Sara's List Hostile Takeover and The App that Made $1M In Ten Days

Episode 379: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about a hostile takeover of Sara's List and brainstorm how they're going to deal with it, the backstory of the #1 app - GAS, and much more. ----- Links: * Sara's List * Kristin Kent's Twitter (@kstankent) * The Muse * Packy McCormick * Gas * Nikita Bier Twitter (@nikitabier) * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (02:40) - Palmer Luckey recap (06:00) - The Sara's List Hostile Takeover (12:15) - Shaan makes an offer (25:20) - Nikita Bier & Gas ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  And so Nikita said something in the group message, which he says, I think it'd be an interesting idea to ask myself or to figure out.

• 0:08Shaan Puri?

  Not even that. You're making it too soft. I remember exactly how he said it. It's like, oh, so what are you doing? What are you up to nowadays? Oh, Sam, you sold the hustle. What are you doing? Sean, you still be, what are you doing? Nikita, you're sitting at Facebook. What are you doing? And he's basically, he just said it straight, straight up. He goes,

• 0:25Shaan Puri?

  I'm just thinking about how I can make $10 million in three months. Like, and we're like, what? And he's like, yeah, I want to make an app that generates like $10 million in 90 days.

• 0:42Sam Parr?

  What's going on? We have a good episode. We talk about an app that's going viral, but this app role is getting written about in a bunch of publications. We actually have the inside story because we kind of saw what was happening behind the scenes early, early on. And so we talk about this guy named Nikita, who launched this app that has made a million dollars in like, two weeks or something crazy like that. And we tell you the inside story behind it. What else we got?

• 1:02Shaan Puri?

  And he called his shot, which you know, we love here. We also talk about a ransom note that we got through email and why this ransom note was one of the best emails that we've ever got. And me and Sam live brainstorm and live negotiate how we're going to deal with this ransom note. So if you want to see that, that's at the end of the episode. We also talk about the MailChimp CEO getting canceled and a little debrief of Palmer Lucky. So that's it. Enjoy this episode.

• 1:28Sam Parr?

  All right, we live.

• 1:29Shaan Puri?

  Sam Parr, what's up?

• 1:31Sam Parr?

  Nothing. How's it going?

• 1:33Shaan Puri?

  You know, just the usual woke up, decided, okay, no small boy stuff today, got going, immediately started considering some small boy stuff. And then I remembered, there will be absolutely none of that today.

• 1:45Sam Parr?

  What was it?

• 1:46Shaan Puri?

  I woke up, I was like, I'm a little sore. So wake up with a complaint and wake it up with a complaint on one of the greatest days I've ever had. Wow, this is, this is not how I'm going to start my day.

• 1:59Sam Parr?

  Wait, why was it one of your greatest days?

• 2:01Shaan Puri?

  I just like, that's just like a general, general attitude I have.

• 2:05Sam Parr?

  Do you want to start off by recapping Palmer Lucky? Cause after talking to him, I feel like he's kind of the greatest guy I've ever talked to.

• 2:13Shaan Puri?

  The man? Yeah.

• 2:15Sam Parr?

  Right? Is that how you feel?

• 2:17Shaan Puri?

  I thought he was awesome. Um, okay. Let me just say a word that describes Palmer Lucky. I would say, um, like,

• 2:28Shaan Puri?

  Independent minded. I think, I think I really respected that. He is independently minded. I felt like all his opinions were his own. You know, people like, they write that shit in their Twitter bio, like, opinions of mine, not my employer. You know, his opinions are really his.

• 2:44Sam Parr?

  Also, when people write contrarian thinker, and it's kind of like, if, if you have to say that you're contrarian thinker, you're maybe not like the most contrarian thinker.

• 2:57Sam Parr?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 2:57Shaan Puri?

  Right. It's like the no offense. I'm not racist, but.

• 3:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it is. So I, anyway, yeah, I, I, I thought that he was an independent thinker. I also thought that he was incredibly enthusiastic, which I liked.

• 3:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, dead on the inside. Like, we have, we have said no to a bunch of guests just simply because they're like, you know, their intelligence is like cranked up to level 10, their success is cranked up to level 12, but their like charisma and ability to convey any sort of enthusiasm about themselves, about the world, about their story, is so low. And, and so they, they make for a terrible podcast guest, but for him, it felt not only like did he have charisma to tell stories about the past, he seemed really pumped about what he was doing and what the future looked like and why it mattered. And I just felt like this guy, you know, just like springs out of bed every day.

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  Me too. That's exactly how I felt. I felt like he was incredibly enthusiastic about life and he, yes, that, that's a great way to explain it. But he, dude, he was so fascinating. He was one of those guys that I like because I don't like, I, I can't think of a great word to explain, say, other than like prolific, but also almost like this. I don't think this is over explaining it or over grandizing it, but like, almost like a Renaissance man, where he would say comments like, yeah, I bought this marina because there's going to be new laws about. I don't even understand like what he was explaining about his marina, but he said like something about his marina and like seaport access and how it's changing. And then he made another comment.

• 4:36Shaan Puri?

  He was like, he's like, I was gonna do this. Well, I mean, sea steadying is, is off the table for now. And I was just like, I don't even really know what sea steadying is.

• 4:44Sam Parr?

  Exactly.

• 4:44Shaan Puri?

  And you just said it like, well, we all know sea steadying, now's not the time. What are you talking about? What the hell is he studying?

• 4:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he also, he also, like, he'll make another comment. He's like, yeah, I have this house we rented. We had like a workshop and one weekend I was building a jet engine for the water. And we actually discovered that like, we should make biodegradable food. Or what did he say? We should make oil based foods. It's kind of like building a Diet Coke for every food. And I was just like, we could take this over lots of different paths. But it's just so interesting to me that you have that ability.

• 5:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was like a bunch of like candy being waved at us. He's just like, you know, I have one of the largest Samurai sword collections in the world. And that just got me into thinking. And it's like, wait, what?

• 5:27Shaan Puri?

  He didn't say that, by the way, but there's at least a 50% chance he has one of the top 10 Samurai sword collections in the world.

• 5:34Sam Parr?

  And 100%, the guy owns swords. Like, yeah, he definitely owns swords.

• 5:38Shaan Puri?

  All right, so where do you want to go next?

• 5:41Sam Parr?

  You can drive.

• 5:42Shaan Puri?

  All right, so check this out. I forwarded you an email. Did you see the email I sent from about Sarah's List? Or maybe, maybe she sent this to you too.

• 5:52Sam Parr?

  What was it?

• 5:53Shaan Puri?

  So, a woman named Kristen sends a, an email. I'm just going to read it to you. We'll show it on the screen, you know, for those on YouTube, because it's, it's kind of amazing looking.

• 6:03Sam Parr?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 6:04Shaan Puri?

  You open up the email and it says, I am holding sarahslist.com hostage. And she goes, you don't know me, but I obviously know you. I purchased sarahslist.com. I've turned it into a bomb ass website. I am willing to sell it to you for $20,000. This is a steal, as I purchased it for $30,000. I'm essentially giving you $10,000. You're welcome. If you'd ever, if you'd ever like to see sarahslist.com again. And then she turned the font small, or for the first time, you know, replied to this message. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Kristen. And I was just like, this is amazing. I go, who are you? And.

• 6:42Sam Parr?

  Who is, who is she?

• 6:44Shaan Puri?

  So she's, this is, this is woman Kristin Kent. So she sends me her story after that. She goes, I've been in tech for 12 years. You know, regrettably, I chose companies off Kristen's list, which was not as lucrative as if I had chose companies off Sarah's list. So for those who don't know, Sarah's list is this concept that we should explain. We did a full episode about it. Basically, Sam's wife, Sarah, is a self-made millionaire and did not do any of the heroic entrepreneurial things you hear about in the media. She just did one really good thing. She just picked companies whose equity was going to like, whose valuation was going to go up four or five X in a four-year period.

• 7:23Shaan Puri?

  So she worked at Facebook and not early at Facebook, not like she was like employee four at Facebook, like she was like in the thousands of employees, joined as like a middle, middle manager type. Now, again, I say this not as disparagement because of how amazing it is. Like she didn't do the things that you think you have to do to become like a self-made millionaire. She joined Airbnb again as employee, I don't know, something hundred. What was it? Maybe like three or four hundred?

• 7:46Sam Parr?

  No, a thousand.

• 7:47Shaan Puri?

  A thousand. Okay, great. And Airbnb goes public at a valuation of this four or five X. And so, you know, if you're receiving a stock grant for, let's call it $60,000 a year, you know, on top of your, you get, you get some base compensation, I'm just gonna use fake numbers. Base compensation, let's say is 150 and then they give you 50K of stock a year for four, over four years, that's 200K of stock. But now the stock price, four or five X is you made a million dollars during that time period. And you were safe. You didn't have to like work 90-hour weeks. You got to work at a fun growing company that was gonna like win its category. And you didn't have to have this like amazing lightning in a bottle genius idea in order to do it.

• 8:28Shaan Puri?

  And so she had done that a few times. And so we, we said, oh, this was actually intentional. You and Sarah sat down and you guys.

• 8:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we like made lists. We like made lists, like what's like a 500-person company that has good maternity leave? You know, like, these are all like the telltale signs that it's like an interesting startup has. You're in the, you know, top quartile of pay just off salary. You have interesting benefits, good healthcare, like all this stuff that a lot of startups. That are early don't have, but big companies do, yet they can still five or 10x. So yeah, we made that list.

• 9:01Shaan Puri?

  So we made the list and of the, we put 12 companies on that list. This was like a year, a year and a half ago now, 12 companies on that list. And I think we did the recap. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think the, in the year, year and a half since then, the average company values up like two and a half X or something crazy like that. And 11 out of the 12 companies raised a like significant up round since then. So we were like very high hit rate. And if you got in, whatever your stock value would have been at that time, I think on average, it's something like two and a half X. Could be wrong. I don't remember the math, but.

• 9:34Sam Parr?

  And so this lady sets a site, by the way, and I'm looking at it. This is amazing. But the, her email is, she, so she DM'd me on Twitter. And so whenever people DM me on Twitter, I either ignore them or I just like click the heart emoji like, thank you. I recognize you, but I don't want to talk. And that's what I did with her and I just replied and said, I'm an idiot. This is, you're actually, you're different.

• 9:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Sam Parr?

  This is a really good one.

• 9:58Shaan Puri?

  So, okay. So then here's what I want to do. So you go to the website, it's just sarahslist.com. It says 12 startups that can make you a millionaire. It's got a picture of Richie Rich, which is hilarious. And then it goes, who is Sarah? Who are we? And why do we have any business sharing a list like this? And then it tells the story about Sarah, about us, whatever. Selection criteria, it uses our criteria, which is that it's a company that's already valued over $250 million. So it has a low risk profile, meaning it's likely not going to go to zero. A stable work environment, a high salary, great benefits, but still can make you a millionaire because the equity has potential to five to 10x. And then it has our list, which was like Flexport and Uniswap and Anduril and Replit and Airtable and Figma. Like Figma got acquired for whatever 20 billion or something like that, or more than that.

• 10:40Shaan Puri?

  You know, after we, after we mentioned it on this list, when it was, that's like a 10x, I think from where we mentioned it. So anyways, then it says, find a friend a job. So you go to the job board and it goes, these are placeholder jobs. You guys should consider syncing this up to one of these websites, but those cost money, which is why the last job post says, I'm not doing it.

• 10:59Sam Parr?

  And the tagline, so the tagline at the bottom says, Sarah's List. Get rich in five to 10 years, over 50% guaranteed.

• 11:07Shaan Puri?

  So hilarious. So then I started thinking, okay. So I said, let's brainstorm this live here on the podcast. Should we do this deal?

• 11:16Sam Parr?

  And no.

• 11:17Shaan Puri?

  And, okay, so your, your opinion is no, and give me why?

• 11:20Sam Parr?

  No, here's why. It's just a, a, a website that would take me five minutes or no, it would take me, oh, it's a website that'd take me three hours to copy and a domain name. So for that reason, it's not that valuable. But what's more valuable is this lady, uh, Kristen, who's making it. Yeah. Her emails are, are beautiful. Her copy's beautiful. Her, I just looked at her Twitter. This woman, uh, Kristen is the exact type of people that I like to be around. She also works at Expa, at which, uh, Expa is basically a company founded by the founder of Uber. Garrett, I think it's Garrett Camp.

• 11:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Sam Parr?

  And they basically are a startup studio that launches companies. I don't actually know any of the companies that they've launched, but I imagine a lot of them are really successful. But she works there, which is also a really good, like, indicator that she's like on to something. Uh, do I think that we should buy this? Absolutely not. Do I think that I want this woman in my life and would love to work with her in some capacity? 100%.

• 12:15Shaan Puri?

  Agreed. The real value here is not the domain. It's not the website. It's Kristin Kent. Okay, so here's my, here's my proposal to Kristin Kent. Here's my counter offer, uh, my public podcast counter offer to you, Kristen. I'll give you the $20,000. I'll give it to you. In fact, I'll give you the $30,000 that you paid for this, uh, this domain. If you really paid that much for this domain, I mean, that's kind of crazy and, uh, but it comes with this catch. We're going to work together on this project. You're going to do the work on the, on the, um, company side and I'm going to do the work on the promotional side, the distribution side. And here's what we're going to do with Sarah's List. We're going to turn Sarah's List into a half a million dollar a year passive income stream.

• 13:00Shaan Puri?

  Uh, passive-ish, I should say. Passive for me, uh, it's a little active for you.

• 13:05Sam Parr?

  By the way, by the way, Sean, when you say, we gotta, let's remember this is Sarah's list, of which I am 50% of Sarah's list.

• 13:13Shaan Puri?

  Sam is on the side right now. Sam said no.

• 13:16Sam Parr?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 13:17Shaan Puri?

  I got him on the record saying no a moment ago. And he's not a part of the counteroffer. Sarah herself will get a 1% royalty as we use her name.

• 13:25Sam Parr?

  Not a chance. Here's what we gotta do. What, what, what percentage of the, of the, of the dividends would you give or would you want Kristen to have?

• 13:35Shaan Puri?

  Kristen deserves 50%. She deserves 50%.

• 13:39Sam Parr?

  I agree. The, the other 50% split, you and I.

• 13:43Shaan Puri?

  90, 10, you got it, sir.

• 13:48Shaan Puri?

  So you can share the royalty with Sarah.

• 13:52Shaan Puri?

  So here's what we're gonna do. Actually, I don't know if I even want to say this, this deal now that we're having these, uh, this, this intense negotiation. I want to give out my great idea. Okay, I'll give out my great idea. So here's the great idea. Here's how we're gonna make this work. So normally a job, this is like monetized as a job board, right? It would be a list of companies that we are curating, saying these companies are great. And let's say we might take it to 24, 25 companies, um, rather than the 12 we have today. And normally on a job board, you pay like $500 a post, um, for, for job posting. So we would need to go reach out to those companies, get them to post. The other thing, uh, you know, but, but hey, this is maybe premium. It's a curated job board. Maybe we could charge more, maybe a thousand, maybe $2,000 to be, be posting your jobs on here.

• 14:35Shaan Puri?

  So if we've got people to do that, you know, let's say $2,000 a month, 24 companies, let's say half, half of them actually do it. You know, that's like 24K a month, not bad. But I think we're gonna be in this kind of constant sales outreach period. So let me put out a different idea. Here's a different idea. We're gonna take these companies and we're gonna host a demo day once a quarter. What's that, what's gonna happen at the demo day? We're gonna, basically, um, each week, we're gonna feature one of these companies. We're gonna create an email list. We're gonna spin off our current email list and we're gonna say, we're gonna feature one of these companies, we're gonna do a deep dive, but why this company is a good company to work for. And interested people, you know, high, high quality people in tech might.

• 15:13Sam Parr?

  Well, that needs to be an upsell. That needs to be an upsell. It's where it's like for $25, $25,000, like you get a deep dive.

• 15:19Shaan Puri?

  As a minority owner, I'm not sure you have a say here. So.

• 15:27Shaan Puri?

  I could barely hear your voice. It was so faint, like you're equity ownership in this.

• 15:33Sam Parr?

  If we were in the same room, do you think I would have hit you already? Or will that be coming in the next, will that be coming in the next 10 minutes? Or would it have already have happened?

• 15:44Shaan Puri?

  So, so you know, the way you promoted HustleCon where you used to write these kind of blog posts once a week, I think you would, you would feature the speaker of HustleCon and you would tell their story in this awesome infographic and then you would say, do you like stories like this? You should come to HustleCon. We're going to have 25 badass entrepreneurs, including this person speaking there and you should attend. And you did that for 12, like 25 weeks and you sold out like 500 tickets to this thing. So what we're going to do is we're going to do that once a week cadence about these companies, do a little deep dive. That's an email. And then it's going to get people to attend the, the hiring day and hiring day is where the founder of those companies is going to come and they're going to give a little five minute flash presentation on their company and it's going to be a cure and applicants apply to join and

• 16:28Shaan Puri?

  these, you gotta be good to join. That's why we had to keep the quality high on the company's side and the applicant's side. And then we're not charging for a job posting. We take the, like the recruiter fee because when a recruiter places a candidate at one of these companies, they take 20 or $30,000 right away. And so if we could place like 25 candidates in a year at $20,000 a pop, you're talking half a million dollars of, of revenue, which is basically all we have to do is hire a writer. We're going to hire a ghostwriter who's just going to write these company deep dives on the companies that we select.

• 17:00Sam Parr?

  Have you heard of the daily, uh, it was called the daily muse. Now it's called the muse, the muse.com. Have you ever heard of that company?

• 17:07Shaan Puri?

  The muse.com. No, I don't think so. Was that, oh, it was like a women's hiring thing? Was that?

• 17:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So it was, it's called the muse.com. It's been around now for 10 years and the woman who started it, I've been actually DMing her. I've been wanting her to come on here.

• 17:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. She went to Duke too.

• 17:20Sam Parr?

  Oh, did Catherine, I think her name is?

• 17:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Sam Parr?

  And so she went to YC and so I actually. Originally thought that this was a great idea, but they screwed it up by raising a lot of money. And I think they've raised 20, 30, 40, 50, tens of millions. I don't know the exact number, but basically what they would do is they would do these deep dives on companies and charge the company some like fairly big fee to do a deep dive on the company. And they somehow got tons of traffic. Now they're still getting eight million people a month coming to their website or six million, something like that. And they had tons of people coming to their website from search, which is incredibly valuable. And I thought that they like, were just chugging along, but like not doing that great because I hadn't heard about them. I have a feeling they actually might be killing it because they've raised a lot of money and they're actually are starting to buy other companies at this point.

• 18:05Sam Parr?

  And they do these deep dives on companies and another guy who does this is Packy McCormick. And I have no idea what he charges for this anymore, but when the economy was crushing it, I think he was charging $25,000 to $50,000 per deep dive.

• 18:19Shaan Puri?

  I think it was, I think it was a little more. I remember he was making a hundred thousand a month, if I recall correctly, off his deep dive. And I think he might've been doing one or two a month.

• 18:26Sam Parr?

  Wow, that's pretty amazing. And so I think you could do something like that.

• 18:29Shaan Puri?

  We do this with Milk Road, by the way. We do a deep dive thing and it's like, I don't know, I forgot what it costs. I think it's like, it's like something between 25 and 40K depending on, on the total like promotion.

• 18:39Sam Parr?

  And who do you hire to do that?

• 18:41Shaan Puri?

  I wrote the first few because like we have, one of our writers wrote it and I like, kind of like changed it big time. But now we are hiring a writer just to do the deep dives.

• 18:50Sam Parr?

  How much would you pay a writer to do that?

• 18:53Shaan Puri?

  Couple of grand a month, like two grand a month.

• 18:56Sam Parr?

  No way, really?

• 18:57Shaan Puri?

  Because it's just per deep dive, like I'll pay $2,000 to write this one article.

• 19:01Sam Parr?

  So this could work.

• 19:02Shaan Puri?

  The value is not in the writing. The value is in that we have a huge list and that if we promote something to this huge list, you're going to get a bunch of traction or you're going to get usage or you're going to get candidates or whatever it is. So the writer is not bringing the value. The writer just needs to deliver value, but the, the list is what the list size is why you can charge that much.

• 19:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I think this is a really interesting business. I've always, I mean, I'm the one who even turned you on to job boards, aren't I? So like, you know, you're welcome. I don't even, I wouldn't have even met Sarah had you not married her.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  So actually, I think I should own 1%.

• 19:40Sam Parr?

  I am introducing Alyssa and Sarah. So and before me, you weren't even into dot coms. So like, you're welcome. So I think kudos to Kristen. I think she's on to something. Well, I think we're on to something, but she also seems pretty special.

• 19:58Shaan Puri?

  Like I said, if you want, if you want a side hustle that'll make, I don't know, 250K a year for you. It's there for the taking.

• 20:05Sam Parr?

  I think that's underselling.

• 20:06Shaan Puri?

  All you gotta do is all the work. That's all.

• 20:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but we'll, we'll promote it here. This is an interesting thing. I don't think this is an event, venture sized business, which is I, I guess why Xba isn't going after it, but it maybe could be. It maybe could be.

• 20:28Shaan Puri?

  There was a business back in the day that went through YC called Developer Auction. Do you remember this?

• 20:32Sam Parr?

  No, but that sounds a little weird. That's not a great name.

• 20:35Shaan Puri?

  In a great way. So basically what they did was they were like,

• 20:38Sam Parr?

  No dude, that's not, and auctioning humans doesn't exactly have the best branding.

• 20:43Shaan Puri?

  That's why it was great. Guy's a head turner. And you know, when you're a small company, you need to be a head turner. And so, so these guys, basically they, they realized they were like, wait, the power dynamic is off. Why is it all about applying to jobs when actually like the developer is like the most valuable, like developer was like gold in Silicon Valley. And so they said, why don't we just curate like the top developers? So like, who are these quote 10x engineers? And then let's just have them almost like a beauty pageant. They walk down the stage and, and the companies are like raising their paddle. I guess that's not what happened to a beauty pageant, but like an auction where the, the companies were raising the paddle, be like, I'll give him 300,000. I'll give him 400,000. I'll do his laundry. And then someone's like, you know, all suckles boom.

• 21:26Shaan Puri?

  And it's like, you know, that's basically like the companies were like just falling over themselves, trying to get this talent. And so they did one and it was amazing. It was like, you know, 50 engineers or whatever. And all the engineers got this huge pay jump from these top companies. They're like, oh shit, that's awesome. And then it built a slow flywheel where they're like, the next batch of really great developers like, yeah, yeah, you're going to do all the work for me to like, get me my next job offers. Awesome. All I gotta do is just go and explain how like, yeah, I helped scale Netflix's like video infrastructure so that, you know, we got this latency in this blah, blah, blah.

• 21:58Shaan Puri?

  So they would just go explain what they did and then the companies would bid. And it was kind of a great idea. I thought they eventually, but the problem is it wasn't going to scale up. It was like two almost boutique. And so in order to scale up, they changed the model and then ended up pivoting into something else altogether. But like, if you just kept it boutique, which again, you can't do this if you raise a bunch of venture money, because then your expectation is to go huge. But if you're like, if you like making, you know, a million dollars, you know, a year of like passive income, you could do that with a boutique model like this, just by basically creating a demo day. But instead of startups pitching investors, you have, you have companies pitching to top talent. And so you could just, if you're good at curating, right? If you're a good curator, right? We did a good job curating on the company side.

• 22:42Shaan Puri?

  Now you've just got to do a good job curating on the talent side. You could actually create a pretty solid side hustle here.

• 22:48Sam Parr?

  Do you enjoy working with your wife?

• 22:51Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 22:55Shaan Puri?

  I There are enjoyable things, but there are also some very unenjoyable things. But I tell her this on everything. If we have to like assemble some like Ikea furniture, I'm like, I hate doing projects with you. And like, we're both, we're both too stubborn. We both want our way. And I'm like, why don't you just listen? And she's like, why don't you just listen? I'm like, because I don't want to listen. And she's like, well, neither do I.

• 23:20Sam Parr?

  I, so I've been, I'm coming out, I'm going to do the ideation bootcamp again. And I was trying to convince Sarah to like quit her job and like do this. And it ain't happening. We like, we did a few test trials and

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  Dinner together and

• 23:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. It didn't work out like it just like me talking to her like we're coworkers just, just doesn't work.

• 23:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's exactly the problem. I talked to her like I would talk to somebody who's like, you know, somebody on my team at my startup. And she's just like, why are you speaking to me like this? And I'm like, well, I'm not in husband mode right now. I'm in like startup mode, his modes, his modes.

• 24:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like, I would be like, look, you're not stupid, but this is stupid. And she'd be like, why are you talking to me like this? I'm like, what do you mean? I'm, I'm trying to encourage you and like, don't you want to like climb up this organization's ladder? Like, don't you want to be great and achieve great things? She's like, just wants to punch me in the stomach and knock the wind out of me. I'm like, Yeah, I don't know if this is gonna work. I wanted this to work, but I don't think this gonna happen. So I don't know how the couples do it, but it wasn't working for us.

• 24:35Shaan Puri?

  There are many great examples, like the founders of Eventbrite were, that's a husband and wife couple. The founders of Bebo back in the days, Oji and Michael Burst, they're husband and wife couple. They worked together just great. And, but I think it needs like that complementary personalities where one, and also like, I don't have the best bedside manner. Shocker.

• 25:00Shaan Puri?

  Pretty direct and pretty blunt about stuff. And I, you know, I don't have that thing that some people have going for them. I think you have this where you could just be hella blunt. And it's like, it's just Sam being Sam. Like, you know, you know, he's got, he gets, he gets to play by his own rules because that's just the way he is. I have, like, I have too much finesse in my game. Like, if you have, if you have no finesse, people are like, he's got no finesse. It's fine. Like, he's just being blunt. Don't take it seriously. But if you have any, then it's like, oh, he could have said that differently, but he chose to say it the wrong way. And you don't get the, you don't get that, like, that, you know, that pass to just like, you know, say things, you know, the wrong way.

• 25:41Sam Parr?

  Earlier in the episode, we said you would describe Palmer Lucky in one word. And I think, you know, we both said different things. If I had to describe the, this last 60 minute episode in one word, I would say exhausting. This was an exhausting, I feel like I just went on like a journey with you and I need to go rest my eyes. Is that how you feel?

• 26:07Shaan Puri?

  No, I'm just getting stronger by the minute.

• 26:10Sam Parr?

  Dude, that, I believe that's called anti-fragile. You and I are not the same.

• 26:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you and I are absolutely not the same. Where do we go from here? Do we end it here? Do we keep going?

• 26:22Shaan Puri?

  I want to do two little things. One, I just want to have a moment of silence for the MailChimp CEO.

• 26:29Sam Parr?

  What happened? Wait, the MailChimp CEO or the founder, Ben?

• 26:33Shaan Puri?

  Ben, who was the CEO, I think, right?

• 26:36Sam Parr?

  He was. I think he quit when they sold it. So I don't know exactly.

• 26:41Shaan Puri?

  Ben Chestnut steps down as CEO. So, okay, so so MailChimp was this like darling, they were bootstrapped, I think they were bootstrapped forever. Then they sold to Intuit for many billions of dollars. And they did it for like 20 years and they did it out of like Atlanta. So they were like this indie success story, right? Like they're like, you know, like there's like hundreds of indie hackers right now on indiehackers.com that like.

• 27:07Sam Parr?

  By the way, you said Atlanta in a very funny way. It's kind of like I usually say Detroit. You just said Atlanta. You put a you put a hard A T on that. Atlanta. I like that. Atlanta.

• 27:18Shaan Puri?

  Ah, okay, well.

• 27:20Sam Parr?

  You know, it's like Detroit, Detroit, Atlanta.

• 27:25Shaan Puri?

  So this guy, he had to step down. So he goes, um, so did you see what what he did or what happened? So he sent a, um, so he sent like an email or something like that. Where is it?

• 27:38Sam Parr?

  I see it. Yeah. He basically just said, uh, he's, uh, he basically, uh, said Chestnut said he identified a dangerous trend in his workforce. New hires introducing themselves using their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for a woman who is clearly a woman to tell us her pronouns as she, her. And a man who is clearly a man to tell us that his pronouns are he, him. He wrote in an email, uh, to a small group of employees. Uh, instead Chestnut said he understood the practice of rooting kindness, but added that in the long run, this approach does more harm than good. Forcing people to behave in certain ways that are the opposite of inclusion. Okay, sounds not horrible, but, uh, that's a dangerous.

• 28:20Sam Parr?

  Dangerous path to go down.

• 28:22Shaan Puri?

  By the way, my recommendation to all of us is to just not comment on this. I think we should just read what happened and then a moment of silence for, for, uh, for, for this guy for getting fired. Basically fired. Oh, I stepped down coincidentally right after this. But you know, for, for, you know, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, I kind of feel like having to step down is a pretty like severe penalty, having to step down from your own company is a pretty severe penalty for like having a point of view on this stuff. But like, maybe that's like, maybe it's a lot more severe than I think. I don't know. Like.

• 28:55Sam Parr?

  Well, what's crazy, I think that when you look at, when you think about these things, words aren't just words. You have to look at intentions.

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:02Sam Parr?

  And his intention, if you, we don't even have to read it, but his intention is not to say that. His intentions are good. His intentions actually I think are rooted in like, I want to make everyone feel included and I want to be productive. And I, you know, whatever. Uh, and I'm just reading this email a little bit like live. And so it doesn't seem like a negative email.

• 29:25Shaan Puri?

  Here's the part where I think it got dicey for him. So he goes, in the email, he goes, um, first, there is a tiny number of peeps at MailChimp. Strange to use peeps. Maybe that's like what they call themselves.

• 29:36Sam Parr?

  Is that like a chimp word?

• 29:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So there's a very tiny number of peeps at MailChimp who consider themselves transgender. Forcing either with orders or through guilt, the approximately 1300 other peeps to adopt a new communication paradigm that humanity has never had to use in our 300,000 years of existence and under 150,000 years of spoken language. In order to make things slightly more comfortable for an extremely small group of peeps is completely illogical. And he says that if you're forced to do something illogical, eventually you will believe and do anything, even if it's vicious. That's like a little like. He says nowadays, everything is incredibly politicized. I'm finding that peeps are no longer motivated by meaningful work. They're motivated to make political statements.

• 30:19Shaan Puri?

  They're using company time and company resources to win a game against their opponents in a game that is raging in their minds and on social media. Understanding and respecting that people can have different, different views is part of being American, part of being mature adults. Peeps of all different political leanings are free to vote the way they want, blah, blah, blah, but it's not for the workplace. So that's what he said. I'll leave it to anybody to agree or disagree. My personal opinion is I understand what he's trying to say. I think he said it in a pretty stupid way, like it's a little too aggressive.

• 30:53Sam Parr?

  And using the word peeps when you're talking about these things is also like, if I, I, I, I agree with the sentiment here, but I think that if I, if it were a hot button issue, I wouldn't use slang.

• 31:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you can't be like, to the homies that had to use the.

• 31:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Shaan Puri?

  I guess internally, maybe they must just always use that, use that, like, you know, like Facebook had like, whatever, like, and now has like Meta Mates or whatever.

• 31:19Sam Parr?

  Dude, it's kind of like.

• 31:20Shaan Puri?

  Meta mate to use a pronoun is unMeta mate.

• 31:23Sam Parr?

  There's two words that I hate using in a serious like argument or discussion. Like if I'm talking to Sarah, my wife, or like someone else about like, look, like, you know, they said this in their tweets. Like if it's ever like the word tweets in an argument, like, well.

• 31:37Shaan Puri?

  I tweeted.

• 31:38Sam Parr?

  Did you see the tweet? Did you see their tweets? You know what I mean? Like, I don't, well, he tweeted it. Like, I don't want to use that word or texts. That word texts. Yeah, like when I'm having a serious conversation, I want to talk about something and I gotta use, well, he tweeted that. You see his tweets?

• 31:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, because it's too much like I tweeted at him and it's like, yeah, it doesn't sound.

• 31:57Sam Parr?

  I'm not a fan, but yeah, I mean, I'm going to add peeps to that list. So yeah, R I P Ben. I like Ben. I don't know him. I'm acting like I do. I've cold emailed him a ton of times and he's never replied to me, but, uh, so we kind of know each other.

• 32:09Shaan Puri?

  So.

• 32:10Sam Parr?

  And.

• 32:10Shaan Puri?

  It's like so karma.

• 32:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Shaan Puri?

  I guess he's just one of those peeps.

• 32:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Shaan Puri?

  Doesn't reply to my emails. You know what happens to those peeps.

• 32:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he's, he's, him and a six billion can go off and be unhappy by themselves. But, uh, you know, whatever. Uh, I like Ben Chassma, Chassma. I love Mailchimp. I think it's a great company.

• 32:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, um, me too. I think Mailchimp is a cool, really cool success story.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  This data is wrong every freaking time.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Whoa, I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  HubSpot, grow better.

• 32:58Sam Parr?

  Do you, uh, do you want to talk about Nikita?

• 33:01Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, we kind of did, but it seemed like you wanted to do it more justice.

• 33:04Sam Parr?

  It over, I think. So at the end of a podcast, a few days ago, the Sean story one, we talked about this guy Nikita Bier, who you and I are both friends with, but we talked about it at the end of like an hour session. And I realized this is actually really amazing and deserves significantly more time. And so I'll kind of give, yeah, so Nikita Bier, he's our good friend. We're in a group text message, uh, with him and that's actually how I got to know him. And everything I'm going to explain, most everything is public information. So this is like through articles and his Twitter feed. So I'm not going to say anything that is confidential, but basically he started an app called TBH. So he went to school in Berkeley, California, started an app called TBH, which was basically, uh, some type of like viral high school app that like you could answer questions about your peers,

• 33:49Sam Parr?

  something like that. And it wasn't incredibly significant of an app, but it went viral and got millions of users very quickly after him spending over two years trying to create viral apps. And so we kind of felt like he kind of honed in on what works and more importantly, what doesn't work. Facebook eventually buys the app for tens of millions of dollars. Originally it was said to be like a hundred million. I think in a recent article, they're like, it was actually like 40 million, which is still a great outcome. And that was about five years ago. And so Nikita said something in the group message, which he says, I think it'd be an interesting idea to ask myself or to figure out how can I build?

• 34:26Shaan Puri?

  You're making it too soft. I remember exactly how he said it. It's like, oh, so what are you doing? What are you up to nowadays? Oh, Sam, you sold the hustle. What are you doing? Sean, you still be, what are you doing? Nikita, you're sitting at Facebook. What are you doing? And he's basically, he just said it straight, straight up. He goes, I'm just thinking about how I can make $10 million in three months. Like, and we're like, what? And he's like, yeah, I want to make an app that generates like $10 million in 90 days.

• 34:53Sam Parr?

  And we talked about that, like, that's just crazy. That's outlandish. We brought it up on this podcast, but it was a really interesting, we just thought of it as an interesting thought exercise. Like, oh, that's actually a really-

• 35:03Shaan Puri?

  Work backwards from that dream. Okay, if that's, is that possible? Yeah, it is possible. I guess it is possible. So then, all right, I'm a smart guy. Let me find out, find out a way I would do it. It is obviously very challenging.

• 35:15Sam Parr?

  And so I guess he must have had, I actually don't know if this is true or not, but I imagine when you sell a company to Facebook, you have some type of non-compete. Well, typically, non-compete's are anywhere from two to five years. The other day, a few months ago, it was the end of the five-year period since selling TBH. And so I imagine that was the period where he was like, great, I can do that. And so he launches this app about three months ago, where basically you-

• 35:41Shaan Puri?

  By the way, it's the same app as TBH. So what was TBH? TBH was a anonymous polling app or compliments app. So I don't know if you remember, like in high school, they would always pass this thing around the end of the year, the, the superlatives test. And it would be like, who is most likely to become a famous, you know, famous in Hollywood? Oh, this person in our school. Who is most likely to, you know, end up with, with 10 kids or whatever, right? You just come up with these like, future looking things. Who's the best, who's got the best smile? This person wins best smile. And so TBH was that because it was playing on this thing, which is people are very interested in themselves and, and the people around them.

• 36:24Shaan Puri?

  And so you're like, all right, if I, I'll go through and I'll answer this quiz. And it was using like, so that sounds very simple. Under the hood, it's got to be pretty smart, right? Cause it's got to surface in your contacts. It's got to surface the right four or five names that you actually know. Who do you actually know? So you could pick, you know, your friends. And, and then it would send them a text message and saying, hey, Sam, somebody said that you have, you have the best smile in your school. Download the app to find out who said it. And you're like, 100%, you're gonna go find out who said I have the best smile. Who said I'm most likely to, who said they have the biggest crush on me? And so, you know, that taps into like something pretty deep in a teenager. And so that's what TBH was, got acquired.

• 37:05Shaan Puri?

  And by the way, that same idea had been done many, many times. Our buddy Suli, who was the first episode of the podcast, he had built that same superlatives idea as a Facebook app. When the Facebook app platform launched back in like 2007 or something like that.

• 37:17Sam Parr?

  And it also went viral.

• 37:18Shaan Puri?

  It also went crazy viral. Like this is just an idea that goes viral. And you could switch, but he did it on the Facebook app platform. Nikita did it on the mobile platform where you would send SMS, you know, invites based off of this. And so it's the same, that was what he did then. It got acquired, it pretty much immediately got shut down. There wasn't really much retention in it. And so it was like, oh, that's a cool idea. It gets people engaged, goes viral for a short period of time, but there's no engagement. Oh, sorry, there's no long-term retention.

• 37:45Sam Parr?

  But it gave, it gave him this like, this persona of like, I am a, I'm a wonderkin. Like I know how to make things go viral because A, it is partially true. And B, Nikita kind of has this like aura about him that, who knows if it's on purpose or not on purpose, where he like is mysterious and like somewhat silent and only makes sarcastic jokes and everything comes easy to him. Like that's like, his like cool kid demeanor.

• 38:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, he definitely, definitely tries to be a cool kid. All right, so then it's a app you open up and says, who do you have a crush on? Who's got the best smile? Who's most likely to be whatever? Who would you trust to bail you out of jail? And you, you answer and they're all supposed to be, you know, sort of like more positive-ish questions. They're not, it's not like mean, it's not supposed to be bullying. And again, starts to go viral. And so we sat there in this group chat as it was happening. So describe kind of how it played out from your perspective.

• 38:38Sam Parr?

  He says things like, all right, now we're adding a thousand people an hour. And I kind of brushed that off because like, I'm thinking, maybe these are just bots. Like this isn't actually serious.

• 38:49Shaan Puri?

  Well, there's one little difference. He launches it and we're like, cool, man. How do we download the app? He's like, you have, it's geofenced to these three high schools in Georgia. And we're like, what? And he's like, and we're like, hey, and then he would post like a, like, you know, he'd be like, post this graphic. It's going viral, but it's got like 200 people. We're like, ah, only 200. He's like, there's only like 2,000 people in the school. This is gonna take over the whole school, like right away.

• 39:12Sam Parr?

  But he uses like academic language, like it has a K factor of blank, but we're seeing that user retention stagnates at this thing. The turn happens at 3%. Like it was

• 39:21Shaan Puri?

  The density coefficient is blah, blah, blah. We're like, whoa, that's cool. And then, and then he goes, then he's supposed to chart and we're like, oh, sick. Like, I don't like, how come I don't see it? When I go to my app store chart, like, you know, social free apps, he's like, we put it in the games category under puzzles. He's like, he's like, that way, we're gonna like, stay away from competition till we flip the switch. And we're like, whoa, like damn, this guy is like, this is like, if you want a game of thrones and they're talking about like, you know, how to invade King's Landing. It's like these guys standing at this giant table, moving these chess pieces around, like talking about conquering. That's him, but the chess pieces are like high schools.

• 39:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was like, it's like James Bond villain of high school, you know, quizzes.

• 40:05Shaan Puri?

  If that's such a thing. By the way, there's one key twist to the whole thing. It's TBH again, but he's like, this time, we're not trying to be the next Snapchat. We don't care about the retention. We're just gonna put an in-app purchase that says, pay to see who voted for you. And he's like, they're gonna pay. And we're like, well, I get, well, will they pay? They're gonna pay. And it's like, the thing is a freaking 6.99 weekly subscription. This is basically $28 a month. This is double the price of Netflix to see who voted for you. And he's like, yep. So if we're converting, you know, whatever, 4% of people, and we take over

• 40:47Shaan Puri?

  this state, Georgia, Georgia has this many high schools, each high school has this many students. Yeah. $1.8 million a month. Okay. Good. Yeah, let's go. That's basically like my reenactment of how they're thinking about this.

• 40:59Sam Parr?

  And at this, with TBH, he had raised a little bit of money. He had raised money from Founders Fund and Greylock and like the, the, when you do that, it says, uh, you know, you, I've got to build the next Snapchat. This way, with this new company, he just basically says, dude, I'm self-funded. I've got four engineers living in my LA house right now. We're just trying to like, make it big, make it fast. And what do they say on South Park? Like, uh, scale up, no, start up, get big, cash out, bro down. You know, like, like, that's exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to just get in, get the bag, get out and just maybe repeat.

• 41:33Shaan Puri?

  Tattoo idea for you.

• 41:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, not. And so anyway, about 10 days after it launches, I'm just making these numbers up, but it's around a week, maybe two weeks. He starts saying like, oh, man, people are starting to spread these rumors that this app is being used for human trafficking. And we laughed that off. And he goes, so I changed it to

• 41:55Shaan Puri?

  No, he was like, he's like, yeah, it's annoying. Like, as hell, like, we're getting a bunch of deletion. Okay, oh, it's gonna die. And we were like, what? The thing that like, you called your shot, you're like, I'm gonna build an app that goes viral. It's gonna make $10 million in like 90 days. And that's a ludicrous thing to say. You spend like, two years plotting, he went through a bunch of different ideas to think about what it could be. Decides, you know what, it's TBH with a paywall. Launched it like spends, you know, has these like seven engineers living in his living room, you know, the place smells like, you know, ramen and Old Spice. And he's like, all right, we build the app after a few months, we've launched this thing in these pockets of Georgia, it goes viral. But then this hoax, you know, this hoax starts saying, this is for, I

• 42:39Shaan Puri?

  don't even know what the sex trafficking, human sex trafficking, human

• 42:42Sam Parr?

  Which I didn't even understand. But I didn't even understand. But

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  I shouldn't even say those words. YouTube's gonna like, deprioritize this algorithm. Like, and we're out of the algorithm now. Like, because I said that out loud.

• 42:50Sam Parr?

  And he says that, he's like, well, it's actually, it's just like a couple of reviews, but I have a feeling that these couple of reviews are gonna like, spread. Someone already made a video on TikTok. This is just how things work. And so I'm like, it's whatever. Like, that I don't understand that entirely. That sounds like you're just being like neurotic, but sounds good. So he changes the name to Crush, right?

• 43:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so app starts getting deleted, or it gets taken down in the App Store. Apple takes down or something like that. He's like, oh, we're gonna petition, blah, blah, we're gonna re-upload as Crush. And he sends us, hey, guys, like, new brand. And it looks

• 43:24Sam Parr?

  Exactly like, yeah, exactly like Crush the Soda, like, like the grape flavored

• 43:29Shaan Puri?

  He literally sends it in the text. And I got so thirsty, like, you know, like the Pavlovian dog response. I saw that. And I was like, I need orange soda on my tongue right now. And I hadn't had orange soda in like, a decade. I saw that thing. And I was like, I need that. Relaunches again in like, you know, Alabama this time. He's like, okay, we're going south and they attack Alabama with their four high school launch strategy. They do, they have this like thing set to a T. And by the way, like he had, he had wrote a memo inside Facebook once about how TBH was launching high schools effectively. He's like, we created basically, his theory is basically for a social app, the most valuable thing you can have is

• 44:09Shaan Puri?

  a reliable way to test your app. So like, can you get this into a small network like, like a high school where most people know each other or know of each other of a thousand people quickly? Cause if you could do that, you could test it in one high school, see what the data says, and then you could tweak the app, launch it in another high school, do it again. He's like, that reliable like Petri dish to test in is the most valuable thing. So they had come up with this strategy, which was a, but this memo got leaked when he was at Facebook, which was like, they would create Instagram accounts, like, you know, crush, you know, um, you know, Archipelago, hi, you know, and it's like, they, they take the high school name and they take the, the brand name of the thing and they would make the account private and they would go follow

• 44:52Shaan Puri?

  every kid who had like, you know, class of whatever 2022, um, in that high school. They would follow all of them. So then the kid would see who followed me. Uh, it has my high school name in it. They click it. It's private to, to find, to see the profile. You've got to follow back. So they would, they would request to follow. So a whole bunch of people requested to follow. He's like, but we would not accept anyone. And it's like, this is like the, you know, the dentist system on all of a sudden. He's like, you know, first we demonstrate value, then we take it away. And he's like, then at 4:00 PM on the day before launch, which, uh, the day of the launch, when everybody gets out of school, you know, we have a guy in a truck watching people leave the school. As soon as they do, we hit accept request, we accept everybody's request. Everybody gets a notification at the same time. And then they go to it. The

• 45:33Shaan Puri?

  bio basically says, download the app, see who likes you. You download the app. And then he's like, we would instantly go viral in a high school. So he had this like launch strategy, which was I thought pretty, pretty great, pretty tactical. So he's doing that again now with crush, crush gonna go, it's gonna launch like that. And it starts to work. And we're like, wow, dude, you did it again. Like the first one wasn't a fluke. You did it again. All of a sudden, like it totally attracted a different demographic because of this like stupid orange soda logo and the name crush. And so he's like, oh God, you know, to cut. All right, let's move the scene around, change the name again. And he comes back for act three and this time it's called gas.

• 46:12Sam Parr?

  And by the way, this whole, so he'd been working on this for many months, maybe more than a year. I don't know. But this whole thing that we're describing takes place over two to three weeks. And it gets to the point where he starts making up phrases like, uh, we are acquiring new users at this rate per hour. You know, a lot of times we talk about saying like ARR, annual recurring revenue. And what a lot of companies will do is they'll take like their monthly run rate and multiply that by 12 to say that this is what they're doing. He was basically doing that at a per hour basis. So he's like, oh, we're, you know, we're, we're acquiring a thousand users per hour, which means our, uh, our rate of like a new users is like 365 million, whatever. And

• 46:51Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. He's like, he's like, if you look dawn day over day, it's like,

• 46:56Shaan Puri?

  like dude, you're just measuring the period of like the sunrise day over day, what your, what your numbers are. That's insane.

• 47:03Sam Parr?

  And so gas starts like taking off similar to the original one, but this time even, even more. And in a matter of like seven days, I believe he starts tweeting out the results and letting us know. And basically within like seven days, give or take five days, I don't know exactly. It was doing a million daily, it had a million daily users, was adding 30,000 new users an hour. Users were answering 3.2 million polls per hour. In a round, like 10 days, I believe he's hit a million dollars in sales and also around 10 days in. It was number one in the app store and he had been telling us it's going to be number one in the next handful of days.

• 47:46Sam Parr?

  It's going to be number one and he totally called it. And we're talking number one, like above Tik Tok, above Instagram, above Facebook.

• 47:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, totally. And this is all true. And he said, he tweets out, he goes, ladies and gentlemen, after a five year hiatus, I'm no longer a one hit wonder. Introducing gas, the number one app in the app store.

• 48:07Sam Parr?

  And this is when it turns to the point where it's incredibly hard for us to compliment him and to root for him because clearly this guy has a chip on his shoulder. Clearly, for the last five years, he was mad that he sold too soon, or didn't become like huge, or didn't become wealthier, or didn't become whatever his, his target was. But he fell short, it felt like. And now he is proving that he is the man. Because here's what's, here's what, here's what starts happening. And he gets hilariously cocky about it, which I, I, I love.

• 48:39Shaan Puri?

  I love.

• 48:40Sam Parr?

  I love. It makes me like him even more. But I love. And so, like, here's an example. A really popular VC tweets out, uh, his name's Josh Elman, "Momentum growth is a powerful feeling, and it could also go away really quickly. I have been surprised, I have been surprised how many things with seemingly unstoppable momentum have slow crawled this past year. Zooming out, growth without deep duration adoption and habits doesn't count." And Nikita replies, "Just at me." And so basically, he just starts going around, anyone online on Twitter who's a big shot, who starts talking about high growth stuff, Nikita just pops at it and said, "What are you talking about me?" And it's hilarious. It is so funny. And

• 49:25Sam Parr?

  so around this time, though, the rumors start happening again about human trafficking. And he starts tweeting and sharing the craziest stuff. And this gets so big that Ashton Kutcher is retweeting, who Ashton Kutcher, I didn't entirely know this, but like his whole like philanthropy thing is human trafficking. And so these rumors of human trafficking start happening again. And Ashton Kutcher retweets Nikita and says something like-

• 49:51Shaan Puri?

  Nikita said this is a screenshot. It's Ashton Kutcher DMing him. And he's like, he just, he's just screenshotting us these like big shot people that are just DMing him like wink face. Instead of even saying hi, they're just like, it's like, is this how this guy like slides into DMs? That's interesting. That wasn't Ashton Kutcher, but like.

• 50:09Sam Parr?

  But Ashton also retweeted it.

• 50:10Shaan Puri?

  I'd love to meet, I'd love to meet you. I'd love to help, you know, uh, this thing is a hoax. Cause basically what Nikita's saying is he's like, the thing is taking off like you wouldn't believe that, you know, it's going viral. The K factor is two. And when K factors two, what that means is for every person who joins, you know, virally, they invite two more. Right? So it's like, you know, you thought COVID spread fast, watch how fast the gas app is going to spread. It's got a incredibly high viral coefficient. That just basically means for free, it's going to take over whatever demographic it is until that, until that coefficient starts to go down. Because either it's saturated or it hits a new market where it's less viral. And so it's going viral. Um, Ashton Kutcher is like, I'll help you try to fight these hoax rumors.

• 50:50Shaan Puri?

  Cause on Tik Tok, on Snapchat, you just see story after story of somebody saying, guys, uh, delete this gap at gas app. It's sus as hell. I downloaded it and a white van started following me around my neighborhood. And, and people are like, oh my God, oh my God. Share, share to keep it, keep our sis, like our school safe. Uh, and it's like, girls, like, girls do not download gas app. Like, like you ever seen the show you on Netflix? Say no more. And it's like, people are just spreading this thing. And so it's like, what the hell? Like, where is this coming from? And he doesn't know. And he's like, it's gotta be a competitor. And we're like, okay, what, like, what kind of, I mean, you've just launched like two weeks or how are they doing this coordinated?

• 51:34Shaan Puri?

  Like social, like psy ops attack on you and your user base. And he's like, then he's like, we've, we've located the source of the hoax, uh, or it originated in China.

• 51:48Sam Parr?

  Well, here's what he says. Here's what he says. It's, this is the most official tweet ever. It's so funny. He goes, after an investigation, our team found several indications that the gas app, that, uh, the gas app, human trafficking hoax was planted by an entity or person originating in China. Our data shows users connecting from China when the app first began growing and the fake, fake review, the first fake review were posted that same day. And so basically he's accusing something or someone in China who starts.

• 52:17Shaan Puri?

  He's accusing just the country.

• 52:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And so this is just taking off from, I want to make $10 million. I want to get in and get out to China is trying to actively bring me down.

• 52:28Shaan Puri?

  He just tweeted out, dude, I am calling for a total and complete ban of Chinese goods in entering the United States. No, I'm just joking. But I told him, I was like, dude, you need to go lean in way more because what he's doing in his PR push, he's like, the hoax, a false hoax is being spread about gas app, human trafficking, blah, blah, blah. And, and I'm like, bro, you need to go full Trump. You need to be like, China, the China virus is trying to take down this American success gas, gas app. You know, Tik Tok is not only stealing your data, they're trying to take us down because we're

• 53:09Shaan Puri?

  the number one app for teens. China is doing this. This is anti-China. I was like, you should be leaning in way more to this. I was like, I don't know if this is true, not true, but like this is your only hope is to get this. Like you should stop saying your app's name with the words, you know, human trafficking and you should start saying, you know, why is China trying to, you know, spread fake news about this? That is, that is my, my, my official recommendation to you.

• 53:32Sam Parr?

  And it's, and it's totally working. And so this entire story that we just spent 30 minutes on, this entire story, we're talking like 20 days. And this is the roller coaster that we've been in. And he would say to you.

• 53:45Shaan Puri?

  He's on Fox News yesterday?

• 53:46Sam Parr?

  Yes. But that's my point. He says these things in this group chat. And when it's on your phone, when it's just on this small thing, you think this is just limited to us six guys in this thing. This is just no big deal. But then you turn on Fox Business News and, or Fox News Business and he's on there. You go to Wall Street Journal and he's on there. You go to Business Insider, Bloomberg, all these places and it's real. I go to Tik Tok and I open up and there's a video about this app. And basically. As much as I don't like saying this because I like Nikita, but he is so smug. He has 100% called his shot and he hit it. He nailed it.

• 54:26Sam Parr?

  This is, this is one of the most epic stories that I've seen behind the scenes in real time in a very long time. It's been quite amazing to watch this entire thing play out in just 20 days.

• 54:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's smug as hell, but I, you know, the same reason I find Conor McGregor very entertaining in the UFC, right? This cocky guy who tries to call his shots and then tries to pull it off. Like, um, I, I'm thoroughly entertained and I'm here for the entertainment. And like, you know, good for him, made it happen. This, this matters to him. He got really pumped about this and he made it happen. And it's like, I feel like, you know, you know, Bain, when he's like, uh, you know, when he sees other people like, you know, I felt like Nikita for like four years would see other people try to build social apps and he would just like shit on them. Or he would be like, uh, you know, or people building apps would be like, you know, if your app doesn't let you, you know, flirt with somebody, it's never going to work, you know, like, or it'd be like, unless you built the number one app in the app store, like, you know, don't talk to me type of attitude.

• 55:23Shaan Puri?

  And, um, and I find it, you know, pretty awesome that like, you know, like Bain, when he's like, oh, you know, you know, whatever the line is where he's like, you know, you, uh, you, you trained in the dark. I was born in the dark. Like that's him with these like teen viral apps. He's like, you know, oh, you're trying to make a social app? I was born to make social apps. And like, the fact that he just relaunched the same app is hilarious to me in so many ways.

• 55:51Sam Parr?

  He probably had just like a countdown timer to like when the non-compete ends.

• 55:55Shaan Puri?

  No, it wasn't even that though, because I talked to him in between and he was considering all these like other ideas. We're considering this one real estate idea. He's considering this other idea. And then it was just like, ah, like, you know, it's sort of all like Harry Potter, the wand chooses the wizard. It's like, it's just pulling me back in just when I think about, I gotta go do this app again. Like, are you fuckers really going to let me just do this again?

• 56:19Shaan Puri?

  He did it again.

• 56:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, this is pretty amazing. It also goes to show that it shows a few things. It kind of breaks a lot of narratives, which I actually like, which is a like, you don't really need like a mission, you know, all the time. Like, and I think that like with us, he's like

• 56:34Shaan Puri?

  You don't need a noble mission. The mission can be $10 million to three months. That's a great mission.

• 56:39Sam Parr?

  And I do actually think that maybe there is something where like, oh, it makes teens feel good or whatever. Maybe that's like there. But like, I think what's there really above all else is get big fast because that's exciting and just like play the puzzle. It's just a puzzle. And I think that that's like, kind of the dominating factor behind what's driving him. And I think that that's

• 56:57Shaan Puri?

  The funny thing, he goes on Fox News and he's like doing the interview, you know, they have the person talking and then the background, they're showing screenshots of the app. And so he's like, well, the thing we wanted to do was bring positivity to teens, you know, teens feel really bad from whatever, like, you know, Instagram.

• 57:13Sam Parr?

  We want positivity to our bank account.

• 57:15Shaan Puri?

  We wanted an app where there's, you know, it's anonymous, but there's no bullying, there's no, there's no like sort of negativity. And the screenshot is a poll question that says, want to steal them from their boyfriend?

• 57:29Shaan Puri?

  He's like, you know, we just want to, he's like, I get messages every day from teens saying, you know, I was gonna do something bad to myself, but this app came out and now, you know, I'm running around in a field full of flowers. And it's like, it was just hilarious. The whole thing is like straight Silicon Valley HBO show. Like, it's so funny to me.

• 57:48Sam Parr?

  It is so funny and it's so exciting. Another thing is that basically when you're building these apps, like, the really good folks are just like maniacal about these little small numbers and just tweaking them and just, just being obsessed with these little small things when most people are carried about, were worrying about design, or branding, or the logo, or just these things that don't matter. It's like, dude, all I care about is making this K factor like more than one. And so, and when it's not, when it's .99, it's, we're screwed. We gotta totally redo this. And I just thought that it's a really interesting story. And this has been like a roller coaster and one of the coolest things that's happened in a long time. I just love following along this.

• 58:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, props to him. Great, great job. Thank you for the, thank you for the entertainment. All right. Do you want to do any more? Or should we save it for the next?

• 58:40Sam Parr?

  I thought you had one more.

• 58:41Shaan Puri?

  I do have one more, but.

• 58:43Sam Parr?

  We should save that one. It sounds too interesting.

• 58:45Shaan Puri?

  Okay, let's save it. Same for the next one. That's it, we're out of here.