Did This Man Just Expose the Silicon Vally Tech Mafia? - Ryan Breslow, Founder of Bolt

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) talk about how to learn any skill, whether Dan Price is legit or a fraud, Dave Friedberg and Cana, and what a chicken wing actually is. They are then joined by Ryan Breslow (@theryanking) of Bolt to talk about the latest controversy surrounding his Twitter thread, and why he's trying to take down what he considers to be silicon valley's tech mafia. ----- * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (00:30) - The Hustle's New Podcast (03:45) - Podcasting and how to learn any skill (07:10) - The Day You Became A Better Writer (10:50) - Maven and Shaan's Power Writing Course (14:30) - Is Dan Price a fraudster? (20:00) - Dave Friedberg and Cana (32:00) - Ryan Breslow joins the show and explains his background (43:45) - The Y Combinator controversy (01:27:45) - Sam and Shaan recap the Ryan interview ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  My motivation here was to open people's eyes to what goes down in Silicon Valley, where it's not all sunshine and rainbows. It is very fierce and there's fierce competition and there's also games that are played with powerful institutions and you know groups of people who you know help each other out.

• 0:36Sam Parr?

  Don't chickens have two wings?

• 0:39Shaan Puri?

  But it's not their actual wing. Hey, what's up, Ryan?

• 0:41Speaker 00

  What's up, Sean, Sam?

• 0:43Sam Parr?

  What is it?

• 0:44Shaan Puri?

  Dude, you can you can settle this for us. So Sam, this is Ryan. He's the founder of Bolt. And we're having a we're just going over this detail. Are chicken wings actually the chicken's wings? Or are they just like the ribs of the chicken?

• 1:00Speaker 00

  I think they're the wings.

• 1:01Sam Parr?

  What's a drumstick?

• 1:03Shaan Puri?

  You mean they're the actual wings? I feel like they're not the wings.

• 1:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Sean, this is like, this is like such a stupid conversation. Of course they are like, what's a drumstick? Isn't drumstick a leg?

• 1:12Shaan Puri?

  Powerful young Ben. Ben, look that up. See if I'm right. I think I think I'm right.

• 1:19Shaan Puri?

  All right. So we should we should switch gears. Okay. So Ryan's here. I met Ryan in where were we hanging out? LA. Okay. I was in LA. I'm at this dinner and and Ryan's across the table from me. And at this dinner, everybody kind of like dressed up because it was at the dinner was at the owner of an NBA team's house. And you know, most people are pretty dressed up. I see this one guy who looks like I'm like, is this a TikTok star? Like, who's this guy? He's got earrings. He's got this like tie dye shirt on. He looked totally different than every other kind of like business schmuck at this thing. And I was like, oh, what's up, man? Like, what's your I was like, like, I'm literally in my head. I was like, this guy's definitely a TikToker or a YouTuber. He's got this like charisma about him. I feel like that's who he is.

• 2:03Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, no, I'm Ryan. I, you know, I started a payments company. I said, oh, what is it? Bolt. And I was like, oh, shit, I know Bolt. That's amazing. And we ended up becoming friends, ended up investing in the company. And you ended up getting Twitter famous over the last few months, my friend. And I wanted to have you on to talk about a couple of things. You've done some pretty impressive stuff at a young age. I want to talk about, I want to give people the background of that. And then you currently have some spicy Twitter shit going on. I want to get your take on some of those things. Welcome to the show. I don't know if you've ever listened, but we have a very casual business show.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Yes, pleasure to be on, Sean. I've been looking forward to doing this, and I think we picked the perfect time.

• 2:46Shaan Puri?

  And Sam, what do you know about Ryan besides what I just told you?

• 2:48Sam Parr?

  So I was Googling you. So I saw your Twitter come out of nowhere about a month and a half ago, and Sean told me all about Bolt, and he told me about this dinner that he had. And so Bolt is a payments company that is at like 11 or 14 billion dollars in valuation. So it's a huge company. What I know is that you look incredibly young. And on your bio, maybe on LinkedIn or something, or maybe Twitter, it says that you've started two or three companies that are worth about a billion dollars, including a bunch of crypto stuff. And when I was Googling you today, one of the first images that comes up, it's beautiful because you're tweeting about mobs and mafias. The Forbes headline is "Meet the Stanford Bitcoin Mafia",

• 3:33Sam Parr?

  and there was a picture of you and like three friends. And so I know you've got your hands in a bunch of stuff.

• 3:37Shaan Puri?

  So Brian, what's your claim to fame? So this is the part, you don't have to be humble, just give people the reason why they should be listening. Who is this cat? What have you done? What's your claim to fame?

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Well, my claim to fame is, I think I've, you know, I operate pretty fearlessly. And I've, you know, done a lot of things that I think I've been told I shouldn't be doing. So I think it's business. I've been told by many people I shouldn't be doing, that it would never be possible. And, you know, we've written the framework on culture.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  On Conscious.org, people are like, who are you to write about culture? Now I have close to 100 companies pledging that culture. We've written books, done four-day work weeks. So, you know, I think we're thinking differently, myself and the whole Bolt team, and I'm very proud of that.

• 4:32Shaan Puri?

  And so walk us through the, I don't want to go too far into what Bolt is. I'll give kind of like the TLDR on, on, on the, I'll oversimplify it. You might cringe a little bit as I oversimplify, but basically, um, the way we pay for things online is, uh, you know, some people shop at Amazon and Amazon says, hey, one click checkout, we got your stuff saved. And then you have Shopify, Shopify has a bunch of stores. Now Shopify has Shopify Pay, which says, hey, you've shopped at a Shopify store before, you can check out that way if you want. Apple's got Apple Pay. They let you pay at some places. And what you've done is you went to like, you're like, hey, you know, even though those, those companies are huge, they're monstrous. The internet's a lot bigger than that. There's a whole bunch of stores that aren't on Shopify. There's a whole bunch of

• 5:17Shaan Puri?

  platforms like Pinterest, uh, where people go and they find products they love and they love to be able to check out. And as somebody who owns an e-commerce store, you, I, I've felt this pain many, many times, which is you can look at how many people just drop off at the checkout because they don't want to type in their name, their first name, last name, address, credit card, you know, zip code, blah, blah, blah. Every single time when they're on their phone and they're on the go. And I'm just see like, that's the biggest drop off in our whole store. It's like, shit, what could I do about that? Like, wouldn't it be amazing if there really was a way to just check out at any store, have your information saved. It would make a merchant like me more money because my drop off would be lower. It would make the consumer experience easier because

• 6:01Shaan Puri?

  I don't have to type in the same shit over and over and over again. Um, and it has this like network effect where the more stores who use something like Bolt, the more shoppers have a Bolt account. Now every single store benefits because that account can be used on all these different stores. Amazon is going to work on Amazon and Shopify is going to work on Shopify, but the world is a lot bigger than that. All right. How did I do out of 10? Did I, did I get it or what I missed?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Sean, that was like pretty epic.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  We need to put you in customer calls.

• 6:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there we go. I'm down.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  So.

• 6:34Shaan Puri?

  So that, so you create Bolt and you're saying at the beginning, people told you, don't do this or it can't be done. What's an actual story that happened there where somebody kind of told you, look, look, man, it's not gonna work.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Okay, so I have a pretty extreme story. I went to one of the, you know, tier one Silicon Valley firms. Someone who was a PayPal led, not PayPal, sorry, a payments legend, not PayPal mafia, but a payments legend. Big firm, big name. And I went in, I told them about what we're, what we're doing. And they spent the entire conversation telling me why this couldn't be done. And that, you know, they actually got mad during the conversation. And then after the conversation, they saw one of the people on our team, because we were recruiting top people.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Was at another company they were involved with, spent three hours trying to convince that person not to join us. And to join other portfolio companies. And so it's amazing, you know, I think everybody coming from the payments space. The OGs, they have real, you know, they've been in the sausage factory, they see how hard it is.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  But I think there was a little resistance to the fact that there could be something this disruptive, that's this obvious. And we just, you know, decided to go ahead and do it.

• 8:04Sam Parr?

  What were you, and I want to hear all about that, but what were you doing before this, before Bolt?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Sean had mentioned, I dropped out of school. So a little bit about my background. First job was bagging groceries, did that for three years. And then I started going to the internet to make money, started some websites, online businesses. Ran a web development agency, working for a lot of other customers. So that's where I learned everything there is about e-commerce. And then I was lucky to get into Stanford, started the Stanford Bitcoin Group with some friends in early 2013. Many of which have gone on to do amazing things. And I dropped out of school in 2014 to focus entirely on crypto. I'm like crypto is going to change everything about payments.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  I still believe, but about a year in, so mid 2015, I was like, wait a second. Why has nobody solved this checkout problem? If you create a checkout and all the users who go through your checkout enroll in shopper accounts, you could create the most powerful, important shopper network, payment network on the planet. And so like this is a site I couldn't unsee. And I decided to go, you know, real like learn about the space. The more I learned, the more I realized this was an opportunity. And so we started building and, uh, and yeah, so that's, that's, that's the story.

• 9:30Sam Parr?

  Did you, did you, did you, you dropped out before, I mean, you're probably what 21, 22? You dropped out at a young age. Did you, did you just like knock it out the park with crypto to the point where like money, you, you fix money's good, you're good. Now you're going to go and start things. Did it happen at that young of an age?

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, it did not. I had this mentality that I was going to build things in crypto, not invest in it, which was a very costly mentality. I had like a little bit of crypto. I mean, you know,

• 10:04Sam Parr?

  But you, you, you, you didn't become, you know, F you rich.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  No, not at all. Um, so I had to, uh, Bolt had to make it. I was couch surfing, like I didn't have enough money to like even rent a place to stay. So I was

• 10:19Sam Parr?

  A friend texted me before this podcast and he said, ask him like how well, like, uh, be like, well, he already got really wealthy from Bitcoin. Is that why he's like so brash now? And so you've kind of just answered that question. You weren't

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Weren't and at Bolt, I started off at a 40K salary and for about five years, it never got higher than 60K. So I was living paycheck to paycheck. I wanted every dollar to maximize Bolt's outcome. And just recently I sold a very tiny amount of shares. Um, just to kind of pay for some expenses. But up until a month ago, I hadn't sold a single share almost eight years into the journey.

• 11:05Sam Parr?

  What about your other businesses? You didn't sell any of those either?

• 11:08Shaan Puri?

  So you also helped start ECO, right? Or now known as ECO. Your buddy runs it, I think, who's also, what's his name?

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Andy Bromberg.

• 11:15Shaan Puri?

  He's super impressive as well, yeah. And I don't want to go too much into ECO because your Twitter stuff's frankly just more spicy right now. But basically, you kind of helped, just with the vision of that? Or the initial strategy of that?

• 11:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I, what I can take credit for is I helped build an awesome team of founders. And inspire some of the ideas, but they have really manifested ECO into what it's become today. The founders there have drove amazing vision, the ones who are on the ground every day, and they've executed. And so I've played a part in the journey, but Andy Bromberg is one of the CEOs I have the most respect for on the planet. Henry Alt, Ryan Sachs, Joey Krug there have done miracle work.

• 12:04Shaan Puri?

  Cool. And so let's talk about this Twitter thing. So you came out the other day and you basically said, "Look, you're like Bolt. You know, we've become successful now, but it wasn't without kind of some challenges. And there's like the normal business challenges. And then there's sort of the like, the challenges of the powers that be. And in Silicon Valley, there's two kind of like, very powerful. And in most people's minds, I think you picked a fight with people that very few people have bad things to say about Y Combinator and Stripe, right? Stripe is probably like the most beloved startup in Silicon Valley, respected, beloved, whatever. And NYC is also, you know, the most powerful sort of like a brand.

• 12:48Shaan Puri?

  You know, it's like, basically, if you're going to pick on a college, you pick on either Stanford or Harvard if you were going for the top. And you basically told the story about them being the mafia. And so I want you to kind of quickly, can you quickly bullet point what your argument was for people who aren't nerding out on Twitter? And aren't seeing it because the audience we have here is not going to have seen it. So bullet point that, and then I got some questions for you.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the point is, my motivation here was to open people's eyes to what goes down in Silicon Valley. Where it's not all sunshine and rainbows. It is very fierce and there's fierce competition and there are also games that are played with powerful institutions and you know groups of people who you know help each other out. And so if you're starting a company, especially in payments, you've likely failed. There's you know, the only ones that have been successful have been internationally. And we probably should have failed five times over with investors pulling out of term sheets

• 13:55Speaker 00

  when we were about to run out of money. And so we, I'd say Bolt almost didn't exist because of the powers that be, the powers that be. And you know, I think there are a lot of other companies that would have existed today if it wasn't for the powers that be. And so you know, now I don't blame these institutions.

• 14:18Sam Parr?

  But but what I you're, I don't know if you're doing this on purpose to be kind, but you're kind of being vague. Is it possible that you like, what does institution mean? And are you able to like, actually?

• 14:31Shaan Puri?

  Let's separate out, right? There's, there's fair, fair, you know, fair business games, which is like, we're competing against somebody. That's fair. They can compete with us fiercely. There's investors just deciding the space is too competitive or Stripe's gonna win. I've just got to, I'm just gonna back away, right? So perception thing. That's kind of like, nobody would say that that's unfair. Talk about the specifics of what you felt was unfair or where you know, some, some, some, there was some heavy handedness to it.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. So when we would be pitching investors, they'd get interested. They'd say they want to invest. And then they would talk to somebody at Stripe, someone related to Stripe, and either be told they can't invest, or they shouldn't invest, or somehow the conclusion was they were dissuaded from investing.

• 15:27Shaan Puri?

  But how do you know that that's what happened?

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Many of them.

• 15:29Shaan Puri?

  They might just come to you and say, we're not interested.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Told me Stripe would always come up somehow in that conversation. So many of them told me directly, other investors say directly, I got a call by Stripe and they told me I can't invest in you guys.

• 15:44Sam Parr?

  Is that bad, though? I mean, what if they, if they were already an investor of Stripe? I understand that.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  I have a conflict of interest.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Right, but you know Stripe has like all the big names in Silicon Valley invested in them. And so they've intentionally put every single, you know, tier one firm on their cap table. And they even stuffed them with small checks. They're like, everybody's on their cap table. Right? And so, you know, for.

• 16:11Shaan Puri?

  And then they say, you're conflicted out, right? That's a competitor of ours. You're our shareholder.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. And I didn't even, you know, consider ourselves a direct competitor at the time. But I think they're very guarded about anything in their periphery. So I've heard the same story from companies, you know, doing card issuing. I've heard the same stories from companies doing subscription payments. And then Stripe would roll out their own product next. So it's almost as if they have these feelers out, anything that's tangential, they make sure that it doesn't get off the ground. And then they go and build it. Um, and so.

• 16:47Sam Parr?

  Is there any, is there any side of you? So the way that you're phrasing it, and I would like to figure out what, what my opinion is, I don't have an opinion yet, is, is like, that's unethical. But one maybe could argue and be like, well, that was just a savvy strategic move to like get everyone on board. And you know, that's just like, that's just, that's a, that's fair. Is, do you, do you see that side of it at all? Or do you think that like the way they went about it, their intentions were, the intentions matter here?

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never pulled a single investor, you can't invest in somebody.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Right? And so to me, like, everything is fair competition. And if someone wants to invest in a company tangential to me, I tell them, go for it. We've even invested in tangential. I invested in tangential. I think, you know, innovation is good. I have a very long-term perspective. So when you're calling, I say, you can't invest in this company. Like, even if they're not on the stripe cap table, there's investors too that are not on the stripe cap table. To me, that's just not how I would do business. And I also want the next generation of founders to go into building with their eyes wide open. Because I invested eight years of my life into this business and not knowing about the games that go on.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Right? And so the most important thing I'm exposing here is if you're coming to Silicon Valley, you have an idea, you're quitting your job, putting a lot on the line. Like, get ready for war. Like, it's, it's, it's serious. And there will be people who do not want you to exist, and you're going to need to be ready to battle that.

• 18:27Shaan Puri?

  And so one of the things you say is that, which is, they basically hurt our ability to fundraise by telling, first, they, they kind of played good, good game theory, right? They, they got every investor, every big investor to get a little piece of Stripe, because every investor wants a piece of Stripe. And then they said, cool, now you're conflicted out of investing our competitors. Okay. Some might say that's, that's shady. I personally, just, I'm an investor in you, right? I'm a fan of yours. I personally would just say, okay, there's nothing unethical about that. You may not like it, but that's competing. It's like a, it's a strategy. It's a harsh strategy. Okay, fair enough. In the same way that like, I don't think it's cool that Mark Zuckerberg just copied stories or whatever. I don't think that's like, you don't get bonus points of respect from me.

• 19:10Shaan Puri?

  But I also don't think you did anything illegal or crooked, completely crooked, right? That's, that's, you copied something that was copyable. Okay, fair enough. The second thing you said is, That they that YC, which has a huge stake in Stripe, controlled, they own Hacker News and that on Hacker News, people would be posting about Bolt. It would get some play, it would go up the ranks, but that somehow there's some editorial shenanigans behind the scenes where all of a sudden the post about Bolt would disappear or get de-ranked, and then a post about Stripe would be up higher. And so you posted some examples of that. Now, that I think, I think that's the summary of what you said. As that was happening, did you, is that a suspicion? Or you're like, I know that that's what happened.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Pretty sure that's what happened. You know, because we had some posts, one in particular, that, you know, I'd written catered to YC audience. It was unraveling of how we do fraud detection better and guarantee it with your payments, which was radical and new at the time. It had organically got in to number one, held there. We had a ton of comments on it, just like very active people, very interested. You can go read all my comments. And then Stripe's post, I don't know if those there before. It seems like they said it got posted technically before. But anyway, after it's got to number one, theirs started to rise. And ours just started to fall and then disappeared.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  And so I don't know if those editorial, there's also this down vote functionality. And so you can also just have a bunch of your employees go and down vote or have a bunch of your friends. So, you know, whatever it is, they're able to get us off of there pretty quickly.

• 21:03Sam Parr?

  The, the guys who started Stripe, the Collison brothers, I don't know them, but they seem,

• 21:09Sam Parr?

  from the outside, like good dudes. Do you think that, is that?

• 21:13Shaan Puri?

  Do you know them?

• 21:15Sam Parr?

  And is that, is that a characterization that you'd challenge?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I'm doing.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  So you know, they don't meet my standards for good dudes.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  And so, you know, good dude is not what you say publicly, it's what you do privately. And so.

• 21:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I just think that like, right now, you're like a loose cannon and I love it and I find it incredibly refreshing. Because from the outside, you've raised money from amazing people at a $14 billion valuation. You are like the guy right now and I'm just, I think it's cool and I'm shocked, but I think it's cool that you're, that you've just said that. I think that that's, I've never heard that before.

• 22:00Shaan Puri?

  Me and Sam both have definitely like a rebellious streak in us and we've told some stories on the pod about situations where, where we do kind of like not keep it muzzled. And you know, sometimes that works to our benefit. Sometimes there's some, you know, collateral damage or some, you know, some blowback from it. I gotta ask you, news came out, I don't know, yesterday, today, day before, you're stepping down as CEO of Bolt, okay?

• 22:27Shaan Puri?

  Did you get in trouble? What happened here?

• 22:29Speaker 00

  So stepping up into executive chairman.

• 22:34Shaan Puri?

  I like it. I like it.

• 22:38Sam Parr?

  Nice. That's one of those things that you like come up in the shower and at bed at night, you write it down. Aha.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  You know, that was actually the truth. And you know, it's, but yeah, the stepping up worked well on Twitter. And, uh, and I promoted Manju because this guy is like, he schools me on execution every day of the week. So he started off running tech and product. They gave him COO, like 60% of the company reported into him. And just like my, it's not my superpower. My superpower is, is creativity, is vision, is culture, is landing epic deals for the company. So now I get to spend a hundred percent of my time on that. So this is something I've.

• 23:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but the, the timing is weird, right? Everyone, a lot of people online, even though it's not true, they say Ryan got fired because of what he said.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Well, our, you know, this is, this is the start of our fiscal year and basically January 31st starts February 1st. And so this was a timing we had planned on for a while.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  And so then I had some people saying, you don't think we should wait? People are gonna think it's related to the tweets or whatever. And I used to have fear about those types of things in the past. And I think this recent episode has just locked me into my fearlessness even more. I'm like, F it, like, let's just do it. And as everyone's gonna gossip and, you know, interpret in their own way. And I actually think that's great.

• 24:11Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:12Sam Parr?

  You're, you're crazy. I like it.

• 24:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I respect that. And also, um, I respect the move, not the, the CEO part. Right, great, that's, that's fine. I don't know, I don't know anything about that. But, uh, for the, for the content that you're putting out. So, um, we've talked before about, about how to pick a fight. In fact, there's a, there's a passage from a book called Rework called Pick a Fight. It's a marketing strategy and it's like a two-page thing. And I remember earlier on the pod, I had literally read it word for word. Cause I was like, this is a great idea. And I think this is when, um, the guys from 37signals were picking a fight with Apple. Uh, and saying, you know, this is not right. Or Fortnite, you know, Epic Games from Fortnite was picking a fight with Apple. And, um, and we talked about, you know, there's a, there's an art to doing this. Like first, you know, you can't just completely make something up, right?

• 24:58Shaan Puri?

  You gotta have actual reason to pick a fight. But then you wanna pick a fight, not when you're punching down. You wanna punch up at, you know, the, whoever is the sort of like the power. And when you do that, you're gonna get this ground swell of A, attention, B, support, and C, other stories will come out of the woodwork that'll make you seem even more credible. And, um, and you get your name out there. So like, you know, I don't know how many people knew about Bolt before this. Cause it's like, okay, you know, checkout technology is not the most like in your face. You know, it's not Snapchat, it's not like a pup, like, like a product everybody uses. But a lot more people know about it now. And so how conscious were you? I mean, how strategic was it that you were, uh, you were thinking, you know what?

• 25:40Shaan Puri?

  Like, I think if we come out with this story, yes, I'll be helping people understand how the game is played. But I think this will be good for Bolt too.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think doing what you believe to be right.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  will always pan out in the end. And so I think this was I stand by this decision. I think it's great for both. It shows the world who we are as a company. It shows that we're going to stand up for what's right, no matter how controversial that may be. We're going to stand up to the big guys, which is literally what our entire product is about. And what I wrote to my team, you know, when I was doing this, I said, just because our company is worth billions of dollars, you know, I'm not going to become a sellout founder. Like, it's worth way more financially for me to go become buddies with all these guys.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Right? But every cell in my body, like, my spirit won't let me do that. And so for me, it was a way of telling the world who I am as a leader. And I'm trying to, you know, set an example of fearless leadership for the next generation of founders, because I think we lack it. Like, I can't point to too many leaders in this country who are truly fearless, who stand up for what they believe in. And I think a lot of leadership is fear-based. And I think we have to kill that.

• 27:13Sam Parr?

  I agree with you. I'm entirely on board with you. I think the, I don't, I don't actually think this is my stance, but I, in fact, it's not my stance, but at first it was, but it's changed a bit. And that's that, like, I don't know if what you're saying is necessarily true. And I saw a lot of people who used to have your position where they're the underdogs, like Sam Altman and Gary Tan. They're not anymore. Now they're like the man, you know, the folks in charge. But, and they're like, this guy Ryan is lying. He's false. He's just full of it. And so it's like, really hard to take a side right now because of this he said, she said, even though I totally agree with you that they are this like cool kid group, and it's

• 27:57Sam Parr?

  always fun to stick it to that cool kid group.

• 27:59Shaan Puri?

  Honestly, the things you said that they did, this is like actually credit to you. The things that you said that they did are not even that bad. Like the he said, she said, doesn't even really matter, because it's like... If they did it, okay, even if they did it, it's not the worst thing in the world. If they didn't do it, nobody's gonna know how to prove it. Kind of doesn't really matter. I think you pointed out the overall power dynamic and that's what was important. And then you just like got your story out there about who you are, your bolt, what's your point of view is, whether people agree with you or not, that's their choice. But I think it's actually, it actually emphasizes how brilliant the tactic was, that it's not even like the most scandalous, you know, Theranos, does this work? Is it a giant fraud? Is it deception at the highest levels? No, it's not. Even if the accusation is true, it's not. But it got so much play because of A,

• 28:44Shaan Puri?

  you're a good writer and B, everybody is so afraid to say a word against them. Like I got, one of my, my most viral tweets was when I came out and said the clubhouse is gonna fail. And here's why, I think, here's how I think it goes down. And it is because at the time clubhouse was the darling. Every VC was fighting to get into the deal. Everybody was on clubhouse every night talking about how great clubhouse is. That was the only topic they knew what to talk about. And that's why it faded quickly. Cause if you go on the product and all you can talk about is the product, it's gonna fail. And, and so, and I got privately, I got a bunch of messages from high profile people who are like, dude, I could never, I can't, sorry, I can't retweet this to like show support for this. Just because of, you know, politics, but dude, I totally agree with you.

• 29:28Shaan Puri?

  I like, or like, I'm glad somebody fucking said it. I don't believe in the shit at all. I had one person, you know, these are all blue checkmarks. Dude, people must be smoking crack if they think that this thing is gonna work. And so, did you get like the, the DM back channel support of people who are like, look, I can't come out and, I don't want to get YC on my bad side, but like, dude, you're so right.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Hundreds. You know,

• 29:51Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  If I, if I was, if I had any nervousness about doing it beforehand, the outpouring that I got afterwards just gave me all the conviction in the world that this was the right thing to do. Cause hundreds of founders reached out to me, thanking me, many of them sharing their stories with me about what encounters they've had.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  And, you know, this, this stuff is happening, this stuff is rampant. And so, yeah, I had all of those messages.

• 30:21Shaan Puri?

  All you were missing, you needed a movement, people could, could rally behind and say,

• 30:25Speaker 00

  I needed a hashtag.

• 30:26Shaan Puri?

  YC has done this to me also.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  The problem is, why is everyone so afraid? Right?

• 30:32Sam Parr?

  Well, why are you asking that question? You know the answer.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Right?

• 30:37Sam Parr?

  You already said the answer, which is you'd be significantly more financially successful if you just were to shut up. And so that's why I asked you that question. Are you already very financially successful? On paper, just on Bolt, you're very, you're set. Uh, that's on paper, but that's why I was asking, do you have this like crazy Bitcoin stash? Do you, did you have this other stuff?

• 30:59Shaan Puri?

  I think even in this like tiny version of the interview, you've actually heard four or five examples, like dropped out of Stanford. Uh, it takes some guts to do that when you don't have like something else that's working amazing.

• 31:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but that's what I was asking.

• 31:12Shaan Puri?

  I dropped out to support. I wanted to know. Focus on Bitcoin when Bitcoin was nothing at that time. That's fearlessness. Start payments company to compete with, uh, you know, like one in one of the most like vicious fields, uh, where everybody tells you, everybody, everybody who's smart that you respect tells you that this ain't going to work. Fearless number two, going on the four day, basically saying, we're going to only do four day work weeks because I believe in XYZ in terms of company culture, coming out against YC, right? So that's actually like several, uh, of these kind of like, you know, it's like when I invest in something, I've looked for like a breadcrumb trail. It's like, oh, actually I see a trail of this person doing, you know, really bold things or, uh, you know, clever things or hacking different systems. I think they're going, the next thing is just going to be more of that. And so, you know, that's, I think that's pretty cool.

• 31:57Shaan Puri?

  I wanted to, to switch gears a little bit and ask you, um, you, uh, you are an idea guy. In fact, and when we were, uh, driving home from the dinner, you were telling me some different, like, I was like, how'd you get the idea for Bolt? How'd you get the idea for Eco? And I just kind of got the, got the sense that you're an idea guy, but you're fully cut, you know, you've been fully locked in for eight years doing one idea. So I want you to get out that little note sheet of, uh, other opportunities, other things that you see that you don't have the time to do or the energy to do or the interest in doing, but you think that these are opportunities that exist. Did you bring any ideas for me?

• 32:31Speaker 00

  I brought some.

• 32:34Shaan Puri?

  Okay. Fire them off and we will, we will react to them. So you give us the quick pitch and we'll react.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Okay, this is a big one. Think a lot of people are going to do it if they hear this, so I hope they do. I think someone needs to start an investment bank for early stage companies.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Where they help.

• 32:52Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Introduce you to a bunch of investors. You know, they sanity check your deck and materials, they blast off a bunch of intros. Which is 99.9% of the value that YC has, right? And they don't even do that. They don't even send personal intros. You're one of 400 companies, right? So now you're a company that's being intro'd.

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  You're a serial number.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Literally. And so, um, somebody needs to do it. So that's what I do personally. I've probably done that for 200 companies. Half the size of a YC batch I've done this for personally. So for founders, it doesn't take very much time. You know, if you have the contact list, if those people trust you, right? You can do it with one email and then a bunch of follow-up intros if investors are interested. And, you know, maybe half an hour, 60 minutes with the founder, making sure their materials are good, giving them some feedback. So I think there needs to be an investment bank for all stages of company building.

• 33:54Shaan Puri?

  That's actually a really good idea. How would you, uh, where would you? What would be the business model for it? So would you take a percentage of the raise? Would you take equity? Would you take a referral fee from the VCs who want this deal flow?

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you take far less than 7% of the company. You maybe take a certain percent of the amount raised, right? And then maybe a little equity. So that's what I do. For earlier stages, I take, you know, anywhere from a few percent to high single-digit percent of the capital raised. And then I would take a little bit of equity. And that's.

• 34:29Sam Parr?

  You do this, Ryan does.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  I do this.

• 34:33Sam Parr?

  How much, how, how, how much money have you raised for other companies?

• 34:36Speaker 00

  A ton of money. I mean.

• 34:39Sam Parr?

  I don't know what that means. 100 million or a billion or 10 million?

• 34:43Shaan Puri?

  One company could be.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, through intros that I've made, hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe upwards.

• 34:49Sam Parr?

  And they've given you a percentage of that capital?

• 34:51Speaker 00

  No, I don't take a percentage of capital raised. So I used to, I sometimes do this voluntarily for free if I like a founder. I don't take anything. And then for some, I take a little bit in advisor shares. It's usually less than a percent.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  It's usually less than half.

• 35:10Shaan Puri?

  This is actually a great idea. This is actually a great idea.

• 35:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think it's a good idea too. But here's the thing. So I used to run this conference business, and it was fun and everything. But the crappy part was the more successful the conference got, meaning the more, I mean, you go, you either do more events, or you have more people come, or you charge more money. But the more people who came, and the more successful my event got, the worse it got. And it sucked. And so with this, if you're doing this, would this be like that, where the bigger it got, the less your, like, oh, man, he promotes everything, or this brand promotes everything, you know what I mean?

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. You have to be picky with who you work with, right? You can't work with 400 companies every quarter. And so sure, and a company could do this. You could start your own firm, could team up with people. You can do it as an individual founder. You can do this. So I think there's many ways to skin this cat, and many different models here. So this is just a seed of a thought.

• 36:16Sam Parr?

  How did you build that reputation as both A, the guy who knows the investors, and the investors trust, and B, the guy that gets his fingers on the, has his fingers on the pulse of early-stage companies, so much so that you're helping them raise money?

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Well, the secret that I'd share with any investors is treat founders really well, and they'll refer other founders, right? And so some do that early on, then they have a brand, and then they, you know, form an ego, right? And they forget how that brand was generated in the first place.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  And so the firm that continues with that ethos, and hold on to that ethos forever, is going to build one of the greatest next-generation firms there is. And so I developed a reputation from founders, from being somebody they could call about literally anything, that they don't have to mince their words, that they could trust, that has their back completely.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  And so, you know, my only wish is I had more time, which that's kind of the challenge. But I, every ounce of available time, I've tried to dedicate to the next generation. And it's, you know, it's the most rewarding thing I could possibly do.

• 37:40Shaan Puri?

  I like it. So let's give, I like that idea. I think that's a good one. I've, I've said this for a while, which is that, uh, like venture, investing is going into like a couple of big categories. I think, I think there's like the big brands that are like, you know, they're, their stamp of approval means like a lot for you. Whether they're good or bad investors doesn't really matter. They're like the Harvard, Stanfords of the world. That's Sequoia, Y C, Andreessen, whoever else, Benchmark, whatever. And then there's niche specialists that are like, oh, I know robotics better than anybody. And so I'm going to see all the robotics companies. I'm going to help them. And even if they get a Sequoia to invest in them, they'll also want the robotics expert in the deal. And then the last one is basically like venture services, which is can you serve the founder in some way?

• 38:24Shaan Puri?

  So if you could help them raise their next round, I think that's a, a smart way to basically get yourself into the right companies as long as you're, as long as your filter is pretty good. All right. What else you got? Give us another idea.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Well, I think DAOs are going to change the world. So, um, in continuation of, of the spirit of investing in VCs, there need to be more VC DAOs where you invest in things as a DAO.

• 38:55Shaan Puri?

  And why is a VC DAO better than a normal, you know, either individually investing or starting a traditional fund? Why is, why is a VC DAO better?

• 39:03Speaker 00

  Because it relies on the collective intelligence of a group. I think it's transparent in terms of how it makes decisions. I think you can raise capital more publicly and I think your actions are more kind of on a public record. Um, so, you know, and frankly, the best reason is I think if you're up and coming aspiring investor or VC.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  It's way easier because you don't have to spend five years building relationships with LPs. You can start a public track record investing within your DAO and that track record will, you know, talk for itself and attract more and more capital.

• 39:54Shaan Puri?

  Right. Sam, have you, have you heard of Orange DAO?

• 39:58Sam Parr?

  No, what is Orange DAO?

• 39:59Shaan Puri?

  So, Orange DAO is basically what Ryan's describing against, you know, his, uh, his enemy of the month, which is YC. So, basically what it is, is it's a DAO, which means it's like a, if people don't know, it's a decentralized autonomous organization. Basically, in the crypto, it's the crypto version of a company. And, um, so what it is, is basically they made it where only a YC alumni can enter and only YC companies can get funded. So, it's a, it's an organization whose mission is to fund YC companies. And the, all of the investors are YC alumni. So, basically it started off with like 10 or 20. Now, there's a thousand YC alumni that are in this. They provide the capital.

• 40:42Shaan Puri?

  They also provide the deal flow and the diligence and the filtering and whatever else. And then they fund YC companies. And, um, and so if you're a, if you're a YC company, you could take money from Orange DAO in addition to these other traditional funds. And with it, you're getting these thousand people and the, and the, I think the DAO votes on the deals. So, that, so somebody proposes, I think we should vote, I think we should invest in this company. And then the DAO holds a vote and it'll come back, you know, 70% say yes, 30% say no, let's invest. And it's like a, a group, group investment fund like that.

• 41:14Sam Parr?

  So, I actually, I like Y Combinator. I think that the, like the Paul Graham, I love reading Paul Graham's work. I, I like a lot of that guys. But when you're describing this, Sean. I understand, I am also frustrated. I'm like, oh, so the rich get richer even more and more. Like, it's just a, it's a circle jerk that is never-ending. And that frustrates me. I don't wanna, I feel like, I guess, it's definitely part envy of like, well, I'm not in that crowd, therefore I miss out. And it's also part like David versus Goliath type of thing.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can't stand clubs. And so, it's, yeah, I have the same feelings, Sam. It's just something about it doesn't feel right. And even if I was inside of it, you know, I've had the opportunity to join a lot of these clubs, and I won't do it. Because it's also in your self-interest not to do it, you know? I could have obviously gotten the benefits of them, but you know, now look at where I am. Like, I'm free to do what I want, and to speak up how I want. And I don't owe any favors to anybody. And so, people...

• 42:26Sam Parr?

  But are you free, though? Why are you free to do this?

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Because...

• 42:32Shaan Puri?

  Because he's not in a tribe. He didn't, he didn't basically go into a tribe which has certain like rules.

• 42:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but you've got, he has 600 employees who he doesn't want to completely screw over, you know? Like, if something bad happens to Ryan, that could negatively impact some of his people. He's got some investors that look out. I mean, I don't...

• 42:50Speaker 00

  I have accountability...

• 42:51Sam Parr?

  Maybe you're single, though.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  To my employees and my shareholders, right? To make them successful and better off. And I think that's enough. Like, I don't need, I don't have all these other groups that I'm accountable to. In addition to that, that, you know, basically makes it impossible to say anything.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  And I consider myself fairly free.

• 43:22Sam Parr?

  Where were you raised?

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Miami, Florida.

• 43:27Sam Parr?

  And what did your parents do for work?

• 43:29Speaker 00

  My mom was, worked a local secretarial job. My dad had a small business. So I grew up very middle class. I went to, you know, very lucky to get into Stanford on, you know, almost entirely financial aid. So grew up without much money, went to a big public high school in Miami, 4,000 kids.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Grew up in a very diverse environment. So I got into breakdancing and stuff like that. So when I came to Silicon Valley in Stanford, it was like the biggest culture shock ever because Miami and Silicon Valley, it's like, it couldn't be more opposite.

• 44:11Sam Parr?

  Not anymore.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true.

• 44:15Shaan Puri?

  All right. Did you have any other ideas you wanted to share with the, with the audience?

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Man, I, so here's my general theme.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Is, and I'll, I'll reference Bolt for a second, then I'll talk about it broadly.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  Everything's getting decentralized. So if you think about commerce, Amazon was phase one, right? Network effects, economies of scale, data, everything but on one domain, amazon.com.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  And then phase two is you have Shopify, which is all of that power, network effects, economies of scale, tech, scale, but on one end to end enclosed platform. Renzo Bolt is the network effect and the data and the tech economies of scale in a fully decentralized way. Completely unbundled, completely headless, completely tech stachnastic.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  And that's why we're such a powerful force for commerce, right? That's why Maju, who's our new CEO, he centralized commerce, Amazon for eight years. Ran all the logistics, came to us because he saw it getting decentralized and thinks they're the best approach to decentralizing commerce. So I think every industry is getting decentralized.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  I think purchasing, you're gonna see a tidal wave of purchasing platforms that help you purchase from your neighbors, purchase food locally. I think the consciousness of our society is raising. I think we wanna buy and purchase things that are good for society, that are sustainable, that are recycled, more than things that are flashy. You know, I think more people are gonna start wearing t-shirts. And so, I know it wasn't a specific idea, but those are, that's how I think about things.

• 46:10Sam Parr?

  And with your, with this whole new, like with you kinda coming out and doing this Twitter thing and accusing these people, it, it, like, a smart move, and you seem like you definitely are incredibly smart, is like, you know, I'm mad at that this system exists, and it just so happens I'm working on a solution. Is that what you've got up your sleeve?

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Just might be.

• 46:35Sam Parr?

  So what are you gonna do?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  To, to be announced. I've been working on ideas for a while. I think there are much better systems that could be created if you think creatively about incentive alignment. And I have confidence that, you know, better systems will be created, not just by myself, but for others who may see this as an opportunity to go build.

• 47:03Sam Parr?

  Well, you realize, I agree with what you're, I, I think what you're doing is smart, but like, if I was a hater, if I was Sam Altman or whoever's like disagrees with you, I would say, "Oh, well, he's talking shit, cuz he's launching a competitor." And so what, what percentage, what motive, how, how are they each playing into this of like, "I genuinely feel this way, and also I, I have something up my sleeve"?

• 47:28Speaker 00

  I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't so distraught with how they operate. So, you know, if they were like a bastion of positivity, good advice, and, you know, if they were super pro founder, I wouldn't be doing this. But I fundamentally do not think they are. And so, you know.

• 47:56Sam Parr?

  And they being Y Combinator?

• 48:00Sam Parr?

  And are you, are you happy right now? Or do you have like a nervous energy in the morning because of what's going on? I mean, like, I know sometimes when I do something that I like, I'm happy that I did. I wake up in the morning, I'm like, man, I'm getting a lot of hate, though. Like, this type of energy just bothers me. Where's your energy right now? Like Sean's thing about Clubhouse, it kinda, it wasn't like a career maker, but like, it wasn't that far from that. But like, he was getting a ton of hate and like, I don't know, I didn't ask him, but maybe there was some nervous energy in the morning.

• 48:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's just like, I didn't like how much I started looking at my mentions that next 24, 48 hours, because I was like, oh, man, like, that's two days of my life, I kind of let my main focus be, what are people's reactions to this? It was very hard to look away from that, for me personally. And I'm pretty like, strong minded about this sort of thing and very like, I tweeted this out the other day, I want my attention to be very expensive. But I know, once you get, you know, 20 million impressions on some tweet and you're getting 50,000, you know, replies or whatever, or the heart likes or whatever, you know, that's a flood of stuff you can go look at about people talking about me, people saying things to me, what are they saying, people hating me, do I need to defend myself? It, it was a bit of a distraction for me.

• 49:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so where's your energy right now? Are you nervous? Are you happy? Are you uptight? Where are you?

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Well, I'd be lying if I said I don't care what people think. I mean, I obviously do. The fact that I'm doing this because I care what people think so much, that I want the right, you know, I want my opinions out there in the world. And so, you know, people can update how they think about these things. And I've been fairing with it pretty well, like, do yoga, meditate every day, every morning, and I stay pretty calm and grounded. And, you know, I think that I feel more, more empowered than ever, just like, I've gotten so much love the last few days.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  It's been, you know, 95% love. And then it's all the people I expected to blast on the hate who came out of the woodworks, right? It was like, Sequoia VC, you know, Paul, Sam, YC. And so, that was unexpected. I was actually kind of surprised at how, just like...

• 50:25Speaker 00

  Crazy their messages were and how hostile they were like, you know, generally older, like I think they'd be wiser, but.

• 50:35Sam Parr?

  What, what did they say? What did they say? Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fuck you up? What are they gonna fight you? Or what did they say? I mean, like, what, what would they say?

• 50:42Speaker 00

  Um, Paul nitpicked on a tweet of mine about Strike Publishing, which basically said, because I focused on that, that this is mania. Um, you know, or I was manic or something like that. And then Sam, like, just like said something and then he like corrected my spelling, which is like, you know, was someone in.

• 51:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I saw that. Why? He, he, he, not even your spelling. He said, why commentator? It's two words, not one.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, exactly.

• 51:14Shaan Puri?

  Most arrogant, most arrogant type of color you could do.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  I thought it proved my point, right? It's like, that's what you do in middle school. You know? And then.

• 51:24Shaan Puri?

  Like, they might as well have just said, I know you are, but what am I?

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And then Sean was just like, you know, called it like, used just horrifying words and just, you know, this, this guy.

• 51:37Shaan Puri?

  The guy, the guy from Sequoia. He basically was like, uh, this, you know, he's making it sound like everybody was against him, but the truth was their numbers just.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. He started commenting on my metrics. Like, just like, you know, it's, it's the only thing, you know, he could point, like, first of all, VCs aren't supposed to comment on metrics. Second off, what he said was a blatant lie um, about our metrics. And so another just complete low blow. And so everybody who messaged me was like, all of those comments validated what you were saying. Like, these are the people you're putting on your cap table. Imagine when you'd have a disagreement with them as a founder, how they're gonna treat you.

• 52:22Sam Parr?

  You, um, I actually think this is gonna be a net, net win for you. I think that like, there's definitely fear if I was you of like, man, is anyone gonna work with me again? But I think like, being a good natured loose cannon is actually a typically a Good natured loose cannon, I like that. A good natured loose cannon. Yeah, cuz intentions matter. Intentions matter a lot. So like, if you're a loose cannon, but you just wanna hurt people, that's one thing. If you're a loose cannon and you genuinely wanna help, that's another thing. That's lovable. So I actually think this is gonna be a big benefit for you. Do you, um, are you single? Do you live alone? Or do you have a girlfriend or whatever you're into? And what are they saying?

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Um, well, I have people close with and, uh, like, everyone's super supportive. They're like, dude, you're doing what no one else, what everyone was afraid of doing. And I find if you're doing things that other people are afraid to do, you're generally in the right. So, you know, it's a, for me, that's a marker of like, I'm on the right track.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, they're very supportive.

• 53:27Sam Parr?

  Have you read the book Forty Eight Laws of Power?

• 53:29Speaker 00

  I haven't, but I want to. I heard it's epic.

• 53:32Sam Parr?

  You are doing it, so maybe you should go read it. Try to get it all done pretty soon because you are in the middle of a lot of like, different strategies that the author discusses.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  All right, I'll go pick it up.

• 53:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and the author, his name's Robert Greene. He's got another one called The Thirty Three Strategies of War, of which you are also doing some of that. But this is very interesting that you're like, involved in this. What do you, what do you read on a, uh, what have you read that's made an influence on this whole process of yours?

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Well, I read a lot of spiritual texts.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  And that has given me the fearlessness to make first principle decisions. Cuz when you're grounded in spiritual reasoning, you're not grounded in mainstream reasoning. And so that drove conscious culture, that drove Four Day Work Week. I'm like, why are we working people to death? That's not healthy or health spiritually is very important. Sustainability is important spiritual concept. We have to push Four Day Work Week. And you know monks? Certain monks, the more higher on the spec, on, you know, wiser they are, more ascended they are, the longer their sleeves. And people are like, oh, wow, it's because they're more

• 54:51Speaker 00

  docile. And it's not the case. It's because they're actually, you know, more combative when they see something wrong in the world. And so for me, like, I've found that kind of the further I've gone in kind of healing myself and healing those around me and going inward, the more fearlessness I've had externally. And this is one manifestation of that.

• 55:20Sam Parr?

  You are so strange. It is awesome. You are so cool. I've become a fan. Sean, I understand what you, what you saw in this guy when you had dinner with him.

• 55:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, thanks, thanks for coming on. Twenty-eight, right?

• 55:36Sam Parr?

  Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven? You are the weirdest 27-year-old I've met. That is, what a unique, what a unique perspective. It just, you're, you're, you're interesting. TBD if, if, if, if this battle, I hope, I hope you win this battle, but like, you're definitely gonna win some big war. That's for sure.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  We're looking forward to it. Fight the war.

• 55:55Shaan Puri?

  Cool.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Let's go.

• 55:57Shaan Puri?

  All right. So people, people should go follow you on, on Twitter. I think that's the best spot. What's your handle? It's like King Ryan or something?

• 56:03Speaker 00

  The Ryan King.

• 56:05Shaan Puri?

  The Ryan King. Why is that your name?

• 56:09Speaker 00

  I think it's fitting.

• 56:12Sam Parr?

  Oh, my gosh. This is awesome.

• 56:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay. There's a great meme. I don't know if you saw it, but you posted another, you posted a thread about the mob and the, and the YC mafia. Then you posted another thread, why YC isn't worth it? And like, one of the first replies I saw was this meme of like, this wife asleep and the husband's like, like, reaching over to her and he goes, honey, wake up. The Bolt guy did another thread. And I thought it was so funny. So people should follow you.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  That handle, actually, my grandparents always used to call me The Ryan King. So, call me that growing up. And I was just like, oh, it's a great handle. Let's go for it.

• 56:47Shaan Puri?

  Dude, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it and good luck with all the, all the stuff.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  Thanks, guys. Thanks, Sam, Sean. Such a pleasure. See ya.

• 56:55Shaan Puri?

  See ya.

• 56:56Sam Parr?

  All right. Ryan just left.

• 56:58Shaan Puri?

  All right. What'd you think?

• 56:59Sam Parr?

  That guy's, so like, let's separate this current, like, do I think he's right or wrong? I don't, I haven't investigated up. I think he's right, maybe, but I haven't, I don't hold that that strongly. But as a person, this guy is a killer. I'm team Ryan, just in life. This guy is so unique.

• 57:19Shaan Puri?

  Unique, yeah. He, he's a very unique guy. He's got a very unique style of speaking.

• 57:25Sam Parr?

  Yes.

• 57:25Shaan Puri?

  Like, I usually have a bias against people who speak slowly.

• 57:29Sam Parr?

  He talks so slow, but I loved it.

• 57:31Shaan Puri?

  And so, and I've noticed that about myself, that I'll, like, I'll instantly kind of, okay, this person's talking slowly. If they don't like have something super interesting to say right away, I find myself tuning out. But when I met Ryan, he was talking really slowly, but then he would say one thing that would just grip me and I'd be like, wait, what? And then he would say the next, then it would like be another minute and then he'd get me with another one and another one. I was like, wait, I think this guy might be one of the more, I was like, how old are you? He's like, I think I met him when he was 26 or 27. And I was like, you're one of the weirdest, you said it perfectly, you are the strangest 27-year-old I've ever met and it's awesome. And that was my exact takeaway. And then I was like, I was leaving the dinner and I was like, um, you want to just hang more? You want to, how about I drive you? Where are you going?

• 58:16Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, oh, that'd be great. And canceled his Uber and hopped in the car and I just drove him around. We just talked some more because I found him to just be a very interesting person. And, um, you know, I like the stuff that he stands for, um, which is great.

• 58:32Sam Parr?

  In our text group ahead of this, people were saying, oh yeah, you know, he probably has sold a ton of secondary. He probably made all this money on Bitcoin and maybe that's one of the reasons why he's able to kind of be this like loose cannon and say whatever he wants. He said that that's not true.

• 58:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't think that that's true.

• 58:48Sam Parr?

  I don't think he's a liar.

• 58:49Shaan Puri?

  I mean, but I, obviously I'm sure he's doing fine, right? Bolt's a $14 billion company now. Uh, I think he knows.

• 58:55Sam Parr?

  And that's what I said.

• 58:56Shaan Puri?

  He can get fired and his equity will still be there for him. You know, that's okay. Like, that wouldn't be, you know, I think that's the safety net. But like I had said in the thing, he's got a track record of just kind of doing things his own way. So I'm not really surprised. And I also think he didn't say anything bad and I think actually it's a whole bunch about nothing.

• 59:13Sam Parr?

  He did say something bad on the pod, though. He said, I am saying that the Stripe brothers are bad. I said, do you think they're good dudes? And he goes, no, I don't think they're good. I don't think they're good.

• 59:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but I don't think that's that bad. You're allowed to say, you know, I don't think these are, these are good dudes.

• 59:30Sam Parr?

  I think that's bad, man. I think that's bad. I think that that is a, it's a very simple word, bad and good, but like what's, it's like to say something, I don't think he's, I don't think this person's a good person. That's a really strong thing to say.

• 59:44Shaan Puri?

  I feel like we say stronger than that every episode about people we know half as much about.

• 59:49Sam Parr?

  Like I, I text you that all the time. I'm like, hey, this person messaged me. I might work with them on X, Y, and Z. Are they a good person?

• 59:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 59:55Sam Parr?

  And if the answer is yes, that's it. If the answer is no, then that's it as well.

• 59:59Shaan Puri?

  Now, I would say, I think the things that he said that they did, I don't think are that bad at all. And again, I'm an investor in both. I like Ryan or friends. So, you know, like, I'm, I'm not agreeing with him that they're that bad, even if they did it. But that's okay. Like he, he's totally allowed to think that those are fucked up things. I think that those are pretty much fair play. But I think it's really funny, the way that people reacted to it. And I think it's really good for him and good for their brand, the way people reacted to it. So good on him for, for using them in a way to build the, the brand of what he's doing and also put his stake in the ground and say, this is what I think is right and wrong. I think they did wrong. You know, he's fair to say that, even if my stake would have been 10 feet over to the left.

• 1:00:42Sam Parr?

  I, I, this guy's interesting. That was a good find. So I don't know where the, in the episode, this little segment's gonna go in the beginning, in the end, but that's what we think about that guy. That guy was fascinating. I could talk to him for a long time.

• 1:00:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Sam Parr?

  I'm older than him, but I would like look up to him.

• 1:00:56Shaan Puri?

  And I think that in his, like, you know, when he was on here, I think he was, you know, trying to do a good job, kind of representing what he stands for. Like, I think most people do. If you go, I think most people's default, if I get invited onto a podcast, I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna try to like, you know, say all the right things. So I think he was definitely doing a little bit of say the right things, it stuff. But actually, having talked to him in private, he actually was very similar where he's like, you know, I believe in this. I think it's gonna be awesome. I think we're gonna win. And I'd be like, yeah, but like, you know, we're just shooting this is a late night dinner over two drinks, like, but he was just like, I said what I said and I meant what I said.

• 1:01:33Shaan Puri?

  I think this is awesome. I think I've, you know, this is the best. I think this is totally gonna work. I think blah, blah, blah. So like, I think he has a very singular mindedness about what he believes in. And I think that's cool to, to, to interact with because I think most people A, don't believe anything. B, when they believe they'll hedge, or C, they'll kind of be wishy washy about it, where they believe when the lights are on, and then when the lights are not on, they're, you know, why are you applying for a job? I thought you just said this is the company that's gonna win. Oh, yeah, yeah, just a case, you know, like, there's a wishy washy to a lot of people. I, he has zero wishy washy-ness. So, you know, for better or for worse.

• 1:02:09Sam Parr?

  And I, I'm upset at myself. I judged him as being far different, just by looking off his profile picture.

• 1:02:16Shaan Puri?

  What'd you think?

• 1:02:16Sam Parr?

  He was not, just that he was this, like, I thought he was what people accused me of being, of this like blond-haired, white bro who had everything in life handed to them, who is gonna be kind of, maybe not as intellectual, kind of a, an alpha, you know, like this, this stereotype that, it's not an insult necessarily, but I wouldn't be proud of it.

• 1:02:40Shaan Puri?

  They just think I'm just like a good-looking, strong, muscular, successful guy, and I just feel like it's unfair.

• 1:02:48Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm not talking about myself, but like with him, I'm like, well, because he went to Stanford, he dropped out of Stanford, was in Bitcoin forever, so was like crazy rich at a young age. He said he's from Miami, so in my head, I'm like, oh, okay, I paid you. Yeah, this is like, this, this thing that you're calling life is a game for you. And in reality, he was incredibly intellectual, very intriguing. I believe him that he, that, like, I understand that you can be very wealthy on paper, but like, he hasn't sold a lot of stuff, so like, that's an interesting perspective. So I thought he was cool, different than what I thought he was gonna be. I enjoyed it.

• 1:03:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Cool. Let us know what you think. If you want us to do kind of more of these or less of these, you can tweet at us. And, you know, we take it into consideration. We don't necessarily listen, but we, we like to know what you think, and then we may or may not do it.