#203 - Why Dunder Mifflin Should Be a Real Paper Company & An Inside Look Into MicroAcquire With Andrew Gazdecki

In this two-part episode, Sam (@theSamParr) and Shaan (@ShaanVP) start off with ideas on building brands around pop culture, discuss the drama around the private space race, and talk about a few business-in-a-box concepts. In the second part they interview Andrew Gazdecki (@agazdecki) from MicroAcquire. They talk about how Andrew raised $3.5M this week, discuss MicroAcquire's role as a market network, and successful niches to build in. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (:49) Intro * (2:41) Building brands around pop culture * (10:59) The private race into space * (21:48) Bill's lemonade stand * (24:57) Service based businesses-in-a-box * (30:34) Meet Andrew Gazdecki * (34:17) The buy & build MBA - Soldstock.io * (37:19) Market networks * (40:04) Andrew's first company * (47:30) What Andrew did after selling his first company * (59:05) Successful niches to build in

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  I used to go to an ATM machine and just put my card in and say, print balance and just look at it. And he's like, I would just do that like every day.

• 0:20Sam Parr?

  So we have an interview with Micro Acquire. They, well, we talk all about it then. And it's with Andrew. He sells startups, basically, on Micro Acquire. It's a marketplace for selling startups. But we're going to talk about some ideas first and catch up. I've hired someone, Jake McDonald, to do research. I just sent you.

• 0:39Shaan Puri?

  You, of course, hired like a guy who looks like a football player. And yet, he's your like business researcher guy.

• 0:47Sam Parr?

  Well, so here's the secret, which is Sean has had a little bit of help with the research for a very long time. And his name is Ben. We've talked about Ben. Ben's amazing. And I got jealous. And I said, I want a Ben. So I went and hired a Ben. And his name is Jake. I had Ben, or I had Jake call Ben to get all of his research tips. And Ben did a really good job. And I just sent to you, Sean, my Notion doc with all Jake's stuff. It's good, right? You see how he organized?

• 1:17Shaan Puri?

  Very thorough.

• 1:18Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's wonderful. So we're gonna, we're gonna be a little bit more well researched, although he doesn't start technically kind of till next week. This is kind of, we're still kind of getting used to things.

• 1:27Shaan Puri?

  Training wheels. Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah. So basically, we're gonna do a couple of ideas now. And then Andrew's gonna join. Andrew's the founder of Micro Acquire, which is Zillow for buying and selling companies. So we bought one company on there. I bought, basically, we bought, me and Andrew bought a business for this kid, who was like a college senior. We bought, we bought him a business to go run, just as an experiment. And that was kind of the first time I used it. So I think it's pretty cool. He's gonna tell us about like, his previous company, which he sold for tens of millions, how that deal came about, how he structured it, what he did with the money. So we were like, all right, if you're gonna come on, you gotta tell us, what did you do with the money? So he tells us about what he bought, how he invested money, his kind of like very boring

• 2:09Shaan Puri?

  investment strategy, why he chooses to do that. So yeah, we're gonna talk about that with Andrew. But first, a couple of ideas. All right. So I want to talk about this tweet I saw. And it's a tweet from Doug Ludlow. You know who that is?

• 2:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, Main Street.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, CEO of Main Street, founder of Main Street. And so he tweeted this thing out. He goes, Isn't it crazy that Bubba Gump Shrimp, the restaurant chain, does like 200 or 300 million dollars a year revenue? When Forrest Gump, the movie that the brand is based on, did like 700 million like lifetime box office. So he's like the restaurant-

• 2:45Sam Parr?

  No way, is that real?

• 2:46Shaan Puri?

  Restaurant has produced more money than Forrest Gump ever did. And I was like, that's interesting. And he's like, why aren't there more of these? And so I kind of like this idea, which is basically you take IP, intellectual property, a brand from TV or movies, and you license it. And so they did this for Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. And so I went and kind of looked up the backstory of this. And the backstory is pretty simple. It's like, the movie happens, and Paramount is actually the one who did this. I thought, I just kind of figured that some entrepreneur went to them and got the brand. But actually, it was the opposite. So from what I could read, or what I found, Paramount Pictures goes and approaches this restaurant group called Rusty Pelican.

• 3:29Shaan Puri?

  And they're like, hey, we want you to create a brand based off the brand of the movie. Because it's like a kind of a key plot point in the movie, or whatever. It's a key moment in the movie. And it's some crazy things about this. So first, they do that. It generates, you know, 200 million plus a year. It gets, it got bought by the Fertitas, I think, and their restaurant group. But it, this is also where, you know the actor Chris Pratt?

• 3:53Sam Parr?

  Of course.

• 3:54Shaan Puri?

  He was a waiter at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, and this is how he got discovered. He was waiting on a table for this producer, this director-producer lady. And he's like, oh, I love that thing you made. And she's like, oh, that's great, blah, blah, blah. And they're talking, and she's like, you know what, like, you know, you want to be an actor? He's like, yeah, that's what I'm just waiting tables, but I want to be an actor. And that's how he got his break in the movie industry also.

• 4:15Sam Parr?

  How did you learn about this?

• 4:17Shaan Puri?

  Just a hell of a lot of Googling, my friend. We don't all have buff researchers like Jake. Some of us got to get our hands dirty and go do some Googling.

• 4:26Sam Parr?

  So, let me tell you something real quick. So do you know, so you said the Fertitas. You meant, you were referring to the Fertitta brothers, right? So there's two brothers-

• 4:35Shaan Puri?

  Tillman Fertitta is the cousin.

• 4:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I think he's like a distant cousin. So I was gonna, I was gonna correct you, but you, you know the story. But Tillman, so there's this guy named Tillman Fertitta. So a lot of people probably don't know this. If you live in Houston, if you live in Texas, you certainly know who this guy is. He's a pretty-

• 4:51Sam Parr?

  He's a pretty polarizing figure. I think a lot of people who know him think he's a huge asshole. He probably, he probably is an asshole. I mean, he's pretty cutthroat. He owns this thing called Landry's. Landry's, I've never even been to one. I think that's its own restaurant.

• 5:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like a steakhouse, I think.

• 5:03Sam Parr?

  But then he also owns Bubba Gump Shrimps. He owns, I believe, like J. Alexander's, Ruth Chris Steakhouse, like a ton of like $30 to $50 a head dinner places. So like, not particularly fancy, but upscale, really upscale, upscale franchises. And he owns about 600 of them. But here's a fun fact. I am pretty positive that Landry's is the largest company in America that is owned by one person. Tillman Fertitta owns 100% of the business. He owns literally every single share. Right around the beginning of COVID, they were doing something like $5 billion in revenue and like 1.5 to 2 billion in EBITDA.

• 5:45Shaan Puri?

  That's nuts. By the way, he owns the Houston Rockets now. So that's, that's how he got a lot more famous was because when he bought the Rockets, people want to know who the heck this guy is. So that's kind of crazy. Okay. So, so, so back to kind of this idea real quick. So licensing IP. So Doug was basically saying, he's like, why don't more people do this? And he's like, why isn't there a paper company that's like the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company? Or, and you know, and so there's a couple of these. So I went through and I kind of came up with a list of brands that I think could translate. Here's, here's my list. And then you tell me what you would do if you were approaching this, or if you think this is a bad idea, you can tell me.

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  I don't think it's a bad idea. That's for sure.

• 6:21Shaan Puri?

  Here's my top five, top five brands that I think you could license a creative company. So Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, yes. The Office is one of the most popular shows of all time. It has like crazy reruns on Netflix. And there's no signature paper companies. What, what is another paper company? I have no idea. So I think you'd stand out. All right. Duff Beer from The Simpsons. I think Duff Beer could be a real beer, maybe is a real beer somewhere. But I think Duff Beer is a, is a potential one.

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  You don't have too many more, you don't have another decade or two left with that one, though.

• 6:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. That one's sort of aging out. Wonka Bars. So anything with Willy Wonka. I think you could, I think Willy Wonka painted this picture of like wonderment around the factory and this innovative stuff. So I think you could take that brand and create cool novel, like chocolates and candies out of it. Another one is if you're an ad agency, could you go and actually like franchise or license the Mad Men brand for that? So basically Sterling Cooper, Draper, or whatever it is, Draper Price, say the name of their agency. You know, why not? Why not use that if you're going to start an ad agency versus anything else? And then I started thinking about, all right, where else would I go for this? And I think the opportunity here is like, depending on what age bracket you go for,

• 7:36Shaan Puri?

  but I think the 90s had a bunch of brands that were famous in the 90s for our age group. If you're basically 30 or 40 right now, there's a bunch of brands that have like zero kind of like equity value anymore, but the brand names, you grew up with it. So it still means something to you. And so we've talked about like Warheads or Jinko Jeans or No Fear. Yeah, like a bunch of these brands. And I think the move here, I think one interesting play here would be you don't actually have to create the product. You could create. So another idea is to create the nostalgia licensing company. And all it does is it goes and buys options on these brands and then it pedals them to existing makers of products. And it just says, hey, why don't you use, we have

• 8:19Shaan Puri?

  this portfolio of nostalgic brands. You could choose one of these that fits kind of your product category or whatever. And you could just be the middleman. Basically, you buy cheap options on these brands and then you sell them at a kind of a retail price if you can. And even if you get one or two hits, I think the business could be quite profitable. So that's my random ass licensing idea.

• 8:37Sam Parr?

  I went to Urban Outfitters the other day because there's one near my house and they had, they had, you know, Urban Outfitters is pretty shitty, but they have like tons of old t-shirts. And they, it's like their, their whole genre of t-shirts was things that 30 year olds saw their dads wear. And, and it was like t-shirts that had like the old Coors Light logo, the old Budweiser logo. I forget some of the other logos, but like I pretty remember blind skateboards or world industry skateboards or independent skateboards. It kind of like transcended popular culture, I thought, but they had a lot of those things. But anyway, I'm aboard. That's amazing that Bubba Gump trip does that much revenue. Who and it's it's still owned by Landry's, I guess, but dude, it's a horrible restaurant. I'm amazed at that. It's like, it's like an Applebee's.

• 9:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, well, dude, one of my first investors of any business I ever had was this guy who owned 12 Applebee's. And this guy was like, you know, I went to college at Duke in Durham, which is a very pretty small city. And this guy was like, one of the wealthiest guys in Durham and how he owned like, I don't know, 10 to 20 Applebee's. And I was like, oh, you could just do that. And he's like, yeah, here's how it works. I was like, don't even tell me. I, I don't, I want to be more successful than you. But I don't care if I'm less successful than you is what I mean. I just don't want to own 20 Applebee's. Like, that can't be the end game here.

• 9:55Sam Parr?

  I had a friend who worked on their ad agency or his ad agency won that account.

• 10:00Shaan Puri?

  Applebee's?

• 10:00Sam Parr?

  Applebee's and they gave him a thousand dollars to go spend at Applebee's and told him like to bring a friend and order just a ton of stuff. So you understand it and we ordered everything and I'm a and I'm a slob. I eat anything and I'll eat a ton of food like.

• 10:13Shaan Puri?

  It's like six months of food.

• 10:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm an animal and he ordered, we ordered so much stuff and I eat everything and anything. And I got it in front of my plate and I was like, you guys just microwave the steak. Like this is microwave. It was fucking awful.

• 10:31Shaan Puri?

  All right, what, what else?

• 10:32Sam Parr?

  So you want to talk about this space shit?

• 10:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What do you want to talk about about? I just had one cool thing, which was, I don't know if you saw, I tweeted this out yesterday. But there's a video of Jeff Bezos. So I, I thought this billionaire going to space. It's like Elon's doing it. And then, you know, Jeff Bezos stars Blue Origin and Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic. And it's sort of like, oh, okay, cool. Like this is, you know, golf for, you know, old white billionaires. Basically, it's like this is some game that they're playing.

• 10:59Sam Parr?

  It's just a dick measuring contest is what it does.

• 11:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's a thing swinging thing. And so, and so I was like, all right, well, as I kind of wrote it off, I was like, you know, I think Elon was in it. You know, sort of first and genuinely for, for a bunch of reasons. That seemed real to me, but you know, definitely there's an ego component to it. But what was cool was I found this interview with Jeff Bezos from the year 2000, so 21 years ago. And Amazon at this time was like six years old. So. And it was definitely a thing, but it wasn't Amazon like today. It was like, you know, it was a public company, but it wasn't, uh, it wasn't, it wasn't a juggernaut like it is now. And I think they probably only had a couple of categories at that point. There wasn't like prime and doing video and doing all this other stuff. And he's sitting down and they're like, you know, so, so, you know, what, what would you want to do?

• 11:46Shaan Puri?

  You know, what, what would you do if you could do anything? He's like, if I could do anything, and they're like, yeah, he's like, you know, I would love to explore space, like space. He's like, yeah, I would love to just explore space and, you know, he's like, you know, the space, and then they're like, whoa, you, maybe you could do it someday. You're a smart guy, but if you put your mind to it, he's like, well, it's hard. It's really hard. And like, but I think you could do it. And he's like, yeah, you know, it's harder than you think. Like, we haven't made much progress for space in like, in the last 20 years, you know, but the technology is like, he was like, maybe 20 years from now, the technology will be there, or maybe we could, we could do it. And then 21 years sort of to the day, he's in a spaceship going, you know, in his own rocket company going into outer space.

• 12:30Shaan Puri?

  So I thought that was pretty cool. It made me give, it had a different level of respect for it because it's more like somebody having a vision and a dream 20 years ago, when it wasn't cool to talk about it or say it, and then actualizing it, not just sort of like copycatting Elon.

• 12:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So look, I think that it is like a, like a, like a measuring contest, a pissing match. But I'm all, and, and at first you're like, well, that's lame. These guys are so rich. Why don't you do something good? But my opinion is this is good. It's just so long-term thinking that it's actually hard to see. But I do think that we're going to get good out of this. And my opinion is when, when rich people want to give money and they want shit named after them, like a building, like a hospital wing, or they want to go to space and make a big deal out of it. And then like, maybe in 10 years, we can capture some of that value of like, all right, they kind of paved the way. At first, a lot of people are like, well, that's bullshit. You know, fuck these guys. But I'm like, who gives a fuck? That's such, that's the, that's the most fair trade on earth. We name this building after you and you give us all this money.

• 13:27Shaan Puri?

  Hey, I wrote your name on this.

• 13:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Shaan Puri?

  Great. Thanks for the hundred mil.

• 13:30Sam Parr?

  Yes. It's like, dude, let them have that. Who cares if they have an ego? Like you get the money. So like, in my opinion, we should accept it as as good.

• 13:40Shaan Puri?

  For sure.

• 13:41Sam Parr?

  Bezos said something kind of stupid the other day, although I do like that he said it because it was kind of funny.

• 13:46Shaan Puri?

  But at the same time.

• 13:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but at the same time, I'm like, oh, you are asking for it. So.

• 13:51Shaan Puri?

  Not a great move.

• 13:52Sam Parr?

  So Bezos flew up to space with his brother and this older woman, I forget her name, and a young kid. I believe there was supposed to be another person on there, but he had a scheduling conflict.

• 14:03Sam Parr?

  I swear to God.

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  Don't be that guy.

• 14:05Sam Parr?

  He had, there was supposed to be someone else and there was a scheduling conflict. So the guy couldn't make it. And they go to space and they're up there throwing Skittles at each other's face. Did you see that? They're like doing flips. Bezos, he's like, he goes, hey, guys, I brought Skittles and he brings out a packet of Skittles and he, he throws a Skittle at one person. He goes, and the guy catches it in your mouth and he goes, Jeff goes, let me try. And Jeff hands the kid the bag of Skittles. He goes, throw one in my mouth. And I thought that was kind of funny.

• 14:32Shaan Puri?

  Amazing, amazing for Skittles. I'm surprised he's not like, hey, I have Amazon sugar circles. Yeah, I'm throwing at each other, you know, like our own house brand.

• 14:41Sam Parr?

  So I thought that was kind of cute and funny and he lands and he says, I just want to thank all of you workers at Amazon as well as all you customers because you paid for this. And he's, he said that and I was like, oh, that's not the best way to phrase that. Then this morning, I, I shared this with you. I saw a Business Insider article, which I think is, I kind of love them. But at the same time, I, I can't stand some of those things they write. But Jeff Bezos was actually an early investor in Business Insider and the Business Insider article was written in such a way that it's, it was complaining about it and it said, Bezos' flight to space was too cramped and far too short.

• 15:25Shaan Puri?

  Oh, my God.

• 15:26Sam Parr?

  And I was like, oh, my God, you're completely like.

• 15:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so a couple of thoughts on what you just said. That was amazing. First of all, a couple of thoughts on what you just said. I hate the haters. First of all, Dan just looked it up. The person who had the scheduling conflict paid 28 million for their seat. So that's kind of insane. I think their dad paid for their seat or something. Look up the story, Dan. Tell me what I'm missing here. Because wow. You know, if you're gonna hate someone, don't hate the billionaire who built Amazon and then reinvested his money into like exploring outer space. Hate the trust fund kid who paid 28 million for his ticket and then no showed because he was doing a TikTok dance or something. I don't know the story behind this, but that's kind of ridiculous. The, I'm so tired of people

• 16:12Shaan Puri?

  just like hating billionaires randomly. I'm team billionaire is what I'm trying to say. You know, people are so dumb. They're like, why are you wasting money on this? You know, when they like do this, like when you pay for, when you, when you fund a space company, you're paying, you know, that money doesn't just like go into space and just vanish.

• 16:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I think Blue Origin has like 3,000 employees, I think.

• 16:35Shaan Puri?

  When he spends the money, it's going into people's pockets. And so it's funding jobs, it's funding, you know, technology development and a lot of great technology we have came because of what NASA did for the space program. And so, you know, one of the silliest things is thinking that the money just somehow gets vacuumed into outer space. The second thing is, just don't be that guy. It's not even that I'm team billionaire. I'm team, not the guy who's hating on billionaires all the time. This happened actually a second ago. Clubhouse tweeted out, oh, like we are open for everybody now. There's no waitlist or something like that. We got a new logo and all this stuff. And, you know, I'm obviously not the Clubhouse cheerleader, right? So, so, so don't get me wrong. But the very first comment, the top comment is,

• 17:18Shaan Puri?

  open for everybody, but you don't even have captions on the live audio. So it's not open for deaf people. And I'm like, okay, like, you know, fair point that it's, you know, it doesn't have like full accessibility, but like, that's the top comment. That's the first comment. Like, this company has to provide you live audio text captioning. Otherwise, like, fuck them. I guess it's just the hater culture is so annoying to me. And it's so weak and spineless to be just like, you know, like, the top comment, just like, oh, yeah, you did this great thing, but, you know, but whatever. And I know that's gonna sound hypocritical, because I wrote kind of like a giant thread hating on Clubhouse.

• 17:59Sam Parr?

  Well, it wasn't exactly hating.

• 18:02Shaan Puri?

  But that's going to be the easy criticism. I wasn't trying to hate. I was basically saying what I think some of the like, why I think they're not gonna, why it's not gonna work out the way they think. Some of the like strategic product problems. I just wrapped it in a funny.

• 18:13Sam Parr?

  Even though you explicitly said, I hope none of this comes true.

• 18:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I wanted to win. I think it's cool when things win, but like, you know, I think people are missing the boat. Anyways, I guess I'm just over hater culture and the easiest way to find it is go read any like response to anything that Elon or Jeff Bezos or these people, people who are doing great things in the world and have won the game, you know, the money game. They attract this like really annoying class of haters.

• 18:40Sam Parr?

  And I actually think you should rephrase it. I'm not team billionaire. What I'm team is I'm on team people who, who set audacious goals and get after it.

• 18:50Shaan Puri?

  I'm on team do your thing. If that's your thing, do your thing and let me let you do your thing. I'm gonna do my thing. Why, why do I need to worry about your thing?

• 18:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I have respect for someone who says they're gonna write a book this year and they write a book or someone who says they're gonna lose 50 pounds and they lose 50 pounds.

• 19:04Shaan Puri?

  Team taller shot.

• 19:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm on team. You set what you're gonna do and you actually achieve it. And it just so happens that one of the big outputs of business is money and that's a great way to measure it. But when I look at something like Sean Parker, before he got involved with Facebook and before he actually became wealthy, Sean Parker started Napster. Napster, a lot of people, and it probably was the case, it was unethical. And he actually, it was a, he did not succeed financially because of it. I've always admired that because it was an 18 year old who just revolutionized something and totally caused a shitstorm

• 19:42Sam Parr?

  and got in the thick of it and made something interesting. And so I'm in favor of people who do that. And oftentimes, those are people who build a 100,000 person company called Amazon. But. Yeah, so I would actually say if you are a billionaire hater out there, I think you should actually rephrase it. I mean, there are people who are billionaires that I think are fucking awful people and I don't want them to exist. But I enjoy seeing people who put their stamp on the world. And I think that's what we should celebrate, not just defaulting to hate the way some people do.

• 20:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, or, you know, it is just in general, like how somebody else spends their money, that's their, that's their, that's their business, right? Like, I think Elon right now is living in like a 50 square foot, like pop-up house or something. You've seen this? He's living in like a shipping container or something. He sold his house, he sold his cars. He's living in a goddamn like 50 square foot shipping container and uses all, you know, he put his entire, like, whatever he made out of zip, he put all, he poured it all in, went into debt to try to make Tesla and SpaceX happen. And like when they win, you know, he gets rewarded for it. But even if he decided to do nothing and never work again and just wanted mansions and butlers, cool, that's, is your money, do your thing. Deciding, you know, criticizing other people for how they spend their money, really all that says I wouldn't

• 20:55Shaan Puri?

  spend my money that way. And I think that's a fair thing to say. But I think in most cases, the people who are doing this, they would do, they would spend their money, you know, in the same ways or worse.

• 21:04Sam Parr?

  And for the record, if I could, if I could trade spots with Elon Musk, if someone said you could trade spots automatically, and by the way, you'll still be the same age that you are, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it.

• 21:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 21:14Sam Parr?

  Not a million years would I trade spots with that guy.

• 21:16Shaan Puri?

  But I think it's awesome what he's doing for him. Good. Do your thing. All right. Here's something at the opposite end of the spectrum. Have you ever heard of Bill's Lemonade?

• 21:24Sam Parr?

  No.

• 21:25Shaan Puri?

  All right. So go to this website, just type in Bill's Lemonade. This is a little fascinating business. A friend kind of tipped me off to this. And I can't say their name because I don't know if they want their name said. But basically, this is, this is a, Bill didn't tell me. This is like a business in a box. And this business does about 5 million a year, roughly. And what they do is they just sell you a kind of like a course and the materials to start your own lemonade stand. Not for kids, but for like adults, like you could start this outside of a concert venue or a ballgame or like at your like local like neighborhood square or whatever. And what they do is they basically say, hey, you can, you can, here's a business in a box. If you have the ability to grab this bottle and shake it,

• 22:09Shaan Puri?

  you can become a lemonade stand owner and you can make this much money. Here's how it works. Then you could download their like little brochure. It shows the unit economics. It's like every lemonade costs a dollar 20 to make. That's your costs and you're going to sell that for, you know, $4, $5, $6, depending on your location. So you're going to have, you know, 70% margins on this thing. And if you could sell X many per day, you're going to make this much money. And they basically just sell you this business in a box. It's a very simple business and Bill's Lemonade on the other side, they don't take any royalties or franchise fees. They say, you're going to get our brand. We're going to send, we're going to send you the machine, the frozen, you know, lemonade machine, the shakers, the, the cups, the everything. And all you do is you pay for the materials and the like information, the course on how to do it. And I just thought this is kind of a fascinating idea.

• 22:53Shaan Puri?

  And I feel like you could do this for a whole bunch of other, a whole bunch of other like industries as well, like whether it's, you know, snow cones or ice cream trucks or pest control or something like that. Like, I just feel like there's a whole bunch of businesses in a boxes you could make. And if you did that, maybe you could even roll these up into one thing, which is like, hey, you don't want a job. You want your own business that's going to get you a hundred thousand dollars a year and you'll be able to kind of control the hours you work and you're going to work for yourself. Are there people out there who want that trade as a franchisee? Yes. And then basically you just say, great. Would you like the lemonade one? Would you like to drive an ice cream truck? Would you like to do this or that? And we own all these brands. It's sort of like what 1-800-GOT-JUNK has where they have the, the trucks you can drive, the franchise you could buy to be a junk hauler

• 23:39Shaan Puri?

  or the house painter or the, I forgot, they have like three or four of them. But I feel like you could create a mini version of what 1-800-GOT-JUNK with this.

• 23:46Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is awesome. I'm looking at this and I'm trying to find, there was a guy, when I started my hot dog stand, there was a guy in Tennessee who was doing this exact same things for hot dog stands. So you'd give him five grand and he would send you everything you needed, along with the state rules and things like that. I need it for hot dog stands. Bill's Lemonade is better because you could spend. I don't even know what the price is like a couple hundred dollars on here and I'm looking at it now. This is pretty badass. You uh, and these guys have been doing this forever, by the way, I'm looking at their website.

• 24:16Shaan Puri?

  I've seen this brand a long time ago. Yeah.

• 24:19Sam Parr?

  This is badass and they just have like you can buy all your supplies from there. I recognize these cups too, by the way.

• 24:25Shaan Puri?

  Right. I've seen this like thing at baseball games or something, but yeah, so I think this is kind of interesting. Another version of this, I think you could do is in the services industry. And so like, here's like another one, which is like, let's say, um, corporate headshots. So I once saw Facebook ads. So the profile picture I have for this podcast, this like, kind of like where I'm trying to make this like ominous look. It's because I saw a Facebook ad of a really high quality headshot and like a striking headshot. And it was like, I can make, I can take a photo of you that will look like this. Like you can level up your kind of like game as far as your brand, your LinkedIn, your website, whatever it is. Um, you know, it's 300 bucks and like I shoot in, you know, in the Bay area and I'll come do a shoot for you and you get to pick your photos, whatever. And

• 25:09Shaan Puri?

  I just remember thinking, oh, that's really smart. Like I've never seen Facebook ads. This is somebody, I've never seen a photographer doing Facebook ads for this. But I feel like you could do the same thing here where you could basically sell somebody a business in a box that says, hey, um, maybe, maybe photos is a little too high skill, but you could say like any kind of like service and you could say, great. Um, you're going to be the service provider in your local area and I'm going to run the Facebook ads countrywide. And then whenever there's a lead for your area, I'm just going to dispatch it to you and you just go fulfill it. And it's a business in a box that way.

• 25:39Sam Parr?

  Great.

• 25:40Shaan Puri?

  You wear, you wear our uniform, you know, you could do Geek Squad this way, like tech help or something like that. Um, you could do it for the thing we talked about with like setting up home, uh, home office and home like office video studios.

• 25:51Sam Parr?

  What I would do is I would do it for taking, so when we, when I rented out my place, so I took pictures and I put it online and I didn't get that much love. And then I, I went online and I found a photographer to come and take pictures for me and I paid her $200 and I got way more, uh, traction. And my, my wife works at Airbnb and I think she has told me, I don't remember if, uh, who told me of, I think it was her that told me that the number one. Difference between a winning Airbnb and a losing Airbnb is the pictures. And yeah, I definitely think you could have Airbnbphotos.com or whatever it is and that and you take $25 for every lead that you send a photographer and you could totally crush it that way.

• 26:31Shaan Puri?

  Right. So I like these little business of the box ideas. This is like, you know, the opposite of the billionaire space race. This is the Bill Zelenade making $5 million selling lemonade kits to people.

• 26:40Sam Parr?

  There was this, there was this company called iCracked. iCracked was started by a friend of mine, AJ Forsyth. It went out, it either, it was acquired, but I don't think they even kept the brand anymore. And what they did was they actually raised like 20 million or 30 million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz. And what iCracked did was they were doing this for iPhone repair. And so I guess to switch an iPhone screen on your phone, it takes only like a few hours of training. Anyone could figure it out if I just showed you how to do it. And what they would do is they would send you leads and they would take a small cut of the charge. So they would charge like $150 to fix your phone and maybe they would take $20. Then in order to get leads from them, you had to buy iPhone parts from them and they would sell you iPhone parts.

• 27:22Sam Parr?

  And they're doing something like $30 million a year in e-comm sales. I don't know how much service revenue they're making, but just selling screens, they're doing like 20 or 30 million dollars in sales for the service.

• 27:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's crazy. What do you think went wrong with the business?

• 27:37Sam Parr?

  I think they raised too much money and probably spent way too much money on ads. I'm not sure if it was quite venture scale. They got to like 20 or 30 million in sales and I don't know if they could figure out how to get bigger than that. And they tried to launch more stuff and probably lost focus.

• 27:52Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha.

• 27:53Sam Parr?

  But there's other services out there that are just like them that do like 30, 40, 50 million dollars a year in revenue. Also AJ, my friend who's the founder, he's a wild man and I think that he had like crazy aspirations of like having a drone come and drop off stuff. Like things like that. And I don't know if that industry is cut out for that, but I do think you could have a nice company that makes 30 or 40 in sales.

• 28:15Shaan Puri?

  On this episode of Visionaries Gone Wrong, he had a healthy business and wanted to change it to having drones drop off your iPhone.

• 28:25Shaan Puri?

  He was also the one who like paddleboards to work every day or something, right? Like, doesn't he do something crazy like that?

• 28:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he had a small little dingy boat, like a little tiny boat. I forget what they called it, but it was, it was, it's super small, like the small, like the size of like a little baby desk, but had like an engine on it. And he would ride that from, where's the Oracle office out there?

• 28:47Sam Parr?

  Like 20 minutes away, I forget in California, but he would write it down the bay to his office at South Park in Soma.

• 28:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's awesome. Sounds like a super interesting guy. I love it.

• 28:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's crazy. All right. So do we, are we going to get to the episode or the?

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  Let's do the interview now.

• 29:04Sam Parr?

  All right. So you're going to hear Andrew and let us know what you think. Andrew, so how do you pronounce your last name?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Gaz Deki. My friends call me Gaz.

• 29:14Sam Parr?

  Gaz. All right, go ahead, Sean. Sorry.

• 29:17Shaan Puri?

  I never had a cool nickname or friends for that matter, but all right. So you did that, you did your like micro acquire funding announcement thing yesterday. I'm curious, does that do anything? So, you know, we're seeing this a lot more where it's like all the famous people on Twitter and tech like did something. They also are promoting something and me and Sam have been a part of a few of these.

• 29:39Shaan Puri?

  What's the result? Is that like meaningful or is it just like a feel good moment or does it do anything for you?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good question. I would, I would say both. I mean, really, you know, the goal of that fundraise was I want to build micro choir with a startup community. And so just having everyone involved in that for feedback and just, you know, really letting everybody know that this is kind of, you know, something to watch. So good brand value added. And then, yeah, we saw like 2.5 million impressions on Twitter.

• 30:12Sam Parr?

  So for those listening, micro acquire. So Andrew, you've had a couple of companies, you sold one recently or like a couple of years ago, which was, it sounds like a home run for you, but micro acquire. Although you guys have some really big aspirations right now, if we had to like, kind of dumb it down, it's a newsletter that people pay to get access to. And that content is interesting startups that you've vetted and are now for sale. That's like the current iteration, right?

• 30:38Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's not just a newsletter, right? Like I go to the website. I don't get, I don't even look at the newsletter. It's a, it's a market, it's like a marketplace. It's like, if you want to go buy a house, you go to Zillow, you see a bunch of houses for sale.

• 30:47Sam Parr?

  I only read the newsletter.

• 30:50Shaan Puri?

  Who's the normal user? Is it Sam or me?

• 30:55Speaker 02

  It sounds like you, Sean. So it's a marketplace. So you can sign up, create a profile, list your startup in, you know, literally minutes. Then I have a team on the backend that basically creates like a SIM, completely free. We have a streamlined process that does that. And then, once you go live-

• 31:13Shaan Puri?

  What's a SIM for people who don't know?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  It's basically a document that outlines basic details that buyers would want to know, like revenue, how much time are you spending on customer support? What is the tech stack? Who are your competitors? Why are you selling? Asking price, market opportunity, just basically a pitch deck, but more geared towards like, I'm selling the business. And after you go live on MicroAcquire, you-

• 31:38Sam Parr?

  Thousand dollars worth of subscribers. So they pay like $299 a year, right?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, $290. We're at like $675?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Thousand?

• 31:51Sam Parr?

  Okay. And so the, I mean, you have this brand vision here, but in doing this, you, I mean, there's a, what did you describe it? Did you say Zillow for startups? Is that how you described it once?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Zillow for M&A. Basically what we want to build is, yeah, so what we want to build is we want to build a global and modern M&A marketplace. Right now, the whole M&A marketplace is fragmented and we're looking to consolidate it and really bring in everyone who's involved in M&A transactions. Like when you get on the larger side, you know, you have investment bankers, you have an M&A advisor. On the lower end, you have business brokers. Even just people for due diligence or accounting or, you know, potential wealth management if you're successful in your acquisition.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  So we're going to be really building a community of advisors that startups can hire. But then on top of that, we're going to build tools to make acquisitions super easy.

• 32:50Shaan Puri?

  We bought a business for somebody on here. So we did a, what we call the a micro SPAC, which is basically your idea, Andrew. You basically tweeted it at me or something like that. And I was like, this is a great idea. What we did was we said, hey, let's put up five grand and into a holding of blank shell company. So we give five grand to an entrepreneur and then we'll find them a business to buy on micro acquire. We'll go vet 50 deals, 100 deals, and we'll go find a business for them to buy. And we'll go buy a micro business. And the other people thought that was such a cool idea that somebody was like, oh, I'm in for five. I'm in for five. I'm in for five. And all of a sudden, we had 100 grand. I think the total amount was like 85 to 100 grand that we ended up raising from random people on Twitter to help this entrepreneur, Daniel, buy his first

• 33:35Shaan Puri?

  business. And so like, he was gonna go get a job. And then it's like, okay, instead, you can, you can buy this Shopify app that's producing revenue that's profitable today. And let's go buy this thing. And so that's what we ended up doing, which I think is pretty cool. And that experiment is still running. So the transaction closed, he's figuring out ways to grow it. He's sending his little like investor updates. It's awesome. And I feel, I called it at the time, I said, this is like when you go to buy like cake mix and it's like, just add water. This is a like, just add hustle. Here's a business. Here's the code's already written. The business is already running. Revenue is already there. And all you need to do is grow it. And you just need to add that hustle into to grow this thing.

• 34:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And we did, we actually did one with the hustle and we gave, we did the same thing. I don't remember who came first, but we did the same thing. And the guy who won it is a dentist here in New York, and he's offering to give me free braces as a thank you.

• 34:35Sam Parr?

  He was like,

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm still working with him on finding a business. He's, he's being pretty picky, but we'll get, we'll get something good. But,

• 34:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's good to be picky.

• 34:45Sam Parr?

  He was like, you want to come in for a teeth cleaning, retainer, braces? Let me know. I would love to thank you.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  He's awesome. We've been chatting almost weekly, just going over businesses he's interested in. I give my opinion. And most of them are like, no, that one's like, too complex or something like that. But Sean, I want to talk about that, that deal that we did. You have no fucking idea how much work that was like. I literally had to get notarized.

• 35:13Shaan Puri?

  Well, I saw like 50 emails come through.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Dude, we did it legit. Like, like, you know, we formed a new Inc. So a new corporation to purchase and transfer the assets into. We, you know, created stock agreements for 20 plus investors. So this was harder than the fundraiser that I, I just did by a mile. And it took like three weeks. The legal bill for me was like 15K and I spent like 60 fucking hours. It was totally worth it. Dan is amazing. I, I meet with Dan.

• 35:50Shaan Puri?

  Sounds, it sounds like it might not be worth it.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Well, well, well, here's the thing is it opened my eyes to a new opportunity for MicroAcquire as well, which is there's all these amazing operators that don't have capital. But again, there's so many businesses on MicroAcquire that, you know, they're built by builders. They aren't looking to scale a business. They're not familiar with sales and marketing. And so we see an opportunity to potentially allow them to raise capital from other investors, just like we did with Dan, like a micro spec. Spacks are kind of getting a bad name, so we might need to rebrand on that. But yeah, so like if you, if you're like, you own an agency and you see a product for 2 million bucks and you have 10s of thousands of customers, you can easily sell this product to.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  We allow you to basically present that to other investors inside MicroAcquire. And this is just like a napkin idea. This isn't like a guaranteed thing. But streamlining that whole process that we went through, Sean, like that, I think could be a really, really interesting opportunity. And we're thinking about that a little bit.

• 36:51Shaan Puri?

  By the way, the, the thing you're describing is like, it's basically what Angelus did. So Angelus was like, great, we're a marketplace to connect startups and investors. And they started by doing that. And then they were like, okay, cool. What else can we do? Well, startups need employees, so we'll create a jobs division. And then they're like, well, some of these entrepreneurs want to be investors, but they're not investors. They don't have the ability to raise capital. You know, it's very hard to raise a fund. Okay, we'll create like rolling funds and we'll create SPVs and we'll create one click ways for now you to invest instead of just being an entrepreneur. And so they created what's called a market network, which is basically. People have heard of a network. Network is just a bunch of like, let's say, let's say there's 10 dots on a screen and they're connected by like little lines. That's a network.

• 37:34Shaan Puri?

  And all the dots do their own thing. And a market network is where it's 10 dots on a screen and there's lines connecting all of them. But there's money signs going in between each, right? So like on Facebook, you transfer likes to each other. You transfer comments to each other messages. But on AngelList, when you hire someone for a job, you give them money. When you invest in somebody, you give them money. When you raise money from for your rolling fund, somebody's giving you money. And so there's every transaction, instead of just being a message, is money. And so if you've never heard this concept before, it's a pretty important one in terms of business. Go research market networks. James Courier and the NFX team write a lot about this. They're kind of the only ones I see writing about this.

• 38:15Shaan Puri?

  But I think it's a pretty important idea. And then once you know, oh, there's such a thing as a market network, then when you see a business that's structured as a market network, you know, it's a good opportunity either to start it or to invest in it. That's why I invested in MicroAcquire because I was like, oh, this is a, this is a market network. Great. I've been looking for market networks to invest in. This is a good one.

• 38:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of like throw that little theory in if, if nobody knows that, that term.

• 38:37Sam Parr?

  And one of the reasons why we wanted you to come on, Andrew, was I want to hear about the MicroAcquire story. But I want to hear particularly two things in this order. The first is, I want you to go through some of the coolest startups that you have sold or are selling on the platform. Some of the insights that you've gotten from them and, and, and things like that. And then also what we should talk about at the end is you sold your last company for like 20, maybe 30 or 40 million dollars. I forget the exact amount, like a, a pretty significant amount and life-changing amount. And you, you, you told me some crazy stuff that you did with the money. I would definitely want to talk about that, but.

• 39:16Shaan Puri?

  Can we start with that one? I want to, I want to hear that one. So before MicroAcquire, you started a company, you sell it for ballpark-ish. Give me a range or rhymes with 30 million.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Let's just assume I have, you know, low eight figures. I, I candidly don't like to specifically say how much I sold my company for. I think it's a weird flex. And it's hard to do without feeling like you're bragging. So let's just peg it at low eight figures. But yeah, the story there, I started a company in college. I was 21. It was a no-code app builder. So it was a SaaS company. Uh, only raised a hundred thousand dollars for that business. Ran it for about eight years, grew it to over 10 million in recurring revenue. Employees was over a hundred. There is a lot of moving parts to that business. Were a lot of those people overseas?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. How do you have a hundred employees?

• 40:18Sam Parr?

  Or you weren't making a lot of profit and you're underpaying people.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was, it was a mixture of both, not underpaying people, but we probably half the team was in-house. So our entire engineering team is probably overseas. But the way it started was, again, I'm not a technical founder at all. I don't know how to write code at all. And when I tell people that, they, they're kind of like, wait, what? But I was in Chico and there's no engineers in Chico. But I just went on Upwork. I previously had a job board before that, that I also sold. And that was a seed money for business apps. But found, just randomly found an engineer in China. His name was Raymond Chester. I'm still friends with him today and he was just a badass.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Like he could have been a CTO at a Silicon Valley company. And I paid him well, treated him well, I consider him like a brother. And considering I didn't know how to hire other engineers or spot good engineers, I knew how to manage. And that's one tip for people that aren't technical is, you know, I always recommend, don't learn how to code. Learn how to manage engineers properly. And so I ended up just hiring all his friends. So we ended up having like a house for them and they had like 20 engineers in China. And we had engineers in Russia. We had one in, we had a group, we had a QA team in the Ukraine.

• 41:50Sam Parr?

  So you're a big communist fan.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  I guess you could say so. I mean, not, not by design, but you know, we, we did not discriminate.

• 42:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Was your customer service based out of Cuba or what?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  No, no. So customer service was in-house, but we did have 24/7 customer service. So we had some customer support reps in Brazil, France, some other, some other areas, but.

• 42:18Shaan Puri?

  All right. So let's fast forward to the good bits. So you, you build the business and it's good 10 million in recurring revenue. You, you decide to sell it. Why did you decide to sell it? And then how did you sell it?

• 42:31Speaker 02

  So I was, so initially I, I tried selling it when I was 26. I hired an investment bank and this kind of leads into my career as well. We did, you know, full road show, ended up getting an offer for 30 million. Ended up turning, turning down that offer. We also had an offer from a strategic company. One of the, you know, big do yourself website companies, you could probably guess it. I was young. I felt I still had gas in the tank. And so I wanted to push for, you know, a larger exit. After we went through that process,

• 43:10Speaker 02

  just kept running the business, kept growing the business, kept staying focused on executing, which is the number one way to really sell a business is have a good business. So went back to, you know, executing with my team and then just started getting tired. That's the short answer. I just, you know, managing that many people, Monday comes around, it's like, hey, can we talk? It's like, I get it. Like you want to switch jobs. Like, please just, you can just email me. Like, I'll write your reference. Like, I love you. Like, like, please, I don't need to hear like, you know, we're good or like, I'm sick, you know, it just became so much management and I love, you know, building businesses and the ideation stage.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  The way the transaction went down was the private equity firm, ESW Capital had previously reached out to us.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  I think it was like five years ago or something like that, like prior to the investment bank. And I know this because during due diligence, we had to share all the NDAs that we had signed. And I found them from SW Capital. I was like, oh, we've met before. Nice to meet you again. You know, let's, uh, let's see if we can make this happen. They gave me fantastic terms. It was an all cash transaction. We did a stock purchase. So I benefited from QSBS, which if you're looking to sell a business, look up QSBS. You pay zero federal taxes on up to the first 10 million. So I saved, I don't know what I saved. I gotta ask my accountant, but I actually didn't even know about QSBS.

• 44:41Sam Parr?

  Well, if you're, I had QSBS. If you're in California, it's about 15%. So 15% on 10 million, you save 1.5 million dollars, or it might be even a little bit more, but around one and a half million dollars in savings.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  No, it's actually 20.

• 44:55Shaan Puri?

  I think it's more than that.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  20. So I saved like 2 million on taxes and I paid 13 state.

• 45:01Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, my bad. I'm an idiot. I totally, I picked the wrong, the wrong one.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  I forgive you, Sean. I'm calling you the wrong name on purpose, man, because you butchered my name, butchered my name.

• 45:13Shaan Puri?

  There was levels to that joke.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Got you back, got you back. But anyways, so we structured a really favorable deal for me. So we had 2 million cash on hand, which we added on to the purchase price. So we had an agreed purchase price. And I said, I want a stock deal, no earn out. I'd love for you to buy the cash. And the reason for buying the cash is they buy it, basically, they just put a 1X multiple on to the purchase price. And so typically, if you are acquired, you have 2 million cash in the bank account, that is divided back out to shareholders and you're taxed at 40%. So we got QSBS on that 2 million cash.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Quick transition in terms of me leaving the business. So I was out of the business in 90 days.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  That's great. And what'd you do? You said, you know, you bought a house. What's the mindset? So you go from basically before that, how much money did you have? Cause you were just paying yourself a salary out of the business, right? Like you didn't, it's not like you had, you were at Sears selling TVs. It's not like you had a bunch of money before that. You're running the business. You probably were paying yourself some salary, but probably nothing fancy. And then all of a sudden you come into a bunch of money. So describe that transition and what you did, what you did with it.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, I was okay before the acquisition. I, I was buying Ethereum at like 20. I remember like the day Ethereum came on the Coinbase and the ETF was coming out like approval denial. And I was like Bitcoins going down. Let's just move it into this new thing called Ethereum. So I bought a bunch of Ethereum. So I had like, let's just call it like, you know, high six figures. So I wasn't like paying debt, you know, as soon as we got acquired, but when you go through an acquisition, you have a closing date and we had a circle closing date. And then all of a sudden this gigantic amount of money just hits your bank account and you're like, what the fuck did I just do?

• 47:12Speaker 02

  That was my feeling. I was, I was actually kind of scared. I was like, is this legal? Like, did I just sell drugs? Like that, like, you know, some people like think like you just celebrate and you're like, like I, I made it like, yeah. So I was like the opposite. I was like, you know, candidly, I was like chain smoking like a jewel. I was like, oh, holy shit. This is insane, you know, because, you know, I grew up poor, like, you know, my dad died when I was six. I grew up in Detroit. I moved to San Clemente when I was, you know, like five. I grew up knowing like what it's like to like really struggle for money.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  So going from like that to like an absorbent amount where, you know, I'm not flying private or anything like that. Like I'm not like bawling like some of the other people you guys talk to, but I'm comfortable. Like I was set. Like I can literally buy a house cash. I could, you know, put money into something really boring and just, you know, watch it grow over time. So it was a life-changing moment, but my reaction was holy shit.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  This is insane and I hope, you know, they don't come back and say, hey, we found something wrong. Yeah. And the business is still up.

• 48:30Sam Parr?

  When I did my deal, when we did my deal, I remember I called the bank ahead of time and I let them know. I'm like, there's going to be like a big deposit and I don't want you to think that like I'm doing something illegal. Like, is there like a check mark you need to put next to this? Like, I called you, I told you, like, this is normal. And they're like, no, like, it's fine. And they're like, how much do you expect to come in? And I remember being on the phone, I like, I whispered it. I was like, I didn't want anyone to hear. I'm like, it's like around this number. And they're like, I can't hear you. And I remember saying it again. And I had a, and I whispered a little bit more and, and I, it was uncomfortable. I was like, this is kind of weird. Uh, saying this and they're like, yeah, that shouldn't be a problem at all. And I'm like, well, you, you don't sound impressed.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:16Shaan Puri?

  Sir, that ain't shit.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Well, we're a bank. Sam, I, I did this thing for a minute. Um, so the first, the first thing I did was, um, I hired a, a wealth manager to move all the money out of my bank account. He just bought bonds. I knew nothing about bonds. And then all of a sudden I'm like, why is there more money? And they're like, yeah, that's how bonds used to work at least. Um, but when I went into wire the money, so my office was in La Jolla in San Diego. It's kind of like the Beverly Hills of San Diego. Um, the guy was like, this is the biggest wire I have ever done. Like, can we triple, triple, triple, triple, quadruple, check this? And I was like, really? Like La Jolla? Like there's like $10 million houses everywhere. He's like, yeah, this is the biggest one.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Like, I'm nervous. And so we wired that over.

• 50:04Sam Parr?

  It's a lot of money.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  But what I used to do, I was, I was just going to say one other funny thing I do, I would go in, I, this is kind of like a, like a lame move, but I used to go into the bank a few times before that wire and I'd pull out like a $20 bill. I'd be like, hey, can I get like 20 bucks out just so they can see my account? Like, Like, yeah, I just need 20 bucks. And then they look, they, and I'd come in looking like this. I'm like 29, because I was 29 when I sold the business. So like, you know, I'm gonna do some immature stuff. Like, I'm not gonna be a professional, like, you know, and I, you know, I hadn't been married. I didn't have a kid at the time. So, you know, it was party time at that, at that moment. So, yeah, I'd go into the bank and be like,

• 50:51Shaan Puri?

  I was gonna say, similarly, we had this guy, James Hong, who created Hotter Gun on the podcast. He said the same thing. He goes, I used to go to an ATM machine and just put my card in and say, print balance and just look at it. He's like, I would just do that like every day for like the first, like, you know, week that it, that it happened. And just, he just wanted to print out the balance on his little paper, rip it up, and then like go about his day. He just made him happy.

• 51:14Sam Parr?

  So on this podcast, we've had a lot of really, we've had a lot of really successful people. We've had some people who have sold things for over a billion dollars. We've had people who have sold things for hundreds of millions of dollars. We've had people who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. This is all a huge amount of money. But I have found myself, when we talk to these incredibly, we just had Dharmesh on the podcast. And I was like, Dharmesh, isn't it crazy? I could see your, like, your HubSpot shares, you know, right now, you're worth like $900 million. That's wild. And so you kind of like get in this bubble of like, oh, yeah, it's like, you know, 20, 10 million, whatever, 30 million, whatever the numbers are. We're like, oh, that's like, you know, that's a nice start, you know. But then like, what do you, what do you think about one person having that amount of money, particularly when they're young, when they're 29? That's, that's

• 51:58Sam Parr?

  a, that, I ran the math the other day. I had a friend that sold his company and he's 32 now, and he's got over $50 million liquid. And I was like, dude, this is crazy that you have this. And we did some research and we found out that there's like 600 Americans who have that much money or more who are also in around that same age. It's like, dude, that's crazy. You're like one of the, you know, almost top 500 richest young people in America. That's a, an astounding amount of money. And that's kind of like what you had, Andrew. It's an astounding thing. And you talk about like, well, I can't fly private, you can't fly private. But it's like, yeah, you can. You really can. I mean, you're like incredibly wealthy if you have that amount of money at a, at that young of an age. The age factor is a really big deal here.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  I, I, I agree because, I mean, so moving in, do you guys want to hear what I bought? I told you I'd share it. So the first thing, my friends call me kinda like, um, like, like a white rapper kinda guy. Like, I love hip hop, like, I love fast cars, I love big houses. Yeah, Detroit, man. If it wasn't Eminem, it'd be me. Um, so I bought a big ass house, cash. Um, 2.5 million, uh, San Mateo, right on the golf course. I see, like, literally deers running around in my backyard. Um, and I recommended that to you, Sam, cause it's like, it's, you work so hard and when you come from nothing, just having, I wanted something that I could

• 53:28Speaker 02

  just be proud of. Like, you come over and you're like, damn, you don't get this with a regular job. And I'm like, yeah, you don't. You need to start a business. And I'm happy to talk to you about that. Cause that's like, all I talk about is startups and stuff like that. Um, and then also for my wife, just for, you know, supporting me through the years and, you know, we wanted to start a family. So, um, bought a beautiful home. Uh, and then I bought a C63 AMG, like you, Sam, but I bought a older one for the, yeah, badass car, uh, for the naturally aspirated. And it was my second one. Um, I wanted just like a newer one with less miles. Um, and that's, that's all I bought. Um, that's, that's pretty much

• 54:12Speaker 02

  it. Just, and then I put the rest into, uh, just like really boring index funds, like Vanguard, Dimensional. Um, I don't, I barely angel invest.

• 54:23Sam Parr?

  Dude, so I did the exact, I do the same thing.

• 54:26Shaan Puri?

  You and Sam are the same.

• 54:27Sam Parr?

  Dude, I did the exact same.

• 54:28Shaan Puri?

  Is this a white person thing to do when you get rich?

• 54:30Sam Parr?

  Yes. I got a black Mercedes, a black AMG Mercedes. I think technically mine is faster than yours, just saying.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Yours is. But I looked, I looked it up.

• 54:39Shaan Puri?

  Oh my God.

• 54:40Sam Parr?

  But they're both cool. They're both cool. I got a house. I didn't get nearly as fancy, but a nice house. And then I also put almost every single thing into a Vanguard Total Market Index Fund. And Sean and a few other people just mercilessly like kinda, kinda mocked me. Like, if they don't mock me, I, Sean kinda rolls his eyes. He's like, why aren't you taking risks? And I'm like, I don't know. Seems pretty risky. So you and I are the same, uh, same type of thing. I don't know why Sean and all these guys we hang out with. I don't know why they like buy stocks all the time. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, what do I don't even know how to like, what do you mean?

• 55:12Shaan Puri?

  Dude, it's fun. It's the real world casino. Uh, you know, like, whatever. You gotta have some fun with it.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  I've never sold a stock and I, and these guys are doing it like every day, sharing their screenshots. And I'm like, you're nuts. I think that's nutty.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  I guess, I guess my view is like, what, what more money do you need? Like the way I view it, and if you do the math, like, you know, 10% market returns compounded for 40 years, sell when you're 70, you're set. Like you're going to be balling when you're 70, you're going to be like richest, like, like you're going to die with that money. And so like for me, I don't like checking the stock market. I don't care to, I don't want to understand it. Um, I no longer own any Bitcoin or Ethereum. Like I have the most boring investment strategy. So people listening to this that are like in real estate or, you know, stocks are probably like this kid's an idiot.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  But I like waking up without any money problems. I don't have a mortgage. I don't care if my stock portfolio goes down. Like it's just there till I'm 70. It's a set plan. I'm not deviating from it. But I guess for me, money buys like just peace of mind. Like I just, I have no worries. And so, you know, tying into micro acquire, it's like, I'm comfortable taking big swings. Because, you know, I have a win under my belt. Um, comfortable with everything I have. Um, I have no material wants outside the Lamborghini, uh, Eurus. I'd, I'd take that if I could afford it.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Or actually get it approved by my wife, um, who's a very, very, uh, cost, uh, conscientious Italian.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  But other than that, I mean, you know, just love building businesses and that's all I focus on. And that's, I think that's the key, Sam, is like, you know, when you go boring, it allows you to focus on what you're really, really good at rather than trying to like manage stocks, like investing in startups, like what's crypto doing today? Like who's this new? I don't know, whatever.

• 57:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg wearing the same gray shirt every day. He just removed one whole thing he needs to think about, which is like fashion, how I look, what I'm gonna wear, how I'm gonna dress that day and just lets his brain focus on the one thing he wants it to focus on that day.

• 57:31Shaan Puri?

  So I wanted to ask you, I want to wrap this up because we're gonna basically use this as like kind of half the episode, then half the episode's gonna be a different riff. But I wanted to ask you, because you're seeing a bunch of businesses on microquire every day. What, you know, this is the podcast of business ideas. What ideas or niches or spaces are you seeing interesting things? Give us two or three ideas that people should be looking at or spaces that people could be building in that you see opportunity that you would do if you were kind of like, you know, 22 again or whatever.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. Well, first, I'm going to take the cop out answer and I would start with something you're passionate in. I think that's huge. Like if you're not passionate about it, there's someone who is and they're gonna just beat you. But I think what's really opened my eyes about microquire. Every day I wake up and I get to see the most interesting startups. I was telling someone earlier today, like there is a rabbit breeding company for farmers to track, like when they make other rabbits or something like that, make like a million a year or something like that. Like super niche and profitable. And I'm like, and it's a SaaS business, it's legit.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Probably not like the best, I would not recommend buying that business, it's not for me. But it just is an example of just how broad, I think the future of the small business economy is going to be online, digital and profitable. People who used to want to start like a restaurant or like a plumbing business or something like that, those young entrepreneurs are going to be looking to start a niche SaaS company or a niche e-commerce company. Like categories that we see a lot of activity in are obviously Shopify SaaS applications, lots of communities, even newsletters, like kind of everything online.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  And like it goes as deep as like we sold this company that was a marketing automation platform for just specific types of dentists and they were making an absorbent amount of profit, sold within like a couple of weeks, but that's kind of where I think things are going is we're going to have a few really, really large companies, you know, ventures going into tons of, tons of different companies and we're going to see just probably a handful winners is my guess. And then we're going to see a long tail and the calculating that someone put this out where, um, you know, you have a 2.5% chance of becoming a unicorn when you raise venture capital. So those are my odds. I'd probably increase it to 20

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  just with my, my, my luck. My friends call me Gaz luck. Um, that's another nickname I have. Um, but for the other 97.5%, there's micro require, you know, if you build a business and you know, you want to sell for, you know, a small but life changing amount, you're not getting a tech run, she can do that. But yeah, trends just very, very niche, very, very focused, I think is the key. And those are the businesses I get most excited about. And then if you're looking to buy a business, there's a ton that just are built by really, really talented engineers, great for acquirers. I'm seeing tons of those. And then also for people that are experienced in sales and marketing, you want to just like we did with

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Dan, Sean, where we just let's hustle on this thing and try to grow it. That's also a huge opportunity.

• 1:00:53Sam Parr?

  Let's name a few specific ones. You have this one started by this guy named Arsene Normaga Madoff. I know how to say that last name because Khabib. Khabib, Khabib Normaga Madoff. I didn't realize that that was a common last name. Um, but so this is a B to B software. Can you actually talk about this? I'm looking at the email. A B to B software company, corporate gifting. I don't even know what that is. 20 million in ARR, 3 million in profit, it looks like, right? Am I reading this right? Yep.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So all those are private. So I can't name the names. The one that what you're viewing at the top is a podcast that I did. So, um, Arsene sold RestPack for half a million on micro require in about a month. I believe it was like a developer API tool. There's over a thousand plus startups on micro require right now. So I I don't have my, I'm not that smart. My memory is not that good, but I keep going.

• 1:01:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, no, I, oh, I'm looking at one of the ones you had listed here on this idea sheet. I guess so that one wasn't one that you sold. So I just want to hear about a specific one, a few specific ones that you've sold as well as like maybe a few specific ones where you saw this and you're like, oh my gosh, I could have, I should have started this company or like this is amazing. If people knew that these types of things, they existed, they would totally be starting things like this.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Okay. So I'll talk about the ones that I know I have permission to talk about. One was a company called Push Engage. It sold to an individual named Cead. He runs a firm called Awesomeotive and he basically is doing a WordPress type rollup. And he looks for-

• 1:02:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah, well, we've talked about, we've talked about WP Beginner on here a bunch.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  So Cead, awesome guy. That acquisition was in the seven figures. That one closes in like, Cead moved fast. That one closes in like two weeks or something like that. I don't, I don't know the exact details, but the founder was happy. Cead was happy. Another one would be Median, which sold for a quarter million, 300. I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head, but it's basically like a live chat video tool. So if you log onto a website, instead of going to like Crisp Chat, like this intercom button I'm seeing right here, you can just click it and then like my video pops up and you're like, hey, like, and then I can take control of your, this was probably my favorite business because you can, you know, add it for sales teams, support teams,

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  and anytime someone has any questions and it was, they had really, really large enterprise agreements with some big, big names that I can't say because they're under NDA, but public companies that you would recognize. And that one was interesting.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Another one, the marketing automation platform for dentists, that one sold really fast. I did another one with a company called X-Mark Clock, which is like a time management solution for construction workers. And the guy was based in Europe and he sold for over half a million, again, in less than 30 days, all cash transaction. I'm just trying to think of the podcasts that I've done. There, I mean, there's so, there's so many, so many examples.

• 1:04:01Shaan Puri?

  It sounds to me like, I think what people should do is if you end up going on Micro Acquire, I've done this in a couple of different platforms. Basically, you can learn a lot just by checking out the different businesses. So even if you're not ready to buy, get the premium subscription or whatever, so you can read the like actual details about the businesses. And that's like a, you know, like a $300 MBA that you can give yourself because you're going to discover all these different niches, the patterns, you're going to see which businesses sell for more, which businesses sell quickly, and it'll really shape your thinking. So that's kind of my recommendation is whether, if you're buying, obviously, you know, it's no brainer. But even if you're not buying, I think this is a great way to learn. I've done this. I've looked at probably 200 online businesses for sale, just with the only intention of like, learning.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:04:45Shaan Puri?

  And, and that's, that's how my brain just sort of collects a bunch of data. So I would recommend doing that. But we should, we should wrap it here because we're gonna have to do one more segment after this. But Andrew, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks. Best of luck with Micro Acquire. Excited to be on board with this thing. And yeah, thanks for, thanks for sharing the story. I think people are gonna dig it.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on. And yeah, still for M and A coming up. Appreciate you guys supporting.

• 1:05:10Shaan Puri?

  Sweet.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.