Controversies, Disrupting High End Real Estate, And The Best Way To Use Twitter

Episode 392: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) talk about all the controversies... FTX drug use, Liver King admits to steroid use, and the curious case of Katie Haun. Plus, disrupting the multi-million real estate business. ----- Links: * More Plates More Dates * Liver King * Katie Haun Twitter * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (02:25) - FTX drug use (18:10) - Liver King liar (31:00) - curious case of Katie Haun (40:50) - High end real estate (54:35) - The best way to use Twitter ----- 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?

  Sam Bakman-Fried was 19 years old, about 19 years old, about when this post was posted in 2010. And I just want to read, this is going to be a little bit long, but it's really interesting. I want to read what this post says. So it says, first off, and this is a review of someone using this drug. First off, I'm a 19-year-old male, about 170 pounds, who is experimenting with nootropics out of curiosity. A few months ago, I ordered a bottle with 60 doses of 5mg of selagelene from a research chemical site, and it looked, and I've been taking it pretty much every day. The day I started taking it, I noticed a marked increase in motivation. For me, it was money. There was a huge desire for me to make as much money as possible.

• 0:47Sam Parr?

  All right, what's going on? We have an awesome episode. So we're going to start off by talking a ton about controversy. In fact, this entire episode, it feels like it's about controversy. So the first part is on FTX, and we talk about the drugs that they are on. And it's kind of funny, actually, how ridiculous it is. The second thing we talk about is Liver King. You guys have to hear this story. It's about this yoked guy who's like this fitness influencer who's built this $100 million company. Turns out, he's been on steroids the whole time. But in my opinion, that's actually not the most interesting part. The most interesting part is like these emails that we got our hands on about him talking about how he was going to get huge on Instagram, and he totally called his shot. And then we talk about buying and selling high, really expensive real estate. We're talking like things that are like 30, 40, 50 million dollars, and how this one woman, Katie, bought some

• 1:30Sam Parr?

  real estate that kind of sent some signals to Sean and how he thinks it's a little, little mysterious and how she actually afforded that. It's a really, really interesting story. So check it out. I think you're gonna like this episode. All right, we're live. I have two interesting things to bring up to you. And I think they're both pretty hilarious.

• 1:50Shaan Puri?

  Hit me.

• 1:51Sam Parr?

  The first one. We've talked about FTX. We've talked about Sam Bankman-Fried, but something in the next two segments, I completely ripped off a YouTube channel called More Plates More Dates. So I don't want to take credit for any of this. Something that's interesting is that these guys were doing drugs, like, like, sometimes they call them nootropics, but they're really just amphetamines or drugs. And they were talking about it publicly. We're looking back, it's just hilarious how blatant this was. And they just were rubbing it in our face. And so I want to talk about that. Do you know anything about that with these folks?

• 2:26Shaan Puri?

  So I know what you're talking about. I know that they were kind of like, open about it, promoting it, but not, but like, like you said, this wasn't seen as too much of a red flag. It was sort of almost like, oh, man, this is that like ultra competitive nerd thing where they're like, basically, you know, I guess doing Adderall and making all this money. You know, so when you're making money, it's like, not seen as as much of a bad thing. When you scam people and lose everyone's money, then it's like, these drugs are a problem.

• 2:53Sam Parr?

  All right. So this YouTube channel is called More Plates More Dates. It's the guy who breaks down like what drugs different celebrities are for different roles, whatever. And he goes into in-depth analysis on it. And it's pretty nerdy, but it's quite awesome. And he did this thing talking about FTX and the drugs that Sam Bankman-Fried was on. And a few interesting segments. The first thing, so basically this whole FTX saga, it boils down to like two interesting people. So Sam Bankman-Fried, who's like the leader, and then like his right-hand woman, what's her name? Caroline? Caroline Ellison, I believe. So in April 5, 2021, here's, listen to this tweet that she she put out. "Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experiences."

• 3:39Sam Parr?

  At the time, she's running Alameda Research, which has billions of dollars under management, and she's making huge decisions. And she tweets out, "The dumbest thing, this morning, I was lying on the couch reading a book, then I decided to go for a hike, but it took me like half an hour from the point to muster the energy and motivation to actually get from the couch." I guess this means this is when she wasn't on drugs. And the hike, it was good. My body had no problem making the countless exertion of effort involved in ascending and climbing this, whatever. But the second dumbest thing that I realized is that apparently, there's about a 20% of my brain that's dedicated to food. So when you're on amphetamines, you don't worry about food. And she's just tweeting this in the open. You know, this is like, She's just telling us all to go fuck ourselves, you know, all of the people.

• 4:21Sam Parr?

  Like, it's just, it's, that's hilarious that, that, like, looking back that that was actually a thing, that she's just openly talking about this. And it's, and it's wild. And I actually said that openly, she had a Tumblr where she says she wants to date a guy who's, like, wants to conquer the world and wants to dominate global governments.

• 4:41Shaan Puri?

  Like, control governments.

• 4:42Sam Parr?

  Control governments. And I thought that this is hilarious.

• 4:44Shaan Puri?

  She's like, that's my kink. That's what I'm into.

• 4:46Sam Parr?

  It's so funny. And so, another interesting thing is there's this picture of SBF, of Sam, and he's sitting at his computer, and you see, like, a patch on his arm, and you see a wrapper, like a, like a, like it looks like a food wrapper on his desk. And people start analyzing it, and they realize that this picture, basically, and this is actually Autism Capital, my favorite, my favorite source of news, they actually tweeted this out, and they go, "If you look closely, it's actually a stimulant patch that Sam, that Sam was wearing, and it's called EMSAM, which is basically a drug normally used to treat depression or Parkinson's, but for off-label use, people use it for alertness and focus benefits." And so they go down and they talk about it.

• 5:31Sam Parr?

  So EMSA, EMSAM, that's the brand name drug, but it's really, what is it? How do you pronounce that?

• 5:39Shaan Puri?

  Celagalein? I don't know.

• 5:41Sam Parr?

  Celagalein, I believe, is what it's called. And it has fatal effects if it's eaten with meat products, which is interesting, because SBF was a vegan, so that kind of checks out. And the downsides of it are that it is linked to impulse control disorders, such as pathological gambling and hypersexuality, which could lead to some of the weird things that Sam was doing. And here's what's even more interesting. In March of 2019, there was this, like, website that was built for users of this drug. And in 2019, this person left a post, and it said, where basically he was reviewing his thing.

• 6:22Sam Parr?

  And at the time, if you do the math, Sam Bakman-Fried was 19 years old, about 19 years old, about when this post was posted in 2010. And I just want to read, this is going to be a little bit long, but it's really interesting. I want to read what this post says. So it says, first off, and this is a review of someone using this drug. First off, I'm a 19-year-old male, about 170 pounds, who is experimenting with nootropics out of curiosity. A few months ago, I ordered a bottle with 60 doses of 5mg of selagelene from a research chemical site, and it looked, and I've been taking it pretty much every day. The day I started taking it, I noticed a marked increase in motivation. For me, it was money. There was a huge desire for me to make as much money as possible. I'd never been a material person at all, although I had money.

• 7:06Sam Parr?

  I never thought about doing anything with it other than spending it. I guess some might say that, and then the arrow kind of screws me up on Twitter, but some might say that possessing money is a bad thing, but the feeling was and is nothing short of complete empowerment. I love doing math problems in my head involving money. The thinking was so clear. From having a bit under $500 in the bank to having over $10,000 in two months that I, since I started taking the drug. Of course, I can't quite disclose how I made this money, but I have to say that I engage in activities that I probably wouldn't have without selagelene.

• 7:42Sam Parr?

  And then I'll kind of like skim the rest of the stuff, but it says, "I was motivated to use better vocabulary while speaking to people. I used to be pretty goofy and not many people took me seriously, but now when I talk, people listen. There's a notable increase in strength in my voice, and I would say I probably had low confidence before taking this. And now the words that I say, instead of saying, 'May I form,' it's, 'I will.' It makes, it makes people tend to look, it makes me tend to look down on most people, but not in such a way that it would affect friendships, although a few friends mentioned to me that I changed because of my general mindset. This probably sounds incredibly cocky, but it's true confidence. I'm still nice to people. It's just that, it's just now they seem, it's just now that I look more confident. Another benefit is emotional numbing. Before taking this, I would jump on any chance to be with a decent-looking girl,

• 8:27Sam Parr?

  and I'd become attached pretty quickly. On it, I'm completely rational and my emotions, my emotions are never affected by my thinking. I'm not even looking for a girlfriend until one can rationally show me that she's really worthy. Girls love to play the game, to say the least. I'm a calmer, I'm calmer with, without emotional outbursts. When I get upset with people, I simply use my enhanced charisma to undermine them, rather than losing control."

• 8:53Sam Parr?

  This is awesome.

• 9:04Shaan Puri?

  I thought you were gonna have a bit of that. Are you trying to take this right now?

• 9:10Sam Parr?

  No.

• 9:10Shaan Puri?

  My enhanced charisma, my increased desire for money.

• 9:16Sam Parr?

  No.

• 9:17Shaan Puri?

  Is the patch with my first million in it?

• 9:22Sam Parr?

  Dude, I, I was prescribed Ritalin for my, like when I was in fourth grade and I took it for one year and it was the fucking worst. Since then, I've never taken any of this crap. So I hate it. I hate these amphetamines. But this is a pretty good commercial. This is pretty great. This is pretty awesome. It's also like, what if this is him? What if this actually is him describing it?

• 9:45Shaan Puri?

  It's probably not him just by odds, but way more fun to assume that it is him and you know, as we say, F this guy. So, so yeah, it's him as far as I'm concerned.

• 9:56Sam Parr?

  But, but even if it's not him, this, this person, if you go to the website, by the way, where this forum, it's like a nerdy forum. Like I, it definitely like, there's no evidence, but it adds up to where like, I could, I could, I could see that this could be him. Um, but even if it's not him, the way this person describes it, makes a lot of sense for how this guy behaved. No excuses, but like, this guy was crazy.

• 10:18Shaan Puri?

  I feel like these are gonna become excuses for his behavior. No, I'm, I'm, there's no, no excuses. This guy is a, this guy is, um, he did all of this under his own control and volition. And, uh, that's, that's where I, that's where I stand.

• 10:31Sam Parr?

  Well, it's, there's no excuse because they just bragged about it. You know, he tweeted, he tweeted it another thing where he goes, "The best thing I do is take stimulants in the morning and then sleeping pills when I have to go to bed." And then I'll just round this out. I didn't, this was another funny thing. The, uh, this just explains why this is not an excuse. The former co-chief executive of Almeida, he bought a boat shortly after stepping down in August, only months before the trading firm collapsed. And he named his boat that he bought, "Soak My Dex."

• 11:00Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you can't write this stuff, but do you know like the, you know, one of like the sort of most damning things about how FTX collapsed? I feel like this kind of gets lost in the shuffle of there's a whole bunch of details and it's kind of overwhelming. But one of the truly unbelievable parts is that they just lost track of $8 billion and he called it poorly labeled fiat accounts. And what this actually was, his explanation, as far as I understand, is at the beginning, FTX, when they launched the exchange, they're trying to move fast, kind of scrappy startup thing. They didn't have their own bank account. And he was running Alameda before that. So they're like, oh, cool. Just send the money to Alameda and then we'll, we will give you the credit in

• 11:43Shaan Puri?

  your FTX account. And they never trued it up. They never moved the money from the Alameda account to the FTX account. It just accrued in the F, in the Alameda account and then they just used it to trade. So the money literally never even made it to the bank account of the, of the, of the company itself. And that's what he meant when it was like, people are like, did you loan the users money? Did you, did you do this against the terms of service? Did you, uh, did you lend this out or give this away to your company? It's like, no, actually, I never even got it. It went straight to their bank account. I never even realized that, uh, we forgot to like, connect the link later. And so $8 billion of deposits just went straight to Alameda and

• 12:25Shaan Puri?

  never even touched FTX. And we were just like, it was just being like, you know, marked on the account. Yeah. Lazy, unorganized, or fraudulent, right? Like you, you take your pick, you know, pick, pick three, as far as I'm concerned. And so, uh, that, that I thought was crazy. So, you know, these stimulants aren't, aren't so stimulating if you feel like forgot to, to like, you know, pick up the $8 billion that you, you know, your business is generating.

• 12:50Sam Parr?

  Like if you get beyond the fact that people are hurt here, which is a big deal, but get beyond that, it's hilarious.

• 12:56Shaan Puri?

  You're like, it's funny.

• 12:58Sam Parr?

  It's funny like this is like it like just what's funny is how ridiculous this is and and I fell for it too, but it it's wild. This is a wild story.

• 13:09Shaan Puri?

  I want to see like, you ever seen the movie Miss Congeniality? Where Sandra Bullock goes from this like, you know, butch cop to like a beauty pageant queen? And they like transform her. I want to see the version of that for FTX, which is like, Sam is this normal looking that guy. They're like, you know, grow out your hair. He's like, what do you mean? It's gonna look completely disheveled. They're like, yes, disheveled equals genius. And they're like, hey, when you're walking, turn your knees in. He's like, ah, that's a little uncomfortable. They're like, you need to walk like this. Okay. And they're like, hey,

• 13:40Shaan Puri?

  you need to put this patch on. And they're like, hey, can you start saying things like, you know, this is a 12 sigma event. He's like, what does that mean? They're like, don't worry about what it means. It sounds provocative. And so they're, they're training him to be this like,

• 13:51Sam Parr?

  Dude, by the way.

• 13:52Shaan Puri?

  Autistic hero, you know, nerd that everybody's gonna believe in.

• 13:56Sam Parr?

  He's the type of guy who probably wears a backpack wherever he goes and he doesn't walk, he runs. He's that type of guy.

• 14:01Shaan Puri?

  Did you see the clip of him running through the Bahamas?

• 14:03Sam Parr?

  Was he running?

• 14:04Shaan Puri?

  It's hilarious. Somebody said there's a clip posted on Twitter. I'm sure your, your boys at Autism Capital have it on their feet. But basically it's like SPF on the run and it's literally him wearing a backpack, running and he's doing the run where, you know, like most people run like this.

• 14:20Sam Parr?

  You put your hands behind your back?

• 14:21Shaan Puri?

  He just had straight arms. And so he was just swinging his straight arms and running.

• 14:26Sam Parr?

  That's how they run, dude.

• 14:27Shaan Puri?

  Like a penguin, running as fast as he could just down the street. And they're like, where's he going?

• 14:33Sam Parr?

  God, that's crazy, man. This whole story is crazy, crazy, crazy.

• 14:37Shaan Puri?

  He came, some more stuff leaked yesterday or like he did it. He did a random interview with somebody who's like, you know, a YouTuber with 10,000 subscribers. He like decided to give her the scoop. And he's like, um, she's like, she goes, so what, you know, she addressed each of the concerns. She's like, so you know, when you guys reopened withdrawals, but only for the Bahamas, where people felt like maybe, you know, the employees, yourself included and insiders could cash out and everybody else was stuck. And there was like 24 hours where you guys, you know, people in the Bahamas could withdraw and nobody else. What was that about? And,

• 15:11Shaan Puri?

  You know, there previously they had said, oh, the Bahamas government ordered us to do this. That's what that's the first lie he had told. And then the Bahamas government came out and said, we didn't do that. What are you talking about? So that was kind of debunked. And so then on this call, he just goes, yeah, um, that was a decision, you know, we had to make because, you know, it's funny, you don't want to be in a country where everybody's angry at you. So we had to do that just, you know, because FTX is based in the Bahamas. And we just didn't want to be in a country where everybody was mad at us. It's like, what? This is literally, you're saying this out loud? Like, that was your reason for this? Like, you didn't want to get like, beat up? Basically, like, you didn't want to get your door kicked in by the government?

• 15:54Sam Parr?

  How can you have? Okay, so let's get beyond like, the crime. Now, this is the stage of a criminal's period where you're supposed to shut the fuck up. You don't talk. You say, I plead the fifth. Where's my lawyer? I don't talk. I go silent.

• 16:05Shaan Puri?

  He's going on tour.

• 16:06Sam Parr?

  He's going on tour. He's speaking at a New York Times Summit with Zuckerberg and like, oh, you know, these politicians. I think Mike Pence is speaking there. He's going on tour.

• 16:16Shaan Puri?

  I think that's today, by the way. I think he's, he's, yeah, he's going on tour. And I don't think he has any idea what he's trying to say, because, uh, none of it makes sense. None of it sounds good. And

• 16:28Sam Parr?

  Both his parents are lawyers.

• 16:29Shaan Puri?

  Incriminating himself more. Yeah.

• 16:33Sam Parr?

  And then he tweets out this dumb stuff where he's just tweeting like, letters as a joke. This guy is just, what the hell? You're, you shut up. You don't say a word. Don't say a word. You shut up.

• 16:44Shaan Puri?

  I hope he keeps talking. Keep talking. Keep talking, boy. Yeah, keep talking. I just want to hear, hear what you got to say. You know, go ahead, build your own trap. That's fine.

• 16:52Sam Parr?

  It's crazy. So I had to bring that up. And then another scandal. You want to, can I give, tell you one more interesting scandal? This might be less interesting, but it's interesting nonetheless. So we talked about this guy named Liver King a while ago. Do you remember that?

• 17:03Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, Liver King, the, uh, just for those who don't know, the ultimate meathead. This guy looks like a caveman. He's absolutely jacked and he's just like always eating like raw, you know, kidneys from a cow. Like he is butchering it and eating it.

• 17:17Sam Parr?

  So he basically, the backstory is this guy owns a company called Ancestral Supplements, or something like that, where it's all like liver and meat organ supplements, which I think that's great. Uh, like the people who I like follow, they're like, yeah, that's like, fine. That's a fine supplement to take.

• 17:34Shaan Puri?

  You're in the demo, let's just say.

• 17:36Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, like I, I guess that's good for you.

• 17:39Shaan Puri?

  When they did their persona, it was called their, you know, they're like, instead of Joe Smith, or you know, Jane Doe, they were like, okay, so Sam Parr is online. How are we going to talk to him? How are we going to get this guy to buy our like liver tablets?

• 17:51Sam Parr?

  So it came out yesterday that basically, this was another more plates, more dates thing, that more plates, more dates, this YouTuber, his name's Derek, he got ahold of these email exchanges back and forth with a doctor that Brian Johnson, who's the Liver King. So basically, this guy looks huge, he's yoked, he has millions of followers and he makes a hundred million dollars a year on supplements. They have these documents, uh, these emails back and forth of Brian saying, hey, uh, I'm gonna get popular on social media in the next month or two. I need to look totally shredded. Here's the steroids I currently take. I spend fifteen thousand dollars a month and here, what else should I be taking? Um, and so spoiler alert, he's on steroids, but that's not the interesting thing. He's on lots of steroids. And the reason

• 18:33Sam Parr?

  this is a big deal is for, for the past year or two, he's gone on podcasts and he's explicitly said, there's not a chance I'm on steroids. No, I'm not on steroids. I only do this because I eat my liver, which you guys should buy too at my website. So that's shady, but whatever. He's on steroids. But here's what's interesting. I wanted to call out a couple of different things in the emails that he wrote. So he says, let's dig right in. As it relates to my goal, I'm the face of several brands, including Ancestral Supplements, and I've hired a team to build the Liver King brand with a goal of one million followers by 2022. I looked it up. He had, he wasn't even really, he had zero followers. He had like single digit thousand followers when he, when he wrote this in an email.

• 19:13Sam Parr?

  And he hit a million followers before this number, uh, before March 22. That's pretty impressive. He says, uh, I've hired a film crew who, who's living at my house and they're filming, uh, they're filming constantly and I got to stay in great fucking shape year round. And what's interesting is that he nailed it. This guy totally called his shot and he hit it. And even though he's a liar, I respect that. And so he basically says that he goes, um, I live on, uh, I live on a 15 acres on the lake and have everyone come to me. My ranch is 500 acres of paradise. I don't go out to eat. I don't go bowling. I don't go to the movies. I stay home and people come to me.

• 19:56Sam Parr?

  That was kind of interesting, but here's another funny thing that he wrote. The doctor asked him all these different questions about like what foods he's allergic to, what his current, uh, daily routine is, what type of foods he's eating. And then he says, what type of food? This is funny. What type of food do you like to eat that isn't bodybuilding related? None. Even when I eat sushi, I have a sushi chef come over and make it exactly how I want it. If I ever have ice cream, my, my, my wife makes a colo- colostrum ice cream made out of first milk colostrum. I don't know what that is, egg yolks, vanilla extract and a little maple syrup. And then listen to this, he goes, you should come over and fuck some of this shit up with me, doc.

• 20:37Sam Parr?

  And, uh, and then he says, uh, the doctor says, how's your mood? Uh, as you go deeper in your diet, can you function and continue with your jobs and deal with friends and family? Or does it become increasingly difficult to maintain your obligations, you know, outside your bodybuilding goals? Listen to this response. I can do anything. I'm unequivocally strong in mind, heart and spirit. And even though this guy's a liar, I kind of dig it. I kind of dig this attitude.

• 21:04Shaan Puri?

  Let's get your moral code straight. All right, guy, proven liar, borderline scammer for lying about, you know, what was causing his gains.

• 21:15Shaan Puri?

  Weirdo, absolute weirdo.

• 21:16Sam Parr?

  Absolute weirdo. And his daily routine, he goes first thing in the morning.

• 21:21Shaan Puri?

  Redeemed himself in your eyes.

• 21:22Sam Parr?

  Totally redeemed himself. No, not, not quite. It's kind of like Lance Armstrong. Cheated, sued people for saying he cheated, ruined people's reputation.

• 21:32Sam Parr?

  Well, it was a real competitor, real, real competitor.

• 21:36Shaan Puri?

  Came on the podcast. Gotta love the guy.

• 21:38Sam Parr?

  Yeah. So like

• 21:40Shaan Puri?

  Make time for us. You're good in my book.

• 21:42Sam Parr?

  You know, people, you know, my dad used to say, no matter how thin a pancake, there's always two sides to it. And

• 21:53Shaan Puri?

  What a gem.

• 21:56Sam Parr?

  So anyway, kind of interesting that this guy, he says he's spending, by the way, 15,000 a month on steroids. That's any, and he goes, I'll spend whatever, like, I need to get this done. So I just think it's interesting that he had a goal. He called his shot and he nailed it.

• 22:13Shaan Puri?

  Called a shot, was willing to go all the way and all in. And did it his way. So, you know, there is, there is respect. We do put respect on his name, even though he was a liar and scammer.

• 22:26Shaan Puri?

  That's, that makes sense to me though. I'm like, I'm with you. Other people might hear that and be like, what? I don't get it. I totally get it. I'm the same way.

• 22:38Shaan Puri?

  By the way, for people who are seeing Sam's camera go in and out of focus, we're just, we're working on the new studio look. We gotta figure out some settings. So just like, you know, just have a seizure today, but by next episode, you'll be totally fine. All right. So let me give you one while we're on this topic. Actually, I want to do two things. Number one, you've said the more plates, more dates guy a couple of times now. You know, is that a dog whistle to try to get him to come on? Maybe could be, but

• 23:04Sam Parr?

  Totally it is. I love this guy, man.

• 23:06Shaan Puri?

  But you also tweeted something out the other day, and I think he's a good example. You said something like the following. You go to have a great podcast, you need, there are like three factors. And I think you said unique slash amazing content, unique slash amazing delivery. And then the last one is unique slash amazing perspective. So like you have specific knowledge or insights that like, you know, the average person doesn't have. And you said, you need at least one to have a successful podcast. Two is, two is great. Three would be unbelievable, but extremely rare. And you got a bunch of replies to this.

• 23:46Shaan Puri?

  And I would, I want to first ask you, I want to ask you a little bit about that, but also let's use this guy Derek from more place more dates as a, as a, as a case study here. I think he's a perfect example of what you're doing. So. Unique, amazing content. Before him, I didn't see any YouTube channels. I'm sure there were some, but they were, nobody was popular, but there wasn't like a common, it wasn't a common content category to be like, I'm gonna make videos speculating, is this dude on steroids? And if so, what roids do I think it is? That's his, that's his entire premise of his channel.

• 24:16Sam Parr?

  From a non-judgment perspective, this guy Derek says, yeah, here's what I use.

• 24:20Shaan Puri?

  He's not trying to, he's not trying to take them down. He's just trying to speak honestly about what he thinks. And he's like, here's my, here's my guess. If I'm this dude, I'm looking like this is what I'm doing. And, you know, here's the evidence that I'm piecing together to make that, that claim. And so, unique content, check. Unique delivery. His delivery is actually very, very good.

• 24:41Sam Parr?

  It's very good.

• 24:42Shaan Puri?

  Because it's non-judgmental, because it's not overproduced, because he's not trying to sell you something during the thing. And he's just like humorous on laughing about it. So he does it without like, there are other people that do this and they're either judgmental or they're like, ah, I'm ripping the mask off this scandal, like expose. And he's just like, he's like, you know, he'll like, the guy will claim he's all natty. Like, all right, sure, bro. Whatever you say, right? Like, I don't think so. And like, that's the level of like, his delivery. And then-

• 25:12Sam Parr?

  And he, and he has a lot of really good phrases. Like, he'll be like, oh, this guy's looking saucy here. Yeah. He's like, it's sauce to the gills. He just wants to be a little saucy. That's all right. Like, he just has really funny, funny ways of-

• 25:23Shaan Puri?

  His delivery is good. I don't even care about, I don't have any interest in steroids. I don't even care if other people are taking steroids. I will watch his channel because his delivery is so good. He's so likeable. Like, he's very likeable. He watches his channels. Like, I would be friends with him. And it's actually a self compliment. It's a self delusion that you think he would be friends with you. Because the guy's like, just, he just seems like a good dude, great hang. So I think that's the second one. Third, amazing perspective. He has, he has that also because he actually has quite a bit of scientific knowledge, but also like street science. So like, he's not just straight academic, nor is he just a meathead. He's got enough knowledge about the science while having enough, you know, sort of street smarts about what a dude's actually used when they're doing this stuff. And how do they say

• 26:07Shaan Puri?

  it makes them feel? What do they say are the side effects?

• 26:09Sam Parr?

  Dude, he's so good. And you want to know another interesting thing about him is no one knows his last name. So I actually tried to like Google and I only spent five minutes. I'm sure I could really find it. But he's done a really good job. Everyone just knows him as Derek from More Plates More Dates. And you can't find a lot of like personal information about him.

• 26:27Shaan Puri?

  Wow, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

• 26:31Sam Parr?

  And he records, I think he records every, I think he makes a video every single day. So he makes a video every single day and he's got 1.5 or 2 million subscribers. And it's really good. And what's really fascinating is that there's guys like him. Who they don't call themselves journalists with a capital J, but they really are, you know, these guys are doing investigative journalism and it's quite good. It's better than a lot of different stuff out there that's done by the quote professionals.

• 26:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, totally. So yeah, he's great. Okay, so that's a good example. Should we continue the theme of?

• 27:05Sam Parr?

  By the way, for that, for that podcast one that I quoted, I further, I said, I go, let's do All In for an example. Their delivery, it's decent. I said it's decent, which I thought was like a compliment, but I was like, their delivery is pretty decent. They're not like a comedian, you know, they're not like serial or like some like investigative thing.

• 27:26Shaan Puri?

  It's not super well-produced and cut and edited and or like a unique format that we haven't seen before. It's like, you know, four dudes on a Zoom call.

• 27:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, four guys on a Zoom call, sometimes speaking through AirPods and like they're quite funny, they're quite charismatic, but they're not like 10x better at that than other people who are.

• 27:44Shaan Puri?

  I'd say it's definitely above average, like, you know, the intros they do, the kind of ball busting and like the way.

• 27:48Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but that's not 10 times, that's not 10 times better than the other people who are of that, of that magnitude. I'm comparing them to like the other like people who are doing great.

• 27:58Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Sam Parr?

  It's maybe better, it's maybe worse than a some, it may be better than a lot. And then what else did I say? I said their delivery was, was, was decent. Their content, like the, the format and everything, that's just normal. It's just four people who are speaking. It's kind of rare that you have.

• 28:13Shaan Puri?

  Well, they're talking about current events, which is not like current events in news, which is not like.

• 28:19Shaan Puri?

  Super unique.

• 28:21Sam Parr?

  It's not super.

• 28:21Shaan Puri?

  Content angle, right?

• 28:22Sam Parr?

  That in itself is not the unique part, but the thing that makes it amazing is that it's them. It's four people who typically who are incredibly like ungodly, successful, potentially some of them are billionaires. And they sit down every week and they talk about all types of stuff in an unfiltered way. That is 10 times better than most things that are trying to become that. And that's why they're awesome. And people, including Jason, I, I think Jason, one of the hosts, he was like, I think he thought I was insulting him. Uh, and I'm like, no, dude, this is like, this is a compliment. I said, like, it's, it's like saying like LeBron is like good at a lot, like he's so such a great basketball player, but maybe he's not the best at blocking shots or whatever. And people got mad at me and they're trying to pick a fight and that was not my intention. I, to me, I was complimenting them.

• 29:07Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you were complimenting them, but you have a way with words where you'll like, you'll add a little period after a word. You've like, it's decent, period. And is that, that kind of sounds like, you know, like, like this, you gotta, you gotta watch the periods, dude. The periods totally change the tone. Like if you're using a period, like.

• 29:25Sam Parr?

  It's fucking Twitter. I have like 190 characters.

• 29:28Shaan Puri?

  And you used one of them on a period and you didn't, you know, that, that, that, that thing, that adds, that adds the tone, right?

• 29:35Sam Parr?

  I did not mean it that way. I did not mean it that way.

• 29:41Shaan Puri?

  Well, you also doubled down after he was like, you know, whatever he put that I took that personally meme up there. Uh, you were like, you know, I said what I said, it's decent.

• 29:49Sam Parr?

  Oh, I didn't double down. I don't backtrack. I'm like, dude, yeah, your delivery is like pretty good. You're not like Theo Von. You don't say like the most like funny shit on earth. You say pretty great stuff, but whatever. That's my point.

• 30:03Shaan Puri?

  Sam, the kind of guy that doubles down on a 17 in Vegas is like, whoa, sir, are you sure? I said what I said. Give me another card.

• 30:15Sam Parr?

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• 30:30Shaan Puri?

  All right, so I have one that's not, it's not in the category, we did SBF liar, probably fraud, scammer, whatever. We did Liver King liar, probably scammer, probably allegedly, whatever. This is not that, but I am calling this The Curious Case of Katie Haun.

• 30:56Shaan Puri?

  That's right.

• 30:57Sam Parr?

  What was that music?

• 31:00Shaan Puri?

  That's my new, that's my new like X-Files style music, whatever, we're getting into a little case that makes me say, hmm, how does this work? So.

• 31:11Sam Parr?

  How do you spell this woman's name? I want to Google her while you're talking.

• 31:13Shaan Puri?

  Katie, like Katie as in Katie, and then Hahn, H A U N. Okay, so she, you know, I think you probably know of her. Seems like a great person. So, you know, I think her backstory is kind of like, you know, went to Stanford Law and then worked, you know, for, worked for the government. So she, I forgot what her, she was like federal prosecutor or something? That was her job title? Let me find my notes here. So. Okay, so she, she goes to Stanford Law, then she spends a decade as a federal prosecutor for the DOJ. And she's, you know, and then she creates at one time

• 31:56Shaan Puri?

  the government's cryptocurrency task force. And we know her because she was involved with or helped, I think after the fact, with the Silk Road case. So the Silk Road was, you know, that website where people were buying and selling drugs and, you know, you could buy anything, assassination attempts. You could buy a lot of, a lot of crazy shit on there. They eventually take Ross down in your, your neighborhood in San Francisco. And after the fact, they, you know, have all this Bitcoin from, because Silk Road was using Bitcoin for most of the purchases. And so she's involved in that case. That's kind of how she got on my radar was she did a great interview with Tim Ferriss where she's talking about that story. So, you know, I hear the story. That's kind of amazing. Like this person who like, you know, was just grinding it out as part of the government. And that's kind of was the impression

• 32:40Shaan Puri?

  I had of her was this like awesome civil servant. So imagine the look on my face when I hear that Katie Haun just purchased a $41 million home in Atherton. $41 million home, what's going on here, Katie Haun?

• 32:55Sam Parr?

  What do you, how much she has to be worth to buy a $41 million?

• 32:59Shaan Puri?

  Go to DOJ, average salary, federal prosecutor, 94,000 to 150,000. Okay, so she worked there for 10,000 years? No, okay, that's not it. So what's been going on? So Katie Haun, at one point.

• 33:11Sam Parr?

  With that DOJ seller, she could pay her property taxes for a month.

• 33:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the gardener, her property is making that. So, but she made a switch. So she did the decade there and she's doing these like, I forgot what you call them, like the Rico cases, it's like these crazy like drug cases, cartel stuff. And then she makes the leap and she comes, all of a sudden, she's a VC. So she becomes a VC at Andreessen Horowitz in 2018. She joins as a general partner. The year before that, 2017, she was named to the board of Coinbase. That's interesting. I guess like, you know, they wanted a diverse board member who had a different background.

• 33:52Sam Parr?

  No, you can't, you can't say that she's a, I mean, that's bullshit.

• 33:57Shaan Puri?

  No, I'm saying like her, her work history. So she's not a business person. She's from like a regulatory, like, you know, side of things. That's her expertise. So that's a good person to have on your board, somebody who was part of the government's cryptocurrency task force. Definitely see the value there. But how much value is what I got to ask? That's the question of the day. How much value? And was this too much value? Okay, so she joins the board and she gets, so, okay, on the day of her IPO, it was worth 73 million. That was April 14th, 2021. And she sold pretty much the top. So she was selling at, you know, she was, she was sold at that, that price and then she sold even more as it went up to like, whatever, 300 something dollars a share.

• 34:42Shaan Puri?

  It's currently trading, you know, for far less than that. So let's see what Coinbase is trading at today. Coin stock price, I think like 40 something bucks a share? Yeah, $41 a share. So she sold at like the, whatever, 300s, 380, you know, 380s type of range.

• 34:57Sam Parr?

  Almost 10 times.

• 34:58Shaan Puri?

  So sells the absolute top. But what I have to, the question I have, and I'm not saying she did anything wrong or illegal, yeah, more power to you. What I don't understand is. Why did this person get $100 million for sitting on the board? Is that not an outrageous number? Like there, I don't think there's any wrongdoing. But goddamn, how did somebody make so much for doing so little? Like a board seat? You know, a board member does not work very hard for the company. A board member does not usually create this much value.

• 35:28Sam Parr?

  I thought board members typically got like 250,000 a year, like

• 35:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's the normal like board compensation. So what I want to know is why did this board member get 100 million dollars? And I don't know if you know the answer to this, but that is the, that is why it is the curious case of Katie Haun. What, what?

• 35:44Sam Parr?

  Well, you're asking this question. You're asking, this sounds like a leading question. It sounds like you have an opinion, but keep in mind, I'm looking just at her LinkedIn.

• 35:52Shaan Puri?

  I'm a dummy about these things.

• 35:53Sam Parr?

  She founded a thing called Han Ventures, which is, which has a 1.5 billion dollar fund. That's focused on Web three.

• 36:01Shaan Puri?

  And I believe she's the only partner. So the fees on that alone, 2% venture capitalists gets 2% management fees on a typical. And her 1.5 billion fund and she's the only partner. I think that's $30 million per year that she takes as her management fees.

• 36:16Sam Parr?

  That's fucking crazy.

• 36:17Shaan Puri?

  And when she was at Andreessen, again, hard to know the exact specifics here, but like their, the A16Z crypto fund was $7 billion, I think at the time. There were five general partners, you know, so I don't, I don't know exactly if that, if that number's the total after Coinbase's exit, or if that's what they raised. I haven't gone that, that far in, but like, I think it's, it is believable that she was making $30 million, that she's made $30 million plus off of her slice of the Andreessen crypto fund before she left. And by the way, I think her portfolio there, Coinbase was the only one that, that has exited. There's R Weave, there's Autograph, there's Royal, there's a bunch of others, but like, these are, these are early, early bets, right?

• 37:01Shaan Puri?

  Cause we're only talking four years ago when she joined the fund. So kind of crazy that somebody made 100, 100 million dollars plus off of, off of their board seat.

• 37:15Sam Parr?

  After working for the government for 10 years.

• 37:17Shaan Puri?

  Ever, yeah. And so I don't know what's going on. I don't know if this is like a very fancy way of like buying favor in, in Washington. It's like, hey, we're going to get this veteran who's super plugged in, you know? Great. She gets this really, really, really, really, really, really, really capital, really strong comp. And, you know, she's going to make sure that the right people, you know, think favorably about Coinbase. I don't know if it's that. I don't know if this is standard. I don't think this is standard for what board members make.

• 37:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 37:47Shaan Puri?

  It's just very, very interesting.

• 37:48Sam Parr?

  What did the other board members get?

• 37:49Shaan Puri?

  What's going on there?

• 37:50Sam Parr?

  Did you look at the other board members?

• 37:53Shaan Puri?

  During the S1, you could see kind of who the other major shareholders were. I didn't see any of the other board members that were there, but I could, I could be wrong. So there's Marc Andreessen is there, Fred Wilson. Those are the investors. Maybe, yeah, I mean, hers is just outsized. So like, I don't know who, who's Gokul Rajaram. I think he's a, I think he might've been another board member. So let me see Coinbase. I don't know if he worked there or if he's a board member. But he got, you know, whatever he had was 600,000 shares. Hers was 5.9 million shares. So like, you know, just definitely like a step, a step higher. Yeah. He was also a board member. So like, for some reason, she got 10 times

• 38:36Shaan Puri?

  more in her stock grant than this, this dude Gokul did.

• 38:42Sam Parr?

  This is, yeah, this is wild.

• 38:44Shaan Puri?

  Things that make you say hmm.

• 38:48Sam Parr?

  I don't, I agree. This is a very curious case.

• 38:51Shaan Puri?

  I'll also say, it could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. I don't know it. I would love to hear it. And I'm not, I'm not owed any explanation either. I just thought this was weird because I'm like, how the heck did this person who worked with the government for almost their whole career, except for the last three years, how are they buying $40 million pads? That doesn't make sense to me. And then I looked at where the money came from, and then that didn't make sense to me. But again, that might be my own limitation of, you know, knowing how this stuff works.

• 39:20Sam Parr?

  Have you ever spoke to her or like heard her speak?

• 39:23Shaan Puri?

  I've heard her speak. Yeah, she's she's, you know, whatever. She tells cool stories. I heard her on a couple of podcasts. I have she's invested. She's co invested in some of the crypto deals that I'm in. So I'm not saying like, yo, she's a bad investor. If she is, then I probably am terrible. So, so, you know, I don't know much about her from that angle. But there was one other funny thing. So there's this guy, Liron, who Liron Shapiro. I don't know if that's I don't know if I said that right. But have you seen this guy on Twitter?

• 39:50Sam Parr?

  No.

• 39:50Shaan Puri?

  He's a fan of the show. So he listens to the show. He is also the number one like crypto skeptic on Twitter. So his mission is basically to just expose the like, you know, like the fallacies, scams and hypocritical things about web three. And so he tweeted this out four days ago. He goes, OpenSea's large investor Katie Haun claims that NFTs have many uses and invites us to check out her latest purchase. Okay, let's check. He goes to her profile on on OpenSea and it's called wrapped moon cat. And it's just like this purple cat. It's like, okay,

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  that not only has no uses, you know, besides just being a funny little purchase, her account has zero activity since June. If you weren't using NFTs yourself, maybe you shouldn't keep investing in the space. And, you know, so he's kind of caught her out of that. Now, of course, she could have other wallets or whatever, but like, it is a little strange that, you know, the kind of lead investors, you know, in in OpenSea, the biggest, you know, NFT platform doesn't seem to have much activity, you know, on the platform.

• 40:56Sam Parr?

  Beyond this woman, I've I've like, do you like, look at Zillow and like, read like the real estate, like, trade magazines of like, you know, anytime someone buys like a $50 million home or $20 million home? I love reading that stuff. Do you ever read that stuff?

• 41:09Shaan Puri?

  Yes. And actually, call to action, I want to, I want to know or help start one of these Instagram accounts that's just featuring baller homes that ballers buy. So like, I just want like celebrity, business celebrity, kind of like homes that rich people are buying, like, who are they? How are they rich? And what's their home look like? I think that'd just be a great Instagram account that I want to follow. And I don't know if that exactly exists. So, so somebody start that, please.

• 41:37Sam Parr?

  No, I love that stuff. And I always think about the economics of that, of like, how do people afford the? I don't know 30, 40, 50, 60 million dollar homes. I want to know what the monthly nut is each month. If they have a, do you have to have a full-time staff member just handling that?

• 41:53Shaan Puri?

  There's no mortgage, right? That's not a mortgage.

• 41:57Sam Parr?

  I don't know.

• 41:57Shaan Puri?

  What are you doing? Are you putting like, getting like a 40 million dollar mortgage?

• 42:01Sam Parr?

  I don't know. That's what I want to know. I want to know. I want to know what the tax bill is. I want to know how they actually care for it. I want to know what their liquid position is and like, how they finance it, if they pay cash, like what they do. Uh, when you have a 40 million dollar home, is that like, do you view it like, for example, when I think of a home, uh, owning a home, I don't think of it as necessarily an asset. I think of it as like a store of value because it typically don't grow much more than inflation. And so like, do they view that as like an asset? Do they take care of it of like, like an asset? Like I just want to know how they, how they account for it in their, in their net worth. There's so many fascinating things with owning these 40 and 50 million dollar homes. I want to know all about how they work. And frankly, I just want to have a huge pain in the ass.

• 42:40Shaan Puri?

  I just want to know any of that shit. I just want to have one.

• 42:45Shaan Puri?

  Do you tip the landscape or do you not tip it? I was like, dude, who cares about all these details, man? I want to, who bought it? How'd they get rich? What does it look like? And how can I get one? Those are my four questions.

• 42:56Sam Parr?

  I'm about that too, man. I just, I'm always curious about how that works. Cause in, in, in New York, you see it like crazy. You see people buying 20, 30 million dollar homes and there's, you know, it's another shocking thing is how many of them there are. There's so many of them. I read this blog called Mansion Global and they always talk about like different mansions that are being bought and sold. In New York, there's just so many of them. In San Francisco, there's not that many 20, 30, 40 million dollar purchases. In New York, it's constant and it's like a fucking condo. It's crazy.

• 43:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I think I told you this once, but, um, when I was working with Michael Birch, he put up his, he, he, it's for sale right now. I think he put up his house in San Francisco. And so

• 43:36Sam Parr?

  It's been for sale for like three years, right?

• 43:38Shaan Puri?

  I think I was at his house and he's like, yeah, I was like, you're gonna sell this place? And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna sell it. I was like, so you bought this for like $30 million? He's like, yeah, it was like the highest purchase at that time, I think, in San Francisco. And he's like, I was like, well, I was like, was that like, do you have a prayer? Are you gonna have to sell that? Are you gonna take a big loss on this or what? He's like, no, I don't think so. And so, and then when he came out and listed, he listed for $50 million, which it didn't sell at that. But, um, but you know, that's kind of like the range here. And I was like, how do you even sell a house like this? You know, like, what's the process? Do you just put it on the MLS? Do you have open houses on Sunday? He's like, no, it's a big problem.

• 44:12Sam Parr?

  Hand out flyers?

• 44:14Shaan Puri?

  And so he was like, no, actually, this is a, one of the ideas I wanted to talk to you about. Like, I'm thinking like, what if we made a service for buying and selling these like only homes that are worth $10 million or more? He's like, cause it breaks the traditional model. Like you shouldn't pay 6% commissions to an agent when the, when the purchase price is 20 million or 30 million dollars.

• 44:35Sam Parr?

  Is that how much they pay?

• 44:36Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's just like, it's the standard real estate model is that, right? Is the five or 6%.

• 44:40Sam Parr?

  And Michael goes and like, tries to negotiate and they're like, ah, you know, our paperwork already says 6%. Like, it's gonna be a hassle to like, change that six to one.

• 44:49Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna have to hire somebody for the social media. And it's like, yeah, like, you know, like a month, like, what are you talking about here? You know, like,

• 44:56Sam Parr?

  It's like, look, I didn't make up the rules. I just thought them up and wrote them down.

• 44:59Shaan Puri?

  You know, like, we just, So he wanted to make a thing that was a service for only selling homes that are 10 million or more. It's a, it's a flat 1% commission. That's it. Because we could do 1% on a $20 million home and it's, it pays for the actual service that was done by the person who's doing it. He goes, second, it's, um, one broker, not two. So you have, um, you know, you're basically that you're gonna take both sides. He goes, no open houses, cause like, people just wanna walk through my house. They're not serious buyers. So basically, anybody who does the, the open house tour, there's like, on the website itself, you'd be like, almost like an accredited investor. It's like, you need to show that you are able to buy homes of this caliber in order to get access to the open houses.

• 45:41Sam Parr?

  I actually toured Michael's home. I was one of those people. I, I saw that they were having finger sandwiches.

• 45:47Shaan Puri?

  Mud all up on your shoes.

• 45:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like, oh, free sandwiches.

• 45:52Sam Parr?

  When I got there, I was so bummed.

• 45:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Sam Parr?

  I was like, my no ham.

• 46:00Shaan Puri?

  So, so he's like, you know, that's one would be one difference. And then um, he's like, you know, the, or he's like, the, the broker's commission on top of the 1% is just a tip based on how you felt the service was. Like, if you felt like you were taken really good care of, then you can optionally tip. Um, and so he had like this whole plan. And he's like, he's like, figure out how many of these houses sell a year. So I did some analysis and I was like, oh, there's, you know, I forgot it now. This is like seven or eight years ago, but it was like, yeah, it was like, there's like, you know, 5,000 or 10,000 homes like this sold per year. Um, okay. So you back that out, average home, let's say is 15 million. That's in this category. So that's X hundreds millions of, of, it was like in the hundreds of millions of sales, you know, so then

• 46:42Shaan Puri?

  your 1% commission would be X. And like, okay, how would you take the market? Oh, these are all your friends. Okay, that makes sense. We can get the first hundred, hundred people just out of your network. That makes sense. Uh, we never pulled the trigger. I think we should have. Um, because I thought it was a great idea. I, in fact, I had a whole brainstorm with him, which is just like, you know, what are the 1%er problems? Like, tell me the, the like, I got, you know, my problems sound like I can't even speak about my problems because they sound too privileged, because they exist and nobody's talking about them and you know them. We could build for them. And you know, all the people that are in that group. So you could like, kind of help bring those people on board of whatever service we make. So, um, so yeah, that, that was, I think, a good brainstorm in general.

• 47:27Sam Parr?

  Dude, I think that's awesome. I think, uh, I can't decide if that would be a pain in the ass of people to work with, or if it would be the best person to work with, you know, like, are they, are they, or are they not going to nickel and dime you? If no, then yeah, it could be awesome.

• 47:42Shaan Puri?

  Well, I don't think it's necessarily about nickel and diming, but this is how I feel about all businesses that are based on influencers.

• 47:50Shaan Puri?

  It sucks doing an influencer based business because you are pretty much always grovelling at the feet of these people who they should take your offer. It's in their best interest, but they're just busy and they have too many offers and they don't care. And even if they say yes, then they'll just flake on you. Even if they say yes, when it comes time to post the thing, it'll be done, half done. And you're like, oh my God, this is like, we really needed this to work. This was really important to our business. And like, you know, it's so difficult to do stuff like that. Of course, when it works, it works, right? Like, you know, you build one of the, you know, you build the whiskey brand with Conor McGregor, or you, um, you know, you do the Honest Company with Jessica Alba. Like, you could make it work for sure. But I hate influencer

• 48:31Shaan Puri?

  based businesses. I remember, um, I remember talking to a buddy who was building something around Twitch when we were both in the Twitch space. And Twitch is basically like, you know, there's a hundred streamers that matter. And if you can get them, everybody else will follow. And if you can't get them, it's very hard to make stuff work. And I go, I'm like, I'm like, talking to him over, over dinner. I'm like, what about this strategy? What about this strategy? What about this pivot? And he just, I'll never forget it. Cause I heard this and I ended up pivoting my business because this just rang in my ears for so long. He goes, I'm just tired of sucking dick, man. And I just met this person. This is like my friend. This is somebody I met

• 49:11Shaan Puri?

  for a business meeting. And he said this to me. And I go, what? And I, I asked him what? And then I immediately knew exactly what he was talking about. It's the thing I had been doing for the last year, which was basically going and trying to get these like 20 people who really, really mattered to just like, watch our demo to like, just say yes, to like, just partner with us and like, just agree to take our money to promote our thing. And I was like, she's right. I hate this. I really, really hate this. And we pivoted like three months later. Cause I was like, this is terrible. This is a terrible style of business to build.

• 49:42Sam Parr?

  Well, thank you, Katie, for bringing us to this topic. The curious case of Katie Haun.

• 49:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Trying to put it sounding good? No. Okay.

• 49:49Sam Parr?

  Dude, you're gonna get DMs about this. So well, I'm sure we're gonna have a follow up.

• 49:53Shaan Puri?

  Dude, Andreessen already hates me, man. They

• 49:55Sam Parr?

  Why do they hate you?

• 49:56Shaan Puri?

  Mark blocked me again. He blocked me first for the clubhouse thread, which by the way, Not only she did not have blocked me, where's my, where's my apology? I was right.

• 50:07Shaan Puri?

  I called that shit. That was a bad investment. It was gonna fail. I called it. Okay, so, you know, he blocked me then, then he unblocked me for some reason. And, you know, I got a second chance, a second lease on life.

• 50:17Sam Parr?

  Why did he unblock you? Just think about that through his head. Like, what was he going through his, his going through his setting to be like, oh, let's just.

• 50:23Shaan Puri?

  Someone sends, someone in the firm sends the, posts the thread. He clicks it, says, you can't view this. You have blocked the person. He's like, oh, fuck it. All right, unblock this person. So yeah, that's the only thing I can imagine, how I would even show back up on his radar.

• 50:35Sam Parr?

  I don't know. Maybe just laying in bed going through his blocks, like, oh, I miss him.

• 50:39Shaan Puri?

  The one that got away?

• 50:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I wonder what he's doing now. I wonder what he's up to now. Like, do you think we're staring at the same moon right now?

• 50:47Shaan Puri?

  He's looking at the 65 Indians who work for him and he's just, I just need one more.

• 50:53Shaan Puri?

  None of these are right.

• 50:55Sam Parr?

  None of them are above six feet tall. I want a six foot tall one.

• 50:59Shaan Puri?

  So I don't know what happened, but he unblocked me. And then the other day, he blocked me again. I don't know what I did. I'm not even mentioning this guy. I think what I did was I had put out that tweet that I said, like, you know, this year I've realized that like a lot of the things I thought were smart money. And you could just kind of follow them or just assume they know what's going on. Like, there is no smart money in this space. FTX, everybody thought was the, the quant geniuses, quant genius traders and the fucking dummies and scammers. And then, you know, Chamath, oh, Ben, SPACs, this is the IPO 2.0. Oh, this must be great. Oh, nope, SPAC collapse. You know, all these are all.

• 51:32Sam Parr?

  But you didn't mention him.

• 51:34Shaan Puri?

  Lipstick on a pig. I did mention him.

• 51:36Sam Parr?

  Oh, I didn't see that you specifically named him.

• 51:39Shaan Puri?

  No, no, I didn't name it in market reason. I just said A16Z, like, whatever. I wasn't trying to pick on anybody. I was just saying, like.

• 51:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you were.

• 51:47Shaan Puri?

  The most prestigious names also make a bunch of bets that don't work out. That's part of their business model. This is what I was trying to say. It's part of their business model. You can't look at any one bet in isolation and say, well, if they did it, it must be, it must be good, must be smart, must like, they must know something I don't know. In fact, trust your own gut, trust your conviction, trust your research. Because you know, you don't know their whole portfolio, you don't know their strategy, and they're gonna make mistakes. That's part of like venture investing. So like, you know, don't just assume, because the really smart person who you like to listen to invest in this, that doesn't mean it's a good investment necessarily.

• 52:19Sam Parr?

  Do you think that having, like, being an asshole on the internet, like, I don't think you and I are assholes, but both of us sometimes get into it with other people. Do you think that, we tip our toes, yeah, just a tip. Do you think that that is gonna bite us in the butt, or that it helps us, or should we just go the nice guy route? Like, like, I can think of a few guys who are assholes, and it's paid off for them. Or not assholes, but like, like Scott Galloway and Jason Calacanis, both cause a fuss, they get into it with people, and it's, and I would say been a net positive for them. There's a few other examples where I can just say, it just has ruined their reputation. But do you think, and then there's other guys who, like, Jason Lemkin.

• 53:04Shaan Puri?

  Who did it ruin their reputation?

• 53:07Sam Parr?

  Uh, I don't know. I mean, there's people I follow, where I'm like, oh, you're just a joke. And not even, I don't even want to mention them, because I just don't want to do that. But there's people who

• 53:16Shaan Puri?

  Because I can't think of them.

• 53:17Sam Parr?

  No, I definitely can. I'll tell you off air. But like, I, you, I messaged you one the other day, where I'm like, this person, I just, it's, it's, they're working through some stuff.

• 53:26Shaan Puri?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 53:27Sam Parr?

  And anyway, I just think that, like, sometimes it hurts their reputation. But other times, it's like, it's definitely been beneficial. Where there's guys like, you know who Jason Lemkin is? I love Jason. He's a disaster.

• 53:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 53:38Sam Parr?

  Just generally a positive person, and I never say, hear him, goes out of his way not to disrespect people. Another guy's Nathan Barry, goes out of his way in nine out of 10 times to not disrespect him, not disrespect people. The one time he called someone out, which was Gumroad, I was like, oh, well, Gumroad must be bad, because Nathan never is rude.

• 53:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 53:55Sam Parr?

  Do you think that being rude has its benefits, or are you gonna try and be like the, the nice guy?

• 54:02Shaan Puri?

  Both. I think, I think being a kind of call out artist has its benefits, is very addictive.

• 54:10Shaan Puri?

  You could be right, you could be wrong, kind of doesn't matter, you're provocative, people will pay attention to you, people will fight with you, it definitely draws attention. So if your goal is attention, it definitely works. Having said that, doesn't really generate a lot of pos- like positivity in your life and doesn't add a lot of value typically.

• 54:27Sam Parr?

  Sure.

• 54:27Shaan Puri?

  Unless you go full on like a WWE character, which is what I consider like Sky Galloway to be, where they just, you know, hey, I'm gonna take this super strong stance, I'm gonna argue it and like, you know, if I'm wrong, like the truth kind of, the truth or accuracy is like sort of secondary, I wouldn't say it's not important, but it's secondary, like the more important thing is to have like, strong opinions that get shared, that get read, that get commented on, that cause a debate, because that's the, that's what makes, that's what makes, that's what drives clicks, that's what drives followers, things like that. So, there's strategically, I see that advantage. Life, you know, like life EV, I think it's kind of net negative, and, but I also don't think you should just be like Mr. Nice, we know a bunch of people that are like this,

• 55:10Shaan Puri?

  that will talk mad shit in text messages to us, but they won't, then publicly they'll suck up to those people, and it's like, that, that is disgusting to me, that I actually judge the worst. I would rather, you know, just speak my mind, but sometimes realize that like, you know, A, I'm wrong, you know, more often than I'm right, and B, like, ah, sometimes it's just not worth the hassle, like you just don't, you don't need to say anything at all, you could just kind of go on with your day.

• 55:36Sam Parr?

  Is there any time that you've been rude to someone on the internet and you've lost sleep over it?

• 55:43Shaan Puri?

  No, no.

• 55:44Sam Parr?

  Really?

• 55:45Shaan Puri?

  Can't say that that's happened.

• 55:49Sam Parr?

  That's crazy to me, that is crazy to me.

• 55:51Shaan Puri?

  That, you do that? You, you feel bad, you feel guilty or something, or what, what happens?

• 55:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, sometimes I'll say something to someone, I'm like, oh man, I, I was too rude, I came out cold.

• 56:00Shaan Puri?

  I'll question it, like, I'll say, ah, that was maybe a bit much, or like, you know, I should have just stayed out of it, or whatever, but I don't, like, I guess loose sleep just sounds so serious, like, for example, when I wrote that clubhouse thread.

• 56:12Sam Parr?

  That's not that serious.

• 56:12Shaan Puri?

  When I wrote that clubhouse thread, I remember getting a message from, I won't say their name, but somebody I respect, I admire, somebody super smart and somebody who's kind of like, you know, loosely affiliated with that, you know, like the project. So, um, and they were like, oh man, this Twitter thread, like, you know, I'm torn on one hand, amazing storytelling, and I think you might be right. Um, on the other hand, I don't really like, you know, tearing down like a startup, like, you know, startups are, you know, small fragile things like, you know, I don't really like teardowns in general. We should be building each other up. Um, but like, you know, this was a, you know, whatever. This was like, it was super interesting the way you wrote it. And, uh, and I was like,

• 56:55Shaan Puri?

  yeah, I think that's right. Like, I think that's a fair, I think that's a really fair point. Like, you know, uh, I have nothing against them. I sound like I wanted it. I was not like I was rooting for it to fail or anything like that. I just thought this is what might happen based on my previous experience in the space. And I thought this is how it might play out. And I just wrote it. I just sent it. And I thought, oh, you know, there's something to that, you know, I don't really want to, you know, even though I know I could make it my thing to be the teardown guy. I don't like where that leads me. Right, right, right. That's a, that's a, I don't want to corner myself in that area. So you know what? Like, let's just, what I'll often do is I'll say, I'll say it. I'll say, let me see how that goes. Let me see how I feel about that. And maybe later I'll say, you know what? I should have just stayed out of it, or I shouldn't have said that, or that was too

• 57:39Shaan Puri?

  harsh, or whatever. And, uh, okay, lesson learned, but I just sort of move on from it. I don't really like, you know, dwell on it. It's like, I'm okay floating, you know, like, it's a trial balloon. It's like, let me just send, put that out there. I'll do this with ideas all the time, too. I'll be like, I want to do X. Anybody want to work on this with me? And then people will DM me. I'll be like, uh, you know, after I see how kind of like the first three days went and I kind of slept on the idea a little bit, like, no, I'm, I'm just not doing that. And I think people find that very strange. And like, but for me, I'm like, I don't know, this is like an experimental platform. Like, I'm not like, uh, I don't know. It's not that serious. It's okay to like, say something and change your mind. You know, based on, you know, further reflection or information. That's okay.

• 58:20Sam Parr?

  Like when you tweeted out that you're gonna put X amount of your net worth into crypto and then someone automatically wrote an article about it and you're like, well, you know, like, there's, it's a discussion.

• 58:31Shaan Puri?

  No, no, I did that one. But that's the funny thing. Like, this happens all the time. People could tell you when they buy. They don't usually tell you when they sell. And or they don't tell you if they're hold, right? Like, they don't tell you in either direction. So people make a whole lot of assumptions about things. Like, you know, somebody told me, I remember, somebody told me the stock was great. And then like, it turned out to be dog shit. I was like, oh, man, we, we got busted on that one. He's like, no, I sold it like at the top. I was like, dude, where was my message for that? Like, you know, you only told me the buy part.

• 59:02Sam Parr?

  All right. And I think that was a, that was a lively discussion. Was that, is that the pod? Or you want to do one more?

• 59:08Shaan Puri?

  No, that's the pod. I have a bunch of other topics, but yeah, that

• 59:11Sam Parr?

  We have to save them for Monday. We have a bunch of cool people. We have Austin Reeve from Morning Brew coming on. Formerly my nemesis, now one of my great friends. He's gonna come on.

• 59:20Shaan Puri?

  Who are the cool people that are coming on?

• 59:24Sam Parr?

  We have a bunch

• 59:25Shaan Puri?

  People don't know this, by the way. Austin, Sahil, these are our friends. We make fun of each other all the time. And, you know, it's just, it's just a competition. Who can, who can get the right zing in on the other person at the right time?

• 59:39Sam Parr?

  We have Austin. Do we have anyone else interesting coming up? The founder of Whoop is coming on.

• 59:45Shaan Puri?

  We're gonna do another Milli Awards, where we do our end of year awards with Andrew Wilkinson. You know, the three year tradition now. And I think that's, that's kind of the most popular episode of the year. So, so that one's coming up.

• 59:58Sam Parr?

  And then early next year, we're having the return of Dear Deck. Oh, dude, Rob's been on a tear. I, I, I, we, I think Jonathan booked him. We got in a little bit early. We're early on his podcast journey. I take a lot of pride in that. He's been on, he was on Impulsive the other day. And I watch all of them, man. He's inspiring. The guy's awesome.

• 1:00:18Shaan Puri?

  He's great.

• 1:00:18Sam Parr?

  He's the real deal.

• 1:00:19Shaan Puri?

  All right, cool. I'm looking forward to that.

• 1:00:20Sam Parr?

  All right, that's the pod.