5 Internet Goldmines To Spot The Next $1B Trend | Steph Smith

Episode 529: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Steph Smith about the 5 Internet goldmines she uses to spot $1b dollar trends before anyone else. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:30) Leveraging expiring patents (9:00) One chart sports (14:00) Mining Sci-Fi for IRL ideas (20:00) Spotting the mega trends (36:30) Building off of adjacent waves (47:30) Workshopping Steph's upcoming launch strategy — Links: • Internet Pipes - https://internetpipes.com/ • Blue Chew - https://bluechew.com/ • Sci-Fi Idea Bank - https://tinyurl.com/e3w5nfrd • Fastest growing sports (based on SFIA data) - https://recreateyou.com/blog/post/the-25-fastest-growing-sports-in-America • Newsletter on patent filings: https://patentdrop.substack.com/ • Patent expiry tracker: https://patentsexpiringtoday.com/ • Entering the 2024 public domain: https://publicdomainreview.org/features/entering-the-public-domain/2024/ • Patrick Collison's pollution page: https://patrickcollison.com/pollution • Our World in Data air pollution home base: https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution • Varda - https://www.varda.com/ • Gadget Flow - https://thegadgetflow.com/ • Dyson Zone - https://www.dyson.com/headphones/zone • Berkey Water Filter - https://www.usaberkeyfilters.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Free 2024 Goal-Setting Session - https://planfor2024.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I was at a dinner and somebody said something as a joke and I put up my finger to my lips and I said, "Shh, I need to write this down because it was an incredible idea." The guy goes-

• 0:12Sam Parr?

  You put your finger on his lips?

• 0:15Shaan Puri?

  And then my own lips, back and forth. And I was like, "Say no more. I need to, I don't want to lose this idea. Let me write this down."

• 0:31Sam Parr?

  So today, you're going to talk to, talk us through a bunch of research products that you use. A bunch of pipes, you call them, right?

• 0:38Steph Smith?

  Yeah, internet pipes.

• 0:40Sam Parr?

  I call that research tools. You said that was dumb.

• 0:42Steph Smith?

  Well, it just sounds boring. It's more accurate, but it's boring.

• 0:44Shaan Puri?

  I call them gold mines, which is basically, some people just come back and show you a little piece of gold, maybe a jewelry. Steph shows you where the mine is, so you can just keep going back to the mine for more and more gold over time. Because I think people wonder, you know, if they see your tweets or read your blog posts or hear you on our podcast, they're like, "Where did she come up with this stuff? How does she find this stuff?" So today, you're going to tell us exactly that?

• 1:07Steph Smith?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think, you know, the internet is such a special thing. And we often rely on something like Twitter to serve us the information of the day. But I feel like these tools are like, like you said, the gold mine. There's so much information that tells you exactly what people want or aggregates a bunch of opportunities for you. So.

• 1:26Sam Parr?

  Steph, tell me about this patent one. Because there's actually a handful of like really good examples with this one that I can, that I know of.

• 1:34Steph Smith?

  So there's two parts. There's patent filings and patent expiries. So patent filings, I think, there's probably some databases that do this, but the newsletter that I like to read is called Patent Drop. And they'll basically break down every newsletter, three or so patents from, again, big tech firms like Fang, but also companies like Nike. By the way, I think Nike is the company with the most design patents, or it's up there. In any case, there's patent filings, so you can track what these big companies are betting on, what they think is interesting that they want to retain some IP around. And then there's also expiries, which is interesting. I think we covered the company Hims before and how they basically leveraged a patent expiry

• 2:18Steph Smith?

  to build their company, or at least their first products. So there's a website called patents expiring today.com, which aggregates these. And obviously, it takes quite a bit of sifting because there's a lot of things like, okay, I don't care that some Shin guard is expiring, but I think the combination of those two definitely can can result in some business ideas.

• 2:40Sam Parr?

  Have you guys heard of BlueChew? You guys know what BlueChew is?

• 2:44Steph Smith?

  BlueChew?

• 2:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so about three or-

• 2:47Shaan Puri?

  I don't think they target you in ads, but they target us for sure.

• 2:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, basically about six weeks ago, I went to these guys' office and I met the two founders. And one of the founders is a doctor and the other one was a commodities trader. And basically, they worked together and they were like, what can we start? And they saw that the Viagra patent was going to expire in 2017. And so they like, were just plotting and plotting and plotting. And Hims gets a lot of credit for doing this, but BlueChew, I think, is actually more interesting. So what BlueChew does is, I think they also own med.com. So it's basically a telehealth business where you call in and you say what your issue is. Their main thing is their pill, I guess, I don't know if they call it BlueChew, the

• 3:31Sam Parr?

  name of the pill, but it's a for erectile dysfunction, which I didn't realize it. It's like the customer base for that is like 150 or 200 million people in the world. And then it's projected by 2000, 2030 to be like 400 or 500 million. So it's a massive amount of people who have erectile dysfunction disorder. And they bootstrap this company and they didn't, I don't know how big they are, but I'm pretty sure they're between 100 and 200 million dollars a year in sales. And they entirely bootstrap this company, starting in 2017. And it was because of that patent that expired. And they built this business because of that.

• 4:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's, it's an incredible example. Another kind of one chart business. All you had to do is just show, here's the business plan. This is the expiry date of Viagra. We're gonna make the D to C generic version. And yeah, they just do it through Instagram ads, whatnot. They own, I think it's meds.com. So meds.com, I think is the telehealth side. And then they have BlueChew, which is like their product. I think it's like Cialis, Viagra, and one other that are all expired now.

• 4:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I went to their office and we were playing poker and they had like a sample, like instead of having like breath mints, it was like a sample of like, you could just reach it and take one. And I was like, I was like, my wife had a baby like two weeks ago. I don't think I need this, but like, what happens?

• 4:50Shaan Puri?

  They're like, here's a room, also a padded room. You could just go stand in to see the effects and nobody will look at you then come back when you're done.

• 4:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna, if this is gonna like be in use anytime soon in my house. But, uh, but there, I was like looking at some of their numbers, particularly on SimilarWeb. And they had like 2 million people a month coming to their website. And I was like doing back of the, back of the envelope math. I was like, I'm pretty sure this is a massive, massive company. Hims gets a ton of credit because they're publicly traded and they're starting in San Francisco and they had all this press. I think this company is probably almost as big. And I'm pretty sure the two guys own most all of it. They haven't taken any financing. And so anyway, this patent thing is, is pretty wild.

• 5:27Steph Smith?

  Yeah, and I haven't gone through the stuff happening in 2024. But another quick call out is the public domain stuff, right? So every year, new things go into the public domain. We're hitting January soon. And so that's another thing to call out for folks.

• 5:43Sam Parr?

  Well, I think like a few years ago, wasn't it like Winnie the Pooh or something like that? Like, was it Winnie the Pooh? Like a bunch of these like?

• 5:49Steph Smith?

  Yeah, and then Ryan Reynolds took advantage of that. He did, what was it in partnership with one of the phone companies? And he did Winnie the Scrooge as a commercial.

• 5:59Sam Parr?

  That's pretty wild. That's pretty funny. By the way, another one of these trends that you called out a few years ago, which I thought was so stupid at the time, and I've since spent probably $500 on this crap, is you did, my wife loves this stuff. It was like minis. It was, um, for some reason.

• 6:17Steph Smith?

  Oh, like mini cooking sets and stuff?

• 6:18Sam Parr?

  Have you seen this, Sean? Like basically, it's mostly women, I think, young women.

• 6:22Shaan Puri?

  Sounds stupid, though, I agree.

• 6:23Sam Parr?

  But it's so, I've spent, when you- She was pregnant. I would buy her. I bought her this like, I bought like a bulk case of it. And then every week I would give her like a present.

• 6:32Shaan Puri?

  Wait, describe, what is it?

• 6:33Sam Parr?

  It's so, it's, it sounds so dumb. The, the one that she liked was called mini brands, I think. And it's like any famous brand that you know of, like Coca-Cola, Kit Kat, like any type of snack, but also like different products, uh, like a shoebox. They make just miniature versions and you open up this small ball. It's like a, it's like a baseball sized thing. And you open it up and inside there's like a variety of like eight different mini things. And people just love, I guess, looking at them. I, I don't even understand what the appeal is.

• 7:05Shaan Puri?

  But for children?

• 7:07Sam Parr?

  It's weird. I, Steph seems like someone who's into like this mini shit.

• 7:11Shaan Puri?

  By the way, this is, uh, Zuru. So this is that same guy, Nick Mowbray, that we talked about on the podcast. The, the toy mogul, uh, who, by the way, he said he wants to come on, so we should, uh, we should hit him up and get him on. But there, it looks like they're the makers of this, this.

• 7:23Sam Parr?

  Is it called mini brands?

• 7:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, mini brands.

• 7:25Sam Parr?

  It's, and it's really expensive. They're expensive.

• 7:27Shaan Puri?

  Are they edible or are these fake?

• 7:28Sam Parr?

  No, no, no. It's just like a, it, it looks like, imagine a Kit Kat bar, but just like the size of a penny. That's all it is.

• 7:37Steph Smith?

  It's just small. It's just mini and excellent.

• 7:40Shaan Puri?

  I have had this theory for a long time that anything mini just works. Um, like I remember in science class, there was like a mini beaker and everybody used to fight over it. And I was like, what? That holds less. And nobody wanted to hear me. I was like, no, but that holds less stuff. And, uh, but everybody wanted to have the tiny thing. And I was like, what's going on here? There is something to this, like either overly large, like kind of like the love sack, like either like an overly large thing or a completely tiny thing is just like one way to make a product more.

• 8:10Steph Smith?

  There's a YouTube channel called Jenny's Mini Cooking Show. That's the one I remember from years ago where I was like, people will just watch this person cook, cook these quote meals for hamsters. And they'll do the whole thing. They'll have like a tiny little knife and cut the pizza and the cake and serve it on the tiny plate. People love this stuff.

• 8:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And, and I can't, I make fun of these people, but one time I ordered a, uh, a birthday cake. That was, it was a Reese's peanut butter cup. That was actually the size of a birthday cake. So I, I just like bigger things, but I understand like.

• 8:47Sam Parr?

  Which sounds awesome, right? Like you're not, you're gonna buy that.

• 8:49Shaan Puri?

  Right now, I should make like the Cybertruck Mini, basically, is like the thing I should do. I should make like the really tiny Cybertruck that can just park in your garage and that's it.

• 8:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's weird, man. It's weird. We're freaks. Steph, you want to do, you want to do a few more?

• 9:05Steph Smith?

  What do you guys want to do next?

• 9:07Shaan Puri?

  Let's do the sports one.

• 9:08Steph Smith?

  Okay, so there's this website that aggregates a bunch of reports on sports, which obviously people love. Americans love sports. So they have like a state of pickleball report, state of the industry report. These cost money. So.

• 9:26Shaan Puri?

  What is the state of pickleball? Should we go into that? The burning question in all of our minds. What is the state of pickleball right now?

• 9:33Steph Smith?

  But what I did find was this article that basically aggregated some data from this and it, don't open it because I want, I want you guys to guess what the fastest growing sports are. The 25 fastest growing sports according to this SFIA research, which is the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. What do you guys think were the top fastest growing sports in America?

• 9:57Sam Parr?

  I already opened it and I could tell you I wouldn't have guessed one of them.

• 10:01Shaan Puri?

  I already opened it as well, so the game is over. But I would have said pickleball and, and I would have said that game paddle. Isn't there like another game that's just like pickleball, but it's for people that are, they want to be like, no, pickleball is old. This is the new, new shit. Like there's, there's like two of them. That's what I would have guessed. It does seem like pickleball is number one, but number two, I would have never guessed Alpine touring. I don't even know what that really is.

• 10:24Steph Smith?

  I think it's just like off, off country skiing. And then I have never heard of, what is winter fat biking?

• 10:33Sam Parr?

  It's awesome is what it is. It's like, so.

• 10:37Shaan Puri?

  I need to research.

• 10:40Sam Parr?

  These fat tire bikes are, are really popular right now. So it's basically a bike with a, just a really fat tire is what it is. And they, they are, they're sick looking. You see them ride by and.

• 10:51Steph Smith?

  Is this a sport?

• 10:52Sam Parr?

  You know.

• 10:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's just mountain bike riding, but the tire is particularly fat. It that's all it is. You know, we, what do we say? We like big and small things. It's just a normal bicycle with a fat tire that can like imagine a bicycle that could drive on a beach.

• 11:08Steph Smith?

  Got it. But I guess, I guess it's a sport. Number four, off course golf. Interesting.

• 11:15Sam Parr?

  I don't even know what that is.

• 11:16Steph Smith?

  I, when I Googled it, it, I think it's just those machines. But I guess they've turned that into a competitive sport or.

• 11:24Sam Parr?

  And then number seven is trail running. I could definitely see that. That is the, I, I get so many videos on my Instagram of trail running.

• 11:31Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I was at a dinner and somebody said something as a joke. And I put up my finger to my lips and I said, I need to write this down because it was an incredible idea. The guy goes.

• 11:44Sam Parr?

  But you put your finger on his lips.

• 11:47Shaan Puri?

  And then my own lips, back and forth. And I was like, say no more. I need to, don't, I don't want to lose this idea. Let me write this down. He said something, he goes, yeah, I do the, um, the suburban triathlon. And I go, what? And he goes, yeah, suburban travel. You, you walk, you walk a half mile, you to this bar, you drink two beers and then you go play nine holes of golf. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, it's the suburban, I forgot. He said suburban Ironman or the suburban triathlon. And I was like, this has legs. And I, I really think that if somebody created some kind of, um, thing for, you know, out of shape, middle aged guys to do,

• 12:33Shaan Puri?

  they'll do it. And I think if you make it, if you brand it almost like as the, uh, the non-fit person triathlon, and it's got to have like some version of eating and drinking being one of the legs.

• 12:46Shaan Puri?

  You know, a couple holes of golf as one of the other legs. And then you can really pick whatever you want as the third. But dude, that's the next tough mutter. I think that could be a massive, a massive trend that people start doing because it's kind of fun. It's ironic and it's, it might be pickleball as the third one. Actually, that's probably the right bet. But um, this is, this is definitely something that I think would appeal to people. What do you guys think?

• 13:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's beautiful branding.

• 13:15Shaan Puri?

  We're working backwards from the brand. We really don't even know actually what goes underneath. It's just the idea of the suburban triathlon.

• 13:23Sam Parr?

  That deserves you putting your finger on his lips and they just, just kissing him. Just give him a little kiss like, I love you. That's beautiful.

• 13:32Shaan Puri?

  It's like you bike to the grocery store, you chug a beer. You like, I don't know, run an errand and that's the suburban triathlon. And you got to do it on Saturday mornings.

• 13:40Sam Parr?

  Steph, what's, what's another one?

• 13:41Steph Smith?

  Got to give a shout out to Packy McCormick. He aggregated this and he aggregated this from a site called Tech Novelgy, which is one of these sites where I'm just like, I can't believe someone created this. Um, I think his name is Bill Christensen or something like that. Um, who basically took all of the sci fi novels that have been written or most of them thousands. And he put them on a site called Tech Novelgy. And what Packy did is he took this kind of very outdated HTML site that's hard to navigate. And he put it into this database. You guys click the link, you'll see it and you'll see that there's this first page that is just, just the sci fi stats.

• 14:23Steph Smith?

  So it basically takes all the ideas, so not just the books, but the ideas within these sci fi novels and says, does it exist today? Were these ideas in bits or atoms? And then it also breaks down things like for certain authors, let's say they had like in some cases like Asimov had, I think like 99 ideas. How many of those ideas actually came to be? So you can kind of get a sense of like how grounded

• 14:51Shaan Puri?

  Let's do some examples. So I'm on the Idea Bank, row 194. It says, in 1911, the author Hugo Gernsback predicted telemotor coasters. And these were powered skates for personal transport. Wheelies, basically.

• 15:09Steph Smith?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Shaan Puri?

  Or like that one viral video that went, the video that went viral of people walking, but with these like power skates that were making them go way faster.

• 15:17Steph Smith?

  Yeah, exactly. So there's like, they basically break down thousands of ideas in this database. And then they say if it was created, and you can see in, yeah, the Sci-Fi Idea Bank tab in column J, you can see what year it was first made. And then you can see things like Google, right? Or credit cards, when they first appeared in these sci-fi novels. So for example, the credit card was first referenced in 1888. But credit cards like Visa and Mastercard weren't actually created until the 1950s. Or Live News in 1889. And then, you know, it took until the 1980s for 24-hour Live News to actually be a thing. And it's kind of interesting because now you look at all these things like credit

• 16:01Steph Smith?

  cards or Live News, and you think, of course, right? Like, of course that exists. That doesn't sound like sci-fi. But then you can extrapolate that and probably deduce that many of the things that sound like sci-fi today, or even 50 years ago, likely will follow that same fashion. And so I like going through this database because there are still many things that still fit in that category of not yet created, but drummed up.

• 16:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so we can create electric rollerblades that just revolutionize the way we get hit by cars, right?

• 16:34Shaan Puri?

  What are examples of things that you're interested in this?

• 16:37Steph Smith?

  Yeah, so I mean, some of these are certainly at the point where they're becoming real. But for example, in 1897, someone drummed up a non-alcoholic beverage similar to wine in 1897 as well. Electric bicycles, which are now a reality, but I think becoming way, way, way cheaper and way more important. Vat-grown meat in 1984, which is another thing coming online. But I think what's equally interesting is to consider some of the major tech trends like AI, like some of the stuff happening in biotech. Some of the stuff happening in space, all of those trends kind of intersecting. And you, you can ask the question, whether some of the things that you see that again,

• 17:18Steph Smith?

  sound way more sci fi than something like an electric bicycle, may actually be a reality. So I think like an example of a company that maybe fits this bill is Varda, right? They're manufacturing drugs in space, which I think almost certainly a decade ago would have sounded crazy.

• 17:34Sam Parr?

  What's Varda doing?

• 17:36Steph Smith?

  They're manufacturing drugs in space.

• 17:38Sam Parr?

  Why?

• 17:40Shaan Puri?

  Great question.

• 17:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Shaan Puri?

  Question I think we all have in our mind.

• 17:45Sam Parr?

  What's wrong with doing it in like Massachusetts?

• 17:52Sam Parr?

  Like.

• 17:54Steph Smith?

  Imagine Sam in the pitch meeting. They're like, okay, hear me out. Drugs in space. What about Massachusetts? So my understanding is that the way that some of these drugs are manufactured, the physics, when you're on earth, due to gravity and some of the other forces that don't exist in space, results in you not being able to create certain chemical structures. And that impacts the way that drugs can be basically ingested or administered. And so there's that, I guess, immediate function of being able to create almost like drugs that exist today, but in different structures. But then there's the obvious future opportunity where you're then creating completely new compounds that could not be manufactured on earth.

• 18:38Sam Parr?

  Did those guys raise a lot of funding?

• 18:39Steph Smith?

  I believe so.

• 18:41Sam Parr?

  That's wild. What, oh, that, yeah, that's beyond what I, that's beyond my, my IQ. That's just pretty amazing.

• 18:49Shaan Puri?

  There's like a list of ideas that were definitely started on like an ayahuasca trip, and this is one of them.

• 18:54Steph Smith?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Sam Parr?

  Well, whenever I see these lists, I just think of like, have you, I'm not like, I'm not into like wizards and game, games of thrones and all that stuff. You know, what do I say? I say, I play sports. I don't, I don't read Harry Potter. But I do like appreciate the fact that one woman just sat down and created this whole. This whole world to the point where there's like, like we talk about Quidditch, we're like, that's just like a part of, like a relatively small part of this whole universe. This lady just thawed up and it is actually kind of been crazy, crazy to actually see some of these predictions. It's in a weird way, it's inspiring to think that an imagination can do this. And I do actually feel pretty psyched up looking through this and being like, damn,

• 19:37Sam Parr?

  I'm thinking way, way small and not into the future enough. So I understand that. I think it's actually pretty cool.

• 19:42Steph Smith?

  I just spotted in row 3,543 in 2003, smart wallpaper. So Sam, maybe that's coming your way. Next pod.

• 19:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So I'll look less pale. All right. You want to do another one?

• 19:57Steph Smith?

  Next goldmine. So I love this one. Our world in data. So people have maybe heard of this website. It's a website that tries to aggregate data that is a reflection of, of what's really happening in the world. So it includes things like data on poverty. It includes really niche things. Like I found, I went through the website and there was a graph that related to the day of the year with peak cherry tree blossoms in Kyoto, right? So like when, when the cherry blossoms peak the most, like so random, but they're collecting data on this. And I checked this website a few years ago, and I want to say

• 20:35Steph Smith?

  there was maybe 200 graphs on here. And if you go to their arworldanddata.org/charts page, I want to say there's thousands of different data points now. And so I wanted to call out a few that I thought were interesting, but I guess, what do you guys think? Isn't this crazy that there's so much data being collected?

• 20:59Sam Parr?

  I just clicked on one. It's adjusted net savings per capita from 1970 to 2020. And you could see like how much per capita of variety of countries are saving. It's pretty wild. Congo and Portugal, not saving a lot of money. Germany and France, really great savers. So like, it's just like literally thousands of like different charts. You know, Sean talks about these like one chart businesses. I can't think of anything for this chart, but there's like many of these charts where you can see something and just spot interesting things.

• 21:29Shaan Puri?

  One of them is this population of the world distribution. So basically, this is a chart that is looking at how many, of all the people in the world, how many are young right now, meaning under 15, how many are working age 15 to 65, and how many are elderly, 65 plus. And the shocking thing about this chart, this is a one chart, this is a one chart business right here, which is the elderly curve goes from today, right, like kind of like the 2020, early 2020s, where it's under 1 billion, it's by far the lowest, you know, the smallest line, to it's going to cross over the young population and be at, you know, by the end of where this has it projected, 2.5 billion.

• 22:12Shaan Puri?

  And so that's the biggest grower, the working, the working age one kind of flattens out, the young one kind of goes down, and the elderly one has this huge spike. And so if you're building anything that's in the elder care, that you're going to own for, let's say, 10, 20 years, you have this immense tailwind behind you, which is just that the population of people who fit, you know, the customer base is going to grow dramatically. We're going to go from under 1 billion people to over 2.5 billion people that are in that market. And so that's a, it's, you know, a case to say, you know, if you go there, let's say, let's say it's like real estate. Like if you owned, you know, senior living facilities or something like that, you would be able to just benefit from the fact that, oh, occupancy is going to go up over time in this, in this way.

• 22:57Shaan Puri?

  Now, of course, technology may, may, may completely upend things and AI and all that, but it is a very, you could see these like huge trends that are going to be very hard to reverse. So it's hard to imagine a scenario that we, we changed the direction of these lines. It would take like a whole societal shift, population level shift to change where these lines are going.

• 23:19Sam Parr?

  Did you guys see the video of, uh, it was Kim Jong-un, the, uh, the North Korean leader? He was delivering this speech this week where he was like pleading and begging, uh, his, his people to start having sex and having babies because the population is just dwindling. And he's literally crying, like you see tears coming down his face, crying. And the rest of the audience is crying and he's begging them, please have babies. It's really, it was really fascinating and

• 23:46Shaan Puri?

  Pretty big turn off though, eh?

• 23:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I thought it's just Crying in front of a man, crying in front of you, begging you to have, have children. Stop it. Just light some candles and put on some, uh, some R. Kelly and it'll get it done.

• 23:57Sam Parr?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it was, it was crazy. I guess, I guess I didn't realize it's funny. I'm looking at this chart and seeing his video. I didn't realize how big of a problem it is, but there's so many here. Which ones stick out to you, Steph?

• 24:07Steph Smith?

  So I just linked another one that I think, again, is this like one chart, um, business. This one's hard to get involved with, but I think it's, it's the lithium production. If you pull that up, I just linked it in the document and you can see that lithium production, which obviously is the core ingredient in many of our batteries, is concentrated in just a few countries. A lot of it's in China. A lot of it's in a few countries in South America. That's another example of just as you're browsing through a bunch of these, these charts, I think that one jumps out. But the one I wanted to dive into in depth is air pollution. So if you click the, the, the stat, uh, in here in our document that says,

• 24:52Steph Smith?

  "Air pollution is one of the world's leading risk factors for death", which maybe is obvious to some people, but to me, when I think about it's like, what are, what are the key causes of death? What am I afraid of? Air pollution is not at the top of that list. However, um, I also stumbled upon Patrick Collison's pollution page. He's got a bunch of cool pages on his website. He's got a page with just a bunch of questions. Uh, one of them's on pollution and he says that the World Bank indicates that 3.7 billion people, so about half the world's population are exposed to this metric, um, of PM 2.5. That, that has to do with like the size of particles, uh, in the air.

• 25:35Steph Smith?

  They're exposed to around five times the unit of measure that he correlates with a bunch of things, which include lower GDP, it includes stock market returns being lower, people making worse decisions, like chess players making mistakes, politicians using less complex speech. So those are just, you know, some fun facts. But I think what's really important is obviously the health side of things. And there's another stat that I'll just quickly share, which is from a newsletter called Charter, which says that India's capital, this was recently, breached the 450 mark on the air quality index over four times the healthy level. And basically, they're in this hazardous zone, which is

• 26:18Steph Smith?

  akin to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes a day. And obviously, that is an outlier. But I wanted to call this out because I think air quality is something that is a problem in a lot of places, clearly, some more than others. But it's something that I think people are going to be caring about a lot more. And maybe one product that came out in the last year or so that's indicative of that, that a lot of people made fun of, was the Dyson mask headphones. So I'll stop there.

• 26:48Sam Parr?

  What were those? Yeah, I never saw those.

• 26:51Steph Smith?

  They are headphones that have a, basically, a mask, an air purifier attached to them.

• 26:58Sam Parr?

  Wow. And they're expensive. They're $1,000, I think, right?

• 27:02Steph Smith?

  They are $700, from what I can see.

• 27:05Sam Parr?

  And what, this came out and people just made fun of them? Well, if you Google images, it's like a white guy in like the New York subway wearing it. You know what I mean? Like, it's a little off on, because you're talking about India and a few other countries, not maybe the New York subway. So it's kind of like a misleading ad they have. But that's pretty fascinating. Is this, are these taking off?

• 27:29Steph Smith?

  No, I think they're in that zone of a lot of people making fun of them. However, the reason I'm calling this out is because I think there is this understanding that, you know, it's just in New Delhi. It's not, you know, anywhere close to home. But I think, have you guys ever used like an air quality index measure in your home, or like a CO2 monitor?

• 27:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I have multiple times and I bought like these air purifier things that also measure the air quality in my house and I have them and it's like shocking whenever it'll like it basically turns red and it's like, oh God, there's something going on. You know what? We need to air this place out or whatever.

• 28:07Steph Smith?

  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, air quality changes over time and I don't know. I've been noticing more even in San Francisco a few days where people are like, oh, I'm, I'm wearing a mask to work, not because of COVID, but because like, oh gosh, like I, have you checked the air quality? And a lot of people aren't doing this still today, but I think that'll change. And I think if you use some of these, like the CO2 monitor, for example, you literally like, if you go to bed with your door closed and you wake up and you check that thing, it is wild how high it is. And, you know, all you need to do is open a window or, you know, circulate the air in your home. But I think as the stuff, I guess, is people are more educated on it. I think some of these devices like the air quality monitors are going to take off. And you can see some of this data in Jungle Scout as well of

• 28:51Steph Smith?

  just like the kinds of products that people are buying.

• 28:53Shaan Puri?

  Do you see, uh, what did you see? Anything in Jungle Scout that stood out? Any product that stood out?

• 28:57Steph Smith?

  Okay, so there's one product which is, uh, has to do with, uh, an AC furnace and an air filter. Um, but guess how much this thing sells every single month?

• 29:09Sam Parr?

  What is it?

• 29:10Steph Smith?

  It's an AC furnace, air filter and an air quality monitor.

• 29:14Sam Parr?

  And so what does that mean? Literally like the filter I put on the vents of my, like, like, I've got like eight vents around my home and I put these like filters there? Is that what you're referring to? Like those, like the cloth almost filters?

• 29:26Steph Smith?

  You, it's a filter you would put on your, on your furnace.

• 29:30Sam Parr?

  Got it. Okay.

• 29:31Shaan Puri?

  All right. So what I'm looking at here is, yeah, like the kind of standard air vent, uh, filters that you have to swap out every whatever, six months or so. But also it's a smart one. So it has like a monitor associated with it that has an app. This thing costs 250 bucks. Uh, yeah, I have no idea, but I would, you know, sounds like it might be a little high. So tell us, what, what's the, what does Jungle Scout tell us for the revenue?

• 29:53Steph Smith?

  So I'm seeing four entries in Jungle Scout and, um, they are 17 million, 12 million, eight million and eight million. So what is that all total? That's like over $40 million per month. This is, this is what Jungle Scout is saying. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how they measure, but, um, they tend to be pretty accurate. And so. That's an example of, I think, as people, again, like, try to understand the air quality around them, I think there's a, there's a growing business here.

• 30:24Shaan Puri?

  That is fascinating. I want to point out another thing. So this, um, this chart that you have of like, causes of death. So the top, uh, let's see, risk factors, I think I might have chosen the United States here, but in the United States, I believe the top ones are smoking, number one, high blood pressure, high blood sugar and obesity. So I have a crazy story to tell you. So I can't say his name because he asked me not to, or he said he prefers to stay under the radar. But I have a friend who is an investor and he's a very different kind of investor. So what you see on Twitter often is people who are investors, they like to be loud about what they do. They'll just kind of spray and pray.

• 31:07Shaan Puri?

  They're, they're doing a lot of deals. They love to be angels in 50 things, putting 20K checks. My friend is very different. He says that in every year, there's like, one thing that matters, maybe two, and his old job is to just find the one or two things that matter. And so I've known him for, you know, maybe 10 years now. And at one time it was like, he's like Bitcoin, it's Bitcoin right now. And I was like Bitcoin, really? Like the, you sure? And this is like, you know, let's say, I don't know, 2013, 2014, 2015, somewhere there. He's like, it's Bitcoin. And then he was the one who was like, OnlyFans, I'm all in on OnlyFans. And I was like, OnlyFans? What, what is that? This is before, and before any of the revenue numbers had come out about OnlyFans. He's like, I think, and I was at Twitch at the time, and he's like, OnlyFans is bigger than Twitch, or

• 31:51Shaan Puri?

  it's going to be bigger than Twitch. And I was like, no, dude, Twitch is like, one of the biggest internet sites on earth. And he's like, trust me, it's going to be bigger. And he, and he's like, called it basically each year. And he doesn't necessarily always get to invest, but he's trying to identify what is the thing. Did he get in on those? Yeah. So like, for a couple of these, yeah, he's got the ones I've mentioned so far, he did. So then. He texted me the other day and he goes GLP greater than GPT. So this is like, I talked to him, maybe, I don't know, nine months or a year ago. And he was like, yeah, I think this Ozempic stuff is the thing for the year. And I was like, really? Like, isn't it AI? He's like, no, I think this, I think GLP is bigger than GPT.

• 32:36Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, I'm trying to figure out the right way to invest in this. Cause they're all like, basically Ozempic and the makers of these are all public stock. So he's like, I could buy that, but the upside's not exactly there. So I'm trying to figure out what's the move. And he told me, he's like, there was one company I invested in several years ago that might actually be a beneficial beneficiary of it. So yesterday he sends me an article. Carmot, this Carmo, this pharmaceutical company got bought for $3 billion yesterday. And that they are a maker of GLP drugs. He was an early investor and he invested in it like seven years ago or something. And I was like, dude, how did you get in on this? He's like, well, you know, at the time, this all wasn't clear. I can't say that I, you know, definitely didn't know about that.

• 33:18Shaan Puri?

  But it was, uh, these guys were drug makers that were attacking obesity drugs in a different way. And, you know, just looking at the charts about what kills everybody, you know, like the obesity is a massive, massive problem. There's not that, that many interesting bets of who's attacking obesity in a different way. These guys were one of them and I liked their team and whatnot. So I invested early on and I was like, geez, man, like just to have like a $3 billion exit out of nowhere. Kind of amazing.

• 33:44Sam Parr?

  What do you think his return on that was?

• 33:47Shaan Puri?

  Uh, I don't want to say, but you know, he got in fairly early and uh, three billion is a big number. So I think he did extremely well on that one. But I will, what I will say is that he kind of looks at these like mega trends. And uh, this is kind of what you're, you're showing here, Steph, is that if you understand how big the wave is. Then it kind of simplifies life. You can ignore all small waves. If you know what the mega, you know, the big tidal waves are, and you just figure out, okay, what's the best way to surf this? And even if you don't figure out the best way, even the fourth best way to surf a mega trend is gonna, gonna work in your favor. And I've heard this now from, from a few investors, but also Mark Zuckerberg said this a while back.

• 34:29Shaan Puri?

  Like, I remember when we were, we were working on some app that was like a messaging app, like text messaging app. And this was maybe 2015 or something. And it seemed like text messaging was the big thing. And Zuck came out and he goes, there's only a few mega trends. Mobile was the last one. And then the new one is video. He goes, video is a mega trend. Everything is moving to video. People are kind of, kind of communicate through video. They're watching more and more video, short video, long video, medium sized video, scripted videos, UGC videos. It's all going to video. And I had never heard anyone say this, this word mega trend. And when Zuck said that, I started to pay attention. And we actually ended up pivoting our company into video streaming, live video. We were like, oh, we'll go for live video. And that's the company that got bought by, when we got acquired by Twitch is because

• 35:12Shaan Puri?

  we were just partially in the right space, like live video streaming. There weren't that many people working on it in an interesting way. But live video kept growing, kept growing, kept growing at this like really fast rate. And so it was smart to get out of the tech game and get on the right mega trend.

• 35:25Steph Smith?

  Yeah. You know, something I'll mention about the air quality stuff that's related to what you said there, Sean, is I feel like one missing gap with air quality, readings and devices and all that is it's not obvious. As in, I feel like most people would be surprised to be like, oh, my gosh, I inhale all this stuff and it has these adverse effects and it's, you know, it ranks here on, you know, the, the likelihood of, of death. But it's not obvious. It's not in your face. Like, let's say, like the GLP-1s. People see themselves every day and they're constantly trying to improve their image and how other people interpret them. So I think maybe one thing that if, if someone was going to go figure this out, You guys have talked about the air, the water filters.

• 36:08Steph Smith?

  People go into your home and they're like, they say like, did you know like you're drinking like this much of like basically like rocks and other sediment and lead in your, your water. Can you believe it? And they show you. And so I feel like there's an element of that where as it's going to take a while for people to really care about the air quality stuff, but there may be some middle ground where some company is able to effectively give people that aha.

• 36:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I would put it differently. I don't think it's going to take a while. I think it's going to take a marketer for people to care. It's just going to take a marketer and a product design that puts it in your face and that educates you about this and kind of scares you about it. But then says, don't worry, there's a solution. And that's how a lot of things get done is, you know, a great marketer or product designer figures out the way to put it in your face.

• 36:51Sam Parr?

  Did you guys remember what Rob Dierdick said? So Rob Dierdick came on and he didn't spend too much time talking about this, but he said he bought a good chunk of a company that is doing water filters for showers. And I've got a bunch of friends that are like health freaks. So Justin Mares is, is one of them where he's a health freak and he's a great entrepreneur. And he was like, man, I installed this really expensive, basically Berkeley filter, which is that big metal, it's like those metal jugs that you see in people's homes. And he's like, I wanted to install one for my whole home because I wanted my shower water to also be completely filtered. And I went through this whole ordeal to do this. And then Rob Dierdick invested in this company that is basically making a shower head that is a filter.

• 37:34Sam Parr?

  So it's ideally simplifying that entire process. He talked about that on this podcast, but he didn't spend too much time talking about it. And I went and researched a bit of it. I think that is going to be a, a, a pretty big company. And I think there's going to be a, a whole, I, I imagine it's going to be like a, like a boxed mattress trend where no one has them. And then suddenly many people have them and there's tons and tons of competition because I don't think that's quite that hard of a company to, to, to create. I don't know what the mode is entirely, but I imagine there's going to be a whole bunch of people in that space. And so I'm, I'm pretty much on board with, with what he said. And I, I think you have an interesting insight with the, particularly with the AC vents. That's another product that literally everyone has in their home.

• 38:18Sam Parr?

  You have to replace it two or three times a year and it's a really, really easy Instagram ad to make. All right, let's go to the next one. What else you got?

• 38:26Steph Smith?

  All right, next one in here is Gadget Flow. So this is just an interesting site that aggregates gadgets, frending gadgets. I want to call it two things here. The first is, if you look at the most popular gadgets, you might say, well, what's the opportunity here, right? Like, I'm not going to create a drone like DJI. I'm not going to create the next AR/VR device. Apple's doing that. Meta's doing that. Like, there's no opportunity. I just wanted to call out that every time there's a new device that ends up penetrating a lot of people's homes or wallets, there's almost always an opportunity for accessories. So a good example that we covered years ago, Sam, on Trends was AirPods.

• 39:08Sam Parr?

  And you have got a crazy stat on that. You've got a crazy AirPods stat.

• 39:11Steph Smith?

  This was forever ago. I wonder what it is now, but back then it was like, early on in the AirPod journey. And it was like, AirPods, if it was a standalone company, would be in the Fortune 50 or something like that. And I was like, whoa, whoa.

• 39:24Sam Parr?

  I think your stat was like, AirPods make more revenue than like Spotify, Snapchat, and Airbnb combined.

• 39:31Steph Smith?

  Yeah, I think Twitter was in that too. It was, yeah. And that was, again, that was in 20, I want to say 2019 or 2020. And so now there's some crazy stats with AirPods, which is just like, 70% of all US teens have AirPods. Like, that is like true penetration. And so, early on in that trend, it's like, okay, there's like cases. There's, I'm trying to remember, like keychains, really simple stuff, but I think what is worth just understanding, or what you can take away from this Gadget Flow website is like, okay, what are the newest devices that are not going to have the scale of like hundreds or thousands of people using them,

• 40:11Steph Smith?

  but millions or hundreds of millions? And what are the adjacent accessories or products that I can create?

• 40:17Sam Parr?

  So how do you, how do you use Gadget Flow?

• 40:20Steph Smith?

  So Gadget Flow is not as much of like, you know, a searchable database like something like Jungle Scout, but it's more so just what I would do if I came to this page is first, I would look at the dropdown of most popular, right? So that's where you're going to see some of those big devices. And then the other takeaway is... Some of the dropdown categories, I think. So the one that caught my eye was pet accessories. So remember gadget flow is like all tech devices. And so if you go to pet accessories, there's a bunch of different things. I guess you both have owned dogs. I've never owned a owned a dog, but I wonder if you're familiar with any of these devices. And in particular,

• 41:01Steph Smith?

  there was one that I noticed. Have you guys heard of Fluent Pet?

• 41:07Sam Parr?

  No, it's that now. What is it?

• 41:09Steph Smith?

  It is this really interesting trend of these buttons. Fluent Pet is the particular brand that I think is going pretty viral because of one account, this dog called I Am Bunny. This, this account has, I think, a million followers on Instagram and it's, it's basically these buttons where you can, I don't know how, like how well this works for all dogs, but you can kind of teach them to communicate with you by pushing these buttons to indicate what they want.

• 41:39Sam Parr?

  And I've seen these and it's, and it is actually really cool. So the way it looks is it looks like a, so it looks like a, imagine like a, like a twister pad and each color has a button on it and the one button means bathroom, one button means food, one button means other thing. And you could train your dog to click a button to do what, to tell you what they want. It's actually really cool. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I've seen these and I, we trained our dog how to do that where like he, like I, I could tell what he wanted based off of a handful of activities that we would teach him how to do. This is actually really cool.

• 42:16Steph Smith?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Shaan Puri?

  My dog is way too dumb for this, but this is awesome. Yesterday I took my dog out to, I took my kids to gymnastics and we brought the dog. And so all these kids love to come pet the dog. And this kid comes up, probably like, I don't know, seven years old or something. He goes, oh, your dog's so cute. And I was like, thank you. I was like, you want a pet? He's like, yeah. He goes, what's her name? And I go, yeah, her name's Bunzly. He goes, oh, why didn't you give her a better name?

• 42:46Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, okay, maybe I, I was like, I didn't know how to respond. I was like, man, I just got owned by this little kid.

• 42:57Shaan Puri?

  Why didn't you give her a better name like Rosalina?

• 43:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like.

• 43:01Shaan Puri?

  Oh, my God. What I was, I was, it's like I got a jab in the nose.

• 43:04Steph Smith?

  Sean, did you name the dog?

• 43:06Shaan Puri?

  I did.

• 43:10Sam Parr?

  What was the answer?

• 43:11Shaan Puri?

  I just thought it was a very regal sounding name.

• 43:15Sam Parr?

  I think your definition of regal and everyone else's definition is a little bit different.

• 43:18Shaan Puri?

  Like, like a butler. I don't know. Like, oh, Bunsley.

• 43:21Sam Parr?

  Steph, are you just, what are you doing all day? Are you just clicking through all these? I mean, you probably have a hundred or 50 different links here. Are you just clicking through this stuff all day?

• 43:30Shaan Puri?

  Tabs are open right now.

• 43:32Steph Smith?

  I want to say 35.

• 43:36Shaan Puri?

  So are you going to go through those or are you just a hoarder?

• 43:38Steph Smith?

  There's an order. There's like the Jungle Scout tabs grouped together, the like similar web tabs grouped together. Um, I don't know. I mean, I think so. I will spend time every so often, just like going through these websites and like scouring for ideas. But I think there are a few newsletters and things that I pay attention to, that kind of surface ideas that I then, if I find them interesting, will go and check them, you know, in similar web or Jungle Scout or whatever.

• 44:06Sam Parr?

  And I know you're at A16Z now and I presume you're happy, but inevitably one day you're going to go and you're going to start a company that you have it in you. I think you're going to do that. What do you think it will be? Which category? Cause you, you've seen all this data. You look at all this data. What, what's going to interest you whenever you do it?

• 44:25Steph Smith?

  Well, I don't want to share the ideas that I actually want to pursue soon because.

• 44:30Sam Parr?

  Which category?

• 44:31Steph Smith?

  Um, you could say games or I like the idea of, you know, people we've talked about before, someone, if you guys remember Neil Agarwal, Neil fun.

• 44:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, great, great website.

• 44:45Steph Smith?

  You know, part of me, we talk about these big ideas like AI and biotech and it's all very interesting. And, you know, someone, please go become the air quality marketer that we all need. But part of me just wants to create things that I wish I saw on the internet or I wish existed on the internet that aggregates some of these ideas or gets people to learn things in ways that they never thought of before. Um, and so I kind of just want to be. This is too silly of a term for this, but like an artist, like an internet artist, if that makes sense.

• 45:16Sam Parr?

  Are you, and you work at Investor now, is this something that you'd raise money for? Or you'd want to do all on your own?

• 45:22Steph Smith?

  I'd do it on my own.

• 45:23Sam Parr?

  You wouldn't raise money?

• 45:24Steph Smith?

  I don't think it's the kind of, it's not a VC. Internet artist? Who's gonna, they're gonna be like, do they have those in Massachusetts?

• 45:37Sam Parr?

  All right, well, I'm just curious.

• 45:38Shaan Puri?

  Like Peter Levels is like the internet, like the bank CEO of internet art right now, right? Like he's, he's kind of one of those guys.

• 45:44Steph Smith?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:45Sam Parr?

  And I think you will do that. I'm eager to see when you, when you finally do do it. I think you're gonna do really well in it.

• 45:52Shaan Puri?

  Well, they have her trapped because I saw her do something yesterday that made me just shake my head. She tweeted out, who's got the best company swag in the world?

• 45:59Steph Smith?

  Oh, no, don't sell me out like that, Sean.

• 46:02Shaan Puri?

  A backpack and like a koozie and like a water bottle that all said A16Z on it. And no doubt they were beautiful products. It's great to get free stuff, but that's how they get you, Steph. I was like, no, they're wrapping their tentacles around you. You know, what's the, the two most addictive things in the world? Heroin and a monthly salary. Well, third is free swag.

• 46:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they don't even, you don't even have golden handcuffs. You have a black umbrella. That's what they did for you.

• 46:26Shaan Puri?

  The internet artist that I want to follow, that I admire, does not fall into the traps of company swag.

• 46:33Steph Smith?

  They reject company swag.

• 46:35Shaan Puri?

  They reject company swag. When I saw you post that, I was like, oh no, she's, she's in too deep. It's like an inception. We need to wake her up. She's so far, she's in level three of inception and we gotta snap her out of this.

• 46:46Steph Smith?

  Well, I mean, I am human. I am convinced by free stuff.

• 46:50Sam Parr?

  It looks like they got you with a bookbag and umbrella and a poncho.

• 46:56Steph Smith?

  That's what it could be. So for all the people who have previously tried to coach me, that's all you need. Just send me a backpack and a poncho and.

• 47:05Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm eager to see you start a company. Where do you want to go from here, Sean?

• 47:09Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, I think we'll let's wrap it up. But Steph, where can people get more of like this type of stuff specifically? So like you have this very unique method to your madness that you, you know, you know, these nooks and crannies. You're like those people where you go to a city. And you're like, I really wish I just knew kind of like what to what tourist traps to avoid, what good places to go, what's the best place to eat? Oh, she knows this hole in the wall where you can enter through the to the chef's kitchen and blah, blah, blah. You're like that for the internet. So how can people get more of that?

• 47:40Steph Smith?

  Yeah. So like you said, it's my seventh time on my first million, which is kind of crazy. And ever since the first few where I'd come with these docs and you guys would be very nice and and hype up the doc and say, oh, my gosh, so crazy. There's so much in phone here. I constantly get people reaching out, asking for those docs and, you know, an aggregation of all the websites that I visit and how to use them and how to internet sleuth. Or I like the term to use the internet pipes. So I'm putting together something. I don't know what to call it. Maybe you guys can help me with it that aggregates these internet pipes and shows people how to use them. So I think the only thing I've done is aggregate them and then buy the domain internet pipes.

• 48:20Steph Smith?

  But I think by the time this episode goes live, I'll probably have some sort of like pre-sale up on that page if people are.

• 48:26Sam Parr?

  What are you going to charge for it?

• 48:27Steph Smith?

  Okay, if you guys have a minute, I want I want your opinion because I think I'm going to do something wrong here.

• 48:33Sam Parr?

  Don't just don't use the C word. You can't say course. You have to call it something else. Like a, I don't know. You gotta use chat GPT, but something involving the word research, I'd imagine.

• 48:42Shaan Puri?

  There was this one guy that used to really, he had a lot of knowledge. He read a lot of books. He had a Lamborghini in his garage and he too had a course. So maybe you could take his blueprint. He had a good one.

• 48:53Steph Smith?

  I mean, so I don't know what I'm going to call it. I don't like the idea of it being a course because I don't. I want it to just be like a resource that people go to and it's not like a, not like a teachable course or something like that. But what do I charge for something like that? I, when I did my book, I did this like tiered pricing scheme where it started at $10 and then it went up for every like 30 or 50 sales. But I have no, I feel like I'm gonna end up charging too little.

• 49:21Sam Parr?

  What was that called?

• 49:22Steph Smith?

  It's called doing content, right?

• 49:23Sam Parr?

  So doing content, right? Sean, tell me what you would have done in this situation. So Steph worked at my company. Yeah, and she was talented at, she was talented, she worked at my company while she was doing this. And I remember Steph, someone came to me and they're like, do you care that Steph is doing this and launching this content? Book? And I was like, no, why, why should I care? Would you have cared, Sean? And I think Steph, you made, I don't know, you could say what you made, but you made great money. You maybe made more than that than we were paid.

• 49:50Steph Smith?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Sam Parr?

  You mean, did, did you make more doing the book than I paid you?

• 49:53Steph Smith?

  Um, maybe in the first year.

• 49:56Sam Parr?

  And Sean, what would you have said if your employee was doing this? Would you have been pro or anti?

• 50:01Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, I would have been pro. I mean, it's fine. Like, I have no problem with that. I would have had a conversation just to be like, cool, where are we going with this? Like, what's the, where does this live in your life? Is this like fun side project? Is this what you actually want to go do? Then maybe I can help you go do that in a, in more. Like, I just kind of want to know where that lives. And I just, you know, obviously, you know, for you, Steph was like a star performer. So, you know, stars get like more rope to go do things. If you're like, if you are doing a mediocre job and then you got this side hustle, that's the final straw for me, right? Like, then you're not putting your energy kind of towards actually getting a good outcome. But Steph was crushing it. So, you know.

• 50:41Sam Parr?

  So I don't think, we were pretty encouraging of people to do stuff unless they were screwing up. I don't know if we ever lost an employee because of their side thing. But I think, like, that was pre Twitter getting popular like it is. I think in the future, I maybe wouldn't have encouraged it. And that, it's kind of effed up, but I don't know if I would have encouraged it, but I did encourage it back then.

• 51:03Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's what I mean by, I want to know where it lives in your life. Meaning, if this is kind of what you really want to do, then let's just be honest about it. Like, let's just have the honest conversation and we can figure out, like, what's the right pathway forward? And if you're like, I just want to make a little bit of extra money, we could talk about like, hey, if you just. Did XYZ here, you can make that, you know, you don't have to start a separate business, right? If that's, if that's the motivation. If you're just like, oh yeah, I just use this for serendipity and networking and I just kind of like to put stuff out there on nights of weekends. Like this is my hobby. Like that's what I told people when, when I was doing things, I was, I'd say, you know, business is my hobby. So like, you know, for you, when you log off work, you might go to CrossFit or you might go play golf. Like what I do

• 51:44Shaan Puri?

  is I read, I write, I make things. That's what I like to do on the internet. And so, you know, this is just me doing that hobby, you know, you, you do taekwondo or whatever you do. And I think there's just some people that are like that. You gotta, you gotta let them spread their wings.

• 51:57Steph Smith?

  I mean, I think also to your point, Sean, it depends. Is this like an ongoing thing forever? You're going to be writing, you know, doing a course every quarter and it's going to take up all your time. I intentionally with this project, partially because I didn't want it to last forever, but partially also because it's just my psychology to like, get something done and out there was like, I think I compressed it until like a six week thing. And I was like, this is all, this is the only time I'm going to allocate to this. And I feel like for this, this new project that I'm launching to, it's kind of the same thing where it's like, I don't want to be like doing a course forever and people checking in with me and have this, I just have this like little burst of like creativity. I need to get something out there to exist and then that's it.

• 52:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, your question was, what would you, what should you charge for it? I don't think this is going to make a ton of money because the, who's the type of person that wants to, who's the type of person that wants to buy this is somebody like you. So there's not that many people that are like you that are like, hey, I just have some disposable income that I'm going to use so that I can have better internet, random research tools and like ability to lurk and just find interesting things on the internet.

• 53:06Shaan Puri?

  I think those are awesome people, but there's not, it's not like mass market, right? So you either got to charge a bunch or you go the other way and you charge very little, but you use, you get the value in a, in a separate way. Like for you, what I would be doing is I would use this as a honeypot to attract a, like the type of person that's going to pay even $99, whatever, $100 a year to have access to this database. Is like somebody that you would want to go hang out with for three hours, most likely. Right. And so I would just use it as like, the value isn't going to come from the, the direct monetization of this asset, but from the little community you build and then the interesting either investments you get out of it, or, you know, introductions or opportunities or the company you started,

• 53:48Shaan Puri?

  someone from this, that's, I think where you're going to get way more value than just trying to charge a premium for this for.

• 53:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but it'll, it'll pay for her monthly expenses. This, you're doing content right, plus a new thing, you'll make 25,000 a month, I think.

• 54:02Steph Smith?

  We'll see.

• 54:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but like, your, your needs are covered, right? So like, you know, one way, one thing I think about a lot is like, um, you know, more of the same keeps me where I am. So, you know, if I keep doing things that kind of keep me in the same level of the game, I'll never have the bandwidth to do whatever it's going to take to get me to the next level of the game. And so like, for example, I, I had a course that I was teaching maybe five to 10 days a year, not much, and it was making over a million dollars a year. So that's an amazing like effort to pay off thing. And then I stopped and I was like, why? Cause for me, making an extra $1 million a year is not going to get me to the next level of the game I'm trying to play at. So I was like, if I'm trying to get to the point where, let's just say, let's just make up a goal,

• 54:46Shaan Puri?

  say I was trying to make, I want to get to where I'm making $20 million a year. Okay. Let's say, let's say that was the goal, then I need to like, have enough like room on, room on my plate, just empty space that will like force me to go create the thing that gets me to the next level. Um, or I might give things away for free. In fact, if it's gonna like, create the serendipity that's going to take to like, open up new opportunities that are bigger. And so that's just something to think about is like, how do you, if, do you care about, uh, you know, maybe the next level of financial freedom of, of, you know, sort of wealth that will give you more runway, more ability to like, use money to do shit, the shit you want, like the internet art type of thing. Um, and if you do, maybe you could use this as a tool to like, get the

• 55:30Shaan Puri?

  right people around you and do something else. I don't know. This is worth considering.

• 55:32Steph Smith?

  I mean, one of the biggest learnings from the book was some people are like, oh, you're totally undercharging, but it's like, how do you deliver a product at a price point that people are like? So happy with that. They go and share it and talk about it. And also like, yeah, want to work with you and like actually digest the information instead of

• 55:50Sam Parr?

  And requires no customer service.

• 55:52Steph Smith?

  Yeah, exactly. Where there it's just like, it runs itself. It markets itself. That's what ended up happening with the book. And so I am leaning more in that direction. But then I also, I was expecting you guys to be like, no, no, no, like, charge more. Like you always undercharged, but I guess, I guess maybe I should keep it low.

• 56:08Shaan Puri?

  Tim Ferriss said something that changed my thinking on this. Tim Ferriss said, he goes, I had a strategy, which was ultra free or ultra premium. He goes, I was going to give away 99% of what I do for literally for free because I'm trying to reach the broadest number of people possible. And I want to over be over delivering. I treat it like it's a paid product, but I deliver it for free to the masses. Because then on the one day, and he, he, he gives the example, he did a, um, this was back when he was doing four hour work week and whatnot. So he's doing, uh, you know, his blogging for free, podcast for free. And then he said, Hey, I'm doing a two day, kind of like in person workshop, seminary thing that's

• 56:45Sam Parr?

  That open the kimono thing or?

• 56:47Shaan Puri?

  Open the kimono. Yeah, exactly. And I think he did two or $3 million in sales in like 30 minutes, right? Cause people were like, I will pay $10,000. He was like, it's, it's expensive. I don't expect everybody to be able to afford this or want to, I'm not even going to promise anything. But if you're what I do, like, I'm going to do this open the kimono thing. And it's two days. And I think he made two, two to $4 million on that day. And he's like, if I had been trying to like, kind of charge along the way, like, let me do this little ebook for, for $9. I mean, let me do this like monthly subscription for maybe making it $20 a month. He's like, I would have had a smaller audience and less money. And so, and same thing with his podcast ads. He's like, I would rather have no ad in the thing or charge an ultra premium to a premium brand.

• 57:28Shaan Puri?

  Because there's always really, he said, there's always a market for luxury, right? There's always a market for the, for the absolute best. So I wanted to make the absolute best product and then charge the absolute, you know, best price I could for that. And that was like his, his strategy. Um, when it came to that, I think Alex Hormozi does a similar thing. So Hormozi is like, look, I could be trying to make a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there, do a course. Do a do a seminar, do whatever. But he's like, no, no, I'm gonna be really in your face that this stuff is normally what people charge for. I'm giving it to you for free, builds a bunch of goodwill, builds a big audience. And then when he's ready to charge, he'll make all the money back and more when he finally does charge for the thing. In his case, it's a combination of acquisitions.com,

• 58:12Shaan Puri?

  where he's like, I'm gonna buy equity in your business at this like, super, super sweetheart deal for him, because he's built up so much goodwill and like, reputation amongst, you know, his potential, like, you know, acquisition targets. Or if he ends up doing ever, like, a course or a seminar or a live in-person thing, he'll be able to charge $25,000 per person to get in. And he'll make $10 million on one day, because he's kind of built it that way. So I think there's something to learn from these people that play the real long game.

• 58:39Steph Smith?

  Totally. I don't think I could charge 25K for anything. But we'll see, we'll see if I ever get there. But um,

• 58:45Sam Parr?

  Well, you do, you get paid more than that.

• 58:48Steph Smith?

  That's true. That's true.

• 58:50Sam Parr?

  So I mean, you definitely do. And you definitely can. I think that you will eventually, for sure.

• 58:57Steph Smith?

  Someone, by the way, I read the comments. And I read one from something, one of the episodes I was on ages ago, and someone wrote something like, wow, Steph has a really intense case of imposter syndrome. And I was like, oh, true. Anyway, I guess if people want to find

• 59:17Sam Parr?

  By the way, I'll tell you this now, you do. I remember when I was negotiating your salary, when you first joined, and you asked for a number. I don't remember if I did this for you. We, in particular, women would typically do this. They would say a number, and I would say a number back. Or I would just say a number to them, and they would just accept it. And I'd be like, hey, you should negotiate with me. Women in particular were horrible at pushing back on their salary for what they should ask for. And, you know, my company was small, we in aggregate, probably hired 75 people. But I noticed a small trend of women in particular did not push back nearly as hard as the men. There are many men that they would push back, and it was laughable. What they, I'm like, there's not a chance I'm going

• 1:00:02Sam Parr?

  Going to give you this, but I guess I'll meet you somewhere in the middle to like adjust this. But like, this is crazy. I offered, I was thinking you were a hundred fifty thousand dollar a person. You're asking for seven hundred thousand. Like, that's just ridiculous. But I remember with you, Steph, you were way, we gave you a lot of bumps, I think, over the, how, how long you worked with us. But you, you started way too low. And I would encourage you to, maybe not for this product, but to definitely elevate what you should be demanding for pay. I, I think you're doing all right now, A16Z, but that I've, I've noticed that with you, in, in particular amongst very, very, very smart and qualified young women.

• 1:00:38Steph Smith?

  Yeah, it took me around, what is it? So twenty one to twenty eight when I, twenty eight or twenty nine when I joined A16Z. So it took me like seven years or so to actually learn to negotiate. So I agree.

• 1:00:52Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you a embarrassing version of imposter syndrome that I have, which is, it's not imposter syndrome, but it is what I call Michael Scott syndrome. Where sometimes, I felt this for like ten years, I always hire people that are like super smart. That's great upfront. But the downside is sometimes you just feel like Michael Scott. You're like, oh, I'm the idiot in the office. And I'm telling these people, I'm actually in their way. And these people are like, they're kind of looking at me like the way that Jim Halpert looks at, you know, Michael Scott. And I'm like, oh no, it's happening. That's, the, the Michael Scott thing is happening. Have you ever felt that?

• 1:01:28Sam Parr?

  Yes, I felt that way all the time. And then I realized that's actually, I felt that way for a long time. And then I realized, oh, wait, no, that just means I'm good at hiring. So like, I should just get out of the way.

• 1:01:38Shaan Puri?

  Scott would do. And do a compliment for himself.

• 1:01:44Sam Parr?

  No, I felt that way too. I remember hiring people that were A, older than me and B, smarter. And I'm like, what the fuck are these people? Did I really just convince this person? Did I just trick this person into coming and joining anything I'm doing? I feel horrible about that. I felt that same way.

• 1:01:59Shaan Puri?

  One woman that's so good at what she does in our e-commerce business, she's so fast, like literally so fast and hyper productive. Like she gets the, like she gets like three people's stuff done and in the same amount of a day. And she's the one who, Michael Scott's me all the time. I'm like, I'll be telling her something in the meeting, I'll be like, yeah, let's follow up next week on that. And she's like, I already sent it out. And I'm like, while I was talking, but I was giving you such a good anecdote and metaphor. And, uh, you just like finished it? Oh, okay. I guess, uh, I guess I could have shut up five minutes ago, huh? And I realized, actually, this is a great thing. Just like you said, Sam, it's not that I'm great at hiring. I said, now this is actually the bar. I only want to hire people that make me feel like I'm Michael, I'm the Michael Scott of the office. That's actually how it should feel when you're doing it right.

• 1:02:43Sam Parr?

  How it should feel. That means you're good at hiring. Now you just gotta get the hell out the way. You did the hard part.

• 1:02:47Shaan Puri?

  And you're funny. That's the other thing.

• 1:02:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I don't know about that.

• 1:02:51Steph Smith?

  I'm just gonna quickly shout out, if people want to go find it, internetpipes.com. I guess we'll figure out the price. It'll be live when this goes live.

• 1:02:59Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the pod stuff. Thank you for doing this.