#22 - Cloud Kitchens, Kava Bars & Religious Products

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. This week they talk about food joints that no one visits and only serves people through delivery, bars that get you semi high, making products from the largest free IP: religion, businesses that eliminate choice, non-alcoholic beverages, profiting off book summaries and fixing dog owner issues. If you enjoy this and would like a weekly briefing on super in-depth research in these trends, Sam has offered a discount on The Hustle's Trends newsletter, go to https://trends.co/million. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Okay, million dollar brainstorm. We're back. You've been in Hawaii. Tell us about that.

• 0:03Sam Parr?

  If you guys Google lobby conference, you'll see it. A lot of people write about it as if it's this douchey event, which is definitely checks the boxes from the outside of being that.

• 0:12Shaan Puri?

  Okay, what's douchey about it?

• 0:14Sam Parr?

  It's expensive and it's in Hawaii and it's a bunch of tech people. I don't think that's douchey, but it definitely checks many people's boxes.

• 0:19Shaan Puri?

  And it's like exclusive, right? It's like, I think fifty people.

• 0:21Sam Parr?

  It's like invite only.

• 0:22Shaan Puri?

  A hundred people, yeah, it's a small number.

• 0:24Sam Parr?

  It's like an invite only thing. So it definitely checks all the boxes to fit that stereotype. It's called lobby conference.

• 0:29Shaan Puri?

  So how'd you get invited?

• 0:30Sam Parr?

  One of my investors, Narendra, he referred me. Okay, so it's this, you can Google it to learn about it, but it's this event hosted by David Horneck, one of the partners at August Capital VC, a hundred fifty or two hundred people, invite only. They've done it for thirteen years now. And the guys who were there on the first year, many of them are still there. And it's like internet OGs, like Tony Shea, founder of Zappos was there. Kevin Rose.

• 0:51Shaan Puri?

  Kevin Rose, dig.

• 0:52Sam Parr?

  I had dinner and hung out most of the time with Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.

• 0:55Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 0:55Sam Parr?

  Like all these guys who were like maybe my age now, but are in their forties.

• 1:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:00Sam Parr?

  Who were still trying to have a hit and have now had some hits. It was awesome. It was great. Two takeaways.

• 1:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 1:08Sam Parr?

  Number one, Gen Z totally, they're fucked. We talked about like, there's this one.

• 1:13Shaan Puri?

  Were they there? I don't think they were.

• 1:15Sam Parr?

  No, there was like, we had these like little meetups about like, and we would talk about interesting things. Gen Z, I didn't realize that they're having very little sex. They're doing a lot of drugs, but they're not drinking. And a lot of them have depression and mental.

• 1:27Shaan Puri?

  Gen Z is like twenty one and younger right now?

• 1:30Sam Parr?

  Uh, maybe four, twenty four.

• 1:31Shaan Puri?

  Twenty four and younger, okay.

• 1:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the suicide rate's high, the depression rate is like astronomical, a lot of issues.

• 1:37Shaan Puri?

  Who was talking about this? Who was like the Gen Z expert?

• 1:39Sam Parr?

  One woman who runs like a research firm for Gen Z. So it was very much like, well, here's what the cool kids think.

• 1:43Shaan Puri?

  Right, right.

• 1:44Sam Parr?

  I realized at that time, I'm like an old guy who's like, well, how do they use?

• 1:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Old people talking about young people.

• 1:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 1:50Shaan Puri?

  It never fails.

• 1:51Sam Parr?

  Funny, I was like, I was like the youngest guy there. People had Gen Z children and they were talking about it.

• 1:56Shaan Puri?

  Right, right. Okay, fair enough. All right, so that was one takeaway. What's the second one?

• 1:59Sam Parr?

  The second thing, there was tons of like rich ballers there, like really wealthy. And a lot of them seemed just horribly like down, depressed and not like that.

• 2:07Shaan Puri?

  If you're young or if you're rich, you're depressed. That's what I'm learning.

• 2:10Sam Parr?

  Well, like, and this is something that's kind of like, I can't believe I'm saying this because everyone who's young hears this and no one believes it, which is that money will not make you as happy as you think it will.

• 2:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 2:20Sam Parr?

  I saw this firsthand very clearly.

• 2:21Shaan Puri?

  What made you say so? They're at this conference and they were just kind of recluse or what made you feel this or they were sharing like, look, I'm not feeling great.

• 2:28Sam Parr?

  First of all, yes, a lot of people, there was this one gathering, it was like a bunch of small sessions and people would complain about stuff like, say, here's what I'm struggling with. And you think that these people who have it all figured out, they definitely don't.

• 2:38Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 2:38Sam Parr?

  People brought their families and you see like the interactions that people have with their husbands or wives or kids. And it's like this guy on the surface appears like this baller, but he just has, he's going through the normal bullshit that every family man is going through.

• 2:50Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, I have a, I have a friend who's, I don't know how wealthy he is, but close to a billionaire. And he basically, he was talking about this, how he was feeling this way. And he's like, the problem is no one wants to hear about an unhappy billionaire. He's like, you will get zero listeners to that, like, talk. He's like, so you end up just sort of bottling it up and going on your way.

• 3:06Sam Parr?

  What you're saying and what happened this past weekend, and I have a few friends that just sold, your friends too, just sold big companies. And I was with one of them and we went to the ATM because he was like, wanted to have like a celebratory where he like printed out his receipt.

• 3:19Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 3:19Sam Parr?

  $200 million on the ATM receipt. Wild, a wild amount. And then we went and had dinner at like a Whole Foods, like really cheap. Yeah, like we went to a grocery store, I think, and just ate on the patio and he was stressed out. He was like, what am I going to do with this? And I was like, dude, when are people going to like chill and see?

• 3:36Shaan Puri?

  There's a Jim Carrey quote where he goes, I wish everybody could be rich and famous so they would know that that's not the answer.

• 3:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's depressing.

• 3:42Shaan Puri?

  This podcast is like all about building successful businesses called million dollar everything. I feel like half the conversations are like, yeah, money's not the thing.

• 3:50Sam Parr?

  I think we need to reiterate that, which is that it's not, it's just like if you're training for an event or training for weightlifting, you are no different from 150 pounds to 300 pounds in terms of like bench press.

• 4:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 4:02Sam Parr?

  It's just the act of pursuing that is.

• 4:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the act of pursuing is fulfilling in itself. And the other thing is when you have money, you have freedom and, but you don't need.

• 4:11Sam Parr?

  You need less than you think.

• 4:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you need less than you think, but that freedom is very powerful. Okay, so let's do it. Ideas. What have we got? We promised the people some ideas, talking about different trends, talking about. Different ideas that we found interesting. You want to go first or me?

• 4:22Sam Parr?

  You.

• 4:22Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool. All right, I have one. Have you heard of made bathrooms?

• 4:25Sam Parr?

  No.

• 4:26Shaan Puri?

  Okay, there's things called made renovations. All right, so I saw this ad on Facebook. And basically, it was like a before and after. And before after is, in my opinion, the best sales pitch I've ever seen, always, right? If you split screen on the left, it's like this is you before, on the right, this is you after. And so the left and right in this one were, left was like a normal, ordinary, kind of crappy looking bathroom. And on the right was like this really slick looking bathroom. And it basically said, we will come renovate your bathroom for X dollars and it'll look exactly like this. I was like, this is interesting. Like, I've never seen somebody advertise a bathroom renovation on Facebook, so I clicked it. And basically, what this company does is they have three stock designs, and they're all look great. And so there's like a super modern one, there's kind of an old school Victorian looking one, but again, very clean. There's like another one that's like

• 5:09Sam Parr?

  What's the company called? Made Bathroom?

• 5:10Shaan Puri?

  Made, yeah. And so all you do is you say, yeah, I want that bathroom. You don't have to hire a contractor, go through ideas with them, figure out what you want for the sink versus the toilet versus the walls. It's like, no, this is the bathroom. Do you want this in your house?

• 5:23Sam Parr?

  Silicon Valley thing, or like?

• 5:24Shaan Puri?

  I don't think that they're super Silicon Valley centric. They are available here, I saw, but

• 5:28Sam Parr?

  Is this like a new startup?

• 5:29Shaan Puri?

  It is a startup, yes. It is a startup. So it's a direct to consumer turnkey renovation. And so most people who do home renovations want kitchens and bathrooms. Clearly, they're starting with bathrooms, will probably expand to kitchens. The second thing, they're taking all the thought out of it.

• 5:42Sam Parr?

  I love that.

• 5:43Shaan Puri?

  This is a beautiful bathroom. Do you want this one, this one, or this one? We have three models. And then I thought, wow, because they only have three models, they're probably getting phenomenal prices, you know, economies of scale on buying the the materials they need to do this. They're training contractors to like deliver the exact bathroom. And so they're probably training staff that's like, just has to learn this one thing. And for the buyer, they're taking all the complexity of this kind of tangled project, like, oh, do I want to do a home renovation right now?

• 6:08Sam Parr?

  Like elimination of choice.

• 6:09Shaan Puri?

  Elimination of choice.

• 6:10Sam Parr?

  Okay, that, I think that should work for haircuts, men haircuts, like barbers.

• 6:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, when I go to the barber, I want to choose like I'm at Subway, be like, here's the 14, I'll take the number 12, large.

• 6:20Sam Parr?

  Because everyone gets, 80% of people get the same shit. They say, short of the sides, a little bit off the top.

• 6:25Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 6:27Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I don't even know why they ask me. I'm like, just look at it and just make it shorter of this.

• 6:31Sam Parr?

  So what else could that work for? Where like you eliminate choices? I think interior design and renovation is like a great idea.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's just so complicated. I think travel is another one. So turnkey vacations. If you knew not just the flight, the hotel, the whatever, people do this, but like flight, hotel and activities. Bundle it up, give you a price and be like, okay, you've heard that the Bahamas is great. Here's Bahamas if you want to just hit the buy button. And just email people every week being like, here's Aruba, buy button. Here's, you want to go to Venice, here's the buy button. And I think eliminating the choice and the planning required, set up a vacation.

• 7:02Sam Parr?

  I think that's a cool concept. I'm going to think about that for a little while of what to start that where you eliminate choice. I mean, I look, it goes both ways. Like the more products a company launches, the more money they make typically. But also a lot of times when you just sell one or two or three things, it makes life better and you can.

• 7:17Shaan Puri?

  And you can deliver on that service in a way that you can't if you have this like larger variety of choice and customizability. And so it won't work for everything, but if it does work for one thing, and I think it'll work for something like bathrooms and kitchens. That's such a high ticket price thing that that could be a really big business. So I'm excited about those guys.

• 7:36Sam Parr?

  Okay, something we covered on trends and I experienced this weekend because people were talking about it, kava bars or.

• 7:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, what is kava? I've heard of this.

• 7:43Sam Parr?

  Okay, I've done it. I lived in Australia for a little while. Fiji is like, Australia is Mexico. So it's like, we're like, it's like the Caribbean, like.

• 7:50Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, of course.

• 7:50Sam Parr?

  And so I went to Fiji for two weeks and we hung out and we drank kava. It's like a root. It tastes like dirt. And you mix it with water and we would just sit around a circle with the folks who lived in the Fijians. And we would drink it and it gives you a mild high effect. It kind of felt a little bit like weed.

• 8:07Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 8:07Sam Parr?

  Where you're like chill and people loved it. Immediately when I went home from Fiji, I wanted to buy some more and it was really hard to buy.

• 8:13Shaan Puri?

  And but what's the experience? You said tastes a little bit like dirt.

• 8:16Sam Parr?

  It tastes bad.

• 8:17Shaan Puri?

  It's a drink and.

• 8:18Sam Parr?

  It's a communal thing. You sit around.

• 8:20Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so it's like hookah in a way or are you passing it or something?

• 8:22Sam Parr?

  It's like hookah, but it definitely gives you a small high.

• 8:26Shaan Puri?

  Gives you a small high.

• 8:26Sam Parr?

  It's just like smoking weed with your friends.

• 8:28Shaan Puri?

  Right. So on a scale of like, I don't know, is it like a cigarette? Is it less than weed? Is it like molly?

• 8:34Sam Parr?

  Less than weed, less than molly, more than a cigarette, less than alcohol.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha. Thank you.

• 8:39Sam Parr?

  Okay, we discovered that trends. That's, I think that's our, I don't think that's ever going to be huge, but it's definitely like a niche, popular thing that you could make a business out of. Hallucinogenics, man. I met this guy who at the lobby, he was like, I just got back from thirty days in Amazon doing ayahuasca.

• 8:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:55Sam Parr?

  There's this idea that whatever is popular among elite Silicon Valley people, fifteen years from now will be mainstream.

• 9:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 9:01Sam Parr?

  Because they're like the rich nerds who like have the time to like try stuff.

• 9:04Shaan Puri?

  Do this experimentation.

• 9:05Sam Parr?

  I've never done a hallucinogenic.

• 9:06Shaan Puri?

  Right, me neither.

• 9:07Sam Parr?

  I'm super into it, though, like the idea of it. I want to explore it.

• 9:11Shaan Puri?

  What stops you from doing it? Because you're super into it. I'm not that into it, so it makes sense that I haven't done it. You're super into it, why haven't you tried?

• 9:17Sam Parr?

  Because I don't know who to trust.

• 9:18Shaan Puri?

  But even your buddy does it, right?

• 9:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but he's a weirdo. And I, and I, and I tell him, I don't know if I can trust you because you're extreme.

• 9:24Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 9:25Sam Parr?

  So like, if I could find like a normal person who could be like, yeah, this one is a little too much.

• 9:29Shaan Puri?

  If you could go into a clinic and you're like, great, under supervision in this cool environment, if it looked like a spa.

• 9:35Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and so I.

• 9:35Shaan Puri?

  Would you want that?

• 9:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I would love that. And I went to a session where I was, I met with a guy who was going to take me through the process and I got into an argument with him because he was talking to me about, I was like, asked him what he did for work and he like was a former venture capitalist, but then he was talking about how capitalism was horrible. And I was like, well, that, that doesn't, so like, why are you charging me? And so anyway, we got in a fight over like values and so he kicked me out of the group.

• 9:57Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 9:58Sam Parr?

  But I was almost on the verge of trying it. So I'm really interested in, we discovered Kava, or we talked about Kava in trans. I think the ketamine, crazy interesting.

• 10:07Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:08Sam Parr?

  I think these things are going to be much bigger.

• 10:10Shaan Puri?

  And there's a related trend of this like kin euphorics. Have you heard of this? It's a, basically there's a trend of non-alcoholic.

• 10:17Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:18Shaan Puri?

  So they're non-alcoholic drinks and what they are is, I think kin euphorics has like some, I don't know what chemicals they put in, but it's supposed to give you some kind of buzz without being alcohol.

• 10:28Sam Parr?

  Yeah, we cover the non-alcoholic stuff as well. So non-alcoholic beverages, I've drank non-alcoholic beverages now for about eight years. I drink non-alcoholic beer regularly. I like it.

• 10:37Shaan Puri?

  Like what, like a ginger beer type of thing?

• 10:38Sam Parr?

  No, O'Doul's was for the longest time, has been the only one, but over the past three years, Heineken has introduced some Japanese brands have come about, it's a little more popular in Japan. So the Japanese brands have come to America.

• 10:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 10:49Sam Parr?

  There's been a lot of new variety and that's a growing trend that we actually have already written a report on is non-alcoholic beverages. And interestingly. Z is drinking significantly less than millennials and

• 11:01Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. I think I've seen that trend firsthand. And then when I saw you guys write about that, it made a lot of sense to me.

• 11:06Sam Parr?

  But Heineken, the CEO of Heineken said that the fastest growing category is they call it zero point zero. It that's the name of their brand is these zero point zero beers.

• 11:16Shaan Puri?

  Non alcoholic beer.

• 11:16Sam Parr?

  Non alcoholic beer, but they even have some that are non alcohol and no calorie.

• 11:20Shaan Puri?

  And no drink.

• 11:24Shaan Puri?

  All right, I got another one. All right. So what if I told you that I could give you some IP? IP intellectual property like Star Wars, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, whatever. I could give you globally famous IP, billions of people recognize this IP and I could give it to you for free. And I could let you build a business around this IP at no charge. Would that be something you're interested in?

• 11:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, of course.

• 11:47Shaan Puri?

  Okay, religion. So I sort of had this realization the other day, wanted to buy a gift for my niece. And I was like, what did I used to like when I was little? I loved Where's Waldo books. And I was like, where's Waldo? And I was just went down the rabbit hole of like, who the hell made that? What is this? How was this so popular? Blah, blah, blah. Sort of thought, what's the modern day Where's Waldo? Could somebody create a new Where's Waldo book? Right? So same premise, just finding pictures in a book. Cause kids love books, but reading is tough, right? So this picture book is actually pretty cool because it's like active. You don't just like flip through the pages.

• 12:15Sam Parr?

  Who owns Waldo? That probably like

• 12:17Shaan Puri?

  So I read about the guy who made it. I forgot his name, but yeah, he, you know, whatever. A publisher owns it.

• 12:21Sam Parr?

  Probably crushed it.

• 12:22Shaan Puri?

  And they crushed it. And I was like, what if you made a new Where's Waldo? I was like, well, part of the magic was that Waldo was this character that just worked. And I was like, what character could you use? And I was like, what if you did this with religion? Cause the other thing my sister always wants is to introduce culture to her kids in a way that they like, that this playful, that's fun, that's interesting. And so I was like, my family is like Hindu, right? So they have Hindus, like a hundred different gods. Oh, this would be cool. You basically have this page with a bunch of different little, you know, drawings.

• 12:47Sam Parr?

  Like stories about the gods.

• 12:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you're trying to find Hanuman and you're trying to find this god and trying to find that god.

• 12:51Sam Parr?

  Can anyone own?

• 12:52Shaan Puri?

  Anybody can use gods, images, likenesses and names because nobody owns the religious IP. Hence my starter of what if you could use globally famous IP for free for profits? So I believe that there's a set of businesses. The Where's Waldo one is just a goofy version of this. But the better version, the version I've thought about starting is to do Calm, but for religion. I don't know if we already talked about this, but like daily prayer, daily sermon, daily Bible passage, daily whatever. These apps are quite popular. And so if you use the Calm model of audio, premium and freemium audio, and every day you could have five minutes of faith where you would just listen to a prayer or a sermon.

• 13:30Sam Parr?

  That's awesome.

• 13:31Shaan Puri?

  So I think this could be a really big business. I was very close to going and starting this one, but it's not a founder fit for me. Like I don't even believe in religion. So if somebody out there wants to do this, I will help you do this. I put a lot of thought into how you would do this, how you would grow it. But I think religion generally as a free source of popular IP is like an untapped opportunity.

• 13:50Sam Parr?

  That's awesome. Two comments. There's this set of Googlers, ex-Google people. They either, I think they emailed me after our podcast who were Christians and they created like a Christian meditation app. Have you heard about this?

• 14:02Shaan Puri?

  A halo or something, alright.

• 14:03Sam Parr?

  Someone messaged me after our podcast and they told me the numbers and it was astronomical.

• 14:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I've seen, I've seen their numbers. They are really good. It validates this idea. They're doing it for Christians. Somebody else can do it for Catholics.

• 14:14Sam Parr?

  But is it just a Christian meditation thing?

• 14:16Shaan Puri?

  It's exactly what I just described. It's a daily Christian meditation, which is basically like a prayer. And you hit the amen button when you're done and you could share it. And people love sharing religious shit on Facebook anyways. So it grows somewhat organically through that.

• 14:31Sam Parr?

  So when I think of like business ideas, I like to think of from a distribution first.

• 14:34Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 14:35Sam Parr?

  So how do you get users? The advertising rates on Christian and without judgment, but let's just say conservative websites, stupidly low. Engagement is stupidly high.

• 14:46Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:47Sam Parr?

  There is a lot.

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  Because mainstream brands don't want to associate with some of these super popular conservative publications.

• 14:52Sam Parr?

  And the people who typically, because I've bought ads on like religious websites and right-leaning political websites.

• 14:58Shaan Puri?

  Where do you even go to do that? You just go direct or there's like an ad network for that?

• 15:01Sam Parr?

  Direct. Yeah, you could do direct, but like, so like Breitbart.

• 15:05Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Sam Parr?

  Their marketing, I send them to everyone's emails to understand how, what they're doing.

• 15:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Sam Parr?

  Breitbart has the most aggressive, like they'll let people buy their email list. They're the most aggressive and the most effective. Like they, they sent one email to me that said like, "From the desk of Nancy Pelosi." And it was like a letter written about, and it said like, "We're going to come for your guns. So you better donate now." Or like whatever.

• 15:30Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Sam Parr?

  I was like, "Oh, this is gonna kill it." So anyway.

• 15:33Shaan Puri?

  You can get distribution there.

• 15:34Sam Parr?

  Oh, yeah. I think I think that there's a lot of undervalued distribution, but a lot of like the young techies who build this stuff are typically on the opposite end of that. So they don't even think about that, but it's there.

• 15:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I like that. I think traditional ad buys, that's a smarter way to add by. I think that works because again, you're charging on the other side through people who pay for that $79 a year subscription. The other thing is I think through churches, you can get distribution. So you give the church the ability to make their own group in this thing and and let them distribute it. And then it's like, hey, for the people who are not coming to church on Sundays or who want it Monday through Saturday, here's a way they can engage.

• 16:10Sam Parr?

  And the market size for this is like 200 million people.

• 16:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Sam Parr?

  Only in America and only the Christian one, let alone the other religions.

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. So I would actually start with Islam for this because there's a couple other like specific app features.

• 16:21Sam Parr?

  There's like 4 billion Islamic people in the world or Muslims in the world.

• 16:24Shaan Puri?

  And also like the type of people who start these companies will start with Christianity. So just start on the other side with like a super popular religion.

• 16:31Sam Parr?

  Hindu is kind of cool.

• 16:32Shaan Puri?

  It is.

• 16:33Sam Parr?

  Because you have more characters.

• 16:34Shaan Puri?

  But I think that, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. For some reason, I don't feel like that's a starting point, but maybe. Although when it's like Mormons, like how do you go for the most devout, even if it's a smaller number of people, but like very active.

• 16:44Sam Parr?

  I think Mormonism, though, that's the fastest growing religion in the world.

• 16:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I know, but it was like a small base, but.

• 16:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but that could be a good one to attach yourself to.

• 16:50Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. So anyways, religion. Okay, what else? It's not really an idea, but something to talk about. So ghost kitchens or cloud kitchens? Are you familiar?

• 16:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah, DoorDash. I just saw a photo. Someone drove by a place in Palo Alto and DoorDash had just opened up a kitchen.

• 17:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So for those who don't know, a ghost kitchen or a cloud kitchen is basically a restaurant that doesn't have the sort of brick and mortar storefront where you can come in, sit down and get a meal. You can't go there and order. It only exists to make food that gets delivered on Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash, and all these delivery apps that are out there now.

• 17:21Sam Parr?

  And Travis Kalanick raised a, well, I don't know if he raised it. He probably used his own money, but he allocated something like $500 million to creating ghost kitchens or services for ghost kitchens.

• 17:30Shaan Puri?

  So the founder of Uber was like, hey, what's the next big thing? And he was like, these cloud kitchens. And so he, his new company is all about, he's basically going into a city. He's buying up this like real estate that nobody wants, but is very centrally located and kind of useless today. But what he's. Doing is converting into kitchens and letting sort of food entrepreneurs come in, make food, create these little digital restaurant brands that only are optimized for delivery.

• 17:52Sam Parr?

  Awesome.

• 17:52Shaan Puri?

  You would do things differently, right? So like you would want to make food that is, you know, you'd think delivery first.

• 17:57Sam Parr?

  Like no french fries.

• 17:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. You'd make food that is going to travel well. You'd package it. You'd put a lot more money into packaging because you're not spending money in other.

• 18:05Sam Parr?

  And you don't need to buy all the furniture for a restaurant.

• 18:07Shaan Puri?

  And you can make money by partnering with delivery companies to say, hey, you should actually pay us to be on your network because we bring this awesome set of delivery optimized food to you. So in fact, you should be paying us per order to be on your network.

• 18:20Sam Parr?

  Are there any?

• 18:21Shaan Puri?

  We are great supply for your network.

• 18:22Sam Parr?

  So you know who I originally saw was doing this was like a Chinese restaurant owned by a family and they were clearly just like hustlers. And they are like, well, let's offer like hot dogs. Like I could tell because it was like the same. There was just a bunch of ways that I'm like, oh, holy crap.

• 18:36Shaan Puri?

  That's the same maker behind it.

• 18:37Sam Parr?

  They just, it's like, these are, this is a Chinese family and they're making Mexican food. So anyway, I saw them doing that, but what I'm curious about is, is there one brand that is like, well, like a.

• 18:47Shaan Puri?

  There isn't today yet.

• 18:48Sam Parr?

  But there will be.

• 18:49Shaan Puri?

  There will be. Exactly. So it's still in that early phase where all the fundamentals are there. So what's changed? These delivery apps have spent, I don't know, probably upwards of a billion dollars paying to get installed on a bunch of people's phones. And they're training people that, hey, don't go out to restaurants, order in. And because ordering in is now super convenient, really easy to do on your phone. And so anyways, they're training people and they're getting installed. That's your distribution. They need restaurants that are going to plug into their networks because they want to offer their customers better food. And so you have a good value proposition for them. You say, hey, wouldn't it be great if you had a central pickup point? Where you could pick up from all these different providers and we're centrally located in the city. So you could provide really fast delivery. What if we optimize our packaging and our foods that's traveled really well? Wouldn't we be a good partner to work with over, you know, a restaurant who's doing delivery as like a second thing or a side thing?

• 19:34Shaan Puri?

  The next thing you do is you could test different concepts really quickly. So you could see, should I just make a hot dog only brand or a mac and cheese only restaurant? And like you try the brand and if nobody's ordering from it, you just take it down and you just do a new cuisine the next day.

• 19:46Sam Parr?

  I had a hot dog stand and what I did was I would like, I don't know what people want. So I would have an idea, go and buy ingredients for. Only one day.

• 19:54Shaan Puri?

  Right, exactly. And so, and a lot of people who are great at making food are really bad at running business. And so they don't, they're not great at picking the right location for a restaurant, running the operations, managing the cash flow and all the stuff. A lot of them flock to food trucks for this reason, because it's like a simpler kind of business in a box. I think this is even simpler.

• 20:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, and way more lucrative.

• 20:12Shaan Puri?

  Way more lucrative.

• 20:13Sam Parr?

  Because you can be nationwide.

• 20:16Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Any concept that works in one city, you want to take to other cities because someone who owns these cloud kitchens will say, great, you want to expand? I already have infrastructure in 12 different cities. Just either you staff up or franchise your concept to other people.

• 20:29Sam Parr?

  I'm incredibly interested in this. If anyone is actually pursuing this, I would like to know about it.

• 20:34Shaan Puri?

  So there's a few people pursuing it that we know of, but I bet that there's a lot more. And I bet there's other angles to this that I'm not thinking about. So if anybody's really interested in this, reach out.

• 20:42Sam Parr?

  Who's pursuing it?

• 20:44Shaan Puri?

  So Travis is like the, kind of the main one that I know that's doing this.

• 20:47Sam Parr?

  It's obvious, if that guy, if he is into this, it's like.

• 20:50Shaan Puri?

  Right, and he saw the Uber Eats numbers early on and was like, oh shit, this is going to be a really big business. And so.

• 20:55Sam Parr?

  And I just saw an interview with Tillman Fertitta, you know Tillman Fertitta? And he was saying his restaurants are hurting a little bit because of the, how big delivery is.

• 21:03Shaan Puri?

  Exactly, and I think people love the convenience.

• 21:05Sam Parr?

  He was like, I was shocked, people actually are ordering, because he owns Morton's Steakhouse. He goes, people aren't coming into our restaurants as much, but we're still doing really well because they're buying it and bringing it home.

• 21:14Shaan Puri?

  Right, so I actually ran a restaurant like this back in the day. This was my first startup.

• 21:17Sam Parr?

  Sushi, right?

• 21:18Shaan Puri?

  Sushi restaurant, and we got famous because we were the restaurant without a restaurant. Where we were delivery only, but this was before Uber Eats, before Postmates, they didn't exist. So we were trying to get people to come to our website to order. And that was just very hard, whereas every night, me or my wife opens up Postmates pretty much. And we kind of scroll through and it's like, ah, do you want to order? Should we cook something? And so if our sushi restaurant had been on there, we would have been getting free customers.

• 21:39Sam Parr?

  What do you think is the best? Okay, so what food is good delivered?

• 21:42Shaan Puri?

  Uh, sushi is actually pretty good delivered, because sushi is meant to be served room temperature. It's also packaged in a very like tight wrap, so it doesn't like sort of get loose and messy and stuff like that.

• 21:51Sam Parr?

  But anything potato based is not. Have you ever?

• 21:53Shaan Puri?

  I didn't notice.

• 21:54Sam Parr?

  I know someone who worked at Uber Eats and they had a phrase called keep your eye on the fry. And they had a whole team dedicated to McDonald's because of french fries.

• 22:02Shaan Puri?

  So the main one is obviously pizza, right? So pizza is the most delivered food. People love pizza. So you really want to work backwards from that. Like, what do people order the most? And so the question is like the Domino's Pizza Huts of today, like of tomorrow, I bet will get started here. Either those brands will start delivering and make this a big part of their business, or somebody will create a new pizza brand optimized for this. Maybe they don't sell full pies, maybe it's half or I don't know. You'd have to think through what would, what should pizza be? You'd have to think back from scratch, but.

• 22:27Sam Parr?

  I think this is great.

• 22:28Shaan Puri?

  Pizza's the biggest delivery item.

• 22:29Sam Parr?

  I'm going to post about this in the group. I think it's actually bigger than I ever would imagine. We recently wrote about this. If, if you invested a dollar in Domino's IPO versus Google's IPO, you would have made like five times more.

• 22:40Shaan Puri?

  I saw that chart. You, you posted that chart. It was like Domino's is the, is the line that's up until the right.

• 22:46Sam Parr?

  And Google, Facebook is.

• 22:47Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:47Sam Parr?

  Just because they were valued really high right off the bat or higher.

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  Do you know what's causing that? Why is Domino's stock been going up so much or they just?

• 22:54Sam Parr?

  They're crushing it on marketing and they do, they are quite innovative for the space. Like they do like little cutesy things that is they're like, we're testing this new mobile oven. So it's going to show up even hotter.

• 23:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:04Sam Parr?

  Which who knows if that works, but it makes you want to buy it.

• 23:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they're pretty forward thinking.

• 23:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 23:09Shaan Puri?

  I had the app and their app is phenomenal. It's like so easy to order. The tracker is amazing.

• 23:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it is easy to order.

• 23:15Shaan Puri?

  It's coming, you know, five minutes from now here. It just left the store. It's going to be at your door in seven minutes.

• 23:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're great. So this is interesting to me. I'm incredibly interested in this. It sounds, and this sounds kind of like a fun thing. You and I both owned food businesses.

• 23:29Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:29Sam Parr?

  I found that to be almost more rewarding than traditional internet things.

• 23:33Shaan Puri?

  I found it to be way harder than everything I've ever done. I don't know about rewarding, but I made the least money of anything I've ever done. I learned the most, but it was also the hardest.

• 23:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Shaan Puri?

  And I also feel like when we're in this tech bubble, it's very easy to like lose touch with like reality and how most people's job works, how sausage gets made, all that stuff. And there's like a different level of respect, appreciation and like understanding because, you know, working in service industry for a bit. I have a question for you. So do you use any of these book summary apps or anything like that?

• 24:01Sam Parr?

  I was thinking about that today.

• 24:02Shaan Puri?

  What were you thinking about?

• 24:02Sam Parr?

  I think those are stupid.

• 24:04Shaan Puri?

  Okay, tell me why. What type of

• 24:05Sam Parr?

  Blinkist.

• 24:06Shaan Puri?

  Blinkist, right? So like

• 24:07Sam Parr?

  That's cool. I think they're cool companies. They'll do really well.

• 24:10Shaan Puri?

  So what's stupid? You don't like it as a user?

• 24:12Sam Parr?

  I'm not like that artistic of a guy, but sometimes I think like you gotta read it to understand like the new like you gotta like really read the thing to get it. But the efficiency part of me is like, oh, it's kind of cool.

• 24:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:23Sam Parr?

  So I have mixed feelings on it, but I do think I would invest my time into or money into something like that because I think it can work.

• 24:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, because I'm thinking about doing this for fun. So I started reading more because ever since our company got acquired, there's these hours of the night that used to be like grind mode that I'm like, well, I don't really need to put that into my job. I'll put that into this podcast. I'll put that into like reading and learning and things like that. So I'm reading these books that I'm like, if I could summarize this for people, would that be useful? And so

• 24:50Sam Parr?

  The answer is definitely yes.

• 24:52Shaan Puri?

  There's something kind of like off about it, right? Like, why did you say it's stupid? Like, how do I make it less stupid?

• 24:57Sam Parr?

  Well, I think there's a few things. The first thing is so Otis Chandler, the founder of Goodreads, spoke at our event.

• 25:03Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  Cool company, really cool company. I think it's actually bigger than they sold for a hundred million dollars. I think it's actually way bigger than that now.

• 25:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And then BookBub, you know, BookBub?

• 25:14Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 25:14Sam Parr?

  They advertise with us and they spend a lot of money with us and the results are really great. And what they've done is it's a huge company now, or it's a startup. It's like basically an email for people who like Kindle books and they set out some free ones, some paid ones. And they're just an aggregator of cool stuff. And then some publishers will pay money to get their free book. Like when a new release can happen, so make it free for like a day, just to get the get a bunch of ratings. The book space, I think that

• 25:38Shaan Puri?

  It's growing like crazy.

• 25:39Sam Parr?

  Anything book related

• 25:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:41Sam Parr?

  Is I would put my name on for sure or want to be part of.

• 25:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:44Sam Parr?

  That's one of the things we talked about with the whole Gen Z thing was that they're reading more than ever, but it does feel weird. I found myself whenever I read books, particularly I've always want to look up the characters significantly more. And you told me about with what you're doing with Blab, you were trying to do the same thing where you wanted to create communities around TV shows. I have found myself wanting to do that for books. I've not found a solution for that.

• 26:04Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right. You read what you read like you read a lot of biographies, right?

• 26:08Sam Parr?

  I read a ton of biographies. Yeah.

• 26:10Shaan Puri?

  Do you read anything else?

• 26:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I like to read fiction, like American classics. Catcher in the Rye, things like that.

• 26:15Shaan Puri?

  I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna do something here because I'm reading these books and I'm like, oh, a good way for me to even just digest this is to try to like, distill it down into the most interesting bits and be able to explain it. Like, if I can teach it, that means I've learned it. And so I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna experiment. I'm gonna see if I can make something that I would want if I was the reader.

• 26:33Sam Parr?

  The make it or break it, though, is the model that you choose because there's like the affiliate model, but you're gonna be earning 4% on a $8 thing. That's silly.

• 26:41Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I'm not even thinking about the business right now. I just want to put the content out there and see if people like it.

• 26:46Sam Parr?

  There's this guy named Nat, and I came across his blog. He's always popping up my Twitter feed and he just started doing what you did where he summarized books. And then he just said, you could buy all my summaries for a hundred dollars. And I think he's selling a ton of them.

• 26:57Shaan Puri?

  Okay, nice. I'll check that out. Yeah, there's something to this. I don't know what it is. Okay, that's like a half-baked idea, but I'm gonna do something there. Do you have anything else that you've been seeing that's interesting?

• 27:06Sam Parr?

  No, but follow-ups on.

• 27:08Shaan Puri?

  Follow-ups, yes.

• 27:09Sam Parr?

  Okay, so last time we talked about Shopify.

• 27:11Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 27:11Sam Parr?

  So I got a lot of criticism. People said the reason why WordPress is, why you can build a theme businesses around WordPress and software stuff around WordPress is because WordPress makes up 35% of the internet. They told me, and multiple people cited this, they go, Shopify only makes up 2% of the e-comm like store market and WooCommerce is actually significantly, way bigger.

• 27:33Shaan Puri?

  Which is crazy to me.

• 27:34Sam Parr?

  Which is crazy to me. 100% crazy.

• 27:36Shaan Puri?

  What is that?

• 27:36Sam Parr?

  So I got a lot of criticism for that, but I know that's what the numbers say, but that doesn't sit right.

• 27:42Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, something seems off about that.

• 27:44Sam Parr?

  The second thing is agencies. We talked about agencies. So a friend of mine who has a $50 million a year agency hollered and he wants to.

• 27:51Shaan Puri?

  Ad agency, creative agency?

• 27:52Sam Parr?

  Creative agency, which sounds like a miserable thing to do. I think that sounds like a horrible company.

• 27:57Shaan Puri?

  He reached out, he said.

• 27:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he wants to come and fill us in on all the, on the economics.

• 28:02Shaan Puri?

  And what do you want to know? So is it?

• 28:03Sam Parr?

  So here's why agencies are interesting to me. One, I think they're easy to start. Like, it's like a straightforward thing. Someone needs a service and you say, okay, I can, here's my portfolio. I've been able to solve for this. And they say, okay, we'll give you a shot. We'll pay you money. And then you just go out and find talented people who can execute on the work. It's super straightforward. It's actually interesting because if you start an agency, you actually. We'll discover there's way like I know a guy who has an agency that does 50 million in revenue. It's quite profitable, 20 million in profit. And with all the profit, he invests in cool things that he's discovered with the agency.

• 28:34Shaan Puri?

  That's this guy or there's a different?

• 28:35Sam Parr?

  A different guy, that guy who I'm talking about who invests in stuff. But that's called Meta Lab, his name called Tiny Capital.

• 28:40Shaan Puri?

  Oh yeah, you talked about them.

• 28:41Sam Parr?

  But I'm talking about Brendan, my friend Brendan, who has, he sold his company to an agency where he's now a partner and it's called Mechanism.

• 28:47Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 28:48Sam Parr?

  It's a 300 person agency and it seems hard, it seems really hard.

• 28:52Shaan Puri?

  Okay, we'll get him on, we'll check it out, we'll see.

• 28:55Sam Parr?

  Because it's like, there's like a few things that everyone starts when they're first getting going. The first thing is like, they're like, how do we create like roommate matching thing?

• 29:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:01Sam Parr?

  Everyone has that idea and I've done it.

• 29:03Shaan Puri?

  To do list.

• 29:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, a to do list and then like a college.

• 29:07Shaan Puri?

  Invoicing.

• 29:07Sam Parr?

  How do we sell our products to college kids? Like, like, okay, like all this is like, and then it's like, it's social media agency.

• 29:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:15Sam Parr?

  So.

• 29:16Shaan Puri?

  Common ideas, yeah.

• 29:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I want to hear more about this agency stuff.

• 29:20Shaan Puri?

  The other thing that came to mind for me with dogs was, I was like, okay, given that 44% of people own a dog, what problem am I having as a dog owner? Maybe somebody could solve it. It's not a business I would want to start, but a product I want to buy is, I take my dog for a walk here in the city. City's filthy, dog comes back in, my wife demands that we wash the dog's paws.

• 29:37Sam Parr?

  So what are you gonna make socks?

• 29:38Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, it could be anything, it could be socks.

• 29:39Sam Parr?

  Kittens?

• 29:40Shaan Puri?

  A little jacuzzi that I put her feet in to like wash her feet real quick.

• 29:44Sam Parr?

  No, it's obviously socks.

• 29:46Shaan Puri?

  Is, yeah, it's gotta be some kind of easy thing because I'm so sick of this like mini bath I have to give my dog twice a day.

• 29:52Sam Parr?

  What happens when you Google dog socks?

• 29:54Shaan Puri?

  I haven't Googled dog socks, I don't know.

• 29:55Sam Parr?

  I would like to see what is on top.

• 29:57Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and I just want something that's like, I don't want to put shoes on my dog, so like, yeah, maybe more like socks or like even just like a really thin, like, you know, transparent little plastic thing that I could put on her feet.

• 30:07Sam Parr?

  That's hilarious.

• 30:08Shaan Puri?

  Tear away when we're done, I don't know, I need something because I'm sick of washing my dog's paws.

• 30:12Sam Parr?

  So you just interviewed the guy who started Bark Box?

• 30:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's coming out in a couple of weeks, yeah.

• 30:16Sam Parr?

  Okay, are there any stats that blew you away?

• 30:19Shaan Puri?

  He's doing 250 million in revenue.

• 30:21Sam Parr?

  Shit, really?

• 30:22Shaan Puri?

  For a year, I believe they're profitable, yeah, they raised 50, 50 something million bucks and total lifetime. And they've been doing this for a while, so I think they're probably doing well. Profitably, I think at that stage is more of a choice. It's like, do we have good ideas to go invest in or do we want to optimize our profits?

• 30:36Sam Parr?

  Well, they own like a bunch of stuff.

• 30:38Shaan Puri?

  They do a bunch of different things. Yeah. So they do the, they do the subscription boxes.

• 30:41Sam Parr?

  They do one off selling stuff. I mean, they have a bunch of little.

• 30:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they're doing a bunch of things. The other part I really liked from his story was they kind of invented the dog influencer on Instagram trend. So he was like, you know, it's kind of unclear, but it was definitely early.

• 30:54Sam Parr?

  I follow a ton of those.

• 30:55Shaan Puri?

  Before that was a thing. Yeah. I follow a bunch of cute dogs that like, are like my dog.

• 30:59Sam Parr?

  My wife cried the other day when one of her dog influencers died.

• 31:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I've had literally the same experience. It's crazy. And so they kind of, they basically started promoting all those dogs. They were like, hey, you're a cute dog. We will promote you. And in turn, you promote our products. And they started this like affiliate thing early on and, and it just became great content.

• 31:18Sam Parr?

  That sounds like the greatest company to work at, to be able to do that all day. That sounds awesome.

• 31:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. If you're like a pet lover, they're hiring. So anyways, we'll see what that comes out. All right. We should wrap up. Anything you want to leave people with?

• 31:28Sam Parr?

  No.

• 31:29Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 31:31Shaan Puri?

  On that note, we're done. See ya.