The AI App Doing $6M With 1 Employee

Episode 579: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) talk about 3 niche trends they’ve found that are guaranteed to make $1M+. Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Shaan gets his hotness score (2:30) Reddit trend leads to $6M ARR beauty app for men (10:12) Male nail care influencers (12:42) Sam upstages Shaan's beauty score (14:00) Spin-off businesses: Med Spas (16:00) Aging influencers and modern male grooming products (20:27) The story of Teflon and Dupont's billion dollar problem (22:49) Forever chemicals are in our water (26:14) Pfas free products (29:12) A regulatory inflection point is here (33:16) Trend: Assassins with water guns (34:32) $0 - $250K MRR app (35:22) Playground virality (38:00) Trading expertise for social vouching (49:10) Exporting a profitable internal tool — Links: • Umax - https://tinyurl.com/mezh49ac • Acqua Pana - https://www.acquapanna.com • MAMAVATION - https://www.mamavation.com • Splashin - https://www.splashin.app • Splashin TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/discover/splashin-app — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  And I'm like, yeah, I can see how this would work. If this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids or the third on the way, 36 year old me, dude, 17 year old me would be like, this app is now my life. And I think that's what's happening. So the, the, the general trend here is basically that.

• 0:25Shaan Puri?

  Sam, uh, notice anything different about me today?

• 0:27Sam Parr?

  You're wearing a collared shirt?

• 0:29Shaan Puri?

  Do you know what that's called nowadays, Sam?

• 0:31Sam Parr?

  No.

• 0:32Shaan Puri?

  It's called look maxing. Have you ever heard this term?

• 0:36Sam Parr?

  I've seen a genius CEO use the phrase look maxing. Yes.

• 0:41Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So I want to talk to you about look maxing because I saw this app called Umax. And so I download it. It says, are you male or female? I say, okay, male. It says, one million, one million people have done this on Umax. Uh, are you ready? And I'm like, yeah, I'm ready. And so then it says, take a picture of your face right now, and I'm going to score you on how ugly you are. So your boy takes a bed selfie.

• 1:12Shaan Puri?

  Then it's like, hey, you want your score? Pay 399. And I'm like, gladly, sir. Take my money. Apple pay 399 and, um, I'm a 69 overall, Sam. I just found that out this morning that I'm, I, it's something I've been wondering my whole life really is where am I? And I am a 69 overall. I am better looking than 49% of the people, which means the majority of people are better looking than me. And then what's interesting about this, so.

• 1:39Sam Parr?

  Wait, that math doesn't work out. You're not better. 49% was there 110% of people?

• 1:45Shaan Puri?

  No, I'm better than 49, 51 are better than me.

• 1:49Sam Parr?

  Well, why are you a 69 then? Shouldn't you be a 51%?

• 1:52Shaan Puri?

  No, I don't know. Yeah, that, that doesn't make it. 69 overall. Okay. So I got a 69, uh, but my potential. Is in eighty-three. I'm intrigued. Tell me more app. And so the app basically then rates me on my jawline, masculinity, my grooming, my skin quality, my hair.

• 2:10Sam Parr?

  That's from that one selfie of you in bed?

• 2:13Shaan Puri?

  It's AI. It's a two, two, do you take a side profile and then you take a front profile?

• 2:17Sam Parr?

  What do they say about your jawline? You got a good jawline?

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  Oh, dude, jawline sixty-nine, skin quality sixty-eight, masculinity eighty-two.

• 2:23Sam Parr?

  Nice.

• 2:24Shaan Puri?

  Your boy's a man.

• 2:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You know, you're a man when you have to use an app to tell you you are a man.

• 2:32Shaan Puri?

  So what's amazing about this app? This app, uh, I saw it on Twitter. Somebody tweeted out an interview with the founder and um, he's hanging out on the subreddits and I don't know if you've seen, but like on Reddit, these uh, like here's, if you go to the beauty and grooming category, so like there can be a bunch of reddits in here. Number three and number five are both this. Number three is look maxing advice and number five is male grooming with seven hundred forty-four thousand members. And so these are three of the top five subreddits. So he's hanging out in these and basically what people do is they would go post.

• 3:08Sam Parr?

  What's male grooming? Just pictures of pubes?

• 3:11Shaan Puri?

  No, it's your, your hair, your beard, your face. It's your, your, your, your.

• 3:15Sam Parr?

  Ah, that's a grooming.

• 3:16Shaan Puri?

  All that.

• 3:17Sam Parr?

  Got it.

• 3:17Shaan Puri?

  Yes. And so you would post a photo of yourself and you would say, hey, um, give me some advice. How can I look better? Strangers of Reddit, uh, you know, my family, they all just tell me, oh, you're beautiful, honey. Don't worry. At school, I'm too embarrassed to ask, you know, I don't want to look like a loser. But on Reddit, we're all losers here. It's all good. And so they, they post a photo and they say, what can I do better? People give advice. So what this guy did was he turned that into an app. He's like, let me sprinkle a little AI on this, turn this into app. The app does three and a half million downloads. He's making six million in ARR on this app right now, six million ARR run rate. The app costs three ninety-nine a week when you unlock your thing. So I think it's like one of these, like you pay to unlock because oh my God, I really want to know. And then you forget to unsubscribe is, you know, probably the, the reality, but you're

• 4:01Shaan Puri?

  supposed to do a daily update as you take the steps they recommend. So for example, uh, now this part, the first part was me doing it for science. The second part was me being like, you know, it's got a point here. So I click in and it's like, hey, you know, your first, he says, your glow up routine. And it says, first priority is skincare. How are you going to make your skincare better? So I click it and it says, easiest way to improve your skin is limit your processed foods. Opt for meats and natural produce, work out five times a week and wash your face with warm water in the morning and evening. That's the easy one. It says, the best mode is you should clean your face in the shower, moisturize after the shower, exfoliate two or three times a week. And it says, products for you. And then there's like some, um, some skincare product. And I went and I immediately was like, I don't buy this shit.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  So I bought this $20 thing and it's not like their product. It's like just a link to Amazon of CeraVe is like moisturizer after shower or something like that. And I'm like, yeah, I could see how this would work. If this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids or the third on the way, 36 year old me. Dude, 17 year old me would be like, this app is now my life. And I think that's what's happening. So the, the, the general trend here is basically that, um, guys who are, you know, guys, it's like acceptable to be like, how do I, um, how do I look better? And normally the answer was just, we go to the gym. That was like, the societal norm was you could become a gym bro and you're not seen as doing anything weird or lame or whatever. It's like acceptable.

• 5:30Shaan Puri?

  And now guys are like, cool, but what about from the neck up? What, what am I going to do about that? And, um, honestly, Sam, this is my greatest fear come true. And the greatest fear is for, for years, decades, centuries and millennia, men have had a truce. And the truce is this, beauty is all relative. And if you don't try, I won't try. And while women had to put on makeup and wear heels and do lip fillers and then they started, it became a beauty contest. And they all had to continue to keep up with whatever the norms were. Guys were like, look, I'm not doing shit to my face. So yeah, me neither, bro. I'm not doing nothing. It is what it is. Take it or leave it, as is condition. And now as soon as people really start doing this.

• 6:14Shaan Puri?

  It's gonna become an arms race. Everybody's gonna have to do it.

• 6:16Sam Parr?

  Do you do anything for your face?

• 6:18Shaan Puri?

  Nothing, dude. I've not, no lotion, no moisturizer, no skincare routine. I've never applied a cream in my life. I'm not even really sure what you would do if you put it on. Like, what are you, what are you supposed to do? I have no idea.

• 6:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I've never done it either, but since I married a black woman, I now have so tons of like lotions and all this crap like in my house. And I'm slowly starting to like learn a little bit about it.

• 6:40Shaan Puri?

  Dude, you're a muggle. That stuff, that's for wizards. It doesn't, it doesn't work.

• 6:43Sam Parr?

  No, I've been, my eyes have been open to the Korean skincare routine. I'm like slowly understanding what all this stuff means and I wanna use it. But I've never, I've never really gotten into it until recently where I started seeing some wrinkles and I'm like, alright, I think I can learn now. And the problem, the problem is, is that like when you see issues, like you know, you should have done something like five years ago. Uh, but this is amazing that this guy's doing it. It's one guy.

• 7:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know how many other people, but yeah, one guy basically saw the trend on Reddit and decided to productize what he saw people were doing on Reddit. Which I think is just a great, like, you know, one, one common way to do a business is that, is you, you observe an organic trend. And you say, cool, could I use tech to make this more efficient and to actually like ramp this up?

• 7:26Sam Parr?

  When did he launch it?

• 7:28Shaan Puri?

  This thing is pretty new, dude. This is like, yeah, it's not that, not that old. I don't know exactly when he launched it, but it looks pretty, pretty fresh. It's also such a simple app. Like when you download this, you know that this is built by like a growth person. Not a skincare person, not an engineer's engineer. This is built by somebody who was like trying to solve a problem and was like, cool, big blue buttons. One button per screen, can't get lost. Um, alright, I'm gonna take, take a picture. I'll give you a number. Alright, and then I'm gonna tell you how to make the number go high. I mean, and I'm also gonna give you your potential number, which is higher. And I'm gonna sell your product to fill that gap. And like, um, they also have like a chat GPT, so it's like your coach. So it's like, um, you know, you can go on here and be like, how do I, um, lose more body fat?

• 8:12Shaan Puri?

  And then it just, you don't even type the question. You just select from one of the preset questions and then it types out some advice for you from there. Then you can ask it more questions and it's basically like a custom, you know, chat GPT type of interface, uh, for you from there. And the idea is that this is like an overall trend. I said, there's more, more thoughts on it, but I don't stop there.

• 8:30Sam Parr?

  People shared this in my work Slack and they were like, you know, trying to get us to use it. And I was like, this is like asking me to step on the scale a few days after Thanksgiving. Like, I'm just not gonna happen. Ignorance ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know. I don't want to know the the reality. But this is awesome. I guess I'll I guess I'll use it. Are you paying $3.99?

• 8:49Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah, but 3.99. Honestly, I would have been happy to go to 7.99. I'm just saying that out loud. So I asked a friend, I said, I said, under the under anonymity, I said, he I know I was like, I know he knows about this kind of the trend, the space. He's younger, he's more into Tik Tok and stuff like that. I was like, can you give me the your your honest reaction? What are your thoughts on this? He said, he said, well, to most older guys, this movement just seems completely bewildering. Like, what are what are what are young guys doing nowadays? But it makes sense. He goes, he goes, it's a response to men generally being rejected and cast aside. We can now take ownership and pride in how we look. Can you max out your natural genetics and ultimately become a more desirable person? You know, societally, men caring about their looks has been viewed

• 9:31Shaan Puri?

  negatively narcissistically, seen as lame, or even gay. But now the view of the the narrative is shifting where they're just frustrated and they want to be able to, you know, to be their most attractive self. I could see this trend continuing to grow. It's already big in Korea with the Korean beauty trend. Basically, like in Korea, I think men's beauty products are like, you know, on par or close to on par with with women's beauty products. And he also pointed out like a interesting thing, which is that I don't know if you're not a big sports guy, but two of the most famous college athletes not named Caitlin Clark, the two most famous male male college athletes are, there was this guy named Caleb Williams. He was the quarterback at USC. So like, imagine like,

• 10:12Shaan Puri?

  the most alpha male position in the country. You are the quarterback of USC, you know, the in LA, you're the, you know, you're the guy. And he's this big athletic guy, but he would paint his nails. And and he would get, he got criticized for it. And people were like, oh, man, I don't want to like, because he's in the draft right now. But I don't want my team drafting a quarterback who cares about that stuff. Like, I want a tough guy. And people and other people are like, what are you talking about? Why are you overreacting? The guy paints his nails, so what? And then the, there's a guard at Duke. So that, you know, Duke's probably the number one basketball program in the country. And this guy Jared McCain built a huge following on TikTok by doing goofy TikTok dances where he's laughing and happy. Like even if they would lose a game, you know, a day later, he would still do this.

• 10:58Shaan Puri?

  And he paints his nails and like the opposing teams would harass him in the crowd every, every game. Calling him all sorts of names, but he was like, dude, I'm just doing me. I'm having fun. He's like, oh yeah, it's a superstitious thing. I did it once I had a good game, so I decided to keep doing it. And he's like, I don't know, I like it. It's fun. What's the big deal? And at first he got like a lot of negative backlash, but then over time, over the course of the year on TikTok, this guy amassed like one or two million TikTok followers. I think he was one of the highest paid, because you know, college athletes can get paid now. So he's one of the highest paid NIL athletes because he was getting sponsorships from beauty companies, like the nail polish companies are sponsoring him. You know, paying this guy, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to post a simple 10 second TikTok.

• 11:37Shaan Puri?

  And so in the end he had the last laugh and, and he, you know, for someone like me, I became a huge fan of this guy just because he was so unafraid to be himself. And that was, you know, obviously a very, that's a very attractive trait in general.

• 11:49Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is amazing. By the way, I, when I was in my like boxing phase, my boxing instructor, who was like a tough guy and would kick my ass all the time. He wore nail polish all the time. Uh, and I was like, why are you doing that? And he was 25 and he was like, it's a thing. It's cool. It's what people do. And I was amazed by that, you know? I remember as a kid, you would paint like a fingernail black as a punk rocker, but now it's like, it's mainstream. I think, I think it's cool. By the way, I just downloaded Umax and I just took my pictures. I just clicked the button that says, give me the results.

• 12:21Shaan Puri?

  I love.

• 12:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Shaan Puri?

  I know, I know. I didn't even want to do this.

• 12:25Sam Parr?

  It's not real. This isn't real. This isn't real. This, it's not real.

• 12:29Shaan Puri?

  Your jawline's fantastic. I could tell you that right now. At 89, oh my God. You are maxed, sir.

• 12:36Sam Parr?

  Wait, what? My, my masculinity is in 93. My skin quality. No, it's just good lighting. It gave me a 94. My skin quality is not that good. And I'm frankly, I should be in the

• 12:47Shaan Puri?

  You're doing that thing that women do where you're like, no, no, this little thing I bought. Oh no, this was on sale at Target. You're immediately going into that mode. That's hilarious.

• 12:56Sam Parr?

  It said I

• 12:57Shaan Puri?

  Classic hot guy thing to do.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  I, I, dude, if I'm hot, I mean, that's just not the reality. Overall 89. Potential is 95. Masculinity 93. Jawline 90. Cheekbones 87. I got some work to do.

• 13:15Shaan Puri?

  What are you gonna do? Shave them?

• 13:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, what do you do? I don't know with your eyebrows. I guess get them plucked. I don't know. This is a, this is a good app. I'm gonna have to take pictures without good lighting and actually get a realistic rating. I just paid my 3.99. I'm into it. Kudos to this guy.

• 13:31Shaan Puri?

  I have a few spinoff business ideas for this. So I think that, I don't know if you've seen, but you know what med spas are? These things are booming.

• 13:39Sam Parr?

  No, what's a med spa?

• 13:40Shaan Puri?

  Med spas are absolutely booming. If you don't know about them, we should do a separate segment altogether about them. But basically it's like microblading, you know, you get your Botox, you get your lip filler. I don't know what, what doesn't happen there, but it's stuff like that. Basically the optional aesthetic glow up type of stuff that you could do. That's beyond manicure, pedicure and like, you know, hair blow dryer or whatever.

• 14:00Sam Parr?

  Has your wife, by the way, Sean, has your wife ever said that she wants to get Botox? And if she has, what has your reaction been?

• 14:07Shaan Puri?

  She has said it. She's like, she's like, oh yeah, I want to do it someday. And I'm like, are you just floating? She's like floats it out. There's a little trial balloon just to see how it feels. I feel. And, and I'm like, what? No, you don't need that. And I just go into that mode and I'm, but like genuinely like, I, you know, I have always told her, I prefer her like completely without makeup. I think she looks way better that way. And so I've been telling her that for like, you know, a decade, but she's, she's like, I'm not doing it for you, you idiot. I know you like me. Like, she's like, this has nothing to do with you.

• 14:33Sam Parr?

  Every man, every man has had that same response. My wife will say it too. And I go, no, just age normally. You look great. Just be normal. And so I think every man has said the exact same thing about women in Botox. It's very funny. They get this Botox and I think most every man that I've spoke to, they're like, I don't give a shit. Just, just age.

• 14:54Shaan Puri?

  Also it goes like, it's not even just like, oh, you're fine without it. It's like, actually, don't get Simon Cowell face. Like, have you seen Simon Cowell?

• 15:02Sam Parr?

  Yes, they all look like cats, like Shishaw cats. It's weird, man. They all look the same.

• 15:06Shaan Puri?

  It's like they go to the Madame Tussauds wax factory and at some point it's like, you look fine, you look good. Oh, you look better. Oh, my God, you look like non-human. And then they never recover from that. So there's some stuff there that's like a little scary to me.

• 15:18Sam Parr?

  They all look like the ladies on the Desperate Housewives, or whatever it's called, like the housewife reality shows. I can't, I don't like that look. And I think most men do not like that look. So that's a PSA for the women listening. And what was the, okay, med spas, that's cool.

• 15:32Shaan Puri?

  Okay, I think influencer content on this niche is going to become really big. So I think that anytime you have a new generation, anytime there's a learning curve, and there's like a trust gap, and there's, you know, it's a, it's a new norm that's being established, you need your, you need your shepherds that are going to guide you. You need your Sherpas that'll take you up the mountain. And so I think that anybody who goes all in on this, like, in terms of their social content, you know, there's going to be some, you know, 21 year old dude, who all the, you know, 15 to 19 year old dudes look up to, or even actually 15 to 24 year old dudes look up to, because he's going to show his before and after. And I think that there's going to be room for, and I'm sure this already exists, I'm just, I don't, I don't even open up Instagram, so I'm probably out of the loop on this. But I think there's going to be some really big influencers that can go

• 16:17Shaan Puri?

  into this space, because they're going to hold the keys. Whatever products they recommend, whatever procedures they recommend, whatever brands they recommend, that's where the masses are going to go, because you're in a low trust environment, you don't know anything. And so you're going to need that. So I think that's an opportunity here. More AI driven apps. I think, I think another person could create Umax right now, and get the same exact result.

• 16:37Sam Parr?

  I agree.

• 16:37Shaan Puri?

  I think this app can be cloned in seven days. And I think you could just blitz the marketing on it, and you will also have a 6 million AR. That's the unfortunate side of it. I think that male nail polish and male like makeup brands, you know, it's obviously coming. But even like, as a gateway, I think that somebody could recreate Old Spice. So like, what's the deodorant for guys who care about their, like, guys who are like in gym culture, and maybe now even in kind of like hair and grooming culture?

• 17:06Shaan Puri?

  Who is speaking to them? Like, I don't think Procter and Gamble knows how to speak to them. I don't think they have the right influencer strategy. I don't think they have the right brand and content strategy. And I think somebody could do what Native Deodorant did for like, um, you know, the natural movement and, you know, Native basically built the product that would ride on the wave of natural, chemical-free, aluminum-free products. And that was where Native got built. I think somebody can create the Axe or Old Spice of today, right now, and get bought by Procter and Gamble or Unilever, whoever, for, you know, $200 million, $300 million, if you, you just build a great brand.

• 17:41Sam Parr?

  This is insane. And in Hampton, uh, we have this company that's called For Them, and their name is Kylo, and they have a company that makes clothing that are like unisex, and they're killing it. And if you would have told me that this company was gonna take off five years ago, I would have been like, you're insane. They are killing it, and they are kind of pouncing on this exact same niche of men who are androgynous, you know what I'm saying? Like this, uh, Timothy Chalamet. My wife said she likes Timothy Chalamet, and I'm like, what? Really? Timothy Chalamet, that guy? Like, it's these feminine men are kind of having their moment at the, uh, at the moment, which I guess they always have, right? Like Mick Jagger is basically that. Uh, Prince, Prince is that.

• 18:25Sam Parr?

  You know, feminine men have always kind of killed it in the game, but this brand is one of those brands that I didn't think would be, uh, a thing, and it is. And so I'm on board with what you're saying.

• 18:35Shaan Puri?

  So I'm look back seeing now, all right? I'm in, I'm in, I'm in on the trend. I'm gonna ride this. I'm gonna relate to my fellow, uh, you know, 17-year-olds and, uh, and I'm gonna see what happens. This is great.

• 18:45Sam Parr?

  Dude, good find. I can't believe this UMAX thing is as big as it is. I had coworkers share it with me today. You brought it up. It must be like going everywhere then.

• 18:54Shaan Puri?

  Well, someone did an interview with the founder and did a good, like, Twitter summary of it. So I think it was just like a tweet that like a lot of people saw today.

• 19:01Sam Parr?

  God bless them. God bless America. God bless capitalism, right? I would have thought that this was like some Chinese app, because wasn't there a Chinese app recently that was like, here's what you would look like if you were better looking?

• 19:10Shaan Puri?

  Well, yeah, I thought when I first downloaded, I thought it was gonna be like Facetune. I thought it was gonna be, you take a picture, it makes your picture look better. This is like, no, no, the real face. We're gonna try to make your real face look better. By the way, we should shout out the person who did it. AT, AT Pie, I think is that AT Pie? I don't know how you say the, the name of the person who did the podcast interview, but shout out to them. Those good, good, fine, good interview.

• 19:31Sam Parr?

  By the way, the tagline for this app is become hot. It just says UMAX dash become hot. This is, uh, these guys are just digging right at every insecurity we have. I love it. All right, let me tell you about a, a trend that's happening as well. So this will be like the trends episode. UMAX is happening right now. I want to tell you about a trend that's happening as we speak. Before we get to the trend, and this is recent, some news just happened. But before we get to that trend, I need to tell you the background. So have you heard of this company called DuPont? It's a large chemical company. So in the 1940s, they were tasked by the government of coming up with a sealant for atomic bombs. So basically atomic bombs needed some type of like sealant for gaskets. Gaskets are the parts that put two pipes together so nothing leaks.

• 20:15Shaan Puri?

  Talk about a job you don't want to fuck up.

• 20:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, a job you do not want to fuck up and a job that requires a chemical that is very, very, very, very strong. The chemical they eventually created, it was one, it's one of the strongest bonds in chemistry. It's a very strong chemical and this chemical, it's resistant to heat and it's super strong. And so the world, the war ended and they were like, we have this great chemical. What do we do with it? And they start testing new things with it and they go, we got a great idea. Let's make a pan out of this. If we make a pan out of this, nothing will stick to the pan, even if it's burnt food. And so they run all these commercials, they go, we got this new thing called Teflon. They trademark it and they go, this chemical, you can burn food on this pan and you could still just wipe it off. It's the easiest to clean thing. And it takes off, this chemical, we're gonna call it Teflon.

• 21:02Sam Parr?

  But it's, it's a long chemical name, but it takes off and they trademark it and they make it a huge thing. And it's, and it's a massive hit, starting in the 40s all the way up until today. It's a big hit. Well, what they noticed was that there's this subset of chemicals that when you make Teflon called PFAS. And PFAS is basically a broad term that describes like 9,000 different chemicals that are kind of traded when you create Teflon. But what they noticed is that some of their workers working on the line were getting sick. And so they go, we should probably like look into this and test this a little bit. So they started giving it to rats and the rats started getting enlarged kidneys, which is a bad sign. Then they go, well, fuck, let's give this to monkeys and see what happens with these monkeys. It killed the monkeys.

• 21:44Sam Parr?

  And then eventually after 20 years of making this chemical, we're getting to the seventies now. And some of the ladies that are working on this, on this, in this factory, they're having kids that are be being born with weird defects. Like some kids were born with one nostril or like they had eye issues. Like it was a massive problem and they tested these kids and they found that they had PFAS in their spines. And so it was like being passed down from mother to son or mother to child. And they're like, all right, this is really weird now. This is actually becoming a big deal. For some reason, the FDA doesn't call them out on it. They're still able to produce this. Now we know Teflon is incredibly popular, nonstick pans are incredibly popular. But here's the problem with this chemical.

• 22:27Sam Parr?

  Because it is made for atomic bombs, essentially, it lasts forever. This chemical doesn't get broken down. And now we're calling them forever chemicals. Instead of PFAS, a lot of times in the media, they'll just call it a forever chemical. And what they're noticing now is that basically 100% of Americans have PFAS in their bodies. Because it gets in our water. And so it's in all the water in America. Not only is it in all of our water, it's in everything else. So for example, all your cookware, your nonstick pants, that's an easy one. However, it's in all of your, it's in a lot of your clothing. So any clothing that kind of feels like plastic, like a, like a rain jacket or like sports pants or like workout shirts.

• 23:12Sam Parr?

  That has PFAS in them and it gets even worse. It's actually in all of your food packaging. And so in order to, for your pizza box, in order for the grease not to seep through and go through the cardboard, it has PFAS in it. This can of soda, I believe, has PFAS in it because it helps make it a little bit more resistant to liquids. Well, This has been a big deal. And so recently, I think last year, DuPont lost a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit where it says that they basically can't be doing what they're doing. They have to, they can't put this in people's water anymore because they were just dumping it in water or dumping it in the environment and it was getting in our water because the forever chemicals don't go away. Well, last week, or two weeks ago, I believe, the EPA, which is the Environmental Protection

• 23:55Sam Parr?

  Agency, basically just said that this is a big deal and that they're banning a lot of these companies, so DuPont, Gore, and a few other companies, 3M, from putting this into water and that they're going to demand that local water companies, your city water, is going to have, going to have to start testing for this and getting this out of the water somehow. And so that was like a landmark case. And so in my opinion, this is a trend that's happening right now. And I think that amongst my hippie friends, do you have any hippie friends who refuse to use non-stick pans?

• 24:27Shaan Puri?

  Yes, and I never understood it until now.

• 24:30Sam Parr?

  I never understood it either. They just said it's bad. And if you look at your non-stick pans, what you're going to notice is that there's chips in it. There's like little chips from where you like put your fork or a knife on it and it like chipped that little piece of Teflon and it like went into your food. You're basically consuming this stuff, but it's in plastic water bottles. It's into everything. And you actually hung out with Joe Gebbia recently, the founder of Airbnb, and he said that he only drinks a certain type of water. And I looked up that water company, what was it called?

• 24:55Shaan Puri?

  Aquapana.

• 24:56Sam Parr?

  Aquapana was one of the few water companies that did not, they did not detect PFAS in the water. And the implications of this are quite big. So have you heard about men having like really low sperm counts right now and that's impacting fertility? Well, one of the hypotheses is, is that if your mother consumed this stuff, the studies have shown that the men are likely to have lower sperm counts later in life. And so there's all these implications where people are getting cancer right now at super high rates and there's rumblings that maybe this is called from PFAS. And so the reason I'm bringing this up, obviously this is a big deal and it freaked me out as a consumer because... By the way, the takeaway of this is basically you can't avoid it and you're screwed. That's basically.

• 25:37Shaan Puri?

  Oh, God.

• 25:38Sam Parr?

  That's kind of the, I mean, it's in everything. It's in floss. It's in everything. And once it's there, it's there. And so our generation might just be screwed. But the reason why this interests me is there's a common theme of hippie or like fringe people being interested in something and it becoming mainstream and popular in the next 10, 15 years.

• 25:58Shaan Puri?

  Hippies are just innovators.

• 25:59Sam Parr?

  They really are innovators. Yeah, like Birkenstocks are cool now. I mean, like they, they, they start stuff early. My opinion is right now is a wonderful time to get into this business. And I was Googling which products are PFAS free. I couldn't find a decent website. There's one website called mamavation.com. This lady's been blogging about this since 2009. And she does like crazy tests on like different products. So it'll be like which Ziploc bags are PFAS free. And she basically does all this analysis where she sends these plastic bags to the lab and then her conclusion is none. None are PFAS free. I don't have any good recommendations for this product.

• 26:41Shaan Puri?

  Mommavation. Shout out to her. How, how long has she been doing this?

• 26:44Sam Parr?

  2009.

• 26:45Shaan Puri?

  This is amazing.

• 26:46Sam Parr?

  And she has a rabid fan base.

• 26:49Shaan Puri?

  Forever Chemicals in contact lenses. Damn it.

• 26:52Sam Parr?

  It's in everything. It's in everything. And she'll, and then she'll do like bottled water and she'll like measure, she sends this off to a lab and she like measures all the bottled water and she'll say, these are, this is the order of least likely to have PFAS. Or she'll do a variety of products, like jackets or clothing, things like that. And in my opinion, the same way that cold plunge is popular right now, the same way that, I don't know, whatever trends are popular. I think PFAS free or forever chemical free products are going to absolutely take off and they're going to be a thing. In a, in a, in a few years, we're going to see, do you remember Thrive Market? Thrive Market was like an online marketplace for like organic food. We're going to see Thrive Market for forever chemical free products.

• 27:38Sam Parr?

  I think this is going to be a very popular thing because all of the brands that you and I probably use are, are really, really heavy in this. So for example, like. You know, 10,000 shorts. Have you heard of that brand 10,000?

• 27:50Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 27:51Sam Parr?

  Uh, it's just like an Instagram brand of, of workout shorts. That's basically what this, what their product is. It's like this, like plastic liner that are in your shorts. They're in everything. They're in everything. Not to call it 10,000, but they're in everything. It's in your food packaging, everything. And so the EPA actually just announced that food packaging, starting, I think next year can no longer have this. So everything that you order from DoorDash, your Chinese, uh, food cartons, everything. This has that shit in it, but starting in 25, it's supposed to not have any of that crap in it. Of course, there's a huge issue here, which is the FDA has kind of like sat on this for like 50 years and the damage kind of has been done and there's new chemicals that you can kind of get around this stuff that are probably just as bad for you.

• 28:37Sam Parr?

  But I still think that this is actually a turning point to make this trend mainstream. We've talked about inflections on this podcast. Now is what I call a regulatory inflection, just like when COVID happened. You could do online therapy and you saw BetterHelp and a bunch of other businesses like that take off. This is a, a thing that's going to actually get quite popular in the next five and 10 years.

• 28:55Shaan Puri?

  Wow. This is, uh, this is wild, dude.

• 28:58Sam Parr?

  It's frightening.

• 29:02Shaan Puri?

  Not only was this a good segment, you might've saved my life and many people's lives by bringing this. What a story. Uh, I did not, I had heard of PFAS because I tried to buy a, uh, like a kid's bed and I was like, how come checkout's not working? I got so frustrated. I was like, why is this not like purchasing? It's like, oh, I contacted help. It's like, oh, you're in, you're in California. We can't ship PFAS, uh, uh, like anything that contains PFAS to California. And I was like, oh God, how annoying. Uh, what is that? What do you mean? We can't take it, you can't ship it to California? I didn't realize what I was, uh, what I was angry at. I should have been happy about. And why are these in, you know, I guess, why are these in beds? Why, why do beds need these? Why do I, should I sleep in these forever chemicals?

• 29:42Sam Parr?

  Most of the paint you have in your home have it as well. And so it's like a, it's a sealant is what it is.

• 29:48Shaan Puri?

  We need to clip this because I think in, in two, three years, it's going to be, we're going to see that, look, I'm looking at these categories like. So for example, she she's testing, you know, contact lenses, makeup, dental floss, toilet paper, tampons, wrappers, oils, pans, activewear, all these different categories. You know, that's just like a a minefield of opportunity to go through and build PFAS-free, you know, alternatives and popularize this story. The story that you told at the beginning is the story that needs to be told more, right? Like, it's one thing to say, has PFAS. It's another thing to say, do you know what that is? Do you know how bad this is? Do you want your kid to be born with one nostril? How many nostrils you want your kid to have? Right? Like, that's all somebody needs to say. And if you tell that story well, that's

• 30:33Shaan Puri?

  going to be incredibly powerful.

• 30:35Sam Parr?

  Well, this is why, when I read this, I was like, obviously, this is bad. But the business side of my brain was like, this is advertising gold. Like, I'm like, an HVAC guy during a heat wave. I'm like, this is, this is, this is gold.

• 30:51Shaan Puri?

  Is that our version of kid in a candy store?

• 30:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Shaan Puri?

  I'm like an HVAC operator during.

• 30:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Sam Parr?

  Like, it was gold when I read this stuff. And the reason being is, Forever Chemicals, awesome branding. They're already branding it for us. That's a great brand.

• 31:07Shaan Puri?

  I feel like that almost sounds like, I don't know, it's like a slight positive twist.

• 31:11Sam Parr?

  Is that good? It'll last forever.

• 31:13Shaan Puri?

  Diamonds are forever. Oh, great. You know, like, I kind of want it to be a little more dangerous, right? Like, a little more off-putting.

• 31:20Sam Parr?

  Well, I just think that, so there's a lot of research, but I think a lot of, a lot of people actually, when I was reading the research, there's some debate over it. And I don't know why there's too much debate over it. I wasn't able to, like, read all the research, but there's some debate as to how dangerous they are and in which setting. But I still think you can, this sounds manipulative, but you can use fear to be like, just don't have any of it. And so, for example, I remember I was pretty nervous about this shit. And so I was looking just for cotton-only clothing. So clothing that is just plain cotton. But you look at what your clothing is, like Lululemon, I mean, it all has PFAS in it. And so, it's been quite challenging. And if you Google PFAS-free products, you're basically just going to come across a bunch of sub.

• 32:05Sam Parr?

  And so it's still quite niche and grassrootsy. There's not like a good website that refers you to different products. There's this mom evasion website, but like it's still kind of a messy website and kind of confusing and hard to read. They're not just telling me what to buy and how to live my life. They're kind of telling the science behind it a little bit. But I think that there's going to be a lot of interesting brands that pop up on this trend. I know Patagonia is doing it right now. They've said that 95% of their clothing is PSA free or P pass free. I know that IKEA has been on this since 2009 and they've tried to say that their, their furniture doesn't have it. And a lot of people are committed to not having it by 2025, but very interesting movement, I think.

• 32:47Shaan Puri?

  All right. I got another trend for you. So this is a cool story and I would say this is an example of niches and riches, which is a phrase we've said many times. And if there's anything more niche than this, I'd love to hear it. So here's the story. There's a guy named Josh and Josh Dunning, he, his wife is a high school teacher. And when he's talking to her and he goes, maybe picks her from school, he notices kids are doing something outrageous in schools, which is that they're coming into schools and they're just blasting each other with water guns. And he's like, what is going on? She's like, oh my God, I know these kids are obsessed with this game. I said, what's the game? The game? I don't know if you ever played this when you were in school, but it's, it's the game assassins.

• 33:32Shaan Puri?

  And the game assassins, the way it works really simply is you can play this one-on-one or like free for all or teams or whatever. But basically one person is the target and other people have to find them and you have to basically get the target first. So you want to shoot, you want to shoot the target with the water gun first. And then after you've got them, you get points because you were the assassin who not, who got them. And then the, the target moves. And so.

• 33:56Sam Parr?

  First of all, that, that sounds awesome. I wish I could have played that game. That sounds great. I'd love to play the game right now.

• 34:01Shaan Puri?

  This is allowed, right? Water guns? You imagine the mess. This is ridiculous, but somehow, uh, you know, rather than being annoyed, he sees opportunity. Uh, and so he goes, how do they play in this game? Like, how do you know who's it? And they're like, oh, we have this sheet, this paper, and then we have to like, keep track of this, keep track of the points. He's like, huh. So he goes home and he builds an app and he builds an app called splashing. And the splashing app is, um, just a way to like run your assassin's game. And so he messages, I don't know how Ben found this guy, but he's messaging Ben. And he starts explaining, he's like, yeah, I built this app and I built, I just turned the game into something that would just like, keep track of this, like replace pen and paper for this.

• 34:45Shaan Puri?

  He's like, it's good because it keeps track of the points and it tells you who's it and all this stuff. But it's like a very simple app and super, super niche. So he would not think this is how somebody gets wealthy. So he starts texting Ben his revenue numbers and he's like, um, you know, week one, pretty small, week two. And he's like, week three, he's like 40K. What? I was like, wow, you made $40,000 on this thing? Next week, we're like, how's it, how's it going? Did you keep the, did you stay at 40K or did it kind of fizzle out? He goes, yeah, 93K. We're like, what? 167,000 the next week. This week, 250,000. It is just like week over week. It's this thing has gone viral. And so he's getting 5,000 signups per day right now. Uh, and so in about four, in a four week span, they basically went from no revenue to

• 35:28Shaan Puri?

  uh, $250,000 a month in revenue on this. It's called splashing? Splashing. Let me, let me show you that. But you can go to their TikTok. Every TikTok they post, they'll post three or four times a day. Each one gets, uh, you know, 10,000 views or so. And then people are posting this and it's also inherently viral. So not only did they do well with TikTok organic, but like this has something that, that Michael Birch, one of my mentors taught me, which was playground, playground virality. Which is, um, when, when Bebo went viral, I asked Mike, like, how did it grow? He goes, it had playground virality means like literally on a school playground. One kid would be talking about it and all the other kids who were out of the loop had to go home and figure out what the heck this thing was. And, um, similarly, like if one group of people are playing splashing in your, your school,

• 36:12Shaan Puri?

  you're going to have to go get the app to like play or you're left out. And so this thing goes super viral on high school and college campuses right now. And, um, and their content is really good because they'll start with someone running after somebody, the video starts first three seconds, somebody's running after somebody else spraying them with water and the other person's like, oh no. And then they're like laughing and it's like, what app is this? What game? It says, what game are they playing? Is the, is the hook is as if you've seen random people running around water guns, splashing each other at the compilation of someone splashing someone in a car, someone diving under the bleachers, somebody like run, jumping through a window. The trick is they have these videos that like from a marketing perspective, you watch these. And in the first three seconds, it shows somebody chasing somebody else and splashing them with water.

• 36:55Shaan Puri?

  And it says, what game are they playing? And then it says, if you've seen people all over your feed who are, you know, spraying each other with water. And it's just a compilation of crazy people diving through windows, being sprayed with water. It says they're playing a game called splashing. And the way it works is you're assigned a target, you see them on a map, somebody's targeting you and then blah, blah, blah. And so that's, that's the game and pretty amazing to see this thing going viral. And like, this also falls into a category of apps that is not sustainable necessarily.

• 37:27Sam Parr?

  But who cares?

• 37:27Shaan Puri?

  But who the hell cares? Yeah, it's a summer fling and it's a great summer fling.

• 37:32Sam Parr?

  Dude, you were kind of glossed over the fact that this guy just messaged Ben and he just, Ben's just like, what are your sales? Tell me your revenue and he tells them every week.

• 37:42Shaan Puri?

  Dude, that, that happens to Ben like 10 times a day.

• 37:47Sam Parr?

  It's like in Parks and Rec where they find out that, uh, one of the, one of the main characters is a nurse and they start sending her dick pics to like diagnose. So they could get diagnosed with an STD. Uh, and she's just like, dude, my, my inbox is just full of like men's penises asking if they have herpes. And I guess that's just Ben's inbox. It's just all these guys sending.

• 38:06Shaan Puri?

  Cause he's useful, dude, like you, you, people tell him what's going on. And then he's like, oh, you should talk to this person. They will solve that one problem you're having. And then they're like, wow, I love this guy. And then he does it again and like, you know, cause I'll be like a, uh, like two people that don't know each other that we know are talking. I'm like, oh wow, how'd they meet? He's like, oh yeah, I introduced them. I'm like, how'd you even think to introduce them? He's like, well, he's every week he tells me like how it's going. And then he said he was having this problem. And so I told him about this other guy who solves that specific niche problem. And now it's like, you know, working out great. And I was like, oh, you're like a router. He's like a, like a, like a switchboard operator who's able to just like, once he knows what you need and he knows what somebody else has to offer. He makes connections and he asks for nothing in return. And that like, you know, it just works out.

• 38:47Sam Parr?

  Have you seen Boardwalk Empire? The show.

• 38:49Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 38:50Sam Parr?

  So the main character, amongst other things, he's basically a mafia guy. He's in the mob and he connects like Al Capone with this one distiller who can make Al Capone's whiskey or whatever. And whenever he does that, he goes, all right, where's my cut? And he, that's how he makes a living and gets rich off that by just making connections or he'll introduce Al Capone to a politician who's going to help hide his whatever. That's what Ben needs to do. Ben needs, we need to start, we need to change because in Silicon Valley, people make these introductions and they don't ask for anything. Ben should ask for something. He should get, he goes, where's my points? He just needs to start asking for points.

• 39:25Shaan Puri?

  No, no, that ruins it. That's why guys like you and me don't, don't have what he has. He just, he's just happy to be useful. And then value just comes back, dude. There's a, there is a business karma. Value does come back. You know, a few of these people will be like, hey, let me cut you a check or, um, hey, if there's more like that, I'm happy to like incentivize you to, to give me more like that. He's like, okay, sure. I didn't ask for it, but people come to him with that because they're like, give me more of where that came from. And so he's created a lot of value and I think that in general, you want to be like ultra free or ultra premium. So it's basically like, don't make money on every transaction. Don't be a gatekeeper who stands in the way of, of the traffic flowing. And it's like, not let 99% of the cars go through completely free.

• 40:08Shaan Puri?

  But then on the one where, you know, there's a bigger opportunity or something like that, we get to invest or we get to be a part of it in some way. And, uh, it pays off for the, the 99 free things that he did. And I think he's got the right method.

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  How old is this guy Josh Dunning? I just looked him up. He looks like a young, a really young guy. I mean, that's pretty impressive. These, uh, basically kids like coming up with these things that are making very, very meaningful traction as one or two people operations.

• 40:35Shaan Puri?

  Well, it's also the magic of software, right? Like software is so different than a services agency or an e-commerce play. We have a physical product, right? Like these software things, they build it once, it runs forever. Um, you know, they can have three mil, this Umax guy, three and a half million customers can use his thing. This guy's signing up 5,000 people a day because software scales. Software is magic.

• 40:56Sam Parr?

  That's not the magical part. The magical part, I think, is the psychology behind it. And I think, you know, we have a friend Nikita, who frankly, I don't know what's the reality versus the story, but like, there's all these people who he claims are coming to him for advice on how to make my app viral. And he like says, like, he doesn't say it, but the story that I kind of glean from it is like beep, bop, boop, you just do this, this, this, you change this thing to this thing. That's to change this metric to this thing. And boop, dud. Like, where's my money? And I don't know if that's the reality, but he's like, he's like, hey, look, three of the apps that I advise are now in the top 100 of most downloaded apps in the, in, in Apple Store. And it just like, is amazing how there's a little bit of a pattern. And I don't entirely

• 41:40Sam Parr?

  understand the pattern because I'm not.

• 41:42Shaan Puri?

  You're just describing expertise, right?

• 41:44Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but it just seems like more than ever before, it's becoming like a playbook. And it just, it is ridiculous how like, I do think that you could take some of these, the, the, this knowledge and apply it to five or 10 other things and it works almost as well.

• 42:01Shaan Puri?

  All right. Hey, I want to take a quick break to congratulate our friend, Tim Ferriss. Tim's podcast has crossed 1 billion downloads. Billion. That is insane, especially for a guy who said, when he started the pod, hey, I'm going to do six episodes. Just give this a try. See if I like it. And if I don't, it'll just be six. But, but if I do, maybe I'll keep going. And he sure enough kept going. Tim is amazing at the pod. He's a big inspiration for me. In fact, when I started this podcast, I still remember the day I had sold my company. I was walking around San Francisco. I did a four hour walk with my buddy. We walked ourselves into a frenzy. And he goes, well, what do you want? What do you really want to do next? And I said, I think I want to be Tim Ferriss. I don't want to be Tim Ferriss. I want to have the impact Tim Ferriss had. I said, you know, I have listened to so many of his episodes, like the, the Jamie

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  Fox one I remember was epic. The ones with Naval are all killer. His ones with Arnold Schwarzenegger were really good. You know, he's done so many episodes that really stood out to me and, and shifted my perspective, changed my lens, gave me some inspiration. He was there when I was doing just boring commutes. And I want to thank him for doing the show. The world would be a worse place if he did not do the Tim Ferriss podcast. And he's done, is now, this is his 10 year anniversary. So happy birthday, Tim, for the 10 year anniversary of your pod. A billion downloads. That is incredible. He is still, to this day, I think, one of the best question askers on the planet. Which you probably didn't even think was a skill, but it is, of course. And his quote about questions has always inspired me. He says that questions are like the pickaxe of the brain.

• 43:29Shaan Puri?

  You can use a question to just unlock information. That's what he does. He breaks down world-class performers by asking them amazing questions. So, Tim, congrats on the 10 years. If anybody's out there, you're listening to this podcast, just hit pause and go listen to Tim instead. You know what? I don't mind. It is a, it is a great move by you. You can find the Tim Ferriss Show wherever you get your podcasts. He's also got a newsletter called Five Bullet Friday with 2 million weekly subscribers. You can find that at tim.blog and you can find the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. So I'm going to tell a story. I don't know if I can use the guy's name just because I didn't ask him if I was going to tell the story, but I could tell, tell a version of the story. So, uh, I met a guy recently, really awesome guy, became friends with him and he is like a growth expert.

• 44:11Shaan Puri?

  Not like the, you know, Twitter, YouTuber, you know, I'm a growth expert. Hire me for $500 an hour and I'll be your growth guy. Like this guy actually like the big name Silicon Valley products. He was like running the growth team there. And so like, you know, like in the same way that, uh, you know, Chamath or Javier grew, you know, they were the, the lead guy on the Facebook growth team and they like, they fought those wars. Or Josh Ellman did this at different companies. There's another guy who did this at other companies. And so he would describe to me, he's like, yeah, he's like, um, I went for a walk with him in Silicon Valley, like the real Silicon Valley, meaning he was walking, he's like, that's Steve Jobs' house. That's Larry Page's house. That's Mark Zuckerberg's house. And they're like, I don't know if you've ever been here, by the way, in Palo Alto. These are like completely unassuming houses, by the way. They, they're not like mega McMansions.

• 44:56Shaan Puri?

  They're just like small cottage houses in a cool little neighborhood that's open in Palo Alto. And he's like, yeah, uh, and he was like, I was like, how did you, um, you know, get connected with? Cause he was telling me about somebody he knew. I go, how did you get connected with these people? And he goes, well, I had built an expertise around SEO. He's like, I just understood SEO. I had done it at two of my companies. I just really, I was like, I feel like I knew SEO better than most people. And somebody introduced me to, um,

• 45:26Shaan Puri?

  To the guy from Quora, Adam D'Angelo, who was like, you know, co-founder of Facebook, now was doing Quora. And Quora had a SEO problem. They were heavily dependent on SEO traffic. And then like, some Google update happened and their SEO traffic was dying, or was having trouble for whatever reason. And I did a call with him. And he's like, he's like, on that one call, I told him, I was like, oh, it's this. You are getting penalized by Google for this. You need to change that and it'll fix it. He's like, and it fixed it. And like, the growth, you know, went up. And then I told him one other thing after that. They did one more call. I did one other thing. And like, basically, like, the Quora growth curve was like, you know, really impressive afterwards. And Adam, you know, called him and was like, hey, dude, like, can you, can I, will you come work here? Can I hire you

• 46:11Shaan Puri?

  as a consultant? I'll pay you any number to hire you as a consultant. And he's like, also, how did you do that? Because that was, like, my teams are working on this for months. And like, you just pointed at the thing. You're like, this is it. And he's like, well, it looks like there was just one thing. He's like, but actually, the skill is that there's a thousand, you know, needles, there's a thousand straws in a haystack. And the trick is just to find the one straw that matters. And it looks like, oh, man, you only had to move one straw. But it's like, because I knew the 99 other things, 99% of things to ignore. I knew which which ones were not the answer, which told me it's got to be one of these two things. And then I pulled that out. And he's like, that's what expertise looks like when it's done well, is not that, it's not that you come up with more ideas

• 46:53Shaan Puri?

  than anyone else. You can quickly eliminate the 99 wastes of time and try to find the one or two that matter. So I love that principle. Then he said another thing. He goes, so when he offered me that, I was like, so did you go work there? Did you take the consulting gig? That'd be awesome. I bet they could have paid you a ton or whatever. He goes, I had a better deal. I told him, I'm gonna do this for free for you. But when the time comes, I know you're super connected to Silicon Valley and I just moved here. I would love for some introductions. Like, you know, if I do come up with something, I'd love for you to make an introduction. And at the time, Adam's like, Done. Easy. You know, that's the price. Amazing. I got a steal here. He's like, but actually I got way more value out of that trade. He's like, because then when I cashed in that chip, he's like, people would say, he's like, I could get an intro to anybody.

• 47:34Shaan Puri?

  And the intro would come like with extreme vouch of this guy's like the magic man. And he's like that. And Adam doesn't make many intros. So as soon as they would interview me, the person would say, not only did Adam vouch for you, Adam never makes any intros. This is the first intro he's ever made. Cause he knows like to interview me is like, you know, kind of a high bar. So you must be really something. And that was kind of that business karma.

• 47:56Sam Parr?

  So badass.

• 47:57Shaan Puri?

  Coming back. Uh, he's like, I didn't do it in a manipulative way. I just thought that that was a better ask. And, uh, I was like, wow, that's a great, great story.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  That's awesome. That is a really good story.

• 48:06Shaan Puri?

  I want to get him on. I think he's got some, he's got some good, uh, growth stories and growth advice. So I'm going to try to get him on. I'll, I'll ask his permission.

• 48:13Sam Parr?

  I, um, I think today was a 10 out of 10. I feel hyped. I want to like go and learn about some of this stuff. I want to look up splashing. I want to play splashing. First I need like friends that are immature enough to play a water gun game with me.

• 48:25Shaan Puri?

  Adults, we need adults splashing throughout Austin.

• 48:29Sam Parr?

  I guess I'm not going to go buy a water gun, but, uh,

• 48:32Shaan Puri?

  In Texas, you guys just play with real guns.

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we're going to call it bleeding instead of splashing. Um, that's great. Is that the pod?

• 48:41Shaan Puri?

  Well, we have one more thing, one more thing about expertise, and this is also the thrill of the show. I was watching one of the podcasts that I recorded when I went to Austin and the guy said something, he goes, this is a guy who's, who's Joe Lonsill and his claim to fame, I think the title of podcast is going to be, the guy who's created more billion dollar companies than anyone else.

• 49:02Sam Parr?

  Great title.

• 49:02Shaan Puri?

  Just an incredible claim to fame and an incredible title. And so he goes, um, he was saying something and he goes, he almost paused me while I was saying something. He goes, oh, by the way, that's always a good idea. I was like, what, what is he talking about? And he, what he's saying was, he goes, anytime a company that was successful doing one thing. Had to build internally their own tool. That's not their product, but they like hired engineers. That engineer's working on something and they were like, that's the tool that like some internal homebrew tool that they used. It was like part of their secret sauce for their success, but it wasn't their main product. He goes, that's always a good idea, which is basically to, I call this the export framework. You export something that was built internally and you make a product that's available to all.

• 49:46Shaan Puri?

  And so he was talking about this, for example, with Palantir. He started Palantir, now a $50 billion company. Palantir, you know, the genesis of it was he was an intern at PayPal, fighting fraud. And so at the time PayPal, because PayPal was getting popular, basically what he said would happen. He goes, somebody would, you know, somebody, you know, some cashier at a gas station is having a bad day would, would kind of steal your credit card number and they could go sell, you know, 50 of these on the black market to, to the Russians, Russians would pay a hundred dollars a pop for these credit cards, stolen credit cards. And then they would go charge up this thing and then, then the customer would be like, I didn't buy any of this stuff. And so they would charge it back is like PayPal was left holding the bag of that chargeback. And that to the tune of like millions of dollars, it would have put us out of business. It put out, most of our competitors went out of business for this one reason.

• 50:31Shaan Puri?

  And so fighting fraud was like a really important thing. And we had to build a set of tools to be able to do like data, data detection, fraud detection and like fight the bad guys. He's like, and then when I started Palantir, I was like, what if we took all that fight the bad guy stuff? And we made it available to the government to be able to fight the bad guys for counterterrorism and stuff. Cause this was after nine 11. And so he was giving that example of like, anytime you see the homebrew tool that spins out, becomes a product. That's a successful business. Well, today's sponsor is exactly that, and that is Beehive. So Beehive was basically

• 51:01Sam Parr?

  Great, great plug, great plug.

• 51:04Shaan Puri?

  The thrill of the show, I guarantee you that nobody does ad reads like I do ad reads, right? I'm going to teach you something, tell you a story and then I'm going to give you the value to

• 51:10Sam Parr?

  That's a great thrill and I'll give you the show.

• 51:13Shaan Puri?

  Now the show part is these guys were inside of Morning Brew, which is probably, would you say it's probably the most successful newsletter business outside of Agora, right? Like the most successful mainstream newsletter business.

• 51:22Sam Parr?

  Nearly a hundred million dollars a year business.

• 51:24Shaan Puri?

  Hundred million dollar business grew really fast, you know, and both of us have tried building newsletter businesses. And these guys built like grew faster than both of, both of us. We, we were successful, but they were even more successful. They grew their newsletter about five million subscribers. And, and the secret sauce of how they grew their newsletter, their growth engine was this internal tool that they built, which let them write a, write a newsletter easily, like format it, get it all ready to go. Baked in the growth stuff. So like referrals and you know, like recommendation things. So at the bottom of an email, when it's like, hey, send this to a friend and you can get a free sticker, a free mug, a free T-shirt or whatever. That all of those little tools that they built internally, this guy Tyler basically spun out and created Beehive to do that independently. So now anybody

• 52:06Shaan Puri?

  like me, when I built the Milk Road, I didn't have to build any of that shit. Milk, uh, Morning Brew has like, you know, I don't know how many hundreds of employees. We didn't need any of that shit. Literally it was me, Ben and one other guy. Like the three of us built a newsletter that we sold for millions of dollars because we could just use Beehive off the shelf. And so if you're looking to build a newsletter, either personally, or you want to start a newsletter business like me and Sam did, Beehive is the way to go. They basically took all the secret sauce that was inside Morning Brew, turned it into a product that you can use off the shelf on day one.

• 52:36Sam Parr?

  10 out of 10. I was, I was thrilled. I just imagined Joe Lonsdale just holding up his finger to your lips and saying, shut up, just shut up, just shut the fuck out. Beehive.

• 52:49Shaan Puri?

  It's hilarious too, because uh, I'm trying to connect with Joe and he's like this billionaire who's created like, you know, spy technology for the government, 50 billion dollar company, you know, tools that all the asset wealth managers use, Adipar, a $3 billion company, OpenGov, which sold to governments and basically sold for 1.8 billion. He's, he's got a, uh, like weapons company that builds like EMP pulses that will, you know, knock drones out of the sky, war tools. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, me too, man. I'm an entrepreneur too. Just like you, me and you, same, same. Um, yeah, I built the newsletter company. Yeah. I did it like kind of part-time for a year and then sold it. Um, not for a billion dollars, just like a few million. It was great though. Yeah. And then, uh, what else do we got? Podcast. Talked to my buddy Sam

• 53:32Shaan Puri?

  a couple of times a week. That's pretty dope. Um, working hard out here, man.

• 53:37Sam Parr?

  All while you're wearing camouflage sweatpants.

• 53:41Sam Parr?

  You and I are the same.

• 53:42Shaan Puri?

  While we were at a cold plunge together and I was just like also hyperventilating and being like, how long do guys like this stay in the cold plunge? I think it's longer than I'm used to, but I cannot, I cannot get out of this plunge until he does. I die an icicle or I live, you know, with all the glory of this.

• 53:59Sam Parr?

  And you're like, oh, you did a multi, multiple billion dollar companies. I got a 69 on you hot. So.

• 54:11Sam Parr?

  What'd you get?

• 54:13Shaan Puri?

  So are you into look maxing? No, I didn't think so. I just was curious if that was a priority for you.

• 54:18Sam Parr?

  That's a, that's a typical 49 percenter answer, bro.

• 54:23Sam Parr?

  So check it out. Beehive, that's what two I's by the way.

• 54:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 54:27Sam Parr?

  Kind of hard to spell. H I I V. They're H I. Oh, yeah, that's weird.

• 54:32Shaan Puri?

  By the way, they, they give, they post their revenue. I don't know what, let me.

• 54:37Sam Parr?

  Dude, Tyler, the CEO, for the next time we give the shout out, we'll, we'll focus on Tyler. Tyler's a great CEO. I thought he was a loose cannon and I think he sort of is.

• 54:46Shaan Puri?

  No, he's just good looking. That's what you thought. You were like, ah, nobody this good looking and cool is going to be a good operator. He actually is.

• 54:51Sam Parr?

  He's just, he, I thought he was just too lucific and then I realized that his aggressiveness is actually awesome. And I, I did not invest in them and it's one of the things that I'm like, oh, I should have done that.

• 55:03Shaan Puri?

  It's, I almost didn't invest. So I did, I did end up investing. I actually, I think I passed the first time and so I, what I did was I passed the first time because I was like, ah, I don't know how big this can get. And then we started using it for the milk road and I use it for my personal newsletter. So I became a customer first and then I would just see like anytime we'd have a problem, they were so fast to fix it and they kept releasing stuff. I was like, oh, okay. I called him back. I was like, I want to invest. He's like, well, you, you changed your mind. You think the market's bigger? I was like, no, actually I think the market's the same size, but you guys are like relentlessly shipping and I'd rather just bet on somebody like that than not bet on them. And like, you know, I'm often wrong about market size. Markets can trick you. Markets can look small and be bigger. But founders or teams that operate like this, that's like always a good signal.

• 55:46Shaan Puri?

  And so I'm like, let me just bet on the known versus not bet because of this hypothetical unknown thing. But what, but I almost didn't because when I did the call, he had a surfboard behind him. And I was like, ain't no way I'm going to invest in a CEO who surfs regularly enough with the surfboards behind him in a, in his room. But I was wrong.

• 56:05Sam Parr?

  Next time we talk about him, we have like four or five more stories about Tyler. Tyler's an interesting guy and. I respect the hell out of him. He's a good entrepreneur.

• 56:13Shaan Puri?

  I want to see what their revenue is at right now. So they

• 56:17Sam Parr?

  He tweeted, I think it's at like 12 million, isn't it?

• 56:19Shaan Puri?

  Dude, look at this graph. We got to put this up here. 7 million in ARR was February 1st, so two months ago. And this graph is literally shaped like this. It's pretty crazy. And he goes, this doesn't include some revenue from the ad network. Oh no, March 19th, quickly approaching 10 million ARR. So they're probably just under 10 million ARR now.

• 56:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's an amazing company. They've taken off. Is it just Beehive.com or is it like a Beehive.com slash?

• 56:43Shaan Puri?

  No, it's just Beehive.com. Go there if you want to start a newsletter.

• 56:46Sam Parr?

  All right. Is that the pod?

• 56:48Shaan Puri?

  That's the pod.

• 56:49Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the pod.