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Kind: captions Language: en okay these are the five most interesting businessmen alive these are going to be eccentric billionaires people who not only have a crazy business life and have just done a variety of wild [ ] these are people that they should be making movies about so we got a [Music] list can I start off with number five we’re going to go 5 to one one being who we Crown as the uh the most interesting man alive the criteria for this by the way is they got to be interesting so not just rich not just successful but fascinating interesting um that can be good and bad they have to be men we have a separate list coming for women and they have to be alive so nobody who is you know some dead historical figure fair enough yeah you gonna kick it off yeah I’ll kick it off okay so number five is a guy who won the game twice and on his way out the second time is just flipping the bird to everybody and this is a guy named pavl durov I call this guy James Bond with Wi-Fi if you see this guy’s Instagram you’ll know why I said it he looks like James Bond he travels around the world he’s a international Man of Mystery but he he built his his claim to fame as uh you know using his laptop using a Wi-Fi so this guy’s basically the Russian Mark Zuckerberg he it’s even more impressive than Zuck so when he was young he built um the Facebook of Russia and it was called VK and what’s cool about this is is two things number one he actually beat Facebook so there were many countries in the world where somebody built the Facebook of Brazil the Facebook of Africa the Facebook of Europe we there’s been tons of these and in every single one of them the endgame was no no no Facebook is the Facebook of Brazil Facebook is the Facebook of India and Facebook dominated everywhere the one place they couldn’t dominate was Russia and in an interview Zuck was talking to Sam Alman and he even said he’s like God the only ones we could never beat were the Russians he was like it was insane he’s like we would make a change and literally like 12 minutes later they would have that update on their on their side like if we moved a pixel they moved that pixel and he’s like these guys were just the most prolific copiers we’ ever seen and we just could not figure out how are we ever going to overtake them if they’re the world’s smartest mathematicians and programmers who have dedicated who are dedicated 247 to beating us or cloning us and doing exactly what we do if if they can’t come up with a better idea and so he gave them a you know a hat tip so he creates VK it becomes the Facebook of Russia he won but he had to sell it because one day the Russian government approaches him and says pav we need some information he’s like cool what do you need to know like we need some information about all your users and what they’re saying he’s like uh what why and they’re like well they’ve been you know there’s been some users who are saying some anti-government things as you know that’s not how we do [ ] around here so give us some names and uh we’ll make sure that they get quiet he’s and while you’re at it drop your pants and bend over and cough so he doesn’t want to do it and so what pavle does and by the way this is not like um you know this is not just a business move this is not a lawyer sending you a ceasa toist when the ref Russian government comes knocking this’s a pretty uh Ser there’s serious consequences for what you decide to do after that you comply great uh if you don’t comply there’s not only consequences for those people they were after now there’s consequences for you and so what he does is he not only doesn’t comply he flips the bird so he goes and he posts on VK the government request the memo that they the secret like kind of letter that they sent him telling him what they needed and he said they’re asking for your data I’ll never do it and here’s my official they ask you know here’s my official response and he posted a picture of a dog wearing a hoodie and that was this famous picture of a dog in a hoodie that he posts he’s like here’s what I have to say about this and he just posts a dog with a hoodie and so immediately he’s now in trouble uh you know the they they raid his apartment he ends up losing this company has to flee the country never allowed back in Russia you know costs him basically everything his entire life gets completely uprooted and his it’s not like he was just like you know a guy he had something to lose here and so at the end of all this he says and I would do it all again without hesitation and I love that I love this guy and so what he does he now gets kicked out of Russia he loses his company he does get $300 million because he sells it on the way out to some other guy who is going to comply so I don’t know fully if I if I you know what happened to your principles I’m not sure sure what happened after that but whatever he gets $300 million and he he’s uh he hasn’t fully left Russia yet uh but he’s like kind of like figuring out his way out but he’s like dude I can’t even message my brother who to tell him like what you know what we’re going to do because they’ll just see these messages like they want to see our message they’re going to see all these messages so his brother who is a double PhD in math is like you know what let’s make a encrypted protocol encrypted messaging protocol so that we can communicate like this is [ ] that they could just read all our goddamn messages and this becomes the the precursor to telegram which is now one of the biggest messaging apps in the world so this guy not only invented Facebook he then got kicked out it’s like if the Winkle flosses had beat up Mark in the locker room took Facebook from him kicked him off Harvard campus and then he goes and creates WhatsApp cuz that’s basically what he did how how big is is telegram I I know it’s huge but I don’t use it do you use it I use it I love it it’s probably my favorite messaging app of all messaging apps it’s incredible product it’s got a billion users dude what’s so good about it other than the encryption thing which is huge I mean the encryption thing is huge um it’s just like really well made like the app is really fast works really well it’s got a ton of features like you know you can do a broadcast channel where it’s like Twitter and you’re broadcasting to a bunch of followers you can just message each other you can do huge groups you can have admins you can send like stickers and memes and like you can send a ton of different types of messages it’s a it’s a really well-made app and has a billion people using it yeah about a billion users now last I think I heard was like 800 million but like I think recently he said something like we have about a billion users never runs ads he’s refused to sell any equity in the company he took about a billion dollars of debt but he never sells any equities just him and his brother own the whole thing he’s got 30 full-time employees so he’s got 30 employees running a service that a billion people use all around the world and every government attacks them and tries to like break their encryption or ban them because no government wants this nobody government wants the citizens to be able to speak freely he is the sole director Equity holder and he’s the sole product manager he works directly with every engineer and designer himself he has no HR he only recruits people through something called contest.com which is a contest platform where he puts up engineering challenges and the people who are the best at cracking his engineering challenges get hired they get an offer to come work at telegram is it a Russian company no he’s like it’s crazy everyone calls us a Russian company we have no office in Russia we have no employees in Russia we have no servers in Russia but the media just will be like oh Russian founder blah BL blah blah he’s like dude I’ve he basically for a while he just moved around the world every three months living in different airbnbs um and then finally he now settled in Dubai this guy’s worth about $15 billion so he’s the richest expat in Dubai he’s one of the you know top 150 richest men in in the world and then you go look at his Instagram you’re going to love this dude the guy’s ripped he’s absolutely ripped and every photo there’s never another human being in any photo with him every photo is him alone with his shirt off doing something manly as hell and it’s hilarious it all the photos look AI generated it’s like if I said hey generate a um Rich billionaire living in Dubai who uh is on the Brian Johnson protocol and wants to become Instagram famous this is what DOI would give me he’s literally on a pirate ship on some of these photos yeah I have a bunch um another quote I love from him so yeah he says uh they’re like you know you’re a billionaire billionaire billionaire he’s like dude this billionaire thing’s like a little overplayed he’s like he’s like yes it’s true I’ve had a few hundred million dollars of both uh dollars and Bitcoin in a bank account for 10 years and I’ve never touched it he goes yeah that’s true he’s like but I don’t own any Jets or Yachts or mega mansions like do any of that [ ] I would rather make decisions that would influence how a billion people are going to communicate rather than sitting there choosing the color of the seats in my house that only me and my relatives are ever gonna see that’s amazing I read I read another interview with him where he goes I went to San Francisco to see if I wanted to open an office there and I met with Jack dorsy and it was great and I went to the Twitter office which the Twitter office is in the epicenter of kind of bad stuff or uh crime is happening in San Francisco I used to live down the block fromit and he said after the meeting I was walking around and three guys tried to mug me and the interviewer was like well how’d it go he goes blood was spilled but he does that that he doesn’t say like who’s blood he just said there there was blood well he he he was like yeah three three guys tried to see my phone I fought off the robbers and then he posted on Twitter he’s like I he’s like my goal was I was trying to tweet out I just hung out with Jack dorsy because Jack dorsy made Twitter he’s like that’s what I was trying to do on my phone when they did this so he posts a picture of his bloody knuckles reaching for a book which is just a hilarious thing he goes and this is the Tweet he goes just got into a fight with guys who tried to grab my phone near Mission 980 scary neighborhood question mark not for a Russian [Laughter] time yeah this guy’s pretty badass I like the idea that San Francisco is like the nice quaint neighborhood in Russia it’s the nice clean family family area of Russia yeah I read that and and it was so funny yeah he he’s clearly uh man securing his social presence but I think I believe it yeah the guy’s amazing and he just flexes on everybody his Instagram is just a pure Flex yeah I mean he’s awesome this guy’s a good one hey real quick you know one of the cool Parts about what we’re doing is that people have reached out and told me that they’ve built actual million-dollar businesses made their first million off an idea they heard on the show that is crazy that’s wild that’s why we want to do the show and we want to see more of that one of the questions we get asked over and over again is is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we’ve talked about well the answer is finally yes to find Folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50 plus business ideas and put them into a business idea database it’s totally free you can click the link in the description below and get the database for you all right now back to the show how does uh telegram make money or do they uh they basically don’t make money they’ve made I read somewhere I don’t know if this is 100% true trying to find it but like um two things one they take donations and so I’ve read something that they’ve had over a billion dollars in donations from users and that’s been part of what keeps it going and like you know it’s 30 people and then it’s the the the server costs right so it’s like you know there there’s burn but it’s not like he’s running a 3,000 person or 30,000 person company um in addition to that he raised a billion doll uh debt Bond uh which is basically like a pre-ipo coupon so he was basically like we’re going to make money someday and we need money now to get there he had offers to sell 10% at a $30 billion valuation he turned it down so he turned down 3 billion then they came back and said we’ll buy 10% out of $40 billion valuation so $4 billion he turned it down and he said I don’t want to sell any Equity I’m scared of what an investor will do for this he did a crypto token back when crypto was really hot he raised over a billion dollars for um their crypto coin but then the SEC came after him and was like this was basically like you were selling Equity like you called it a token and it was a utility but like this is equity so he had to return a bunch of money and that that that token project never got off the ground because he had raised and I think the minimum at the time because I was looking into investing in it is you had to buy in chunks of minimum 20 million God so basically people were forming syndicates and was like oh you want to come in for 500k all right cool we’re trying to get to 20 million so we could buy some some of the telegram token because you had an app that actually had a ton of usage the most brilliant uh you know like engineering team probably that exists on Earth or you know one of the top 20 engineering teams on Earth and um and now they were going to do a token to try to make money and um you know figure out like basically you’d be able to to use the token to to do things inside the app so anyways that’s kind of some of the things they’ve tried but you know he has you know quote unquote some plan of how they’re going to make money that doesn’t involve selling user data this guy’s really cool all right that’s a good one yeah who’s number four who do you got all right so my goal with this was to pick people who you have no idea who they are and hopefully most of our audience has no idea who they are either and so we did not talk before this so it’s just a coincidence that my guy is also Russian I call him the Russian Richard Branson his name is Oleg tinkoff so he grew up as a in a mining family so very like humble beginnings but he goes to the city because he wants to experience freedom and he gets into cycling for some reason he’s into cycling and he goes abroad for a bike race and he sees someone wearing blue jeans and this is in the 8S in the Soviet Union the Soviet Union’s about to uh crumble and become Russia and and he starts bringing home these blue jeans and selling them and he’s like all right it looks like people in Russia really want this like Western fashion and so he opens up a chain of stores where he starts selling blue jeans but then everything else perfume VCRs Electronics this is right in 8990 where the the Soviet Union is crashing and these people actually want to be able to buy stuff from from Western countries and he kills it and so in his early 20s he sells that business and he makes something like $7 million and then he does that you’d expect him to do he starts a ravioli business is this guy just watching commercials in the states he’s like Levi’s got it uh okay next one ravioli cool we we’ll do that too well what he does is he goes to America every once in a while and he like he like he says he goes every five years to learn what’s popular in America like different advertising whatever and he like basically brings that to Russia have you ever heard of the phrase uh it’s a it’s a word Baba Baba Babushka I can’t even say it right it means Russian it’s like a Russian grandma it’s like when you think of like Fiddler on the Roof abka yeah Babushka it’s like a Russian grandmother with like a scarf over her head so typically raviolis they have a different word for them in Russia but the raviolis were made by that type of person and it was like a comfort food and so he gets the idea where he’s like we’re gonna do something sexy we’re gonna make this like really stand out and so he buys this huge ad and it’s just a woman’s be ass and it says something like uh ravioli’s not made by your grandmother it’s like a woman’s be ass with flower on it h as if I guess this woman’s ass is pounding out the flower I don’t know which is kind of weird when you think about it I don’t want ravioli like that I don’t understand but I’m hungry yeah but it takes off it works this business Works he eventually sells it for $21 million so his next thing is that he’s in uh California and he actually meets with Dan Gordon from Gordon beers that’s interesting to you and I because Gordon beer was a micro Brewery outside of San Francisco one of the co-founders are at the time CEOs was actually uh Lorenzo fertida from UFC and he starts seeing this trend in the 990s where these micro breweries are quite popular and so he opens up a micro Brewery in Russia and he calls it Tink off breweries and it’s kind of like Sam Adams beer where at the time beer in Russia was like not that good tasting and he goes we’re actually going to charge four or five times the price of normal beer and we’re going to make this thing uh very Americanized and he says like he’s got this F famous phrase where he says beer and freedom go rap together and he’s all into like freedom and like not in line with what Russia wants him to do and so he starts this Brewery it takes off so they started in 1997 but by 2003 it’s doing 35 million in sales two years later 2005 it’s doing $200 million in sales and that year he sells it for $200 million which is a huge sum he owns most of the company so he just s sells his company he’s immediately in nectar Necker Island with Richard Branson and and olog is talking to Richard he goes Richard I was in America recently I moved there for just like a few months and I was able to get a credit card it was so amazing how easy I got a credit card we need this in Russia and Richard’s like you should start it and so that’s exactly what he does like six months after selling his Beer Company he starts this credit card company it’s called Uh tinkoff bank I guess is how it translate but or Bank of tinkoff and he for some reason names everything after himself because he’s great at marketing and his name is popular and so he starts this uh bank with $70 million of his own money and he actually buys a bank and the reason why this guy is interesting is because or this bank is interesting is we know what Mercury is we know what a bunch of these Neo banks are he beat all of them he started this in 2005 and it gets huge to the point where Goldman invested into it uh he invests $70 million of his own money a bunch of people invest in it and it becomes massive and so the business takes off it’s up until recently 2021 it was the second largest issuer of credit cards in Russia it was the largest digital Bank in the world and the idea being like we don’t need branches we don’t need any of that it’s just all going to be online and we’ll send you your card and so it goes public and his stake in it is worth 10 billion do and here’s where the story gets kind of crazy just like pavl Russia does not like olig he talks a ton of [ ] uh basically at one point when they uh invade the Ukraine he’s very anti- the war he says he just says Putin you’re full of [ ] all these oligarchs in Russia you’re all full of [ ] he tweets us out he goes the generals they wake up with a hangover and realize they have a shitty Army how can the Army be any good when our when the rest of our country is also [ ] like he says these things on he tweets this out he says all this crazy stuff and eventually they delist tinkoff bank so it’s no longer public and he loses most all of his money and so at this point he’s worth I think he he was able to like forell some of his shares and he walked away with like $ million and he’s now he has leukemia and he’s dying he’s going to die soon and he basically is still talking mad [ ] he says like they wanted to punish me for this and to that I say [ ] off I want to die with Good Karma and for people to remember me for being strong and fair and so he’s paid the price for being outspoken and he’s still being outspoken and he’s been completely screwed but he’s doing a good job of kind of still sticking it to the man the other thing that he’s done he’s always done he’s done really well at challenging the status quo the reason I have found this guy is he owned a very successful cycling team cycling is not a very popular sport I’m one of the few guys that watches it but he did a great job of like getting into the cycling game and he like criticized the tour to France for tons of stuff they eventually changed tons of rules and finally he’s a [ ] in the best possible way so there’s this famous story where for his micro breweries he wanted to name the street that the brewery was on tinkoff he wanted it to to have the same name of his restaurant and so what what he did was he got a basically a version of an encyclopedia and he made a fake encyclopedia that said years ago in the 1700s there was a brewery on this street named tinkoff and so we need to do it justice by naming the street out it after it because this is a historical thing and so they Nam the street after it years later he admits he made the he made one page in an encyclopedia and just put it in there and they totally went for it and so he’s done tons of things like this and he’s going to die soon they he says that he’s he’s he basically has said he’s going to die soon and he’s donated what’s left of his big Fortune it’s now a small fortune to leukemia uh and so he’s young and if you look him up he uh he’s famous for dyeing his hair he kind of he looks like Richard Branson actually and so he’s very Richard Branson esque he dyes his hair purple because that’s the color for his cycling team he’s pretty eccentric very unique guy uh he also wrote a book but the books hard to read because it’s uh it was translated but he’s a columnist and he and he writes a lot so you can read a lot of his work speaking of which this is my cue for you you know books are cool but books are a little little heavy for me if any of these people wanted to put their thoughts out there they would have great newsletters and if they wanted a great newsletter they would use a great newsletter platform like beehive and that is our Thrill of the show this week the most interesting men in the world if they were ever going to write a newsletter they would write it on beehive back to the show um anyway so what do you think of ol he’s an interesting guy you’ve never heard of him I think fascinating never heard of him well done you you got me with that one I like that um yeah this is this is super cool and I also like just the idea the the move of I’m just going to export Western culture I feel like this is a common blueprint for coming up with you know really uh really big businesses which is you go to Japan You observe Japanese culture you find the most interesting bits of it and then you export that culture to a different country that doesn’t quite yet have it but you but you know most humans are pretty similar and um and you can sort of create the demand especially when some cultures just tend to be NE net exporters like I think the US is a net exporter in you know movies and entertainment and you know has certain strong values like freedom and whatever else so you can like use those in bringing that to a place that’s sort of uh you know deficient in those areas um and so I think that’s a that’s just a cool model is exporting culture from one one place to another and that’s what he did he went and studied business for some classes at Berkeley and he would just see what’s going on in San Francisco in the Bay Area what’s interesting what’s neat and he was inspired by that and he said every five years I go to America to learn these things and I don’t want to bring them back but right huge coincidence that we both chose Russian Russian guys Russian expats sort of uh I guess that kind of sells our stance and sticking it to the man sticking it to Putin all right my next uh I think I’m gonna do a back toback here because I have well an extra one to do do so number three for me I call him the walking middle finger number three is Shawn Parker and Shawn Parker is um a fascinating guy so a lot of people know him because in The Social Network movie Justin Timberlake is supposed to be Shawn Parker and he’s this like super charismatic kind of know-it-all guy that um you know tells them to hey drop drop thethe in the Facebook just make it just Facebook it’s cleaner right do you think that’s real yeah so that is real um but a lot of that role is not how Shawn Parker actually is like he he’s like I’m he they were like what do you think the movie got right he’s like well they got some some of the stuff right but the most of the character he’s like I’m not like Justin Timberlake he’s like I’m not cool and smooth he’s like I’m weird and insecure I’m he’s like I’m a lot more eccentric like they made him seem like cool and normal I’m not cool and normal he’s like I might be cool but I’m I’m definitely not normal and I want to just tell you a little bit about this guy so one of the commonalities I had when I was searching for for people like this and you’ll see the next guy I have has the same story is that when he was in his teens hack was a hacker hacked into something and got arrested so I don’t know if you know this but basically when he was a kid he was 16 years old and he basically got Tracked Down by the FBI because he hacked into like a for 500 company’s Network and they were like hey he got offered he eventually got offered a job with like I think the CIA he turned it down he was like no no no I’m like you know I’m on the rebel side you guys are the are the authority I’m I’m Rebel and so he creates of course Napster and Napster is just like one of the coolest slash like biggest middlefinger companies that I I think has ever existed um you know obviously people today proba there’s probably some a generation of people today who don’t even know what Napster is but Napster was like the first place before Spotify first place where you could just go and you could just like get access to all of the world’s music and then movies and other things too but like really music was the main thing and it was illegal you upload the songs you had other people could download those songs and it was music file sharing and it got mega mega popular and then it got sued out of existence and to like let the young people know this was gamechanging I think you and I must have been in grade school like 12 and 11 and 14 when this came out this was such a big deal it got to the point where artists would even release fake music that were Auto remember that when they were scrambled after 10 seconds they get scrambled because they want the fake song to go viral yep yep exactly or like a comedians I remember I forgot who it was it was like Dane Cook yeah Dane Cook basically be like Chris Rock comedy special featuring Dane Cook and like people just read Chris Rock comedy special and the first three minutes were Chris Rock doing comedy it’s like and now Dane Cook and Dan Cook got mega mega Popular by basically it’s a growth hack a genius growth hack which is to say oh how do I basically like hijack the SEO the search intent of Chris Rock in order to distribute my own you know comedy virus to to everybody else so napsha was super cool he get Su it out of existence but the thing I like about Sean Parker is that um there’s this phrase that uh Kevin Van drump said once and we’re gonna have him on the Pod he’s he’s the guy who um what’s his newsletter called the farming newsletter I forgot what it’s called but he basically writes the biggest newsletter for farmers in the in the country and he has Farm con and a bunch of different things but he said something to us once he goes you know the the train always comes back a second time we’re like what do you mean he’s like for all of the best possible deals Investments Trends opportunities you overlook it the first time very common and you think you totally missed it I missed the boat he’s like but I he’s like I just see it over and over again the train comes back around you know maybe um you know you you didn’t invest in Facebook but then the stock tanks for a couple months that’s your time to get back on is like it’s not always going to be the same price as it was the first time but for the truly great things the train has such a long Runway it’s a so much upside that even if you just get on the second time you still get filthy rich and he’s like the same thing happened with Bitcoin the people who just kicked themselves for not buying Bitcoin the first time they heard it at $150 instead of just buying it at 500 they just kept telling the story about how they missed it at 150 and then they missed it at 600 700 800,000 and now it’s at 60,000 they’re still missing it he’s like but the smart people are like well the train came back around let me hop let me hop on I do I now recognize the value in this thing and I feel like Shawn Parker did that with his career so for a period of time Shawn Parker was seen as this kind of like bad boy but like kind of Untouchable like you couldn’t invest in Shawn Parker he’s too rebellious he’s getting sued out of existence the big companies hate him the government’s after him he was like an Untouchable and then later it was like oh Shawn Parker this guy was the you know he he led the round into Facebook and he um was the early huge investor in Spotify he was did this and that and he became the guy who could do no wrong but those weren’t his companies but he recognized that those companies were winners and actually made his fortune not on the thing he did Napster but in recognizing the Brilliance of the next Shawn Parker and that was you know Daniel e for Spotify or it when he was like Facebook he he did this when he was like he was an elder at 25 yeah yeah and every hacker looked up to him because he’s guy’s an icon he used the reputation but not necessarily the money to make all his money usually you use your money to make money he used his reputation to make money so couple things that this guy did that was that’s pretty fascinating so first I’m going to give you some lifestyle things and then I’m going to give you the career story so crazy lifestyle things so I met somebody who went to his wedding have you ever heard about his wedding yeah man he got a ton of [ ] for it in like the Heyday of s Silicon Valley so this guy basically spent somewhere between five And1 million on his wedding and he was like and so the interesting thing here is just like weird people are not just like they’re not just like crazy in their business and super chill in their normal life most of them if you’re if you’re wired a certain way you just apply that to everything that comes your way so for example when it came to time to get married he’s like all right the budget no budget let’s just do the sickest thing we can imagine so like we’re going to go to a forest in the big sir and it’s not just going to be a wedding it’s going to be like like an immersive theater experience like I know people who were there and they’re like it was crazy you walk in and like you could see the stars above you but it was daytime it’s like how the hell are there stars and like there was rabbits running around like wild rabbits that were just like you know there because we were in the forest and they like but it was all planned had the the costume designer from Lord of the Rings made everybody’s outfits um you know he ended up paying like2 or three million doar in fines because you’re just you’re not allowed to just use like the most beautiful public like forest for your own wedding but he was like [ ] it I’m doing it uh to propose Sean are you sure they’re like is there permit and he’s like put on your put on your costume and get in here um to propose he baked his wedding ring into an onion gave it to his wife like what let me know what this is dude it’s like being it’s like being mad at a UFC fighter for getting like drunk in a fight in the street it’s like yeah he’s an animal what do you expect right the guy who gets caged up in his underwear and fights another man to the death like he wasn’t super chill outside the Octagon that’s weird um he bought this $55 million house in LA from Ellen degenerous and then like tricked it out um he’s just got like his houses are crazy like it’s worth a 30 minute dive just to go look at his houses but even in his other stuff like you know rich people do philanthropy but like how you do it is also interesting so for him he’s like I want to bet on he’s like I’m going to take a venture capital approach to philanthropy so he’s like I’m not just going to donate to the Red Cross or whatever he’s like I’m G to find the people that are trying to cure cancer in the most interesting ways and that nobody will fund them because it’s too crazy it’s too unproven they have to like they’d have to convince the whole world that their crazy approach is going to work he’s like but that’s what that’s like in the startup world that’s exactly what happens some crazy kid has a crazy approach that like you know most likely will not work but if it does it’s going to change the game and that’s what VC’s do they bet on that he’s like I’m going to do that and you know for curing cancer and so he’s poured in tons and tons of money into unorthodox Cancer Treatments how wealthy is he he’s very wealthy so when he identified Facebook as like a thing and he was like um you know what I want to you know invest in this be a part of this Mark really liked him he’s the one who connected Mark to Peter teal to make to get the investment um the first 500k investment he’s the one who convinced them I think to move to paloalto and leave Boston which then let them you know recruit the best talent which let them you know succeed when other social networks like frster and Myspace were failing um so Shawn ended up owning 4% of Facebook which is just like became worth like I don’t know four or five billion dollars uh just on his Facebook stock then there’s an interesting story of how he invested in Spotify have you ever read this email that Shawn Parker sent to the Spotify founder wasn’t it something like this is Napster but done legally exactly so he just cold emails them in 2009 Spotify launched in like kind of like 0607 range Spotify launched in Europe So Daniel I think lived in Sweden and then on top of that uh you know they only launched in Europe because the rules allowed them to do it in Europe but he he knew he had to build up enough critical mass before entering the United States Market it’s like one of the the weird reasons that Spotify and all the other music sharing Services never worked because they all tried to start in the United States and all of the music labels were so ready to just sue the [ ] out of everybody from Napster that like you couldn’t have done that that was not they would come after you when you were just a baby an infant so he writes him this email and it just subject line thoughts and he’s like Daniel and Shaq he goes I’ve been playing around to Spotify you’ve built an amazing experience as you saw Zuck really likes it too I’ve been trying to get him to understand your model and I think he just needed to try it to see it for himself then he talks a little bit about Facebook he’s like you know we should partner because we can integrate like you know spotify’s music stuff with Facebook social graph all that but then he’s he just compliments me like your your design is clean elegant tight and fast it’s clearly lacking some important features like the social stuff but I think you’ve done a great job sequencing you’ve nailed the core experience blah blah blah ever since Napster I’ve dreamt of building a product similar to Spotify I might have tried had I not been quote sidetracked with Facebook Founders fund like you know like this dope [ ] that I’ve been doing and he’s like to be fair um I also was like you know pretty scarred from the record labels um he’s like and he’s like you know so I’ve adopted a what watch and wait thing to try to see a when the labels would come to their senses and realize that they need something to distribute music and two until a product that would come in that would fix all the things we got wrong with Napster and he’s like you have done that and then he just goes on he articulates from a product point of view what they have done right and what they need to change and he’s like I can help you do this [ ] and he ends up leading a $15 million invest into Spotify which is like you know an amazing investment I want to read you one other Shawn Parker story so the guy pretty magnetic and actually this story comes from you a long time ago you posted on the hustle a blog post about the the this famous story of the painter who took stock in Facebook I guess he was like supposed to get paid 60 Grand and instead of taking the 60 grand for the painting he did on Facebook’s office wall he took stock and the stock ended up becoming worth $200 million I almost uh chose for this segment uh because he David Cho I think he’s a crazy man he’s a crazy man and he did this interview on Howard Stern and what that’s cool about it so I knew the story I think everybody kind of knows the story of the painter what I didn’t know is why he took the stock and the answer to why he took the stock is that [ ] Sean Parker he’s like that guy and so he’s like dude uh and so Howard’s like why did you pick the stock like you know were they offering not a lot of money and he’s like no they were I told him the price is 60,000 they said yes he’s like that’s a lot of money he’s like yeah I just I decided that’s what it was going to be worth and I think he was like coming out of jail or something at the time and Sean Parker loved this artist was like no no no this artist has to be the guy and he had tried to get him to do something for plao his other company but they didn’t have any money he’s like finally he hit him up he’s like yo we finally have money I’m at this new thing called the Facebook uh we I think we have enough money come on I want you only you can do this painting so he comes over he’s like cool it’ll be 60 Grand you want me paint this whole building it’ll be 60 Grand uh by the way if you if you I’ve been to the Facebook office and they’ve reone it but like part of the ceiling they Ed the same drywall so you could actually still see the painting right and so Howard’s like what happened like they they didn’t have the cash he’s like no no they had the cash he’s like so why did you take the stock did you do you believe in this are you like an investor did you believe in this he’s like dude I never invested in anything in my life he’s like they he’s like I asked Sean I was like what’s this company he starts describing uh you know what Facebook is a social network for college kids and I was like dude that’s lame as [ ] and he’s he’s like I wasn’t on frener I wasn’t on MySpace I hate that [ ] he goes um and this is for college students oh even worse I hate education I hate College I never went I don’t even like college students and he’s like so you hate no social networking you hate College he’s like yeah I dropped out of school I hate everything about school and he’s like and it’s only starting on H Harvard and Stanford campus oh man like I hate Harvard I hate Stanford I’m like an anti anti all all those things that they stand for he’s like so why’ you do it he’s like because every time I’d hang out with Shawn Parker he would just tell me like yo I’m gonna make some [ ] happen he’s like before he went and met with Peter teal he says oh I got to go I gotta raise money for Facebook and he goes I’mma Bend these [ ] Minds he’s like and he came back and he’s like and he’s like yeah the rich he’s like those [ ] ended up being like the richest men in America like you know like Reed Hoffman and Peter teal and he’s like dude this little nerd this scrawny nerd he’s got a lot of Swag and confidence and he’s like he’s just and he came back he had raised the money from them and he’s like okay interesting and he’s like so uh he’s like you want those cash or you want stock he’s like you’re you’re in this like yeah he’s like all right he’s like I sized him up and I’m like this guy’s going somewhere he’s like so that that’s why I took the stock that’s awesome that is so awesome and it ended up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars I don’t know what he sold and when he sold it but that’s insane and that’s what you know these people are they have a sort of magnetic a magnetic trait to them uh that I think is is pretty common um as a great example were you going to talk about his career or is that the career part let go to the career part right well you know that he’s done a few other things he had a bunch of things that failed so he had plaxo he had air airtime he had you know a bunch of things like that then he was managing partner of Founders fund that’s all I know what else is there have you heard of opportunity zones for Real Estate you know I believe he invented that so basically I’m I I I read this a long time ago I’m going off the cuff but basically opportunity zones if I remember correctly they’re zones designated by the government that show these places are impoverished or they’re like Warehouse spaces and we want to incentivize investors to to open up I believe residential build build stuff there and I think it was his idea and he and he Lobby the he lobbied the government and he turned it into a reality opportuni those are the brainchild of Shawn Parker he um in in the early 2000s he was Facebook’s first president and he wanted to minimize his capital gains on his Tech stock Fortune so he lobbied the government to create this idea of opportunity zones so that investors would be incentivized to invest in areas that you know were were not receiving enough investment and uh and he did it that’s pretty that’s pretty fascinating yeah he convinced the Obama Administration I think it was to make this a reality and now it’s a thing where billions and billions and billions of dollars go to this and it was his idea and he didn’t just come up with the idea he he lobbied the government he changed the law uh which is really fascinating that he did that so he’s done a bunch of interesting stuff and I think in fact I think he also played a hand in Obama getting elected a little bit or something like that I mean he’s a political guy uh so he’s he’s done a bunch of interesting stuff all right let me do number two then you do number one all right so um number two is Tom Anderson AKA Tom from Myspace and I call him the guy who won the game and simply stopped playing which is really critical almost all these guys like you talked about Oleg it’s like he did this and then he went bigger and then he went bigger and I think that’s a common thing but Tom had one thing those guys will never have he had enough and he was able to walk away and so Tom story is pretty wild I didn’t I didn’t know the backstory so also age 14 hacks Chase Bank gets R access into Chase Bank all of the names the bank accounts the the um the the the amounts in them he could have wired as much money as he wanted out of it he did not uh he knew their mortgages he knew everything and he was basically the leader of a hacking crew and his nickname was Lord Flathead and so Lord Flathead gets Rude access and he leaves a message in in Chase Bank and he says um basically you need to let me keep my access um or I will you know expose all this information I will leak all this blah blah like you need to give me give me full access even even you know just U acknowledge that I won and give me access to this thing and he starts bragging about it so he tells 40 of his friends he shows them exactly how he did it how he hacked Chase Bank at age 14 and this is why the FBI conducted one of the biggest raids they’ve ever done a simultaneous raid of 40 different people all happening at 7 p.m. all in one area because they didn’t know who was the the kind of the The Mastermind behind it but they knew who all had you know had seen it or had access to it or was talking about it and so they raid everybody at 7M they steal his computer they take all stuff but they leave him alone because they’re like the guy’s 14 what are we gonna do we can’t charge him and so he gets off and he agrees okay I’m not gonna hack stuff anymore that’s his origin story so now he ends up creating Myspace Myspace obviously was one of the biggest social networks in the world and uh Myspace was dope for a bunch of reasons that don’t even exist anymore so you know if there’s he’s on our top five but he was in everybody’s top eight on MySpace which was like you know my top eight friends and he was the first friend to everybody on MySpace he has the iconic picture of him turning away from a whiteboard wearing his white shirt everybody knows that photo everybody who’s our age at least that grew up on MySpace and Myspace like was kind of a culture shifter um like something that Facebook never really actually captured was that Myspace actually was cool for bands and getting you know Discovery for music and talent and art and um and Myspace was kind of amazing and he sells Myspace for $580 million and he pieces out he bounces he he he has a quote where he’s like yeah before the acquisition I could do whatever I wanted it was pretty fun he’s like now I have it takes all this time to get anybody to agree on things because they sold to News Corp I think and he says um you know there’s like a budget review and a process for everything it’s a pain so I’m out so he he pieces out and he’s I think 38 years old or something when this happens he’s pretty young and instead of doing what almost every other business guy does which is like cool and now I shall you know change cancer free speech I’ll take Rockets to Mars Tom’s like no I’m GNA travel the world and uh and just take a bunch of pictures he’s like I’m just GNA go have fun so I’m G to read you what I admire about this guy a his Twitter bio is not it doesn’t say I’m Tom I invented MySpace I exit vised to news cor for $580 million currently a VC and you know professional dad uh you know husband of two husband of one father of two you know he doesn’t do all that [ ] the virtual signal he just says enjoying the good life my new hobbies are surfing architecture photography and golf and what he does is you know basically he’s like I’m not gonna waste my time just debating politics or like trying to be the next big you know venture capitalist or whatever he’s like I’m too bus busy like you know my eyes are too busy blinded by the by the Reflection from the Mal sea I can’t I can’t be bothered with all that [ ] I’m just going to go travel the world do awesome things and take awesome pictures and so he becomes if you go to his Instagram he becomes like a world famous photographer D he has se almost 700,000 followers and he takes beautiful pictures like his his Instagram is amazing it’s just pictures from his life traveling the world and he even he’s surprised he’s like I didn’t have a big background of this he’s like but I took a few photos I was traveling and he’s like I couldn’t believe what was coming out of the camera he’s like I couldn’t believe that this was coming out of my camera so he’s like yeah I decided I’m G post this stuff and so you know he starts posting it gets popular so his second act was was was as this the reason I put him on this list is because I was on air chat the other night and somebody shared a story about him they go you know the they go Tom is a hero of mine of all the Tech Heroes he’s one of the biggest because he was able to win the game and then bounce and they go not only did he win the tech game but he won the photography game and then he bounced from that too so if you go to his Instagram his last photo that he posted was like 300 weeks ago so you’re like what happened where didd he go why did he stop and why did he stop was because Tom has the ability to have enough and what happened was this guy goes I I ran into Tom and I was like Tom why aren’t you posting pictures anymore he goes oh dude I was traveling one time I was in whatever Thailand and I was um he’s like I I keep all my camera stuff in my locker and my locker got jacked and he’s like somebody stole all my cameras so I was like all right that hubby’s done moving on can you imagine like not only winning the business game then you win the social media game and you’re super popular and everything you post you get the dopamine Rush of hundreds of thousands of likes and comments saying how beautiful it is how they’re so jealous of your life and then someone steals your camera and of course you could afford another one but you’re like maybe it’s a sign time for the next adventure and he just moved on to the next adventure so what’s he doing now so uh the last thing I could find because I was like I needed to know this answer and I went into um by the way he does reply to some tweets I did did remember that he replied to one of mine and if you go to his replies or maybe he didn’t but I somehow he came he did reply recently and it was like the last time somebody had heard from him and he just replied like with Emojis um to somebody and people like oh Tom he’s back and somebody on Reddit was like I bumped into him in Hawaii he’s like and I basically got the sense that this guy is literally just like swimming taking pictures doing like kind of like U you know he’s just like swimming hanging out um he’s like I think he’s just like you know hooking up with like smoking hot women and I think he’s just having a great time and he’s like not bothered by anything they’re like that’s the vibe I got from him for my 302 encounter and that was the last information I could find about Tom look at this picture I just posted Tom’s on that longevity protocol This Guy’s in his 50s now and look at him he looks great he’s young he looks fresh he looks happy he but he looks like he’s in his 30s he looks really good yeah without uh you know life hacking every you know bio optimizing and taking 96 pills a day and like cold plunging for 10 minutes every morning like he’s just like cool I’ll just live a stress for you happy life and get a lot of sun and hang out and eat good food and meet cool people dude when I think of hackers at 14 I don’t think guys who look like Shawn Parker or or Tom so God bless these guys what do you think they look like Harrier rounder like for sure Harrier and for sure rounder these guys aren’t that hariry or round they look great so they’ve won yeah that’s part of why we put them on this list because they’re awesome in more ways than just uh just their uh you know the net worth all right I’ll I’ll bring it home like I said I tried to pick people who you or the listeners would not have any idea who they are there’s a 5% chance that you’ve had a runin with this guy though and I only put maybe 10% because I think he would have ran in the circles of Michael Burch but basically his name is uh Vivy Neo so VII space NE v o Google this guy for me really quick tell me who you think he looks like you probably don’t know pop culture enough so I’m actually going to say it he looks exactly like Sting okay he definitely looks like a rock and roll icon or like you know what I think the guy who invented Zara should look like yes exactly exactly that’s a great which by the way Google the guy who looks like who who started Zara doesn’t look like that looks like what I think a hacker looks like uh so I call this guy the Israeli Great Gatsby and so I need to tell you this guy’s story because he’s incred mysterious so this guy he’s famous for being an investor he claims to be and many people including New York Times claim that he was the largest shareholder in Time Warner he was a very large shareholder in Goldman Sachs so he like runs in all these amazing circles he’s the Godparent of some of rubert Murdoch’s kids and he’s like incredibly well connected the reason I heard about him was do you know how uh there’s that famous like Bohemian Grove like who’s who of of the World Conference called Allen and Co like the Sun Valley Allen and Co conference where everyone walks out in their vest you know what I’m talking about and they have those high def photos every photo on Google Images is him at the Allen and& Co conference he sticks out he’s a really good-look guy and he does not look he looks like a rockstar and I thought it was Sting at first and they said his name was V uh Viv Neo and I was like who the hell is this guy so I started researching him so here’s his backstory he uh was born in Romania eventually moves to is Israel and his parents die when he’s in his 20s and his parents were very successful they owned a chemical company and they leave him something like $3 million and he was obsessed with Hollywood and so he moves to LA and he’s like somehow I want to make it into the entertainment business and so the story is is that he got some type of low paying like not low paying but he got he convinced some guy who he met at a gym to hire him at this man’s Investment Bank because Viv was like look I like investing I a thing or two about it I’ve been investing my parents’ money hire me and so this guy eventually goes on record his last name is Burke and he goes somehow he just this guy just starts showing up at my office and he was incredibly engaging however he didn’t do anything and that was his whole point is that he did nothing he was kind of a gopher and he didn’t really do anything and all the Traders and money management guys were like what the hell does this guy even do he doesn’t keep a schedule he can’t he he’s like a hummingbird he’s so add he just jumps around from thing to thing and I didn’t even know what he was doing but he just showed up at my office until suddenly he quit showing up and I don’t see this guy for years I went to his apartment to see if he’s okay he moved out of his apartment I couldn’t find any records for him I just I was looking all over the place in Yellow Pages I couldn’t find this guy he comes back into my life like three years later and he’s totally different he dresses fancy he starts hanging out with celebrities and we have no idea what what he did in those two three four five years and so the rumors about this guy and there’s all these articles about what the hell does this guy do for a living none of us can figure it out because he basically has said that he’s one of the largest shareholders of Time Warner which was eventually sold for tens of billions of dollars like I said he was one of the largest shareholders of Goldman and he’s hanging out with all of these celebrities and so he’s like I said he’s friends with the rubert Murdoch uh Viv he owns homes in New York City he owns home in Beverly Hills he owns these mansions in Malibu and Lenny Kravitz eventually lives in one of his guest homes that’s how fancy it is and a reporter goes to like check out his house because it’s like this amazing piece of architecture and they’re like what do you do for a living and he won’t tell anyone what he has done for a living it even comes out that he uh is engaged to the actress from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon this woman is like one of the top five most famous women in China and he’s engaged to her and everyone’s like dude what the hell has this guy done like we have no idea what he’s done for a living and it turns out he’s also one of the larger investors of Twitter one of the larger investors in square and if you Google him you’ll see there’s all types of photos of him with Leonardo decao with all these like young amazing attractive women even though he’s like 65 now he hangs out with all these celebrities The Who’s Who of everyone and there’s reporters are like I have no idea how this guy is everywhere he’s always at the biggest events I don’t know what he does for work I can’t figure anything out about this guy and he’s a prolific investor now in startups he’s uh that’s how I thought you would have known him and he owns homes that are worth tens of millions of dollars many of them you know he’s got one in I think Beverly Hills that he tried selling recently for like 50 or sorry that he bought recently for $48 million the homes are filled with the most amazing art you know these things by bosia Keith Herring like tens of millions of dollars worth of artwork and he claims to be a startup investor he claims to be a public equities investor uh have you ever heard of this guy I’ve never heard of this guy guy and also I’m still unclear are you saying you don’t think he is those things cuz you’re kind of like he claims to be this he claims to be that but like the story doesn’t fully add up so what’s the what what’s your take here the story doesn’t fully add up because if you own more than 5% of a publicly traded company you have to be listed as that and and New York Times have asked Time Warner and a bunch of his people uh they go he is a shareholder that’s just all they’ll say they’ll say he is in fact a shareholder and he’s in the ears of the CEOs and the CEOs of Time warmer will be like hey VI Vivy is really important to our operation he’s been a big deal now a lot of people think there’s rumors that he’s part of the Mad which is basically like the Israeli like Secret Service because no one actually understands what he does and you’ll see him with all these interesting celebrities he looks super fit and they all say the same thing about the guy they go he’s the most charismatic person we have ever met and like story after story after Story it’s billionaire after billionaire after billionaire are saying oh Vivy he’s one of my best friends and they’ll say well do you know what he does for a living you know we don’t really talk about that but he’s the most engaging guy we will ever you’ll ever talk to he’s the least boring person and they go we’re best friends because just like this person this person and this person who will say the same thing he came up one day and he sat next to me and I couldn’t stop listening to what he had to say because he was so interesting to talk to and so my theory is that he is in fact very wealthy and he’s wealthy because he made connections to a bunch of different people and he connected them and would get little bits of equity into a variety of businesses and he’s fascinating to me is because he’s completely kind of made up this fake persona that has become a reality and you know if you read that book 48 Laws of Power one of the rules is to change your image constantly and he basically disappeared in his 30s and he came back with a new persona and he became that person and many like Hollywood people have been like this guy needs a movie if you guys would know this man had the greatest New Year’s resolution of all time he’s like all right new year new me literally now I’m the most charismatic interesting well-connected romantic and richest person in the world fantastic you’ve never had runin with them no I’ve never I’ve never bumped into this guy have you um and I’m glad too because it sounds like you know have you ever seen Eric Weinstein talk about Jeffrey Epstein like the first time you met him what did he say that he was charismatic well no he’s like the hair on my neck stood up immediately he’s like it didn’t add up like uh you know where did this guy you know how have I never heard of this guy where did he get his wealth how did he create this hedge fund how is he splashing cash around like this how does it why does nobody know him from like before a certain time and he’s like he he’s like Jeffrey iene was a government construct like he was basically a government you know created uh entity that was meant to you know ultimately like get you know comprom like you know blackmail on a whole bunch of Rich successful people and that’s what he goes around talking about on podcast um I know this guy at all but it just reminded me of uh of of that like the ma the mystery of like who is this person how how does this all that up like okay you your mom left you 10 million bucks but then how did you become such a big shareholder and all these things like that’s not a a big starting amount of capital to be able to um to accumulate big stakes in things it’s also interesting that like you know he he was one way that he came back years later as like a totally different guy with a totally different personality and and a different Persona dude the New York Times said he’s the single largest shareholder of Time Warner which uh is a big deal that’s that’s billions of dollars and it’s amazing that today’s age that you can’t find out this guy’s background no one really knows no one talks about it look at this picture I put into uh the doc it’s him at the Allen and Co conference riding a bike while the two people he’s talking to are walking yeah and he’s like dictating that’s not even possible dude how you going to ride a bike and how are people going to walk and talk next to you you can’t even I’ve tried that you can’t ride slow enough where they could do that and they can’t walk fast enough for you to do this this just added to the Allure to me in a way that nobody else will really understand this is impossible he is defying physics to be able to socialize like this and you see him with literally the most powerful people on Earth and he is always talking with his hands flailing yeah he’s gesturing like crazy in all these pictures and and the people who are the most powerful people on Earth are are leaning in listening there’s a photo of Tim Cook stroking his chin leaning in like oh what’s your opinion on this and he’s just engaged them wildly and so this guy like he is like somehow in the ear of the most powerful people on Earth but no one knows who he is I think it’s hilarious that we ended this list with a guy that we basically know nothing about no one knows anything about may not actually be an interesting guy and we also massively reading into these signals of like from these like random photos where we’re like look look at the way that lean is happening oh he must be charismatic or like I’m like look at this bike look at how he’s biking while other people are walking how can he even do that wow this guy is is fantastic we have so little to go on we are grasping for straws on this guy we not grasping he’s I’m grasping too there’s something here about there’s something here about this person I need someone to message me information about him surely people in our audience know who this person is I did that on a t-shirt by the way I’m not grasping you’re grasping that’s our version of like you can’t triple stamp a double stamp all right well that’s that’s the list I think the real list uh here is basically that these are the most interesting billionaires you’ve never heard of that’s right where we’ve I agree with that um all right that’s the pod