#77 with Greg Isenberg - WeWork's Head of Product is an Idea Machine

Today's episode is possible because of Superside! Head to www.superside.com/mfm to hire a dedicated team of designers for your project! Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talks to Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg) who is the Head of Product at WeWork, the cofounder of a product studio called Late Checkout, and he’s an advisor for TikTok. Today's topic include: Greg talks about how YouProbablyNeedAHaircut.com came about (1:30), Greg talks about his background (4:50), Shaan and Greg talk about what drew them to Silicon Valley (11:00), Greg talks about selling his businesses to StumbleUpon and WeWork (19:00), Shaan and Greg talk business ideas (22:30), How to think about consumer internet products (26:00), Discussing how Evan Spiegel explained Snapchat (36:40) and How to invent the future and think about new products or ideas (45:45). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  This episode is brought to you by Superside. They're an always on design company that delivers great design at scale, fast, affordably, and within 24 hours. Go to superside.com/mfm, MFM as in my first million. So superside.com/mfm to check them out.

• 0:25Shaan Puri?

  What's up guys? Sean here. Sam is out today, but we got my friend Greg Eisenberg filling in. Greg is a great dude. You guys will like him a lot. He's been a founder of a couple of companies, sold two of them, one to stumble upon, one to WeWork. He's at WeWork now. He's an investor in companies. He's a cool guy. You guys will like him a lot. He's got a real brain for designing products. Anytime there's like a social or consumer product, he's one of the best thinkers around. And I think you guys will see that. We spent the first half of the conversation talking a little bit about his background. And then the second half is we go through a bunch of random ideas he has on his, you know, notes app on his phone just for fun. So I think you guys will like it. Tweet at me, Sean VP, tweet at Greg. Let

• 1:08Shaan Puri?

  us know what you think about the episode. As always, enjoy. Hope everybody's doing great out there in the quarantine. Keep hustling, building stuff. Keep yourself busy with, with good things. All right. Take care. Enjoy the episode. Okay, so I should introduce you. So Greg is on the podcast. Greg is a homie from, I don't know how long I've known you, a few years at least. We, you know, I guess the world probably now knows you for your haircut website.

• 1:34Greg Isenberg?

  Right. It's true.

• 1:35Shaan Puri?

  Explain what that is. What is the URL? Do you probably need a haircut? Is that it?

• 1:38Greg Isenberg?

  Youprobablyneedahaircut.com. Yeah, we're the busiest virtual barber shop on the internet.

• 1:44Shaan Puri?

  Dude, so what happened? Okay, so people are in quarantine, they need haircuts. And how does this idea go from a little germ, a little sperm in your head to a real idea out there?

• 1:56Greg Isenberg?

  Um, I mean, you know me, I like, you know, I get sort of excited about stuff that goes viral. And I was talking to a buddy of mine, he's a stylist out of work, couldn't pay his rent. I was like, I need a haircut, I like to look good, uh, you know, built the MVP. Um, and then just threw it on Product Hunt and before I knew it, it went as on the Today Show, ABC. And basically the way it works is, it's pretty simple, like for people who need haircuts, they book an appointment. They get connected to a virtual stylist and they could either cut their own hair or they can have a friend cut, cut their hair for you.

• 2:33Shaan Puri?

  And so, this is a dope idea. When it came out, I was like, who's behind this? I know, I feel like I know the person behind it. I didn't know it was you, but I was like, I feel like it's either you, it's Alex too. Or it's like, you know, one of you sort of viral memers of products.

• 2:49Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Shaan Puri?

  I feel like, actually in general, I've spent hours brainstorming with you before. I feel like for you, uh, to get excited about building something, it's gotta start with some emotion. Like either you think of something and it makes you laugh and then you're just giggling and, but you're serious about it. Once you start laughing, or it's some like really sad story and you're like, okay, this is an injustice in the world. I wanna go solve, but is that a fair, is that a fair characterization of you?

• 3:14Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I mean, um, I do like things that kind of go viral. And like for me, you probably need a haircut. I mean, I was, I, I told my girlfriend, I was like, I'm a hundred percent sure this is gonna go viral. And she's like, well, how do you know? How do you know? And I was like, well, like the name and, and kind of, you know, where we're at. And it was the timing, like you just seeded with a couple of journalists and, you know, throw it up on Product Hunt. And like, before you know it, like, I don't know, we probably had a hundred and fifty thousand uniques in the first twenty-four hours.

• 3:47Shaan Puri?

  How many actual haircuts?

• 3:49Greg Isenberg?

  Um, probably more, probably over a thousand at this point. Yeah, yeah, definitely actually more than that. And we have one Silas who did two hundred. So yeah, more.

• 4:00Shaan Puri?

  In any public speaking thing where they're like, hey, can you send me like your bio? This absolutely needs to be the first thing, you know, I, you know, conducted over, I'm responsible for over a hundred thousand haircuts over the internet.

• 4:14Greg Isenberg?

  And the crazy thing is that people like actually look good. Like I've, I've.

• 4:18Shaan Puri?

  Well, the crazy thing is you don't have a haircut right now. You're growing it up.

• 4:22Greg Isenberg?

  The crazy, try booking a haircut right like this weekend. You can't. The, the site is busy. You know, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm, I'm out here. I gotta, I gotta make it happen for the people.

• 4:30Shaan Puri?

  I love it. Uh, there's a reason I have this hat on because, you know, your boy butchered himself with his own two AM haircut with his own quippers without using your website. And, um, you can't see my hair. So that's why. Um, all right. So let's give people background and then we're going to shoot the shit as we do. Uh, Greg, first, do you remember when you became a millionaire? Do you remember the day?

• 4:52Greg Isenberg?

  Of course, you always remember the day.

• 4:54Shaan Puri?

  Tell me about the day.

• 4:55Greg Isenberg?

  But I actually like, you know, where I started actually, and I've never publicly said this, where, where I started, and I think you might know this. Where I started to actually make a little bit of money was really as a teenager doing affiliate marketing.

• 5:09Shaan Puri?

  Oh, affiliate.

• 5:10Greg Isenberg?

  Uh, in like the underbelly of the internet.

• 5:13Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 5:14Greg Isenberg?

  And, you know, not people, not a lot of people talk about, you know, there's a lot of actually great entrepreneurs who, who actually come, came from that area. Area. I think Julian Smith, who you know, is also was in that era, era as well. Um, but I actually remember, uh, two thousand eight, um, it was my, I think it was my eighteenth birthday. And I was doing affiliate marketing. Basically I was doing deals with, um, you know, the e harmonies, the mash dot coms that in, and zingas. Who were like, they were willing to pay you three, four, five, six bucks for every install you generated for them. And back then there was this arbit, I mean, there's still arbitrage now, but there was this arbitrage where if you could, you know, create a landing page and

• 5:56Greg Isenberg?

  cost you one dollar to, to get someone to it, to install that game or get that lead to e harmony, they would pay you five bucks.

• 6:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:04Greg Isenberg?

  So I would just figure out like kind of, um. Just some innovative ways to do it, you know, one, one thing I did, which, you know, which I invented was the uh, auto-playing video pop under ad, which ru- ruined the internet.

• 6:20Shaan Puri?

  Were you desperately trying to find which tab is playing the sound?

• 6:24Greg Isenberg?

  Well, we did it for a poker company and yeah, that's it. And basically, you know, we, we, I remember getting like one, two percent conversions on it. This is a pop under ad to co- cost like a fraction of a penny. But you know, from that whole experience of like, as a teenager, kind of working um, in affiliate marketing, it really just taught me like, what do people want?

• 6:45Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 6:46Greg Isenberg?

  Because, you know, I, I didn't grow up poor or anything, but like my parents weren't giving me money to like go and, a lot of money to like go and buy the things that I wanted. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna have to go out there and do it myself. And I ended up building, um, you know, I put it like, okay, a hundred dollars a month on this landing page, a thousand. And it sort of grew and you really pay attention if it's your own money. You really do pay attention and, and you know, if the difference between like a one percent conversion rate or a one point two percent conversion rate is if you make a hundred dollars a day or lose a hundred dollars a day, or at bigger scales, lose a hundred thousand dollars a day, or gain a hundred thousand dollars a day.

• 7:28Greg Isenberg?

  And if you realize it's, it's around just subtle details, like having a woman with red hair, or have the eyes look at, look at you in the landing page, or certain copy. All these little nuanced things add up to the, to getting people to do things on the internet.

• 7:42Shaan Puri?

  Totally. Me and uh, I think you know Furcon, the, the CTO uh, that had my startup. We used to literally look for, hire for, can we find anyone who's, who's done affiliate marketing? Cause we were like, the people who understand those arbitrages, they actually understand how the internet works. You understand what makes people click, what drives them to actually take action, uh, how the economics of the internet works, how to move traffic around. And that's a, probably, it's not a great long-term path, but it is like, a great place to sharpen your sword. So that then you can do damage with like products that actually matter, or like more sustainable businesses versus these kind of like, you know, moment in time arbitrages.

• 8:19Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I was, I tweeted the other day, actually, I was like, the people I, I wanna hire are, if I'm building a consumer internet thing, is like X game developers, or game product people, or game marketers, or X affiliate marketers. Like, those are the people that understand game dynamics, mechanics, social mechanics, how to, how to build, uh, like, you know, game, game companies have very sophisticated marketing funnels and understand the flow very well. Um, and the same with affiliate marketers, like, those are the people that have been there, done that, um, that are, that are probably undervalued in the market.

• 8:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And then you, you went on, you did a bunch of other things. You did an agency that was kind of like building websites for big, big brand, bigger brands. Uh, then you did, by the way, we, we had James Altucher on the last one, and he said he did the same thing, basically. That was, cause kind of his first hit was like, making americanexpress.com, or like, whatever, those websites.

• 9:13Greg Isenberg?

  Well, yeah, after, after I, the affiliate marketing, I mean, no, no one's lower on the totem pole in terms of status and reputation than then, domainers and affiliate marketers. So I was just like, how do I gain credibility? So got into the agency game and said I would only work with the top clients.

• 9:28Shaan Puri?

  Which is all status.

• 9:30Greg Isenberg?

  All status, like 100% status, so.

• 9:32Shaan Puri?

  And did you have, like, status symbols? Did you have, like, dope car or anything like that? Did you do anything to play the status game?

• 9:39Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, not, not, I mean, I feel like for us, like, internet entrepreneurs, like, that's not even, like, the status. Like, the status isn't dope cars or dope, like, houses. I feel like it's, you know, it's more about.

• 9:52Shaan Puri?

  Did you have a clubhouse invite or not?

• 9:54Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, exactly. That's what, you know, eh, whatever is cool at the moment. So, yeah, I ended up start, you know, doing this agency. Um, it was called Stress Limit Design. We ended up doing like high-profile projects, like the TechCrunch redesign, which was like in 2010, which was like a big deal, and that spawned a lot of business. And then, like, I think you had, um, uh, Andrew Wilkinson from, uh, Tiny, uh, on, on the show. We had a similar model where we took a percentage of our revenue and we built our own startups. And the startups is was all really all around this idea around building mostly community. So like we built like start a vertical. So we did like start cooking.com, which was like at the time, the largest video cooking site on the internet.

• 10:38Greg Isenberg?

  Um, things in the finance space, a company called Wall Street Survivor, which became the most popular financial education. And stock market simulator on the internet. And just like, how do you look at a vertical and build something that they really want? And then wrap around community.

• 10:54Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 10:54Greg Isenberg?

  So did that. Um, and then I realized, um, I wanted to go do something. I want to do the whole San Francisco, kind of like, I was living in Montreal, Canada at the time. I'm like, I want to go do the whole like, this is like post social network. Um, right around then, probably when it came out, twenty, twenty twelve, maybe.

• 11:13Shaan Puri?

  And what did, what did you think was hot shit back then? Were you like reading certain blogs? Was it Twitter? Was it the social network, the movie? What was hot shit? Cause I literally twenty twelve is when I moved to San Francisco too. And my journey was like, um, I, I was starting like a restaurant. Uh, I started, I was trying to start the Chipotle of sushi at the time, which ended up becoming this like cloud kitchen. And then somebody, you know, my mentor gave me the book, The Lean Startup. And I was like, oh shit, yes, we should test if there's demand before we pour everything into this and sign personal guarantees for this lease. And, um, that led me to Paul Graham's essays. And I was like, oh, this guy, this Paul Graham guy, this is the shit. I don't know why his website looks like this, but this is amazing. And so then I started to like, you know, drink the Kool-Aid of Silicon Valley.

• 11:56Shaan Puri?

  And I was just, I picked up and moved from Australia just off of the Kool-Aid. I changed my phone number. I was like, here's a San Francisco phone number. That means I'm in, I'm, I'm committed and then I moved. So what were you, what got you hooked?

• 12:10Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, I'm, I'm like a product designer. Um, so like for me, it was really. And I love social apps. And so for me, it was really like the path, like path, you know, that was like so cool back then, you know?

• 12:24Shaan Puri?

  It was, yeah.

• 12:25Greg Isenberg?

  Pat, yeah. So, yeah, for those of you don't remember, it was like kind of a, you know, it was based on this idea around Dunbar's number, which is like a person only really has a hundred and fifty relationships. So like, what if you designed a social network around um a hundred and fifty people like private? And it was just super well designed and beautiful and they invent, they kind of were like way ahead of their time, like Danny Trent invented like reactions and stuff like that.

• 12:50Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:50Greg Isenberg?

  Um, and I just like remember looking at a lot of like those people, like the dig guys, the stumble upon guys and just being like, I mean, you needed to be there. You needed to be there and then, you know, even if you took quick trips, it just didn't feel that there was something special going on in that era. So came down.

• 13:10Shaan Puri?

  You're speaking past tense. You still think that's that's true or that's not true anymore?

• 13:15Greg Isenberg?

  I mean,

• 13:17Greg Isenberg?

  I think it's for me, I think like Bay Area is like very much. Um, I mean, li- listen, it's a wonderful place, but I think for most people, it's very much like I look at it like a college experience. Like if you're not from there, it's like you go there four, six, eight, 10 years, you do your stint. You learn as much as possible, you build your network and then you bring it to wherever you're from or whatever major city that you live near. Um.

• 13:43Shaan Puri?

  Are you still in S? Where do you live now?

• 13:44Greg Isenberg?

  No, I live in New York City now.

• 13:46Shaan Puri?

  Okay, nice.

• 13:47Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 13:48Shaan Puri?

  Did you sell your place here or what?

• 13:50Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, it's gone on.

• 13:51Shaan Puri?

  Oh, man, Greg had this fat house here in San Francisco. It was awesome. It was a great, great little pla- place.

• 13:57Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, that was a crazy story. That was like a community, like it wasn't even like it was my place, but like it was a community place. Like I, you know, we threw so many events there and it was, you came to some and um.

• 14:06Shaan Puri?

  It was like a coworking space if instead of working, you just partied there. It was like a co-partying space.

• 14:13Greg Isenberg?

  It was wonderful. It was awesome. I do miss it. So, yeah, I think like, you know, that's what drew me to San Francisco and I started something called Five Buy, which basically took a look at all, you know, integrated with all the video popular.

• 14:27Greg Isenberg?

  You know, apps like YouTube and Vimeo and all these sort of sources and we built like a beautiful curation layer on top of it so that when you press the funny button, you'd actually get videos that would make you laugh.

• 14:39Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 14:40Greg Isenberg?

  And we sold that to Stumble Upon, which is Garrett Camp's company, which at the time was one of the largest social apps by referring traffic.

• 14:50Shaan Puri?

  So you ended up being within reach of being able to invest in Uber. Right? Because you knew Garrett and then do you remember the first time you heard that he was doing this Uber thing?

• 15:01Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't remember exactly, but I remember when I met him.

• 15:07Greg Isenberg?

  You know, Uber was, you know, it was a thing. It wasn't obviously what it is today, but you know, I definitely, I definitely wasn't like, hey, like, take my money.

• 15:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 15:17Greg Isenberg?

  You know, I think, uh, but you know, I guess you live and you learn.

• 15:24Greg Isenberg?

  You live and you learn. I have a friend who, uh, who, you know, Garrett pitched him and he was in New York City. This is, you know, one of the smartest guys I know and, um, Garrett pitched him on the seed round of Uber and, and this is in, you know, in Manhattan. He was just like, Garrett, like, I don't know what you're thinking about, man. Like, people aren't gonna like, press a button like, and like a car is gonna come. It's just, you know, you raise your hand. Look at me. He raises his hand.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  Right. Watch this.

• 15:52Greg Isenberg?

  Watch this. Bam. You know, like, it's about creating 10x better product. This isn't 10x, quote unquote.

• 16:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's true. In New York, it actually wasn't, right?

• 16:02Greg Isenberg?

  It wasn't.

• 16:03Shaan Puri?

  A whole bunch of other places it was. It's like people now with crypto, they're like, oh, watch this credit card. Boom. Paid for coffee. I'm done. Uh, you know, look at this bank, you know, don't need to worry about my money. It's like, well, yeah, but that's not the experience for most people in most of the world. And so maybe this doesn't solve your problem, but it's gonna solve somebody's.

• 16:22Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 16:23Shaan Puri?

  So are you a crypto guy?

• 16:26Greg Isenberg?

  Am I a crypto guy? I, um, I have some crypto. I, not enough crypto, but I have some crypto. I dabble. I mean, my whole thing is like,

• 16:35Greg Isenberg?

  Everyone should have 2 to 5% of their net worth in crypto as a hedge.

• 16:40Shaan Puri?

  Right. I calculated the other day. I think I'm at 9%. Cause I was like, am I going a little too crazy with this? But then I was like, no, no, it's okay. It's at 9%. That's, that's acceptable. It's in the acceptable range.

• 16:50Greg Isenberg?

  I'm at 7.5%.

• 16:53Shaan Puri?

  So you're It also grows, right? So as it grows, the thing is, are you going to sell off? No.

• 16:58Greg Isenberg?

  No.

• 16:59Shaan Puri?

  So yeah, not, not gonna, not gonna sell off.

• 17:02Greg Isenberg?

  We'll see if this ages well on this podcast.

• 17:04Shaan Puri?

  The other, yeah, exactly. The other thing is like pay to learn in a way, right? It's like, dude, okay, this is interesting. I need to get in the game. I need to get a little bit of skin in the game just to like be, be, you know, if not like sort of driving things in that, that space, but at least I'm in the passenger seat or the backseat or the trunk. Like, I'm involved in the journey of where that's going by putting a little bit of skin in the game. So I highly recommend that too, because uh, that's been my approach with a lot of things now is just um, pay to learn.

• 17:33Greg Isenberg?

  Right. Yeah. I think like for me, like I learned best when I'm just like pushed into the ground, just like push me into the arena and like, listen, like I've, like I've lost a lot of opportunity and I've learned a lot of things and you just have to assume that you're in it for the long, long game and like life is long, hopefully. And that you have enough at, it's all about at bats, like getting at bat, trying different things, you know, build good relationships. In the end you'll be fine if, if you, if you learn and if you have a lot of at bats.

• 18:04Shaan Puri?

  All right. This episode is brought to you by Superside. All right. So here's the deal. I'm incredibly impatient, like horribly, horribly impatient. And if I get an idea at midnight, by 8 a.m. The next day I want it done. Um, you know, but that's really hard because if something needs to be designed, where am I going to find a designer at midnight to try to make this thing, bring it to life? Um, so you know, I don't think I'm alone. Other startups, even huge companies need design help fast. And they just don't have the internal resources or expertise to get it done. So how do you get reliable design done? Without dealing with expensive agencies and lots of freelancers? You use Superside. That's our sponsor for this week. Just go to superside.com slash MFM. And tell them what you want. They have a team of designers that can get it done fast.

• 18:44Shaan Puri?

  You know, they are 20 times faster than hiring a designer and 50% more affordable than a traditional agency. So if you need high quality design done fast, try Superside. Lots of fast growing teams that are stretched are using them already. Check them out. Superside.com slash MFM. I've used them before. I love them. Check it out.

• 19:02Greg Isenberg?

  So we sold the business to StumbleUpon, ran it as an independent unit, sort of helped out StumbleUpon as well.

• 19:11Greg Isenberg?

  Left, grew that to like one of the fastest growing video discovery apps at the time. Left in 2015-ish and started Islands, which was based on this thesis around group chat is the new social network and it was gonna verticalize and that you'd have a place to talk with your workplace friends. That became Slack, a place to talk with your gamer friends, that became places like Discord. And we focused on just the college market. So raised a couple million bucks on the idea and away we went.

• 19:45Shaan Puri?

  And then what's your story on how that ended up?

• 19:50Greg Isenberg?

  So, um, the story is we sold the business to WeWork in May 2019. Um, and I would have loved to have continued building it out. It, you know, it, it had amazing, it had a lot of really good metrics, like the daily active users would send between 30 and 50 messages every single day. Weekly active users would open the app 47 times per week. Um, the average user would invite 2.1 people. It was a beautiful product. People loved it. Um, so it had like engagement, it had retention, and retention was a 50% 45 day. So like, that's two, you know, it's like, pretty damn good for a social app, above, above what you'd normally see.

• 20:34Greg Isenberg?

  But like, when I went out in the market to raise money, um, I wanted to raise a lot of money. And the reason I wanted to raise it is because we were seeing 5 to 25% penetration on every school we launched at within a couple of weeks. And we had all these metrics. So it was just like, hey, give us money so we can scale this to every college in the United States. But at the time, um, this is around Facebook antitrust type stuff. Uh, Twitter wasn't really like, you know, innovating that much, or they had a lot of like, um,

• 21:08Greg Isenberg?

  kind of like health of the, health of the product that they were doing. Snapchat, the stock was at $5.90. Like, social was kind of like, and, and House Party was flat. You know, social was kind of like... No one wanted to look at it, you know, and I could have raised two, three, four million bucks to continue it. But like, I, I was kind of like, I'm very much, and you are too, like very much like a go big or go home.

• 21:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:33Greg Isenberg?

  And I just figured, yeah, let's find a good home for it.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  You went home.

• 21:40Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha. All right. So tell me, tell me what's got your interest now. So what are you doing day to day basis nowadays?

• 21:46Greg Isenberg?

  So I am the head of product at WeWork, which is awesome, an interesting place to be. I'm a co-founder of a product studio called Late Checkout, which spun up the you probably need a haircut idea and among other ideas, um, which is kind of a reincarnation of what we had at Stress Limit. It's part agency, part, um, part product studio. Um, I've been an advisor for the last year and a half or two years for TikTok, um, which has been amazing to see because they've obviously grown tremendously. Um, and so I've been keeping busy.

• 22:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Okay. Nice. Um, so people, when they listen to this, what they like to hear about is they like to meet interesting people. So I think that's check. Uh, then the second part is the people who are listening are either current entrepreneurs in the market doing something, or they're people who have a job or thinking about making the shift, or they're a college student thinking about making the leap. And, um, you know, one of the things that we do a lot of is we sort of, you know, uh, guess and check or sort of pontificate on,

• 22:57Shaan Puri?

  you know, why doesn't somebody solve this problem? Or wouldn't it be cool if you did this? Or hey, that thing's working. What if you applied it in this other way? And so, uh, I'm curious, do you have, um, I don't know, do you have like in your phone? Do you have like a notes app of like startup ideas, half big startup ideas?

• 23:11Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I have probably, there's probably over a hundred ideas here. I thought what might be fun, because you mentioned that just before, you're like, oh, hey, like, do you have any ideas? I have a notes file. I could literally just like,

• 23:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 23:22Greg Isenberg?

  We can play, we can play a game where I just go like this and just hit it. Spin the wheel?

• 23:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 23:27Greg Isenberg?

  All right, pulling it up.

• 23:30Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, some of them are like, you had a couple of glasses of wine.

• 23:33Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no, I understand, I understand.

• 23:36Greg Isenberg?

  All right, Metamucil for millennials.

• 23:40Shaan Puri?

  Metamucil does what? It's rehydrating or it's like diarrhea?

• 23:43Greg Isenberg?

  Fiber.

• 23:45Shaan Puri?

  Fiber, okay.

• 23:46Greg Isenberg?

  So I think the genesis of this one was,

• 23:52Greg Isenberg?

  you know, I think I love subscription based businesses. I love businesses that are like repeatable.

• 24:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:01Greg Isenberg?

  People who take Metamucil, take it every day mostly to get their routine.

• 24:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Greg Isenberg?

  Kind of in check.

• 24:08Shaan Puri?

  To be routine, yeah.

• 24:10Greg Isenberg?

  A lot of brands right now are just being kind of like rethought of with like obviously as D to C with like kind of a nice brand like, I don't connect with Metamucil. I'll tell you that much.

• 24:20Shaan Puri?

  Not at all. Yes.

• 24:21Greg Isenberg?

  You know, maybe it's just so it's like, that's like a no brainer.

• 24:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like that one. In fact, when I did, I did a podcast with the guy from who created Soylent. And he was like, yeah, like, you know, part of the original thesis was kind of like the, you know, I forgot what the other shake is called. Ensure. It's like Ensure for millennials. And they don't, they don't market it that way, but they were thinking about it that way early on. And so Metamucil is another one. All right. I like it. I'll give that a solid nine out of 10. Actually, you came out hot with that one.

• 24:52Greg Isenberg?

  All right. Spin again?

• 24:54Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 24:55Greg Isenberg?

  Uh, secondopinion.com. When you need a second opinion on literally anything.

• 25:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay, these are experts giving you opinions or what?

• 25:04Greg Isenberg?

  I don't know, man. Like being an adult is hard, right? And we have to deal with it. And sometimes we need relationship advice. Sometimes we need, I don't know how to fix something like, you know, what I've learned from you probably need a haircut actually is that people are actually open to getting help and they'll pay for it.

• 25:23Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:24Greg Isenberg?

  And so it's like, imagine you're having like a big fight with your girlfriend and you want to tell someone, but you want an unbiased opinion. You need a second opinion based on the text that you're going to say.

• 25:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:34Greg Isenberg?

  Secondopinion.com here to help.

• 25:37Shaan Puri?

  Great domain if you could get it. Okay, I like this. What, what vertical would be the best? That's kind of where this gets interesting to me because like, where would you start? And you know, maybe you actually just end there because it's, it's you specialize. Uh, but if, if nothing else, you start with one where people really want this or people really have this problem. So, so where could it, where could it be hot?

• 25:55Greg Isenberg?

  So a good framework for thinking about like how to think about consumer like internet products is like, what is the thing that's gonna get a lot of media attention? Because you want free customers and you also, yeah, you want free customers and also word of mouth is the best customer anyways. Um, so like what's something like, why don't you just reverse engineer? What would be a good PR story like that's just one way to look at like MVP, right? It's like, what's the minimal viable press release?

• 26:27Shaan Puri?

  So somebody was doing this like for dating profiles, um, so which especially as Tinder got hot. That was the time where somebody was like, oh my God, there's Tinder coaches. They'll tell, they'll give you a, you know, objective opinion on your profile and how you're coming across. And you pay for it and that's like actually a thing. And that worked, and that worked when there's like kind of the wave of internet, you know, Tinder itself was kind of newsworthy and you could piggyback off that in the way that you guys sort of piggybacked off of, you know, all the sort of quarantine woes with the, you probably need a haircut. So you'd probably want to find something that is people are already talking about. And then you sort of, you offer the second opinion around that space.

• 27:06Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly. So, you know, maybe, yeah, so one idea is like, maybe you start with like relationship, like relationship advice, um, because that's like evergreen, that that's always. And but then you've launched like the viral piece of it.

• 27:21Shaan Puri?

  Should I get a divorce.com?

• 27:23Greg Isenberg?

  Or I was even thinking more on top, like you have to answer the why now. And the why now is like, a lot of like single people are like, should I go on a date with this person? Like an in-person date, less than six feet, let's say, or should I make out with Johnny? And then you press the button and it's like, no, or something like that.

• 27:46Greg Isenberg?

  So I think that's where it comes down to like, yeah, like building little games, building little like nuanced things that like, surprise people, delight people, people want to write about.

• 27:55Shaan Puri?

  Okay, love it. Spin again.

• 27:59Greg Isenberg?

  Uh, this is kind of like.

• 28:01Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna give that one a six and a half out of ten.

• 28:04Greg Isenberg?

  Uh, yeah, this is maybe even a, a three and a half and a ten, but like we're picking random ones here.

• 28:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Greg Isenberg?

  Text me a secret dot com. And this is, I, I didn't do a full spin, so I guess it was related to secondopinion.com. But like, we all have secrets and a lot of the time we wanna like, talk about those.

• 28:21Shaan Puri?

  Get them off our chest.

• 28:22Greg Isenberg?

  Get them off our chat, chest. So this is a service that does that. Here's another one.

• 28:27Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I like that idea. So, so here's, here's what I'm imagining. Um, I get matched with someone and it tells me a little bit about them. Twenty-nine years old, male, San Francisco, rich. And then he basically, but I don't know more than that. And then they open up and you can open up. Or you can sort of roulette, we'll get to the next person. It's a secret network of, of telling secrets to each other.

• 28:51Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, man.

• 28:52Shaan Puri?

  And the business model is blackmail. It's genius.

• 28:56Greg Isenberg?

  We'll make millions.

• 28:57Shaan Puri?

  We'll make millions, exactly. I'm doing the money burns, you know, evil, evil hands.

• 29:04Greg Isenberg?

  Uh, next idea, which is a bit more, uh, the, the opposite of this idea, more, you know, nice for the world is a wash and fold for low-income families. So I, a, a lot of people, especially in New York City, but you know, everywhere in the world and cities, spend a lot of time in laundromats.

• 29:26Shaan Puri?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:26Greg Isenberg?

  And if you're a working mom or working dad, like, you know, sitting for two, three hours at a laundromat is, is like, take, is a lot of unproductive time that you could either be spending with your children, um, or you could be like, doing a side hustle or whatever it is.

• 29:42Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:42Greg Isenberg?

  So like, how do you like, do wash and fold and just take that out of the equation so that they can focus on, uh, what it is they wanna be doing?

• 29:51Shaan Puri?

  And so this is just philanthropic. It's like, uh, uh, it will be taken care of for you. We're gonna give back hours of productivity to the people who, people who need it.

• 29:59Greg Isenberg?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 30:01Shaan Puri?

  Okay, alright.

• 30:02Greg Isenberg?

  Here's another one. Um, Spotify, but for work in progress. It's called Watercolors. So, the whole idea here is, um.

• 30:14Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, life is messy. And there's a reason why there's an eraser at the end of a pencil. But like when you go on Spotify. It's all these like highly curated, like I've produced this piece of content for the last six years. And this is, you know, here it is.

• 30:32Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 30:33Greg Isenberg?

  What if, what if, what if artists can put like, just like little pieces of work that are like unfinished. Um, and create almost like a SoundCloud type website or app. Um, and, and it's called, uh, yeah, what do they call it? Watercolors? I don't know why I call it watercolors, but I. That's the idea.

• 30:55Shaan Puri?

  So for the unfinished thing, would it be like a dribble where it's like a shot? It's like, it's like ten seconds of the song. It's not the whole thing raw. It's a snippet that you like.

• 31:03Greg Isenberg?

  Well, it could be, yeah, it could be whatever, whatever the artist decides. So if the artist decides they want to do a like ten second thing, great. This is like, here, check this riff. But I just think that there's a whole dimension of music that we're not exploring. And I also think that, um, it's just kind of like, I want to see more apps. I want to see more websites where it's fine to put unfinished work. I think that's a part of the creative process.

• 31:30Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 31:30Greg Isenberg?

  And I think that, um, it's a good message that we should be spreading.

• 31:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and I, I think, uh, stories is an awesome format for unfinished things. Like, just like stories got people to share little raw moments of their life. Cause they're like, look, it gets, it's gone after 24 hours. I feel like if you can make it ephemeral, uh, then more people, the question really is, why don't people share more unfinished work? And then you would work backwards from that, like, well, here's my objection. Here's my hesitation. Here's what I'm worried about. And then you could figure out product design that will solve those problems.

• 32:01Greg Isenberg?

  Well, yeah, I think like to talk to, to speak to that, I think, you know. Artists, and I include myself as an artist, because I'm a product designer, is like, we don't, we, we like to show our best work, right? So like, putting unfinished work isn't quote unquote our best work. So I think like, a part of this is like, edu-, you know, that's a big challenge with this one, but I think like, educating the artist around like, it's okay, like, you, it's cool, like, and in fact, like, if you're like an artist, hundreds of thousands of followers, or even like tw- like, if you just have like a thousand really engaged people, like, they wanna interact.

• 32:40Greg Isenberg?

  Like, I, I, I, I know this one artist, he has two thousand followers, but like, he posts on stories, like, little unfinished things, and I'm like, post more of this.

• 32:48Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, I'm with you. Uh, uh, we, I used to call it working in public, and then somebody sent me this link, I think, uh, Jessica Livingston or somebody was calling it, working with the garage door open. I don't, I don't know who, who I was reading, but they were saying like, imagine your startup, you know, you're starting in the garage, but what if you had the garage door rolled open? And like, what are the sort of serendipitous benefits you could have of putting your work out there in public?

• 33:11Greg Isenberg?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:13Greg Isenberg?

  Another, you want one more, you want a couple more?

• 33:15Shaan Puri?

  Yes, yes.

• 33:17Greg Isenberg?

  I get, we can literally do this for hours. Um, this is just a concept, so like, I just wrote, you know what are cool? Ideas that take something free and then you charge for them, like, and then I put IG water. Like, water bottles, if you think of water bottles, like, no one was charging for water until some, someone was like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if like, you can transport this water, and like, we would sell it? And then we can have like, a luxury brand, like, you can have Evian, and it's gonna be from France, and then there's this whole new category, like, new categories. Um, the founder of Gumroad tweeted the other day, he was just like, if you wanna make ten dollars an hour, did you see that tweet?

• 33:55Shaan Puri?

  No, I didn't see it.

• 33:56Greg Isenberg?

  You wanna make like, ten dollars an hour, like, go work for some, someone, you wanna make a hundred dollars an hour, like, charge companies or something like that, I'm butchering it here, but if you wanna make a thousand do- like, a thousand dollars an hour, the, the point is, it was like, you wanna make ten thousand dollars an hour, create, create a new category, and be like the leader of the new category, and I think like, I'm always interested in like, n- new categories, like, virtual, you know, barbershop, new category, like, yeah, it may not work, but it may work, and if it works, it's gonna work big. Uber. New cate- like, it's really just like a new on-demand, like, using technology to bring a car to you, like, New category like boom.

• 34:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure. So what's something that's free that could be could be charged for? So for example, water is a good example. You know, when you first said that, my brain was like, oh, air. But actually, air is also charged for air purifiers, diffusers, things like that. humidifiers, there's ways that people have found a way to essentially charge for air in a way. They're processing it, but they're doing it. What else is free that could be charged for? So content is a good one.

• 35:06Greg Isenberg?

  Or put another way, like, what are things that we take for granted as human beings that we can charge for? And that opens up like a whole other set of products and services.

• 35:17Shaan Puri?

  And those are hard because those are blind spots, right? You have to actually think hard because they are just embedded in the world. You don't even realize that they're sticking out because you take them for granted by definition.

• 35:28Greg Isenberg?

  Absolutely. And that's why, like, I was before we were chatting, I actually, someone called me and was like, Greg, where do you see like the consumer internet going? And I was like, this stuff comes out of nowhere. The stuff literally comes out of nowhere. There's like, you can look back in hindsight and be like, oh, yeah, like, we can connect the dots for these reasons. But I think like, the dots are actually pretty messy to connect. If we actually look at it, and I think like, the best actually consumer businesses are kind of like,

• 35:57Greg Isenberg?

  somewhat random. They're somewhat random. It's based on like, an entrepreneur just like, being obsessed with like, like I, Ben Rubin, for example, the founder of House Party. He's an architect. He thinks of, you know, House Party is these rooms, sort of physical space, you know, digital representations of these physical spaces. The guy is like, spent years being, you know, studying to be an architect and obsessing his like, entire teenage years about like, presence and what that means. So like, it's not because then in like, 2016 or whatever, 2015, like, live video was like, important, why, you know, it was like, no, the guy's literally been like, thinking about it forever. And he's like, the expert in the world on it.

• 36:42Shaan Puri?

  Have you ever seen, there's this video of Evan Spiegel from Snapchat, he's in a kitchen, and he's explaining Snapchat on like, um, you know, like a notebook, just like a notepad of paper, and he's got like, you know, he flips it three times, and it's like, those are his slides essentially. Have you seen this video?

• 36:58Greg Isenberg?

  I have. It's actually, everyone should watch that.

• 37:00Shaan Puri?

  Everybody should go watch this video.

• 37:02Greg Isenberg?

  Because it's, he's taking, when you go through that, it's, he, like, I've never met him, but he's such a, like, you just realize that he's amazing, because he's able to just still, a really, quote unquote, complicated, sort of, like, he just makes it so simple. And I think the beauty of it is, like, everyone on his team could look at that, and like, oh yeah, then they, they repeat it to other people, "Oh yeah, what's Snapchat?" "Oh, it's so hard to use." No, actually, it's so simple.

• 37:29Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. Yeah, the video, the video was amazing, even like, I just remember one detail in it, uh, on the product design, he's like, "Yeah, so", he, he explains first, you know, why, um, why, you know, it opens up to the cameras, you could take a photo, and it's meant to be, he's like, basically, photos today are thought of as memories. You take a photo, and you're stashing it away, for essentially, your, your, your keepsake. He's like, "But we use photos for communication." Uh, "We just think if you send somebody a photo, it's a great way to communicate, you know, what you're doing, how you're feeling, if you take a photo of your face, it's, you know, it's better than typing in many ways." So he's like, "First, Snapchat is just using photos and videos for communication, not for memories." It's like, boom, insight one. Insight two, he's like, "And then we created this thing called Stories", and he's like, "Uh, for Stories, you know, what we wanted to do",

• 38:14Shaan Puri?

  he's like, "Every social network is reverse chronological, so you open up your feed, and you see sort of the latest thing first." He's like, "But that's not how our brains are really wired." Um, you know, "We communicate through story, and that's what we remember." And so, um, you know, when you click on a Snapchat story, it starts from beginning, then it goes middle and end, and it sounds like, obviously, duh, but, that was counterintuitive. Twitter was reverse chronological, Instagram was reverse chronological, Facebook was reverse chronological, your email was reverse chronological, and so, that was the, um... You know, with stories, he's like, when we do it, beginning, middle, and you can, you know, you're when somebody clicks your thing, they're going to experience it the way you are wanting to tell that story. And I was like, oh, okay, guy's a genius. Like, that's what that is.

• 38:59Shaan Puri?

  It's taking complicated things, making them simple, or taking things that seem simple on the surface and showing how much is actually below the surface, how much thought went into crafting that simple experience.

• 39:11Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I think what I like about that is like, he starts with the key insight.

• 39:15Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's, you know, picture's worth a thousand words is one way of looking at it. So communicating through photos is a richer way of communicating than through text or calling somebody, right? And so, great. And people do do this. And that's sort of like the immediate hater is, well, I can just, I can go to iMessage, I can upload a photo, and then I can hit send, and I can send that to you. And then, so the first insight is, people use photos for memories, they should use it for, you know, it's a really effective way to communicate. That's the insight. And then he changed the how, which was like, well, what if we reduce the friction to zero? So like, yeah, you could open up iMessage, click your friend's name, click the camera button, click the gallery button, find the photo,

• 39:56Shaan Puri?

  then hit send, and then they get it. And like, then they view it. Or, you open up our app, the camera's already open, you push, you know, you take the photo, and then you send it to as many friends as you want, one to many. And like, boom, it was done. And so they changed the how, lowered the friction of getting people to do what they already wanted to do.

• 40:14Greg Isenberg?

  Right. So I think it starts with the, it starts with the key insight. Next, it goes to, like, what is, who, what is the community that has a burning need for this? Like, instead of like, a lot, you know, a mistake a lot of people make is they create software, and then they find the community versus like, finding the community and then building the software.

• 40:35Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:36Greg Isenberg?

  So like, you know, with this particular key insight, the way it relates to the community, I mean, Snapchat started off in high schools in Los Angeles, at like, preppy, preppy, preppy, preppy, you know, $50,000 a year high schools, and...

• 40:51Greg Isenberg?

  These people were sending, you know, they're kids, they're sending like naked pictures, they're sending pictures of drugs, they're sending things that their parents don't want them to see, or just like making, or just basically things that their parents don't want to see.

• 41:04Shaan Puri?

  So actually, we should change one thing. The unique insight wasn't just that they use it for communication, it's that when photos stick around forever, people, you know, so hesitant to share, it sucks. And so there's a whole bunch of things we want to share that we don't want to stick around forever. And so the ephemerality was the, was sort of the key mechanic.

• 41:21Greg Isenberg?

  So second, second piece, burning, you know, what is the burning need for the community? And then third, I think is like, okay, how? Like, what is, okay, now you, you want to build software. Now, explain to me how that ladders up to one and two? And why this is the most beautiful and the fastest and, you know, and then if you have those three, like, forget decks, forget like business plans. Like, just show me one, two, and three. And if you show me one, two, and three, like, the market for, you know, when people looked at Uber initially, people were like, on demand, black cars, San Francisco? Come on.

• 42:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:02Greg Isenberg?

  Such a small market. What are you talking about? I know, I know people who did that. And it's like, yeah, like, but sometimes small markets, you can't always pick a really big market. Sometimes those small markets actually expand to be new categories in really big markets. So I think you got to play the field. I think you got to also, you got to look at small, you got to look at medium and, and look at large. And I don't think that if the market is small, you should be like, I can't do this.

• 42:30Shaan Puri?

  Right. And I guess if we're being honest with Snapchat, they didn't realize the high school was the community that they, that would need this the most, because I think what ended up happening was they had it, they built it while they're in school, summer hit, usage was pretty flat. They were thinking like, oh, college kids will want to do this, which ended up being true. College kids did want to use it to send photos from parties and whatnot, photos you don't want to stick around forever. And Then somebody, you know, introduced it to their niece or somebody, something like that. And then basically in the, in the school, I think they were using it. Was, am I right on iPads to send sort of in classroom iPads to send, you know, messages to each other across classrooms or whatever. And the teachers couldn't catch it basically because the message destroyed, burned after reading essentially. Is that, do I have history correct?

• 43:13Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, that's it. That's it.

• 43:15Shaan Puri?

  And then with Uber, same thing where I think they also probably thought it was a small market because neither Garrett nor Travis ran the company initially, right? They hired a guy, hey, you know, guy off Twitter wants to run this thing. Sure, come on over. And he became a billionaire, you know? Um, but like, I think if they knew what Uber becomes, they probably run it from day one themselves. I think they sort of observed over time, holy shit, there's a lot of pull here. And then this could go even further. Um, and so, you know, it progressively stacked up from there.

• 43:41Greg Isenberg?

  I agree, and I think like for, for the people listening, I think it's important to, like, when you're thinking about what do you want to spend your time doing? Think about like, what have you spent your time doing? Like, what have you spent your life doing? And why, why do you have like this unique advantage or these, you know, what are some key insights that you can have about the world that, that you could?

• 44:03Shaan Puri?

  So what, what's the answer for you?

• 44:05Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, I have a lot. I've had, you know, I think every person has had unique insights. Like, for example, like, um, or unique backgrounds. Like, my, my family used to own like store, you know, stores in Quebec for, I don't know, a hundred years. And I grew, and because of that, like every Saturday, my mom would drop me off at the mall where my dad's store was. And I spent a lot of time in a mall, frankly, because that's, my mom was there. My dad was there and my dad was working. So I kind of like walked around, I got to know the mall really well. And I learned, I have a unique perspective on the world in terms of like commerce,

• 44:47Greg Isenberg?

  in terms of like, what does the mall even represent as like a meeting point for people to like, you know, young people and old people and why are they there? And like, what, what are the types of restaurants there? Why is there a restaurant? Why is the food court here? Like, why are things, you know, how are things merchandise? You know, I think one of the big reasons I became a product designer was because I saw that, you know, if you put like a product by like,

• 45:12Greg Isenberg?

  I remember like, yeah, basically like if you put products like near, you know, the lineup like people will buy them. And I was like, wow, like the UI UX, you know, the interface user experience of the physical world is a real thing. And that just led me to digital.

• 45:28Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, for sure. So I like that. Basically, there's one, one school of thought. And I think this is the Paul Graham school of thought. This is where I cribbed this idea from, but he basically says, uh, if you want to invent the future, um, just live in the future and then invent what's missing. And it's not sort of this crazy thing. It's like back to this, there's some quote where it's like, if you want to paint the perfect painting, become perfect and then just paint. Um, but the idea is like, if you already do something in your lifestyle that is unusual, that is sort of forward thinking in some way. Maybe you're somebody who doesn't own your house, you, you rent and you rent your car and you rent everything. Then the sharing economy is quite obvious to you, right? If you go and do couch surfing and you think that's normal, Airbnb is normal, is a normal idea for you, even though it's abnormal to others.

• 46:13Shaan Puri?

  But to you, you're like, no, I live in this future where this is true, right? I push button and my groceries appear. Um, not everybody does that today, but I live in that future where that, that exists. And I'm going to sort of enable that for more people.

• 46:25Greg Isenberg?

  Right.

• 46:27Shaan Puri?

  And so one way of looking at it is what, what are things that are normal to you? It's normal to me to record something and have hundreds of thousands of people I've never met, listen to me in their ear balls every morning while they commute to work and they feel like they know me. That's a normal thing for me, but not for most, but like, maybe there's something that I could sort of, um, make that, make that, make my normal, normal for others. Um, so that's one, one way of thinking about it. And what you said is sort of the, the, the counter to that or the, like compliment to that, which is,

• 46:55Shaan Puri?

  um, you know, don't try to get interested in sort of new things to try to create a company. Look at what you're already interested in, the life you've already lived. And there's embedded insights and domain expertise and nuance that you understand because you lived that way. And then think, how do I, how do I start something that leverages those insights and that experience that I've already had?

• 47:16Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah. And, and, and be, be mindful of the fact like, oh, hey, like, why, why am I so, why do I love this P? Like, why do I love spending time at the mall or like, why do I love looking at like how things are merchandise and stuff like that? And being like, wow, like I.

• 47:34Greg Isenberg?

  I have an eye for that and let your imagination go wild and be like, oh, you know, it would be cool if you could do this, you know, like, what if you could do that? And then then that's when you start like, oh, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if you can like create that?

• 47:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 47:47Greg Isenberg?

  Something. And that's when a business is created to fill that void.

• 47:51Shaan Puri?

  And what are some of the most interesting either products or startups you've seen, invested in, you've noticed existing things? Uh, what are some of the most interesting things that have caught your eye lately?

• 48:02Greg Isenberg?

  So I'm gonna like pull up my phone. Um, there's an app. Have you? I was playing with it today. It's called It's Me. Do you know It's Me?

• 48:11Shaan Puri?

  No. Is this an avatar app?

• 48:13Greg Isenberg?

  Yes.

• 48:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I think I had it before, but I I forgot what it is.

• 48:18Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, so it started, it recently started to kind of take off. But the way it works is, um, you log in with Snapchat, um, pulls your emoji. Um, and you say your age, if you want to meet with like girls or guys or both. And it chat roulette style, like you press a button, it connects you to someone. It says it says a bit about like where they're from, who they are. And you see your the avatar talk. So you like you're like you're you're talking, but you see yourself as an avatar.

• 48:53Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 48:53Greg Isenberg?

  And I think what I find, you know, like, what is the key insight there is that like? Man, like being, you know, for a lot of people, like, being in a physical form, be it even on like a Zoom or FaceTime or, you know, literally physical is tough for people.

• 49:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 49:12Greg Isenberg?

  And having that like wall is nice as like an icebreaker to eventually get you to meet in person, et cetera.

• 49:22Shaan Puri?

  I like that. Let me connect that to the last idea. So. When I first started working in this Twitch ecosystem, the live streaming ecosystem, I saw this one guy, his name's Manny. I think his handle's like the one Manny or something like that. And Manny, it streams on Twitch, but he's a dog. He's not actually a dog, he's a guy, but his avatar is a dog. And so he's one of the few Twitch people who their little webcam area is not themselves. It's a, it's a dog that he uses this obscure app, or it got, I think it might've got bought by now, but it's called Face Rig at the time. So Face Rig was this obscure app. You have to have a Windows machine, go on Steam, download Face Rig, pay 20 bucks for Face Rig, then you get the dog and the dog will mimic your head movements and your mouth movements while you're streaming.

• 50:06Shaan Puri?

  And so for him, he was like, oh yeah, this is way more comfortable for me than putting my own real face out there as the like, kind of the show. And so I saw that and then I tried it and I was like, wow, that really does make me feel way less anxious about kind of like performing. If I, if I just have this little goofy looking dog as me instead of me. And so that's another one where it's like, okay, today it took a lot of extra work. You had to go find this app, download it, pay money, blah, blah, blah, set it up on a PC. But, once you've experienced the magic at the end of that, you're like, okay, magic is here. Now can I make this way less friction? I've lived in the future, I saw what life is like, and now I'm going to bring that back to the present and make it accessible to more people. And it sounds like these guys who are guys and gals who are building this app might've done that.

• 50:51Shaan Puri?

  They might've made it way simpler for somebody to have that same experience.

• 50:55Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's simple, it's fast and magical. And I think what I like about it, and what I like about your story actually is that like, that dude was like, he was unique and he was like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. I don't care what people think, like this is what I'm gonna do. And he like pushed the envelope and did something weird. And it turns out like weird things are actually like head turners. And like head turners are actually create word of mouth. And word of mouth actually creates audience and creates buzz and creates all these things. So like, same with Snapchat, right? Like, and it's obvious now that like a message would disappear, a photo would disappear, a video would disappear.

• 51:37Greg Isenberg?

  But at the time, like, no one, that didn't exist. It's a new concept. So like, people like, you know, listeners like...

• 51:46Greg Isenberg?

  Tap into that like uniqueness about yourself and don't be afraid to do it. Um, because who knows, you might be on the verge of a Snapchat or something like that.

• 51:58Shaan Puri?

  And people will doubt it. There's a reason my Snapchat handle is still SVP test. Because I was like, this app ain't going nowhere, right? Like, I don't have to worry about making a real handle here. I'll just do this test account because I just want to try this silly fad. And then, you know, this will be gone in a month. And of course, uh, famous last words.

• 52:16Greg Isenberg?

  Yep, absolutely.

• 52:17Shaan Puri?

  Let me give you, let me give you an idea that's sort of like that. Okay. So my friend, uh, Damian. He's the founder of a company called DoDill. Have you ever heard of this?

• 52:26Greg Isenberg?

  I haven't.

• 52:26Shaan Puri?

  It's like a British based company, uh, DoDill as in due diligence. So basically they, they surface, um, private company information. In a way that's, I, I think the EU has different laws of what you need to disclose. So he can provide like, you know, revenue information, employee information. So you can get a lot more information about companies there. So he built this platform. It's like fintech guy doing fintech things. It's a super, uh, super valuable company. I think it might be a billion dollar company. And, uh, so anyways, he did that. And so the other day I see him on Facebook and he posts like, hey, you know, you know. I, you know, I've left and I was thinking about my next thing. So I come up with this new thing called Batel. And I was like, oh shit, what's Batel? Is this like some neo bank? Is this, you know, what is this new fintech product? And he's like, it's not fintech.

• 53:10Shaan Puri?

  It's a remote sleep school for parents. And basically, uh, he's like, I met this woman and what she does is she teaches parents how to put their baby to sleep. Um, and you know, so they get a good night's sleep and the parents aren't up all night feeding every two hours and whatnot. And, uh, she doesn't use what's called the cry it out method, which is the, the normal way you do this. But it's like really hard on the parents to, to fight through and, and let their kid cry it out. She's like, she doesn't use the cry it out method. And she's a, you know, she's like the dog whisperer. It's amazing. I watched her work her magic on 200 families. And I thought, okay, I'm going to help this woman scale her, her, you know, magic to, you know, as many families as I can.

• 53:50Shaan Puri?

  And so he created this remote sleep school. It's basically costs a thousand bucks, but you're going to teach your kids going to get a good sleeping program. So it's like, you know, what's that worth to you? And like, I don't know if you know this, I had a kid eight months ago. So now I'm in that position. And so I was like, oh dude, I'll beta test this now because you know, I'm going on three hours of sleep right now. And damn, I would love if I could, you know, do this. And so I think that there's these fringe sort of weird things where it's like, would people really pay a thousand dollars for this woman to zoom call you? And, um, and teach you how to put your kid to sleep like, you know, but I think that that's one of these products that is just weird enough. Solves a real problem and like adds a lot of real value and is charging for something that normally this advice is just like a free mommy blog.

• 54:34Shaan Puri?

  Telling you, hey, try this. And instead it's like, you know, here's a super high end version of that. But we're going to guarantee the result in a, in a better way than a average blog would do. What do you think of that idea?

• 54:45Greg Isenberg?

  I think it's, I actually really like it. Um, I think like, I'm a big believer in, you know, come for the tool, stay for the network. But like, the way I look at it is like, come for the tool, stay for the vertical network. Where the vertical here would be parents.

• 55:03Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 55:04Greg Isenberg?

  Like the fact that he's capturing such a high, like, you're just in the, your beginning stages, my friend. And like, you're, you're about to buy a whole lot of products and services for your child and maybe even more children if you have. So like the fact that like, here's the thing, here's one thing I'll tell you. If, if they help you with this problem, you're definitely going to be, wow, that was amazing.

• 55:27Shaan Puri?

  My trust in them will be like 1,000 points, you know?

• 55:30Greg Isenberg?

  Right. So that's what it is. It's like, when you're looking at like building a vertical, something in a vertical, it's all about like, what is the trust quotient you can have with the vertical? And I, I like that this particular task will give you a lot of, a lot of, you know, a lot of cred for this business and. Yeah, man, I think like, that's the other thing is like, it could, I could see it being like a million dollar a year business, but I can also somehow see it being a billion dollar

• 56:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 56:00Greg Isenberg?

  business. And so it's worth a shot.

• 56:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and you know, the math, I think, works where he has both options where it's like, you know, thousand people paying you a thousand bucks a month, or sorry, a thousand bucks for the program, that's a million bucks. And can he find a thousand parents to do this? I'm very confident just through Facebook ads. So I think he could bootstrap to a million dollars in revenue uh, very quickly with sort of like thirty, forty percent margins on that and just pocket that. So I think very low tech, uh, easy to start, bootstrapable into the single digit millions, let's call it between one and nine million. Um, or what you said, which is like, cool, if he thinks about this bigger, like, how do I, now that I have trust with these parents and I've solved one problem for them, the problem they had during their first seven months of, of their baby,

• 56:44Shaan Puri?

  how do I help them with their next phase and the next phase and the next phase and, you know, could go, go bigger from there. So I like, I like having those options on the table where it starts with sort of those humble beginnings. And it might just be a great cash flow business, or goes for the sort of home run.

• 57:00Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, man, tell them to keep going.

• 57:02Shaan Puri?

  I will. Well, I don't think he needs, I don't think he needs my, my encouragement, uh, to keep going. That's the, the best entrepreneurs don't need any advice or encouragement.

• 57:10Greg Isenberg?

  It's true.

• 57:11Shaan Puri?

  I remember, I invested in, uh, this, invested in Lambda School and afterwards I was talking to my friend, we, we did it together. And I was like, here's three reasons, you know, here's what I want out of this investment. So it's like, I don't know if this will make us money or not, but, you know, I want to learn about like this idea of this trade school thing for education. I want to hang out with the founder, you know, monthly and be helping him solve problems. I think it'll be really interesting. And, you know, lastly, you know, I hope we, we get a return on this. And he replied, he was like, oh, all I care about is the return. Uh, don't give a shit about the rest, but hey, they each their own. And on my end, I was like, ironically, the return is going to be there, but for the first two, like Austin doesn't need my help, doesn't ask for my help.

• 57:51Shaan Puri?

  The, you know, if I text him something, I'm actually just taking up his time and it reminds me of kind of what an investor told me, which is the best companies don't need us. That's the reality of the value add services is that the best companies rarely need your help. And the worst companies, you can't save anyways. And so, you know, it's, there's some in the middle where you can help influence their trajectory. But this idea of investors really helping out or encouraging entrepreneurs or whatever else is sort of overblown. It's marketing.

• 58:16Greg Isenberg?

  I, I totally agree. I think, um, Actually, last week, there's this founder, he's just like, literally, he crushes it, like, for years, he's done 10% year-over-year growth, and, sorry, month-over-month growth, and I responded to his investor update, "Keep it up," and then he just responds right away, he's like, as if I wasn't gonna keep it up.

• 58:42Greg Isenberg?

  He came like, "Thanks, bro."

• 58:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 58:45Greg Isenberg?

  That's amazing. I just took a picture of myself smiling and sent it back to him.

• 58:50Shaan Puri?

  That's so good. Oh, that's great. Alright, we should wrap up, we kind of went over time, but,

• 58:56Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Shaan Puri?

  Anything else? We do one last spin of the, one last spin of the idea, Will? Let's do, let's do one more, then we're out of here. We'll do a quick one.

• 59:02Greg Isenberg?

  Let's throw it. Notes. Boom.

• 59:08Greg Isenberg?

  Um, okay, so, this one is a quarantine-ish idea, but it could last beyond quarantine. Um, it's an idea that, basically, um, I called it chef's table, um, and it's this idea that, like, I don't know if you saw Carbone, the restaurant in New York City, um, is not doing, they're just doing one meal per night, and then it sells out. So it's kind of like a drop.

• 59:35Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 59:36Greg Isenberg?

  Um, which builds a lot of buzz and demand, and it sells out every night. This idea is that, like, it's, it's, it's a drop for a restaurant, but, um, you, um, have a live stream with the chef telling you about, like, if it comes with wine, or, or the meal, and it's like, this is how I did it, and it's more of an experience.

• 1:00:00Shaan Puri?

  And the live stream is after you order, or it's before you order?

• 1:00:04Greg Isenberg?

  So, everyone, the way it would work is, you would, you would order it, everyone, which is, everyone would get the meal at the same time. I don't care if you wanted it at 7:30.

• 1:00:13Shaan Puri?

  How would you do that?

• 1:00:15Greg Isenberg?

  This is, this is an idea, you know? This is an idea. Not enough time to talk about how we would do it.

• 1:00:20Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 1:00:21Greg Isenberg?

  They all get roughly around the, you know, same amount of time. And then chef comes and he's like, listen, like I, you know, picked these, these, you know, carrots myself in Hudson Valley and here's explaining it. And I think like, that's what I miss most about sort of restaurants, I guess, is like the, the stories behind and, and this, the experience behind it, which you don't really get if you're just like frying up some eggs in the morning.

• 1:00:43Shaan Puri?

  For sure. Okay. So here's a twist on this idea. You're a high-end restaurant, your business is gone right now. Um, like you're a Michelin star restaurant, what are you, what are you doing? You can't do anything. And so here's your, your pivot. You go live on Instagram before the drop. So you go live before and you're showing the prep. It's the, you know, you're in the chef's kitchen. They're talking about it, they're drinking wine there and you're seeing it being prepared. And people I think like to see as the show chef's table is shown, people like to watch high-end food get made, real skill, you know, that, that sort of thing, as long as you have a personality with it. And, um, and then basically by the end of the, the 20 minutes, um, the, the, the meal is ready for the drop. The drop goes live and it's, um, you know, it uses the new Facebook shop thing that came

• 1:01:28Shaan Puri?

  out yesterday. You push the button and it orders it basically, and it is like a hundred dollar meal. Um, and it's, you know, it's the stuff you don't find on Postmates or Grubhub or whatever, which are all kind of like the bottom of the barrel. So you come in at the very top end of those and it's like, the delivery experience is going to be, you know, the packaging is going to be amazing and whatnot, but you're going to get what you just saw on the IG live. And so you do these like hundred or a hundred fifty dollar drops, um, you know, for high-end stuff through the, through the delivery network. But you can go live before, uh, to build up that, that anticipation of QVC, but for high-end cooking.

• 1:02:03Greg Isenberg?

  I, I like it. I think we kind of merged the ideas. That's why it's nice to have co-founders.

• 1:02:08Shaan Puri?

  Okay, great. I'll incorporate it and we'll, we'll get this off the ground. Sweet. All right, Greg, where should people find you if they like your, your style? They want to hear more of you.

• 1:02:17Greg Isenberg?

  If you want to hear more of me, check me out on Twitter. My name's at Greg Isenberg, G R E G I S E N B E R G. Check and just holler.

• 1:02:26Shaan Puri?

  Cool. We'll put it in the show notes too. All right. All right, Greg, I gotta run, but this has been good. Good catching up.

• 1:02:31Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, you too. Take care.

• 1:02:32Shaan Puri?

  All right, man. See you.

• 1:02:34Greg Isenberg?

  Bye.