these days we should do a story of someone who has done that who went one way and they just said ah [ ] it we’re gonna go the opposite and went back i love those arms all right i get this one uh all right so uh the unsexy simple business that you saw this year i’ll go first we talked about it this guy named quinn i think his name is quinn emmett is that the guy saying spider right is it snyder i don’t remember what it was actually but he had a vent he had a vending machine business and he started he was just working in sales at like some tech company and i i did like a little checkup on him he’s doing like thirty thousand dollars a month in revenue and half of that is profit and he basically started with fifteen hundred dollars he’s got uh some vending machines throughout uh his city i forget where he is california i think started with fifteen hundred dollars now he has software that tells him when the things need to get refilled and he says he only works 10 hours a week on it i think that’s pretty cool i think that’s pretty awesome i love that by the way quinn snyder is a basketball coach so definitely he’s definitely not quinstein or something else i think it was emmett quinn uh andrew who you got for best unsexy or simple business that you saw this year i feel like you see a ton of these so this is probably the easiest category for you i see a lot and i looked i looked at a bunch of ones that people had brought us and i just i can’t really share but this is one i came across recently that i think is genius so some guy um he went and he basically built a fake interior of a private jet in los angeles like they used like a movie set or whatever and then they just rent it out to influencers so that they can take photos where it looks like they’re on a private jet but they’re not and they charge 70 bucks an hour i think it’s booked out like 12 hours a day probably doing like 20 to 40k a month and i can’t imagine the margins would be less than 80 and i was like that’s [ ] amazing you could just build this thing hire a bunch of people in the movie business to build it over a weekend and then you know you can own that for like years what was it called uh it’s la private jet studio it’s on pure space which is like a um a photo photo uh shoot like a studio listing that is so that’s a great one um all right i have one i’m gonna steal this from our friend of the pod cody sanchez uh sam you sent this link earlier and i think this is a great one did you st take the one that i sent you because she has a bunch of that’s the one that’s what i’m taking it was better than the one i had so i was like oh this is we’ll use this one instead so she by the way her tick tock is blown up so she’s always on my i know she’s crazy dude her last one just got 10 million views that’s insane like her she has half a million followers on tick tock i always see them when i’m because i use tik tok a bunch and i’m always like oh like i was in my head i would just see like i don’t know 30 comments i’d be like oh you know tick tock’s so hard and like when i saw that it actually has added up it’s just you know yet another reminder of the value of just keep going compound the the wins over time so she was doing this thing she goes here’s a boring business that um that that you love and um it’s called american striping and all it is is this woman owns this business and it just paints the white line that you need for like a road like lane basically or like a parking spot you know it’s like i need to paint these white straight lines and so she has this company american striping i think it started about three years ago and uh you know four hundred thousand dollars the first year seven million the second year 15 million almost the third year and just crushing it just absolutely crushing it and according to cody seventy percent profit yes exactly somewhere 60 70 profit margins i don’t i don’t know i don’t know much about it because again my research was watching this tick tock five minutes before this pod but uh what a beautiful business and what a you know what a great reminder that like you know you you read about elon musk and you’re like oh i have to like send rockets to mars and then you read about the girl who’s like i drop straight white lines and i can make millions of dollars a year and it just reminds you you know you can win the game any any way so she’s my pick i love that i am i would vote for that one okay i’m gonna take that in honor of cody so we are at one one one right now so we’re one each by the way i have a a little honorable mention here an unsexy business that’s done extremely well have you guys looked at crocs stock yeah crushing it thanks to post malone dude 2020 when the pandemic happened so march 2020 you could you could have bought a pair of crocs for i don’t know how much crocs go for let’s call it a hundred bucks maybe there’s a little less uh you could buy a pair of crocs and you could buy the stock for ten dollars a share it’s now up 13 x in one year just during the the pandemic was good to crocs and uh i just thought that was like an amazing winner uh out of this like pandemic time is it possible is that who’s driving it he was he kind of hopped on that trend really early and then they created this new thing called like crocs i forget what they’re called but they’re like charms that you put on your crocs and if you drive around the midwest or in the south like how do we make every glare what could we do oh let’s dangle charms off of them do you know what i’m talking about like my wife is obsessed with these and she buys them for our kids and puts them on yeah it’s like like a you get like a soccer ball like pin or like a football pin or like some cartoon and the kids are obsessed with it and they’re crushing it right now post malone uh started making them popular and a lot of country um music people like luke uh combs so you probably have no idea who that is started wearing camouflage crocs gotcha yeah who knew uh who knew by the way sam i got another real quick pop quiz for you hands up so i see you’re not you’re not looking it up i want you to guess the monthly visitors to onlyfans.com 20 million a month okay you’re close it’s 250 million tell you’re off by 10x an order of magnets is it really that was gonna be my other unsexy business was actually the business of sexy uh which was like i had no idea they they get 250 million visitors per month that’s insane that’d be one of the top websites in the world then there’s another one called chatterbait that’s it you know a broke man’s version of only fans i gets 300 million oh my god it’s insane um so you know but it didn’t crazy didn’t only fans did they say that they’re no longer allowing nudity they did for a second and then they reversed course stupid like no more porn yeah facebook’s like no more photos you know it doesn’t work that’s so stupid um by the way average visit duration four minutes all right we’ll go to the next category your best investment okay so what was your best investment of 2021 uh let’s kick it off with andrew so um i would uh the boring answer is aeropress i think but i’ve already talked about that on the pod um we we bought that maybe four or five months ago and that’s been awesome so far but that story hasn’t played out yet so the one and we haven’t really done that much in the last year so the best one thing that i’ve been buying myself is actually a company called pershing square holdings i don’t think i’ve talked about it so i have about 95 of my net worth in tiny and our kind of core businesses um but i’ve been quietly building kind of a backup forever rich retirement portfolio of stocks real estate brick and mortar businesses we own a chain of restaurants we have a hotel wait what a bunch of conventional stuff uh i just known a bunch of restaurants in victoria i know what is that we own a hotel in st louis oh marshall yeah yeah with marshall exactly is the hotel business cool it’s amazing basically we bought this uh that we bought like a apartment building and converted it into all airbnb and we took it from we bought it super cheap and now it’s yielding and you’re a billionaire maybe you’re my billy of the uh i don’t think not yet working on it it sounds like uh something you had to think about it that means you you might be round upping to it no i i no i i don’t think i am um i don’t really i i don’t really have like a good picture on that stuff that’s a good answer though i know businesses if the answer is i don’t think i am then the answer then that’s a good sign yeah what’s that people say i don’t i don’t i don’t spend a lot of i don’t spend a lot of time on that stuff because you know a lot of people who are billionaires on paper like you know it doesn’t really matter right you could invest in some startup it could get valued at 20 billion dollars you can own one percent whatever like i i just don’t i don’t spend too much time on that so anyway i i’ve been thinking about this and i go if everything goes pear-shaped i want to still be rich and i want to have enough money to live a great life and so and that’s by that guy you like right bill ackman yeah yeah so i’ve been following bill for five or six years and i found that he had this holding company called pershing square holdings and what he did is really smart so he he had a hedge fund and when you have a hedge fund you have a whole bunch of investors and they give you cash to invest but at any given time they can freak out and they can take their money back so you could be in a down you know down you could own an amazing business and you could be forced to sell at the wrong time because an investor redeems and so he created this holding company in amsterdam i think he raised four billion dollars um and he called it pershing square holdings and it’s basically a public holding company that just owns a bunch of stocks and it owns really great stuff it owns chipotle domino’s hilton lowe’s restaurant brands international so like burger king popeyes that kind of stuff and universal music and so it’s this really diversified blue chip stock portfolio and as i dug into it i realized that it perpetually trades at a discount to the net assets there so if there’s a hundred dollars worth of stocks it trades at about 70 meaning that the market could go down 30 percent before you’ve lost any money in the in the portfolio and then on top of that you have bill ackman managing your money and he does crazy [ ] like he last year he turned 25 million dollars into 2.7 billion and i got to ride along with him on that so anyway i’ve been buying that almost exclusively i’ve got probably like 60 percent of my portfolio in this and i just keep buying more and more every month uh and i’ve quadrupled my money i think over the last couple of years did he do this awesome that that crazy trade that he made last year the covert trade was that out of these vehicles or that was out of a separate vehicle yeah that was in this vehicle and anyone could have bought that and he did the universal actually last year or something like that yeah you’ve talked about this you like um okay great so that’s a good one uh sam what you got your best investment um i bought a i bought a a big lot in austin kind of boring but i bought a big lot in austin i used um an asset-backed loan so i used cash to buy it like i told them i bought it in cash in reality it was a loan at a one percent interest rate and i it’s not the story again hasn’t played out but it’s already appreciated because i’ve gotten offers on it but i’ll make about five hundred thousand dollars in tax free profit with very little work and the work that i’ve been doing on it is fun i’m learning a skill i’m learning how to develop a home profitably um so uh that that’s gonna be my it’s probably not my best just like investing in the s p 500 that’s up 30 that i mean that’s but that’s not much of an investment i didn’t do anything and so the uh my my austin real estate project will be the most like actively i think active thing that i’m managing and make the most that’s a good one uh by the way the youtube video on your personal youtube channel the uh this is sampar or the sampara yeah just my name you you show the the lot the kind of like the rundown shack that’s there today it’s great uh it’s fun right it’s way more in watch that and what you just said will be way more entertaining it’s great but i also i feel like you might make 500 grand but if you’d made 5 million passively it wouldn’t feel as good as exactly that’s why i’m saying you’ve done it it’s better because it’s fun like it’s i’m basically developing a skill uh and it’s been quite fun and the tax implications are quite nice yeah that’s great um okay good my my best investment i’m gonna go with this startup that i invested in so last year i think it was last year last year i created a rolling fund and it was basically said hey if anybody wants to invest in startups alongside me you know you don’t have to have the network you don’t have to have the knowledge all you got to have is the cash you could do this and i was like okay i wanted to start it i was like i want to start this off i want to make it enticing for somebody to join because you could invest in a number of people who are professional full-time investors who have been doing this for a decade so i was kind of thinking like why would somebody invest in me and so i said let me juice it up a little bit let me put three of my personal angel investments into this deal uh into this like fund and uh so they’ll be able to say look i i get to sort of like great i get grandfathered into these deals that you’ve already done that’s a very kind of you and i was self-serving like i wanted my fund to get subscribers quickly so i was like how do i provide more value here here’s here’s some free value now looking back it actually has turned out to be very kind because the very first deal that i put in is a company called deal d-e-e-l and what deal does is it’s the easiest way to hire a contractor um so like i was paying i wanted to hire this guy in australia the guy who actually first was editing our podcast like how do i pay this podcast editor in australia and so i was like oh um you know do i need to go get a lawyer to make a contract and how do i pay them in his local currency and then what are the compliance rules around that how much taxes do i need to pay like i don’t i don’t understand all this so i went to deal and literally in five minutes i was like uh here’s the guy’s name here’s his email address here’s where he lives it’s like here’s a contract it’s like would you like to add a confidentiality clause yeah yeah toss that in it’s like guac on my burrito like you know i’ll go for that and then it was like great it’s sent for signature and the payments will come out of your bank account and it’ll pay him in australian dollars automatically every month and i was like wow that was like kind of magical it basically replaced you know what a bunch of humans would have to do so i loved it so i ended up chasing down the founder and i was like yo your product is amazing um how do i invest in this and he was like oh you know i’d love to have you and i didn’t invest right then and then you know when i followed up he was like oh dude we just closed a thing sorry i forgot like you know you didn’t follow up so so i missed the first round and then i almost missed the second one what was the valuation of the first one first one might have been i don’t remember exactly but it’s like a startup you know like maybe 12 million cap or 20 million cap something like that and so uh he’s like don’t worry i’ll get you into the next round i was like okay great so he messages me one day he says brother like you know i got your spot for you next round’s coming together let me know i’m like oh i’m in 25k no questions asked he’s like great got you in and i was like i was like actually you know one question i guess what is the valuation actually what does it happen to be and he’s like you know i don’t know if i can say this probably i can say this it was like a million and i was like what and i was like uh and i was like okay and i didn’t want to go back on my words i i like the product i like the founder a lot and i was like i said i’m in so i’m in and i was like ah [ ] okay whatever and then i was like you know do you have like crazy traction like how are you getting this this thing he’s like you know we’re doing well but like you know he told me the number and i was like that’s an absurd valuation for this thing i was like who’s doing this deal and his andreessen was doing the deal he’s like these guys are nuts uh well i don’t know why they’re doing this but whatever i wrote the check did it anyways it that it was valued this year at five and a half billion um like you know two years later they said he and the founder tweeted this out so i can share this they ramped up revenue from four million to 50 million in arr in one year and um they went from 50 employees to 550 employees in one year and so this is just like an insane amount of traction that’s like you know actually andreessen knew what they were doing they you know they they bet on this before because i think the revenue was definitely less than four million at the time it was re it was valued at 200 million and so you know the value investor and andrew would have been dying in that moment it just didn’t make any sense it didn’t make sense to me even but this has turned out to be a pretty amazing deal uh you know so if not including dilution which is a big factor here so take that for what it’s worth so 12 million into five and a half billion is 458 so your 25 000 in that 12 round would have been worth over 11 million yes exactly and my buddy my buddy ryan uh did that deal at that at that round and uh reminded me as such about like the crazy markup and so you know the 25k has turned into half a million but man that’s the difference between half a million and 12 million was following up oh my god all right so wait is this my best investment or worst investor maybe this is my worst investment actually i mean 25k to half a million by the way well it would have been good and then i put it in the the rolling fund so now you know most of the economics went to my investors dude that’s crazy that that that mistake yeah and it was by the way this was a period of like i don’t know less than a year between the between like when when one round happened and the next round happened so you know could have uh could yeah coulda woulda shoulda all right so who are we giving this round to best investment me okay for my sob story at least i have at least i have this to lean back on all right let’s go to worst investment what was your worst investment of 2021 i’ll go first mine’s easy zillow i bought silver on that one yeah i i only bought three stocks individual stocks this year one was playboy and playboy kind of makes sense because only a billion dollar valuation 200 million in revenue and i thought the brand was easily worth that i’m actually thinking about buying aston martin stock at aston martin is only valued at like one or two billion dollars it’s like the cheapest car maker but i think they’re gonna have a resurgence so i’m thinking about doing that but i bought playboy thinking that was my logic and i was wrong but then zillow was way wrong zillow was wrong because i bought at it’s the most expensive point tell people why we bought this stock we bought it because we’re in this chat group and our friend nikita and austin reef were like zillow’s the greatest thing ever and so i bought like 25 or 50 grand worth of zillow and i agreed with them i thought yeah you know you’re right like whenever i go to a fancy neighborhood i just pull up zillow and i like browse it all the time it’s kind of a category definer like defining company like i’m on board with zillow i thought how much were they worth when we bought like 15 or 20. i don’t know it’s down 56 percent so i bought 100k and now my 100k is 44k uh left it made sense like i don’t regret like i’m on board with it but the problem was is that it went down just because like we were wrong then it went down because they [ ] it up with buying all those houses and it went down even more yeah so we were wrong like twice and by the way they they lost 56 of their value in a year where the housing market went like bananas so you know it’s not like there was something out of their control and their industry that was doing poorly you know didn’t didn’t rich barton come back or something was he the guy he’s the original founder and a really great investor and a great leader great entrepreneur yeah and and he came back and he tried to do the house buying stuff i would still i would honestly maybe i think it’s a great company it’s awesome i think basically what happened was a bunch of bad stuff happened including one tick tock went really viral explaining how like they’re evil because they’re like big corporations buying hundreds of homes and that totally [ ] them if anyone’s tick tock is the winner here the fact that they haven’t disintermediated real realtors though like the fact you can’t or maybe you can and i’m just not aware but i just want to be able to list my house on zillow and then have an open outcry auction one day like where you say like on this day i want to have an auction everyone’s going to bid and then we’ll get the maximum price and they do all the paperwork like that would be i invested in money i invested in a company that does that they were called rumor it’s kind of a silly name but they re-change it to also a silly name it’s called dorsey so yeah it’s i gotta call this is not bad i like darcy so don’t doors it’s like the word door and then s-e-y and uh it’s a live home auction and uh it’s started by the guy who started hello alfred kind of a cool company i just sent it to you in the chat yeah so zillow was your worst investment hey just before we jump i want to know about playboy so what’s the what’s the thesis there like they still have the magazine obviously it’s kind of a you know there’s a lot of legacy because it can’t be the magazine like where’s the money coming from yeah merchandise basically and so they own the they they own the playboy mansion which is worth uh nine figures i believe and they recently did a spec in 2020 and so they reported 200 million dollars in revenue in 2021 or that’s what the forecast is going to be when i invested i think their market cap was just a hair above 1 billion and um basically my my logic right now it’s one exactly 1 billion my logic was basically like i’m pretty sure that brand is worth more than that like if they just like put their logo on stuff i was like i know young people don’t really care about it as much but i think that brand is pretty valuable and i couldn’t put a value on it but i thought it was above what they were trading for so it was kind of i kind of just made a kind of a gut call but it’s down half wasn’t it it was a guy the guy who bought that was the guy who bought twinkies or hostess or something random like yeah yeah like um yeah he was the guy who bought twinkies made a ton of money on it then he bought pbr i think it is a i mean it’s a very iconic it’s a really iconic brand yeah i know that like they tried i had a friend that tried that almost bought uh this guy the guys at the chive almost sold to playboy and they told me about going to the mansion and they told me that they playboy was thinking about selling the mansion and they told me like how much it was worth and it was it’s like a crazy high number and i thought well [ ] just with this stuff like this is worth more than the if you’re only fans why would you not just buy playboy i think it’s really interesting you don’t need it that brand i mean what’s it worth that you know i don’t know 500 million people know your name and associate it like that’s got to be worth to to a company that has a money plan if you are a money printer what what does it take to accelerate your brand like that that i don’t know that’s well let’s be let’s be real i mean tai lopez is gonna turn into some sort of cryptocurrency all right where are you what’s yours andrew yeah so mine i can’t say what it is we didn’t actually announce the business but so the mistake we made is we bought an ember what i mean by that is it’s like this little tiny ember and it could turn into a bonfire if you blow on it a lot but you have to be very attentive and we’re not set up to be attentive we’re kind of management by neglect we buy these businesses we plug in ceos and then they go on to do great and the problem is when you have this little tiny startup this is a business it was a real business with real revenue and profits but it was very small and we liked what we saw but the problem is we couldn’t attract someone great to run it and so the business the ember just kind of burnt out over time and we ended up spending like a million bucks so it was just a total money bonfire uh and pointless and unsatisfying and so the lesson for us is just board a cruise ship you know don’t don’t try and build your own boat that’s a good announcement two good analogies ember and cruise ship um all right my worst investment i’m gonna give you the fast answer because i think we’re gonna run short on time all right mine is holding coveted winners for too long so i had this amazing run-up on zoom stock fastly which is a like uh edge you know like a cloud or what’s called a cdn um and agora which does like you know voice and video um sdks so they power clubhouse and things like that and i own these stocks they ran up like crazy you know 2x 3x or whatever in like a very short amount of time and then they’ve all come crashing back down to earth um you know in the last six months or so and so i lost money just by holding on to the coveted winners for for too long even when like for example with agora i got in because i knew clubhouse was growing but then i was the one who kind of almost like famously called the clubhouse is gonna fail and it’s gonna gonna tank and yet i still held my agora i forgot to sell my agora stock and it’s cut in half um you know so that that sort of thing so i would say my i lost a nice chunk of change holding my covered winners for too long how awesome would it be if you could short private companies like imagine if you saw clubhouse and you could go and short it and maybe maybe there is a way to do it if anyone has any ideas i’d love to hear them but um stuff like that is quite obvious uh that if you have you ever used poly market it’s basically like a crypto betting it’s like a like a bookie basically but you could bet on anything you could bet on sports games you could bet will joe biden get coveted uh you could bet whatever and it’s only a yes or no so there’s so and the market sets the line so basically if everybody thinks yes then proportionately no will be rewarded like if you bet no but two-thirds of people bet yes you’re going to get a payout more than one-to-one on your money because you’re taking the underdog side of things and um and so there’s a so this idea of prediction markets works really well in in crypto and uh and so there’s a few of these that are out there um i love betting on poly market dude we should do we should do an annual uh betting episode where we all make predictions and bets and then we put it on poly market and we have to put our own money up that’d be awesome do you still stand by that is club what’s the update on clubhouse are you going to be right yeah it looks like it like the charts all you know it’s a it looks like mount everest right it’s like goes up and then it goes straight there’s there’s not a world where like it’s just like maybe not growing a ton but they still have like a million people a day using it or something like that uh well look you never count out an entrepreneur those guys are really talented entrepreneurs they can always pivot uh it’s that you know the product as it is today did not become what people bet on it to become right andreessen put it a four billion dollar price tag on it basically betting that it’s gonna become like a twitter it’s gonna become a facebook or a snap and uh it’s not happening uh that has that hasn’t happened the one good thing is that they they have the same kind of like hype cycle or not hype i shouldn’t say that but like uh trend fad cycle in different countries so like in india they’ll get like it happened in america they got super popular and then usage faded it wasn’t super sticky and then the same thing will happen in india it’ll get super popular and then it’ll start to fade in popularity and so the overall numbers aren’t like totally zero but it’s the problem is if you’re a leaky bucket you’re a leaky bucket it’s just a matter of time tall the water’s gone and uh that’s i don’t know i think i think i’m right but i don’t honestly don’t pay too much attention to it but people will often tweet at me charts of their downloads going down to be like you’re right so that’s all i know it’s basically people cherry-picking evidence andrew andrew chen’s got to come on the pod you know that right oh is he yeah will he be able to talk to me or am i blocked from the pod too we’ll see he’ll he’ll block you he’ll meet you all right uh who’s the winner on that one um i’m gonna go i like i think andrew had a good lesson in there all right we’ll go with that oh that’s we’re gonna go andrew there all right let me um i’m gonna uh i’m gonna combine the next one can i do that yeah okay so i’m gonna combine it with favorite digital tool favorite physical tool and best product under 100 and above a thousand and i’ll go first so favorite digital is true bill andrew you should use true bill you said that you forget subscriptions true bill is awesome like just today i didn’t realize that me and my wife both had an amazon prime membership true bill i paid like 50 bucks oh no or 10 it’s like really cheap and it’s a sick app that syncs your bank account and tells you the subscriptions that you have and it makes it easy to cancel it have you heard of that sweet they just got acquired i don’t i don’t know if it works in canada but you just gotta acquire for 1.3 billion by rocket mortgages your guy dan gilbert um so pretty awesome favorite physical tool is this is kind of physical is a 50 app called camo that’s let you use your iphone for uh like high def uh video calls pretty amazing and then favorite product that was above uh that was under 100 was lock a box it’s a 38 box that i keep in my pantry that my wife knows the code of and she puts things that i don’t want to have that i don’t have self-control so she’ll put like uh sweets in there and sometimes if i want to lock my phone for the weekend she’ll put it in there so that’s awesome and then above a thousand i bought a fancy car a mercedes amg station wagon that i love dude that was great okay uh andrew so we’re doing a digital product physical product or kind of like a cheap or expensive thing you liked okay so um digital product uh consumerlab.com so it’s like 49 bucks a year and it’s basically wire cutter but for food and supplements so everything from like vitamin d to seaweed snacks to baby food they buy every single brand they test it and it’s pretty shocking like i just today learned that the seaweed snacks that i’ve been giving my kids you know have like a bunch of arsenic in them right so it’s just crazy stuff that could affect your life my favorite physical tool is this amazing thing my wife gifted for me randomly that i never thought i would use it’s basically this game called the loser game and you play with friends and you basically all draw a card and on each card is a really kind of [ ] up deep question so for example how have you blamed someone for an issue that was if you’re truly honest largely your fault or name a surprising basic embarrassing gap in your knowledge or anyway you go around in a circle you answer this i did this on a retreat with a couple friends that i did and these were all guys i know really really well and i left going holy [ ] there’s just so many cool stories and interesting facts that we don’t know about one another and this game kind of elicits it so that’s been awesome and then physical thing that i bought this year i bought a house up at the lake about 40 minutes out of town here and it’s been the best thing i could ever do just great place to go and hang out with family and check out of work and even though it’s close it feels like a whole other world away that’s great and i’ve seen the house it’s awesome but i got a quick story on that thing you just said uh my first business i started with my two best friends from college and uh this is the sushi business or whatever we we met the chef and the chef goes all right here he goes he goes you guys are you guys man i love your guys’s kind of like vibe like you guys are i can tell you guys really like each other he goes how long you guys know each other like did you just meet or while we’re like no we’ve and we were just saying now we’re thick as thieves we’ve known each other for years and he goes you can see you guys know each other pretty well huh and we’re like yeah like why why he goes he goes uh sean what’s uh what’s the hardest thing trevor’s ever been through i was like uh i have no idea he’s like you know like just name something maybe and i was like i honestly have no clue and we did and all three of us had no idea of just what’s the hardest thing that your your best friend has been through and um and he’s like oh he goes he goes he goes yeah i kind of noticed this he goes y’all talk but you don’t have conversations oh and i was like oh [ ] do mike drop and he goes he goes so you know you don’t need to do this now but he’s like but try it like go go a little deeper um just ask yourself these questions and we did it that night we kind of asked each other that question and then by the end we’re all like dude i didn’t know that about you like i feel like i knew you way better you know like i really i really know you now um and so that was a great reminder of like sometimes these questions can can take you you know further with your friends totally it’s a superpower one of the questions i ask people when i have lunch i’ll have like a small talk you know first time lunch with someone and i’ll just randomly try and ask them are you happy or are you happy with where your life is right now and it’s weird they will just go down a rabbit trail and tell you all sorts of crazy stuff you wouldn’t normally tell somebody are you just mind [ ] people throughout victoria all right so i’ll it well it just builds builds connection right i’ll do mine okay so favorite digital thing uh this app called othership uh it’s a breathwork app i do it every morning i love it it wakes me up it makes me feel good it’s it slows me down and it speeds me up at the same time it slows me down from just rushing into my day feeling behind and then it speeds me up because when i come out of it i’m like i feel just like electric i feel like i’m on fire i could do whatever i want now so other ship is the name of that app i love that app um favorite uh what is it favorite okay my favorite physical tool is um this is gonna sound stupid all right so i grew out my hair and um you know i grow my hair just to like do it just to kind of have a like i don’t know just have a change to do something different but i don’t know anything about how to take care of hair and i’m like a really messy disorganized person who doesn’t like you know i don’t look in the mirror until 7pm that night i’m like oh i didn’t haven’t even looked at myself today and that doesn’t really work when you got long hair like high maintenance hair so i went to a stylist and i was like you know can i get a little trim and uh she was like what do you want i was like i have no idea i have no idea what i want and also uh what i really want is like can you just like cut the haircut like half an hour short and just tell me what i should be doing like with my hair and she’s like what do you mean i was like i was like so like i get in the shower if i want to do shampoo like here’s how i do it you tell me if that’s correct and i went through like these ultra basics with her and she was like what do you mean and then she was laughing but then through that conversation she’s like oh like no no when you shampooed like don’t be doing it on the roots because you’re gonna end up stripping away all your natural oils like just do your conditioner and shampoo like from the middle to the end and like oh you’re sleep you know your hair is really frizzy and you probably don’t know why but like do you sleep on a cotton pillowcase and i was like yeah of course and she’s like you need to switch that for silk because imagine you’re spending eight hours a night rubbing your hair into this thing so she gave me these like three little things like a silk pillowcase this like uh curling cream she’s like just use this because your hair won’t look like it’s just black or white white dude we have silk things in our in our house all over well yeah because if you have a black girl thing yeah no it is there’s like this whole thing the curly girl method and [ ] like that so i learned so much about hair in like half an hour it was amazing and i felt so relieved i was like ah this is like this class of life school i just missed and like i’m too embarrassed or too like kind of busy to like think about it but like taking the time thinking about it was awesome and so you know the little silk pillow and a couple other things were great little wins for me when when you go to restaurants what i do all the time is i just say they’ll say what do you want and i’ll say i just want meat and vegetables give me whatever’s popular or whatever’s best do you ever do that no but well i’ll often ask what’s best or i’ll say the best question is uh you know what uh like what do you eat after work like what’s the best thing that you like to eat dude it makes him so uncomfortable though i ask that all the whenever i order i almost always do that it makes them very uncomfortable and they freak out just like you did like when i get a haircut i’m like what do you want i’m like just make me look sexy you know just like make me look hot just like yeah whatever chef’s choice is a hella underrated way to live life so is but it makes them so uncomfortable not you might be putting them on putting too much pressure on them i tell them i say look this is where i am it can’t get worse than this don’t worry i trust you and i tell every haircut i said don’t worry what you do my hair grows fast i take a lot of pressure off them same thing with the food you know tell me what you eat after work uh by the way i’m not picky and i’m already in a good mood so i’m gonna love whatever you give me and then you know take the product that’s that’s a good one i’m gonna say that all right and then your last uh you’re you’re over 100 and under 100. the uh what’s let’s see over a hundred uh oh i hired a chef so i don’t know why more people don’t do this like dude that’s such a conceited thing to say no no yeah cancel me and be like yeah because i can’t afford it no what i mean is if you can buy a nice car or you know like i would never buy a nice car before a chef like my order of operations [ ] you drive a bmw no no no i don’t even think that’s the right comparison i think it’s a lot of people who are middle class or upper middle class have a cleaner a chef is just slightly more expensive than that it’s not crazy expensive that’s pretty expensive to have somebody who who preps meals and i don’t do it every day so you know you could do three days a week or you can do you know whatever um it is the biggest life quality change because you get your time back plus you eat healthier plus it’s actually tasty because you probably aren’t a great cook or i’m not at least plus like you know they prep little things for like my dog or my baby who’s like a picky eater and like it just saves so much time energy and mental like kind of like uh mind space i guess to do this so for me i’m like i would cut 10 other things before this so like if you got some money right you can’t do this you got no money but you got some money you got some money to play with like don’t angel invest hire a chef you know don’t don’t buy like a go buy like a used kind of like middle road car don’t buy like a nice car if you’re buying a tesla get a chef that’s why that’s my like you know if you’re in that game those are the kind of trade-offs you can make and above uh below a thousand uh oh jambis i think i’ve talked about this before oh my god i love these things you don’t like it you don’t like jammies like they’re just boxers with pockets very soft boxers with pockets and no hole do you wear them do you wear them though day-to-day or only when you’re at home well i’m at home every day what do you mean well let’s bring it out you know if there’s no if there’s no hole and you put them on under jeans i don’t know just a shitty version of this replacement for short so i like to just walk around my boxers all day that’s like when i’m most comfortable so this is the socially acceptable more comfortable they’re like a little longer so you’re not showing too much thai there’s no hole they got pockets so you can carry your phone around so it’s like the best way to just wear your boxers at home like you’re saying like your mother-in-law your mother-in-law mother-in-law’s going to wear boxers around the house because if you just wear shorts they’re just as comfortable and you’d look like sean’s effects he’s been talking about these things for like three years now i i’ve worn them they’re very very comfortable i have a pair i like them but i wouldn’t wear them like if they’re people in my house i wouldn’t wear lemon shorts instead that have like the underwear in the uh as the light they’re still comfortable we’re not all trillionaires so we can’t all get lululemon we can get jammies right all right can i can i batch the next one again yeah all right so check this out so um we’re giving that round to sam all right i’ll take that uh thank you a thing you learned about yourself this year and best relationship hack i’ll go first because mine are going to be really fast best relationship hack this year i do weekly meetings with my wife using this best self journal and it’s just like a prompt it’s an hour-long prompt of questions and you get to know each other better exactly what you’ve talked about with your buddy it’s been awesome that’s the best hack i’ve had and the one thing i learned this year i’ll say two things one i don’t ask you a question about the relationship one yeah are you both equally into it or is one of you like more into doing it than the other we’re both equally into it okay i think that and so like i’ve always been a fan of therapy like i’ve gone to therapy like regardless if i’m healthy or unhealthy it’s just like going to the gym and so i was like we should do couples counseling even though everything’s great and but i didn’t really judge we didn’t jive with anyone and so i thought this one is actually better it works yeah and it’s like 25 for one time and then so sean i mean i totally relate to what you said though like i’m projecting he’s not into it and i tried to do this with my wife do like uh you almost want to do like a weekly board meeting like hey let’s talk about our relationship my way well it’s not run like a business meeting exactly but like it just has like like like you know like the five languages of love like that’s like one that’s like one conversation that’s like you’ll have that one week and then the next conversation will be uh uh tell me about your childhood right i think i think someone needs to build like an operating system kind of like how you would have board meetings and all this stuff for marriage eos right like what does our family stand for yeah exactly exactly that was a great idea yeah and then one thing i learned about myself which is i actually don’t like owning as fancy stuff it kind of stresses me out so i like bought a fancy watch and i was like oh my god this is horrible it’s freaking me out and but what i learned this year is i had a number of net worth in my head and i was like if i hit this number i’m never going to worry again and i’m not going to chase money i hit that number i still worry and i still chase it’s never enough yeah and now now it’s always 2x you know and there’s a the new yorker didn’t did a study where they like asked a bunch of wealthy people and like it doesn’t matter if the person had uh 1 million 100 000 or 50 million they always said they’d be more comfortable if they had 2x yeah all right you want to go sean uh yeah okay so best relationship hack i literally just wrote this as soon as i read it i go shut the [ ] up i learned this year how to really just shut the [ ] up in a relationship meaning like not everything needs to be talked about not everything needs to be said not every like you know pot needs to be stirred not every issue needs to be discussed not every like worry needs to be a thing like just shut up and uh like just shut up and enjoy it just shut up and listen more um and just shut up and like don’t complain don’t don’t talk about like constantly improving and changing it like just shut up a little bit and so that was my relationship backwards there’s many times where you’ve got you probably know this because you know me pretty well sam i’m kind of a pot stir um and i like to like i don’t feel alive till somebody’s like you know laughing or angry or whatever in a conversation i’m like yeah now we’re doing it that’s true it’s not how everybody is but your intentions are mostly always good which most your mo your intentions are mostly always good if it’s if you just want to call [ ] it’s just because you feel like laughing yeah i’m trying to amuse myself the difference is are your were your parents debaters and that was kind of how your sister because in my household my my dad’s a potster so my dad would say some outlandish thing we start yelling and that was like almost his love language and my problem is i’ve applied that into all my relationships and most people find that horrible you just said it perfectly so that was the lesson that was my relationship this year was the lesson learned was was what if i didn’t try that what if i did something different the thing i learned about myself i’m gonna do one that’s not um not good so you know there’s a lot of lessons that were like ah yeah i learned this and now i’m better for it this is one that like i just learned was kind of like a shitty thing about me so i’ve now had several friends that um i’ve considered to be my close friends or like they worked for me or whatever like i’ve kind of mentored them in some way and then they go on to do like really great things but like you know they called everybody except for me to like kind of like share the wins that they were having or or let them on board or to invest in it or like you know just i wasn’t in the loop beyond once our once our kind of relationship once are like once the transaction was done like once we stopped working together in my head i’m like oh yeah we’re super tight and in their head they’re like they had a different opinion because i had lunch with a buddy and i said he was telling me about like this crazy journey he’s been on like dude can i ask you something kind of weird i was like i’ve noticed this happening a bunch of times like you had this crazy journey and i feel like i thought we were super close and we’re just now talking about it like i wasn’t i wasn’t in the loop like you didn’t let me know like you didn’t share these awesome things that were happening or the crazy bad things and like you took other investors i feel like i could have been like your first check into your thing like i was like is there something i do that makes you feel that way and he’s like yeah can i get can i guess what he said yeah go ahead i just thought that you were too busy yeah that but like uh a less generous version of that is you uh you blew me off basically it’s like it’s like yeah like i messaged you a bunch of times and like you didn’t really respond in a big way so i just figured like okay he’s like he said it perfectly he goes i he goes i felt like i figured out what i am to you and like i thought we were close and you thought we were saying you thought we were close but like you made me feel like we’re not that close and like once our engagement was over you know it seemed like you put me in some place that like you know you didn’t want to engage as much as i wanted to and i was like why would you talk about not me good old sean no way you know this is whatever and um and then sure enough i scrolled back in our dms and it’s like him saying something him saying something him saying something me saying one line him saying something and like asking something and me never respond never getting back how do you come back combat that because like you’ve gotten very popular but it’s not that it’s like well this is this is the problem this is the problem is like so much of becoming friends with someone is where you’re at in your life and how much time you have for the other person and whether you’re in sync or not so some of my best friends they were you know we’re both single we’re both drinking and partying you’re super super close and then you have kids and life’s different and you kind of drift apart and the same thing can happen with texting if they’re texting you all the time and they want you to engage and then you send a one-liner back they immediately take offense they don’t realize that you’ve got 300 other people texting you and you just want to be friends with everybody and it’s funny you mention this because i wrote my worst habit of the year is writing blunt one-line responses to dms and text messages because i’m busy right i’m just trying to rip through them all and i’m tired but it’s way it’s way better to not respond at least then you’re mysterious and oh maybe you didn’t see it the one liner pisses people off so much it’s a little it’s a little better it’s shockingly better if it makes you feel better sean i perceive you as a person who’s in the loop of everything though yeah i don’t know i i basically i re i realized my self-perception of kind of where these relationships were at and how uh good of a friend i was being back i realized like oh no i’m actually i’m kind of a shitty friend back uh i i can make people feel bad when without really realizing it um and and also that that costs me like that i don’t get to share in the wins and and know the stories and be kind of friends and and get these opportunities that like you know would otherwise have come from this and so that’s once i have it like five times i’m like okay the problem is me i’m the common denominator here one of the habits that i’ve realized there’s two things one one is like using a smiley when you say something takes the edge just immediately even if it’s a one-liner takes the edge off the other thing is a friend of mine does this he’s very very busy super spread thin big personality lots of friends and he will just every once in a while text me and say hey man i was just thinking of you uh or you know or you know let’s say it’s new years he’ll say hey thanks for your friendship this year here’s something i really appreciated or took from you and it comes across as very authentic and i’ve looked at that and gone okay i need to really learn how to do that because i’m like you exactly as you’re saying this i’m just nodding along i think i come across as distant and cold and too busy and i don’t want to and i just want to make everyone happy it’s so sad you know bracket first name i was really thinking about you yeah that’s what’s going to come out from us this year yeah someone listened to andrew relationships and um learning about learnings yeah okay so um my biggest relationship hack honestly my wife her love language is acts of service and it’s really interesting like often she’ll start picking at me about some other thing i’m doing that pisses her off and will have a fight about something and it ultimately came down to the fact that i left towels on the floor or i left the kitchen dirty and so now i’m just trying to whenever i have that moment where i’m like i see the kitchen’s dirty i’m just unloading the dishwasher and trying to enjoy it and get it done the other thing no no no no no i’m not a slob but i always say to her i’m like what’s the point of making money if you use your time doing things you don’t want to do right whereas my wife is much more like i don’t want our kids to grow up without them seeing us work and you know doing stuff so so we don’t really have any help around the house we have a nanny but um you know we have a cleaner who does all this stuff we don’t want to do besides we still do all the shows we have it’s all us no we don’t we don’t we don’t have any of that we don’t have we’re not fancy like you um and then the school of life uh which they make that card game i mentioned before i love that so much that i bought this one called the connect card game and it’s for couples and my wife and i have been doing it and it’s basically five stacks and each stack is like you know one is sex one is like general relationship one is personal whatever and so you roll a dice and you go through these questions and again it’s just this great way to penetrate through you know you might be in a bad spot but when you answer these questions it kind of unlocks everything and builds connection between the two of you and that’s been really really good for us because my wife doesn’t like doing the meetings or couples counseling even a lot of the time but that’s been a great thing for us that’s baller yeah ours are me and your we have the same thing dude i totally i really that’s cool you said that about the um people thinking you’re a dick or checked out because i i have that exact thing and you you said it really nicely uh yeah it’s kind of it’s hard it’s hard and you know i’ve even experienced that with you and i’ve probably done it to you as well but it’s like you know you and i we’ve texted and we’ve had these long exchanges and then there’s other times where you text me and i’m like one line yeah or vice versa and it’s it’s i think it’s one of those things where like i would i maybe i do take offense i don’t know but like in my head it’s like i’m so i have so much faith in the in the relationship that i’m like there’s not it’s not gonna like affect my score you know in a way um yeah and also like i hate the kind of excuse if i’m busy because basically to me when the phrase i’m busy means i’m poor it’s like if i think wealth is freedom of time and to be able to spend how you want then saying i don’t have time means i’m poor and so i’m like i don’t want to accept that that’s also reality so you know i’m trying to figure it out well it’s also there’s two i’ve what i’ve noticed is when i don’t work with somebody i text them differently when we do work together when we work together it’s like there’s total filter i’m not going to be nice i’m just gonna be super blunt and we’re just gonna grind it out and that’s just business and whatever and not i’m not being an [ ] i’m just being very to the point but i think that can come across the wrong way and i i think people sense a shift they start working with me and i suddenly become this like super blunt person like what happened all right so i was back okay so i got uh i got the categories here okay so let’s keep rolling we have i think three big buckets left all right so we’re gonna do these together so book of the year and or and then that’s the first one and then the second one to do is you know a podcast newsletter or a person you started following you start subscribing to so a book and something you started subscribing to that you really loved let’s do uh let’s do andrew first okay so i read this really great book that sam i think you’d love called clash of the titans it’s from the late 90s and it’s two parallel stories one is ted turner and one is rupert murdoch right from the beginning and the stories are kind of interwoven and at various times they clash and uh you know try and buy the same businesses and stuff um but it’s two different wacko billionaires so these guys are both insane in their own ways you know murdock is like quiet calculating 100 focused on profit uh but very slick and smooth ted turner’s like insane unpredictable emotional all about building a brand name uh and making an impact but it’s really about him reviews on amazon it yeah it’s like totally weird i had to buy it in print although i found it on um audible but anyway it was a really really great read i didn’t know that much about rupert murdoch before this and i gotta say he’s obviously evil but uh really amazing um billionaire business person and that he’s been going since 1957 and he’s somehow only now this is a huge number he’s only to us he’s he’s only worth 8 billion and you see these other people who are worth like 30 who have been going for like five years um so it’s it’s uh it’s pretty wild but anyway great great book i met rupert murdoch once have you met him andrew yeah you told this story you went to some symposium or something to get because it was sharp right amazing basically what he does is they own all these properties they own like whatever wall street journal fox and like a whole bunch of other things i don’t know what they own exactly but it’s like a bunch of huge media publications and uh they’re all these different businesses they’re all spread around the world and he um he gets everybody together once a year and he rented out the top floor or top two floors of the wind in vegas and he puts all of the ceos of all the execs basically all the all of his different properties puts them all up it was during ces but they didn’t attend ces they were not down at the conference floor shaking hands or anything like that they were in his room which is like the presidential suite or whatever and um they would just start at 8 a.m and they would go from 8 a.m to like 6 p.m or something like that and it would be back-to-back talks 30-minute talks they would just bring in some some somebody from some other field to give us to give a talk and they would grill them with questions and they’d be like thank you so much for coming next and it would be like um you know the number two guy at facebook would go yeah you went with like the skim this game was they then they have like three or four startups as well because it’s like before before us or you know it was like ceo of slack stuart butterfield went and gave his talk and by the way talk is like you know there’s 30 people in the room or something like that so it’s not like a presentation it’s like just someone kind of spitballing about what their what they do in their view of the world and um and then they get asked a bunch of questions and so this goes like eight or nine hours straight and if you look around the room because i i got there early and i just stayed we were talking at the end but i just sat in and sat in on the whole thing it was amazing and i looked around the room and people you know oh there’s the president of fox and he’s his attention’s drifting and this person’s you know they own the new york post and they’re they’re on their phone and rupert murdoch is like the star pupil he’s front he’s in the first row he’s you know sitting in the first row he’s doesn’t look at his phone he’s attentive the whole time he’s taking notes he asked the best questions and he had the most energy like this guy went eight hours straight he was like 87 years old at the time he’s 90 now i think and um he’s the oldest guy from no bathroom breaks this guy i don’t know what this guy’s going to be since he’s seen succession i’ve seen season one and it’s so yeah loosely it’s amazing kinda yeah and they like this old guy in succession he grinds man he’s they’re they’re like working like 24 hours a day and it’s always serious [ ] and very and is just like that and when i hear that i’m like this seems miserable how are they on all the time they have so much energy well not only that but rupert murdoch he’s brought all of his kids the reason succession is based on him is that he’s brought all of his kids in to the business and then his kids have one by one failed to become the heir apparent and fought each other and they all hate each other and leak stuff to the press and it’s it’s really horrible i think rupert murdoch is a great uh he’s a great way to invert you know what do we not want i don’t want to become rupert murdoch because it doesn’t seem like fun to me although maybe his personality uh maybe that works for him i really respect him uh okay so then you’re uh you subscribed to andrew so uh podcast newsletter or whatever so uh yeah and there’s not really i i kind of got off twitter although i’ve been kind of getting back into it a little bit um and i haven’t subscribed to any newsletters at all this year i’ve just i od’ed last year the person i um i really have been enjoying their tweets is uh your friend nikita nikita buyer he had a really great tweet recently where so you know all these people they do aqua hires to facebook and facebook basically just buys companies to shut them down right they find promising social networks that might compete with them they go buy them for tens of millions of dollars before they turn into anything and they bought his company and it’s kind of like a prison for entrepreneurs they make you sit around for three to five years and vest your stock and a lot of people hate it and he had this great tweet where he says oh i’m leaving uh facebook after three years here’s a thread of everything i learned points down and there’s just nothing there i thought that was awesome you know he was sitting on that one for four years as he vested out he’s like here’s how i’m gonna go um okay great sam what you got book and podcast newsletter whatever book uh i’m gonna go with endurance story about a shipwreck and then i’ll also go with empire the summer moon it’s about the comanche indians they’re just and and the texas rangers and how they fought and they’re all just [ ] savages the rate dude endurance is so good and by the way when i said savages i mean the native americans and also the texas rangers they’re all they treat each other horribly endurance is amazing it makes me feel like my life is meaningless and soft um and then things that i followed this year um okay the first laird hamilton i learned all about him this year that guy has the ideal life in my opinion he’s surfer businessman pretty amazing cool dude the second is how to take over the world ben wilson’s podcast one of the best things i’ve subscribed to and i’m gonna suck up even further sean the the five bullet for or the uh five tweets tuesday baby that’s freaking awesome i like that too so those are the things i started following this year all right love it uh okay so mine uh book okay i just started reading this book so this is gonna sound a little silly because i’m 10 pages in do you read thank you i i dabble i basically have like you know i’ll buy 50 books in a year and i’ll read you know 10 to 30 percent of 10 to 30 of them so it’s like i read one book at the end of the year um so this one i’ve read 10 pages so far and in the first 10 pages this book has more wisdom than anything i’ve ever read and i’m not saying i read a bunch of wisdom so that’s the caveat but uh is this book called think on these things it’s by this philosopher guy named krishnamurti and um i don’t know where i think of all maybe mentioned this guy’s name as christopher murphy and i just went bought this book it sat on my couch for like you know a year i didn’t look at it and then i just picked it up one day and 10 pages in i literally i’ve reread the first 10 pages three times and i like i just don’t even want to go on i’m like oh this one principle these two principles that are in this first 10 pages are so good that if i internalize these you know my life changes and it’s just amazing i just i’m looking at it now sounds awesome i just bought it yeah i mean i sold it pretty hard yeah all right so that’s that’s the first book uh second uh the thing i subscribe to this is kind of a again a little bit of an expected one but i listened to the all in podcast uh i don’t know if you guys listen to sam i don’t think you like it right or you don’t listen i don’t listen to any business podcasts andrew do you listen i feel like this might be up your alley yeah i find i i love i love all in but i found it was like um it’s too stressful the time i listen to podcasts in the evening and the last thing i want to do is get pumped up on deals and what’s going on in tech so yeah i listened to it and specifically i would actually say david friedberg on the podcast i actually find uh the rest of them to be very smart and very entertaining but very obnoxious to me personally um like you know like i’m sure these are they’re obviously successful they’re obviously you know probably you know fun to hang out with and things like that david’s like the real nerd but he’s the real nerd and he’s the only one i feel like there’s never is never presenting a face he’s never virtue signaling or like building their brand by saying certain [ ] like i think chamoth is amazing but also i think he virtue signals a bunch um you know i think that uh you know jason kind of says he’s a man of the people but uh like i think he’s kind of likes being high class and likes hanging out with high-class people and doing high-class [ ] but that’s what that’s what makes it good is they’re all they’re they’re they’re all like best friends but they’re horrible to each other and they’re all great and they’re all they’re all very they’re very complicated personalities every single one of them and i think that’s exactly it’s like a great tv show where the characters have flaws um and uh yeah david sacks is super smart but then like super [ ] political and uh kind of like an extent and he’s always just looking for some story that like supports his point of view uh and usually that point of view is that everybody else is biased but like you know clearly just constantly searching for information about how other people are biased um so anyways i think that there’s i love the show i enjoy the show a lot and those characters but i think david friedberg is actually the one who uh is kind of like a star discovery for me this year of like super smart gives great information about science and stuff like that is very balanced and fair in his like pov um while still being saying interesting things and isn’t i feel like he’s not trying to build his personal brand and popularity through the through the show so um you know to the extent that everybody is when you create content like i think he does a good job of not um and one of the reasons by the way i criticize those other guys for doing that sometimes is i do it right you spot it because you got it it’s like i sometimes will say something that like i know makes me look good or you know presents me and assert myself in a certain way so you know i see it when other people do it too um so anyways all in is you know maybe the thing i i enjoy the new thing a new show i’ve enjoyed subscribing to that’s great all right do we want to what was the last one was okay i got i got two more so there’s this is a quick one mfm guest of the year so who was the best guest that came on the pod and then your person of the year somebody you really enjoyed getting to know hanging out with working what about industry and company that’s gonna be the last one all right i’ll go first uh rob diernick and ariel helwani for guest of the year rob dierdick blew my mind ariel he was the biggest fan i’m the biggest fan that was a like i’m the biggest fan of his of all everyone we did and then what was the second question uh someone person of the year just your personal your sam’s person of the year who dude i’m gonna suck up again i gotta say ben and sean i’ve been i’m like so we just crossed like two million uh listens per 30 days um i think we hit 2.1 or something like that um i’m very very this is the thing i’m most proud of that we’ve done and uh so i would say uh and and with ben i think we found the perfect third man so shout out to were you tearing up just a little bit there it seemed like you i’ve been very kind to sean and uh like all the people involved in this podcast where they’re like why are you being so nice i’m just really proud of of what we’ve done it’s something i’ve been very proud of dude when we went to miami for the live show so the other bend the bend works me my my partner he he came with and he’s like i’m finally getting to meet sam i’ve heard him on the pod for hours and hours i’ve never met him and i was like yeah he’s great and i was like you know but like hey if sam like gets like impatient with you or like anything like that don’t take it personally like you know it’s just kind of his style like you know when he we’re doing a live show he’s gonna want it to go well it might be high you know high pressure and i’ve seen him kind of like go off on people sometimes if like you know whatever and we get there and sam was zen sam he was so kind so thoughtful so nice so happy and ben was like what the [ ] were you talking about dude i was like i don’t know where this came from this hundred percent happy sam but like this is amazing and i feel like the whole i don’t know if it’s the acquisition you know whatever the working out i don’t know what you’re doing but dude you’ve been so much happier this year it’s amazing it’s part acquisition and and we’re getting the results we’re finally getting we’re finally becoming as popular as i thought we should you’re you’re not you’re not um threatened anymore right like before if the hustle failed or anything went bad that directly hurts you and you’re that you have safety right so you’re not you’re like a dog you’re like a dog you have ample food now you don’t need to it’s just like it’s it’s been two years it hasn’t been that long since we’ve been doing this maybe two and a half years i forget and it’s finally like coming to fruition and it’s the hardest thing growing the growing the hustle wasn’t that hard growing this has been very hard dude i just want to say i’m so i’m so happy for you because i thought you’re going to sell the hubspot and be out of there in like three months be bitter upset you sold your baby and it’s so cool to see the podcast going so well the hustle going so well trends going so well all the people still there and you actually like the guy you sold to that’s yeah i mean i think i undersold so i definitely have some regrets but i don’t regret it at all and i’m i’m happy i i intend to do this podcast for a very long time investing is a hell of a drug wait did i go off script do you the thing you paid me to say earlier about it did i have to say about doormat all right andrew guest of the year and you’re just your favorite person you got to hang out and interact with so my favorite guest was um steph smith is always amazing like i i tweeted this out but i think it’s like she just drops thousand dollar bills on the ground for amazing entrepreneurs to pick up there’s just so many great ideas uh and i think for you guys the best format is a shitload of quick hits and ideas and i think she always delivers on that i don’t really always love it when you guys just interview someone about what they’re doing the other one i loved was huberman for that exact same reason just like you know i got him on your thread right now you tweeted that you love him and i also like him and i just said hey andrew dm me come on the pot it was on your thread yeah no way oh that’s amazing yeah he’s he’s amazing he’s been my actually i should have said before he’s probably my favorite podcast subscription i just love his stuff it’s so in-depth um and then what was the other question person in your life your favorite person of the year non-family i would say well i may have talked about him before but this guy kimia who uh we started a business with uh last year we started this negotiation business called fire with him and i just freaking so i’ll just share basically what happened so basically he met this guy super scrappy entrepreneur told me he wanted to start something and he told me he loved negotiating randomly in like some conversation and so i started testing him i’d be like hey i’m going to you know i’m buying a nice car can you negotiate it for me or uh hey we’re buying a bunch of desks for the office right and the guy would just save me like 40 on everything and hustle and he’s awesome and so i was like okay dude this should be a business like negotiation as a service you need you know a lease negotiation sas software whatever so we start this business called buyer we go 50 50 on it i promote it and talk about it given the rails and accounting and stuff and we literally i think we started it for like 50 or 100 grand and we sold it to ramp about maybe six months ago now for single digit millions and so we went from like 50k to you know single-digit millions in a year amazing exit for him i would have loved to keep owning the business but this is what he wanted to do and it was just so cool watching somebody actually take the baton and then run the marriage uh and the guy’s just freaking awesome you know i don’t know i mean we were we were already profitable i think we could have made a couple hundred thousand dollars of profit in the first year um i told him i was like look like i think we should hold this but uh for him you know as a it was the first time he was ever going to have a good one like that and you can’t undervalue uh he’s he’s working a ramp so yeah and you just can’t undervalue you know getting a couple a couple jeans right uh i think it’s still i think that’s a great i think that’s a i think they’ve rolled it in someone should just copy that yeah yeah it says right here yeah they’ve like integrated it into ramp buyer.com or no buyer. someone should just do that again i thought that one had legs uh if anyone’s listening and wants to restart that business with me because like i don’t think ramp would care like we would even say like we won’t do sas or something but just i want someone to negotiate a car or a lease or you know these big ticket things you’re you’re trying to mine okay so guest of the year i had uh uh hassan minhaj i thought he brought it and uh what i loved about it was i thought the episode was good but i love that he genuinely listens to the pod and uh like it was a conversation it wasn’t an interview almost every guest is like they show up cold they usually have never they’ve heard about the show but they never listen to it or listen to one episode just to prep for it and the ones who do like dharmesh he listens to every episode when he came on guess what he’s fire right steph listens to the episode so she knows the vibe this was the same now he’s not like a business idea machine but um man the feedback i got from that episode of people just being like dude that conversation it literally felt like i was in the room i thought that was something cool that was something are you guys like homies now yeah we text all the time and isn’t that funny what’s the what’s this story so he listened and then messaged you or how did you crazy connect the dot story actually so there’s a another guy who’s a comedy writer for a tv show his name is azar and he he writes the show remy on hulu um and so he listens to the show i don’t know how he discovered it he listens and he was like dude this is great now his network is people in kind of like hollywood and like specifically maybe like brown hollywood and so he tipped a few people off to it and and i took like a random meeting with him you know i have this one block every week just for random spontaneous meetings with cool people that are like in my orbit and so i took this meeting with him we had great vibes we connected great and uh i think he then told hussein dude you got to listen to this show and so then he started listening from there and then he reached out he dm’d and was like my a couple of my twitter threads went viral like the clubhouse one and then this other one the metaverse one and after each one he would reach out and be like dude that was like that was so good and one time he just called me and at the other that was like dude he’s like he’s like we got to meet he’s like i’m doing a show in san francisco let’s come and i go great can you uh stay an extra day and let’s record the pod oh you know really so that’s what he that’s what he did he’s like yeah he’s like as long as it’s in person i’ll do it i said great can you extend your trip one day and that’s what he did he did eight shows over a weekend and he stayed an extra monday and then we recorded it god that’s pretty badass isn’t that awesome that’s one of the greatest talks about this another example see this is this is why i don’t understand why anyone does public speaking like you look you look at this and you’re literally reaching millions of people and it’s all these random people you’d never expect to meet yeah when’s this crazy episode is over i’m gonna like click close and then i’m gonna go like feed my daughter lunch and like you know not have to be on a flight somewhere you know albuquerque to because i gave a talk well one of the one of the things i thought was weird so you talked about this on one of the episodes where you you know you brainstormed with him business ideas or whatever why why would you if he doesn’t like touring like you were like oh yeah you could tour make all this money but dude like i think that seems miserable flying from city to city to city staying in hotels i would say it’s a it’s a good and bad i talked to him about it he’s like well obviously the feeling of like a live crowd is a thrill and exhilaration like musicians comedians athletes are really the only ones who get that like yeah insane love from thousands of people while you perform your best work like that’s a pretty good feeling so that’s addictive it is definitely cool when you’re single too and the other upside is you make a [ ] ton of money off of it so touring is a great business model it’s basically the music industry makes all its money off touring now live shows so touring is where you can make a substantial amount of money compared to online stuff the the bad the downside is he just had you know his second kid and you’re out of the home for like a significant period of time and you know you bring on the road can get really tiring and your health blah blah blah well it’s also linear you know you’re limited to the number of people that can fit in this so i don’t know if you did you hear the idea i gave them which was to create you know hamilton for brown people yeah the hamilton i thought i liked that that’s great this is the winner all right let’s do the last two right last two so the last two is company to watch and and or like a prediction yeah crazy prediction for 2022. so company to watch for 22 or crazy prediction and or no so then it’s sorry you you’re missing one so it’s company to watch industry you got your eye on next year and then prediction yeah something like that yeah you can do those three all right let me go first prediction i think san francisco is going to be cool again by the way can i read out our predictions from last year yeah um because i think we got something wrong so our prediction for last year you said san francisco will bounce back continue to be the center of tech for decades i said that yeah you said that you go you said and then your second one was that pornhub and large companies will it’ll be normal to pay pay subscriptions for porn uh okay i think san francisco went down the drain this year so far and uh i don’t i don’t know anybody paying for porn really except for i guess only fans uh you got that part right that’s huge yeah only fans that’s literally true you got that one um just not pouring up then san francisco’s still gonna come back i still believe it andrew you said you said uh no one’s gonna give a [ __ ] about covet in a year or it’s gonna bounce back much faster than people think and they’re gonna forget about it and i was like yeah me too i agree with you andrew that was mine as well i think you’re wrong we were both that’s i think it’s true if you go to the states right now i mean no it’s like everything’s open nobody cares about it it’s totally normal not this week the fact that we’ve done an entire episode we’re living in a pandemic and nobody’s mentioned anything about it in an hour and a half right and then what was the other one uh that was it so mine was mine was a cop so andrews i said my prediction all right company to watch this youtuber named meet kevin i’ve been watching this guy he has a 51 million portfolio and he reveals the whole thing and now his business is making 30 million dollars a year with four employees i think that sean said one day there’s going to be a billionaire youtuber i think meet kevin is the guy who but potentially could do it and then industry that i got my eye on at home diagnostics i’m incredibly fascinated with at home diagnostics i’ve been i’ve tried all of them i think a lot of them are really cool and i think it’s going to continue to boom and i think it should continue to boom because we need it okay great andrew what are yours uh company to watch um crazy prediction and what was the other one what uh industry to watch yeah industry so um company to watch i mean it’s exciting to talk about all these new new businesses but what i’m actually interested in is all these companies that were incredibly hot like three or four years ago that raised a ton of money and and they’ve been kind of quietly building so for example superhuman uh you know everyone was talking about it two years ago i haven’t heard anyone talking about it but i know they’re doing very well i i can’t wait to see what they do with all that money uh and then same thing with pitch pitch was like you know huge two years ago uh and i think they’re in a building phase so i’m excited to see what they do when they come out of that uh pitch pitch.com it’s basically replacing powerpoint it’s like a good version it’s awesome uh well you guys put down prediction or opinion oh oh this is prediction oh yeah here we go um i think that uh this high salary inflation is not here to stay i think what’s happened is all these companies down in san francisco are going oh crazy we can hire cheap people in canada but they’re not yet going oh hey we can hire people in india and the philippines and i one of the things i’ve realized is that people in india and the philippines are obviously just as smart but they’re far more motivated and the cost is like a fifth or a sixth of what a north american employee is and they really want the job and they care so you can either give you know you can pay an entitled millennial 150 grand or you can pay someone 30 grand in india and they’ll do a better job and the money means more to them um so i think over time i think uh this work will be democratized across the world and that salaries will come back i agree with you i just don’t think it’s gonna happen next year by the way i forgot one one category that’s a great one which i mean overrated thing thing you are betting against that other people seem to be into do you guys have one there mine was the creator economy and nfc i had nfts in the creator economy and and and web3 image image and give us your quick why nfts why you’re saying it’s the one you think is overrated most overrated trend right now well i think um it’s obviously the technology is fascinating right so that’s amazing um but i think it’s kind of like digital beanie babies that are easily replica replicatable at least a baby baby is kind of hard to replicate these are just like images that you can download that anyone can use and i think that over the long term they’ll be really cool once there’s a standard so if every metaverse or every app uses one api and everyone agrees that this is the way to access images or whatever and it’s verifiable i think that’ll be incredibly cool and powerful and i love the idea of like taylor swift saying like hey i’m selling you know my song rights to my my fans and whenever anyone transacts i get 10 10 or whatever that’s amazing um but i just i just think right now it’s all half baked and all the protocols are all made up and won’t exist in five years and i think i’m going to win our bet okay remind reminders ten years right five years or ten years uh what was the exact bet yeah we we have a bet i believe you chose a piece of digital art and you said it would be worth more in the future and i said it’d be less yes um great yeah okay so i have uh all right company to watch uh i have a company called um terra which is terraform labs they’ve created something called luna so one of the biggest challenges in crypto is that people are like oh bitcoin it’s cool but like it can’t be used as a currency because it’s too volatile and the solution that the cryptic community came up with was something called stable coins and so stable coins are super important they’re you know billions and billions of dollars are transacted every day uh you know whatever i don’t know about day maybe it’s a month uh using stable coins with significant volume and there’s a stable coin called luna that i think is um the stable coin is called us ust uh but luna is the the token that backs it and i think luna has been on this tear it started the year at you know maybe a dollar it’s at currently you know 100 so it’s about 100 x in a year uh it’s been a great investment for me and i continue to believe that that it’s gonna work interestingly it’s actually being used in the real world which is one of the other criticisms of crypto so in korea in mongolia in a bunch of different places um people use uh this stablecoin without even knowing that they use it so they just use their mobile app to pay they don’t realize it in the background it’s being done on these uh crypto rails and so there’s an app in korea called chai i think it is that has like a few million users payments app that uses um uses this stablecoin uh as the as the thing underneath it so it’s it’s the company to watch i think in the next year because if you can actually crack the stablecoin use case uh you know bitcoin cracked the store value use case became you know fifty thousand dollars a coin right now going up ethereum is the you know programmable network uh it’s the compute layer it cracked that and uh you know four thousand dollars a token last year it was at like 200 so that’s been an amazing investment and luna is the the number one contender right now i think for stable coins and so i’m keeping an eye on that okay and what are the others uh industry i got my eye on is actually vr so uh most people think vr is just dead or doesn’t work but i don’t know if you guys know this but oculus outsold xbox this year um so oculus sold 10 million units which is about 4 billion in revenue for facebook on just the hardware for getting the games in the app store that they have now xbox had some production shortages so probably would have been more but like just to round it up oculus did about 10 billion uh sorry 10 million units and playstation did 14 million so it’s like it’s not that far behind um do you do you remember when um oculus or sorry when xbox had that like weird little bar that you could put over your tv and you could like move your hands connect right that was a huge bestseller right but it was still gimmick like i bought one everyone thought it was cool and the exact same i remember i played it for like a day and then i was like whatever this isn’t ready and i did the same thing i’ve bought an oculus every single year for the last three or four years and i every single time i feel sick and uncomfortable i feel wide awake every time i use it it’s cool and then it’s every time i use it every time i use it i say to myself it’s not there yet but i i i buy it i buy into it i think apple i think apple’s going to do a couple of signs i think apple is secretly the industry of vr there’s a couple signs i think are really promising one is that over 60 games made over a million dollars on the platform which i think is pretty impressive and six games made over 10 million dollars so i think that’s also pretty impressive uh growth there so i think vrs is something that most people are thinking is it’s not happening and it’s growing like rapidly so i thought that was pretty good and then um let’s see what’s it crazy predictions uh okay my craziest prediction is that the winklevi the winklevia end up richer than zuck so here’s the case of how the wink of us get their revenge in the end oh my god they own about one percent of all bitcoin in circulation they also own gemini in exchange that’s probably valued at somewhere between 20 and 30 billion dollars they own one percent of bitcoin they want one percent of all the bitcoin they also own a substantial amount of eth they haven’t announced how much and uh if crypto actually like has its like you know its heyday and bitcoin goes up to so here’s the here’s what you need to believe i don’t think there’s a 2022 bet at all this is more of like a five-year bet but if you think that facebook is peaked and facebook you know um doesn’t grow or even maybe drops you know 15-20 percent uh in value and um because they’re priced at a very as a growth stock and uh if you think that bitcoin gets to 500k eth gets to 50k gemini ends up going public they will actually be worth more than zuck who’s worth 130 billion dollars today and i think that that is just a crazy you know the sequel to the social network movie is that these guys actually end up uh you know wealthier than zuck in the end um so that’s my crazy prediction should be hilarious all right that’s good and then oh my my overrated trend by the way like my overrated trend is spax so uh you know in the last 10 years but 10 years before you know the spec trend there was like i don’t know i think it was like 40 billion 45 billion of spax total in like 10 years then last year there was 80 billion so doubled it doubled and this year there was 160 billions i doubled again and if you just look at spack performance like um just if you just take chamath specs chamatu i think you know really started this trend year to date i think his average is he’s down 30 year to date and did he make money off that yes he made a ton of money yeah that’s people guaranteed money this is why it’s messed up they all you make you make the money in the matter you know heads i win tales you lose uh setup uh i don’t really like it and that’s what happened here is that the sponsor the promoter makes money either way and uh you know his stocks are down his his stacks are all down 30 and the the overall s p500 is up up 30 so you know it’s a massive you know massive delta there so i think that’s you know i think spax are the overrated uh trend or the thing to uh the bandwagon i don’t want to be on uh if you’re not the promoter i don’t think it’s a great place to be right now how does that make you feel andrew as a specker well i’m not a spacker i don’t wait ecommerce wasn’t a spec no no no bloomberg misreported us as a spec we we did something called a reverse takeover which is kind of like a spec but instead of having a spack where the sponsor gets 20 they’re getting like point zero one percent of your business there’s just these little shell companies so no we’re a promoter not on a typical spec uh it’s like a hundred million dollars right 20 of whatever they raise i don’t know 20 of the the future company so if you have a billion dollar company you’re literally saying i’ll give you 200 million dollars to take me public and the math on it is it with a spec you can show projections which is really really valuable for a growth company and it’s a little more flexible and the timing is a little shorter you get to show your fancy projections yeah whatever you think the future looks and you i think you only have to buy in for two or three percent but you get 20 so that’s your spread as the promoter you pay two percent of the price and you get twenty percent i don’t know about house packs exactly but it’s something like that all right this is a good episode i think ben what do we think well uh this it was a a long one but i think it’s gonna end up being a hit was last year’s a hit yeah last year was a hit yeah i wasn’t here for last year but um i thought this was really great what was that you mentioned this really cool podcast sam what was that one called again how to take over the world baby how to take over the world if anything it’s the best intro music i’ve ever heard yeah there you go um no it was a great episode um my first time attending it but andrew brought the fire and uh the predictions were like a little a little predictable i will say that um but other than but the recommendations the companies the products were all good you