Tech Startup Ideas for the Farmer Economy

Shaan Puri (@shaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) discuss FarmCon 2022, how Shaan got Covid, tech startup ideas for the farmer economy, how to develop value and a sense of mystique in your personal brand, and much more. _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (00:18) - Should babies pick their own name? (02:50) - Shaan gets Covid (08:22) - How to have Slack meetings (10:15) - FarmCon and business ideas for the farm economy (51:20) - How to create personal brand equity (59:00) - Sam's short term rental crew (01:01:15) - Steady.capital (01:06:22) - American Kingpin (01:11:50) - Announcing the winner of the clips contest ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  So the background is this, this guy named Kevin Van Trump. He is probably in his 50s, late, mid to late 50s. And he basically, I think he worked in Chicago on like the commodities, like trading floor. So he like traded commodities, but he's got a relatively thick southern accent.

• 0:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 0:20Sam Parr?

  So he goes to Chicago, he probably makes eight figures trading commodities. So he like, sounds like this country bumpkin farmer, but like, you know, he's trading like corn futures and shit like that. Makes a lot of money. Then maybe 10 years ago, he starts this daily newsletter where he writes the whole thing by himself every single day. At this point-

• 0:41Shaan Puri?

  For like 17 years, he's done that.

• 0:42Sam Parr?

  Is it 17 years?

• 0:43Shaan Puri?

  Something like that. It's like some, almost 20 years he's been doing this, every day.

• 0:47Sam Parr?

  And it makes like something like in the world of $20 million a year in subscription revenue just to read.

• 0:55Shaan Puri?

  More now, more now. I think it's like 30, 40 million a year now.

• 0:59Sam Parr?

  So I've done calls with him and I'm just, and this guy, he's like, oh, hey, check this son of a bitch out. Like that's what he'll say.

• 1:19Sam Parr?

  Okay. So I haven't talked to you in like two weeks. You had COVID.

• 1:22Shaan Puri?

  Dude, I had, I, I can't even explain what I had. I would apologize because I've missed so many recordings. But in a way you gave me COVID because I got COVID because I went to this conference, which is, you know, a decision I made. I didn't really, honestly, I wasn't really thinking about it. COVID has just been so present that I wasn't really like, I didn't do the math of like, you know, if I go on a plane and I go to a conference with 2,000 people, what's going to happen? And so sure enough, I go to this conference that Sam hooks me up with. He's like, Sam's like, hey, this conference is amazing. It's called FarmCon. These guys who run it, there's a super cool story. You know, it's awesome. And I was like, oh, I'm in.

• 2:03Sam Parr?

  And I was gonna go.

• 2:04Shaan Puri?

  And I land and I'm like, yo, I'm here, baby. Let's do this. And Sam's like, oh, I didn't go, dude. I didn't want to get COVID.

• 2:11Sam Parr?

  Well, I can't, I canceled like last minute. I, I, dude, like, I thought that you knew that I canceled. But like,

• 2:18Shaan Puri?

  How would I know that?

• 2:19Sam Parr?

  Because we, we had talked about you going and we hadn't said, I don't know, we had not really mentioned like, I'll see you there.

• 2:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 2:26Sam Parr?

  And I thought you knew I canceled. So I felt horrible, but like a week or two prior to, to, to, that's like when Omnicrom and all this stuff happened. And it's a, it's a farmer's conference in Kansas City. My, you know, I'm from Missouri and I was like, oh, I think that, uh, like that COVID will be there. And I don't know if I was.

• 2:45Shaan Puri?

  COVID was for sure there. It was, you know, the, the, the main attendee, the main keynote speaker. Dude, we walked in. So I walk in, Ben went with me. And so, um, we go in and me and Ben are literally only two people in the room with a mask. And there's like 2,000 people in there. And I was like, ah, shit. I didn't even really think about it. And I was like, oh, fuck, it's here. And I was like, well, the odds of me getting there are pretty high, but I'm now here. So I gotta just make the most of it. So anyways, basically I go to this conference and everything that could happen to get COVID happened, meaning like, it's like, um, conferences in this ballroom. Great. It's 2,000 people in one room. All right. That's not so good. They don't have masks on. Okay.

• 3:27Shaan Puri?

  Cause it's next thing to happen. I go to the gym in between, uh, like the sessions, we were, me and Ben want to get a workout in. We go, we meet this guy, we're making small talk and we're like, oh, you here for the conference? He's like, no, I'm just quarantining here. My girlfriend has COVID, so I'm here.

• 3:41Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:43Shaan Puri?

  I just shook your hand and we, what am I doing? And so then this guy, my gym buddy's got COVID. I was like, oh, great. And then I get on the plane finally to come back. I'm like, all right, I think I might've made it out unscathed. I don't know. I'm feeling okay. Plane gets stuck on the runway for three hours. Someone on a plane in a closed tube with a bunch of other people for three hours. I was like, all right, it's over. I got COVID. And sure enough, I get home and two days later, I get COVID. The dumb thing I didn't do was I didn't quarantine right away, which I should have just done. I should have just said, hey, even if I'm not feeling anything, I've been around a bunch of people. I should just like leave. But I was like, look, I just left my wife at home with the two babies for like, you know, four days. I should

• 4:26Shaan Puri?

  come back and help. And in trying to help, I ended up giving my wife COVID. Then we gave both our babies COVID. And so for the last 10 days, it's just been someone in my house has COVID at any given time. And I've just been literally, I haven't gone to a computer. I haven't done anything.

• 4:40Sam Parr?

  Did Ben get it?

• 4:42Shaan Puri?

  Taken care of it. Ben did not get it. I think Ben had it like a month ago.

• 4:47Shaan Puri?

  So he somehow came out unscathed.

• 4:49Sam Parr?

  Did Sully get it?

• 4:51Shaan Puri?

  Uh, he didn't go. He didn't have going. He flaked the night of. And it was like, actually, like, it's super inconvenient to get there. I have to like change my, my flight has like a stopover. Fuck this. I'm not going. Uh, we'll do something else.

• 5:02Sam Parr?

  So was it in you, but you were, even though you're vaccinated, you got sick?

• 5:06Shaan Puri?

  I got pretty, I got really sick. Yeah. I got really sick for three days. So let me tell you about my COVID experience. I, uh, I got really sick for three days, but it's just the flu with a side dose of paranoia. Cause it's like, oh, this ain't the flu. This is, this is COVID. And so, uh, definitely, you know, fever, all that good stuff, whatever. Then the babies, everybody had kind of the same thing. But the bad thing is like, I don't know how you are, but I'm like a huge baby when I get sick.

• 5:30Sam Parr?

  Me too.

• 5:31Shaan Puri?

  And my wife is like, uh, you know, never gets sick. She's like one of those people just like, never gets a cold, never has a runny nose, nothing. And so even with COVID, she was like, she fought it off pretty good. It was like pretty mild. You know, she was still doing like

• 5:44Sam Parr?

  I think women are generally tougher, particularly moms are tougher when it comes to that stuff.

• 5:48Shaan Puri?

  Totally. But the hard part is when we both get the same thing and I go down like a, you know, bag of bricks and she's

• 5:55Sam Parr?

  Don't complain.

• 5:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. She's just like, what is this? Why are you, why do you need so much sleep right now? And I'm like, I just can't explain. In fact, I saw this meme that was so perfect. It goes, is this guy, he goes, he goes, you know, it's so good that women have to give birth and go through labor because now they understand what happens when a man gets a cold.

• 6:19Shaan Puri?

  And that's how it is. I'm a huge baby about it and she like toughed it out. No problem. So that was kind of embarrassing.

• 6:24Sam Parr?

  Did um, so how many people, how many full-time employees work at your, um, your company?

• 6:33Shaan Puri?

  Uh.

• 6:34Sam Parr?

  The uh, the, the, the D to C company?

• 6:36Shaan Puri?

  Maybe like seven, eight full-time.

• 6:39Sam Parr?

  And, and these, in Amer- Americans full-time and you, and you like are running meetings?

• 6:44Shaan Puri?

  Not all Americans, but, but you know, people who this is their main job. They work full-time.

• 6:48Sam Parr?

  And when you?

• 6:49Shaan Puri?

  Not accounting the warehouse staff.

• 6:51Sam Parr?

  And do you like do weekly meetings with them and run it like a, a company or is it really Sean? If it's run like Sean, like very autonomous, everything done via Slack?

• 7:02Shaan Puri?

  Very autonomous, everything done via Slack. We have one meeting a week that's in Slack. And I just say, hey, get in this channel right now. And we just did it. It was at 10:30. It's like, all right, get in this channel right now. And I just say, all right. Everybody here? And then they just like emoji react. And then I'm like, cool. This is like a real meeting, meaning like, don't go open 10 other tabs. Like when I say something, I want a response within like a second because it's like a live chat. I was like, but calls are annoying. We all agree calls are annoying. So let's just like, dude, like just humor me. Let's try this meeting style. So we do it. I kind of like it. And basically I just say, all right, what's everybody's main priority this week? Like what matters? Everyone's like, oh, we gotta do this, this, this. I say, then I'll be like, ah, that doesn't really sound that like that matters that much. Can we punt that? They're like, yeah, I guess so. And like, we just agree on here's the three or four things that matter this week.

• 7:46Shaan Puri?

  You're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this. And then it's like, cool. All, uh, I tell one guy, I say, hey, check in on Wednesday and everybody just say how they're going on their things for the week. And then check in on Friday and say, hey, how did we do for the week? That's it. That's the management.

• 7:57Sam Parr?

  How much time does your wife spend on the company?

• 8:01Shaan Puri?

  Spends a good amount of time. Like she's, uh, she, you know, she's a stay-at-home mom, I guess, like first job. Cause like, so during the day, she doesn't really work on it too much. Just kind of like on her phone in between, you know, just like watching the baby. But then at night, she basically works from 10:00 PM when the babies are finally knocked out to two or three AM. Pretty much every night she does that and she works on the business and does the designs and all that stuff.

• 8:24Sam Parr?

  So when you guys are both sick, how bad, like who's?

• 8:26Shaan Puri?

  We did no work.

• 8:28Sam Parr?

  You just, like you just have a, a, a, a person who you trust and you say, just handle it?

• 8:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. We're like, you know, just you do what you can do and then whatever doesn't get done, doesn't get done. We're not going to worry about it. We're not going to add a stress to our life that like says this week, we also have to, you know, work is just impossible.

• 8:44Sam Parr?

  So let's talk about this conference for a second because I have been telling you about this guy for a long time. And I think that you you humored me and the audience has humored me and they have like, oh, that sounds neat. But when you got to meet him, did you understand what I was saying?

• 9:01Shaan Puri?

  Dude, this guy is amazing. This guy is amazing and what he's built is amazing. So I want to go through. I have a bunch of thoughts, but let's start with with them. Okay, so the conference called FarmCon and the families, the Van Trump families, that's their, that's their name. So it's Kevin Van Trump and Jordan Van Trump. That's like the two kind of like core principles. That's the father and son. And I'm just going to describe what happened when I got there because it wasn't like a normal conference. So a couple unusual things. I go in and there's a normal stage, like a conference, you know, like they got that fricking wallpaper behind it. That's like every sponsor's logo on step and repeat banner. Okay, cool. That everything's normal. But the main speaker, Kevin Van Trump,

• 9:44Shaan Puri?

  is sitting not at, not in a chair. He's got this like mahogany desk that was put onto the, to the stage. And he's sitting in it. He's, he looks like a judge of a courtroom. So he's got this humongous like oak wood table that he's sitting behind in his thing and he's got a gavel, literally. And he's talking into the mic and he, it's like a free form agenda. So he'll be like, like he would just say something that he'd be like, I walked in and he's like, yeah, that's why I don't hire any Ivy Leaguers, you know, Ivy Leaguers, here's a problem with Ivy Leaguers. And he'll just go on a rant. There's like five panelists that are sitting there and then he'll just like, dude, tell this story and the crowd loves him. I loved him. He is an amazing charismatic speaker who

• 10:29Shaan Puri?

  is smart and very real. And he's very, he's just a very good speaker. Like his style was so.

• 10:39Shaan Puri?

  Likeable. I couldn't, I can't explain.

• 10:40Sam Parr?

  So the background is this, this guy named Kevin Van Trump. Uh, this is all from memory. I met him four or five years ago at a conference and since then we, I've kind of brought him into our circle of friends. He is probably in his 50s, late, mid to late 50s. Um, and he basically, I think he worked in Chicago on like the commodities, like trading floor. So he like traded commodities, but he's got a relatively thick southern accent. Kansas City, Missouri isn't really considered the South, but it can be pretty country. So, but I don't know where he's from. So he goes to Chicago. He probably makes eight figures trading commodities. So he like, sounds like this country bumpkin farmer, but like, you know, he's trading like corn futures and shit like that. Makes a lot of money.

• 11:21Sam Parr?

  Then maybe 10 years ago, he starts this daily newsletter where he writes the whole thing by himself every single day at this point.

• 11:30Shaan Puri?

  For like 17 years, he's done that.

• 11:32Sam Parr?

  Is it 17 years?

• 11:33Shaan Puri?

  Something like that. It's like some, almost 20 years he's been doing this, every day.

• 11:37Sam Parr?

  And it makes like something like in the world of $20 million a year in subscription revenue just to read.

• 11:45Shaan Puri?

  More now, more now. I think it's like 30, 40 million a year now.

• 11:48Sam Parr?

  So I've done calls with him and I'm just, and this guy, he's like, oh, hey, check this son of a bitch out. Like that's what he'll say. And he's like, he's like pointing at his new Picasso. So I've done video calls with him and he's got like this like beautiful like chopper in the background, like a fancy customized motorcycle. He goes, oh, we just picked up this son of a bitch. We just got this son of a bitch the other day. We really love the Picassos. And he like, that's how he talks. And he's, he, now his family, uh, Kevin or Jordan, his younger son runs like this other business. But in the commodities world, this like farming world, they are gods. And I've met a bunch of the people who like them and they're like New York-ish type folks who have like 50, a hundred million dollars and are like traders and they like revere him and they love him.

• 12:33Shaan Puri?

  Dude, so, so have you read any of his newsletters?

• 12:35Sam Parr?

  They're so good. Yeah. Must pay subscribers.

• 12:38Shaan Puri?

  First they're like, you know, it's like, it's like a 20 page PDF. So it's like, not even like a short thing. It's like a long thing. And it's like, he basically is writing about what he thinks is going on. So, uh, in the market. So he'll be like, you know, Bean futures or, you know, rice, corn, these different commodities. He's talking about what's going on is really important for people in agriculture because if you're a farmer and you're making, you're growing corn, you gotta decide, do I hold this corn and try to sell it myself? Do I need to take on some insurance in case the price of corn drops? And should I sell, you know, all of my corn, you know, in these futures, in this futures market? Or should I, you know, should I hedge, but should I take a hedged position against what I'm producing?

• 13:23Shaan Puri?

  And so you have to decide what you're gonna do with your crop. That is your, like, for most people, investing is this like side thing. It's like you do your job that earns you your money, your business earns you your money, and then you invest in the stock market and whatever. They're two separated things. For a farmer, these are not separated. This is part of the like core thing of what you do is basically managing your risk.

• 13:44Sam Parr?

  And these aren't guys that have like a farm that like they just like get by. These are like folks that like supply the corn to like McDonald's. And we're talking like they have turnover of 20, 30, 50 million dollars a year.

• 13:57Shaan Puri?

  Like there, here's that, yeah. He's like, you know, you'll meet the guy who makes all the rice for Chipotle. It's like, whoa, that's crazy. That's crazy volume. And then I would meet people who were like what you call gentleman farmers. They're basically people who don't need to farm. They just grew up that way and they're like, yeah, my family, I like living on a farm. I want my family to have a farm. I farm on my weekends and nights. Like there was one guy, he's a CEO of a large company. And he was just farming for fun, you know, nights and weekends. And that's why he was, you know, like there. And I was like, such a bad use of like time, but it's not, it's a, it's not a bad use of time because it's a hobby. It's a pleasurable thing for him. What this manual work is like how he relaxes.

• 14:35Sam Parr?

  How many people were there?

• 14:36Shaan Puri?

  So it's about 1,500 people. And so let me explain this guy, their business. Okay, so they have what I'll call three separate components, maybe four. Okay, so there's the newsletter, the paid newsletter that basically you subscribe to. You pay a thousand dollars a year. And I think, I believe, I might guess based on some triangulation is that that's making about 30 to 40 million dollars a year now in annual subscription revenue. And he's writing that, you know, like we'd be hanging out. It was like maybe midnight. He's at the hotel bar or whatever, we're hanging out and he's and I was like, so like, you know, who on your team writes the letter? He's like, he's like, I wish, you know, I write the letter. He's like, I gotta go right up to my room right after this. Go write that some bitch. And he's like, you know,

• 15:16Sam Parr?

  That's how he talks.

• 15:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. He's like, he's like, I don't know why the fuck I did this. And he's like, I created a job for myself. He's like, I told my kid, my son, I say, you, you need to, the best job in the world is investing. You should invest. Don't do what I did. I created a job for myself and I have to write this thing every day. But you know, you know, I love it, whatever.

• 15:32Sam Parr?

  And it's really ugly. Have you seen it? It's like, it's not mobile friendly. It's just a PDF and it's like 3000 words with like PowerPoint.

• 15:39Shaan Puri?

  It's all substance over style. Uh, there's a few memes in there, which I like. Uh, it's like, you know, just some, here's some jokes. Uh, and I think that's very on brand.

• 15:48Sam Parr?

  But it is good. The writing's great.

• 15:50Shaan Puri?

  The writing is really great. Uh, and the insights obviously matter. Otherwise people wouldn't be paying for this thing, right? They're genuinely getting value. And at the conference, he's a god, dude. People, people love this guy. They, they respect his kind of like knowledge and his content. And then they just really like him because again, he would say, I, I literally wrote down verbatim, things that he was saying, because I was like, this is just like, this is so entertaining. Like, for example, um, I'm just gonna read you a couple of quotes on, that he was saying. So he's like, I hate hiring Ivy Leaguers because they're too afraid of failure. He's like, they don't, they done so well their whole life. They're not, they're not used to looking wrong or looking silly. You know, go try NFTs. Go, go, go put your hands on the wheel. Go get, go, go fall,

• 16:32Shaan Puri?

  go scrape your knee. He's like, that's how I grew up. And I, he's like, my dad would take us in the car. He said, no, no seat belts, baby. That's how we roll. And he's like, he's like, we're gonna take some risks. We're gonna get skinned up. We're gonna break some bones. We're gonna fall off the bike. He's like, that's how you gotta treat your kids, even if they're smart kids. You gotta, he's like, cause one of the big concerns is, how do you get your kid, you're, you're 60 maybe now and you got your farm, your kids 30, they don't wanna take over the farm or they don't, maybe they want to, but they don't know how to do anything.

• 16:58Sam Parr?

  With the sauce.

• 17:00Shaan Puri?

  He's like, you got to segment off a portion of the farm, let them fail, but let them have the skin in the game. Um, he's like, you know, I want to have kids that don't melt down when the rug gets pulled. I want to be able to go to them and say, hey, things, things have changed. We're changing tonight. And he's just like going on this rant and dude, I'm sitting there in the crowd and I'm like, world star. I'm like, this is, this is such a hype monologue and had nothing to do with whatever they were talking about, like bean futures, five seconds before that. But he would frequently go on these and every time I'm just nodding my head, I'm like preach. Like we, I was at this dinner with them and people were like, it was kind of like these guys that organize this dinner, they're paying for it, but then they, as you know, like sort of what's, what's, what's the catch? It was, we're going to pitch our idea to Kevin and a couple of other

• 17:44Shaan Puri?

  guys who we want to invest in it. And they pitched their idea and he's like, cool. So who's the, uh, who's the, who's the audience? Who's, who's the customer for this? And they're like, well, you know, uh, we've done extensive psychographic research. Here's a, they slid over this thing. He's like, psychographic, I don't know what that means, man. What the fuck you saying? Who is the customer? And they're like, it's, it's not demographic. He's like, it's a psychographic profile. He's like, no, like name them. Do you know five people who want this product? Like, would this guy want this product? Hey, you over there at the table, would you want this product? And the guy's like, no, I wouldn't want it. And the, and the guys are like, Kevin, you're not like being open minded. He's like, I'm trying to help y'all. He's like, I've heard this idea 10

• 18:26Shaan Puri?

  times and it failed. I invested in this one. It failed. Invest in this. And then why did it fail? Because there was no customer for this product. And he's like, trying to give them real talk and it was so good. And the whole time I'm just like, wow, this guy's core business instincts are very strong and his delivery method is fearless. I just, I'm trying to do the impression because I want people to feel like what it felt like to hear this guy off the top of his head. It's so different than corporate America. It's so different than New York SF where everybody's hedging every word and packaging everything and trying to deliver it and trying to make these fucking, you know, like criticism sandwiches where you say a positive thing, then a negative thing, then a

• 19:06Shaan Puri?

  positive thing to like, you know, deliver the blow. Whereas he would just say the thing and he did it in a way that came off great. I loved it.

• 19:15Sam Parr?

  What, alright, so you have a list of a bunch of shit that you've learned here. Let's just rattle them off. I found them to be all wildly interesting.

• 19:21Shaan Puri?

  Let's do a couple of things. So the rest of his business. So he tells me, so he goes, I'm doing,

• 19:26Sam Parr?

  I know for sure his business was doing in the $25 million range years ago.

• 19:32Shaan Puri?

  Right. So that's, so there's the newsletter component.

• 19:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Shaan Puri?

  Then he's like, well,

• 19:35Sam Parr?

  Two employees, by the way. I think it's two.

• 19:37Shaan Puri?

  Right. And he's like, you know, I don't, uh, there's never been a sponsor. 15 years, John Deere comes to me, they say, we would love to sponsor. No. Trust for the, he had these principles. He was like, these people are going to trust me because I'm not going to be selling them to somebody. And so, um, he was like, you know, I'm going to do it this way and I'm going to stick to my guns. And so, and he's never done a, never like run ads to advertise this thing. It's all organic, word of mouth. One person sharing it with another saying, you gotta check this thing out, forwarding it to somebody else saying, hey, you see what he's saying about where the market's going? And then that person's like, shit, I need these insights. And so that's an amazing, you know, that's probably 90% profit, 95% profit, like on that, on that 30 million, right?

• 20:18Sam Parr?

  I think he uses, I like what someone was talking about which emails, like it's so raw. I think he uses Salesforce to send it out.

• 20:26Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  Like that's his email service provider. Like it's pretty raw.

• 20:29Shaan Puri?

  So then the second piece of the business was, I, I think that there's now a secondary thing that's happened many, many years in, which is like, a big company will come to them and say, hey, you know, let's just, I'm just gonna for, for argument's sake. Chipotle is like, hey, we need, um, we need somebody who's going to grow soy in this region. So he's just like, hey, I know, like they're like, you know, everybody. And so he's like, cool. Yeah. I can find you people who can produce what you need. And they were like, cool. If we pay them, let's call it $5, $5 a bushel. You know, we'll make it 550 and you keep your 50 cents as the, as a broker fee. So I think that now produces as much as the newsletter. So, so let's double it. Basically let's tack that on.

• 21:07Shaan Puri?

  Now, the third thing is investing. So they basically had this, you know, they're like, well, everybody keeps coming to pitch us ag tech. They know, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. We know everybody in this space. So they then started investing and I think they just had their biggest hit, there's something called Benson Hill or Benson's Hill or something like that, that went public. So, you know, like the first kind of like you, public unicorn that they seeded. And the last one is the most interesting one of all. This is what the son is doing. So,

• 21:35Sam Parr?

  Ag swag.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Ag swag. So here's the backstory that he tells about this. And I'm not sharing anything privately. He told us on stage. He goes, I met a guy who he like moved into my neighborhood type of thing. And he used to be, you know, big shot exec at some company. And he's like, cool. Like, what are you doing now? He's like, oh, I'm, um, I'm doing this kind of like either this buyout, like leverage buyout, or I'm going to become a CEO of this company called American Identity. We make T-shirts and hats. And he's like, all right, kind of lame, like, so T-shirts now? Like, you've done some big shit. Why are you doing that? Few years later, fast forward, that company, American Identity, Identity sells to Staples for $8 billion. And he looks at it, he's like, what the hell? He's like, that T-shirt company?

• 22:19Shaan Puri?

  Well, the hats, custom hats, like, what, what, what the fuck? And he's basically like, yeah. He's like, who are your biggest customers? He was like, oh, yeah, my three biggest customers are Cargill, ADM, and John Deere.

• 22:31Sam Parr?

  And he's like, uniforms.

• 22:33Shaan Puri?

  What's that?

• 22:34Sam Parr?

  Is that, are they making uniforms? Or they're just making licensed merchandise? So like, if you buy John, John Deere, they're just printing it for, for.

• 22:40Shaan Puri?

  They're printing, they're making it for John Deere. John Deere might have employee, they have, you know, 2,000 employees. They want to send.

• 22:45Sam Parr?

  Like a John Deere hat.

• 22:46Shaan Puri?

  Or a vest with a green John Deere vest or whatever. And so he's like, those are your top, those are your biggest accounts? Like, those are my buddies. Like, I know all those guys. And so after they sell whatever, it's him and his son. They create ag swag, agricultural swag. It's the same idea, but now they go to all those accounts and they say, hey, you want like vests and, and fleece and hats and whatever. And you got, you know, 100 employees in your office in Brazil. You need to send some stuff too. Cool. We got you. And I think this is going to be a really big business also. And so they are doing very well. He was saying they outgrew their, their warehouse. They're, they're trying to, you know, expand and all this. He was telling me, I want to say any of the numbers for that part. He was telling me some of the, just the square footage they need in the warehouse.

• 23:29Shaan Puri?

  And I know from the DDC space, I know if you need that much square footage, you are putting out pretty crazy volume. So. That was amazing as well, but what an example of just being a big fish and not even a really small pond, right? It seems like a niche, but it's like agricultural, pretty huge niche.

• 23:46Sam Parr?

  You know, like my parents are work in this industry and that's why I like this guys because I got to know him is like the thing that people like guys like you and me and people listening to us were these tech folks and we dismiss this, but like literally everyone in America has an onion in their home or a product made of an onion.

• 24:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:05Sam Parr?

  And you're going to buy it multiple times a week. That's what my dad does. My dad sells onions. And I remember people I would make fun of him and he's like, go look in your cabinet. You have stuff that I have owned at one point, I bet. And, uh, and so it's not as small as we think.

• 24:20Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I mean, obviously it's not like, for example, the, uh, the founder of Square, this guy Jim McCovey, I want to talk about him too. He's, he was the keynote speaker. So he comes on the stage. He was also a very good speaker. I'm, and I kind of have a high bar for that kind of thing, but he's, he was very impressive. And he gets on stage, the very first thing he says is, just want to say thank you to everybody in this room for feeding my family. You know, it's like, but it's just, it's like such an obvious thing, but I say, yeah, of course, where all the shit we eat comes from somewhere. And in my mind, this is going to sound super dumb and ignorant, but it's true, which is like, before this conference, I really spent 0% of my time thinking about where the heck the food comes, where heck food comes.

• 25:00Sam Parr?

  And if you thought of a farmer, you probably had stupid stereotypes of like dumb idiots.

• 25:04Shaan Puri?

  For sure. I was like, oh, and in going into this, I was like, oh, I'm going to go meet a bunch of hillbilly like rednecks, basically was my.

• 25:09Sam Parr?

  And they do talk like that. I'm from there. They, they definitely will talk like that, but they like are wearing like a $50,000 Rolex.

• 25:15Shaan Puri?

  And when I get there, they're like, you know, yeah, you know, put options on bean futures and, you know, with Brazil coming on board, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this hedged position against corn. And I was like, oh, wait, y'all are like fucking Wall Street traders. Wait, what? And I was like, okay, maybe it's just a couple of these guys. And I was like, and then I would meet guys in the hallway and I'd be like, what do you do? Oh, we have my family always owned a farm in South Dakota for 40 years. Okay, cool. So I was like, do you do this like kind of like fucking soybean, soybean oil futures? And they're like, yeah, you got to. And I was like, what? I was like, how do you know? He's like, well, we got a broker, but like, you know? It's key to the business. You gotta, you gotta be doing it. And I was like, holy shit. Like you guys are more sophisticated financially than anybody I know.

• 25:59Shaan Puri?

  I could go to in Silicon Valley, I could go to talk to engineers or, or angel investors, VCs. And I could be like, hey, explain to me how a derivatives contract works or explain to me how a, how the corn futures market looks. And nobody would know what the fuck they're talking about. Nobody would know what to say.

• 26:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, now, now, okay, so you've, you've not made fun of me, but teased me a little bit about like loving trucks and farmers. Now do you understand why I think it's so cool? Like, these guys are sophisticated and everything, but like the people you and I hang out with in our, in our coastal, coastal cities, they don't give a fuck about these folks. And I'm like, man, if you gotta make those collide and be awesome.

• 26:37Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so a couple, a couple of things like on that note. So when I was at one of the dinners, they were talking about, uh, it was the, who's the customer dinner. They were, they're talking about something and they, and something came up. They go, you know, how long, he's like, how long we've been here about Whole Foods and, uh, you know, plant based this and oat milk that. He's like, this is still tiny fringe shit. He goes, America eats corn, bread and milk at scale. This is what America wants. They need, how much, how much volume is the whole food? And then I'm thinking, dude, in my bubble, everybody eats like that. Everybody eats the fringe shit. So it was just awareness of like two things. One is like, in the future, maybe what we're doing ends up becoming more mainstream. I do believe that.

• 27:20Shaan Puri?

  But how not it is, is crazy. The scale, the difference in scale of just like, you know, corn versus, you know, the, the non Whole Foods versus Whole Foods is like, to them, Whole Foods was this rounding error. I thought that was hilarious because to me it's like, you know, I, it's like, I don't know where I shop every day. It's, it's the main thing. And again, all this is going to sound really like dumb, but, uh, I'm dumb. That's, I guess the answer. When I was there, I was learning how dumb I was about everything. Um, there were so many different things like that, that I was learning. Can I just rattle off a couple of other things? Okay.

• 27:56Sam Parr?

  I love this. Jonathan, write us in the chat. Is this, is this, I could talk about this all day. I think this is the coolest shit ever.

• 28:03Shaan Puri?

  So I'm going to give you a couple of pain points and/or business ideas that I saw or heard when I was there or just and making up because like, oh, maybe this. Um, so one thing is, Even though I'm like, oh, these guys are really sophisticated. There's no way that they want to be that sophisticated about this. All these like kind of financial products that they have to use for hedging their crops they produce and the insurance and all that good stuff. So I think that some kind of wealth front type of robo advisor that basically just does all the work for them to manage their risk is is going to be like important because every single one of them is like, yeah, we have a broker we call and we talk to him and he tells us X, Y, Z. And he tells us what he thinks we should be doing and we come up with a position we want to take and then we take it.

• 28:48Shaan Puri?

  So that to me felt very old and I feel like if somebody does a robo advisor thing, that's interesting. Kevin Van Trump had an idea. He goes, I want to make a rally road. And I think we've talked about rally road on here, which is basically rally road is like this app you open up and you can buy a fraction of cool memorabilia. So it'd be like a sweet old car or first edition Harry Potter signed book set.

• 29:09Sam Parr?

  It's awesome. It's in my opinion, rally road has one of the best apps I've seen in like the last two or three years.

• 29:15Shaan Puri?

  Super nice app. Company I wish I invested in, honestly, I feel like I've been saying that for a year. Probably should have just done it at this point, but really cool product, really cool app. So he was saying, he's like, I feel like he's like, I think we could do rally road just for our stuff. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you know, just like the, the original motorcycle from Dukes and Hazzards or, you know, and again, I'm all the references flew over my head. He said them really fast, but like, it was basically just, just cool hick shit. And, and I was like, oh, that's probably actually a really good idea because these guys got money and they care about this stuff. And there's like a network effect of just speaking to that audience.

• 29:53Sam Parr?

  Dude, didn't I tell you, so you know how I used to work for the show American Pickers? Do you, do you, I don't, you were not in the market for that because you were in, were you in Australia at the time? Whatever, but you, if, if, if the show was around now, you wouldn't watch it. You don't fit that, that bill. But do you know that that show American, so for those listening, I used to work for the show American Pickers and it's basically like porn stars. We'd go out.

• 30:16Shaan Puri?

  What did you do for them?

• 30:17Sam Parr?

  So the main guy in the show, his name is Mike Wolf. He's the main character. He owned this store and it was called Pickin'. And so you go and you just knock on doors and you go to Barnes and you find old memorabilia and you either sell it in your own stores or you sell it to antique shops or you sell it on eBay. And like the antique shops, they have to get it from somewhere. They get it from Pickers. This guy like would buy old bike, bicycles, that's a big market, or he would buy like a old 1936 Harley for 10 grand and sell it for 30 grand, that type of stuff. And he owned the store and he started filming himself pre YouTube for like five years to make the show popular, pitching it to the History Channel year after year after year, getting declined. Finally, they said, alright, this is cool.

• 30:58Sam Parr?

  He's a good looking guy, charismatic guy. They pick up the show. He gets, he was not rich off the Pickin' stuff, but he was like making a living. Gets rich because he licenses the show. He owned, he's the producer. He owned all the rights. I work at the store where we would sell the stuff that he bought, the, his picks. But so many people would come to the store that basically we sold 30 grand a day of t-shirts and shot glasses. And because he was like, eventually he wouldn't even sell the picks anymore because he was like, I need, I need stuff for people to look at when they're in the store. And he probably made, I mean, his business was probably doing 30, 40 million dollars a year off all of his whole, all of his stuff. And when the show was on, when the show was live,

• 31:39Sam Parr?

  it's still live now, but it's past its heyday. When it was live, we were the second or third most popular show on TV, on all of TV. And we would have people flying from all over the world just to come and look at the stuff that, I mean, I would, I helped run the store, but like half the time I was just holding the door and making sure that we weren't at capacity. And the reason I'm bringing this up is this whole Rally Road for Middle America shit, this is the real stuff. And like buying like these rare baseball cars or whatever it is, that's the fringe. And Rally Road has built a great business on top of that.

• 32:11Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. And by the way, if you were going to start this, I would, A, email Sam and CC me so I'd get to know. But B, I would go to these guys like Mike Wolf. I would go find these kind of like all American influencers and I would use them to help promote the app and help get them, get them on board to grow this thing. And I think this is kind of like you go where nobody else is fishing. I think there's just not much competition to build technology products in that space.

• 32:39Shaan Puri?

  Let me tell you a couple of other ideas that were that were in there. So any kind of fintech for farmers. So part of it's like this wealth front idea, but also just like I've invested in six companies that are all just variations of like, you know, Brex or Mercury Bank. So basically like there's two startups that got big that were in the that were serving entrepreneurs, serving tech startups. One is Mercury, which is just saying, hey, instead of going and using Bank of America or Wells Fargo, just use Mercury as your bank, right? We have a slick interface. It's a mobile app. You never got to talk to a banker. You know, free wire transfer.

• 33:12Sam Parr?

  But it's not really a bank. It's they're partnering with another bank and they just layer their branding on top of that bank.

• 33:18Shaan Puri?

  They're on top. Exactly. But they've done really well. They're now valued over a billion dollars. You know, this guy who built it, Ahmad, he's kind of in our in our friends group.

• 33:26Sam Parr?

  He's awesome.

• 33:27Shaan Puri?

  And, you know, he's great. He came on the pod. So, you know, so Mercury was bank for tech startups. And then Brex was Visa for tech startups. And same thing, not, you know, they're built on top of the Visa rails or the Mastercard rails or whatever. But it's just a credit card for startups and it was taking advantage of the like, hey, we understand startups. So like, for example,

• 33:49Shaan Puri?

  you might be a startup that's raised $10 million of venture capital, but your credit card limit is $5,000 because the bank's like, dude, you have no income, no history, no nothing, no credit. Like, you know, we can't give you money. And there's like, dude, I just raised $10 million. I have the money in the bank like.

• 34:04Sam Parr?

  Or they they won't cap points on ad ad spend because they know that startups spend most of their money on ad spend.

• 34:11Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Or things like, you know, just the fact like, hey, you can fill out the application online. You don't have to talk to a human and it'll be like sent to you in two days. Or like, you know, you want this to like easily auto fill online. Like there's do little stuff that it makes it like work well for that audience.

• 34:25Sam Parr?

  Mercury for farmers onboard.

• 34:26Shaan Puri?

  Brex became a multi-billion dollar thing. Mercury did. And I've been I've now invested in versions of either Mercury or Brex for teenagers, for teens in India, for businesses in India, for Canadians.

• 34:37Sam Parr?

  Creators is the one that everyone.

• 34:38Shaan Puri?

  For creators. I did that one too.

• 34:40Sam Parr?

  Make this for food creators. This it would be it'd be so much better to do this. Yeah, it'd be. Yeah, it's gonna be creators.

• 34:47Shaan Puri?

  That's what we call farmers.

• 34:48Sam Parr?

  That's what we call farmers.

• 34:49Shaan Puri?

  We're gonna rebrand farming as the creator economy. They're just creating food.

• 34:52Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yeah, seed creators. Um, dude, it's so much, that would be such a better company.

• 34:58Shaan Puri?

  And they're spending a lot of money, right? Cause like the, all of it, the equipment, the like, you know, the, the fertilizers. These are like huge bulk purchases.

• 35:07Sam Parr?

  My cousins, I have an aunt and cousin who it's a mom and son. They have 1,500 acres with like a thousand cattle or so. And I've gone out and hung out with them. And so they basically raise bowls to, it's called bucking bowls. So like at a rodeo, the bowl that is like, it's called, that, that bowl is bucking. And at a rodeo, the guy, the cowboy who stays on wins money and the bowl that bucks the hardest wins money. And you can also make money by, if you have a really good bucking bowl, you get money by getting it semen out there. And all the females, they kill and turn into beef. And they make a living doing this. They're, I don't, they're probably millionaires, but uh, they are fucking hard workers.

• 35:49Sam Parr?

  And when they walk around places like during a workday, cause like when you're a farmer, you're constantly driving to get feed, whatever. They'll have 20 Gs on them in cash.

• 35:58Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 35:58Sam Parr?

  Like they just have just like fat loads of like, you just need, or like when they go to the rodeo.

• 36:03Shaan Puri?

  Rappers and farmers, dude.

• 36:04Sam Parr?

  You went, dude, when they go to the rodeo, I've seen them, they have like a, they've had like 10 grand on them. Because they gotta like buy this while they're there. They gotta do this. They gotta make their bet. Anyway. These farmers have fuck loads of cash because they are, they're still doing stuff with cash. So like, i- i- this is an interesting.

• 36:20Shaan Puri?

  It's a great market.

• 36:21Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Shaan Puri?

  With, uh, they're the one, if uh, automation. So I think the, the number one thing that was on everybody's mind is automation. How do we, how do we get more automation? So I think from the beginning, technology has helped farms, which is like, you know, before there was tractors, everything was like, you know, horse pulled, you know, and or whatever. And then tractors come out and it becomes a big deal. And John Deere is trying to do self-driving tractors and everybody's trying to do automation. And so I think if you're sitting at MIT or you're at Carnegie Mellon and you're in some robotics lab and you're like, okay, I can keep making like, you know, Things that I understand that are from, you know, this gadget that like turns off my light switch in my room because I don't like to get up once I lay down. Yeah, so that's what I'm gonna do.

• 37:01Shaan Puri?

  It's like, dude, instead, go to a farm for like three weeks and just watch what's going on. And then from there, come up with the automations and stuff you want to pull.

• 37:12Sam Parr?

  I've invested in a few companies in that space. So it's automations and precision agriculture, they call it. So, um, which I think automation falls under precision agriculture. That's like the, the term, I believe. And it's incredibly interesting. So like you talk about like automated car, autonomous cars, autonomous tractors is incredibly intriguing.

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Right. And there's also like sensors, so just like soil quality is like the soil health is like one of the most important things. If your soil health is bad, your crop is fucked. And so just being able to come up with models where you can go put sensors in the ground and get real time soil health data and alert people, hey, this plot in this area is not going to grow very well because of this. That also seemed like a big deal. So those are some ideas. The last one is family succession planning. So one of the biggest things was like, how do you pass down your farm? Because if your kids don't want to do it, and increasingly, you know, kids don't want to do it, what the heck are you going to do with this farm? And so there was like places that you can sell farms. So I think that was one opportunity. There's creating your estate, your will and all that stuff. There's renting it out to other people.

• 38:18Shaan Puri?

  There was just a whole bunch of stuff around, okay, if billions of dollars of farms is going to trade hands in the next like 10, 10 years, who's going to be in the middle of that?

• 38:29Sam Parr?

  And I think working with, remember one, we had one episode where we talked about picking your customer and we were talking about this company, UserVoice or user testing? Which one did your mom work for?

• 38:37Shaan Puri?

  User testing.

• 38:38Sam Parr?

  And I was like, I think that's so cool because it gives people like your mom, like moms who raised kids and don't, can't have full-time jobs. It gives them work. That's admirable. That's exciting. That's incredibly motivating. I think you could, I would easily put farmers in that same situation. Or in that same category where it would be really exciting and fun to work with those guys.

• 38:57Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, totally. There was a couple startups that I liked. One was called Acre Trader. So these guys, now they've raised like 60 million bucks. I think Peter Thiel invested in them. And basically, it's just fractional land ownership of farms. So the idea is you can buy, I could go on there today and I could put down a thousand dollars and buy a piece of a farm in North Dakota. And I can make eight to 11% a year on that thing. And I could diversify. I could own pieces of five farms in five different states. I do five different things. And then there's a farmer on the farm that does the work, that's leasing the farm from you. You're just owning the land. And these guys, I think the average farm that they were doing was like $2 million in size.

• 39:35Shaan Puri?

  And they did like 80 farms last year or something like that. So I was like, okay, that's actually pretty good. Like they buy, they basically buy the land and then fractionally sell it off. And they, they take a broker fee plus they take a like management fee of 0.75% a year on top of that, just to manage the, the, just to be the property manager of the land.

• 39:54Sam Parr?

  So it sounds like this conference is badass. You, you changed your perspective on some stuff.

• 39:58Shaan Puri?

  For sure. In fact, I actually just want to say, uh, conferences in general, I think that the general rap is conferences waste of time. You'll see that a lot on Twitter, especially from smart people. People say that. I have the exact opposite view. I think conferences are pure fucking alpha. Meaning I think there's so much gains to be had at conferences. Number one, you leave your routine. And that's just freeze the mind to just like get out of the like, get yourself out of the weeds and get somewhere else. Then when you meet somebody at a conference, there's like, just meeting people in person, like it's so, it's so crazy. You don't have to do anything with them.

• 40:35Sam Parr?

  By the way, you know that I met Kevin, I spoke at a conference and I was just hanging out in the lobby and Kevin Van Trump came up to me. And he was wearing cowboy boots and a Ramones t-shirt. And I thought that he was like a weirdo. Like I did think that he was legit, but he was like, uh, talking like a big game, not like bragging, but kinda like he told me his business. And he had, I could, he had like a hundred thousand dollar watch on. And I was like, wait, you're telling me, he's like, yeah, I got 20,000 subscribers. I was like, oh, sick. You guys make money through ads? He goes, oh no, paid subscription. I was like, wait, who are you? So I

• 41:06Shaan Puri?

  By the way, he remembered you. He gave a great intro. When he was introducing me, he's like, I met this guy Sam. He used to work for American Pickers and Boat, and he just gave, he told the whole conference about you and how great you were. It was awesome.

• 41:15Sam Parr?

  And so anyway, I met Kevin at a conference, which now you've been brought into the fold. This is going to influence you in some capacity. You're going to bring other people into the fold. That's why conferences are cool.

• 41:25Shaan Puri?

  Conference is cool. Secondly, go to weird conferences. So if you just keep going to the same insular, if you, like, I actually think that going to conferences that are not your industry is something that nobody really does. And I've always done, like, I went to, I remember, like, a restaurant trade show conference. And I've been to a gym equipment, gym owners conference. And I've been to, and when you go, you just meet a whole bunch of people from a different, totally different walk of life. You see, what are they thinking about? What are they, what are their, um, what are the problems these guys are worried about? Uh, who are, and you, you know, I'm sure out of this, I'll get some investors for my fund. I'll get some new ideas. I'll get, I'll get some new perspective. And it just makes you a more interesting person. And so I would highly recommend going to trade shows specifically, but like,

• 42:10Shaan Puri?

  it just different industry niches that are not yours. And just go, go to a sneaker conference and just be like, oh, what the hell are these sneaker heads doing? Like, who are these people? What do they do? Yeah, I know. It's like a luxury if you, if you have the time, but um, if you work remotely anyways, go to one of these things, spend four hours on the floor and then spend the other five hours or whatever at night, you know, working and just work from there for the week. Um, or if you're young and you don't know what to, what to do, don't just take a job, like go dabble, go travel around to three of these. And you'll just have like a totally different lens of things. So, so I think that's like a hack.

• 42:44Shaan Puri?

  That, you know, I wanted to bring up, uh, yeah, it's crazy. By the way, these guys, the farmers, the best thing I got from them was their little one liners, like, they were, one guy was telling the story about this investment. He lost a bunny, a bunch of money on, and people were like, damn, like that, like, holy shit, you must have lost a lot. He goes, it was a sad day, but you know, that's why Johnny Walker makes the blue. And, you know, and then he was just like, move on. And I was just like, I'm writing these down. Like, these are bars, dude. These guys are, these guys are amazing.

• 43:12Sam Parr?

  Can we, um, are we allowed to talk about?

• 43:16Shaan Puri?

  I think so. Why not?

• 43:18Sam Parr?

  All right, let's talk about. So do you want to give the best?

• 43:21Shaan Puri?

  We might want to bleep out his name. So let's let's bleep out his name.

• 43:23Sam Parr?

  Well, let's talk about this. Well, let's let we'll ask him after this, but we um, he, there's this guy named. I didn't really know much about him. Somehow I got brought into this group chat that you're in. And in a weird way, I feel like I'm good friends with them now, even though we've only texted. He uh, how does he talk about what happened over the weekend about this app?

• 43:45Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so um, so basically, here's his short story. He's built a couple of like products. Honestly, never really had a big hit. Him and his friends have been working on, they were working on a startup or they're working as a startup for a number of years. And they were just grinding, running test after test, and they're really building a lot of stuff in the social space. So he learned a lot of like, kind of the, he like, cut his teeth in trying to build the next Twitter, next TikTok, next whatever, right? And they were about to fail. The last thing they built, the Hail Mary, was they were like, oh, let's just create this like, kind of like quiz app, this like superlatives app where it's like, oh, who at your high school is most likely to, you know, become a professional dancer or like, you know, go to jail or whatever.

• 44:30Shaan Puri?

  And it goes viral and it's called TBH. And it goes viral, it hits like number one in the app store because this, the flow was basically you saw, you open the app, you start answering these questions about your friends, they would text your friends being like, hey, Sean said you're most likely to X. Click here to see what else he said. I was like, oh dude, I'm gonna click that. And then you click that and then it would go on. Something, something along those lines. So TBH goes viral, Facebook ends up buying it. Smart move by kind of knew this thing doesn't have like, you know, legs to actually be the next hit social app.

• 44:59Sam Parr?

  But it made him like, you know, a good, not like, I don't think it sold for what it was reported as.

• 45:04Shaan Puri?

  Reported as like a hundred million dollars, I think.

• 45:06Sam Parr?

  But it made, you know, a lifetime of money.

• 45:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. So these guys, they pull it off in the end, right? So they went from like, literally they were about to shut it down. He's like, ah, fuck it, let's just launch this last thing. And um, and that thing hits. So then he goes to Facebook, he stays there for like, fuck it, for a full four years. So he hits the full vest. And he's, he, the whole time, I don't know, he's probably bored and he's just on Twitter and he's like, he's what people call shitposting, which is basically like, you know, just posting jokes on Twitter. And oftentimes making fun of the tech industry. So making fun of the stuff that people in the tech industry are doing. And so anyways, you know, people like to follow him because he's funny. So over the weekend, so he basically, he tweeted something out last week that was like, "Hey, I'm working on, I'm gonna work on a new project." I finally like left Facebook, whatever.

• 45:54Shaan Puri?

  "I'm working on a new project. I wanna work with a designer. Like, I'm looking for a founding designer. If you wanna like, you know, "build something amazing, work with a team that's built, you know, built apps, blah, blah, blah. You know, DM me." Something along those.

• 46:07Sam Parr?

  And when he quit and announced that he was quitting at Facebook, it said, "I've been at Facebook. They bought my app. I've been there for four years." "It really was just, there was a lot happened and I wanna give a thread on everything that I learned." And it pointed down, down, like the down emoji, and there was no other thread. That was like,

• 46:26Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Sam Parr?

  And it was hilarious.

• 46:28Shaan Puri?

  Here's what I learned my four years at Facebook. Nothing. And so, yeah, that was hilarious. And so people were like, oh, people generally are excited about [BLEEP] next to your thing. Especially all the kind of like venture investors, angel investors. This is kind of the entrepreneur you like to back, which is somebody who you think is smart, who is a serial entrepreneur, so not their first rodeo, but also hasn't had the big win, so they still have a huge chip on their shoulder and wanna, wanna make it big. So that's like a great entrepreneur to invest in. And he's pretty well networked and pretty well respected, so people wanna invest in it. So he tweets that thing out looking for a designer. And then somebody else said, somebody two days later just tweets like, "I saw, you know, a mock-up of [BLEEP] new app. Like, holy shit, it's gonna like change everything."

• 47:12Shaan Puri?

  And this guy also is like a shit poster. This guy, I think he handles like another co-in or something like. And by the way, you've seen the image that he's talking about. He's posted in our, in our text thread before about like, you know, here's an idea. Like, I might make this thing.

• 47:27Sam Parr?

  And if I remember correctly, it wasn't even like,

• 47:30Shaan Puri?

  It's not a business. It's like, it's like a silly idea.

• 47:33Sam Parr?

  It's high-level ideas. Still, he's still ideating.

• 47:36Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Yeah. So anyways, people then start memeing that guy. They're like,

• 47:42Shaan Puri?

  I just saw a new app, a new app for the first time and you know this wart that I've had on my toe for years just went away. And like, you know, the next person would be like, you know, I showed it to eight children who were starving and now they're, you know, they're not hungry anymore. So this goes viral as a, as like a meme on Twitter. I'm gonna read you some of them that were there, the good ones.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  They're great. They were great.

• 48:06Shaan Puri?

  Let's see.

• 48:09Sam Parr?

  There was guys saying like, we're happy to announce that, it was Andrew Chen, we're happy to announce that we just led in a hundred million dollar round. New app.

• 48:18Shaan Puri?

  Right. I can't believe they're extending. I just got to a session with my therapist. She ended up asking me for tips on how to get allocation into new company. And so it just became this like meme in the tech industry. And then a lot of people were seeing it like, what's this app?

• 48:32Shaan Puri?

  So, and by the way, this, this idea, this like, kind of like what quote growth hack, it was accidental. A, but B, really effective and it drummed up a bunch of interest and a bunch of hype around what this new app could be.

• 48:44Sam Parr?

  And so what he did was he created an NFT with like, I think he's so. He's got, oh my God, he's got this really stupid like image for his Twitter picture, but it's kind of like funny. And he made different Twitter images based off of his and 69 of them. And in, if you bought one, you get early access as a beta user to his app, right?

• 49:07Shaan Puri?

  Was that the promise?

• 49:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's the promise. Look at the floor price of what those are.

• 49:12Shaan Puri?

  So he goes, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce Kita's shitposting club, a collection of 69. Owners will get access to quote, app parentheses, there is no app. It is now available on.

• 49:25Shaan Puri?

  And so he links it and it sells out as, as NFTs do. And I think he made, what did he make off this thing? The floor has dropped. So anybody who bought this, I think is probably not doing so hot. The floor is now only point three six ETH. So that's not great, but anyway, it's still a thousand dollars. So 69 pictures for a thousand dollars. Okay. Not bad.

• 49:46Sam Parr?

  So here's what I want to ask you. I want to ask you a question because you have done something similar. I didn't know before you and I, you introduced me to him. I knew him as like a guy who built an app, but it seems like people revere him, like they consider him an expert on consumer apps.

• 50:07Sam Parr?

  Which, not saying that he isn't, he certainly is pretty successful, it seems.

• 50:12Shaan Puri?

  But also what the fuck?

• 50:13Sam Parr?

  But also like his reputation like is so big where it's like, is anyone that good? That's kind of what I'm gonna get. And you've done a good job of that as well, of creating this like mystique, almost out of nothing, right? Not that like you weren't successful ahead of time, but like you've done a really good job of building a brand.

• 50:31Shaan Puri?

  Call it, I sold my startup for less than what my investors had put in. Now, you know, the way it worked, you know, the team still did well and I made good money off of it. But like, that's not, that's the, that's not the definition of a successful business.

• 50:46Sam Parr?

  Because there's a lot of people that have sold their companies for a lot of money. We have, we have a handful of buddies that are like uber rich. No one fucking knows who they are. And like, even if they told you that what they did, you'd have to like, they'd have to beg to speak at a conference. Whereas guys like you, you've got like the Daily Show reaching out to you. You've got celebrities reaching out to you who want to like get on board with you and then done the same thing.

• 51:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, because you can make it sound good. I could say I sold my, sold my last startup to Amazon. Yeah, technically I did. Technically I made money, but like, that doesn't make it a like a huge success. You know, it doesn't make me like a thought leader.

• 51:19Sam Parr?

  I don't think that's the right way to say it because that you're, you're acting like you're tricking people because you have never tricked anyone ever. And I don't think has either. But what you've done is you, you've both done this really good job of creating a little bit of mystique. About, and what I want to know is you can use example and then you, how does someone, I guess I'm asking for myself because how do you create so much of this like brand equity, like you guys have?

• 51:44Shaan Puri?

  Well, I think in both cases, it's basically you put out, you put your thoughts on blast. So, you know, they're the real, the real answer. And by the way, I say that not to make fun of the I think did sell for a profit, so good, good for them. I'm saying, I know that I've gotten disproportionate credit for my track record of success. When in reality, like the best thing I've built is this D to C company that I don't tell anybody the name of. That's the profitable business that's doing eight figures a year, but like, that's not actually why people. My reputation came before that, so you know, that's kind of weird, right? So where does the reputation actually come from? It comes from two things. One is you meet people in real life. So like you go meet, you know, the investors at these different big funds or CEOs of different companies.

• 52:27Shaan Puri?

  And when they're talking to you, they're making an independent assessment of your love, your caliber, your, based on your thoughts. All right. So, so first it's like a hand to hand combat thing. You meet a bunch of people, you earn their respect one on one by, by, you know, when they're talking about some deal they're doing or a company they're building. You, you actually contribute by adding value, by pointing out things or, or giving them criticism or, or giving them feedback on what's really great. Or identifying to them other things that are really cool. And they say, wow, this guy really, you know, I, I got a lot out of this conversation. So you do that with like 300 people and those people matter, right? Because they have themselves influence and trust. So for example, um, you know, uh, like Josh Elman is a, is a good example.

• 53:11Shaan Puri?

  This guy was, he was early on at LinkedIn, at Facebook, at Twitter, at Robinhood. Like early as Sean, meaning he was, and he was like head of growth at a bunch of these companies.

• 53:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a big deal. He's been on our podcast.

• 53:23Shaan Puri?

  And so he's got, you know, people have a tremendous amount of respect for him because he's had a tremendous career. Well, both and I have, you know, on separate occasions, met, you know, met, met with Josh and we, we're talking about our startup. And whether our startup succeeded or failed, Josh knows, look, you're playing in the sort of like the startup lottery, startup Olympics. A startup can fail and an entrepreneur can still be really great. And if out of that conversation, Josh, Josh walks away thinking, oh, this person's really smart. And then they connect you to some other people that they, they know. And those people say, wow, Josh, thanks for the intro. Sean was really great. You develop a reputation amongst people who have a reputation. So that's the first step. Through real life interactions, you develop a reputation with people who already have a reputation so that they will retweet your stuff, so that they will vouch for you when

• 54:07Shaan Puri?

  you have a project or you're doing something. And that goes a long way in the marketplace. So like, for example, I've had Josh or Balaji or different people who have their own big following and their own respect. If they share me or they say this person's great, then a whole bunch of other people just inherit that reputation. They say, okay, if Josh says he's great, he's great. If Balaji says he's great, he's great.

• 54:29Sam Parr?

  It's such a unique way of, it's almost like credibility hacking or something like that.

• 54:36Shaan Puri?

  But that's the thing I think is important is like, I'm telling you how the mechanic works, but there's the thing you can't just, the reason it's not a hack is because your thoughts actually have to be interesting. You have to actually-

• 54:48Sam Parr?

  I don't mean hack like you're a hack. I just mean like you're getting the desired, the process of getting to the desired outcome.

• 54:56Shaan Puri?

  Right. The second thing is, we both created content. So now [bleep] tweets are mostly making fun of people who create content and threads and teach courses. But before that, he was doing it himself, right? He was, he himself was saying, you know, when you're building a social app, blah, blah, blah. Or here's how we grew inside high schools for TBH. And why did I respect him? Because he released this, this memo actually got leaked from inside Facebook.

• 55:19Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:21Shaan Puri?

  And the memo basically said, he was like, hey, guys at Facebook, here's some of the stuff we did to grow amongst teenagers. And I know Facebook wants to grow amongst teens. Here's some of the stuff we did at TBH. For example, for every high school, we would create an Instagram account branded to the high schools. It'd be like, you know, McKinley High, you know, secrets. And that's the Instagram account. And it would be locked. And we would follow anybody who had McKinley High in their profile. Then they would follow it. You know, 40% of people would follow us back. They would request to follow. But we were private. We wouldn't approve anybody's requests. Then at 4:00 PM, when everybody got out of school one day, we would accept all the requests. So everybody simultaneously would get a notification about our account. So they would all go check it out. And then they would all see the link to download the app. And then they would download the app.

• 56:05Shaan Puri?

  And then as they were downloading the app, they'd be getting notifications that their friends are all downloading the app today. And it felt like a big deal. And that's how we hacked distribution into high school. I similarly have told actually a very similar story about how we would go get, our goal was always to get half of a high school to download our app in one day. We did it a completely different way, but I've shared that on podcasts, different places or on Twitter threads. And people read that and they're like, oh, fuck, this guy's smart. That's a really smart growth tactic. This guy really understands growth. This guy really understands teens. This guy really understands social. And so if you just, if I like, it's that quote my buddy Jason Hitchcock told me once, he goes, you say one interesting thing, I say, huh, that's interesting. You say two interesting things, I say, huh, those are interesting. You say three interesting things, I say, fuck, this guy's interesting.

• 56:51Shaan Puri?

  And that's really what you gotta do with content is you have to, if you say three original interesting things around one topic, whether it's Bitcoin or media or robotics or whatever. If I get three interesting things from you, I'll, in my brain, I will assign that tag to you. This guy's interesting, worth watching. And then if other people endorse it and say, this is interesting, it goes even faster.

• 57:13Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is, this is exciting to me. I think this is a fire episode. I'm not gonna, I don't want to talk about it entirely right now because I think we should wrap here. But I, so last weekend, you, when you were sick, so you probably didn't see this. I tweeted out about SDRs, so short-term rental stuff. Did you happen to see that?

• 57:34Shaan Puri?

  I saw it and I followed what you were talking about. Looks super interesting, your Facebook group. I want to hear more about that. Uh, we can save it for another app if you want.

• 57:41Sam Parr?

  We'll save it, but did you join the group?

• 57:43Shaan Puri?

  I didn't join the group. No, I didn't know the name of it. It's called Sam's SDRs or something like that?

• 57:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I just made it in the car. Like my Sarah was driving and I just made it in the car.

• 57:50Shaan Puri?

  Such a smart way to do things, by the way. Like it's gonna sound super simple, like, oh, I just made this thing because you were curious and wanted to learn about it, right? Like you hadn't decided to do it.

• 57:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but it's, well, I have now, but I'm still looking for property though, but I, um.

• 58:04Shaan Puri?

  Sam's STR crew.

• 58:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'll let you in and there's like a thousand or 1500 people. It's mostly all tech guys. Dude, I've met some guys.

• 58:11Shaan Puri?

  Where'd you get these people? You tweeted it out?

• 58:13Sam Parr?

  Just the tweet. That's it. Only that. It's all tech guys. Like it's that guy AJ who owns the the the pet business. And then it's Nathan Barry. It's Marshall Haas. I there's there's guys in there that I've met guys that are like billionaires, like who have sold or rather they've sold companies for a billion dollars. I met one guy who's making half a million a month in profit. He's paying himself $6 million a year off of his handful of. Yeah, there's another guy in there who owns $50 million worth of them. It's crazy. I'm learning all this in this fucking group. It's amazing. So you're gonna have to browse through that and I'll tell you some more interesting stuff about it.

• 58:52Shaan Puri?

  We'll start with that one next time.

• 58:53Sam Parr?

  Does that interest you?

• 58:55Shaan Puri?

  Dude, of course it interests me. Yeah, that's great.

• 58:57Sam Parr?

  It's crazy. Who would have thought about about about short term rentals and how they're crushing?

• 59:01Shaan Puri?

  It hits the highest level of interesting me, which is where you say, what am I doing with my life? Why don't I do that? All right. You raise your question. Your own life is the highest form of interest.

• 59:11Sam Parr?

  The thing is, the thing is, is that like you, you don't need to quote be doing it. You just need to have done it. And there is a world where you not quite said it and forget it. But like you just like, it's not like you need to do shit all the time to it.

• 59:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 59:24Sam Parr?

  And so I would say like, one of the criticisms, not a criticism, but the one of my feedback for Sean and how Sean should like evolve, maybe is to sometimes invest in some of these a little bit more boring, stable things, at least just a tiny portion of your of your money. And like, this is like a really interesting asset class.

• 59:40Shaan Puri?

  Have I told you about Steady?

• 59:42Sam Parr?

  No.

• 59:43Shaan Puri?

  This is sweet. I think you'll like it. So I actually, I think the website is cool. Steady. I want to say it's steady dot capital or steady capital.com. One second. Let me pull it up.

• 59:53Sam Parr?

  Steady, if I just type in study.

• 59:55Shaan Puri?

  Okay, do steady dot capital. S T E A D Y.

• 59:58Sam Parr?

  How do most?

• 1:00:00Shaan Puri?

  Tell me what just tell me what you see.

• 1:00:01Sam Parr?

  It said it's a black screen and it says, how do most millionaires build their wealth? 90% of millionaires invest in real estate. Steady lets you earn passive income from real estate for $100. Okay.

• 1:00:13Shaan Puri?

  And then.

• 1:00:14Sam Parr?

  You invest in. Okay, so steady is a web dashboard for retail investors to buy shares of income generating commercial real estate, commercial real estate, make investments and senior financial reports in our dashboard and get monthly deposits from your investments directly to your bank account. We do not offer high adrenaline.

• 1:00:32Shaan Puri?

  This is the part I wanted you to read.

• 1:00:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we do not offer high. This is, this is really good copy. We do not offer high adrenaline investments. We don't have an app designed to keep your eyes glued to your phone. We pursue steady returns over hype. We are the tortoise in a race full of hares.

• 1:00:47Shaan Puri?

  So good.

• 1:00:48Sam Parr?

  Wonderful.

• 1:00:49Shaan Puri?

  So I, so I read this. So this guy I used to play pickup basketball with, or he was on my like interreal basketball team. He, this guy Dylan, he created this company. I just kind of saw his Twitter and I was like, oh, what's the guy Dylan up to? Like, and I didn't even know he's a startup guy. Like, he's a dude we used to play ball with and has like steady capital. What's that? And I read this landing page and I was like, dude, what is this? I gotta invest. Literally, so I invested in both his company as well as I started putting my money into steady. This is why.

• 1:01:16Sam Parr?

  You invested in steady?

• 1:01:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, because I was like, dude, this, this, this is what I want. I was like, I want to own, I want to have real estate income coming in, but I don't want to do the work of like going and finding a property, diligencing it, underwriting it, taking out a loan for myself, buying the property, managing the property, all that good stuff. So what these guys do is they basically handpick sponsors. So they'll have like guys who have a good track record in commercial real estate. Commercial real estate, they'll be like, oh, this guy buys warehouses in the middle of Texas. And they basically diligence the properties for you. And then all you do, so what I do, I just said auto invest. So it's a, I just say $5,000 a month, just as a starting point. I was like, I'm going to invest five grand a month into commercial real estate. Cool. Over the, this year I'll have 60 grand put into this.

• 1:02:01Shaan Puri?

  And then it just shows me, it's like, cool, you're going to be, you're going to break even in 18 months, but you're going to get your first check next month. And the, you know, basically what they do is they go to that sponsor, they say, hey, you know, you're going to raise money for this deal anyways. Give us half a million bucks. We have this cadre of investors. We come in as one line item on your thing and we become an investor. And then you just like, we, our investors want passive income through real estate investing. And he's like, he's trying to do like the Robin Hood model where it's like. Robin Hood made it where there was no fee. You could invest for a very small amount of money. So it's like, normally, real estate has pretty high barriers to entry for knowledge as well as the amount of money you have to put in.

• 1:02:42Shaan Puri?

  So his mission is like, I want to make real estate as, you know, investable for even a hundred dollars. And even a hundred dollars, if you're earning eight percent, great, you'll earn eight dollars of passive income.

• 1:02:52Sam Parr?

  Is this thing gonna be big, you think? It looks cool.

• 1:02:55Shaan Puri?

  I think it's a really hard business to do because, you know, you have to, it's like a two sided market. You have to have really, you know, quality deals. But honestly, like, these aren't like, like, for example, with startup investing, I don't just give my money to anybody for startup investing because I'm like, dude, are your deals any good? Or are they all dog shit? With real estate, it's like, these are like the property, like, there's so much data about the property. It's collateralized by the property. The, the guy's got a track record. You're not looking for the next Uber, the thousand X return. You're looking for something that's going to generate eight to 10% a year, eight to 15% a year. And, um, cool, like, that's doable. That's not, that doesn't take a miracle. So I really like steady. I think there's currently a waitlist or whatever. People have to like.

• 1:03:35Sam Parr?

  Dude, I just signed up for it. It looks sick.

• 1:03:37Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah, I'll email the guy to get you in. If people want to do it, they should, they should go. I think it's, I think it's really good for people. Like, I've had, I've had multiple people ask to invest in my startup fund, and I just say no. I'm like, if you're not already wealthy, don't do this because this, don't use this as the way to get wealthy. You have much smarter paths to get there. If you're already, if you're already, you know, multimillionaire, cool, I, you should do this then to get some exposure to startups. But I think for most people, getting exposure to passive income real estate is a much better place to, to build wealth. If you're not already wealthy through your business or what.

• 1:04:09Sam Parr?

  This is a, this is a good episode. Uh, I'm, I'm interested in steady.

• 1:04:14Shaan Puri?

  I have a whole bunch of other topics still, so I'll, I'll save those for Wednesday. I appreciate you holding down the fort while I was, uh.

• 1:04:19Sam Parr?

  It was hard. It was hard. I think like, I had to do it with Ben and Ben's great. And but I had, then I did it with Noah and Noah's great. But you and I are, I mean, you're talented, which I talk about all the time. You and I together are talented and it was very hard with, it was way harder with, it was work.

• 1:04:37Shaan Puri?

  I love to hear it. I love to be needed.

• 1:04:39Sam Parr?

  It was work, dude. It was work. And like, I thought, there's been times where I'm like, oh, fuck, I could just, I could handle this. It was work. It was like, I felt like I was working.

• 1:04:47Shaan Puri?

  By the way, if people haven't listened to the episode you do with Ben on the Silk Road, it's on our feed. It's a special, I think it's called special episode Silk Road. I don't know what it's called. Go listen to that. I listened to that while I was sick. I fucking loved it. Uh, cause I've been meaning to read American Kingpin for so long. You told me it was so good. And I'm just like, back to not reading it. And, uh, so listening to that gave me my fix and it, it's like, you know, the best kind of Netflix shows where after it's done, you then go down the rabbit hole and research more for like an hour on your phone in the middle of the night under the covers. Like, that's what I was doing about the Silk Road after.

• 1:05:19Sam Parr?

  Dude, that one, I think we were prepared for 45 minutes. It wasn't a lot, but we were both so fascinated by that topic. And I think you, something happened where you weren't able to come and we found last minute and we're like, let's just do this, Ben. And so we're going to do another one on, uh, a guy called, I forget the, there's another version. There's another like juicy one, but, uh, I just bought the book. I'm going to go read it and like, do it. That's, those episodes were fun and Ben's really good at that stuff.

• 1:05:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. And you guys play off each other really well. The one thing I really wanted to know, cause while you're here, I'll get you. How did they catch him? So you, you had said like, basically they traced his, uh, you had said, okay, he had, he, he had originally posted on this forum saying,

• 1:06:00Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Shaan Puri?

  Hey, has anybody seen this thing? And then also that, um, that they, you know, caught him in the library right down the street from you. So I got those bits, but I wanted to know.

• 1:06:10Sam Parr?

  It was him.

• 1:06:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And, um, yeah, like, I think there was a bunch of details about like the investigation, like that, the, the cop chase, basically.

• 1:06:19Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So basically.

• 1:06:20Shaan Puri?

  Was there more there?

• 1:06:21Sam Parr?

  It was, you know, it's so funny. There's this episode of South Park where they're trying to like track this terrorist and the boys are like, dude, just like, do a reverse Google search and like, like just use Google. And that's what they did. And so the very first post ever about the Silk Road was written from a username. And that same username posted a few weeks prior to Stack Overflow saying, I'm building a website that is trying to do this. Yeah. Can you please email me [email protected]?

• 1:06:48Sam Parr?

  And then they like did a, they like used a web archive because once they, once he, once Ross caught his air, he changed his username from like Altoid to like Frosty or something like that. But it was on the web where like he was asking, he, he used a username to post about, I've created a website. Or no, sorry. He created a username. It says, has anyone heard about this new thing called Silk Road? And that was the first time anyone ever mentioned it. But just weeks prior, that same username asked about like how to build an exchange or something like that. And then they found out who this Ross guy was and then they realized that, um, oh, we just like went to this guy's house recently as Holland Security, because he ordered like 18 IDs with his picture, but for like different states with different names.

• 1:07:28Sam Parr?

  Let's keep an eye on him. And they found out basically was like, all right, whenever, and so they had a fake, they had an FBI guy become an employee of the Silk Road. And Ross or Dread Pirate Roberts, the owner would say, all right, I gotta log off to go blank. They noticed that Ross would walk out of his house and go for a walk.

• 1:07:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:07:47Sam Parr?

  Like they, they just tracked him or they're like, all right, I gotta go to Dominican Republic to do blank. And they're like, oh, Ross is in Dominican Republic on vacation, according to his Facebook.

• 1:07:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:07:56Sam Parr?

  And so they knew that the FBI, the day he was arrested, he got arrested in the library, right down the street from my house in Glen Park. And they said, basically the FBI was do not arrest him. We gotta get a SWAT team. And they're like, dog, he's on his computer right now. We're chatting with him.

• 1:08:11Shaan Puri?

  And they like tackled him, right?

• 1:08:12Sam Parr?

  He's logged in this second. We know we're having a conversation with them. And so they had two FBI agents. He was sitting at a chair in the science of this library that I used to go to. He was sitting at a desk and a chair and they go, they had two FBI agents, dresses, kind of homeless people, go right behind him and get into a fight where the guy was like, bitch, what are you doing here? And the lady was like, fuck you, man. You don't know, like, you know, like they got in like a domestic disturbance. And so he turns his back and when he turns his back, the other FBI agents, one tackles him and the other one swipes his computer from his desk and runs it straight to the van and they plug it. They already had the, they knew that he was using a PC. They had the outlet right there. They turned the video camera on and they start filming them. They go, look, here's the fucking,

• 1:08:57Sam Parr?

  he's on the dashboard right now as we speak. Here's us. We were literally just talking to him. And then they plug a USB in and they like, they get a lot of the stuff out before the computer goes to sleep and is locked. And so that's.

• 1:09:09Shaan Puri?

  How is there no movie? Like, I know there's like a kind of a shitty documentary about it. Why isn't there an amazing movie about this?

• 1:09:14Sam Parr?

  There needs to be. It's such a good story. The book American Kingpin is the best book I've read in years and years. It is such a fascinating story. And it's also, as we said on the podcast, it's incredibly challenging story for someone like me, because this guy Ross looks like me, right? Like, when you hear about gangsters and shit, they're usually like, poor, oftentimes minorities, and like, well, that's like the other. That person's not, you know, I don't relate to that person. Ross was from a good family, a white guy, a good-looking dude, who lived in San Francisco, played on computers, had these ideals of like, I want to help the world. And you're like, oh, he's just like me. But he's a fucking criminal who tried to like, supposedly wanted to kill people and sold more drugs than Al Capone. And so it makes you question, like, what's right and what's wrong?

• 1:09:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, dude, it's so good. Go listen to that episode if you if you like that little bit. But it was really good. So that that definitely got me through one of the one of the COVID fever nights. I'm in, I got my fever going. I'm listening to the Silk Road. I got all kinds of crazy ideas in my head. It was awesome.

• 1:10:12Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the episode. Oh, we have to do one thing before we before we go. So we, two or three weeks, four weeks ago at this point, we did a contest on TikTok where we were going to give $5,000 to at least one person who created videos about using our YouTube videos and chopped them up and posted them on whatever platform and used our clips. So the end result on TikTok alone are hashtags in like, the first two weeks got something like 30 million views. Do you know that?

• 1:10:43Shaan Puri?

  Damn.

• 1:10:44Sam Parr?

  And we're giving, Jonathan, confirm in the chat, are we giving it to to the people that I think it's the cartoon? Let me know. But the first guy that we're, yeah, okay. And it's the the first guy we're giving it to, his name on TikTok, I believe, was MFM Minis. I think his name is Michael. And he posted a bunch of videos, a few of them got more than a million views.

• 1:11:03Shaan Puri?

  No, no, MFM Cuts, right?

• 1:11:05Sam Parr?

  I'm sorry. Yeah, I can't get that wrong. Because there was an MFM Minis as well. Jonathan, tell me exactly who the winner is in the chat. I can't get that wrong. MFM Cuts is the winner. And this person got something like, so MFM Cuts, that's the winner. MFM Cuts, that's the winner. This person got like, 30,000 followers on their TikTok channel in like, 10 or 15 days, millions of views. They won. And then the second place person who also gets $5,000, I think they're called, Tune Pods? Is that what they're called? Say it again.

• 1:11:37Shaan Puri?

  Pod Tune. Mr. Pod Tune. So they turned podcasts into cartoons like South Park style. We've retweeted a couple of them because they're awesome.

• 1:11:44Sam Parr?

  And they are hilarious. They are really good. So the best one was where I was making fun of you for not wearing a shirt. Hilarious, really good. I have a feeling both of these guys are going to end up making a lot of money by turning this into a business and I bet they already have.

• 1:11:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Good job. Good job by them.

• 1:12:02Sam Parr?

  By the way, MFM Cuts, the guy, he is in university still. When I email them, he's 19.

• 1:12:10Shaan Puri?

  I love it. Good job by them. And so can, is this still going? Can people still like win next month? A different, like a different person could win or no?

• 1:12:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we're gonna keep doing it. We gotta wait. I gotta wait till Jonathan tells me we're allowed to announce it. But we are going to continue doing it because we saw in December, our podcast, basically in November, we were like just shy of a million. In December, we basically skipped over a million and went straight to 2 million. And I think that that TikTok thing was one of the reasons why it happened. One of a couple of reasons.

• 1:12:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And did we do this other winner too? This 60 minute thing?

• 1:12:42Sam Parr?

  We'll announce that next time.

• 1:12:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, sounds good. All right, I gotta go. Good stuff. Good seeing you again.

• 1:12:47Sam Parr?

  All right, I'll talk to you soon. Good episode.