#159 - Update on Michael Jordan's House, a Nine Figure Sex Toy Company & the Man with a Million Acres

MFM #159 MJ house update Recap: Last episode the guys spoke about buying MJ’s house. The plan was to potentially turn it into a museum or Airbnb. Problem: zoning and parking -- but those might be overcome Shaan: Spoke to Rally Rd and Nifty Gateway founders Now what: What's going to happen now? Sam thinks nothing’s going to happen -- the guys are too busy. Shaan: you’re afraid to fail Collecting old Apple computers Opportunity: Old Apple computers like the Macintosh II and Apple II sell for a premium on eBay. There is still demand for these because of their cool aesthetics, and retro look. At Monkey Inferno, visitors would often ask about their old Macs over the expensive paintings that hung on the walls. Sam bets these will continue to appreciate. Can make for a good investment opportunity as retro style becomes more and more in demand. Idea: Creating products from old Macs, such as https://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/03/Macquarium-jake-harms.jpg Sex talk Steve Shubin - founded Interactive Life Forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleshlight Origin: Steve started creating sex dolls, but eventually realized most guys wouldn’t order sex dolls. He pivoted and created the Fleshlight. He scaled the company with his kids. Does an estimated $50-$100m in revenue Sidenote: One of Fleshlight’s factories in Spain uses its excess capacity to manufacture prosthetics elephant legs for Southeast Asia Opportunity: Creating the new fleshlight There is a growing demand for male sex toys, especially in countries like India and China. Even in areas where it’s taboo, new discreet packaging has made it easier. Idea: Fleshlight marketing through channels like Onlyfans. Molds can even be made from the Onlyfans creators themselves. Billy of the week Brad Kelley Started out renting space for factories and warehouses. When he noticed lots of customers using his warehousing space to store tobacco, he pivoted. He founded Commonwealth Brands in 1991 and sold it in 2001 for $1B "I've never defended [smoking]. Hopefully, it will be phased out of society." He’s bought a ton of land since then and is now the 4th largest landowner in the US. In January 2020, Kelley put up for sale many of his West Texas ranches, offering roughly 500,000 acres with a listing price of $404 million. He also bought Lonely Planet installing a 24-year-old CEO at the helm The purchase was a failure when he sold the company in 2020 for $50m having had bought it for $70m Sam’s a fan Keeps to himself and has done “boring” businesses. In contrast to Silicon Valley’s flashy hype-machine Indie VC Indie VC was a venture firm backing mostly bootstrapped founders. The idea was to give founders a little bit of money to help them grow instead of the traditional model of flooding a company with cash and taking a massive stake. The company closed its doors, and Shaan and Sam are critical of how founder Bryce Roberts announced the closing (didn’t take the blame hard enough). https://medium.com/@bryce/the-end-of-indie-6e1b92d90b09 --------- Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  I don't think I would want to do something that high profile because if you screw up, it would be a big deal.

• 0:04Shaan Puri?

  Oh, look at you. You're afraid to fail now. Oh, you make it big. You sell your company. And now, now you're like, I gotta, I gotta watch my step. What's going on?

• 0:12Sam Parr?

  I'm not afraid to.

• 0:14Shaan Puri?

  Where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh? What would that guy do?

• 0:22Sam Parr?

  Sean's new studio. Are you in a garage? Is that what that is?

• 0:25Shaan Puri?

  I am in my garage. We, uh, we upgraded, we improvised. So we did this crazy thing where we had talked about on the podcast. We were like, shit, we need to like upgrade our setup. I think mostly was you just telling me to get a haircut, which is fair and wear a shirt. Wear a shirt. And I took that as I need a whole new studio. So, so basically these guys who are from Chicago, they're like 23 year old guys who love the podcast. They were like, they heard that. And this is like their forte. They do like camera, audio. They have their own podcast. They have their own YouTube channels. They're basically, what I realized was I went and watched their YouTube channel. And his YouTube channel has like this guy,

• 1:08Shaan Puri?

  Henry, his YouTube channel has like, I don't know, 570 subscribers. So it's not like some big YouTube channel, but if you watch it, it's the same level of quality of like video, audio and editing as like Casey Neistat's channel. And I showed this to our friend Sully and I go, I go, check these guys out. Like, look at, look at their channel. These are the guys coming this weekend to, to make my studio. And he goes, he goes, I remember when I was kind of like 21, 22, we were coming up. And what the kind of 30 and 40 year olds used to say was, oh, man, you guys have this huge advantage because you're like, you're, you're like digital natives is what they were calling us. Like, we grew up with a computer and the internet. Like, I think we, we got the internet and computers when we were like in sixth grade. I don't know about you. It was probably around the same fifth, sixth

• 1:52Shaan Puri?

  grade, something like that. And so, you know, for, for our parents, they were getting a computer when they were 35 or 40. So it's just like, you know, you didn't have that, you didn't have it to grow up on. And so he goes, these guys, this is the next, the next wave. They're video native. Basically, they grew up with a camera in their hand and they just like constantly shoot videos. They know how to edit it. They're not afraid to be on camera. And like, it's such a superpower. And I think it was so true what he, what he was saying.

• 2:20Sam Parr?

  You said one line that I think is the real superpower, which is being on camera. So for you and I, we're kind of like media people. So we're maybe a little bit more used to it than the average Joe, but even I am still very uncomfortable just talking to a camera and like looking at it. Young people are not. When I was at the airport, I saw 12 year old kids with like the phone on the ground with a pop socket and they were like doing and I could see that they were doing Tik Tok dances. And it was like, that's like unheard of for me because I'm like, oh my God, you're gonna do that at the airport with people watching?

• 2:52Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. Yeah, the upside is they're all look cool. They know how to dance and they know how to edit videos. The downside is like, you know, they're like riddled with anxiety and stuff like that. So, you know, it's not all, it's not all good, but I, but

• 3:04Sam Parr?

  And they're not having sex, which is a topic we're gonna talk about in a minute.

• 3:07Shaan Puri?

  We're gonna talk about that. But the other thing I was gonna say is, let me ask you this. When you get us, you're on Snapchat, right? You have Snapchat?

• 3:15Sam Parr?

  Uh, I had, no, I have an account.

• 3:17Shaan Puri?

  All right. So, all right, I'll bring you, I'll bring you, you got a time in here. How old are you? 27. All right. So you're more like us than I like the people I'm talking about that are kind of like, I'm not gonna say Gen Z.

• 3:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but God, I think those, I think those couple, he is, he's a lot hipper.

• 3:35Sam Parr?

  He's a lot hipper than we are. He's a little bit more into it.

• 3:39Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So, so basically, uh, when you have Snapchat, right? So someone sends you a snap, right? They send you a picture of something they're doing, something they're looking at, and you need to reply. Tell me, do you just type the reply like in the text version? Or do you send back a photo?

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  That's so weird.

• 3:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, see, that's crazy to me. Uh, that is wild to me. I'm like, you say something, I comment like it's fucking, like it's Facebook, right? I just write like, oh, looks fun. Cool. That's great. You know, like, I'm like a 90 year old.

• 4:09Sam Parr?

  You're talking about young people. Another interesting thing to do is when you ask a young person, or did you show me this? When you ask a younger person, what, what do you do when someone calls? If they put their hand, for the people listening, I have my hand, like I'm waving high, like high five. And they put their hand like a high five to the ear versus they put their pinky and thumb out like this?

• 4:30Shaan Puri?

  Well, or, or, or if you say, um, hey, do like a gesture to, to take a picture. So if I said to you, hey, Sam, take a picture. Yeah, you're gonna do this.

• 4:38Sam Parr?

  That's an old school camera. Yeah.

• 4:40Shaan Puri?

  This is not a camera, right? So, so, so what they do is they, they hold up their, their hand like this with their thumb, like you're holding an iPhone, right? We're like out here with a, a Polaroid trying to, trying to demonstrate what a picture is. Anyway, so, um, I don't even know why I'm talking about that, but basically, these guys are, you know, I, I would say younger people are video native, and I think that's gonna be a huge, huge win for them. Because people like us are like self-conscious and like just don't know how to use the tools, right?

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  I want to bring up a topic that's both related to this and something else. So, at Sean's old office at Monkey Inferno, the guy who owns it, Michael Birch, I mean, it looked like he was out of a magazine, but he had one or two things that really stuck out. And one of them was this Macintosh computer. It was a Mac, Mac, Mac two? Is that what it's called?

• 5:26Shaan Puri?

  Apple two.

• 5:27Sam Parr?

  Apple two. So I'm gonna look that up. So the reason I'm bringing this up is, I am building my studio to look good like yours. Um, and I was looking, thinking of like designs and interesting stuff to put in the back. And I also, this whole NFT has got me, uh, interested in art and like, you know, just beautiful. Yeah, just like valuable, or not valuable, beautiful, interesting, cool stuff. I've always liked stuff, uh, just like junk, right? Uh, that's what I used to like. Uh, but now I'm gonna try to get some nicer shit. Anyway, I was looking around. How much do you think, uh, so is an Apple two, is an Apple two the same as a Mac, as a, a Macintosh two?

• 6:08Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know.

• 6:10Sam Parr?

  Well, wow. How much you think in Apple two that still works costs?

• 6:16Shaan Puri?

  I don't know. Couple thousand, I'd say maybe somewhere between two and five. It would be my guess, two and five thousand.

• 6:21Sam Parr?

  You can get one that's in pretty good condition for like $500. You can get one, you can get a Mac, Macintosh two, which I don't know the difference between the Apple two and the Macintosh two. You can get a Macintosh two that is still in the box for like a grand. And do you remember the commercials when we were younger, we were in our teens, we were probably in eighth grade or ninth grade, where it was like a colored Mac. So it was like a blue, it was called the iMac, I think, right?

• 6:51Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 6:52Sam Parr?

  You can get those for like $300. Now, strictly speaking, like from like a collectible, like just it's interesting, it's, um, it's cool to look at. That's incredibly cheap for a machine.

• 7:05Shaan Puri?

  I tell you what, every single person who came to our office was like, oh, this is awesome. Now, granted, it's tech nerds coming to the office, but they were like wowed by this thing. And there was like expensive art all up on the walls. Nobody cared about any of that. People saw this old thing and then we would boot it up and they would turn on and they were like amazed by it. So it definitely, every single person noted, commented on it.

• 7:27Sam Parr?

  I think these types of like old computers, these vintage computers, I think these are going to get really popular. And the reason I think that is I was looking up how much, uh, so for a gift, I thought about buying people an iPod that wasn't connected to the internet. Did I tell you this?

• 7:43Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 7:44Sam Parr?

  Um, so I was gonna buy people, uh, like our investors, I was gonna buy them like a small thank you. I was like, maybe if I spent $200 a head, let's see if I can go and buy a bunch of, if I can buy like 20 iPods that aren't connected to the internet. And my plan was ruined because I'm like, oh, wait, you have to have.

• 7:59Shaan Puri?

  iTunes.

• 8:00Sam Parr?

  iTunes and that doesn't even exist. So like, this is pretty much meaningless, but these old iPods.

• 8:06Shaan Puri?

  By the way, iTunes exists.

• 8:08Sam Parr?

  Well, but I mean, like you, who, no one buys, can you even buy MP3s anymore from it?

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  I don't think so. Yeah, you have to like have your own music.

• 8:15Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like that, no one does that anymore. You, we all stream and like these things didn't even have internet. I wanted it so you could like download it and then it would only work if you were attached to wifi. But anyway, uh, old iPods, like old, old ones, first generation ones are expensive, like five, $600. And so anyway, I think that both would be cool to have this stuff on your.

• 8:35Shaan Puri?

  Dude, if an old iPod is $500, $600 and Apple two in the box or Mac two in the, in the box is also $500. Yeah, I, I definitely know which one I think has more, more like long-term value here. Uh, those, those, those things are collectibles. I think you're, you're spot on. I would scoop up five to 10 of those right now and just hold them.

• 8:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm okay. So like here's a vintage working in in good condition. Macintosh two for $250. I'm looking at it on eBay right now. Here's a Macintosh. In the box for 400 bucks.

• 9:10Sam Parr?

  It's pretty interesting, right? I think this might become pretty popular, these old computers. And I think that it's kind of a cool idea.

• 9:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like that a lot. Those are good. And I actually will go after this on eBay and try to scoop up at least at least two of those just to hold and see what happens.

• 9:26Sam Parr?

  All right, you want to get into you have two updates and then we have an idea, two ideas.

• 9:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Okay, so one update is on the Michael Jordan thing. So last episode, we talked about Michael Jordan's house has been on sale for 10 years. It was a it's a 56,000 square foot house and it was originally listed for $30 million. Now it's been price cut, price cut, price cut all the way down to 13 million. And it's still not selling. And this is after the last dance. It's after this giant boom in like trading card collectibles like the Michael Jordan rookie card. Is going for almost $2 million and his 56,000 square foot house can't sell for 13 like something seems off like a little tiny three inch piece of cardboard can sell, but not this. So and he's paying property taxes. I think somebody said he's paid about a million dollars in property tax just while it's sat on the market.

• 10:15Shaan Puri?

  And so we threw this out there last time. We said, Hey, look. Why don't we either collect just me and you or we crowdfund? Why don't we buy MJ's house and like, what could we do with it? And we got a bunch of good feedback. So I would say like. There's a bunch of smart people who immediately pointed out that one of our ideas, which was to turn it into some kind of museum, the museum of Mike. You know, the basketball museum wouldn't work because you know, the HOA, the neighbors would never permit you to let like. Tens of thousands of people come into the neighborhood and and go to this museum every year, right?

• 10:47Sam Parr?

  That's what I thought about. I mean, I was thinking about, I just figured there had to be a way around something.

• 10:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. When you start an idea, you don't think about all the different like small reasons why it might immediately fail. You think, you know, what if this works? And then you try to find a way to make it work. But the more interesting one, in my opinion, was always the simpler one, which was you don't have to turn it into a museum. You don't have to get permitting. You don't have to have guests coming in and operations folks. You just. Treat it differently. You don't treat it like a house. You treat it like it's a monument. It's a piece of art and there are paintings that sell for 800, you know, 85 million dollars. And so if a painting itself for 85 million dollars, I think Michael Jordan's house, this relic of the greatest basketball player of all time is going to be worth something.

• 11:34Shaan Puri?

  And so the idea would be you crowdfund it, you get, I don't know, 5,000 people to each pitch in two grand. You buy the thing out for 10 million bucks and you hold it as a piece of art. And then, you know, there was a couple of good suggestions I thought came in through Twitter. So some of the good suggestions were you could list this on Rally Road where people go to buy like, you know, vintage cars or rare first edition Lord of the Rings book sets for $35,000 that you, you know, 500 people each buy it, a fractional share of it. So that was one idea people liked and the Rally Road guys said, hey, we're interested. Let's talk. So I'm talking to them.

• 12:12Sam Parr?

  They, they, they hollered at you?

• 12:14Shaan Puri?

  They did. They've replied to the tweet and then Rob, the, I think he's the CEO, I don't know, his co-founder. He emailed me yesterday and, and so we're gonna, we're gonna chat and see.

• 12:22Sam Parr?

  Why does everyone cool reach out to you?

• 12:25Shaan Puri?

  Bro, they know, they know.

• 12:28Sam Parr?

  Damn. And I didn't get anyone hollered at me. Well, are your, are your DMs open on Twitter?

• 12:33Shaan Puri?

  My DMs are open. Yes. I've also talked to him before through DMs because I was just like, Rally is fucking awesome. So I had reached out to him actually saying, hey, Rally is awesome. Can I invest in this thing? So he knew I was a fanboy already. Um, but anyway, so that was one interesting thing. Some people in the crypto world were like, dude, let's turn this into an NFT, bro. And so I talked to the, the founder of, of Nifty Gateway, which is just exploding. This, this marketplace is just exploding for NFTs right now. So I asked him, hey, would you like to dabble? And then the last thing was that some people were like, hey,

• 13:06Sam Parr?

  And what did they say?

• 13:07Shaan Puri?

  He was like, hey, this is cool, but he was like, you know, we're just crushing so hard on the digital stuff. I don't know if we want to get into this physical thing, because there were some cool ideas from Twitter. Some people were like, you know, let's say you came in and you bought a $50,000 chunk. So instead of the $2,000 entry, you go for 50K. That should get you like, if you present your certificate of ownership, if you show your app and you show that you're, you own a piece of this thing, you should be able to have like a three night stay once a year with you and all your friends.

• 13:38Sam Parr?

  We're gonna time share MJ's house.

• 13:40Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So you're not fully doing an Airbnb. You're treating it like it's art. But if you own a big enough share, if you're, you know, a super minority owner of this thing, then you can actually stay one weekend a year. And I thought that was pretty dope. So anyways, there's some cool ideas. But then at the same time, I ain't got time to do this and neither do you. So what's gonna happen from here?

• 14:01Sam Parr?

  You're asking me? I don't know. I feel like you're kind of the leader on this one. Nothing. If I had a bet, nothing. I here. And here's why. When I did my deal, every smart person I talked to, what did you know what they said? I bet you can guess what they said.

• 14:16Shaan Puri?

  No, no, what did they say?

• 14:17Sam Parr?

  Do nothing for six months.

• 14:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:19Sam Parr?

  Don't invest.

• 14:20Shaan Puri?

  Sit on your hands. Yeah.

• 14:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, don't invest. And so many times I've been, I wanted to change and do something, and everyone has said the same thing. And I'm going to try my hardest to stick to it. So that's one of the reasons why. Although, that's probably a bullshit excuse. The reality is, it's kind of an, I don't think I would want to do something that high profile, because if you screw up, it would be a big deal.

• 14:41Shaan Puri?

  Oh, look at you. You're afraid to fail now. Oh, you make it big, you sell your company, and now, now you're like, I gotta, I gotta watch my step? What's going on?

• 14:49Sam Parr?

  I'm not afraid to.

• 14:51Shaan Puri?

  Where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh? What would that guy do?

• 14:55Sam Parr?

  Dude, my first time buying like, a real estate asset, and doing something like this, would be like, I mean, that would be national. I mean, I guess, yeah, I'm being.

• 15:05Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I'm not, I'm not saying you buy it. I'm saying, clearly, the way to go here is to crowdfund this thing, because it's just more fun that way. And you don't have to put out $10 million of risk capital.

• 15:16Sam Parr?

  How many emails did you get?

• 15:18Shaan Puri?

  So somebody, oh yeah, that was the other thing. So somebody created a website. Jonathan created a website. I think it's like buy, buyjordanshouse.com or something like that. And I think he said, you know, pretty early on after the tweet, he said he had 200 people dropping their email. And I think about the same on Twitter said, I'm in, including a bunch of higher profile people. There's a bunch of people who are-

• 15:38Sam Parr?

  A bunch of really wealthy people.

• 15:40Shaan Puri?

  Founders of companies, owners of, owners of businesses that were like, I'm in for 5K, I'm in for 10K type of thing. Now, are they just talking? Is this real? I don't, I don't know. We'll see, but.

• 15:50Sam Parr?

  I think it was cool. I mean, the, the little video that we had reached 100,000 people, I think, across a couple of different platforms. So it was cool. And what we decided, the takeaway from this is we gotta do viral clips all the time. We gotta, we gotta be like Obama.

• 16:06Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. It's not even a conversation. This is now just a collection of clips.

• 16:10Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 16:11Shaan Puri?

  And the clip, the clip had 60,000 views too, your Twitter clip of you talking about it.

• 16:15Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Sam Parr?

  Well, the shitty part is that it's you talking about it and me looking at, just like it kept showing my face and you're talking the whole time and I'm just-

• 16:25Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that's the way the world goes. You put the white man's face up there, the brown guy's just in the back coming up with ideas and, and handing them over.

• 16:32Sam Parr?

  That's why they get our voices confused. Cause they say I look like a bro, but I talk like a nerd and you look like a nerd, but talk like a bro.

• 16:39Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that was the most spot on. I wasn't even, I was like, I'm not mad at all. That is so accurate and um, you know, I makes, now I understand why people keep saying this thing that they get us confused. It makes total sense.

• 16:51Sam Parr?

  I get it now. Um, let's talk about sex. Um, you have something on here and you, before we get into it, I want to tell you a fun fact. So we have this list where Sean and I list ideas. He has one thing and it says, um, why aren't young people having sex? And what are the opportunities here? And apparently 31% of men, 18 and 24 were sexually inactive before COVID.

• 17:15Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 17:15Sam Parr?

  Inactive. Um, and the tweet was from a guy named Nat Allison, um, who does a bunch of cool stuff. The tweet's not there anymore for some reason. Um, or at least I can't see it.

• 17:26Shaan Puri?

  Canceled probably. Can't say, you can't say men anymore.

• 17:29Sam Parr?

  So this guy Nat is really interesting. His name's Nat Allison. Uh, Google him. He's got like a cool website. He owns this agency business. Did you know that this guy, so he's interested in this because he owns this thing called like, um, I'll have to look up what it's called, but it's a Kegel app. Do you know what a Kegel is?

• 17:47Shaan Puri?

  I do know what a Kegel is. It is the like, exercise you do with your private parts.

• 17:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So basically it, it makes it so you don't premature ejaculate. And I think women do it too. You know, I don't know.

• 18:03Shaan Puri?

  I think women do it because it like, it can increase like the pleasure, but also I think it's just healthy for you to do. Like, it's just like a, it's just like a movement that's good for you. I guess. I don't know.

• 18:14Sam Parr?

  And this guy, his name is Eliason, Nat Eliason. He has a, an app called a, uh, I, I'll look it up what it's called.

• 18:21Shaan Puri?

  It should be called squeeze. Cause to do it, to do a Kegel, you're basically trying to like, you know, for a guy, you're basically trying to like flex your balls. That's the best way I could describe it. And, and for a girl, I'm sure there's, you know, the, the equivalent, but I don't know what his app is called.

• 18:36Sam Parr?

  It's called stamina, stamina. I don't know what the play on words is. Anyway, it walks you through how to do these Kegel exercises and it makes like a hundred K a year. He just made it one time and it just ranks. What? It's a crazy, interesting thing. Kegel exercise. I never, I never knew that was a thing. Uh, go ahead.

• 18:57Shaan Puri?

  Um, okay. So, so we've talked about this before and before when we said, uh, I think you actually were the, were the original person that kind of rant about this. You were like, dude, kids aren't having sex. You're like, I went to this, you know, people make funny for the hot dog stand thing. They're like, we get it. You used to own a hot dog stand. The other story that I've, I've heard you tell a number of times, cause it's very entertaining. And I think it gets you hyped up is you went to some camp and they had a bunch, they had like a Gen Z, like you went to some summit and they had a Gen Z analyst there. And the Gen Z analyst was like, hey, all the kids are depressed and not having sex. And then you were like, dude, what's going on? And you talked about replica, which was this app, messaging app where you message like a virtual girlfriend.

• 19:38Shaan Puri?

  And I tried it out. You've tried it out. Um, after you told me about it, I went and downloaded it and it was okay. It was interesting. There's definitely a bunch of people who are really into this. It's like this AI virtual girlfriend, but I have a different slant to it that I want to bring up here. So.

• 19:52Sam Parr?

  And by the way, this whole sex thing, this has been a problem in Japan, I think for years.

• 19:57Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. Yeah, there's like, you know, the sexless generation or something they they call it like. Okay, so I want to actually talk about a company that's based in Austin, right where you're right where you are. You might be able to see it if you look out the window. It's called Interactive Life Forms LLC. You know these guys?

• 20:13Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, I I know where their building is. I've seen their building.

• 20:16Shaan Puri?

  Do you know what they make?

• 20:17Sam Parr?

  No, in interactive, do they make sex dolls?

• 20:20Shaan Puri?

  Interactive Life Forms. This is the maker of the fleshlight. And so I wanted to tell you about this. So I did a little research. I got a message from a founder of a tech company. Uh, I won't say his name because he said, no, uh, he said, don't say his name, but he messaged me and he goes, dude, idea. Modern fleshlights. And I was like, what? He goes fleshlights and he breaks. He broke it down for me. He goes. The um, the sex toy market is bigger than you think. He goes, uh, female sex toys like a dildo or vibrator are on the rise. And there's this big like, kind of like anti stigma, like people trying to remove the stigma around it.

• 20:59Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't know if you've seen any of this, but it's like, kind of the feminist movement. Um, they call it. They call it sex positivity, which is basically like, hey, sex doesn't need to be taboo. It doesn't need to be stigma. Um, it's okay to have sex. That doesn't make you like, you know, a bad person or something like that. And so there's this sex positivity movement and with that has been this big boom in sales of sex toys, primarily female sex toys. So I started looking at the most popular male sex toy, which is the fleshlight. And so here's some information about the fleshlight.

• 21:30Shaan Puri?

  It was started by this guy, Steve Schubin, and this guy's super interesting. He basically, he's a he's one of 13 kids. He uh, go, he plays college football, then he goes into the army, then he comes back and he's a police officer with the SWAT team in LA. And then he like retires from SWAT when he's like 30 something because he's like. I love being in the police force, but um, it doesn't pay well. So I'm going to start a business and his wife is a pro tennis player. So this is, he's got this hot tennis player wife and he's like, I'm going to start a business. He doesn't know what he's going to start.

• 22:03Sam Parr?

  And by the way, do you know who that hot wife and Steve Schubin's son is?

• 22:08Shaan Puri?

  No, who?

• 22:09Sam Parr?

  Aubrey Marcus, the founder of Onnit.

• 22:12Shaan Puri?

  Oh, no way.

• 22:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And he

• 22:15Shaan Puri?

  co-founded Joe Rogan.

• 22:17Sam Parr?

  Yes, because Fleshlight was Joe Rogan's first sponsor that Aubrey secured.

• 22:22Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. Okay, so I'll get into that. That's I think you're a part of this. So, um, so, so years go by, he does nothing. Then they're in their 40s. Um, Steve's wife gets pregnant and the doctor tells him, hey, you're in your 40s. So this is kind of like an at-risk pregnancy. Um, so you can't, uh, you can't be having sex. And he's like, okay, doc, like, you know, what do you want me to do? I'm a 6'3" red-blooded American. What, what am I supposed to do? And so, um, he starts thinking about it and he goes, why isn't there a, um, why isn't there a, a, a sex toy for men? And so he, he originally plans to make a mannequin. And in fact, in 1998, he gets a patent for a mannequin with sexual application.

• 23:05Shaan Puri?

  So it's basically like a doll that he wants to make. So he's trying to make this doll and he puts in 50K and he starts working on this doll. And he's, he's trying to blend all these different polymers. How do you get this skin feel of this doll? How do you get the flesh to feel like flesh? How do you get it to look like a doll, feel like a doll, uh, feel like a human? And, um, and he makes it a family business. So he brings his sons into the, to the table. They get a whiteboard out and they start, uh, brainstorming together as a family, which I find hilarious, uh, because, you know, in my family, this is not a, this is not a business we can start together. So he, he keeps going. Two years go by. He's put in a quarter million dollars now. He's sold zero, uh, zero, zero product so far, and he keeps trying to make this full body doll.

• 23:47Shaan Puri?

  And he meets a guy one day, a friend of his and his friends like, hey, um, I think what you're doing is great. There's this weird taboo around this, but why not? More pleasure in the world. What's the problem? So he says, um, will you give me one? I'll, I'll buy one off you. And he says, cool. What's your address? I'll send you the doll. And he's like, no, dude, no way. I can't bring that doll into my house. He's like, just take out the part that's like the vagina of the doll and send me that, like put it in a little box and I might, my wife won't see it and, uh, just send me that. And so he's like, dude, if my friend who wants this won't like can't buy this doll. This doll is dead. So that's why he pivoted from the doll to just the, just the like, you know, just the, the organ part of it, just a single piece, one component. And so he's like, okay, how do we brand this? So him and his sons are brainstorming and they're like,

• 24:32Shaan Puri?

  what do guys like? Guys like tools. Okay, this thing's kind of like a flashlight. Okay, we'll call this the fleshlight. So that's how it gets its name during that process. And so he

• 24:43Sam Parr?

  And this was like a father-son project?

• 24:45Shaan Puri?

  Father-son project, multiple

• 24:46Sam Parr?

  How weird, man.

• 24:47Shaan Puri?

  And so now years have gone by, they've put in over $2 million and this guy believes so much in this thing. He ramps up production. He's pumping out 1,200 units a day before they've sold anything. Cause he's like, the world is gonna love this. They are gonna buy this thing. And so he goes all in on this to, to meet this, you know, future demand. And turns out they actually did it. So the fleshlight now, these guys do, I believe about a hundred million dollars in revenue. It's definitely above 50. It's, they don't report it, but it, to me, I did some sleuthing and I think it's a hundred million dollar a year company. Over a hundred employees. They basically dominate the market for, for, for male sex toys now.

• 25:28Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, you know, this guy who went all in on this thing, it ended up being a successful family business, which I think is, you know, just a heartwarming story.

• 25:37Sam Parr?

  What a crazy story. And, and I'd heard a little bit about it, but I didn't realize, I didn't know all those details, but

• 25:44Shaan Puri?

  By the way, this is, this is the best part of the whole story. So he, he opens up a facility in Austin. So it's manufactured near you. Um, then he has a one in Spain and he has one somewhere else in Asia, I think. And he has so much like, like manufacturing capacity. So what do they do with the excess capacity when they, when they have a little extra? Guess what they bake? They make prosthetics for elephants who have had their legs blown off in the, you know, from, from where there's mines in, in, in Southeast Asia. Um, so they're, they are the top maker of elephant prosthetics in Southeast Asia. That's their backup. That's their side business.

• 26:21Sam Parr?

  What got you interested in this?

• 26:24Shaan Puri?

  Uh, well, when this guy said it, I was like, you know, the founder who messaged me, he, you know, this is, we're gonna, might have to bleep this, but he goes, dude, every guy jacks off. There's gotta be a market. What if you, he's like, what if this, he's like, I don't own this product. You don't own this product. He goes, but what if this thing made it 10 times better? Isn't that crazy that there's still a taboo around this? That's gonna change, dude. The sex positivity thing for women, it's gonna affect men. I bet you, you can make a modern day D to C version of the fleshlight. And so I started thinking about it and started looking up, okay, how big is this? How big is this industry? And it is a pretty big industry, like they do, like the sex toy industry itself is about $20 billion a year.

• 27:01Sam Parr?

  What percentages to, to men?

• 27:03Shaan Puri?

  So women, so this is kind of, I was trying to figure out the sales difference. So it's most, it's dominated by female, um, sales. So the fleshlight is the biggest of males, but, uh, the, the female industry is much bigger. About 65% of women say that they have used one. There was a stat that said 50% of male, men said that they've used one, which I don't believe. I don't, I know a lot of dudes, I haven't heard one ever talk about this, so maybe it's just happening on the download.

• 27:28Sam Parr?

  A sex toy?

• 27:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Sam Parr?

  I've never, I've never had one conversation with a friend.

• 27:33Shaan Puri?

  Not a single. Yeah. So, so, yeah. So I don't know if I believe that stat, but, um, basically the European market is bigger than the American market. Like places like Italy, it's like super common, apparently they're, you know, free love. Places, the fastest growing markets right now are India and China, where it's the most taboo. But what's happened is because it's all gone to e-commerce and the e-commerce companies are using very discreet packaging. Like they send it to you and it looks like one thing, but inside is another. And so that's the like, that's where this thing is growing. And so there's a bunch of startups in this space as well that are, um, doing like 15 million a year, like Love Honey. I like, just, just check out this traffic. So, uh, the top, the top website for this, the top sort of Amazon for this thing is called Adam and Eve.

• 28:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I was just, I was just looking at Adam and Eve, uh, cause they have stores all over San Francisco.

• 28:23Shaan Puri?

  They, they have about eight million visitors a month to their e-commerce store, which is a huge e-commerce store. Love Honey is about four million to their store. And what's interesting is there's all these problems, all this friction in trying to build one of these companies because Stripe won't let you take payments.

• 28:41Sam Parr?

  Why wouldn't Stripe let you take payments for a dildo?

• 28:43Shaan Puri?

  They say, they say, we don't, um, we do not do any sexual products. So that's so you can use Shopify, but Shopify uses Stripe. And so you can't do Shopify, basically, because Stripe won't allow it. So Adam and Eve, Love Honey, these companies, they can't, they can't process on Stripe. And so there's an opportunity, I think, for, you know, building Stripe for Vice products because cannabis can't use Stripe and neither can any sex products, porn can't use Stripe. And so if, you know, just those three industries alone, that's like multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of turnover. And so who's building Stripe for Vice? I don't know. I want to go, I want to go look into that. Another one of these like

• 29:23Shaan Puri?

  opportunities is is that you can build a brand that figures out a new form of marketing because you can't advertise on Facebook or Instagram or any like kind of display network that's mainstream for these products. And so I was looking into how do they get around this? And I was curious, how would you get around this if you were trying to market one of these products? It's an interesting sort of like job interview question I would ask somebody.

• 29:51Sam Parr?

  Well, I would write articles on like, you write articles that are, yeah, so you have to write, let me, all right. So if we're talking about like a vibrator, you write an article about like sexual health, I guess, or I don't know, whatever. I mean, I would have to, I would have to do research. What, what, a woman who is about to buy this, what is she, what type of content interests her? And I would write that article and I would display it on Outbrain or I would display it on, I don't know, where would I display it? It's hard.

• 30:23Shaan Puri?

  So I looked into how these guys are doing it. And I think there's, there's three interesting.

• 30:27Sam Parr?

  Pornhub, you gotta go, you can do Pornhub.

• 30:28Shaan Puri?

  So they use the adult ad networks like Traffic Junkie and Exo Click. So they advertise on porn sites, basically. That's a good, that's an easy one, pretty straightforward. The other thing that they do is they they do heavy like content. So so even though you can't advertise on on Facebook, and you can you're kind of limited on Google, you can do it for certain keywords and for just stuff that people searching for. So if people are searching for what is the best one I should buy, what you know, reviews. And so you remember how the cat, the mattress company Casper was buying up the mattress review websites? And then like promoting Casper. So that's what these guys will do as well. They'll buy up the review sites.

• 31:08Shaan Puri?

  And then they'll just put their products as the best reviewed product on there. And they'll say, this is, you know, I'm an affiliate for this for this company. So that's one way. And then I thought the most innovative one. And they also do like kind of direct. So like you were saying, Fleshlight was one of the first sponsors on Joe Rogan. They'll do that. They'll go direct to podcasts or newsletters that are willing to take them as a sponsor, and they'll they'll go for it there. But the last one I thought was interesting was what Fleshlight did. This is a little bit, this whole segment's a little bit X-rated, you know.

• 31:39Shaan Puri?

  You know, apologies if you're listening to this with kids in the car, you know, I hope you've skipped forward at this point. But basically, what Fleshlight did was they wanted celebrity sponsors. So what they did was, you know, Nike goes to LeBron James and says, okay, we want you to sponsor our stuff.

• 31:56Sam Parr?

  So are they going to get women to be the?

• 31:58Shaan Puri?

  They got they went to famous models and porn stars, and they created molds of them. And so it's like, you can buy the, I forgot the, I looked up the chart of who was the top selling SKU of that. And so there's a woman Kayla or Shayla or something like that. I don't remember her name was, but she's some model, she's some porn star. I don't know who she is, but she's famous. And they they they bring them in, they do a cast, a cast mold of her body. And then they turn that into a product, and then she can sell that product to her fans. And so I was thinking, if you were going to do this now, you have OnlyFans where, you know, I think a billion, billion plus dollars is being paid out to their creators.

• 32:37Shaan Puri?

  I would go to OnlyFans creators and I would do this, I would do that model for them. I think that would be probably the strongest distribution tactic you could get.

• 32:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, what a fascinating thing. I

• 32:51Sam Parr?

  Would you ever, I would invest in this, but I wouldn't, I would never work on this.

• 32:55Shaan Puri?

  I would never work on this. I have zero interest in this from, from, you know, like to actually like pursue it. But I do think it's one of those things that nobody talks about. And so because nobody talks about it, it's both interesting and it's surprising when you look into it, how this whole system actually works. So I like, you know, just like I love the Silk Road, but I would never go on the Silk Road and buy drugs. But I like to learn about it and see how it worked and how big it was and who was behind it and how, how they kept it stealthy. Like that's fascinating to me. Just like I like watching prison shows, but I'm not trying to go murder anybody. I like watching, you know, bank heists, but I'm not planning to rob anybody. That's how I am with this, these types of products.

• 33:32Sam Parr?

  So at the Adam and Eve store, what was it called? Uh, yeah, Adam and Eve stores. Um, I saw the, we had so many locations in San Francisco. We probably had three or four or five different locations.

• 33:44Sam Parr?

  It's a pretty huge business, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue currently owned by, I believe, a private equity company. That is also another fascinating business. Did you research that?

• 33:55Shaan Puri?

  Uh, no, I didn't research that one, but I found one other, two other like interesting things about how they, how they market these things. I thought was pretty clever. Uh, it just shows, you know, entrepreneurial creativity here. All right. So, uh, there's one company that's doing these like, uh, you know, like the, the sort of MLM model, which, which is, uh, you get one person who's kind of a seller for you and they have a party. So this is like the old Tupperware parties. Um, they call them passion parties for this. And so they have women invite their friends over and they're called passion parties where they show the different toys and what they could do or whatever. I don't know how this, this sounds like the most awkward party to me, but apparently it's working.

• 34:33Shaan Puri?

  The second one that I thought was super interesting was, um, they basically, there was a company called, um, Diamond Products. And they make, they make, uh, some brand of something. I have no idea. Um, and they couldn't advertise in any traditional channel. So they went and they bought, um, Sir Richard's Condoms Company. So they said, oh, condoms are allowed to be advertised on TV and on, on, on, uh, different websites. It's more loose to, uh, to. Like Trojan, right? We've all seen Trojan ads on TV, for example. So if the restrictions are looser there, they went and bought that company. And then on their website, they just, they upsell other products, basically. And so he, he went and bought this company because he goes, they're sold in Whole Foods.

• 35:15Shaan Puri?

  He's like, this makes it so easy for me to advertise because now I own this little thing. He's like, it's my Trojan horse. Ha, ha, ha. Like, you know, this is how I advertise my, my sex products company. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. And, you know, I think if you did this with Instagram models and OnlyFans, you could basically just copy the, um, what's that watch brand, MVMT? You could copy the, the, the movement, movement watches, brand, uh, model and try to, you know, they, they went to a hundred million in sales and watches. I bet you could do the same, uh, using their influencer strategy.

• 35:45Sam Parr?

  Dude, how interesting. Like I, uh, I love learning from these types of people. I, I don't even like, um, I don't even like going to this. I went to the Fleshlight website. I don't even like going to that. I think it's.

• 35:56Shaan Puri?

  Close the tab.

• 35:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's weird. I'm on my work computer, just so anyone, uh, at HubSpot listener.

• 36:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I apologize. My, uh, my, my wife's dad listens to the podcast. I, I'm just going to tell him, hey, don't, don't listen to this one. I apologize if he listens.

• 36:09Sam Parr?

  Well, it was a fairly academic discussion about something.

• 36:12Shaan Puri?

  Well, the worst part is now my, now I'm getting retargeted like crazy because I was doing research on this for the pod. And now all my ads are completely, uh, messed up.

• 36:22Sam Parr?

  Well, do you want to talk about another interesting person?

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 36:26Sam Parr?

  Or do you want to talk about an idea?

• 36:27Shaan Puri?

  Person.

• 36:28Sam Parr?

  Make this a, okay, we're going to do, uh, an interesting person. Okay. There's this guy who, we're going to do Billy of the week here with this guy. And I, by the way, I think we're going to do this. We've discussed doing this every Friday. Maybe we will, but Google this guy.

• 36:40Shaan Puri?

  We need like a jingle for the Billy of the week. It needs to be like, you know, the Billy of the week. Somebody make us a little jingle for that.

• 36:47Sam Parr?

  That would be pretty cool. Um, we do need that. Google Brad Kelly and make sure you spell it like B R A D. So Brad, space. K E L L E Y. Okay. If you're on your phone, do it. Brad Kelly. Now you're going to see a picture of a guy with a red beard. You see the red beard?

• 37:04Shaan Puri?

  I see it.

• 37:05Sam Parr?

  And then two over, you're going to see a picture of an old guy with a longer, like, uh, he looks like, uh, like Mark Twain.

• 37:12Shaan Puri?

  Yep, see it, black and white.

• 37:13Sam Parr?

  Okay, so that's the same guy. The photos are just, he's just older now. So, this guy, he's so interesting to me for a couple of different reasons. So, this guy's name is Brad Kelly. At this point, he's probably in his 60s. And he's known as the man with a million acres. That was a headline that was written in the New York Times about him. And they wrote it about him because he is one of the largest landowners in America. At one point, he was number three or number four. And he's kind of known for being incredibly reclusive. So, he doesn't do any interviews. He doesn't do anything like that. But he's bad to the bone. He's a really interesting guy. And I read a little bit about him, and I've kind of got a feel for this guy. And he's so intriguing to me. So, he was born, you know, he's 65 years older-ish.

• 37:56Sam Parr?

  He was born in Kentucky, went to college in Kentucky, but at age 19, dropped out because he started buying warehouses. And he started making enough money buying and leasing out warehouses that he goes, "All right, I'm gonna do this. I don't need school anymore." And eventually, he started renting them out to people who were building stuff, so creating little miniature factories. He would fix them up and lease them to people. And eventually, he saw that people were using them to store tobacco. And one of his tendons moved out, and he got whole, they left a machine that turned tobacco and like pumped them into cigarettes, or you know, like a rolling machine or something like that. And he was like, "Well, I got this machine. Let's try it." And so, he started making cheap cigarettes. And eventually, he rolled, he made it a proper company, and he called it Commonwealth Brands.

• 38:41Sam Parr?

  And if you Google Commonwealth Brands, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I recognize some of the brands. They're like, I think maybe one-

• 38:47Shaan Puri?

  Looks like he has like 15 or so cigarette brands, is that right?

• 38:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like, I think Parliament's, that's like, when I was a kid, that was like, we would joke, like if someone smokes Parliament, that meant they were like a bro kid. But he made cheap cigarettes. And after 10 years, he sold this cigarette company for a billion dollars. And I hate smoking, and I don't think it's cool to smoke. And he doesn't die there. But he didn't hide that. He goes, "I've never defended smoking, and I hope that it will be phased out of society. But I did it because, you know, I made a living doing, you know, it made a living for me." And using almost all of-

• 39:20Shaan Puri?

  I love when billionaires say they're just trying to make a living. It's like, no, you made like a billion livings. That's a lot of-

• 39:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he made a lot of livings. And with all this money, he did a couple interesting things. The first thing that he did, well, he didn't do it first, but the first interesting thing is he bought Lonely Planet. You know what Lonely Planet is?

• 39:37Shaan Puri?

  I've heard that name. What is that? Is that a dating site? That's a dating.

• 39:39Sam Parr?

  I bet you if you look at your, uh, your book collection, you might have a Lonely Planet book. It's a travel website and book company.

• 39:46Shaan Puri?

  Oh, okay.

• 39:47Sam Parr?

  And it was a big, it was a really big deal for many years. And then when digital came along, it got crushed. And he bought Lonely Planet for $70 million and he had us, and they probably had 300 employees. And he had a kid that he liked, somehow met this young guy who was 24 and he put him as CEO. And they never signed a contract. They just shook hands and they go, all right, you're CEO now. You know, talk to me if you need me.

• 40:08Shaan Puri?

  Such a Kentucky thing to do, to shake hands.

• 40:12Sam Parr?

  And this kid ran it and it didn't do so hot. I mean, if like, it would have been cool if there was a better ending to that part of the story. It either to a combination of the 24 year old sucking and COVID, they sold it, uh, for like 50 million. So he didn't make money on it. Um, but what he did with the rest of his money is he bought ranches and leased them back to the owners. And they make a little bit of profit, but not a significant amount of profit. And at this point, he owns, um, over a million acres in America, which is a huge, huge, huge amount. Making him in 2012, the fourth largest landowner in America. The guy never does interviews. He, you can't find him if you want to. He's really hard to find.

• 40:55Sam Parr?

  The only reason people really truly know about him is at one point he sold one of his ranches for $400 million. Really interesting guy. I like him because he's, uh, I think that like, I get caught in this world on Twitter of like, oh, building, building public, you know, what's your MRR? I gotta go to executive coaching. And it's so nice to hear from a guy. This guy actually seems like a pretty thoughtful guy, but he definitely gives off the redneck vibe. Obviously he's highly intelligent, but they say that like, he goes to his ranches and he likes to drink bourbons, bourbon and wear a kilt.

• 41:34Sam Parr?

  So he's like kind of a wild guy.

• 41:36Shaan Puri?

  He's into some weird shit. All right.

• 41:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but pretty interesting guy. And I wanted to bring this guy up because I bet most people have never heard of him. But so interesting. He also owns, do you know what Kentucky Downs is?

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  The horse, horse track?

• 41:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he owns that.

• 41:51Shaan Puri?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:51Sam Parr?

  And so he just owns all types of real estate. And that's what he put all of his money into. Very interesting person.

• 41:58Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, this is, this is cool. So why were you saying the part about people who have like executive coaches and what was the contrast there? So explain that one?

• 42:09Sam Parr?

  Like, I see people who've got like small ass companies who like are not even they're like barely just started and they're like tweeting out like leadership quotes or they're talking about like how they need to be more inclusive at their company or this and that. And I just get sick of this hype thing. And I see all people like, oh, building public. And I'm guilty of all this as well. But like all the, and we're part of the hype cycle, right? We're media. But it's cool to see someone who you've never heard of, who just is anonymous and shuts the fucks up and just works and does cool stuff and has a cool life. And it's entirely like, you know, everyone's like, I got in a fight on Twitter about people which about buying domain names. You think this guy knows how to buy a domain name? In one of the interviews, he said he's, he doesn't know how to use email.

• 42:54Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, this guy's not vegan.

• 42:56Sam Parr?

  Yes, this guy. No, this guy eats vegans.

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:02Shaan Puri?

  This guy is made of leather. Yeah, okay. So you just like that these like kind of like a tough guy, rough guy, business guy, doesn't give a fuck. And everybody else, you know, makes such a big deal of little things is kind of.

• 43:15Sam Parr?

  I just think it's cool to see, to hear different perspectives. And I'm sure that he does a lot of bad stuff. I mean, he owned a cigarette company, right? Like, that's kind of pretty shitty. But it was just cool. It's cool to have a different perspective. And this guy, if you Google him, I'm pretty sure there's only three pictures that I've, I've researched this guy a lot. I, I've only found three pictures of him. And he's worth three or $4 billion.

• 43:40Shaan Puri?

  I like it. All right. He is indeed the Billy of the week. Um, I wonder, I wonder who, I wonder how people will, will react to this guy. Cause I think some people are like so anti cigarettes that they're like, you are, you know, you, that you're saying that you, you, you kind of idolizing this guy who is a, uh, you know, who did bad things like, you know, like a warlord almost. And so I don't know, you're, you were the one who also said you would not invest in jewel, right? Was it you?

• 44:07Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Look, I'm not, I'm not defending this person's actions. I think, but I think that no matter how evil or horrible someone is, there's, you can always find something interesting. Maybe saying admirable is a bit of a stretch, but you can always find something interesting, no matter how bad someone is. And I don't think this guy is necessarily a bad guy, but yeah, he, I mean, he fucking, he's so poison. Yeah. It's pretty.

• 44:27Shaan Puri?

  Right. See, I think of it, I think, I don't know, maybe I'm a little disconnected from reality, but for me, I'm like,

• 44:34Shaan Puri?

  I don't like movies where everybody is a good guy. I would not play a game, a video game where you just walk around as a good Samaritan. Like those aren't fun to me. And I think that the real world has all kinds of people, shapes, colors, beliefs, all, all kinds of different things. And I'm interested in the variety of ways that people live their life. And I'm glad that people live their life doing all these different things, even though a lot of them are like villains or a lot of them, I'm not saying this guy's a villain, but like, I think that's just the way the world is. And I think it's crazy to believe that the world shouldn't be that way or won't be that way. Where people are going to live their life doing different things. Maybe this guy likes to drink bourbon and wear a kilt on a farm that he owns like, all right, great.

• 45:18Shaan Puri?

  I'm glad that character exists. I'm glad that, that, that, you know, I'm glad these characters exist. I think that, um, most people will not feel that way. Most people will say, well, if this person's a bad guy, um, you know, he shouldn't exist. And I don't know. I, I find that to be, that's just not the way I think about it.

• 45:35Sam Parr?

  I believe every great man or every great woman is also a bad man. So what I mean by that is if you are at all, if you're considered great at anything, or one of the best, inevitably you have many enemies because you can't make everyone happy.

• 45:49Shaan Puri?

  Right. Now, by the way, can you tweet that out? So I'm doing this thing. I'm getting, uh, behind me, one of the things that's going to go behind me is I'm, I'm getting these laser etched signs that are tweets. Basically it's called laser tweets.com. And so, uh,

• 46:04Shaan Puri?

  You could basically get any tweet turned into a wooden, laser etched sign. And I'm gonna put, I'm gonna hang a couple of my favorite quotes and tweets behind me. And one of them, one of my favorites is every great man is also a bad man. And so I need you to tweet that out so that I can do it. But what you can't do is you can't, or you can do person. If you, if you want to not make it gender specific here, but I need you to tweet that out so I can, I can get that one made. You're gonna, you're gonna get on my wall.

• 46:29Sam Parr?

  I don't think I made, I think I made up that phrasing, but I, I read it in a book and I don't remember exactly how they phrased it, but that's how I phrased it. But I believe it to be true. And dude, I did so much research on this guy that I went and I went to land forums. So a really interesting research tactic that you should do is you type in whatever you're searching for, like fleshlight, and then you type in forum.

• 46:51Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 46:52Sam Parr?

  And then you are brought to user generated content of message boards and what people are saying. Or you could do the same thing, but you just type in the word Reddit. It's pretty sick. And I went to land forums where this guy bought people's land and they go, yeah, you know, or someone was like, hey, this guy named Brad Kelly offered to buy my land. Who sold to him? And people were like, yeah, we sold to him. He's fine enough, done, but doesn't bother us and offered us a fair deal. And so they're like, well, and we all, and people said, well, and we read about him doing cigarettes and that kind of sucks, but he's never caused us a problem. So anyway, every great man is also a bad man.

• 47:28Shaan Puri?

  I like it. Did you want to do any, any of these other ones or are we saving them?

• 47:32Sam Parr?

  Uh, I think this one should, they should be saved.

• 47:36Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I have one quick one because I don't really have much to say, but we talked.

• 47:39Sam Parr?

  Or we could do the NDVC one.

• 47:41Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I'm gonna do a one quick plug for these guys that took an idea we talked about and they made it. So we talked about levels that FYI, which is a salary comparison website. We had a whole episode about like open salaries and should you or should you not transparent data, how that helps, blah, blah, blah. And we said, hey, levels does this for the tech industry where you can go see, all right, if I'm a Facebook product manager, level five, what will I make if I live in Seattle? What will I make if I live in San Francisco? What's the benchmark? What are the, what is some data? So I know if I'm getting, if I'm getting hosed, if they gave me a fair job offer or not fair job offer. And so we said, dude, somebody should do this for other industries because this is awesome. Why isn't this happening in others? So these guys made medlevels.fyi and it's basically doctor pay. Um, and so they, if you go to it.

• 48:26Shaan Puri?

  You can see they don't have a ton of data yet, but they're getting some, they're getting doctors to, to put in how much they're getting paid based on where they live, what type of doctor they are. I think it's great. Super simple. It's just basically an air table displayed on a website. So really easy to build and shout out.

• 48:42Sam Parr?

  No, it's a Google forums, I think.

• 48:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm just saying like in theory, right? It's like such a simple, simple product to do. So medlevels dot F Y I. Good, good job by those guys. If you're a doctor listening, go put your shit in there.

• 48:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool. I was looking at this. All right. We'll wrap it up by talking about one more thing and maybe we should put this in the beginning, but let me ask you, how has your angel investing gone so far?

• 49:06Shaan Puri?

  I'll tell you in 10 years. That's the problem with angel investing.

• 49:09Sam Parr?

  But how many deals have you invested in?

• 49:12Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I think a little under 20, maybe like 18, something like that. 18 companies we've invested in, deployed about, I don't know, a million and a half, $2 million, something like that.

• 49:21Sam Parr?

  And do you feel confident that you have some winners?

• 49:25Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, definitely. There's some winners. Um, now we'll see. I think anything, anything can happen, but I would say I'd be surprised if out of these 18, if we don't have, you know, two companies that are worth a billion dollars or more, I'd be surprised.

• 49:40Sam Parr?

  So, wow, that's pretty sick. So we, um, a few weeks ago, I tweeted out something that Andrew Chen said, basically, I asked Andrew Chen, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, what his advice to me for angel investing was, and he told me his opinion and I tweeted that out. People shit on me, even though I was like, I'm not saying this, I'm just, or I'm just like.

• 50:00Shaan Puri?

  I'm the messenger.

• 50:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like I'm just like reporting on someone interesting's opinion, but I did tend to agree on a couple of the things. And one of them was that there's this narrative that you, there's this narrative of people who hate V C. And they're like, I would rather grow slower. And it's like, okay, that's cool. Do that. But in order.

• 50:22Shaan Puri?

  And, and they also say. Profits matter, you know, like, and they love to mock Silicon Valley companies. They're like, dude, these guys, you know, they don't know anything about profits. I'm sorry, I'm just over here running a profitable business, just growing steady every year. And so they like to get on that kind of high horse.

• 50:38Sam Parr?

  Which is crazy, because like, both can exist and be wonderful. But there was this guy, who I really like, and I don't mean to shit on him at all. It was called NDVC, and it was, it was kind of weird. I don't know why it was a venture capital firm, because its whole shtick was basically, we invest in bootstrap businesses that want to grow slowly. They didn't exactly say slowly, but it was for bootstrapped companies, which is, again, a little bit of an oxymoron. Why is a bootstrap company going to be taking venture capital?

• 51:10Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 51:11Sam Parr?

  But a lot of people really liked it. And the guy who ran it, I forget his name, I met with him, awesome guy, and they went out of business this week.

• 51:18Shaan Puri?

  Bryce, I think is his name.

• 51:20Sam Parr?

  Bryce, I like Bryce. Bryce is a good guy, but the model didn't work. And I wanted to bring this up, because something that Andrew said was, he said two things. He was said, invest in quantity. So just kind of throw money at a bunch of stuff. So like, anything that seems promising, just kind of mindlessly invest in it. And second, make sure it's growing 3X a year. If it's not, then it's not good. And a lot of people didn't like when I said that. And they didn't like it, I think, because it kind of hurt their feelings of like, well, you're saying I'm not worthy of venture capital. And the answer is, is, yeah, you're not.

• 51:54Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 51:54Sam Parr?

  You're not. And but that's okay. That doesn't, like, you shouldn't be offended.

• 51:59Shaan Puri?

  Right. You don't have to shut down your business. That just means this type of asset, this type of venture, you know, venture capital is chasing a certain profile of company, and you may not fit that profile.

• 52:10Sam Parr?

  And by the way, I think that most people, I bet you, I mean, this sounds so douchey. I bet you I've made significantly more money than a lot of people who have raised.

• 52:20Shaan Puri?

  Absolutely.

• 52:21Sam Parr?

  And so.

• 52:22Shaan Puri?

  I was telling somebody this the other day. I was like, I was like, you know, media companies, we're talking about media companies. And, you know, you guys just sold your, you guys are a media company. And it wasn't the biggest exit ever. It's not like, you know, some insane thing. But I was like, dude, he, I don't, how much did you raise total? Like a million and a half dollars, $2 million, something like that?

• 52:41Sam Parr?

  A million.

• 52:41Shaan Puri?

  A million dollars, right. So it took so little money. And not, so give the, give the profile. It was a million dollars, and it took you how many years from start to finish? Not finished, but liquidity.

• 52:54Sam Parr?

  Start as in we raised money to finish less than five years and I made eight figures.

• 53:02Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. And so, and you owned, you know, majority of the business or whatever. So like, because you didn't have to raise all this money and dilute yourself over and over and over again, from round after round after round. And it's like, there are, if you look at companies that are selling for a billion dollars where the founder owns 4% or 2% or 7%. And, you know, it's not like, and they, and they sweated it for 10 years and every hair on their head is gray because, because of that path. So it doesn't, the size of the exit is not, not linked really to the, to the outcome for the, for the founder themselves.

• 53:35Sam Parr?

  I agree, which proves that we're not, or I know, speaking for myself, and I, I think you, you're not shitting on this, this idea of anti VC, whatever. But this company went out of business and it goes against this narrative of like, if you're gonna give money to venture capital, or companies that fit the profile of VC, you want them to be what many would think or describe as reckless.

• 53:59Shaan Puri?

  Right. And one thing I didn't get, why did they go out of business? So, so basically, they couldn't raise more money was the idea.

• 54:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 54:08Shaan Puri?

  Right? That's how a VC fund goes out of business. And he said in his thing, he's like, we invested in 10 companies or whatever. He gave some numbers. So, so tell me, but he goes, they were all bootstrapped and profitable and they're all still going and they're 40, you know, he said something like, we've invested these, they're all still going, they're all still profitable, but we couldn't raise any more money. I said, what, what do you, I don't understand. What, what is his reason? Why did they go out of business? He, he kind of sounded like he was crying a little bit, like, he was kind of whining because he's like, our LPs didn't like our model. So they pulled the plug because, you know, whatever.

• 54:43Shaan Puri?

  I didn't read the thing very carefully. So you tell me you you into this.

• 54:46Sam Parr?

  No, I mean, yeah.

• 54:47Shaan Puri?

  Why is he saying they failed?

• 54:48Sam Parr?

  I don't think he was whining. I think he was just saying the fact that like, most people don't like this idea. And weren't willing to stick it out. And I don't blame them. Because if you go to indie dot VC, the website, it's a video of a unicorn head on fire. As if like they're anti unicorn. And I in my head, I'm like.

• 55:06Shaan Puri?

  Returns are good. If his returns are good, that every people would still be looking to back the fund because people who invest in.

• 55:12Sam Parr?

  But the returns aren't as good as other stuff like.

• 55:15Shaan Puri?

  So that's what he needs to say. It's not that people don't like this. He needs to say. I was wrong. My returns weren't as good as I thought they would be, and they were not good enough to get more money. Because people invest, I invest in VC funds. I also would invest in real estate, which has a different profile. I'll invest in crypto, which has a different return risk return profile. I invest in many things. And so. That's why I thought it was kind of whining because I didn't, he didn't just say the honest truth. I had this idea that this would be a great way to invest. And my but my returns were actually shitty and therefore I couldn't raise more money. And either that's true, or. His returns were actually good and he sucked at going and getting new investors. I didn't, there's only two ways to go about it, right? Like, I didn't understand. I didn't, I stopped reading because I didn't, he didn't, he wasn't saying the truth, in my opinion.

• 56:00Sam Parr?

  No, I mean, he said the truth. He said that, like, our strategy, a lot of LPs bailed. It costs us 80% of our LP base. They didn't want to come back. And it was just, yeah, the strategy didn't, didn't work in the sense of investors.

• 56:13Shaan Puri?

  Did he post his returns?

• 56:15Sam Parr?

  No.

• 56:16Shaan Puri?

  Okay, that's the thing he needed to say, right? He's saying they didn't like our strategy. It was so. He was, he's kind of just like patting himself on the back, I felt. He's like, they didn't like that we were going against the grain, going against the VC thing, and they had to pull out because of that. It's like, well. Is it that they didn't like what you were doing? Or is it that it wasn't working and the returns weren't very good and they didn't believe the returns were going to be very good? I don't know. I, I'm being harsh on the guy. I don't know the guy, but.

• 56:40Sam Parr?

  No, he's cool. And I'm not bringing this up to show them. I think it's cool. He took a shot. It was a bad shot, though, and that's, that's great, right? You take swings, sometimes you miss.

• 56:49Shaan Puri?

  For sure.

• 56:50Sam Parr?

  But I think, though, it's important, it's important that we look at what this, what's, what does this mean here? And I think that someone like Andrew Chen, who's this. From the outside, you think of him as like an elitist, like went to, I don't know, he just like give this vibe that he's like a, an elitist type of guy. But and, and so, and he kind of represents a lot of the people like him, right? These like VCs who like, oh, like fuck these tech bros. And the reality is those that, that strategy of like doing stuff that appears to be reckless from the outside. It is the right strategy. It just feels really uncomfortable for a lot of people.

• 57:26Shaan Puri?

  Dude, if you, if you, it's, it's a classic, don't hate the player, hate the game. It's not that the, it's not that VCs decided, oh, you know what I'll do? I'm going to invest in a bunch of companies and one or two will return the fund and everything else will go to zero. It's not that they want that, right? That's actually extremely stressful for them. That, hey, if I get into this company that becomes a $10 billion plus company, I'm a hero and I'm the best. And if I just miss them and I invest in a bunch of other good companies that didn't quite get there, I suck and I can't raise my next fund and I'm out of a job. And, um, and so, so it's crazy to me that like, they're not picking this, that just is the nature of the game. And they have to play it if they want to succeed at it. It's like in any game theory.

• 58:11Shaan Puri?

  The game will, the players in the game will eventually find the meta game, the strategy that is the optimal strategy. And if you just, because of your like, you know, your opinion and your personality and your morals don't want to play it, cool, that's fine. But you're just not going to get, you're not going to be playing the optimal strategy. You're going to eventually lose the game. And so I, I think it's crazy that people hate the VCs when it's just, that's the way that innovation works. The innovations that break through become humongous and the innovations that don't become zeros and, or close to zeros. And the, the winners are so big that that's, they dominate all the returns.

• 58:44Sam Parr?

  But then there's this other ground where it's like FVC, which me personally, I'm on that boat. Where I want to be a VC, but I don't want to take VC money. And, and that, that's this other group of people. It's like, dude, they all can exist, like.

• 58:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. And that's what that quote is so insightful, right? Don't hate the player, hate the game. Cool. You can hate the game. That's allowed. That's in the quote. You're allowed to hate the game and say, I'm going to play a different game. No problem. You can play games where you bootstrap, or you don't raise VC money, where you, you don't do business at all. You go be an employee somewhere. No problem. That's always an option.

• 59:15Sam Parr?

  Well, I guess we just did a little rant, but I wanted to bring that up. Um, we'll see if this episode turns out to be anything interesting.

• 59:23Shaan Puri?

  How are you? How we do?

• 59:25Speaker 02

  B plus. I want the graphics guys like slam a big B plus all over the screen.

• 59:31Shaan Puri?

  All right. Why B plus? You gotta give, give the people that your explanation. Why, why, why are you saying what you're saying?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I, it was good research, but it just wasn't as juicy as it could be. It was good. I've never seen Sean more animated than when he talks about flashlights, by the way.

• 59:43Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was super into that, to be honest. I, uh, it got ruined when I went to the website. It's pretty freaking disgusting, but.

• 59:52Sam Parr?

  Did you go to the website?

• 59:53Shaan Puri?

  No, I did all my research, but I didn't go to their website.

• 59:57Sam Parr?

  It's not great. It's pretty gross.

• 1:00:01Sam Parr?

  Um, but no, I think it's interesting. I think what we'll have to do is, um, I think, uh, like, if we did an entire episode on flashlight or entire episode on this guy Brad Kelly, I think it would be crazy fascinating.

• 1:00:15Shaan Puri?

  More? I thought, I thought you were saying I went too much into it.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  No, that the, the flashlight was the best part. I'm just saying you're very animated about it.

• 1:00:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like I would do. And I, I have, I have space, but it's cold. So I have to talk in an animated way to like not freeze my ass off.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Passionate about flashlights. It's okay.

• 1:00:32Sam Parr?

  So I've been listening. I listened to a true crime podcast every night, which is weird that I'm in bed like with my wife about to go to sleep, hearing about like how this guy just like murdered and raped these people. Um, but it's this one lately called Generation Y. It's really popular and all it is, is two guys discussing crimes and mysteries ranging from nine 11 to serial murders to the Bermuda Triangle, all the, all that type of thing. And all they're doing is talking and retelling a story. We should definitely just do that with one interesting person.

• 1:01:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's great. Um, although if it's not true crime, I don't know how interesting people, how interested people would be in it.

• 1:01:11Sam Parr?

  Um, if you told a 60 to 70 to 90 minute story in the same way that you told that flashlight story, um, people would love it. I could tell because I mean, I could, I was enthralled by it.

• 1:01:25Shaan Puri?

  What's the first story we could tell? How could we try it?

• 1:01:30Sam Parr?

  Well, um, one time we talked about this, the French Bill Gates, that, that guy was so intriguing to me.

• 1:01:38Shaan Puri?

  Uh. To do sixty minutes. That's like, you can really only tell like your own story or like some, something you really go or like a, you know, the American Kingpin story. You can like retell it, retell the book basically as a, as a podcast.

• 1:01:49Sam Parr?

  Well, that's what you're doing at the end of the day, which is you're just reading fifteen articles and you're telling the long story about it. And what you could do is, uh, one of us is the more, more researched and the other one listens and asks questions.

• 1:02:05Shaan Puri?

  Okay. All right. I'm down to try it if you have an idea.

• 1:02:07Sam Parr?

  Am I wrong, Abreu?

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  I mean, it could work. I'm just, I don't know how you can make it that exciting. Like true crime, there's suspense, there's mystery, you know, what's gonna happen? I don't, I guess business, maybe like big business scandals you could do that with.

• 1:02:21Shaan Puri?

  No, dude, you do it exactly like you did the fleshlight. The origin stories. Yeah, I think origin stories are good, right? That's what I tried to do with the fleshlight guy. I was like, basically you tell how this thing came to be. Um, so I think you could do it that way.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  It works. I, but I agree with John. I don't know how you get sixty to ninety minutes out of it.

• 1:02:40Shaan Puri?

  I think you basically, yeah, forget the sixty minutes. That doesn't matter. It could be twenty minutes. There's no, no issue, but, it's like just a well-told story, a well-researched and therefore well-told story about something that happened. I honestly know, like for me, I started listening to this YouTube channel that basically is like, it's like book summaries, but, um, actually done good. I actually like it and.

• 1:03:01Sam Parr?

  What's it called?

• 1:03:02Shaan Puri?

  It's called Productivity Game. As a YouTube, it's a YouTube channel with about half a million, I think, subscribers or something like that. Um, I'm like, I could be wrong on that, but it has a lot of subscribers. But I've listened to probably ten of their book summaries of just books I've had, I bought. I just haven't got to. I'm like, do I really want to go read like Made to Stick? Or can I just like watch this seven-minute video and like, oh, those are the four principles of Made to Stick? Cool. I still might read the book, but now I know if it's like interesting or not. And so similarly, I'm reading like, you know, whether it's, um, like, for example, I read this book, PayPal, whatever, the PayPal origin story or whatever. If we just retold that. It's like, you know, just take the book and then turn it into a 20 minute retelling of the story. I think that's pretty, that could be pretty.

• 1:03:45Sam Parr?

  Well, I know that would work.

• 1:03:46Shaan Puri?

  American Kingpin would be great.

• 1:03:47Sam Parr?

  There's this awesome podcast called We Study Billionaires, which sounds lame, but honestly, it's like, you guys know it's, they're huge and it's really good. And they'll read a book on someone or just a long article and just retell the story.

• 1:04:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:04:01Sam Parr?

  It's really good. I love this podcast. It's called The Investors Podcast. You never heard of this? Rethink Pish? Yeah, they're good.

• 1:04:08Shaan Puri?

  I know their, I know their thumbnail, the red thumbnail.

• 1:04:10Sam Parr?

  They're huge. Yeah. Forty million downloads they have, so that would work. Boston fanboys. Um, I guess we're, we should publish us talking right now, but speaking of books, you know what I'm doing is, this isn't the one I'm doing with it. I'm just gonna read one book this year, but I'm gonna study the fuck out of it.

• 1:04:27Sam Parr?

  I'm sick of reading like two books a month and not remembering anything.

• 1:04:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I'm just, for me, like YouTube is just so much better. Like I'm just going deep on like, you know, like Charlie Munger, Peter Lynch YouTube stuff. And I'm just like, watching, watching so many of their videos or listening to their videos and there's just a lot of wisdom in there. And Charlie Munger said this thing, he's like, he's like, I don't want to read the news. He goes, I want to read something that it made sense 30 years ago. It makes sense today. It's gonna make sense 30 years from now. And I'd rather just read that 10 times than read like whatever the latest thing is. And that's kind of what you're saying.

• 1:05:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, I agree. Um, all right. Well,

• 1:05:08Shaan Puri?

  Let's bounce. I'm gonna get my shit set up, uh, by the next podcast better.