Rich People's Tax Credit Scheme, Harvard's Healthy Finances & My9

Episode 447: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about the rich people tax credit scheme, Andrew Wilkinson's Tiny goes public, Harvard is a multi-billion dollar tax-free revenue, and Shaan's latest business idea - My9. Click here to sign up for our event in Austin, TX on Saturday April 29th: mfmpod.com/atx Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: *We Work Remotely *Higher Ground * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (01:22) - Rich People Tax Credit Scheme (11:45) - Ramit Sethi debrief (15:15) - Martin Shkreli debrief (20:32) - Deep Dive on Andrew Wilkinson's Tiny Going Public (36:50) - Harvard's revenue (47:45) - My9 ------ 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.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  So you put down, let's say 150K, you you put down 150K of cash and you get a million dollar deduction.

• 0:06Sam Parr?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 0:06Shaan Puri?

  So let's say in California, a million dollar deduction is saving you $400,000 of taxes.

• 0:21Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live. What's going on?

• 0:23Shaan Puri?

  Can I tell you about a cool, rich people tax credit scheme I discovered?

• 0:27Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 0:28Shaan Puri?

  So actually, a mutual friend of ours is the one who put me on to this, but I won't say his name because, you know, never talk about another man's taxes. So when when we sold the milk road, I was like, oh, man, how do you, you know, reduce taxes in a situation like this? Is there anything I could do? And I think we sold in October. So it was like, you know, you get this windfall of profits in October. Is there anything between October and December I could do to to lower taxes? And I looked at it. What are the different options? Like, what are the legal, clear, by the book options that I could do? And when most people try to generate large, you know, deductions or write offs, they typically think of what?

• 1:11Sam Parr?

  A car.

• 1:11Shaan Puri?

  Car, even bigger, right? Because let's say you need millions of dollars of depreciation.

• 1:15Sam Parr?

  Real estate.

• 1:16Shaan Puri?

  Go for real estate. So so real estate is typically the one, but your boy is lazy and your boy doesn't like to go and own things and have to like, you know, manage properties or anything like that. You could always put your money with somebody else and try to try to do it that way. But this is pretty interesting.

• 1:34Sam Parr?

  But you still got to research all of them. And yeah, it's still a little bit of a pain.

• 1:39Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And you have to buy size. So like, how do you get, you know, let's say you buy a property. You know, you're only going to be able to write off like a portion of it, right? So you'll get the the sort of the depreciation that you can get the bonus or accelerated depreciation. If you maybe do cost sag or something, you'll get 20 or 30% of the value of the property to write off. But let's say you needed, I don't know, pick a number, right? Let's say you needed $10 million. Let's say you had 10 million of taxable income. You would need to buy like a $30 million property or so, just to be even close to deducting like enough to make it significant. That's a big deal, especially for somebody who's not in real estate. So I was like, okay, that don't want to do that. And our friend put me on to this thing. He's like, you know, there's this other form of depreciation in the form of financing

• 2:23Shaan Puri?

  movies. Have you heard about this?

• 2:25Sam Parr?

  No, but tell me about this.

• 2:27Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so, okay, so here's, by the way, I-

• 2:31Sam Parr?

  This sounds like a horrible idea.

• 2:32Shaan Puri?

  No, it's a, it's a great idea, I think. I think it's a great idea. So basically, there's this thing called film production tax credits. And what ends up happening is the following. Movie needs to get made. Let's just use some numbers. And by the way, I'm not an expert at this, but I get the broad strokes. So forgive me if I get some of the ratios and percentages.

• 2:53Sam Parr?

  Instead of bro science, this is bro tax.

• 2:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. Numbers, numbers and words aren't my thing. I'm a body language guy.

• 3:05Shaan Puri?

  So, so let's just pretend you have a filmmaker wants to make a movie for a million dollars. So in order to make a film for a million dollars, they need to raise that money from somewhere. And what happened was there was always these, there was always these kind of like depreciation incentives. But when Obama came, came into power, he added to them. So what Obama did was he changed the rules, I believe during his time, to say, you can write off 100% of a film's cost before they even make the film, before the money's spent on that film, just on the budget. So let's say it's a million dollar movie. If you buy that movie, you can write off a million dollars right then and there. Nobody like, you don't have to wait for the whole thing to be shot. Before, you had to wait for certain days of production in order,

• 3:48Shaan Puri?

  order to write off those costs. Now you can just write it off from day one as an incentive to get people to fund more movies and fund more art and culture and this sort of thing. Because movies aren't really the best moneymakers. So you needed a little bit of an additional incentive if we want wealthy people to do this. So now what happens? You put down, let's say, 150K. You, you put down 150K of cash and you get a million dollar deduction.

• 4:10Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 4:10Shaan Puri?

  So let's say you're in California, a million dollar deduction is saving you $400,000 of taxes. So already you see the spread, right? I put 150K in, I save 400K in my taxes. Now it gets better. So where's the rest of the money come from? So you need the other other 850K in order to finance the movie. You could go to, you know, a bank, get a loan for that. So you can go get loans on it. You can also get basically rebates in the form of taxes. So I don't know if you know this, but like most movies are not made in Hollywood. Do you know where they're made?

• 4:42Sam Parr?

  I think as of recently, Georgia. Is that right?

• 4:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Georgia, Alabama, basically a bunch of states come and they say, hey, if you got a million dollar movie, we'll give you 30% of the films, we'll give you 30, up to 30% in tax credits. And so you get a, you basically, you don't need a million dollars to film, fund the movie. You're gonna get, get $300,000 from the state in order to do it. Why does the state want it? Right? Because state wants jobs. State wants, if something's filmed there and it looks cool, that's, you know, tourism, maybe if you, let's say you filmed in New York and New York looks really glamorous. Now you get, you know, additional tourism appeal, you get jobs and you get culture or art in your community. And you get business coming there where otherwise, who's going to Georgia to do something cool, right? Like who's going to Alabama? No, no shots fired at Georgia or Alabama, but, but.

• 5:27Sam Parr?

  But kinda.

• 5:31Shaan Puri?

  But it's human. So, so basically that's, so that now you get funding on that side. Which by the way, you could just go sell those credits. You could just sell those credits for 90 cents on the dollar if you wanted, or you could use them to fund, fund the movie. And so this collection of things is part of a, a, a, a system that wealthy people use in order to get write off. So what happens is there are companies that throughout the year are buying up rights to movies or scoping out rights to movies like, and they're looking at it not in terms of like, how's the plot? How's the script? They're like, what's the budget? I need a one million budget. I need a five. I need a 15, uh, because I'm gonna, I need options available for my clients at the end of the year. So they basically hold options on these things till the very end of the year.

• 6:14Shaan Puri?

  And then they go to their clients and like, how much of a write off do you need? Oh, you need $3 million? Cool. Here's a $10 million project. We're gonna buy. Right? We're gonna put in this much cash. We're gonna get that much of a write off. We're gonna finance the rest. And we could do this as a group of investors, not just one person.

• 6:28Sam Parr?

  But you're forgetting the, the, the, the second part and the more important part, which is the movie needs to be made and make a profit.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  Not necessarily. The movie needs to be made, not necessarily needs to make a profit. So what happens? The movie starts to get made. Once it gets the funding, it's going to start getting made. And then they'll do things to help. But what you have to do is pay off the loan. So where am I going to, let's say in this example of a million dollars, where am I going to pay off this 850K from? Well, they'll get the tax credits for part of it. They'll go sell the international rights before the movie's made, or they'll go sell an option to Netflix. And then they'll get some revenue in that way while the movie's being made. And they're using that to pay down this loan. So that you get, you know, five years later, when the movie's finally made, hopefully the movie's paid off. If it's not fully paid off, it's getting close. And then you basically have the revenue from the movie once it happens. And so it doesn't even need to be this awesome, you know, 20% annual return, because you got your tax benefits five years ago.

• 7:20Shaan Puri?

  And so you just need to make sure it's going to pay off the loan amount.

• 7:23Sam Parr?

  Dude, this sounds like such a racket.

• 7:26Sam Parr?

  Where is there like a?

• 7:27Shaan Puri?

  It's Hollywood, baby. It's Hollywood.

• 7:30Sam Parr?

  Just cause you say it that way, doesn't mean that it's less of a racket. You know what I mean? Just gonna say it's the world's best cup of coffee. Doesn't mean it is. It ain't. Where, uh, where, like, what? Do you go to a website? You, you, you got a guy? You got a movie guy?

• 7:44Shaan Puri?

  I got a guy now. I haven't done it, by the way. So I should say, I didn't do this last year because I learned about it like four days before the end of the year. And then I was like, what the hell is this?

• 7:52Sam Parr?

  We need to make a movie, baby.

• 7:54Shaan Puri?

  I was like, oh my God. I won't say his name, but let's just pronounce his name, Charlie. I just got off the phone with Charlie. He's got a $10 million movie for me. All right. Hey, wire the funds.

• 8:06Shaan Puri?

  It was a little too, too rushed. Um, but the more I looked into it, it's a, it is a legitimate thing. It's completely by the book. You can go read, you know, section 26 of the tax code. You could do the bonus depreciation of 100% of the film's cost in, in that time. I think the, the key part is there's a little, there's some nuance, like, just like with real estate, you gotta be an active investor. So you have to be an active film investor in order to offset against your active income. So you have to like, go to film festivals and do, do like 36 hours of film study online in order to be qualified as active, or whatever the rules are. I'm making up those exact numbers. But, you know, there obviously is a lot of nuance to these things, but just broad strokes. Pretty interesting that rich people can

• 8:47Sam Parr?

  Hold on.

• 8:47Shaan Puri?

  Huge tax write offs financing movies.

• 8:49Sam Parr?

  So I'm just looking at this. So you said Obama did this or he like accelerated it?

• 8:54Shaan Puri?

  He increased it so that you can depreciate 100%.

• 8:58Sam Parr?

  So coincidentally, the Obamas now have a wonderful production company.

• 9:03Shaan Puri?

  They do. Beautiful home in Georgia.

• 9:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Sam Parr?

  No, they do. It's called Higher Ground Media and they've made a handful of movies that I've I've noticed or that I've seen, but they so if you go to higher Higher Ground Media.com, they also have podcasts. So they are the so they have an audible deal. Michelle Obama did. It used to be with Spotify. Now it's with Amazon Audible. They have a Some of Us. I don't know what that is. The big hit show, whatever. They have all these. Oh, they have Renegades, which is like this Barack one. So does this work for podcasts is the question?

• 9:37Shaan Puri?

  What's that smell?

• 9:38Sam Parr?

  Is that opportunity?

• 9:39Shaan Puri?

  A little self dealing I smell.

• 9:44Shaan Puri?

  A little Barack special, as you call it.

• 9:49Sam Parr?

  Do they? Does this work for? By the way, he did it right, man. Have you heard? You haven't. You haven't heard of Pete from Barack. He he he says he did this thing. He did an all right job. He didn't. Whether you like him or love him, he either did great or he did fine. So he did all right job and then he bounced. You know what I'm saying? He did bounce. He's out. And so he's hanging out with Oprah and David Geffen on Manch or on their yacht. So he did it right. But does this count for podcasts? Do we have a?

• 10:16Shaan Puri?

  Well, I don't know. My camera's on. You got a video over there?

• 10:20Sam Parr?

  That's a great point.

• 10:21Shaan Puri?

  People would call. I've seen in the YouTube comments, people consider us, you know, a film.

• 10:26Sam Parr?

  A premium production.

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  Premium. Exactly. I think we need to change the LLC name to Premium Productions.

• 10:34Shaan Puri?

  And you're in Texas. Texas is not far from Alabama. We could do a little road trip.

• 10:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Hopefully this works for podcasts, but that's an interesting find. I thought it was stupid and it's actually more interesting than I thought.

• 10:48Shaan Puri?

  How was your pod with Ramit?

• 10:49Sam Parr?

  It was awesome. You want to do a recap?

• 10:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I haven't listened to it. So what's, uh, what was the best parts?

• 10:54Sam Parr?

  He made fun of you a little bit. Uh, he took a, he took a jab, not at you. Well, because there was a podcast where I asked you if you could get eight percent consistently, but you can't invest in anything other than your own private business. Would you do it? And he was like, Sean was crazy. I was yelling at the, I was yelling at the screen furious that he wouldn't accept that, but he didn't actually give you a hard time. That was it.

• 11:19Sam Parr?

  He's very, um, he's very principled, which I actually like. I think, uh, you are the opposite. Not, I think you are one extreme, and I actually think I'm closer to you a little bit than I am to him where he is just like, this is what I want. I'm going to do it and I'm going to do nothing else. Like he's laser focused on a couple of things, which I admire. Uh, and then he, uh,

• 11:40Shaan Puri?

  What, what is he focused on?

• 11:41Sam Parr?

  He was like, I can make more money with my business. I can do, I could, I could have done a podcast years ago, but I just wanted to wait until I felt it was the perfect, right time. So he just calculated, well, you know, you and I like to just throw a little things out there and see what catches. He's not so much that. He also did a really good job. Have you ever heard him talk about the rich life?

• 12:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I've heard him explain. It's kind of like he made a list of like, what's the rich life to him? And then sort of use that as his financial blueprint.

• 12:08Sam Parr?

  Exactly. And he's got like a handful of things. Like he's like, I just wanted to have the best assistant because I want them to book things perfectly. So he's like, when I fly, I try to fly on a very specific type of airline with a very specific seat. So I want a certain plane when I fly. I want a certain type of food ready for me when I arrive in my hotel room. And it was just very exact and I love how exact he was. It sounded like a lot of work to set it up. So I found it intimidating. But like he knew exactly.

• 12:34Shaan Puri?

  I hate people who are that particular. I hate people who are particular in general. I find, uh, it to be truly spoiled and snobbish.

• 12:43Shaan Puri?

  You know, I have like, sort of, it's sort of like you are what you admire. And I have the opposite of admiration for people that are extremely particular about how they want everything managed and taken care of in their life versus people who are like, look, uh, I'm blessed. I'm going to roll with the punches. You don't have to cater to me. Um, I'm going to make, you know, you could serve me food I'm allergic to, and I'm going to find a way to have a party in the ER, right? Like, you know, that is more of the mindset that I admire is somebody who. Is what I call unconditional, meaning their happiness or their mood is not contingent on anything. I find that to be an absolute superpower. And I say this because not to hate on Remit, I say this because I kind of only ever hear about the opposite, especially

• 13:24Shaan Puri?

  in this kind of like, you know, life hacking, productivity porn, like kind of hustle culture type of thing, where I think people get praised for being super meticulous, for being super organized, for planning out everything, for scoping it out, for working backwards, all that stuff. And I never hear about anybody who's praised for being like, you know what, this guy's always in a good mood, regardless of what's happening. But to me, that's the superpower.

• 13:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and I'm closer to you in that regard. Like, recently, I went to a place, I ordered a steak, and they brought me a pizza that was pesto chicken. And I didn't, and I didn't, I didn't tell, like, yeah, I didn't even tell my, my wife was at halfway through, like, didn't you order a steak? I'm like, yeah, but it was here, whatever. And so I'm, I'm more like you, but I respect that he knows what he wants, and he wants, and he, and he lives that way. So I respect that. And then, Martin Shkreli, do you want to talk about him really quick?

• 14:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we never got to, to debrief that. So fun pod.

• 14:19Sam Parr?

  I got a lot of shit. Did, did you get shit? I got a ton of flack that we had him on.

• 14:23Shaan Puri?

  From where?

• 14:24Sam Parr?

  And dude, just online, and friends were messaging me, they're like, why would you give this guy a platform? And I don't think they even listened to the episode, because my, my response to why would you give this person a platform? It's, it's twofold. It's number one, I'm like, well, did you watch the documentary about him on Netflix? And if they say yes, then I say, well, then he has a platform. Did you criticize Netflix? You know, you watched it.

• 14:46Shaan Puri?

  Did you cancel Netflix?

• 14:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like, you, you watched Netflix? Do you watch the news about him? Because you, he has the platform. And second, I'm like-

• 14:54Shaan Puri?

  How'd you like that Ted Bundy docu-series? Pretty good, huh?

• 14:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, did you watch that? Did you, did you watch that? Because that's the same thing. And then second, I'm like, well, we actually did challenge him quite a bit. I think I explicitly said, why'd you act like an idiot? And why are you such an asshole when you shouldn't, didn't have to be an asshole? Like, we had a very productive conversation.

• 15:14Shaan Puri?

  I think, there's a fair criticism, which is-

• 15:18Shaan Puri?

  He has an explanation about like, you know, why, how the healthcare system works, blah, blah, and we're not well versed enough about the healthcare system to know where to push back. Cause like, let's say, I don't know if he told us anything that was incorrect or sort of sleight of handy, but if he did, there was no way I would have known because that's not my area of expertise, right? Like, um, you know, it's like, I- But why is that wrong? I don't know if that's wrong. I'm saying that's, that would be a fair criticism. Let's say you did know. Yeah. And then somebody comes on here, they say something that's either not true or sort of misdirection or, uh, besides the point or not really how things work. And the hosts don't push back on it. It can be very frustrating if you do know. And so I'd say that's a, if, if that's what happened, that would be, I would say a fair criticism. On the other hand, I thought the most interesting thing he talked about was just sort of like, um,

• 16:02Shaan Puri?

  he's like, I could be the Pfizer CEO corporate speak. Don't, don't toe outside the line. Don't give the media anything to get mad about. Just quietly make your millions. Just do whatever you're gonna do, right? Raise prices, uh, you know, whatever, whatever it is that you're gonna do. It's not like most pharmaceutical companies are seen as like, you know, angels, but they don't get the same level of flack because he was very loud mouthed. He was very vocal and he, he poked the bear constantly. And what I liked was this moment in the thing where it was like, dude, you're not dumb. So like, you probably knew what you should say, or you had a person on your PR team tell you at some point, hey, when you go to Congress and they're asking you questions, don't be doodling,

• 16:43Shaan Puri?

  you know, like a dog on your piece of paper, uh, and, and smugging, you know, having a- Don't smile. Yeah. Don't, don't have a smug look on your face. Like, he knew what to do. But he lives that troll life, baby. He's like, he's like, I don't wanna be that. I don't want a world where everybody who's successful has to be this robot and I'm gonna be me and I'm gonna have fun with it and I'm gonna call BS where I see BS. I'm gonna fight with people who don't know what they're talking about. And I gotta say, that is one part that I really do admire about him. And I think somebody said this to me after the episode, they go, you know, you guys had, uh, Billy McFarland from the Fire Festival on. And he seemed like a dumb, like a dumb cheat.

• 17:27Shaan Puri?

  They go, Martin seemed like the opposite. He seemed like a genius cheat, which was basically like, you know, Billy came back. He's like, next thing I'm doing another other fire festival or like, actually,

• 17:37Sam Parr?

  And he's doing it.

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  He, what he had said to us on air was, I'm going to do this thing where you could micro do, so people are going to go to this island and then you could vote with micro payments to get them to like snorkel with sharks and like, we're going to jump up the water. We're going to jump up the water if people donate. And I was like, wow, that's your comeback? That's a dumb idea. But with Martin, I would say like, you know, I think you could question whatever his ethics or if he's, you know, gone straight after whatever, you know, what he did to, to go to jail. But I think it's hard to deny that the guy's very intelligent and has a lot of interesting things to say. And frankly, you can learn a lot from, from somebody who's highly intelligent, has interesting things to say.

• 18:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, you know, what I was telling people, I'm like,

• 18:27Sam Parr?

  I can like how Michael Jackson dances and I could learn how to moonwalk from him, but also not like everything that he did. Uh, you know what I'm saying? So I can like both those things.

• 18:37Shaan Puri?

  How's your moonwalk?

• 18:40Sam Parr?

  You know, it's a, it's a three out of 10, I'd say, but I also, there's one criticism that we're starting to get now that we're a little bit bigger that I've been thinking about, which is they're like, you have a responsibility to do X, Y, and Z. And my gut reaction is like, F you. I don't have a responsibility. I'm doing whatever the hell I want. But then I'm like, it is journalistically a bit. And that's like a really weird thing to like, uh, kind of approach. Particularly when no one got in for, we didn't get into this for that reason. Like, we didn't want to pursue truth. We just wanted to have fun. You know what I'm saying?

• 19:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's, I mean, to be perfectly clear, we are not journalists. This is not journalism. We are not, we are not reporting anything. This is me and Sam shooting the shit, talking about business and interesting things we see. And then when we meet interesting people, we have them on the podcast and we have a conversation with them. And sometimes we like what they say and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we buy what they're selling. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we defend people because 95% of people hate them. Uh, but that doesn't mean we think that they're perfect. So, you know, that's, that's my stance on it. All right, let's move on to something else. You tweeted out that, um, you had nothing to say today, which is always great, uh, to hear.

• 19:48Sam Parr?

  I found a few things last minute though.

• 19:52Shaan Puri?

  Did you like my, uh, did you like my meme?

• 19:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, uh, the Jesus meme. I thought it was wonderful. It was, uh, it was, there's like this famous, is it Catholic? I don't know where it's like.

• 20:01Shaan Puri?

  Footprints in the sand is the name of the story.

• 20:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Whenever, you know, we saw two footprints on the beach or two sets of footprints and then all of a sudden I didn't see.

• 20:08Shaan Puri?

  One, one set. That's the point.

• 20:10Sam Parr?

  Well, then if it's, no, it's, then all of a sudden I didn't see the second footprint. What happened? And it was like, that's when I was carrying you, son. No, it was good.

• 20:18Shaan Puri?

  It's like, where were you when I needed you the most? If I were the only one footprints. All right. So do you want to go first? You want me to go?

• 20:24Sam Parr?

  I'll go first really quick. This is something that I think both of us are interested in, but I have a feeling you didn't, uh, you didn't care enough to look into this because it was like a shit ton of reading. But Tiny, our friend Andrew Wilkinson, he took his company public. It's officially public. I think the Friday, I don't know what it is today. It was 750 million, I think, Canada, which is 560 million USD.

• 20:47Shaan Puri?

  Somewhere between one and a billion.

• 20:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So hundreds of millions of dollars. And, you know, whenever you go public, you got to release a huge report and it's 300 pages. And I read through a lot of it and I found a bunch of interesting stuff. You want, you want me to tell you some of the interesting things? All right. So the foundation for, so Andrew Wilkinson's our friend. He owns this thing called Tiny. Tiny owns either outright owns or partially owns something like 10 to 30 things. 30 different businesses. The whole thing started with MetaLab. MetaLab was an agency that he created by himself in 2008. And he basically made websites. It was nothing fancy at first. He made websites for Silicon Valley companies. But that's a little bit glamorizing it because it was like, someone paid him like $20,000 to make like a fairly straightforward, simple website.

• 21:35Sam Parr?

  Then he just kept going and kept going and kept going. Well, it's listed in his, uh, I actually don't know what this document's called. In America, I think it's called a 10Q, uh, or just whenever they file for, uh, to go public. This company's in the, I think Vancouver Stock Exchange. I don't know what it's called there, but it's listed as digital services revenue. In 2021, it did $62.8 million. And that's interesting.

• 22:01Sam Parr?

  Because it actually has been growing not crazy fast. So it's been growing something like twenty three percent a year. Or for the last handful of years, we can only see a couple of years here, but it does a forty five percent or forty percent margin. So for every hundred dollars they make, their net income is something like forty percent, forty dollars, which is crazy. Now, if you start in two thousand and eight and you only grow twenty percent a year, you actually get to significantly higher than where he's at now. So there was years where it was lumpy, where it didn't grow or it grew a lot and then it got smaller, but not significant of a business for something that's been around for, what's this now, fifteen years? And this has been the foundation of everything.

• 22:42Sam Parr?

  He has the CEO of that company and that CEO is paid one point one million dollars. Which is a good deal, I think, for everyone. So the CEO gets to run an established company that's working and they get paid a million dollars. So here's something that's really interesting. If you scroll down to on this document, I they have a list of a bunch of the dividends paid since two thousand twenty one. And if you add them all up, it's something like fifteen million dollars that he's took out of the business. They took out a bunch more dividends because they actually took down, I think, something like a hundred million dollars in debt. So he he had a debt facility in order to grow the company as opposed to equity, which is awesome because

• 23:21Sam Parr?

  you just take a loan and if that works, it's significantly cheaper than equity. If it doesn't work, it's that's not good. You owe a bunch of money. But he did it and it worked out. But as he's been growing, he took money like fifteen ish million according to these documents out. Additionally, they had a company called Meal Time, which is like a meal prepping software that he sold for twenty five million dollars. So he had a and they gained, they profited thirteen million dollars off that. So collectively, he's been making tens of millions of dollars along the way. Super fascinating while this business has been growing.

• 23:54Shaan Puri?

  Remember when we were having lunch with him? We're gonna have to bleep out this number, but do you remember having lunch with him and you asked him some question, you're like, you know, at what number did, you know, life sort of changed for you or what what numbers mattered in your kind of climb? And then he says, he's like, yeah.

• 24:13Shaan Puri?

  You know, that's when, uh, that's when, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you go, you go, okay, so that's the net worth. And he goes, no, per year.

• 24:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 24:21Shaan Puri?

  And you go, what? We were both like, wait.

• 24:25Sam Parr?

  And then he skipped over it.

• 24:26Shaan Puri?

  Annual was by.

• 24:27Sam Parr?

  He told another story.

• 24:28Shaan Puri?

  He's like, yeah, yeah. So like, you know, every year. We were like, what the actual fuck is this guy talking about? You were making that much? He's like, yeah.

• 24:37Sam Parr?

  And, and now we see that it, that it's all like, it's all on paperwork. And, and by the way, everything we're saying, this is strictly from the document. We're so there's nothing else that we know. But yeah, like you kind of killed it there. And then one last interesting thing is they own this thing. It's the company called, is called Tiny Boards. It's really just we work remotely.com. And it makes.

• 24:57Shaan Puri?

  I think it's like six million a year, roughly.

• 25:00Sam Parr?

  So it grew during, you know, 2020 to 21. It grew from like three million to six million. Then it went back down to like three or four million. But I looked it up on LinkedIn. I'm pretty sure there's like three people.

• 25:13Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Sam Parr?

  Very fascinating.

• 25:16Shaan Puri?

  And they bought that or they bought that from 37 Signals from Jason Freed and DHH. So that's, that's pretty cool. Yeah, you know, when, so I invested in this right before it went public. So private, just privately. And when I had gone into the kind of the data room.

• 25:31Shaan Puri?

  I was looking around and I was like, okay, so it seems like really there's kind of like two interesting observations. One is he creates these like, what they call platforms, which is basically means you're going to buy a bunch of the same type of company. So he has an agency platform. Meta Lab is the big one, but I think they have like seven, eight, seven or eight other agencies. They're just a lot smaller. Job.

• 25:51Sam Parr?

  There's like a Webflow agency. There's a.

• 25:53Shaan Puri?

  There's a no code agency. There's a whatever.

• 25:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Shaan Puri?

  So then there's job boards and they own a couple of job boards. Then there's creative tools, which is like they own dribbled and dribble block creative market and, and grew that way. And then they have whatever they have, they have a couple of other, then they have like this, like long tail of random things. Like they own B funky, the photo editing app, they own meal time. Like they own some random things. I would say a couple of things really stood out to me when I looked at it. I was like. Okay, so if you look at where the bulk of the revenue and EBITDA comes from, it's two companies. So yes, he's got a portfolio of 30 companies. But it's MetaLab and it's Dribbble that are carrying the thing on its back. I guess the other one would be WeCommerce, which had split and gone public, which was a roll-up of Shopify apps, but that one had done pretty well.

• 26:37Sam Parr?

  And I think, and that one's at 25 million in revenue, I think.

• 26:41Shaan Puri?

  It was like something like 10 million. If you just look at the EBITDA numbers, right, I was like, and I'm not quoting this off, I'm not looking at the sheet, but like just ballpark. I believe that WeCommerce ballpark was at about 10 billion in EBITDA when it went public. I remember you saying that on the pod. That's where I'm getting that from. The second one is, you know, MetaLab, which you just talked about, you know, let's say 50, 60 million in revenue, 45% margin, so roughly 30 billion in EBITDA. And then, which is just a juggernaut. And then you have Dribbble. And Dribbble does what? Does it have it broken out here?

• 27:13Sam Parr?

  So in 2000, yeah, in 2021, so here's the numbers for 2021. Digital Services revenue, which is considered agencies, that was 63 million. Creative platform revenue, which I think is only Dribbble, or it's Dribbble plus a small thing. In 2020, it did 23 million. In 2021, it did 34 million. And then they have other, which is all this small stuff combined, which was about 14.

• 27:37Shaan Puri?

  So just those first two, Digital Services, which is almost all MetaLab, you know, the rest might add up to less than 20% of that. So if you just add up 60 plus 30 plus 13, right? This is roughly a little over 100 million.

• 27:51Sam Parr?

  111.

• 27:52Shaan Puri?

  Of that comes from MetaLab and Dribbble.

• 27:57Sam Parr?

  And the EBITDA on that, I don't know, actually, people are gonna laugh. People are gonna laugh at me. I don't know what adjusted EBITDA means versus just normal EBITDA. But the normal EBITDA, which is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, that was $50 million on that revenue.

• 28:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And you know what I think is remarkable? The amount of equity that they put in to create this. So now this thing is valued at, let's call it 800 million dollars right now, 811 million market cap right now.

• 28:22Sam Parr?

  Which is Canadian and it's I didn't realize it's a seventy five, a twenty five percent decrease from US.

• 28:27Shaan Puri?

  Sure. So let's say.

• 28:29Sam Parr?

  So it's that comes out to be a little less than six hundred.

• 28:32Shaan Puri?

  Six hundred, basically. So six hundred, six hundred million dollar market cap company. And I believe he can confirm or deny this, but I believe less than ten million dollars of total equity was put in. So how much cash did it take to start this business? And most businesses don't take a ton of cash, but but this is this is an acquisition based company. So like, you know, they they were acquiring companies. And so I think less than ten million of seed capital was put in. I could be wrong.

• 28:59Sam Parr?

  And the and the seed capital came from the profits of the agency. So in reality, it's like he started this as an eighteen year old or nineteen year old. He said he was working as a barista. In the papers, it has the stories like I was working at a as a coffee shop person. And then I started doing this on the side and it just we just kept going. And so the takeaway here is like, simple shit. It's it's hard, but it's simple. But for since two thousand and seven, or something like that.

• 29:25Shaan Puri?

  Amazing. Honestly, kind of honestly, it's amazing. And congrats to our buddy Andrew for going public. That's a big deal. You know, that's a decade plus of hard work, fifteen, fifteen years plus of hard work to get there. So you know, kind of amazing for him. I love that.

• 29:42Sam Parr?

  Any other takeaways you have?

• 29:43Shaan Puri?

  No, those are the those are the main ones. You know, I think, you know, one other thing that Chris, his business partner, had told me at dinner was, I think I might have already shared this on the pod, but he said, when he got hired and he met Chris at a bank, Chris was a banker, literally like.

• 29:59Sam Parr?

  Like a like a bank teller.

• 30:01Shaan Puri?

  Like at a branch. He met Chris and they they were they hit it off about cars. They were talking about cars and because Andrew had rolled up in a cool looking car and Chris was into it or whatever. So they hit it off. They ended up talking for a little while. He's like, what do you what's your story? What are you doing? He's like, I'm studying to get my my like CPA license. Like, I want to be a finance person or accountant or whatever. And Andrew's like, awesome. I need help. My business, MetaLab, is just getting off the ground. It's working pretty well, but like, we're super disorganized. Come work with me. And Chris takes a leap of faith, goes to work with him. He says that on day one, he's like, I showed up at the office. And there's nobody there. Like Andrew's not there. Nobody's answering the door.

• 30:39Shaan Puri?

  And then Andrew pulls up in his Uber, whatever his car, I guess there's no Uber back then, but pulls up in a car taxi, hops out and he's like, opens the trunk, takes out this giant box full of paper. He's like, here, here's all of our like numbers, financials. Like this is where it's at.

• 30:57Shaan Puri?

  You know, make sense of this and, and help us get organized. He hands him this huge box. He's like, oh, by the way, I gotta go. So I'm not gonna be able to train you right now. And there's no room in the office for you. So I talked to my neighbor. They have like a basement. You can sit at the desk in there and he's like, just knock on the door and tell them you're the guy. And then they'll let you into the basement desk or something. So he tells a story how he started, whatever, gets, gets organized. And as they're looking at it, they're like, all right. You have a very profitable agency. Like, what do we do with these profits? Right? We're just gonna like accrue them. That doesn't seem very good. And they're like, well, what do other agencies do? And they're like, they looked around. I see another agencies like,

• 31:34Shaan Puri?

  all of a sudden, there's a giant ball pit in the office. There's a basketball court. They're flying, you know, fancy everywhere. They're, they're hosting, you know, just basically spending money on like, like status stuff or like appearances. And he's like, we shouldn't do that. That doesn't seem to have any ROI. Right? Like adding the ball pit to the office doesn't, yeah, it makes it more fun, but like, I don't think that's the best use of money. What if we just thought of ourselves like a really profitable law firm? And like, you know, what if we were a boring business? What would we do with this money? Well, we would just go try to find a place to reinvest this. What if we, take this business? That's okay. Agencies aren't the best business, but we use it to buy better businesses. And then that was kind of like the, the conversation that they had. And that's where they started going out and acquiring other businesses, using the profits from MetaLab.

• 32:18Sam Parr?

  But there's two, or there's one part of that story that you're missing. And, and this is because it's probably not fun for them to tell, but they will tell it because they blog about it, which is they actually started other things. So they did the same things that we make fun of and that we've done as well. They started a to do list. It was called Flow. And they, he said he spent like four or $500,000 or maybe even close to a million, a lot of money of the profits. And they created this thing, which was basically like Asana, but different. And he goes, Asana crushed us because they spent way more money. And then they started, I think, one or two other things. I think another thing called Ballpark. So they actually started things right away. And it failed. And then they go, yeah, let's just buy that. And that's what they did.

• 32:57Shaan Puri?

  And they still start things like Supercast or he's got a bunch of different ideas that he, he started since. But if you just look at them in the grand scheme of things, it's almost like a big company, right? It's like they have the innovator's dilemma. It's like this business is at one million in revenue in nine months. It's like, cool, who cares? Well, that's one percent. You know, it didn't move the needle this year, but probably took a lot of creative energy and recruiting and promoting to get to, to get to that level. So you have a tough thing where you enjoy starting new things. So you want to do it. You keep having new ideas, but it's hard for those new things to really break out and make a difference. Um, you know, and most, most new things generally will, will fail or, or not go exactly to plan either. So it's, it's a tough, tough balance, I think, to have.

• 33:39Sam Parr?

  And I know what they paid for Dribbble. And, um, do you think, I think you know too, but we can't say it. Do you think that, uh, you can buy companies like this? Like, is this one of those things like, you know, or, or am I just being a noob here where people say, oh, you can't start a newsletter now. There's too many newsletters. I'm like, no, that's not true. But do you, what do you think about the competition now to buy companies versus 10 years ago?

• 34:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, certainly more, but there's also more supply, right? Like, uh, the number of like interesting, you know, interesting, uh, internet companies in 2007 versus 2023 is going to be obviously like many fold more because the internet has just become so dominant. There's so many businesses that are, that are successful. So many playbooks of how to build a good SaaS business or a good marketplace or whatever. Having said that, this is probably the type of business where you make one good decision, one good deal a year or two good deals a year, and that was a great year. And, um, that, I think that speed is just very hard for most entrepreneurial people to, to go at.

• 34:39Sam Parr?

  Right. Well, yeah, I agree with what you said. This is pretty inspiring and, and awesome. So that's the low down on Tiny.

• 34:46Shaan Puri?

  Good stuff.

• 34:48Sam Parr?

  Can we talk about, I see you have Harvard's revenue on here. I have an interesting story about Harvard's revenues. I want to hear your take.

• 34:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I was doing some Friday night research and, uh,

• 34:57Sam Parr?

  As one does.

• 34:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, got, got to thinking, how much money is Harvard making? I'd like to tell you some things about Harvard. So Harvard is this thing that if you really like zoom out or you're like an alien and you're looking down at Harvard and you're like, what is that thing on the map? Yeah, not, no, not BU, the other one, you know, what's, what's over there in Boston? What you would see is basically some combination of a church, a hedge fund and a luxury daycare. And I'd like to tell you about each of those components and how Harvard is basically this multi-billion dollar tax-free juggernaut.

• 35:35Sam Parr?

  All right.

• 35:36Shaan Puri?

  There's a lot of taxes in this episode.

• 35:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Shaan Puri?

  All right, so.

• 35:38Sam Parr?

  Buckle up.

• 35:40Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so how is it a, how is it a church? Well, universities are tax exempt, so they don't pay taxes. They don't pay it on donations. They don't pay it on tuition, room and board, or even capital gains from their hedge fund, which is the second part. So they have an endowment that's about $50 billion that they invest across a wide portfolio. I'll tell you their portfolio in a second. So they got a $50 billion hedge fund. They have, they're tax exempt on the gains from the hedge fund, plus all the revenue from their students. Well, I should say revenue from their luxury daycare because parents will pay, you know, $50, $60, $70,000 a year to send their child to this place for four years. And so they take your kids off your hand for four years and they say you're, they're going to come out in a better, better place. And so here's some of the numbers around this, this mashup juggernaut.

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  Last year, 5.8 billion in total revenue. $2 billion of that comes from the profits of their endowment. Hell of a year for them. Actually, this wasn't last year. This was, I think, 2021, so two years ago. So 5.8 billion in total revenue, $2 billion from their endowment, 1.2 billion from education. So what that means is 80% of the revenue is coming from not education. That's the other way to look at that. So where does the rest come from? So they have the endowment, you have $1 billion of grants. So the government funding research for their professors, 500 million of donations and 300 million from something you'll know pretty well, which is their publishing arm.

• 37:04Sam Parr?

  I could tell you all about that.

• 37:05Shaan Puri?

  Their, their in-house media company. So a couple, a couple of observations here. The school earns more revenue than both Twitter and Snapchat. Twitter's at five billion, Snapchat's 4.6 billion. Harvard has more revenue than both of them.

• 37:18Sam Parr?

  And it's been doing that since, when was Harvard created?

• 37:20Shaan Puri?

  Harvard's like 100 plus years old, I think.

• 37:23Sam Parr?

  And so it's been doing that forever, not forever, but for a very long time.

• 37:26Shaan Puri?

  Amazing business, right? The publishing arm makes $300 million just selling case studies to other business schools and publishing the HBR, the review journal, which is basically a really fancy paid Substack. It's got 350,000 subscribers who pay for the HBR, the Harvard Business Review.

• 37:42Sam Parr?

  But the majority of that revenue, I think, I can try to find it, but I studied this a lot. I think that a lot of the, so if you go to Harvard Business School, they, they release all their,

• 37:53Shaan Puri?

  They break it out.

• 37:53Sam Parr?

  They break it all out. And so if I read it here, so 34% of the, so their revenue actually went down. 2019, it was 900 million and 2021, it was 800. So 34% of that was whatever you said, 300, comes from publishing. The next thing down is 14% came from tuition. And of the, of the 34% from publishing, most of it is from selling. I think it's like they've sold, like they sell like five million case studies a year.

• 38:19Shaan Puri?

  To other business schools.

• 38:20Sam Parr?

  Which is, which is insane. It's, it's a lot.

• 38:22Shaan Puri?

  And the Harvard Business Review has a lot of revenue from international. So here's the other kind of like dirty secret from, from Harvard, which is that they make a ton of money off of executive education. $464 million. So almost like, not quite half, but like, you know, almost half of the money they make from their degree, their actual school, they make on executive education, which is basically you pay to get professional development credits. AKA you get to put Harvard on your resume without actually having a Harvard degree.

• 38:47Sam Parr?

  If you go to Tyra Banks, remember Tyra Banks? The, the, if you go to, if you go, yeah, that's right.

• 38:57Sam Parr?

  If you, big T for sure. If you go to, uh, her LinkedIn, it says Harvard Business School. And then like, you gotta scroll down and then you'll see, you'll see parentheses and you'll say, I'll say, extension. It's a very classic technique.

• 39:15Shaan Puri?

  Right. My cousin did this. He went there and I was like, whoa, you're going to Harvard? He's like, I'm going to a, I'm taking classes at Harvard.

• 39:26Shaan Puri?

  Taking classes at Harvard. So you, you got into Harvard. Uh, yeah, you know, like, sure, I got into the executive education program at Harvard. And, uh, and he's like, yeah, like, you know, on my resume, it says Harvard. And he's like, you know, one out of three people understand what it is and two out of three don't. I like my odds.

• 39:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Shaan Puri?

  International arm, their international revenue is up like 80% because they're selling the age of the business review over there. They're selling, uh, you know, executive education. Come on, come to, come to America, come to the best part of America. Come to the, the Louis Vuitton of, uh, of education, right? So basically you got billions in revenue, zero taxes owed, huge barrier to entry, a brand that's lasted over a century. The government loans your customers money and gives you grants for your R and D. Like what a business.

• 40:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's absolutely crazy and a lot of people don't realize this. Um, and to put these numbers in perspective, let's just say that, so you said their endowment, I'm just doing all this math right here. Um, so I might be off, but I bet you if we Google it, this will be true. If their endowment is.

• 40:31Shaan Puri?

  You're not doing public math, are you?

• 40:32Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, I am sorry, but if they're in debt, but it might be wrong. If their endowment is $55 billion, um, it can, and their expenses, some years, I just Google it right now. It's around $5 billion. That means theoretically there are some years that they can pay or charge their students zero tuition and pay for everything still.

• 40:55Shaan Puri?

  The way that the endowment works is it's a $50 billion issue endowment. And there, the plan is they distribute 5% of it a year. So 5% of it a year is used, but they, the, the, the, the rule is this endowment needs to last forever. So they're only going to distribute 5% because they need the other 95% to stay in and to keep rolling. And in 2022, when my portfolio was down like 45%, they lost 1.8%.

• 41:19Sam Parr?

  Well.

• 41:20Shaan Puri?

  Goddamn Harvard geniuses somehow lost only less than 2% when the whole market has been terrible this year. Here's, here's their portfolio, by the way, 3% cash.

• 41:29Sam Parr?

  Okay.

• 41:29Shaan Puri?

  32% into hedge funds.

• 41:32Sam Parr?

  Which hedge funds, does it say?

• 41:34Shaan Puri?

  It doesn't say which ones now. 44% into private equity plus venture capital, but most of it's private equity.

• 41:39Sam Parr?

  So what do they buy?

• 41:40Shaan Puri?

  So that's the bulk of it. Um, and then there's 6% real estate, 3% bonds, 5% treasuries and 6% foreign equities.

• 41:46Sam Parr?

  Okay. So what's this private equity stuff? Uh, is, does that mean they're in like?

• 41:50Shaan Puri?

  Actual PE like.

• 41:51Sam Parr?

  Like Blackstone?

• 41:51Shaan Puri?

  Blackrock or whatever.

• 41:52Sam Parr?

  Or Blackrock? Wow, dude, this is like a circle jerk to the max. Everyone's hands full on this one. This is crazy, right? Because

• 42:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah, because you, if you think about it, like, if I look up where the hedge fund guys went, I bet, you know, 70% of them went to Harvard. I mean, this is just, it's, it's pretty, it's a very circular thing going on here. It's pretty wild. Like, i- i- it is, it's, I would say it's almost corrupt. And if you think about 50 billion, a $50 billion endowment, that's bigger than I, than I would imagine. 95% of countries GOP. I mean, it's like, that's massive.

• 42:28Shaan Puri?

  GOP?

• 42:30Sam Parr?

  Sorry, GOP. GOP, that's the, uh, what's that? The Republicans. What's, uh, GDP?

• 42:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, but, and yeah, like, you know, we think these VC funds like Sequoia and Andreessen are like really big. Like, I don't know what Andreessen's total AUM is, but I'm guessing it's like between 10 and 15 billion.

• 42:47Sam Parr?

  It ain't, it ain't 50.

• 42:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 50 billion. And they're, I think, I mean, they're, they're, okay, they're now at 35. They've been scaling it up like crazy.

• 42:56Sam Parr?

  But that's their full-time job.

• 42:57Shaan Puri?

  Harvard is more.

• 42:58Sam Parr?

  That's their thing. You know what I mean?

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Sam Parr?

  That's their thing. This is just like, you know, I, I would imagine there is a, I forget what I was watching, but there was some show where it was like, a lot of people don't realize this, but like venture capital and PE, like the biggest, when people, I, I always hated when people celebrated a venture capital company going bust. Like, uh, what was that one guy who, uh, the, the Disney guy who went and started, uh, the thing that, Quibi? You know, it raised like billions of dollars and went, and it went bust. What a lot of people don't realize is this money for, so the money that is given to Andreessen Horowitz and to this and that, it comes from the universities. It also comes from the California's teachers pension plan, or the, the police pension plan, or firefighters, or,

• 43:42Sam Parr?

  and like, you'll, like, I think, if I remember correctly, I, I believe like Nevada, for some reason, I think it was like the state of Nevada for their pension plan for government, government workers, something like that, had one of the best, uh, returns. And they was basically like one dorky guy, and he's pretty much just like Warren Buffett. You know, he has a, a similar style or, um, a similar Budget where he has all this money and he just would sit in this office and except unlike Warren Buffett, he's getting paid by the state. And so there was a story about how he was making, you know, a nice amount of money a year, but he would bring brown paper bag lunch and he just drove

• 44:16Shaan Puri?

  He's on Windows 95.

• 44:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And he's like, look, I'm on the, and, and, and this guy was like a fiduciary of fiduciaries where he was like, I don't waste taxpayer money. And because of that, I read all this stuff. I very rarely make big bets. And, but when I do, it fucking crushes it. And so like, these guys. Yeah, he's, he's great. And he's like, and so anyway, it's just like these guys making these decisions. They're just government workers in a way, but they're making, they're basically mini Warren Buffett. And so it's really fascinating, like the world of these like endowments and these pensions.

• 44:46Shaan Puri?

  I met a guy once who worked for Alaska's permanent fund. I don't know if you know about this. They have 79 billion in assets under management. So Alaska has all this money from the oil stuff or whatever. And then they give everybody who lives in Alaska, like three grand a year or something like that.

• 44:59Sam Parr?

  Which is basically like, well, you know, when people were talking about universal income, they're like, oh, that sounds crazy. I'm like, you know, they do that in Alaska. I think, I think you get 15 grand a year if you live in Alaska.

• 45:08Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I thought it was like maybe three, four, but yeah, maybe it's more. Um, but yeah, there, and then there, I met a guy who manages that, that money. And he's just like,

• 45:18Sam Parr?

  What was he like?

• 45:18Shaan Puri?

  I mean, he, he wasn't the main principal, but he was a guy who worked there. And he was like, he was at the farming conference and I was like, what are you doing here? And he's like, I'm looking for, you know, intelligence and then, and investments, you know? Farmland is a great investment. I was like, wow. Uh, good for you. This is, uh, you know, who would have thought you, this guy's managing way more money or these people manage way more money than like the, the famous kind of hedge funds or, um, or venture capitalists that you hear a lot about.

• 45:43Sam Parr?

  Dude, I wonder if this topic is interesting. Ben, let me know in the Slack because I like, I'm geeking out on this stuff. I found this to be crazy fascinating. Um, so he's typing now. Um, you want to do one more thing?

• 45:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, let's do one more. I have a quick idea.

• 45:56Sam Parr?

  My nine?

• 45:57Shaan Puri?

  My nine. Okay. So, uh, sounds a little bit sick. Uh, last 24 hours.

• 46:03Sam Parr?

  You have a great haircut, by the way, though. I really like the, the uptown fade. You got, you know, hi, hi fade.

• 46:10Shaan Puri?

  It's the uptown fade with the downtown brow.

• 46:15Shaan Puri?

  I don't know what that means. I just wanted to say something cool.

• 46:17Sam Parr?

  It looks good. You look sharp. Have you been, have you, how much weight have you lost in the past three years?

• 46:22Shaan Puri?

  Um, I think I've gained weight in the last three years. I just changed the composition like I uh,

• 46:28Sam Parr?

  You're looking svelte.

• 46:28Shaan Puri?

  I put on a lot of muscle, too much muscle, um, in a way that's like not good, like, uh, not like it's like, I'm not, I'm neither a bodybuilder nor am I ripped. I'm just thick. And thick is like, I don't know anybody who puts thick on their vision board, like.

• 46:42Sam Parr?

  Some people do. I mean, look at your, your, your right arm right now. Dude, your right arm right now. I definitely.

• 46:48Shaan Puri?

  Let me hit you with a little.

• 46:49Sam Parr?

  I definitely see tricep. Yes. I see a great teardrop. Man, that's a, that you gotta, you gotta good tricep muscles.

• 46:55Shaan Puri?

  That's my, uh, what do you call it? Like your, your, your, your highlight, your keystone asset? That's my keystone asset.

• 47:00Sam Parr?

  Your triceps.

• 47:01Shaan Puri?

  Thank God it's in the zoom view. Imagine if my quads were what was good. I'd just be wasting it every day.

• 47:07Sam Parr?

  Welcome to my life, my friend.

• 47:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You should make an excuse to stand up every day, every, every episode, just to flex on them a little bit.

• 47:15Sam Parr?

  Quad zone. No, you look good. You definitely look svelte. Uh, and people in the comments are saying it, but sorry, go ahead.

• 47:21Shaan Puri?

  Uh, well, I mean, that was great. Uh, anytime, anytime you want to take that tangent and we can go there. Um, all right. So I was, I was in a fever and I had a little fever dream. I thought of an idea that I'm pretty sure would go viral. I'm not going to do it, but, um, you know, our friend, um, Nikita, who has created the same app twice and sold it twice to the same, to, to similarly stupid tech companies that, that didn't realize it's like, just like a nothing app.

• 47:45Sam Parr?

  Oh, you're talking about, uh, Nikita the asshole beer?

• 47:50Shaan Puri?

  Nikita jerkface.

• 47:54Sam Parr?

  That's his official name, right? For those of you don't know.

• 47:57Shaan Puri?

  We call him DB Cooper, but it just stands for douchebag Cooper.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, I know Nikita the asshole beer.

• 48:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. The funny thing is he's got this persona online of being kind of like a shit poster and like kind of a shithead. But usually when you meet those people, the, if you ever meet somebody like that, you're like, what's, what are they like? It's like, dude, total sweetheart. Love that guy. Totally not like you see online. No.

• 48:23Sam Parr?

  You know how like, you know, it's a very common thing where you're like, oh, you know, Sean, you know, Sam, whatever. Oh yeah. Great guy. Great guy. I don't know if that, that no, that phrase may not be used with him.

• 48:33Shaan Puri?

  Is he getting great guy? He's not getting great guy.

• 48:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. He's more of a, he doesn't get a wow. He gets a wow.

• 48:43Sam Parr?

  You know what I mean? That, that's him.

• 48:45Shaan Puri?

  So anyways, the genius of what he's done, cause undeniably created, uh, you know, these like really viral teen apps. Is his app works as follows. You download the app. You take a quiz that says who in your school or who in your contacts is most likely to whatever. And they try to figure out in your context, who you talk, who you talk to the most or whatever, so that they could surface maybe the right person. And, uh, in a multiple choice. So that you, you say Sam is, is the guy who I'd want to bail me out of jail. And then at the end of the thing, it's like, wow, those are awesome. Do you want to know what Sam says about you? And you're like, yeah, for sure. And basically it texts you in the background and it's like, Sam. Someone said that you'd be the most likely person to bail him out of jail. Do you want to see who? And you're like, of course, click, download. You take the quiz and that's the viral loop.

• 49:29Shaan Puri?

  Do you remember back in the, I think I have another one of these. Uh, do you remember back in the day, the MySpace top, top eight? I think it was called.

• 49:35Sam Parr?

  It was like, uh, was that like, who was in your top eight friends?

• 49:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You just, I mean, this was, this was like a whole pretty wild concept, to be honest with you. You just put on your profile. Yo, these are my top eight friends in order, which is like, I don't know that today that'd be considered like, you know, bullying to the 10th degree.

• 49:53Sam Parr?

  But you know, I think where that came from was like, do you remember blog rolls? Or it was like, if, if you would go to a blog and it would say like, um.

• 50:01Shaan Puri?

  Here's who else.

• 50:02Sam Parr?

  Yeah. On the right-hand side, you would list like eight other blogs that were similar to you that you were friends with. Which by the way, I thought was awesome. I always like, I go, I try to find whatever.

• 50:10Shaan Puri?

  Great way to discover things.

• 50:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I love doing that. And then a lot of people don't know this, but Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, he created. What was it called? It was called Media Link, I think. And it basically went from zero to like a $400 million acquisition. And all they did, I think originally it's called Link Exchange is what it was called, is they helped broker the deals. Where eventually it was a pay to play for like the blog rolls, which is like the things on the side. And I think that is where MySpace kind of got like this idea of like, here's like my top eight or whatever. Like here's the people I. To help you discover new people.

• 50:44Shaan Puri?

  Right. And, you know, Tom from MySpace would always be your, your automatic number one when you start and then you have to fill in your friends. And it was this awesome thing. You could go to someone's profile and you could be like, oh, they're best friends with this person. Oh, this girl moved to number one. Maybe they're dating. It was like this little, like, this like signaling thing. And it was cool to be, it was felt so good to be in someone's top eight and it felt so bad to be out of someone's top eight. So, but it lets you know where you stand. And there's something I really appreciate about that. So I think you can recreate that now with something I'm calling my nine. And what my nine is, you download this app and it just says, who are your nine people? Who you, who you, who you rocking with? And you just designate of my contacts, these are my nine. And they let you publish that as a photo to Instagram or as a video onto TikTok or whatever.

• 51:26Shaan Puri?

  It just lets you share that out, just saying, hey, here's my nine. And you tag them and it texts them also from your phone. And somebody puts you in their, their, their my nine. Do you want to see who? And of course you're going to download. Of course you're going to sign up to see who you're going to connect your address book and then you're going to select your nine and you'll reciprocate because that's what people do. And so I think this would also go super viral. Because I think it just has those like human psychology triggers where if you got that message, you, you gotta know who did it. And then when you're there, you'll do it too. Cause it's kind of fun. Like a little personality quiz. And then that triggers the next nine invites that go out. And nine invites is enough to go viral. So like, even if you have a 15% conversion rate,

• 52:07Shaan Puri?

  which this would have like more like 40% probably, um, you will, by definition, your K factor will be over one. You will, you will go viral.

• 52:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, I always wanted that for when I die. You know, like my nine for when I die. My die. So like I've, I've always wondered like, if I die, how is anyone going to know? Cause like when you, I imagine this sounds douchey.

• 52:28Shaan Puri?

  On your tombstone? Just here's my nine friends, top nine friends?

• 52:32Sam Parr?

  I don't know. Again, I'm going to preface this, this sounds douchey, but when you start having a little bit of something, you eventually, you have so many different accounts and like there's companies that I've invested in and I fucking forgot. When I, when I sold the hustle, we, there's this one guy, he, uh, what was his name? Jonah. Uh, he started moat.com and he sold it for like a billion dollars. He's just a rich guy and he gave me very little money. Enough that like, he probably makes that a day in interest. And when we sold, it took me a year to get in contact with him. I swear to God, it took the lawyers were like, dude, we cannot get in touch with this guy. Like, because he sold his company. So it's like, he just, we can't get in touch with them. We don't know. We had to give him his money, but he's owed money. It's just sitting here. And I'm not close to that, but there are some investments that I've made that I've forgotten about.

• 53:18Sam Parr?

  And I've always wondered, like, if I die, how is anyone in my family going to know, like, who, like, where the stuff is, or if they're, who are they going to contact? Like, is there like a, like a, like a, like a next of kin? Like checklist? You know what I mean?

• 53:32Shaan Puri?

  And it changes all the time, too. So even if you wrote it down once, this is going to change. I actually don't know how this works. When you die, how do they discover all your assets? Especially now with like crypto or angel investing, like, I don't know, to discover all this stuff.

• 53:43Sam Parr?

  And who are they going to know to contact? Because particularly with crypto, it's a lot of single young guys. Like, who's like the next, the next of kin for that? I have no idea. You know, there was, do you watch Succession? Hey, this is producer Ben. Quick note, Sam is about to drop a massive spoiler for the HBO series Succession. So if you plan on watching it and you're not all the way caught up, skip ahead like two minutes. Enjoy.

• 54:05Shaan Puri?

  They're like, he, he just left everything to this emoji.

• 54:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Dude, on, on Succession, it's like, you know, the thing, it's basically Rupert Murdoch's family. And the Rupert Murdoch character dies and they find his will and he wrote it in pencil. But they, and they, there's this part where he's giving stuff, the company to his son. And they can't determine if he's crossing it is. Yeah, well, no, they couldn't determine, is he crossing out the guy's name or underlining the guy's name? Because he like, it was like a crooked line. They're like, is he crossing it out or underlining? We don't really know what that is. But I've thought about that. I'm like, when I die, if I die and my wife dies at the same time. Let's say we don't have kids, whatever. I'm like, how are, who are they going to know to contact? Like, they got to figure out where my mother lives. Like, it just seems like an ordeal.

• 54:49Shaan Puri?

  You're gonna have a really rich dog.

• 54:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I guess. So they need my nine, but like, that's like now, like.

• 54:55Shaan Puri?

  You took this in terms of like a, a trust and will solution?

• 55:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Shaan Puri?

  My teenage viral app idea?

• 55:03Sam Parr?

  Yeah. My nine probate is what it's called. And it's just like.

• 55:05Shaan Puri?

  You really, yes, and did that one. He went full improv kid on that one and took it to an holy place.

• 55:12Sam Parr?

  Dude, I've just been thinking about that. Have you not thought about that? Cause like there's some shit that you probably done. It could be small, like every once in a while, I'll like just do a deal. Like I'll just invest like five grand into something and I don't tell anyone about it. Like, you know, you and I, you and I were joking, five grand is about the limit where you like tell your spouse that you're doing it. And like, you know, there's been things that I've done, like, oh, I don't even fucking remember. And I guess there's a scratch off ticket that I won somewhere. I have no idea.

• 55:38Shaan Puri?

  Dude, um, yes, I've thought about that, especially with crypto. But then when crypto crashed, I was like, hey, nevermind. Forget, forget, forget what I told you. It doesn't matter anymore.

• 55:47Shaan Puri?

  You know, those instructions I told you about how like, you know, it's written on this fireproof, you know, platinum card that's stored in this safe in this foreign country. Yeah, forget about it. You don't need to go retrieve it anymore.

• 55:59Sam Parr?

  Particularly with crypto, it seems crazy. Um, so I need my nine, but for my will, god damn.

• 56:09Shaan Puri?

  I guess that's the pod.

• 56:12Sam Parr?

  Did I, I meant to be a yes man on that one, by the way, not a, not a.

• 56:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you did.

• 56:19Sam Parr?

  All right, good.

• 56:20Shaan Puri?

  That's good.

• 56:20Sam Parr?

  All right. Uh, is that the pod?