The high schooler making $20M a year

Episode 687: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Zach Yadegari ( https://x.com/zach_yadegari/ ), the high school kid who went from $0 - $20M in 10 months. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:45) $0 - $20M in 10 months (17:12) Sold first business for $100K at 16 (20:42) Zach's Influencer marketing playbook (24:23) Being worth $30M at 18 (34:40) How to find problems to solve with AI (38:28) IDEA: AI journal (41:09) IDEA: iOS to Android project converter (44:01) IDEA: Remotely-configurable onboarding flows for mobile apps (47:05) Running away from home at age 10 (51:10) Being peerless (54:41) Who Zach admires (56:02) Gen Z trends (1:00:06) Aging out as a prodigy (1:06:43) Keeping a beginner's mind — Links: • Cal AI - https://www.calai.app/ • Totally Science - https://totallyscience.co/ • The Great CEO Within - https://tinyurl.com/4xuvr95m • TurboLearn - https://www.turbolearn.ai/ • Fitness AI - https://www.fitnessai.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  By the way, it's noon on a Monday. Where are you right now?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  I actually skipped class to do this podcast.

• 0:08Shaan Puri?

  Let's go.

• 0:11Shaan Puri?

  Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling.

• 0:23Shaan Puri?

  Okay, this kid right here on the screen is making $20 million as a high schooler. The high schooler that is making $20 million a year in revenue. That is absurd. Zach, welcome to the show, man.

• 0:37Shaan Puri?

  I think this is actually the make everybody else feel bad. When you find out that like a 17, 18 year old kid is making $20 million in high school, I think a lot of people's initial reaction is wow. And another group is like, oh, man.

• 0:47Sam Parr?

  What, how much of that per year is profit, Zach?

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It's more than 30%.

• 0:54Sam Parr?

  All right, so it's very good.

• 0:56Shaan Puri?

  Ballin'. We're gonna tell the story, find, figure out how it's going. Sam, do we need to address your, your Letterman jacket? Are you just in the high school mood? What's going on?

• 1:03Sam Parr?

  Look, I found out that Zach was coming on and I wanted to look the part, you know? Like, what's it, what's that movie, Sean? It's like Never Been Kissed, where they pretended that they're in high school?

• 1:14Shaan Puri?

  Or 21 Jump Street?

• 1:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Shaan Puri?

  That's us.

• 1:17Sam Parr?

  Like, this is actually the second group of high schoolers that we spoke with over the last two weeks.

• 1:22Shaan Puri?

  I'm Jonah Hill.

• 1:25Shaan Puri?

  All right, Zach, dude, welcome to the show. You've, you've listened to the podcast before, I understand?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, last two years.

• 1:32Shaan Puri?

  You, would you say we maybe inspired you slash were the sole cause of your success?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say this is the sole reason for any of it.

• 1:40Shaan Puri?

  All right, so let's explain what, start with what your app does, because it's like, what app is making $20 million for a high schooler? So let's explain, what is your app?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49Shaan Puri?

  And when did you start it? Let's start with that.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  So Cal AI is the app. And it lets you take a picture of any meal and get back the calories, proteins, fats, and carbs to track it. So think any other calorie tracking app, but then heavy AI features involved.

• 2:08Sam Parr?

  Does it work really well? That sounds like a really hard thing. Like, you know, you were literally 12 years old or maybe eight years old when Silicon Valley, the TV show came out. And that was like, the joke was like, is this a hot dog or not? Now the app says a lot more. You know, does that work really well? Or is it like mostly right?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  So the scanning is about 90% accurate on average, which is really good. When you look at the data for FDA nutrition labels, they can be up to 20% inaccurate. So it's actually really good there. But we only recommend that you use it. Well, if you're training for Mr. Olympia, let's say, we don't recommend you use our AI calorie tracker. You could use the food database, weigh your food on a scale.

• 2:53Sam Parr?

  Well, and the, and the scale stuff like I, you know, I'm, I'm a weirdo. I've actually used MyFitnessPal for probably five years, almost every day now. And what a lot of people don't realize is when they eyeball their calories, they're probably always off by like 30 or 40%. Have you tried tracking your food, Sean?

• 3:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, actually, I think I came on this podcast a while back and I said this exact problem. I was like, MyFitnessPal, it's so slow and annoying to type in every single thing and estimate the weight of it. So, okay, I'm eating this. How many grams of it? I don't really know. I didn't weigh it out. And then you get this calorie thing, but also they have like five entries for whatever for,

• 3:29Sam Parr?

  Chicken breasts even has like tons of.

• 3:31Shaan Puri?

  You don't know which one to pick. And I remember even saying, I think on this podcast, like, I wish somebody just had it where you could just take a picture and computer vision would just know. And I can't wait for that to happen. And it sounds like it's kind of happened. So you started this how long ago?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  10 months ago.

• 3:50Shaan Puri?

  10 months. Okay, so 10 months ago, you started this as a 17 year old. And can you just give us a sense of the, the growth? So in, in 10 months, you started, obviously with zero. First month, roughly, where were you at?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  So the first month, it was a little bit slow to pick up. We probably ended having done $30,000 in revenue. The second month, and that's when we were testing the waters. Do people actually want a calorie tracking app? The hypothesis was that, yeah, it would make people's lives easier. But we are almost hitting this interesting intersection between people are very hardcore with tracking their calories, weighing their food on a scale, needing the precision decimal point accuracy, and then on the other end of people that don't track their calories at all. So our hypothesis was that there was a middle ground, and that's where we threw the capital to test, and it worked.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So then the next month, which was June, we did our first six figures in a month.

• 4:53Shaan Puri?

  So, okay, amazing. Yeah, I mean, you're saying we.

• 4:58Sam Parr?

  Does he talk like every 16 year old? You, you, that's, you sounded like this, right, Sean?

• 5:03Shaan Puri?

  He sounds more mature than us. So you, you, you're saying we, is there a, is there a we? Who's the, is it a royal we? Like, that's just kind of me, and then, did you start this with somebody?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yes, I have three co-founders. So to give you a breakdown, one is also in high school. He's our CTO, Henry Langmac, a killer engineer.

• 5:24Shaan Puri?

  Child technology officer, yes. Go.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Blake Anderson, who I think you guys actually did an episode about one of his apps, Umax. So he had founded previously two other apps that had gotten a few million downloads. So we partnered up.

• 5:39Shaan Puri?

  How'd you guys meet each other? Cause you're not in the same high school. How'd you find these other young builders?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Henry and I met at a coding camp when we were both 10 years old. He lived in Long Island initially, but then he moved to New Jersey. So we stayed in touch. Blake, I actually found on Twitter.

• 5:57Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. So you guys get together and who has the idea for the app?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  So it was a mix of Blake and myself. I was tracking my calories two years before starting Cal AI on my fitness pal, or at least trying to. I was really skinny growing up and I wanted to put on weight, put on muscle, honestly, to impress girls in my high school. And it was super tedious, so I just gave up. But I knew there had to be a better solution. The coder in me, the engineer in me knew that there must be an easier way. And the following two years, all of these AI models started being released. And so after jumping into the app space, and talking to Blake, who had a very similar path of these AI apps, we came to this idea.

• 6:42Sam Parr?

  And having a $20 million a year business is a lot cooler, I bet, than having muscles when it comes to impressing girls.

• 6:48Shaan Puri?

  Which one works better?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Honestly, I thought that once, I always had this vision as a kid that I just need to be successful and all the girls will be on top of me all the time. But nothing really changed.

• 7:01Shaan Puri?

  It's just dudes like us?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:04Sam Parr?

  You know, honestly, dude, having big muscles, it's also just only dudes admiring you. So like.

• 7:11Shaan Puri?

  We're actually still not sure what gets the women to like you. We're still trying to figure that out. Can we pull up, you posted a video back when you were, how old was he in this video?

• 7:22Sam Parr?

  That was three years ago, I think.

• 7:23Shaan Puri?

  Three years ago. So you're like, what, 14, 15 years old? The video is titled, "How I'm Going to Make $1 Million in High School." Pull this up because I want to get your reaction to this. It starts, by the way, it just starts with like.

• 7:36Sam Parr?

  Great video.

• 7:38Shaan Puri?

  It's an amazing video. How many views does this video have? I can't see from.

• 7:40Sam Parr?

  Like 8,000?

• 7:41Shaan Puri?

  Okay, 7,000 views. Three years ago, you posted this. You only have 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. I say only, I mean, I just mean like, this video is criminally underrated.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  At the time, that's 20 subscribers when I posted this.

• 7:54Shaan Puri?

  So you could play, you could play this. I don't know if the audio will come through.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  I'm going to make one million dollars before graduating high school and this YouTube channel is going to document the whole process.

• 8:07Shaan Puri?

  Here comes the best part, the mic. The alignment of the text and then watch the microwave.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  What is one million dollars? It's enough cash to give you a luxury lifestyle. It makes life more enjoyable and stress free. It's every kid's dream.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:23Shaan Puri?

  Director's cut.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Making one million dollars can be broken down. For example, if you're trying to make it in a year, it's just eighty thousand dollars a month, or twenty thousand dollars a week, or three thousand dollars a day. All I would need to do is sell thirty one hundred dollar items every single day.

• 8:43Shaan Puri?

  Alright, you can pause it already.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  I'm really making it more simple than it seems.

• 8:46Shaan Puri?

  I love this video. I love this video on so many levels, it's insane. I love that you're shooting your shot, you're calling your shot, I should say, right? This is Babe Ruth pointing at center field. Uh, so I love that you called your shot. I love that you were just having fun with it, like you obviously weren't like super polished or like, uh, you know, going back and editing this to try to make it fancy. And I love that your mindset, you were like, I want to do this. And then you sort of broke it down into smaller, more digestible chunks, right? Cause you can't just make the million dollars in a second. You're like, I need to make, you know, twenty thousand dollars a week, I need to make three thousand dollars in a day. To do that, I gotta sell thirty hundred dollar items. That seems achievable. What was, uh, can you just tell us, why'd you decide to make that video?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Well, from such a young age, and I'm not entirely sure where I could pinpoint this, but I've always wanted to make massive impact on the world. And usually that is parallel with having a lot of monetary success. And so my goal was always make a million dollars while in high school. Part of that was because I was really stressed out about school. My parents were super strict about my grades and social studies was the one class I hated. I hated that I had to memorize flashcards and I vividly remember one night where I was sitting there trying to memorize these flashcards about explorers that came to the Americas.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  And I was so frustrated, I broke down the problem and realized that I'm studying to get a good grade, but why? Why do I want a good grade? To get into a good college so that I could get a good job and make money and then live a happy life. So if I could skip all those steps, it would remove the stress that I'm feeling right now. If I can make money right now, so I wouldn't need to worry about a job, I wouldn't need to be stressed. And then I set out the goal to do so.

• 10:37Sam Parr?

  You're not wrong.

• 10:39Shaan Puri?

  It's the intelligent man's procrastination. It's like, ah, should I study these 15 flashcards? Or make a million dollars? I think I'll make a million dollars instead.

• 10:47Sam Parr?

  Are your parents entrepreneurs or are they just normal?

• 10:50Shaan Puri?

  The house was nice. It's a nice house.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  So my parents have both been lawyers for their career. But then recently, two years ago, my dad left his job at a company to start a financial consulting firm. And I always worry, people are going to think, oh, because he started a business, that's where all of this came from. But I was entrepreneurial and doing things long before he actually left his company to start his.

• 11:17Sam Parr?

  Do you like give him tips sometimes?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 11:22Shaan Puri?

  You should offer to angel invest in his company. And be his mentor.

• 11:28Shaan Puri?

  All right. So you, Sam, any thoughts on that video before we move on from the video?

• 11:32Sam Parr?

  It's, it's the best. You know, Sean, we brought this up maybe six months ago on a podcast. I don't know if you remember that. And it was still like, is this kid like, is this a joke? Like, does he actually have it? And, you know, how like real is this? And we brought that up saying, this is amazing if it turns out to be true. And it is true times 20. It's like absolutely amazing that you've been able to pull this off.

• 11:58Shaan Puri?

  I think at that time, it was like a like million dollar ARR app.

• 12:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  So I think you were probably at something like $80,000 a month.

• 12:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Shaan Puri?

  Now, how much revenue are you doing?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Well, last month, we just did our first $2 million.

• 12:16Sam Parr?

  So wow.

• 12:17Shaan Puri?

  You're in a 24 million dollar pace.

• 12:20Sam Parr?

  And what will the your first 12 months of full business, what will the revenue be?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Full business, the revenue would have exceeded $10 million from launching in May to coming this month.

• 12:33Sam Parr?

  And is it entirely bootstrapped? Have you had any outside financing?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  All bootstrapped.

• 12:38Sam Parr?

  Wow. And how many employees? I'm just gonna like, I'm gonna, I need to ask so much a question so I understand all the info. How many employees?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Totally. Right now, we have 15 employees full time.

• 12:49Sam Parr?

  Wow. Okay, that's amazing.

• 12:50Shaan Puri?

  Wow, that's a lot. So what, how did you get it to work? Okay, so you make an app, you're a coder, you started coding when you were seven years old or something like that. So I believe that you could make an app. And it seems like, let's just do a quick summary on making the app. So how did you actually build this like thing? Are you basically taking a bunch of AI tools and then sort of, I'm not saying like you just take a wrapper, but like custom, make it custom building for this use case of tracking calories in an app? Can you just quickly describe making the app and how long that took you?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Totally. So a lot of people do look down on apps like Cal AI. They'll summarize them as just an AI wrapper and think that we aren't providing any value. And it's true that we started as an AI wrapper. And I think that that's something all apps should do, just like in e-comm, it's very common to start as a drop shipper and drop ship a product. And then, once you find success, actually manufacture yourself, store it yourself, create your own brand out of that. So it's just the proof of concept is the drop shipping. For us, the proof of concept was using ChatGPT and other AI tools kind of as a wrapper app, frankly.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  But then after finding initial success, which, so the first app, the first version, very, very bare bones, very, very basic. We, you were able to take a picture of your food, it would tell you the calories, it would have the daily breakdown. That was it, one feature. And then, after we saw that people liked it, we started adding more features.

• 14:27Sam Parr?

  How many people did you have using it to determine that they like it?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  We had, so this is important to note, we've grown all through influencer marketing, which is how we've achieved our rapid growth. And so after working with two influencers, having them post on their stories talking about the app, that's when we had the initial feedback and saw that people actually liked it.

• 14:50Shaan Puri?

  So let's go step by step. You make the app, app exists. Who are the first 10 people that say it? Family and friends? Is that where you started with or?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Family and friends, although we just disregarded anything from them because I always think it's biased.

• 15:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So you send it to them, they're kind of, they say, oh, it's great. You're like, all right, cool. But we don't really know. Next, what'd you do? What'd you do next?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  So next, we started contacting influencers, fitness influencers on Instagram and TikTok.

• 15:17Sam Parr?

  Did my DM get lost in the mail?

• 15:20Sam Parr?

  Why did I, is this, is this in my other inbox? What's going on?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll need to get you on it. But we reached out and most people just don't respond. It took me over two weeks to get my first response from an influencer.

• 15:38Shaan Puri?

  Give us a sense of the pitch. What's the, what's the DM say?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  So basically you always want to start, at least from what we've tested, we've ran a lot of A B tests on this. Paid promo, putting that first, the question mark, and then jumping into our app lets you track calories just by taking a picture of your food. We think it would fit your audience and would love to work for you, with you. If you're interested, let us know and we could hop on a quick call. And so this works really well because it optimizes for that preview message, the influencer will see in their inbox, they only see the first line or two. The paid promo is what sticks out.

• 16:14Sam Parr?

  And which influencer took, what was your, who, who was it?

• 16:18Shaan Puri?

  And where'd you, where'd you get the money, right? So you're saying paid promo, but your kids, you're like, hey dad, can we get five grand to like seed money to, to try this? Where'd the money come from to start?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Sure. So before building Cal AI, I actually built an unblocked gaming website my freshman year of high school. This website lets students play games in class while their teacher was teaching, bypassing the website blocking protocols. And I grew that to 5 million users through TikTok. It was generating money by putting ads on the site and then I sold it. So that's where most of the money came in that we put into this.

• 16:53Shaan Puri?

  By the way, Sam, that that's now the third or fourth person that's come on this podcast, who has that same origin story of I was in school, they blocked games on our school. I'm guessing you guys had like Chromebooks or something like some school computers?

• 17:07Sam Parr?

  You know, very, very oddly, Sean, it was Val, my friend Val, who came on and said his, his, his son did it.

• 17:12Shaan Puri?

  Doing that now?

• 17:13Sam Parr?

  Well, they went to the same high school.

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  Oh, really?

• 17:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Shaan Puri?

  Said Balki was said that that was his origin story too, was he, he wanted to find a way to play games while at school. And then because of that, learned all these different parts of coding and technology in order to make that happen. And that was their first taste of money. But just my same thing with gaming servers at school. So you had this, you, you figured out, all right, we have these school laptops, people want to play games, they're blocked. How'd you get around the block and, uh, and what was this thing called?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  The website was called totally science.co. And that's how it got categorized as educational. That was the main thing, but we also had all of these features on the website. For example, if you press the tilde key on the keyboard, it would redirect to Google Classroom. So if the teacher was coming, you could quickly hide it.

• 18:01Shaan Puri?

  Oh, nice, nice. That's crazy. Hey, how can you complain? This is science, not only this is totally science, this is only science. All right, so you, you do that, that, that company, uh, you sell, you were making how much and you sold that for how much?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  It made $60,000 for two years. And then I sold it for $100,000 when I was 16.

• 18:25Sam Parr?

  So this is like the first sign, uh, you know, to have a kid, to have your son, from your parents' perspective, do 60 grand in revenue and profit, you know, something like that, when they're 14, that's like asking, you know, you're like, are you a drug dealer? What's going on? How are you doing this? Did that take convincing on your end to let them know what you were doing was totally legal? Like at any point, your parents are lawyers, were they like, are you breaking any laws, man? Are you, are you sure you're, uh, on top of all this?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  I definitely got questioned about breaking laws by my dad a bunch of times. He actually made me put up a terms of service that said in all caps, "You cannot use this while in school. This is only for breaks or at home." And my mom was always shocked. Every time I actually got a payout from Google, I think maybe it was that it didn't sound like a real business. Unblocked Games website, how could that make money? But I actually had money coming into my bank account that was under her name because I was too young to open one and she was shocked.

• 19:23Shaan Puri?

  Did you do anything cool with it, the money?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Well, not really. Honestly, I put all of it into CalAI when we launched it. It's a pretty cool thing. The only thing actually that I've spent the money I've made on, and this was recent, was my 18th birthday party. I flew my friends out to Miami for a weekend trip from high school.

• 19:46Shaan Puri?

  That's awesome. Alright, sweet. So you, uh, you put the money into CalAI. You got the money, you reach out to the influencers, as you said, two influencers start posting. And what are they posting? Is there some science to it? We just had, you know, Rob the Bank on talking about TikTok as a distribution strategy, about what makes great TikTok hooks and videos and how that game is being played. Do you know, Rob, and I guess, how have you guys played that game of short form content to grow your apps?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  So Totally Science and CalAI were a little different. For Totally Science, I was the one making the videos myself. I was recording my screen in class, saying, "Hey, if you want to play Unblocked Games, go to this website." And then I would put a little thing, a caption that says, "Comment what game to add next." And that would gather a ton of comments, making the video go viral. For CalAI, I'm not the one making videos. No one on the team is. It's all influencers. So we still use the knowledge from, well, what I learned from Totally Science to help these influencers make videos and make them go viral, to give ideas.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  But for the most part, we just pay the influencer that fits our niche. And then there are the professionals. They know what goes viral. As long as we can predict the ROI, which we have a ton of factors and variables we look at, then we let them run with it.

• 21:11Shaan Puri?

  You pay them on CPM or how do you pay them?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  So CPM would be a blessing and that's the dream for everyone if you could do that because then you guarantee profitability. But these influencers, they need to be paid usually in advance. Otherwise, they won't do it. They'll have another brand that's willing to work with them. So you have to predict before they make any video, how many views they're going to get. You'll have to look at their previous videos. But then you also have to keep in mind, not all views are worth the same. You have to analyze the comment section and see how strong their community is. And based on that way, how much you're actually going to pay them.

• 21:47Shaan Puri?

  That's wild. So you, um, is this thing pretty sticky? And where do you want to take this? So great, you, you go viral, you get people to download. I'm assuming they hit some paywall in the app that says, keep track of all your calories, blah, blah, blah. Is it kind of one of these churn and burn games where it's pretty profitable for the first couple of months? And then you lose people or is it a sticky product?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  So it's sticky for the power users. They definitely stay around and I mean, apps like MyFitnessPal, they're doing over $100 million a year. So I know we could get there.

• 22:22Sam Parr?

  You, uh, look at the reviews, Sean. So he has 65,000 reviews and it's a 4.8 out of 5. So this isn't like an arbitrage, like, or like a get rich quick thing. Like people really love the product.

• 22:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what's the churn on these subscriptions?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  We actually don't know because it hasn't been a year and more than 95% of our subscriptions are annual.

• 22:46Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. Okay. But they're still using it presumably so that, you know, if they're using it, they'll, they'll stick with it. Wow, this is amazing. And so you want to take this to be kind of MyFitnessPal or you're like, hey, if somebody offered us, you know, a buttload of cash, like I guess, what's your mindset? Cause I'm so curious, because if I was 18 years old. I don't know what the hell I'd be thinking like I have no I even now if thirty six years old I still don't know really know what the hell I'd be thinking in this position. What what's the mindset of an eighteen year old because you've got many hits in you. You know, this may not be the only one. The same way that you kind of did this a similar thing in totally science versus this. But this just had a much bigger market, much more market potential. You know, you might be able to do even more things. Or is this something you want to do for a decade?

• 23:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And does it feel like you're still breaking the law? Like if you if anyone like if I don't mean that.

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  Breaking the law?

• 23:36Sam Parr?

  What he's talking about? What I mean is like when you go zero to twenty million dollars in revenue in eight months, there's some type of like giddiness of like, I can't believe like this is my life. I can't believe that this is allowed. I don't know. There's something there's some type of like matrix breaking idea where you're like questioning. You're like, how is this possible? Do you still have that mentality? Or are you like, of course, this is possible. And this is just step one.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  I definitely have the mentality of it feels surreal. I mean, it feels nuts. I'm eighteen years old and I'm making the company is going to generate over twenty four million dollars this year. That's crazy. The fact that I'm on your podcast, my first million saying that it's nuts. And a year ago, I wouldn't believe it. So I view this as a stepping stone. I want to build a company that touches the lives of billions of people, something as ubiquitous as the iPhone. And I think Cal AI, if we shifted the idea where maybe it's nutrition tracking in general, and we could link the photos of what you're eating to your health, that could be something

• 24:43Speaker 01

  that touches the lives of billions, and that could be something I could spend a decade on. But I probably don't want to. Instead, I would want this to be something that sets me financially free, where I don't need to think about money, where I'm not incentivized by generating revenue. And so I can start another company that is purely motivated by impact and scale of impact, something that I'm passionate about and can spend a couple of decades on.

• 25:09Shaan Puri?

  Sam, I saw a post today from his partner Blake. He posted something on Twitter today and he said, I guess he's working on something called ten X and it sounds like it's an app for for learning like, oh, you can learn anything. You can learn AI skills. You can learn the language. You can learn whatever. Sounds like it's a learning tool. Which is more in the direction of kind of good for the world, good for humanity, impact style thing that he's building. And so it sounds like he's kind of look, you know, he started with like UMAX, which was literally like probably the most superficial thing. It's like, how does my face look? And what, what can I do to make my face look better? Then it's Cal AI, and now he's going into like, you know, a learning tool. It sounds like you might want to do the same. Was there something that triggered that in you?

• 25:52Shaan Puri?

  Like, did you watch like a movie or did you have like a conversation with a mentor when you were 12 years old? Like, what made you want to even, what made you think differently than the average high schooler who's hyper focused on just their grades and, and you know, just making friends or whatever, whatever's just in their little pond?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  It's funny you say movie. The social network totally had a big impact on me. However, I did also feel this way before that. So that amplified it. That showed me it's possible through specifically software, which made me super motivated to learn coding even faster. But I have, I'm not sure the initial seed where it was planted.

• 26:31Sam Parr?

  What do you think the app is worth right now?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Right now, I think the app calculating its, or taking its growth into account is close to $100 million in valuation.

• 26:46Sam Parr?

  Which means you are presumably worth in the ballpark of $30 million.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  I think Liquid and On Paper is really different.

• 26:55Sam Parr?

  Oh, I know. But like, but you're, you're totally right. But like 17, 18 years old, worth tens of millions of dollars, I think is like a fair ballpark. Would you agree?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I would agree.

• 27:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's amazing, man. Congratulations. I, I'm really, I'm really inspired by you. And I would say there's like a handful of people I've discovered that are kind of like you, who are super young, that are basically AI first. So you're, all the tools you're building, you build with AI, because why would you not? You like code them with AI. The app uses AI, the users get an AI type of experience. And you figured out a growth channel that I think a bunch of old guys like us kind of stuck at. Cause You have what I call the bear on a bicycle phenomenon. So my friend Chris Williamson said this to me. He goes, you basically want to stack two skills that usually don't go together, and it creates something remarkable. So you know, you see a bear. Wow, that's a bear.

• 27:53Shaan Puri?

  Okay, but I've seen bears. You see your, you see a bicycle. Okay, that's a bicycle, but you see a bear on a bicycle. Holy shit. Never seen that before. That's amazing. And for you, that's basically like you know how to code, but a lot of kids know how to code. And it's this other piece that you also had, which was the knowledge of, and you even said it in your video, video editing and just making fun videos. This kind of the TikTok knowledge, and you combined how to make TikToks that will get views with how to make apps that work. And that is your bear on a bicycle thing. And so I'm pretty inspired because there's actually like a group of people who are just like you. And I would say right now is like, a very golden window for that group of people to go build things like, and you know, hopefully people listening to this, hopefully there's, you

• 28:36Shaan Puri?

  know, we trigger another 20 to 100 people just like you who hear this story and are like, you're their social network, right? They're going to hear this and they're going to start doing it. And that set of skills, I think, is very, very valuable for this moment in time.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  I totally agree. And that's honestly why I'm super motivated to go on podcasts like these. I was super motivated by others before me that I've watched on podcasts. And so this is almost a full circle moment for me to come on here.

• 29:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Sam, would you be going on podcasts? Because like, you know, while you're here, I'm like, oh, this is great content. I'm excited. But then there's like the fatherly part of me that's like, Like, shut up. Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn't be saying any of this stuff. Because you have such a good thing going. And you could always tell the story a little later. You don't need to invite, you know, the other Zach Yedigaris of the world who are, you know, they can code, they can make TikToks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they're just gonna do the same thing, right? So like, why go on and spill your secrets? You know, why do that?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  So I've heard this before, that usually you know what it takes, or people usually know what it takes to be successful. But then they are looking for an easier way. They're looking for something that

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn't require as much sacrifice. And I've been coding since I was seven. I'm eighteen now, that's eleven years of coding. I've started totally science and before that I was tutoring kids in coding lessons. For almost a decade of my life, I was in the entrepreneur game. And so I think that, yes, I can share all of this information publicly. But it's only a select few who will actually work towards it. And put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result. Where I want to help those people. I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine,

• 30:42Speaker 01

  where they maybe weren't entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age, even balancing school on the side. And so I completely support those people.

• 30:55Sam Parr?

  You have a trait that, like Sean and I, his good buddy Jack Smith is like the perfect embodiment of this trait. But a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is you're logical. Which like, a lot of times will be awkward on like day to day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is like, he's so, he does think so differently from everyone. Because his way is actually better, but we've all done it in such a way for a hundred plus years that we're like, well, I don't know, we just do it this way. And so like, for example, he didn't name his daughter the first year because he was like, I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her. And I was like, yeah, that makes total sense. It's just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy. You know, you said, well, I'm worrying about grades so I can get a good job. Or get into a good college, get a good job, make good money.

• 31:40Sam Parr?

  What if I just make money now? Like, that's like very, that way of thinking is amazing. And it's really fun to be around people like you. And so I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on a few things. The first is, you have fifteen employees. Do you have any employees who are in their thirties or forties? And what's it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around? To at fifteen people, you're actually running a real company?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  So, yes, we do have employees that are in their forties. And it's difficult to be.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Honest with you, it's hard at times.

• 32:21Shaan Puri?

  To to make them call you sir?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do not make them call me sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids. And it I do have imposter syndrome at times, which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don't, I still act how I know I should. I'm reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder and it helps me lead. I try to be an inspiring leader that that helps people. That doesn't lead by telling people what to do and just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work.

• 33:06Shaan Puri?

  Do your, does your staff, uh, general, are you guys a well organized company, you think? Or is it a shit show?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I think that we are pretty well organized and that's mainly credited to our COO. And the third co-founder I didn't mention, Jake Castillo. He's really good at organization.

• 33:24Shaan Puri?

  So one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, well, I want to inspire other people, but we don't want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we were like, hey, what are some other ideas? That if you weren't doing this, you think somebody could go do right now? So how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you're at? Twenty million dollars a year in revenue as a seventeen, eighteen year old. So what ideas do you have for us?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Sure. So obviously you know, you could teach a man to fish or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas.

• 33:59Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  So how I usually look at these AI problems or not AI problems, but creating something new in general. Is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now. So the calendar was innovated on, and now there are AI calendar tools like motion, which help you organize and. Structure your day a lot easier, your assistant. There are note taking tools where people have always taken notes by hand. People have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like TurboLearn AI, where you can record your lecture and then the AI will generate notes for you.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie trackers, but now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food and it will tell you the calories. So I try to look at everything that doesn't already use AI and think, can AI make this more efficient, make this a better process? And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something, looking at it from marketing first principles, is how I always think. So almost going backwards and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience

• 35:31Speaker 01

  and then wrap a whole app around that. So for Cal AI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories. And that's great for marketing material. They come on, they do that, but then there's a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There's another app on the App Store right now called Fitness AI and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner, where you just take a picture of your body and then it will tell your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So that's what draws people in, it's that AI tool, which is the aha moment. And then there's a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  So that's the framework I generally like to use.

• 36:20Shaan Puri?

  And so what do you think is, so you're saying work backwards from the magic moment where AI does a magic trick? And you're like, holy shit, that's cool. And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, let's take a picture, get the calories. And then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that's going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever. That's gonna keep them around in the long term. Cool. Got it. And you're, the other thing you're saying is take any app that's popular that we've already been doing. That's, and to say, what's the AI version of this? Is that, is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like, all right. Evernote, what's the AI version of Evernote? Or, um, you know, our buddy in, our buddy, um, in San Francisco, I mean, in San Francisco, he had this company called Study Soup. And Study Soup was literally for college kids.

• 37:03Shaan Puri?

  They would have paid note takers who would take great notes in a lecture. And then you had, you have basically the slackers and you had the kids that were, were on top of things. Kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace. They would give their notes and the slackers would buy their notes. And so, oh, cool. I, I don't have to take notes in this class because I'm getting them done for me. And you're saying, you, but you're basically saying that Turbo Loan has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it's like someone records it and now you have, uh, you have, you have well, well taken AI notes for your, for that class.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So what are some examples? Yeah. So here's an idea. I've actually seen something like this or recently on Twitter, I saw something blow up. Maybe it was a couple of months ago, not so recent, where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into chat GPT. And then asked, what are some insights you could give me to make my life better? So they both do that. Yeah. Well, that's great. So I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea, to build a journal app. And these journal apps already exist. So take an existing one. Put your, and this is the spin. So you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn't matter.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  But the key feature, the aha moment AI feature you implement is that periodically you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life. Like, hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.

• 38:31Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. Okay, I like that. So AI journal. I feel like with the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy is cool, basically, whereas in my generation and my parent, my parents' generation was like, therapy equals you're broken, you're, you have a problem. And it was like, you know, more taboo.

• 38:51Sam Parr?

  The whole, the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he's so soft.

• 38:58Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it's almost like a cool thing to do. I don't know, maybe I'm speaking out my ass here. You tell me if I'm wrong, but it's way more normalized. It's not, it's not a taboo thing. And in fact, probably being anti-therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point. And I feel like, but the problem with therapy, of course, is that it's A, a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who's paying a hundred dollars a session for this stuff and stuff? When you could have the AI therapist in your pocket, whether they're using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment? Or, or not, what do you think of that space? Do you think there's something interesting there?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about. And I haven't seen anyone do it great. There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, chatbots. But I think they're all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So maybe it's the verbal aspect that's missing and something like ChatGPT's voice mode, integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure.

• 40:15Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. And what are some other ideas you have?

• 40:18Sam Parr?

  You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  So the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started Cal AI, we built it on Swift. And that's because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android, it's more difficult because it's not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone. After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app. And it was problematic.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app. And we had to release it a few months after. It was, it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars.

• 41:15Shaan Puri?

  And every time you build a feature, you have to build it twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yes, every single time. So it's annoying. I think with all these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the code base to one native project. And then it will convert it to the other. Now, right now, I think AI can probably do 90% of the work. But there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention. So maybe this would be best done as an agency that's very AI powered at the moment. But very soon, it's going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you.

• 41:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's a really good idea.

• 41:59Sam Parr?

  We used to use something, I had an app like years ago, a roommate's app, roommate finding app. And we, what was it called where we use something that turned a web app into an iPhone app?

• 42:08Shaan Puri?

  Hmm, I mean, there's been a lot of tools like that.

• 42:10Sam Parr?

  And they were horrible. Like it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies.

• 42:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this is a problem, right? Like you, you have to maintain two different, two different, every feature you have to build twice. Every, every platform has its own bugs. And you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android and the iOS guy focused on iOS. And so now you have more headcount. And so you always want this thing that's like, but, but you need, but still you're, you're right, like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, et cetera. So you, if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn't work as well as doing a native app. And so you're right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90% of the code transfer.

• 42:59Shaan Puri?

  Just through AI and then maybe you you you do it as an agency or you have one person who's who's doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. That's cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like to use a framework, you know, it's a paper cut you have, right? So one of some of the best places to find startup ideas is you're you're trying to do a startup. And in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that's like, God, I wish somebody had just built this. And maybe you build it in house or you just keep dealing with the pain. And that's a very good source for startup ideas.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yes, I have heard that a piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas. And it's 100% true. So while working on Cal AI and then a few other apps before Cal AI, while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works. Every app you have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the app store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what's coming to explain something that's going on in the app or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  And there is no good solution right now to build these. Everyone has to do it custom in their own code base. But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do A B tests on these, which another problem here is that anytime you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the app store, which could take a few days. So building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions and then also change what the screens are, see how that affects conversion rate,

• 44:58Speaker 01

  see how that affects completion rate, drop off rate remotely would be huge.

• 45:04Sam Parr?

  Are you the type of person that even though you have a full time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to Cal AI?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  So for the last few months, I kind of was. We were orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly. And the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing and blow them up really fast. But at the scale Cal AI is and the rate it's growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full time on Cal AI because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue,

• 45:53Speaker 01

  we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to Cal AI just because everything boosts each other. Increasing retention will increase LTV. And as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel. So one plus one can equal three instead of two.

• 46:10Sam Parr?

  I think that is toward the right move. Is there anything, Zach, you know, Sean and I are parents and there's a lot of people who listen to this who are parents. Is there anything that you you seem traditionally, obviously you're traditionally successful, but you also seem like you're very thoughtful. Be well spoken, thoughtful. Like you seem like you'd be a good son regardless of Thank you. Regardless of if you, who cares about this app, you know, like you, you, you, you're, you have your shit together at a very young age emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success? Or do you think that, and this sounds like a douchey thing to say, were you just born, you know,

• 46:51Sam Parr?

  interested into this stuff at a young age, you know, like there's a lot of like self-directed people.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And from a young age, I was very wired to want freedom. And I think it I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something, my parents would have to buy something for all my siblings. So they wouldn't do it. I would have to find the way to pay for it myself. That's what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money. And Related to that, I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old, I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  I don't know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. At 10, I could have burned the house down. So my mom didn't let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn't trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house. And I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field. And the police were called. I actually got picked up by them and brought back home. I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away. And

• 48:24Speaker 01

  it's really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. The yearning for freedom. Well, but you have that now.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven't dropped out and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job. So I feel, I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me, even if I get into the school. And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  And then when I'm in college, I want to make a good group of friends, then drop out. So you're free. You're gonna go.

• 49:22Shaan Puri?

  What's your GPA right now?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  My GPA is a 4.0 and I do want to go.

• 49:28Shaan Puri?

  What did you get the SATs?

• 49:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  So I took the ACT and I got a 34.

• 49:36Sam Parr?

  Okay, so that's like, uh, yeah, it's like, uh, that's two points away from, it's like a 90, it's a 99 percentile, 98 percentile.

• 49:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so you're, you're, you haven't like neglected school. You got a 4.0 and you did get your ACTs.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Doing this with school. I'm working hard in school. I'm not.

• 49:51Sam Parr?

  By the way, it's, it's, it's noon on a Monday. Where, where, where are you right now?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  I actually skipped class to do this podcast.

• 50:00Shaan Puri?

  Let's go.

• 50:03Shaan Puri?

  Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling.

• 50:06Sam Parr?

  Are you at school right now or are you home?

• 50:08Speaker 01

  No, I left school. I'm home right now.

• 50:11Sam Parr?

  And you told your parents it's because there's this podcast I want to go on and it's going to be good for business?

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:17Shaan Puri?

  How many other people do you know that are like you? Like, is there a community of like a hundred of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things?

• 50:24Speaker 01

  There's not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, 19, 20.

• 50:29Shaan Puri?

  Look at how he's already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand, hand position naturally, dude. Straight out the box.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  I have a handful of people that I'm friends with, but not many. Definitely not.

• 50:42Sam Parr?

  Do you guys have a club? Do you have a name? You get like the grubs?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's the cool kids club.

• 50:48Sam Parr?

  That's, it's, you guys are pretty cool. Uh, so that's a good name.

• 50:52Shaan Puri?

  Always wanted to be in.

• 50:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I've always wanted to be one of the, I've always wanted to be part of that. Uh, if you are either the member, let me know. Um, have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out like, you know, in the movie, uh, The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without going to college? Or are you dead set on going to, uh, going that route?

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Well, over the summer, when things started taking off in June for Cal AI, Henry and I decided, let's go all in. We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house. We worked out of a coworking office with people years older than us. So we lived the San Francisco startup life.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  It was very productive, but at the same time,

• 51:46Speaker 01

  pretty lonely. Although we could have talked to some people, yeah, we made friends. We would get lunch with people. First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us always made it difficult to relate to them.

• 52:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that makes sense. We had a, I have a friend that, uh, like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15. And he was telling me, he was like, man, like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit. And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl and I eventually had to break it with her that I was, fill her in that I'm like, I'm 16. Uh, and so like, I imagine like, it's weird being in these situations where you're like in these, you're just as mature, uh, you're more mature than a lot of 21 year olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you're in this situation where I do understand why you feel trapped.

• 52:45Sam Parr?

  You're in these weird spots at such a young age that like, you literally couldn't go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it's pretty amazing. Like, I hope you enjoy, like the time, like, I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing what you're doing, it's like, this is like, you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  So we haven't paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all. And that's not to say that we won't. We are, we do have profit every month. It is a difficult situation with the app store because we get paid out two months after we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing to keep growing faster and faster. I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can't spend it on growth, even if we wanted to.

• 53:40Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's great. Um, dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations and uh, I'm excited to see what happens. Who are like, who do you admire? Who are you? Who are you learning from and looking up to? Like who's, who's inspiring you? Are you just like, oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos? That's what I, that's what I care about? Or are there other people that you're more interested in personally?

• 54:01Sam Parr?

  Like you said, you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Totally. So I love your guys' podcast. It's, I'm more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that's because I feel like there's, they're not my competition anymore, or they are, but they're not progressing anymore. So I see exactly where they ended up.

• 54:25Shaan Puri?

  Psycho. Love it.

• 54:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I get it. You sick fuck. Makes sense.

• 54:32Shaan Puri?

  They're not my competition anymore. I've already finished them.

• 54:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  People like

• 54:39Shaan Puri?

  I think he's gonna kill us, Sam.

• 54:42Shaan Puri?

  I think he just threatened us, Loki.

• 54:45Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So you like learning from dead people? What does that mean? Books? What do, how you learn from dead people?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  I like audiobooks, but I don't actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts.

• 54:55Sam Parr?

  Which dead people? Oh, so like founders? You like the David Sedaris podcast founders? It's one of my favorites.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I do listen to that. There's one I've listened to recently, How to Take Over the World, which

• 55:05Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah, boy Ben, let's go. So let me ask you a question. What, what's a thing that people your age are doing? That seems weird to us, but it's totally normal. So like, what's a phenomenon that you're like, yeah, kids love doing this. They spend all this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It's, it's normal for us.

• 55:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah. By the way, is wearing Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren polo sweaters, is that a new trend that young people are doing?

• 55:33Shaan Puri?

  I think you've influenced Sam.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Great sweater.

• 55:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead with uh, what cool young people are doing.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  So there's something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I've seen recently and

• 55:48Speaker 01

  It's not a new software. It's not a new social media platform. What it is, is these little things you put on the back of your phone. It's called an Octobuddy.

• 56:00Shaan Puri?

  Octobuddy.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  And it has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall. You could prop it up on your table and watch videos is the purpose. I don't think people actually, I've never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they're designed to, but it's a trend among all girls in my high school. I, over the last few months, I've just seen more and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it's, it's fascinating, something.

• 56:28Shaan Puri?

  It's like a TV mount. You mount your, you can mount your phone to any, any surface, basically. And what do you think? It's not used how it's supposed to be? Isn't that what it's supposed to be?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and.

• 56:45Shaan Puri?

  Oh, it became an accessory.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Stylistic accessory status thing than actually function.

• 56:50Shaan Puri?

  Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I'm like, tell me everything.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Well, that's the main thing that you wouldn't typically notice.

• 57:00Shaan Puri?

  Are your friends drinking?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely. It's big.

• 57:03Shaan Puri?

  Do they like to party? Do you guys like to smoke weed?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  I'm someone who doesn't do any drugs. I'm pretty against them and I don't drink either. But it's, I mean, everyone around me is.

• 57:14Shaan Puri?

  So drinking's common?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Very common, very, very.

• 57:17Shaan Puri?

  You also mentioned this, uh, this like Turbo Learn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like, uh, what other, uh, who else is like you out there who's, who's basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like AI TikTok type of model?

• 57:33Speaker 01

  So there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out. And honestly, I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it's really possible in the app space. So new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social or like by having streaks essentially to gamify the whole experience. So that's a new one that just came out.

• 58:05Shaan Puri?

  You inspired these guys?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  I'm friends with the founder and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing Cal AI really take off. He was with me in the early days.

• 58:15Shaan Puri?

  That's cool. It's got 5,000, 5,000 reviews on, on iPhone. That's pretty good.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they're on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think consumer app right now are like the new drop shipping.

• 58:27Sam Parr?

  You know, Sean had said this once where he was like, you know, Sean was like, I'm a content creator. You know, he's got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it's as if, you know, I am really good at riding horses, but along comes Henry Ford. And it's just, it's just, the cars are no comparison. You know, I can't, there's no way my horse and I are going to outrun even the, the crappiest car. This is one of those moments that I'm having right now, talking to you. So like for a long time, Sean and I, our friends will do drop shipping, you know, when we were 25, that was the thing is like create like a drop shipping site. And people still do things like that. Seeing

• 59:07Sam Parr?

  what you're doing with tech and influencers is so much better than, like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old. You know what I mean? Like chocolate? Like what? That's crazy. You know what I mean?

• 59:21Shaan Puri?

  But dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were, I was probably 24, 25.

• 59:26Sam Parr?

  We were the prodigies.

• 59:28Shaan Puri?

  And it was like, oh, that's very generous.

• 59:30Sam Parr?

  What I mean is like.

• 59:31Shaan Puri?

  It'd be like, if there was something on the, on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it.

• 59:41Sam Parr?

  Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they're like newsletters. And I'm like, yeah, like it's a thing. That's old news now. These guys are so much better and we are that person now. I'm going to go to his office and be like, just tell me everything.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  It's something that always happens. It's going to happen to me too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive and there's someone that's going to come and be the next big thing, the growth hacker that is in the front of everything. I think it's just about building momentum and I'm pretty obsessed with this idea of.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Making sure that everything I work on will 10x the previous thing so that I'm always moving forward towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He's actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him.

• 1:00:33Shaan Puri?

  By the way, I've heard this now a couple of times from people who are like 18 and they're like fearful that when they're 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool. And I just want to say, I get it. Makes total sense. It's also total nonsense. And what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the I need to impress people phase. And the person who's 17, 18, they're still getting that high of, of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody's kind of patting you on the back. And actually, the, the, the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best looking, richest person, because you'll never win that game of comparison.

• 1:01:18Shaan Puri?

  The only real way to win the game is to realize like, oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me and like the act of doing them is rewarding and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is obviously easier said than done. But that's the real thing to focus on and not like this feeling of I'm, I'm running on quicksand, you know, because it's, I'm getting older. Oh no. Or like, I have to 10x my growth, even though I'm already at, you know, 24 million ARR. It's like, sure, that's all fine. I don't, I'm not against growth. But, um, somebody said this to us, actually, they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go, be very careful because growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell. And, um, so, you know, growth for growth's

• 1:02:01Shaan Puri?

  sake is not, not, not where it's at. And there's, there's more to the game than that. And he's like, I'll leave you with that to kind of figure out what, what, what is the answer. I'm not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I'll point that out because I think for me, when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It's the only thing. And it comes from a little bit of a, um, I don't know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Yes, and I've had this, a similar thought to this where I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I've thought, okay, once I find my success and let's say I'm quote unquote financially free, will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore and just want to find happiness elsewhere? Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I'm financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects, so.

• 1:02:58Sam Parr?

  You're always gonna be making stuff. I'll predict the future. Maybe, maybe you'll take the foot off the gas and want relationships and a family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Well, that is why I'm going to college. It's almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two.

• 1:03:18Shaan Puri?

  I mean, I think that's really smart because you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends from college. So actually, the scarce thing is the friendships and that college experience because there's a window of time that expires. And so do that because you still have 50 years to make money after that.

• 1:03:39Sam Parr?

  What school do you want to go to?

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  If I got in, then Stanford is likely the top.

• 1:03:45Sam Parr?

  Surely we have listeners, this is gonna reach a lot of people, surely there are some people listening.

• 1:03:51Shaan Puri?

  Dean, I know you're listening. Yadigari, Y-A-D-I-G.

• 1:03:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Actually, that's.

• 1:04:01Shaan Puri?

  That's what they should do. A real, if I'm at a college right now, I'm DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That's how, a college needs to hustle. I'm tired of these colleges sitting down their ass.

• 1:04:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you're gonna get a DM, someone's gonna be like, sup. You're just gonna get a DM from, sup. Who's your favorite, who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? I wanna, I wanna, basically, I find you so fascinated, I want to be inspired by the people you're currently inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want your info diet. Who, who do you inspired by? And try to make it people who you think I won't know.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Who do I follow? I actually don't usually use Twitter for people I'm inspired by.

• 1:04:41Sam Parr?

  That's interesting.

• 1:04:42Shaan Puri?

  What's your like main social network? What do you use when you're bored? What do you open up?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  It is Twitter. It is Twitter. That is my main social network. When I'm looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people, David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So I have people like him that, you know, inspired by his mindset completely. I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for you page. I only liked motivational videos and anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So definitely those kinds of people, but it's mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk. I follow both of those on Twitter. My own co-founder Blake Anderson, who's a few years ahead of me

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  in life and knowledge too. So definitely learned a lot from him. Cliff Weitzman, he's a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him.

• 1:05:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, we know Cliff.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he's super inspiring to myself as well.

• 1:05:48Shaan Puri?

  That's dope. Uh, okay. Amazing. Sam, anything else?

• 1:05:53Sam Parr?

  Is there, that's, don't ask me. Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you're, you're, you're amazing. Like, uh, anything else that you want to tell us?

• 1:06:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Did we miss anything?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. I mean, it's always hard going on these podcasts. Like it's, it's a whole full circle moment. And also it feels almost bad speaking about all of this. I try to stay humble, but then at the same time, I know you have to speak your way into the world. If I wasn't posting anything publicly, I've had a lot of debate over the personal brand, then I wouldn't have so many opportunities that I have had.

• 1:06:33Sam Parr?

  I, Sean, my, one of my best buddies Val, uh, I think Zach asked him out to lunch or something the other day. Uh, like the other day and like was just asking him for advice on maybe coming on this podcast, but also business advice. Cause Val's a great guy and really successful. And I thought it was funny because actually you remind me of Val a lot, Zach. But it was funny. Apparently Val's kids were like, were you hanging out with our friend Zach? Uh, like at lunch the other day? And he was like, yeah, but it was like a. Very, you know, oddly a business context. Uh, but anyway, Val called me and was like, this guy Zach is one of the most impressive people I've ever met. And Val is a very hard person to impress. He's pretty low key. And so.

• 1:07:16Shaan Puri?

  Well, one of the funny things is like, you have this paradox because you, you want to keep your asset. Your asset is you're young and ignorance is bliss. You don't know how hard some things are. You don't know what's possible. You don't have a ceiling on anything. Cause you don't know any better, right? And that ignorance is a, is a real tool, the naivete, the beginner's mind. And so you want to keep that. And on the other side, you have this giant problem, which is that there's always kind of like this, uh, I forgot what they call it, but there's this three, three known thing, right? It's like, there's the things you know, you know, there's the things you know, you don't know. But then the, the real one that matters is the things you don't know that you don't know. And, and so talking to whatever smarter people, people who have played the game for 15, 20 years, they will help you surface that last one.

• 1:08:02Shaan Puri?

  And that, that last area of things you don't, you don't currently even know that you don't know. That's the thing you should be worried about, but how do you worry about it? You don't even know, you don't know where to look. Uh, but it's by talking to other smart people that that gets revealed to you. And so you have this paradox where you want to keep what you got as your big asset. Your naivete, your beginner's mind, your, your, your, your useful ignorance. But at the same time, um, talk to some well-meaning people who are a little bit wiser to try to get, figure out like, you know, um, little, little, a little bit of a, a push in one direction or the other. They'll kind of nudge you and that little nudge can totally change your trajectory, right? Cause like, I mean, just imagine hitting a golf ball and even just changing by two millimeters, the angle that you hit that ball. It ends up in a totally different spot.

• 1:08:47Shaan Puri?

  So you want to find those people who are your, your two millimeter people, the people that will just give you that slight angle adjustment in order to make it happen. I don't know how you do that exactly, the, the keep both of those. But that's what I would do if I was you. I'd try to find a way to keep both.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  I totally agree. I have heard that, that it's much easier to learn from someone 10 steps ahead of you than 100 steps ahead of you. 100 steps, so much is missing, but 10, you can piece together. They can lift you up this, the extra steps and help you get from zero to 10.

• 1:09:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And one other thing you're gonna figure out is that all successful people do not have equally valuable advice. So you will meet a lot of people who are successful or sound interesting.

• 1:09:29Shaan Puri?

  But their advice is not great and the hard part is figuring out how to parse it and dislike dissociate it slightly from the result because their result might be totally dependent on the context, luck. There's a whole bunch of different variables that will lead to that, or maybe just their understanding of your situation. And so trying to figure out how to parse advice is like an underrated skill.

• 1:09:49Sam Parr?

  And, and make sure that the people you take advice from, that they're actually happy. And they're people, and they're, they're people you admire.

• 1:09:55Shaan Puri?

  They're happy for themselves and they're happy for you, you know?

• 1:09:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like you'd want their life.

• 1:09:59Shaan Puri?

  It's a very good point. All right. Well, on that point, let's call it a, let's call it a day. I think you gotta go back to school now.

• 1:10:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah, lunch is over. Hey, thank you, Zach. You're the man. Anytime you want to come on, please let us know.

• 1:10:14Shaan Puri?

  Congrats, dude. Thank you for having me.

• 1:10:16Sam Parr?

  And I'm gonna, I'm gonna use the app, so.

• 1:10:18Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna download your app right now, Star Trek.

• 1:10:20Sam Parr?

  Thank you. And that's it. That's the pod.