#122 - Not Getting These Jobs Cost Us Millions

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamPar) are back on the today without a guest. On today’s episode you’ll hear: Escape your city with new modular homes (4:20), Cerro Gordo was a ghost town in California sold for $1.2M (10:45) how to make channel/market fit by learning from TikTok (14:45), Shaan introduces an new twist on the stock market (17:00), Sam and Shaan reminisce on missed opportunities and how much money they would’ve made if things didn’t fall through (25:10), Shaan explains limited details on a very interesting opportunity that came to him in the past few days (38:37). Big thank you to Azoras for sponsoring this episode! Follow them on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/azoras. Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:21Shaan Puri?

  All right. Well, Gucci, what's up, Sam? How are you?

• 0:23Sam Parr?

  Hey, our friend Novel just hopped on the podcast. We were checking in with him. The summary, it seems like, is we, except for Sean, many of the crew is going to be in Austin in the next two weeks, three weeks.

• 0:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's exciting. I'm kind of rooted in here now. So my whole family lives here. So I'm like, okay, I'm not going to move for like tax reasons or whatever reasons. I want to be around my family. If your family's not here, there's no point in being in the Bay Area right now.

• 0:48Sam Parr?

  I think that what I've learned doing this whole Airbnb thing, I'm in Nashville now. I was in Utah. I was in all these places. Having your family and friends around you is significantly better than being in a cool place by yourself.

• 0:59Shaan Puri?

  For sure. Absolutely. People always ask me because I lived in all these different cities. I think I've lived in like 10 or 12 different cities around the world, whatever Jakarta and Australia and stuff like that. And people are like, oh, which one was your favorite? Doesn't matter. It's just based on like who my four friends were when I was there. That dictated my whole experience. It's like, city's fine, you know, Sydney was the best, but who cares?

• 1:19Sam Parr?

  You lived in China. I would be interested in China. I would be really interested right now in moving to Japan for a little while, even if I didn't know anyone. I think the Japanese are so cool. You didn't live in Japan, did you?

• 1:30Shaan Puri?

  No, but when I lived in Beijing, I played sports and the weird thing when you go to international school, I didn't realize this, but you don't like play sports against other schools locally. You play against other international schools. So when we would, we'd have like an away game, we would go to Osaka and we would go play against the Osaka International School or we'd go to the Philippines for an away game and you would go and you actually live with the family of the player on the other team. So you live with them and then you play against them in there two or three times and you fly back together. It's like an amazing thing.

• 2:00Sam Parr?

  So last episode, you said something that shocked me. You said you referred to Corona as like the Chinese virus and you made a couple of slights towards China. You've lived in China. Are you anti-China?

• 2:13Shaan Puri?

  No, I was mocking. I'm anti-Trump. I was just mocking Trump.

• 2:16Sam Parr?

  How long did you live in China?

• 2:17Shaan Puri?

  Two years.

• 2:18Sam Parr?

  So like, we're not talking about the Chinese, obviously. We're not talking about the people in general, because obviously, of course, you're not anti that. But are you?

• 2:25Shaan Puri?

  I just come out as racist on this episode. I'm like, yeah, I haven't told you guys yet.

• 2:30Sam Parr?

  But are you, um, are you, uh, I mean, I'm relatively anti-Chinese.

• 2:34Shaan Puri?

  I had, uh, same thing, same thing I was saying earlier. I had a amazing time when I lived in Beijing, because I had amazing friends and we had a blast.

• 2:42Sam Parr?

  Were they Chinese or international?

• 2:44Shaan Puri?

  They were other international students at that school, some of which were Chinese and some of which were from Sweden and other places. If I was gonna go live somewhere, I'd never go live in Beijing, right? It's like, super crowded, super polluted. There's no like, natural beauty really, and the, and kind of the surroundings, no like, kind of oceans or beaches or, or mountains that you can really see or speak of. And like, the food is hard, the language is hard, like, it's just like, not an easy place to go live, whereas like, Australia was like, completely pleasant and easy and like, felt like a vacation. So, I would be anti-going and living in China again, unless I had a really strong reason to. But I had a blast when I was there, just because of my kind of social situation.

• 3:21Sam Parr?

  When COVID started getting popular in December, I had this Chinese intern named Hung who worked for us. And in December, he was like, man, my parents live outside of Wuhan, and they're telling me about how bad this is. It's gonna come. It's gonna be here. I go, Hung, okay, whatever. And then in January, he goes, it's so bad, it's gonna be here. I go, Hung, this is America, okay? We don't have SARS and bird flu. We don't do this. We don't wear masks. That's a Beijing thing. And then-

• 3:48Shaan Puri?

  You were right about that. We don't wear masks.

• 3:51Sam Parr?

  And then in, uh, February, he goes, it's here. Watch. It's gonna shut it down. And I go, whatever. You're so wrong. And then finally, in March, I was like, Hung, I'm sorry. You were, you were so right. And he was telling me, he goes, my mom and dad are texting me from Wuhan, they're telling me all about it. I go, whatever, dude. It's like, the cold, it's a cold. And anyway, it was pretty funny. So, we like, he totally like, predicted this. You wanna get into some ideas? I came prepared.

• 4:18Shaan Puri?

  Oh, love it. I could see you. You're you added a bunch. All right. Give me one.

• 4:21Sam Parr?

  Okay, so I got into this idea of tiny homes. I've been very fascinated with it. It's not like a particularly new thing. When I was younger, we'd call them trailer homes because that's what my grandparents lived. They lived in a trailer home. It was just a home that was prefabbed, pre-made, and they dropped it off on a trailer. And it was just, it's kind of like what we were poor. It was a poor person thing. Now, I think that these are going to get quite big and a new startup called Abodu? Abodu?

• 4:48Shaan Puri?

  A B O D U.

• 4:50Sam Parr?

  They just raised a few million dollars. A bunch of these tiny home businesses have raised a few millions of dollars. And now that I'm thinking about like homes, it seems like a pretty interesting alternative. You can buy a 500 to 1500 square foot modular home. And it's kind of a cool idea. And I've actually met people who are buying plots of land and putting it on outdoorsy. And they're like making money off of it. And now I'm like, man, I should do that with one of these modular homes. And and here's why. There's this new startup called Getaway. Have you heard of Getaway?

• 5:22Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 5:22Sam Parr?

  Collectively, Getaway, I've already looked this up, but Getaway, I think, has raised $40 million. And I've had family that have went and stayed in it, and they love it. It's a tiny home in a small plot of land outside of New York City, outside of Austin, outside of San Francisco, outside of Chicago, whatever the popular cities are. And millennial people go and they get away from the city and they spend $200 a night or whatever it is. And it's like a cute Instagram home. And they're doing well. And anyway, I think this is a really interesting market and I'm I love it.

• 5:55Shaan Puri?

  I like this one as well. I also like how when you go to getaway.com, it's like escape from like that's instead of like where you're like, where are you traveling from? It's like escape from Atlanta, escape from Boston, escape from New York. Yeah, we've seen this trend. There's also rent the backyard. So I think this looks like a bodu and rent the backyard are doing the same thing, which is their pitch is not like outdoorsy or whatever. Theirs is put a little prefab unit in your backyard. You know, your own little in-law unit that you can use to live in or rent out. And so you could turn your backyard into an Airbnb without having guests come into your house.

• 6:26Sam Parr?

  And we've actually written about this on. Trends and we wrote about it. When did we write about this? We wrote about this September 2020. So somewhat recently, very recently. And we were looking at backlink data where we are looking at searches. So it was something like a quarter of a million people were searching for modular homes a month. There's Dwelito, which is an online marketplace for modular homes recently launched. There's just a bunch of interesting stuff about these modular homes. We call them the cute name for millennials or young people, Gen Z is tiny homes. But when I grew up, we called them trailer homes. I think this is so cool. Maybe I should do it. Buy a plot of land in Austin and get one of these modular homes. I think you can get a mortgage on them too.

• 7:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they're not that expensive. How much are they? I think they're like a hundred grand, fifty grand less.

• 7:08Sam Parr?

  Two hundred thousand dollars for this new startup one.

• 7:10Shaan Puri?

  And if you look at Dwelito, it looks like these are like eighty grand, roughly.

• 7:14Sam Parr?

  I was attracted to this is you know Kid Rock? Of course you know Kid Rock. I remember reading this article about him when it was pretty funny. He bought this huge plot of land in rural Alabama on a lake and it was like beautiful plot of the land. He's like, I just wanted to get away. Cause he lives in Nashville. He's like, I just want to get away and have my own plot of land. And he goes, I was going to build this big old house. And I was just driving on the road and I seen a trailer park, like a modular home salesperson, like a lot that sold them. And he goes, I'll just buy one of them to put on my land while I wait for my home to be get built. And he put this fifteen hundred square foot trailer home there. And he was like, living in it. And he's like, oh, this is great. This is perfect. I don't need anything else. I don't need any more space. This is exactly what I need. And I was like, damn, that actually is pretty cool. Maybe we should do that.

• 7:55Shaan Puri?

  I'm with you. I like this trend. Personally, I wouldn't build in this in this space because I don't know enough. And I just think that it's like, there's an authenticity that comes from people who really like this lifestyle or have a background in this lifestyle or want this lifestyle. So I personally wouldn't build in it. What do you think? Or do you think there's any opportunities here? So what, where would you get? Let's say you're like, like you're into this trend. So you're like, okay, I might buy one of these and live in it slash rent it out. So that's like a simple opportunity. Would you start a startup in this space? What do you think are some of the open, open opportunities?

• 8:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so there's a couple. The first is backyard offices. That is very, very cool to me. There was this company called Foam Booth, maybe. This guy Ryan Peterson from Flexport actually launched it on the side. And they made foam booths for your office because those are really expensive. And then when COVID hit, I think he was like, oh, let's just make backyard offices. So I think backyard offices are amazing. I think I would totally invest in that space. Or if I didn't have a job, I would for sure be interested in that. I think that there's always like, I don't want to sound like some startup douchebag and be like, oh, this is totally new. This is like I said, this is a trailer home. This is not new.

• 9:01Sam Parr?

  But I think there's a lot of money to be made in repackaging something and an old thing cute. Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity there just to start one of these businesses.

• 9:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like it. I like backyard offices. I think that's pretty, pretty smart because that, what you could do there is basically, you could have one and then you could make it a mini distributed coworking space. You could sell the backyard office and then you could basically make it where you have the outdoorsy type of landing page where somebody can come and search for a backyard office near them that they can go work out of. And you can turn people into little mini WeWork landlords.

• 9:35Sam Parr?

  I also need to check my perspective. I don't know if it's because I'm doing it and therefore I think everyone's doing it. And I don't know if it's because I'm, we're these like yuppie city dweller startup nerds and a lot of people are doing it. But I do think that there's this idea of people our age or younger not wanting to permanently live somewhere and not wanting to buy a home and not wanting to own a lot of stuff.

• 10:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think there's in general been a move towards rent versus own, not just in terms of housing, but like, why would I own a car when I could just Uber on demand and use, get what I need when I need it and then not own it after that, not owning stuff? But in general, I just think there's just so many people, right? So like, if you're in this lifestyle category, there's plenty of others that are in that category, even though I'm the opposite, right? Like got a kid, you know, I'm not trying to be moving every three weeks. Like I'm living the exact opposite lifestyle as you. But it doesn't really matter. There's a lot of people like me and there's a lot of people like you and there's a lot of people in all these other categories too. There's enough that you can serve them. And that actually is where some of the opportunity comes is where. Somebody's doing a generic catch-all solution and you say, huh, I'm gonna build for this lifestyle segment. I think there's a lot of people who are like me who want to do this.

• 10:43Sam Parr?

  I agree. And then for the listeners and you, Sean, there's this town that I almost invested a small amount of money in and I didn't do it. It's called Cerro Gordo, C E R R O space G O R D O. Cerro Gordo. And Nathan Barry, the guy who owns ConvertKit, a few of my friends that I've just met over the years, just internet entrepreneur type folks, Ryan Holiday, do you remember a ghost? It went viral in 2013 or 14. It was a ghost town that went viral on all the blogs and it said, you can now buy ghost town in California for 1.2 million dollars. Do you remember that?

• 11:19Shaan Puri?

  No, but I've, I heard about it later. I didn't hear about it at the time.

• 11:23Sam Parr?

  So my friend Ryan and all these guys, my friend John was like the ringleader, him and Brent, and they were trying to get like 10,000 to 25,000 dollars ahead and we were all gonna pitch in and buy this town. And I backed out, but a lot of people did it and they bought this ghost town. And it's like 400 acres. It's like four hours from LA and it's very hard to get to, but it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. And there's, it's an old ghost town from the 19, probably 1880s is when it was built. And it's so beautiful and pretty. Well, anyway, the guy named Brent, Brent runs this thing called The Daily Stoic with Ryan Holiday. It's a cool business. He has been living there, I think for the whole bit of COVID. So, starting in March, he went out there and he's currently retrofitting it by himself in the middle of nowhere, turning it into like a getaway

• 12:06Sam Parr?

  town that people can rent. And I think it's really interesting and it's fun. And he has a YouTube channel that you guys should all check out and you could watch it in real time of what he's doing. It's so fascinating.

• 12:15Shaan Puri?

  This is amazing. I love this story and I want to go watch that and see what's going on. And you haven't been there yet?

• 12:23Sam Parr?

  No, but John Byer, who has asked me to come on this podcast, we'll have to get him on. He's been asking me constantly. But did you see the photos of what this place looks like?

• 12:31Shaan Puri?

  Well, I see the photos where it was like a ghost. Like I see these black and white photos. I don't know what it looks like now.

• 12:35Sam Parr?

  So one of the places burned down, unfortunately, but this guy, it's such a like romantic story.

• 12:41Shaan Puri?

  Brent Underwood, is that him?

• 12:42Sam Parr?

  Brent Underwood, yeah. So he's Ryan Holiday's business partner. Ryan Holiday's an author who does all the Stoicism stuff. Brent is his partner and they have good, a good little business, whatever. This is like his vocation now. He's like dedicated to restoring this town and he's doing it live on YouTube and you could watch him do it. And his YouTube videos probably have millions of views. And the day that they're able to host people there for money, he's gonna knock it out the park.

• 13:06Shaan Puri?

  This is amazing. Also, a quick update. Remember we talked about Nathan Resnick from Sourceify doing the Bubble Hotels?

• 13:14Sam Parr?

  Which I bailed on. So this guy, Nathan, he has this business. He pitched a hotel business where it was like a bubble that you could rent. And it's pretty cool, but I didn't think he was going to focus on it full time. So I bailed. But go ahead.

• 13:26Shaan Puri?

  So the Indiegogo campaign just launched. So they had this idea, the Bubble Hotels, of these cool, like, sort of like glamping, this camping experience that you're in this like little bubble dome kind of thing instead of a tent. And, you know, you get to sleep under the stars and it's like in Joshua Tree. It's amazing. So he just launched his Indiegogo and the goal was 25,000 and he's at 286,000. I checked it last night. It was at like 150,000 or something like that. So he had like $100,000 today so far on this thing. So it looks like it's got a lot of momentum. And basically, he's pre-selling like one night stay, two night stay, three night stays. And he's basically going to bootstrap and fund, pre-sale and fund this entire hotel in Joshua Tree, which I think is kind of amazing.

• 14:07Sam Parr?

  So the way that I would think about this is there's this idea called, I'm stealing it from someone, I didn't invent this, called the four fits, which is a growth, this idea for idea to a company. And the guy who invented it, his name's Brian Belfort, he helped make HubSpot popular. And he has this thing called channel market fit, not product market fit. And channel market fit basically just says, you need to think about where's your product going to get popular and then adapt your product to fit that pop, like where you can get popular. And when I think of this bubble hotel, we all think the same thing, which is Instagram and Pinterest. This is going to be so easy to get customers.

• 14:45Shaan Puri?

  Well, here's another kind of like channel market fit example. The music industry is changing because of TikTok to make like shorter, catchier songs. The average song length has actually gone down. Why? Because Spotify just pays you per stream, not per minute streamed. So instead of five minutes for a song, they're doing two and a half minutes per song? Because why would I want a long song? And the second thing is TikTok. So a lot of songs are now being written, working backwards from, okay, if this was going to go viral on TikTok, how would I do it? Well, I need to make it have a dance baked into it. So the song is saying like, put your right foot up, you know what I mean? Like, they're trying to engineer the song so that it's going to spread on TikTok. And I think that's a great example of channel market fit.

• 15:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think that's the, that's like a very simple way to understand the importance of what that is.

• 15:33Shaan Puri?

  What else you got? You have, I have one here. So I saw a tweet from somebody whose Twitter handle is Tommy. I don't know who this is. It's T O M I. Okay, no bio, but at T O M I. And the tweet said, you know, what, like, it's kind of about the stock market, right? So the stock market, most people who invest in companies, they will invest, you're not just investing in what's a great company, you're investing in what will the market think of this company? So it's called like a Keynesian beauty contest. You are judging the beauty of an asset, not based on how beautiful it is to you, but how beautiful you think it will be to the other judges of the contest. And so that's how the stock market works. And so Tommy had this tweet, which was just like, you know, what if there was a market

• 16:17Shaan Puri?

  where you can bet on the fundamentals instead of the price? So instead of investing in Tesla today, because I think that Tesla has all this like retail momentum and its price is going to go up. If I was just betting on how many cars will get bought by Tesla in the next six months, and if I'm right, I get paid. And if I, you know, so it's like over or under this number. And if it's over, then I'm right. But it's on the fundamentals, it's on real world business metrics and not perception and kind of like random price fluctuations based on investor moods. I think this is kind of cool. Maybe there's something like this that already exists. But I actually think it's a pretty provocative, like, simple idea that to me has legs. This is sort of like what we talked about with the long term stock exchange as like, oh, this is a cool, different model for how a company might want

• 17:03Shaan Puri?

  Might want to be listed where it's not subject to the swings of the moods of the market. What do you think of this?

• 17:08Sam Parr?

  I think that you love these ideas and I struggle to grasp them because they're very innovative and they're very not straightforward. To me, that's hard to understand. Can you explain to me more?

• 17:19Shaan Puri?

  So let's say the hustle, let's say the hustle was a publicly listed company. Instead of people betting on the hustle based off of, instead of buying your stock because I think your stock price is going to go up. And I think it's going to go up because other people are going to buy it and you know, you're going to announce some new products and all this good stuff. If it was literally just a prediction market that says, will the hustle have over or under $15 million in revenue? And then you just say, like this year, for example, it is a verifiable measurable metric. And if I am bullish that, man, I think the hustle's got a great team. I think this product they launched is going to do really well. I think they're going to go over. I can bet on the over and somebody else can bet on the under. And then I can make money on the hustle, you know, as a prediction market rather than as a stock market.

• 18:03Sam Parr?

  How is this any different than just gambling? I mean, this is just gambling.

• 18:06Shaan Puri?

  It's gambling, but it's gambling on the outcomes of companies rather than on horses or sports. Right. You can't do this today, you know, so it's an old solution to sort of an old problem in a way.

• 18:15Sam Parr?

  But then why wouldn't I just buy stock in Tesla if I'm betting?

• 18:20Shaan Puri?

  So, so this is the big gripe a lot of people have about Tesla because they're like, okay, Tesla can literally report a bigger loss this quarter and the stock goes up. And they're like, what the fuck? What is going on? Like, did you not read the numbers? Like just because Elon went and did a cool presentation about some, you know, self-driving and he says it's going to be here by Christmas and everyone goes and buys it. Like it would have been better if you could actually.

• 18:41Sam Parr?

  Smoke weed on Joe Rogan.

• 18:43Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Why is the price fluctuating based on these things rather than how many cars got bought? And, um, you know, and so you don't want to value the whole company on that, right? Because there is a, some companies have such high prospects that you'll, you'll say, okay, I will bet that in the future they'll be worth more than they're producing today. So it's not like, you don't want their valuation to be based on it, but it would be nice to be able to just bet on this. So which I think crypto is trying to do in a way, there's these different prediction market things that are really complicated.

• 19:10Sam Parr?

  I like that. I think it's cool. I'm into it. I think that's pretty innovative and pretty interesting. That's cool. I think that's a, it's a hard ass business to make happen because you have to. Man, I don't even want to talk about it because I'm so ignorant, but I guess you just have to be really good oddsmakers or do you?

• 19:25Shaan Puri?

  Well, yeah, I see you. You could you could be oddsmakers or the market will also settle, right? So if a whole bunch of it's just like normal odds, so a bookie tries to place the place the bets, place the odds at a marker that will draw action. And then it corrects. So if everybody's betting the over, then the lot, then the number goes up, right? Automatically. So then less people start betting the over because the number went up. And so you so you would just need to do that, just like a normal betting service.

• 19:49Sam Parr?

  That's interesting. Who's this Tommy guy?

• 19:51Shaan Puri?

  I have no idea. There's no bio and but got a four letter handle with a verified check and 50,000 followers. So probably.

• 19:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this idea.

• 19:58Shaan Puri?

  Probably somebody I should know.

• 20:00Sam Parr?

  This idea could go viral and I would do it immediately if I was ever going to do it because the Robin Hood nerds who are into this shit are like rabid right now.

• 20:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:11Shaan Puri?

  Which is hilarious. There's a great little blog post, by the way, that I recommend you check out. There's this guy, he actually works at Amazon. He writes this thing called the flywheel. It's a Substack. He did this great article about breaking down the Robin Hood business model. Check it out. Like, do you know how, I think you know this, but I would say most people don't. Do you know how Robin Hood makes money?

• 20:29Sam Parr?

  No, I don't. I don't know anything about it.

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  They came out and they were like, you know, free trades, right? That was like, kind of like the initial thing. It was like, oh, wow, you're you're a man of the people. Thank you. You're giving us free trades. All those other guys gouge us. And so then the question was like, oh, yeah, well, how are you going to make money if you offer free trades? They do is this thing. I forgot what it's called exactly. It's called payment forward order flow or something like that, which basically is when you place a trade, they basically sell that trade data information in real time to hedge funds and quantitative traders who want to know what retail buyers are trying to do. So if a whole bunch of people, average people with, you know, $1,000 in their Robin Hood account are going and buying Tesla because they saw some good news today or whatever from Elon.

• 21:10Shaan Puri?

  Before that trade gets executed, the order flow is sold to hedge funds and quantitative traders who want to front run the market. So they want to actually go place a bunch of bids before that retail trader's bid even gets placed. And there's a small pennies that they can sort of take per trade as an advantage by having that advanced information by front running.

• 21:31Sam Parr?

  So I'm not criticizing them, but on first instinct, my bullshit detector alarm just goes off so hard where I'm like, why not just like, why overcomplicate things? Why? Like, can that actually work? Why not just charge the retail investor money?

• 21:45Shaan Puri?

  Because their hook to get users was, hey, it's free to trade here, right? That's how they grow.

• 21:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but my whole thing, what I thought they were gonna do was just do that for a while and then be like, all right, now we're charging you money.

• 21:54Shaan Puri?

  No, because this is more lucrative. They made like $200 million last year on order flow data. It's crazy. So they make 70% of their revenue or something like that from this payment order flow. If you look, it's kind of, they get criticized because the traders, the buyers of this data, they'll pay more for options trades because options trades are usually like these like high leverage, high risk trades. And so an option trade is worth more than, let's say, if I'm just buying Apple stock. Buying Apple stock doesn't really, that data is kind of useless. But if people are buying options trades on small stocks, that data is actually really important because you can swing a small stock or you can kind of make more on these high volatility stocks than you can on random Joe buying 10 shares of Apple. That data is worthless. So the reason this gets criticized is if you go

• 22:38Shaan Puri?

  in the Robinhood app, the button to like buy options is above the button to just buy the normal stock, I think. And so, because, because their business model depends on more people buying options. So they'll do like, hey, you want to buy options? Most people don't even know how to how to buy options. It's like, most people don't even know what the fucking option is. It was like, look.

• 22:55Sam Parr?

  You know, it's funny, I don't know what an option is.

• 22:57Shaan Puri?

  I have a very loose understanding. I've made and lost a few thousand dollars doing it, but just for fun, but like, I don't try to do this. But what they do is they're like, hey, you could already borrow this much margin, right? Because for an option trade, you put down a dollar, but you're buying or selling $4 worth of the stock or $10 worth of the stock. And so that loan essentially that you're taking, Robinhood is like pretty happy to give those out because they want more people doing options trading.

• 23:20Sam Parr?

  Do you think that Robinhood is a net positive or net negative to the world? And do you care?

• 23:25Shaan Puri?

  I don't care at all. And I think it's like everything, it's got positives and negatives. I don't know where the net's at. It's hard, hard to say. If I was gonna bet, I would say it nets out positive because I think that I'm of the mindset that, look, it's on the person, not the platform to make decisions for themselves. And if people go and they make bad decisions, like I don't blame the casino. For people losing money gambling.

• 23:46Sam Parr?

  I agree with you, but that doesn't mean I want to support it.

• 23:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, sure. You know, that's a that's a personal. So I don't know. I would invest in Robinhood, for example. Like, I would have no problem investing in Robinhood, just like I'd have no problem investing in a casino.

• 23:56Sam Parr?

  Speaking of investing and making money, let's play a game. It's gonna call up how much money would I have made if I weren't an idiot?

• 24:04Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 24:05Sam Parr?

  In 2011, I emailed the CEO of, I forget who, the founder, one of the founders, Joe Gebbia of Airbnb. And I somehow got an interview, yada, yada, yada. I got offered a job. I think it was June 2012. I actually, and then the day before I was supposed to start, they took my, they fired me because I had a criminal record and I wasn't truthful about it. And they found it on the background check. I wasn't not truthful. It's I was still on trial for a reckless driving ticket. And they found out, how much money would I have made if Airbnb, when Airbnb goes public in 2012? I think I would have been the 300th employee. So I don't think significant, but maybe significant.

• 24:45Shaan Puri?

  So you do you remember your job offer? Because they would have said, like, here's how much stock you got. Do you have like an email that's like, here's the stock you got, here's the strike price?

• 24:51Sam Parr?

  I can go. No, I've deleted it. I.

• 24:53Shaan Puri?

  What?

• 24:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I know. It was because I was using, I was using GoDaddy as like my email service provider. And like, they have like a one gigabyte limit. I could maybe find it. I was 21 or 22. So I, I think I was using my Belmont University student ID or whatever. Anyway, I think I was getting paid an hourly rate of $25 an hour, and I don't think I would have gotten stock. But I think I would have eventually. When I got that job, my mom and dad were like, what is Airbnb? This sounds like a scam and doesn't have health insurance. You know, I didn't know anything about anything. But if I got in there, I probably would have figured it out. You think I would have made money off this?

• 25:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure. For sure. If you had stayed, now you might have gotten itchy and left. So I think that's always a piece of it. I had a very similar situation. I think I've told the story where I just pulled up the email. So September 2012, I did the first job interview I've ever done in my life. I've only done, I think, like probably three total in my life. And this one was with Stripe. So Stripe in 2012. So basically I interviewed because I thought, hey Stripe, this seems like an awesome company. I think this company is going to do well. I interview and I reach out and the guy who gets my email to reach out. Turns out like on my resume that I had sent in, I had like a few references. I was like, this guy's my mentor. And he was like, that guy's my mentor too. I called him and he speaks extremely highly of you.

• 26:18Shaan Puri?

  And this guy, this mentor guy loved me. Like he put a blog post out that said, this guy has the highest bias to action of any entrepreneur I've ever met. Or something like that, or any entrepreneur I've met in the last five, 10 years. So I had like the shoe in of shoe ins and then I like totally blew the interview. Like they had this, you know, test of like, kind of like sell me this pen. And I fucked it up. I think I've told the story before, so I'll skip it now. But I think at that time, I don't know what Stripe would have been worth.

• 26:41Sam Parr?

  I have it. I have it up. Okay. So what, what month was your?

• 26:45Shaan Puri?

  September.

• 26:45Sam Parr?

  Okay. In February nine, 2012, they raised $18 million at $100 million valuation. I don't know if they raised immediately after that, but let's just assume that it was $100 million. What are they worth now?

• 26:57Shaan Puri?

  So they're worth about 35 billion now. So 350x. So let's pretend.

• 27:02Sam Parr?

  That you had a hundred grand.

• 27:03Shaan Puri?

  $100,000 worth of a stock, you know, round math. You know, there's dilution and there's, there's all kinds of other things, but that's $35 million right there. Which is like, you know, if I had worked there for four years, would have, you know, got my whole grant. And probably later, like if I was doing well, I would have been getting promoted and getting new grants along the way. So like, it is reasonable to believe, let's just be conservative. It's reasonable to believe I could have made $10 million off that job if I had taken it. I think they had like, I want to say 40 employees at the time, but I don't, I don't know. I can't remember for sure. It might've been like 140 or something.

• 27:37Sam Parr?

  Okay. So I don't feel as bad as mine. I just Googled mine. In October 2012, Airbnb had a valuation of 2.5 billion. So they were already big, but if they go public at 50 billion, that would be. Twenty X. So low seven figures. I think if you worked there that whole entire time, I think you personally wouldn't have made ten to twenty.

• 27:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, which is crazy because that job wasn't like some sick job. It was like, I was gonna be like a biz dev person on the like, sales outbound sales team or some shit like that, like.

• 28:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but what would have happened is you would have gotten in there. You probably would have excelled. Then you would have climbed your way up.

• 28:12Shaan Puri?

  That's what I would like to think. I think probably I would have just stayed on that path because I would have been like, wow, this, this is easy. Let me keep doing this. But it doesn't matter because I blew the interview. And honestly, like, you know.

• 28:21Sam Parr?

  Oh, they didn't even offer you a job?

• 28:23Shaan Puri?

  No, no, that's what I'm saying. I had the biggest shoe in going into the interview. It was like, to me, it was like a formality. And then I fucked up the interview so badly that like, he was like, it's not a fit.

• 28:34Sam Parr?

  How many people worked there?

• 28:35Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. I think it was like 50 people, but it might have been 100 or 150 people.

• 28:39Sam Parr?

  Did you interview with the, with the Collision Brothers?

• 28:42Shaan Puri?

  Collison and.

• 28:42Sam Parr?

  Collison, what's her name?

• 28:44Shaan Puri?

  Collison, yeah.

• 28:44Sam Parr?

  Oh, I thought it was Collision. Fuck me.

• 28:47Shaan Puri?

  That would have been cooler. No, I interviewed with this guy Benjamin. But.

• 28:51Sam Parr?

  Ask him. Ask Ben how much money he made.

• 28:54Shaan Puri?

  I actually DM'd him the other day and I was like, hey, man. And he didn't reply, I think. I, I DM'd him, I said, I said, hey, you're still at Stripe. That's amazing. You probably don't remember this, but I interviewed there six or seven years ago. You know, I'd been referred by a mentor, a shared mentor. And I said, it didn't end up working out, but you know, you know, it was all for the best. I went on a totally different journey. Just wanted to say hi. And then this fucker didn't even say hi. What's going on here?

• 29:18Sam Parr?

  So the guy who fired me at Airbnb.

• 29:20Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, his thing says he's on sabbatical. You know, that's, that's like, you've been at some company that did really well for five, six years. And then you're like, I'm going on sabbatical for a year.

• 29:30Sam Parr?

  The guy who fired me applied to work at The Hustle as an executive and I'm, I was cool with them. It's my fault. I, I got, I lied. And he caught it and he was like, I have to do this. But I'm still buddies with the guy who fired me.

• 29:42Shaan Puri?

  What were you saying, Braden?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  September 2012, Stripe had 32 employees.

• 29:46Shaan Puri?

  I thought I was missing out on like a $5 million prize until this conversation. And now I realize it's probably more like a $20 million prize.

• 29:52Sam Parr?

  So in 2011, I had heard about this company that was making like a cab business. It was called Uber Cab and they had this job position called a city launcher. And I was like, dude, I'm so competent. I could, you could, they could send me to Germany and I not know a single person and I will get people to use this thing. I was so confident. They didn't interview me, but in my head, I'm like, what would have happened if I got that? And then, by the way, we'll play this game one more time. I actually interviewed at Vungle. I interviewed with Jack Smith of Vungle and Zane, who are, Jack Smith's now my best friend. And I interviewed at his company and he sold it for $800 million. We became friends three years later. He didn't even remember interviewing me and they turned me down. He said, no, he said, no. They, I got to the final interview and he said, no.

• 30:36Sam Parr?

  And I didn't get the job and now we're best friends. And that's, so I always joke with people. I'm like, if you want to know a good company, good startup to invest in, just figure out where I apply. Then I get turned down and just invest there.

• 30:47Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and you know, there's a, Naval has this great quote where he's like, you know, I, I want it to be where, where you could, um, you could drop me anywhere on earth with, you know, butt naked with no possessions to my name. And 10 years later, I want to be rich. Um, he's like, I want my skill set to be of, as such, where I don't need to get lucky to be rich. Like if I played this game of life thousand times, you know, 998 times, I want to, to end up successful. You know, each of those times I might end up with a different amount of success, but like that lines up with a, with a view I have, right? Like when I worked with Michael and Zochi Birch, a lot of people asked me like, are they smarter? Did they just kind of get lucky?

• 31:27Shaan Puri?

  Cause you know, they sold Bebo, made $850 million, but like Bebo's not around anymore. So was that kind of just like a fluke or what happened? And what I always said was like them being successful was inevitable. They were going to be successful. They actually were successful even before Bebo. They became millionaires on the previous businesses. But the magnitude of success is highly variable. So like, I think I would have, if you played out that, so that's, that was 10 years ago, right? Roughly eight years ago, we're talking about 2012. So if I played out the last eight to 10 years of my life, a thousand times, I think I probably on average end up with more money than I have today. So I think I actually, the real world scenario,

• 32:06Shaan Puri?

  I've netted out less than I would have on average. But I think in 90% of those circumstances, I would have ended up successful. Or, you know, richness, richness, successful, either way, because, and that's, I think, the goal is to get yourself to that point. So you take luck out of it to the extent that you can.

• 32:21Sam Parr?

  I think we're probably both on this, maybe, I don't know if me more than you or you more than me, but we're both on this idea of like, pull yourself up by a bootstraps and get it done. And I think that you can brute force your way to some sort of financial success and happiness. Like, I think that if you spent 10 years and took a risk and worked hard, you will make a million dollars.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 32:40Sam Parr?

  But I will be the first to acknowledge that some number beyond that, which I don't know what it is, it is very, very, it's luck.

• 32:47Shaan Puri?

  There's a lot of variance, right? Like, even just if I think about when we sold the company, the number could have been zero. Was like, it could have very easily crapped out at zero, or it could have been double what we got. And I think we, I think we ended up on the higher range of like where we, like, I think we maximized what, what could have been or should have been out of that. But I'm like, man, that was just one scenario of many, you know, many rolls of the dice that I've done in the last 10 years. And these situations, they like, they have such a huge amount of variance. And the good thing that I take out of that is like, well, I want to develop myself and my skills so that I'll, I'll have some level of success if I stay at it for, for 10 years. And then I don't want to stress and compare myself to others because, look, there is a huge amount of variance of luck that's outside of your control.

• 33:32Shaan Puri?

  And so, you know, don't get fixated on the exact numbers. Just keep playing the game for, for as long as you can. And eventually the luck just keep, you know, it'll, it'll break your way if you play for long enough.

• 33:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I completely agree with that. Do we want to go over anything else?

• 33:45Shaan Puri?

  I have one more question that's sort of like that. The only scenarios I could see myself not being as successful is if I had stayed on a more traditional path of just a job path. Because I think it's very hard to get wealthy from a normal job. We're talking about, oh, if I took this job at Stripe. Well, Stripe was like, probably the top four or five investments. Of the last decade. So like, yeah, being an average employee, being a biz dev rep over there, I still would have somehow ended up with a lot of money there. But most jobs that I was could have taken would not have done anything like that. Do you think it was inevitable that you were going to be an entrepreneur? Like, did you know you wanted to be entrepreneur? I kind of feel like I fell into it. I didn't, I didn't really consciously decide until I was already doing it.

• 34:23Sam Parr?

  Yes, I would have done it no matter what, but I would not have done the internet. I would have, I think that I'm, I would have owned a small store, like a corner store or a gas station, or, um.

• 34:33Shaan Puri?

  What, what switched your path to digital businesses?

• 34:36Sam Parr?

  I met a guy named Casey Smith. So when YouTube came out, did I tell you about this? I used to make $50 a month because I would, I feel horrible saying this, but I'll be honest.

• 34:45Shaan Puri?

  I remember this.

• 34:46Sam Parr?

  Videos, because if you typed in the word, you would type in words and it would autofill. So one of the words, I don't know how I typed in the word black, autofill to like black guy beats up white guy. And then if you autofill, if you typed in the word white, it was white guy beats up black guy. And so I would make these YouTube videos that just had a plain picture and then I would make ad money on it. And some of the videos got millions of views. And so once I made $50 a month doing that, I was like, oh, the internet's cool. And then I met a guy named Casey Smith and he taught me how to buy my own domain name. And then I created an online store and was making money. And that's when it changed. But prior to that, I was, I would use eBay and Craigslist to sell stuff. And I would imagine that I would have opened up a restaurant or in some type of small town thing. Yes, I would

• 35:30Sam Parr?

  have done it no matter what. Cause that's what my mom and dad, you know, my mom and dad, their business that they still own to this day, it started as a fruit stand and eventually grew to be something beyond that. But, and they were always encouraging me to do this stuff.

• 35:42Shaan Puri?

  So that's interesting. So you knew, okay, owning a business or starting a business is the way your parents did it. That makes a lot of sense.

• 35:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah. But they, by the way, they didn't call it like starting a business. It was just, this is just what you do to make a living.

• 35:51Shaan Puri?

  Right. Every single person in my family, every uncle, except for I think one has a job and almost all of them were like engineers who got an engineering job at some company. And it was like, the question wasn't, what are you going to do? Like, are you going to start a business? You can do this. It was like, what job are you going to get? And is it a good job or a bad job? And so I didn't even think about starting a business until it was like, I had accidentally started one. And then I was like, oh shit. Okay. This is this cool. And I started to meet people who did that as their life. And that like, you know, my version of Casey Smith. But like, isn't it funny how like Casey Smith, who the hell is Casey Smith? And like, what if you hadn't met Casey Smith on that day? You know, like a lot of this stuff feels inevitable, but it really wasn't.

• 36:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I was just listening to this Chamath, what's that guy's name? Is that his name?

• 36:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Chamath.

• 36:35Sam Parr?

  He was talking about like, the thing that changed with him was he had, he was like an intern at like a multi-billion dollar company. And he was walking to work and one of the VPs saw him walking to work and picked him up in the car. And it just so happened that the VP was carpooling with the CEO. And he got to, they're like, well, they're like, hey, we'll just drive you to work every day. And Chamath says like, and like the word billionaire came up and he was like, Chamath was like, what's a billionaire? You can have one billion dollars? And that is when he was like, that changed my life. And I think about that all the time and I'm like, having a community is so important. And you have to be purposeful about it, or I mean, you could get lucky like I did and what he did. But having a community like these Gen Z mafia people, that's so important that they have that community.

• 37:18Shaan Puri?

  Yes, we should probably move this to the beginning because it can be, this is going to be interesting. I should have started with this, something very interesting happened to me that I wanted to tell you about. I gotta be careful about how much I say, because I can't say too much and maybe I'll have to bleep out some later. So a very interesting opportunity came my way in the last few days. Okay, so what's the situation? So close family friend has a very, very large collectible card collection of a type of card that I had never even heard of before called, do you know what that is?

• 37:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:51Shaan Puri?

  And so they have a card collection of, of a lot of that, plus like, you know, Star Wars and Simpsons, like a whole bunch of like

• 37:57Sam Parr?

  Toys.

• 37:58Shaan Puri?

  Collector stuff, collectible items, mostly cards. And we're talking like a multi-million dollar collection of millions of cards. And due to the person's personal reasons, so you know, health and other, they have to off all this. And so, you know, because as a close family friend, long story short, I have the opportunity to sell this very large collection of items.

• 38:21Sam Parr?

  Are you gonna buy them or you're gonna help him? Is like the person on the internet person and you're just gonna help him sell them and he'll give you a cut?

• 38:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, something like that. So basically, the idea is how the hell do I sell this collection? If you, if you, if you went in and you took the best cards and you sold them individually on the internet. If you just look at the eBay mark value right now, this is like a dollar collection.

• 38:40Sam Parr?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what?

• 38:43Shaan Puri?

  Yes. And so you can't sell all these cards. Like it's just too much. So you can't sell them all at the eBay mark value, right? Like, you know, that's, you know, if it's like, if you took one card that sells for $10,000, he has like of that card. And so you know, you can't sell them all at the $10,000 card price. So almost certainly it'll sell for a fraction of that. But the question is, what's that fraction? And also, how the hell do I sell this? And so what comes to mind? I don't know. Help me brainstorm. I can only say some limited details there. So help me brainstorm. How would you go about this? So you have three choices. One, you totally ignore this opportunity. It's a distraction. You move on with your life. Number two, you look into it and you try to see how might you actually get some value out of this?

• 39:27Shaan Puri?

  How would you actually like sell this collection? And the third is like you go balls to the wall and you're like, I'm gonna find a way to make a few million dollars in the next few months off this lucky bounce.

• 39:40Sam Parr?

  Let's go with the easiest option, which is an auction. So you, I would use Heritage Auctions or Christie's or Southby's. Is it called Southby's?

• 39:48Shaan Puri?

  So the bees.

• 39:49Sam Parr?

  So the bees. So the bees. I would use one of those three auction houses, but you would probably not get a premium because it's a bulk thing. But it would probably be the easiest.

• 39:58Shaan Puri?

  Right. And also because we're talking cards, they're not like graded, as they say, or more, or you know, they're not all verified and graded yet because it would cost you an absolute fortune to grade a million plus cards, right? And this is like more than that. And it would take a long time to do it. So these are like, you know, they're good because this person's been a collector for 20 years. They're like a staple in the community. But you know, when you sell these items, you typically need to go get them graded first. So even just grading them.

• 40:26Sam Parr?

  Like, how many items does he have?

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  In the collection. So even just holding the collection is an expensive endeavor. They've been doing this for a long time. They put in a lot of money.

• 40:35Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God. What an interesting problem. Could you go to so top like you? You kind of alluded it to being maybe more than just you sell it back to the TOPS company?

• 40:44Shaan Puri?

  Uh, maybe. Okay. So that's like one option. Uh, although, yeah. Okay. So that's, that's an option. What else? What else could you do?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Have you seen Logan Paul's do with Pokemon cards?

• 40:53Shaan Puri?

  I have seen that. So what's on your mind, Abra?

• 40:55Speaker 02

  So I mean, kind of doing something like that where you sell random cards to people and, you know, maybe they might lose a few thousand bucks. Or if they get the big names, they might make some money. So that's what he was doing. He was selling packs for a hundred K. Um, and you might lose your money, but there might be like a holographic Charizard in there that's worth a hundred K.

• 41:13Shaan Puri?

  Let's go down that path because I have thought about that of like, what if I just sold these as mystery boxes? So, look, I don't want to go through the process of grading and marking these. I know that there's X millions of dollars of value somewhere in this. And I'm going to sell them as individual mystery boxes. Now, the challenge I thought of was, how do I get the word out, right? I'm not Logan Paul.

• 41:32Sam Parr?

  Why can't you be like, this is such an interesting concept that why wouldn't this get popular on YouTube?

• 41:37Shaan Puri?

  I don't know.

• 41:38Sam Parr?

  It would have to be a production.

• 41:40Shaan Puri?

  It would take a lot of time and energy to like, make a big ruckus about this, right? So I'm looking, I don't want to spend months of my life doing this. I'm looking to see, is there a, a simple path? Like, I don't want to pay for a bunch of ads to try to get people to buy this because that's going to be expensive in and of itself. But I think you would need like, let's say you're doing a hundred dollars, hundred dollar mystery box. You might end up with one of these items that has, that's worth 10 grand or 20 grand inside. That's the game. If you did that, uh, you know, you'd need to sell like 50,000 or 100,000 of these mystery boxes at a hundred bucks a pop. How would I do that?

• 42:08Sam Parr?

  Have like an in per, just like, could you make it videos about around this, just like the Sarah Gordo guys said, where you just document this whole journey? And then be like, we are going to auction this off in person and digitally on this date. Everything's going to be gone in 48 hours.

• 42:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I could do that.

• 42:23Sam Parr?

  Like it's a 48 hour bonanza. Come in person and on the phone, kind of like a, there's this car company that I love called Barrett Jackson. And they probably do this for all the auctions, but I watch Barrett Jackson. They do it live on TV and I always watch the, uh, the car auctions and you could call in and, and bid.

• 42:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like maybe there's just a live stream that I do from the venue and it's just selling it right, right there live for

• 42:45Sam Parr?

  I would probably do the simplest thing, though, of calling Christie's or one of the auction houses and be like, guys, here's what I have. Get your ass out here and give me some opinions. Do you actually think, be conservative, what is this person's collection worth?

• 42:58Shaan Puri?

  But it's hard to say until you go through the inventory in more detail than anybody's ever done. Because, you know, was bought 10 years ago and it's just been in a case. You have to go, you have to look at the condition of it and you have to grade it so that the buyer feels good about it. And then you have to, you know, figure out how you're going to sell these things. And I know nothing about cards, I should say, so, so I am a total rookie.

• 43:22Sam Parr?

  Is there anything more you could tell about the story of the person before you, without revealing?

• 43:27Shaan Puri?

  No, it is very interesting, but I cannot say.

• 43:29Sam Parr?

  And this person is a fan?

• 43:31Shaan Puri?

  A fan, wouldn't be a fan.

• 43:32Sam Parr?

  Like they've just been doing this out of love, of love?

• 43:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they're a collector.

• 43:37Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:37Shaan Puri?

  This person or persons is a collector.

• 43:39Sam Parr?

  Do you want to answer this question? Do I know them?

• 43:41Shaan Puri?

  You don't know them.

• 43:43Sam Parr?

  Do you want to dedicate an entire episode to this on Monday?

• 43:46Shaan Puri?

  I don't know how much I could share is kind of the thing.

• 43:48Sam Parr?

  Well, ask the person.

• 43:49Shaan Puri?

  I'm measuring my words right now.

• 43:50Sam Parr?

  Can we give the person like a voice cover up and talk to them about it?

• 43:54Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 43:54Sam Parr?

  Is, would this be tax at capital gains or in income?

• 43:58Shaan Puri?

  For the person?

• 43:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it would be like a long-term capital gains.

• 44:02Sam Parr?

  Wow, what a weird situation.

• 44:06Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, I'm gonna have to run. I gotta go now, but if you think of anything.

• 44:10Sam Parr?

  And let's have people tell us in the podcast reviews what they would do.

• 44:13Shaan Puri?

  Right. And before we publish this to Jonathan, our editor, let me think about, let me just make sure I didn't say anything I'm not allowed to say.

• 44:19Sam Parr?

  Okay, wow.

• 44:20Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. All right.

• 44:22Sam Parr?

  All right, we'll see you.

• 44:23Shaan Puri?

  Okay, see you later.