7 Creators Who Make Over $50 Million/Year From YouTube (#408)

So he's got, is it The Daily Wire? Is that what it's called?

Daily Wire. So this is like a subscription media company that he created because they're just sort of like anti-mainstream media. That became a big thing, like fake news and F the mainstream media. Well, why don't we create an alternative? The Daily Wire. And The Daily Wire does some insane numbers. It's like only in year 3 or 4 or something like this. Very new. And it does over $100 million a year in subscription revenue.

Yeah. And have you heard of their, their spinoff Jeremy's Razors?

No, what is that?

Dude, you gotta go to this. Dude, I've had a hell of a, of a, of a day. I'm not gonna say who, but check this out. A friend wanted to come skateboarding with me, so naturally he got a concussion. So I took him to the hospital.

By the way, did you even get like an hour of skateboarding in, or was this like I got an hour in.

I got an hour in. Yeah. And then he was getting hyped up seeing me do stuff. He fell, hit his head, take him to the hospital to get his concussion checked out. Turns out while we, while we were there, while they were getting the scan, their appendix ruptured and they get rushed overnight or they get— they have to stay there overnight, get rushed to a different hospital, emergency appendix surgery. So this head injury basically saved his life and they were like, I don't know, like, this is just a gift from God, but you definitely could have died from this.

Did the appendix get damaged in the skateboard fall or no? Just separately happened to be the same time.

Separate. It's just a weird turn of events. Very separate. So that's where I've been. So I'm a little disheveled, but I'm wearing my cool guy jacket now. That's my new thing. I'm going to be the token cool guy. You could be the nerd. Congrats. No, this is real leather, bro. This ain't the— this ain't Tesla vegan leather. But I'm in my cool guy outfit, so I'm good to go.

Yeah. Cool is what I would describe that as. So that's cool. All right. Where, where shall we start? Where do you want to start? Are we still— is Sam still showing up to the BYOB empty-handed or is he bringing ideas to the table? Where are we at with this whole Sam does research thing? I know you started with a doctor's note there. So is that your excuse for why you don't have any topics?

We, I just went over a lot of my topics. I was the one who did the topics. Um, oh, you wanna talk about your new seed oil only diet? Isn't that what you told me that you're doing a seed oil only diet?

All oil diet, dude.

So like seed oils are all the rage right now. Is it just in my world? We started talking about them and now I'm seeing everywhere. People are so anti-seed oils. My friend Dennis was like, Screw it. I'm only eating seed oils from now on.

I looked yesterday at the bag of, I was like, you know what? I kind of want to have one of these little, little bag of this little pretzel thing for a second. I just, let me just check the, check the stats on this. I was like, ah, it's not so bad. Not, not too many calories, whatever. And I looked at the, the ingredients. I saw canola oil on there or something like that, you know, sunflower oil, whatever these things are. And it was a Sam voice in my head that just told me these things kill you. And so I decided, I decided to put it down. I drank a big tall glass of water instead. So pretty big, pretty big net win there for me.

Yeah. I don't know why it's bad for you, but someone on Twitter told me it was, therefore it's true. If it's, if it's written down on Twitter or if it rhymes or if it's like a cute phrase, I automatically believe it.

Alliterations, rhymes, or 4 people I don't know either. Any one of those 3 and I'm in. Let me tell you, uh, 2 things. One, You said something about like, oh, it's beautiful, it's well done. And it reminded me, yesterday I found an amazing— what would be an amazing DTC product. Not amazing like hundreds of millions of dollars, but a DTC business that I know would just— it would work. It would work really well. It would be very profitable. I'm looking— if somebody wants to operate it, I will just simply give you an idea and a playbook and then I'll take my share and we can start this company. But basically it would require somebody who's good at things that are beautifully done. So this, I think, requires the feminine touch. So I'm sort of fishing in a dry pond here with this, with this podcast. But, uh, to our 4 female listeners, if any, any of the 4 of you, you got a, a 25% chance each here to, uh, to step in and take it. Or, um, to one of our male, uh, listeners, if you, I don't know, see a female today, let her know about this opportunity. I'm looking for somebody who could do something that is, uh, the product is beautifully done. It would be a successful D2C product. I have no doubt in my mind. You would just need to be good at a couple things, you know, an aesthetically beautiful brand and short-form video content, TikToks, or getting them made by other people if you don't do 'em yourself, but easier if you—

All right. You, you have me in the palm of your hand. Tell me what it is.

I can't tell you on air because I don't want everybody to copy it. I will tell you off air.

Wait, really?

Yes.

Dude, this is the lamest segment ever. Is that really it? That's really what you wanna do?

That's really it. Really what I'm going to do here. If it happens, then we can, we can reveal it. Uh, and if it doesn't happen, then I'll also reveal it because I have nothing to lose at that point. So just not yet.

I, I was going to remind people, this is usually the segment where I remind people of our gentleman's agreement where we work for you now, but all you have to do is go to our YouTube channel and subscribe. That's a gentleman's agreement. It's called the gentleman's agreement because I can't check to see if it's true. So you just, it's just based on trust. But after that, lame.

I just violated it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's lame. So if you want to do the gentleman's agreement, we owe you now.

I'm in the penalty box, but I'm gonna fight my way out. Okay, so here we go. I tweeted something out the other day that I think is very interesting and reminds me of the Doug DeMuro, a YouTube creator. Yeah, a YouTube creator who's not just gonna make money off YouTube ad revenue, but has built a business that they built basically a $50 million plus empire off YouTube. Why did I ask this question? Well, your boy's gonna start doing YouTube content, but your boy also wants to make more than $50 million doing this process. And so I wanted to see who has done this before because I'm not really interested in being a pioneer. The pioneers get slaughtered, right? So I don't want to be a pioneer doing this. I want to be sort of a fast follower. So I was looking for examples and I got a bunch out of this tweet. I want to read some of them off to you and see what you think about these.

First one, by the way, when you tweeted that, I don't know if it's because I know you well or if everyone like could read through the lines here, but it was very much like, uh, Tell me what to do with my life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, hey, can you just, um, can you validate my parking pass here? Yeah, I need some, need something. So first one's right up your alley. More Plates, More Dates. Love it. So More Plates, More Dates. You probably know this story a little better than I do. I didn't know he was doing this cuz I've watched his videos. He doesn't really pump product as much, uh, or at least in the clips that I've seen.

If you watch closely, he does. Not, not in an obnoxious way.

Right. So this guy Derek, super likable guy. Puts out great content. I'm not even really interested in like testosterone and like steroid usage and something else occasionally I am with certain athletes, but usually not. But I find myself just watching this guy's videos cuz I like this guy a lot. Apparently he's got a brand or maybe two brands. One brand, you know the name of it?

Yeah. One's called Meric Health and the other one is called Gorilla. What's it called? Gorilla Mind. Gorilla Mind. Yeah.

So Gorilla Mind, if you go to Gorilla Mind, Gorilla Mind is getting I wanna say almost 2 million, between 1 and 2 million visits a month, right? So let's say a million visits a month. I think it's pretty safe that this, that this brand is doing about a million dollars a month in revenue. So $12 million a year in revenue on his supplements brand.

I think more, I would take the, I would take the, the more on that one.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a, I would say a conservative estimate. Would, I wouldn't be surprised if it was as high as 4 million a month. And supplements are an amazing niche to be in, right? Like, you know, everybody wants to be in the, everybody wants to be in the supplements niche. So, so that's great. Just gave you, by the way, two pronunciations of niche back to back just to appeal to both, both sides of the, of the aisle.

You totally redeemed yourself.

And then Merrick is this TRT clinic. So they basically do kind of like, you know, help men, you know, stay young. So hormone replacement, hair loss, sexual wellness, all this stuff. This thing's gotta be doing pretty well too. And I think they also do the semi-glutide stuff as well. I don't, did he start this or what? Because it has like 200 employees on LinkedIn. Is he just a partner or he started it?

I think he's an equity owner. I don't know if he's the guy, but I think it's, he's, he's so popular that it appears as though he's a, a, a main guy and he's definitely pulling his weight. I know a lot of people who use Merck Health. I don't know anyone who uses Gorilla Mind. I think Gorilla Mind's a horrible name for a supplement company. Uh, but I trust Derek. I think the branding on this is wrong, but it's interesting. And what's really interesting is like he sells creatine. Do you know anything about creatine? It's awesome for one. And number two, it's basically like a, it's ba— it's ba—

have you ever heard of creatine? It's awesome.

Yeah.

But there was a joke.

Well, I'm, I'm, I'm almost positive that creatine is like a commodity. Like it's almost like all the same. Uh, and, and he's selling it, but he has an upsell here. He has a, he marked it up because it's Derek. But yeah, that's a good example of a creator killing it.

And by the way, these examples I specifically said, I said you get kicked out of the party if you come here and you say Joe Rogan or MrBeast or anything like, it has to be somebody else, like not the examples everybody always talks about. So here's, here's a couple others. Okay. So here's some that, I'll go in order of the ones, you know, to the ones I think you don't know. So, another one, you know, Kayla Itsines. I don't know how you say her last name. Kayla Itsines, I think.

No, I think it's like Itsines or something. I think it's pronounced a little bit different, but, but if you're, if you're one of the 4 women listeners, they 100% know who she is.

There's one time I tried to pronounce like, uh, Hermès or something like that on this podcast or like Hermès. Yeah. I was, I, I, I, you know, I got a lot of shit for that. Um, yeah.

One time I heard you pronounce the Tahiti. You're not exactly good at pronouncing, pronouncing things.

My mouth doesn't fully work.

Yeah, I got a, a thick tongue.

So she created this app. So she's like a fitness influencer type person, ends up creating an app called the Sweat app. I believe they sold it for $400 million. So her and her husband or boyfriend, and then they broke up, but they kept building the business together. I don't, I don't know what ended up happening there, but sounded like there was some drama. $400 million on this exit. So I thought that was a great example of not just saying cool, I'm gonna hold up a detox tea and, you know, get paid $5,000 for a shoutout. I'm actually gonna create a business off of my following. Mark Rober. So Mark Rober, yeah, he's a former NASA engineer. He makes like engineering videos, like, oh, I built the world's biggest t-shirt cannon.

I love this guy.

He built a cool, yeah, he's a really likable guy. He's like, you know, the science teacher, everyone's favorite science teacher type of guy. He has a monthly subscription box, I think that does like It's like a science kit and you're like, you get to build little products yourself. And that's a great idea. Super on brand. Uh, it's $25, $30. Um, this thing is, I, I think doing millions of dollars, um, a, a year pretty safely. He's got a very, very big following.

23 million, I think on YouTube. I mean, he is like one of the big guys. Yeah.

He's been around for a long time. Um, okay. Another one you probably know, Ben Shapiro. So Ben Shapiro is, um, by the way, I'm gonna make a little prediction. You don't agree with everything he says, but you kind of love this guy.

Yeah. Yeah. Also, yeah.

I'm projecting. I also feel the same way.

Yeah.

I like his nerd swagger.

And he's, he's just fast mouth. He just like says things very succinctly and quickly. And I don't believe in most of the things he says. I believe in maybe some of them. He's pretty religious. Uh, and I'm not into, I'm not into religion, but he says a lot of stuff that I'm like, Dude, just the fact that you came with that, like, pretty brutal reply so quickly. I respect you.

Yeah, it's like a rap battle, right? Like, you just— at the end of the day, you know, whoever kind of insults the other person the fastest and the best wins. And, uh, he does not have a thick tongue like your boys, uh, do. So he's got that thin tongue.

Yeah, he's good, man. So he's got, uh, is it The Daily Wire? Is that what it's called?

Daily Wire. So this is like a subscription media company that he created because They're just sort of like anti-mainstream media. That became a big thing, like fake news and F the mainstream media. Well, why don't we create an alternative? The Daily Wire. And the Daily Wire does some insane numbers. It's like only in year 3 or 4 or something like this. Very new. And it does over $100 million a year in subscription revenue.

Yeah. And have you heard of their, their spinoff Jeremy's Razors?

No. What is that?

Dude, you gotta go to this. So go to, it's just Google like Daily Wire razor company. But so basically, Dollar Shave or Harry's Razor was one of their sponsors. So basically Ben Shapiro is conservative or he's right-wing, whatever you call him. And so naturally, like the left hates him and the right loves him because they feel like they're being canceled all the time. And so Harry's Razors was one of their biggest or big advertisers and they bailed. They, you know, said, you know, we're not going to associate with Ben. You know, you're screwed up. And so the founder, or one of the co-founders and CEO of The Daily Wire, his name is Jeremy. And so if you go to Jeremy's Razors, you'll see the website. And they made this crazy video where they just said, like, it's actually pretty hilarious regardless if you agree with them or not, but they created this video that's like a hype video, and it was launched 9 months ago, and it has 22 million views, and they're selling millions and millions of dollars. They basically just took the Harry's Razors, like, it's pretty much their site is identical to Harry's Razors. But they just call it Jeremy's Razors. And it's like— and the picture is this guy who's— he's like smoking a cigar. It's basically a big middle finger to Harry's Razors. On the about page, it says Harry's and The Daily Wire had a deal. They paid us, we advertise their razors. But after we said that boys are boys and girls are girls, they publicly condemned our views as inexcusable and misaligned. And you know what? You're damn right our values are misaligned. We value truth and the right to speak. We embrace masculinity and the courage to uphold it. And so that's like their whole shtick. It's us versus them. Regardless of what you feel about that, if you think it's right or wrong, very, uh, they capitalized on something and it's, and it's doing well.

This is so good. This is, uh, wow. This is an amazing, amazing little case here. The video that's the like ad, the launch video for this, it starts with a, it's like, it's like professionally made and basically starts with like, you hear like a car and you're in a parking lot and it shows like the parking signs and it's like, um, you know, the Daily Wire and then it says God King. And a guy pulls up in a McLaren and he gets out with a, like a blowtorch and he goes inside and just blowtorches a bunch of like Harry's, like merchandise and just sets it on fire. And it's like such a, such a smart thing to do to take this like great business model, right? The, the classic kind of Gillette, you know, razor cartridge model and then just be like, no, this is the one done by, by us for us. Right? Like, yeah, that is so smart. And I feel like that just opens the door for them to do this in 5 other categories.

Yeah, it's a very, very intriguing case study of what these guys are doing. So yeah, that's a good one.

Can you write the word Jeremy on a stick of deodorant? Yes, you can. All right, great. Can you write Jeremy on a, in a tub of toothpaste? Great. Yep, you sure can. What else can I write the word Jeremy on? That's not— there's now a guy running around grocery stores being like, we can write Jeremy on that. We can write Jeremy on this. Oh my God, guys, the opportunity's massive. Yeah.

They're like, hey, Republicans like sunscreen. Let's do that.

White people get sunburned. This is going to totally work.

Yeah. Interesting case study. All right. What else is there? All right.

So then there's kind of like the Emma Chamberlain. A lot of people talk about her coffee thing. People know that.

Pat McAfee killing it.

You know, he kind of did. He did a 4-year, $120 million deal with FanDuel for his NFL show, which is pretty insane. That's like an absolutely insane like brand deal to pull off. Okay. Then there's some others that I hadn't even heard of.

So he's also the host of like WWE. Do you know that? He's like an announcer there. He's kind of crossed.

I went down a very deep Pat McAfee rabbit hole one night cuz I was like, I think I love this guy.

He's amazing.

And I was like, I'm doing this for the pod, this research. And then 3 hours in, I was like, this isn't for the pod. This is for my soul. I, I just enjoy this, watching this whole journey. and I was also like, I don't think there's even a story here for the podcast. I just think I really like this content and I'm, and I never talked about it. I just did 3 hours one night and I just never brought it up.

There was one time where I thought about our setup and I'm like, we should do it standing up because he stands up when he records and I love it.

He also wears a tank top, which I know you love.

Yeah. So win-win.

Um, all right. So here's some others that I didn't even know who these people are. Danny Austin. Do you ever heard that? Have you ever heard of this person?

No.

Okay. So she created a brand called Divi and it's basically scalp care for women. So she basically took a problem in her life, which was, I think maybe like as she was aging or postpartum, maybe she was struggling with hair loss, which is actually pretty common for women to struggle with hair loss. Like I know my wife, like after we had, every time like you, you go kind of like after you have a baby, like your body's just producing whatever different hormones and there's like, they all like complain about like, you know, their hair thinning or hair loss. It's a very common thing. So anyways, she creates a brand. She first was just talking about the struggle and then she sold the solution. So her content was everyone's like, oh my God, Dani, so vulnerable, so authentic. Oh my God. So I'm so glad you're speaking up on these issues and like, you're a beautiful queen. You're so beautiful. This is like, don't worry about it. And then she sold a solution, which was like the scalp care thing, and she did $20 million in the first like 10 months or something crazy.

That's crazy.

So it just like took off right away like a rocket. Um, so I like that one. There's another one.

By the way, do you ever watch dandruff videos on TikTok? That's like my favorite type of content of people just like flaking off dandruff. You ever do that?

People like popping zits too, dude.

'Cause I got crazy dandruff. If I like itch my head, there's gonna be a snow day. I'm always looking for like a good, a good dandruff shampoo. And I love watching dandruff videos on TikTok. It's a huge niche.

Don't wear black around Sam. Yeah.

Not good.

Um, So there's this woman named Mindy McKnight. This is another cool example. So she started a brand called Cute Girl Hair where she was, cuz she was just doing hairstyles.

Love that name.

YouTube. Yeah, great name. Honestly, amazing name.

Yeah.

She was making YouTube content of just doing hairstyles for her girls. That's cool content. Oh, here's how we do this hairstyle. Here's how we do this one. It's kind of like, you know, what your big sister should have taught you or something like that. And I think her story is like she has 5 kids. I might butcher the story cuz I just, I don't remember it. This was like a couple weeks ago when I saw this, but like, I think she's got 5 kids or something like that and they all have different hairstyles or textures they may have adopted or something like that. And so she's like, her content is showing like this wide range of like hairstyles and how you can make them all look cute no matter what your hair is, right? That's great. She does a launch with Walmart and it's the second biggest launch with Walmart. She just, they're doing 9 figures in sales, so over $100 million in sales. Yeah. And her YouTube channel has 5.5 million subs. Her twin daughters have YouTube, have a YouTube channel with 7 million subs, right? Like, this is just kind of insane how big that launch can be when it's like total alignment between creator, their personal story, their content, and then the product once they have the distribution. And so that was pretty inspiring to me. I, I really like that. And now, now I have a good excuse to spend all day just making fun content for free and being like, Don't worry, one day this is all going to become actual, like, this will, this will be real work. This is not just me getting to play around and like, you know, be on YouTube all day.

All right. Well, what else is there? I mean, Cute Girl Hero, great name. What else you got?

Uh, well, okay. I just gave you 7, but like we can keep going if we, if we'd like.

Oh, I thought you had a few. Uh, there's one, one guy that I find very fascinating that I saw someone mentioned on your thing, Guzman. His name—

I didn't know who this was. A lot of people mentioned him. So Guzman, he's, I guess, a fitness influencer. He's got Athlete or something like that. Alpha Elite.

Yeah, his— I don't know if his niche— I think his niche is like Texans. I think he's Hispanic. So I think he has like a huge Hispanic following. But basically, basically he's like a rip, a rip guy. But he like has like weaved in his family into his content. So you like know about his life and he's like a family guy. He launched something like a 50,000 square foot gym called Alpha Land. Uh, so probably not in your wheelhouse, but it's called Alpha Land. And, uh, they have a sister branch for beta dudes. Yeah.

We go there to watch what's going on in Alpha Land.

Is there like a, is there like a gymnastics, like part of that?

Uh, we stretch and watch other men work out.

Yeah. It's called Alpha Land. It's like a 50,000 square foot gym. I forget where it is, San Antonio or Houston or Dallas or one of those folks, one of those places where you'd expect an Alpha Land. And, uh, and he also has a clothing line and I think he's killing it. I think he's doing a, he's big business.

Right. I like how you acted like you hadn't been there or don't have a membership, but like, we know.

Um, uh, okay.

Yeah. So this is my, these are my $50 million creators and, uh, all of these people I think have built off of their YouTube content, uh, you know, an empire that's easily worth $50 million or more.

Uh, you, um, You, you made fun of me for not preparing and you prepared that list. I think I knew more about all of them than you did.

Yeah. Cause you were, you're like a real consumer of content. Um, right. Like I'll be like, oh, uh, they use this technology in this music video. You're like, yeah, I love that music video. And I'm like, I haven't watched a music video. And it literally, it's been 17 years since I've watched a single music video. I went to your house and you just had music videos on TV on loop.

And you're like, I love music videos.

I was like, this is what you watch? And you're like, I just leave it on.

Yeah. I love music videos.

I just, I ran out of questions because I was like, wow, this is just a different thing that just doesn't happen in my world.

No, I watch music videos constantly. So yeah, that's one of the ways I know about stuff. Also, my wife is a little bit younger, so she just turned 30. So when we were dating, you know, only a couple of years ago, she was like in her 20s.

Okay.

Yeah. Well, hey, I said younger than me and she's got a younger sister. So I'm kind of, I, I'm, I got my toe in the cool kids market. Yeah.

You like, you see people, you leave the house, you take supplements, you watch music videos, you watch movies, you read biographies, you do a lot of things that like, you know, I simply don't do. I'm like a, I'm just like a heat-seeking missile for like, what's the interesting story? And then my stories are typically like, uh, did you know that there's this? And then for most normal people are like, yeah, I love that. Love their channel. You're watching them on Cobra for years.

You're a potato. What you see is what you get. You can pull the skin back a little bit. It gets something new. I'm like an onion, bro. There's layers. There's lots of layers. It goes all the way to the core. The layers don't stop.

Yeah, but French fries are made out of me and I think that that's kind of a win, dude.

All right. Let me tell you something interesting. And this is more so, I want to put this on record that I brought this up about 2 years ago, but have I, remember when I told you about the company Bring a Trailer?

Yeah, yeah. You said, um, you said you were talking about, um, car companies or auction companies or something like that, and you were like, dude, there's this thing— you've been told that this is like a long time ago.

A long time ago.

You were like, dude, there's this thing called Bring a Trailer. It's sick. You can just buy a car on this auction thing. I don't even know how it works exactly. You're like, it's started by this guy Doug DeMora.

No, you're confusing two things.

It was the guy from Inbox or whatever, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So It was started— the main guy, I forget his name. Nathan, I think. The non-main guy, but also co-founder, I think his name is Gentry Underwood. And he started this company called Mailbox, which is like an email thing that sold for reportedly $100 million to Dropbox, like before it even launched, because it built up such a huge waitlist. And it sounded like a cool product. I don't even think it got launched. But anyway, it's this website called Bring a Trailer. And if you go to it, it just looks like almost like a blog. It's fairly unsophisticated. Honestly, I think it's WordPress. And what they do is there's this neat niche of car enthusiasts who like things from like the '70s to like early '90s, which— Like your jacket. Like my jacket. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like my jacket. And it started out small, but it sold recently. And it was recently-ish announced that they last year in the trailing 12 months sold something like $1.2 billion worth of cars in one year. And they made something like $100 million in net revenue with like 80 employees. And you go to their website and it's so basic and people love it. And there's this guy named Doug D'Amore who has a YouTube channel where he reviews all types of cars and he does it just with an iPhone. And he like always has like, you know, like a bacon collar. Have you heard of a bacon collar? It's like where you wear an undershirt on your, on your shirt and your white shirt, the collar's all like shuffled or like the the, the white sleeves are like coming down below your polo. You know what I'm talking about?

Okay, so your undershirt is showing. Is that the idea?

Yeah, where you're like under— like, he's like— it's like where you're wearing— like, imagine a guy wearing cargo shorts and like an Old Navy t-shirt with like a Hollister polo above it, and like you have a bacon collar. Like, he just looks totally disheveled. It's incredibly unprofessional looking.

Okay, I got the definition. Shirts that have a wavy neck due to being stretched out or from improper care.

Yeah, it's just like— it's just like, uh, the very typical like, oh my shirts look. Yeah, you're a bacon collar guy. So that's what this guy is. Doug's a bacon collar guy, but he's hilarious and he's lovable and he's likable. And he's built this YouTube channel, like he'll review like a $2 million Ferrari as well as like a $30,000 Honda Pilot. And it's pretty hilarious. He's got 3 or 4 million subscribers on YouTube now. I told you about 2 years ago, maybe I forget when, maybe 3 years ago, he launched this new company called Cars and Bids, and it's very similar to Bring a Trailer. And so I predict that this is actually going to be a multi-hundred million dollar exit. And I want to make my prediction there now that that's going to happen. But what's really interesting here is curated auctions. I think that's very fascinating because the reason it's fascinating is if you go to eBay, have you ever been to eBay in the last like 5 years?

I have not, dude.

No, like not a lot of people do. Of course a lot of people do, but like not a lot of people do. And it's because it's one of those things, no one goes there anymore.

It's perfect description.

It's got like, yeah.

100 million visitors. You don't know any of them.

Yeah, it's too crowded. No one goes there anymore. Um, and so it's one of those things where like you go to eBay and you like that one.

Oh, smooth. It was really the timing that I enjoyed there.

You go to eBay and you get overwhelmed with options. And there's a couple of businesses that I've been looking at where I'm trying to think of what a curated auction could be. Cause I think it's like, I think it's cool and it feels It's just a beautiful experience, you know? That's what we— that's our phrase. It's just like, don't like it, but it's just beautifully done. Yeah, it's beautifully done.

Really well done.

Anytime people can say like handcrafted or like ultra premium, uh, that's what this is. And I really have been digging this. I invested in a company that is doing this for homes because I've been looking at like, what are big ticket items that people will buy online that they previously didn't, but they will because it's more well curated. So like for example, we talked about, uh, I can never say it right, but Hodinkee. We had Kevin Rose, the founder. They sell like, you can buy like a $40,000 watch online and they do a really good job of editorializing it. So I've been thinking, what are other categories where someone can buy something online that's $30,000 to $100,000, even $1 million plus, but if you curate it nicely and you describe it nicely with beautiful photos. So in the same way that Airbnb, I don't know if you know this, but they used to send out photographers to the really nice listings cuz they're like, well, you charge $1,000 a night with better pictures, you can charge $1,500 a night, so it's worth it to us to help you make your shit look better. What else is like that, that these curated auctions can work at? Because I think they're really, really cool companies to run, and they're really hard to break once they work. Once they work, it's like the people working there, you guys are important, but like the community has taken hold. You are just a, you're just there to help the community. It's no longer your business that you're pushing down people's throats.

Golf equipment.

Golf equipment.

Golf equipment.

Really? How much is it? How much? Why do you say that?

Well, you have an enthusiast market. You have kind of like a knowledge gap of which one should I get? What's better? What's worse? Blah, blah, blah. You have a super premium price point. And I think a golfer over the course of their lifetime is going to spend, you know, probably upwards of $10,000 on equipment. And I think that, so, because I think, because I think the, the thing you want is like cars, you want a high ticket, right? You need, you need a high ticket. You need ability to drive high ticket customers to something. And so I think that's one where people will nerd out on the content and, and get there. But I have other, this, what you said, by the way, is a perfect lead into two things I wanna talk about.

Wait, let me say mine. Livestock. Livestock.

Like animals?

Hell yeah, dog. Dude, my, my— so listen to this. My cousins, they're cowboys, so they buck bulls. They— it's called— if you ask them what they do, they'll go, I buck bulls, which means they live in rural Oklahoma. And when I went to their house once, and instead of like— it was a Thursday night, and instead of going like the community softball game, we went to the community rodeo. And there was only like 20 people in the stands, but they are practicing their rodeo, which is basically you get on a bull and bulls are mean. Bulls want to kill you even if they— even if you raised them, they're just like mean. And they get on these bulls and they buck them off. And the bull— the person who stays on the longest gets a prize. But the bull who bucks the hardest based off of like judging wins a prize. And some of these bulls cost $50 grand. My parents bought into a bull for $50,000 and they get a portion of the, like the offspring, like the, the, the, the sperm that they, they sell and they get a portion of the winnings from the bull. And is it a good investment? They make money off of it. Yeah. And they, so what kind of money are we talking here?

What did it do?

The return's not like that great, but like, you like, I don't know, you get a couple grand every once in a while. So it's like not that great. And like the bull can like break its leg and you're screwed.

But, but like, should we go halfsies on a bull?

It is pretty interesting to own a bull, but it's a, it's a, it's a huge sport in certain parts of the country. My cousin went to college on a scholarship for bucking bulls for being a rodeo guy. And so, and all these folks, they, they, they, it's cash. So they'll come to the rodeo with like 10, 30, 40 grand in cash and they're like playing right there on it. It's very fascinating. Have you never been to a livestock auction?

Sure haven't.

Um, dude, it's dope.

But I do think we should go have these on a bull. If there's a bull dealer in the audience, hit us up. We are— we're in the market for one and we'll livestream our bull purchase. Yeah, this is great. Okay. Okay. So livestock, that's one. Yeah, sure. I like that.

Our software is the worst.

Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM.

Our software is the best.

HubSpot, grow better. All right, I think I've kind of done this, but I went even deeper down this rabbit hole, so I got to bring him back as a new Billy of the Week. A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?

A billion dollars.

The new Billy of the Week is an Old Billy of the Week. It's Sam Altman. And you would think, Sam, what, uh, Sean, what, you know, you got nothing new to say here. What is Sam Altman? We all know Sam Altman. We've talked about Sam Altman, dude. Sam Altman's— Sam Altman's onion status. He's got layers. Um, okay, so I want to read you some of the interesting— I went down to Sam Altman, uh, rabbit hole last night. Here's why. He did an interview, and I was, I was watching.

You got to explain who he is for the new—

okay, for people who don't know who Sam Altman is, He's like an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He created one company, didn't go that far called Loopd, sold it for $40 million. Then he, but he had made, he went through Y Combinator, the big accelerator down here when he was like 19. And the founder of Y Combinator was super impressed with him and kept him on as a partner and eventually named him president of YC, which is like one of like, it's like being named the Dean of Harvard after being a Harvard student because the Dean thought you were so special. And so that's literally what he did. He became the, the president of YC, grew YC. He then created, he then created the nonprofit OpenAI. He then left to go work on OpenAI. OpenAI is now behind ChatGPT, which is like one of the fastest growing like tech waves that's out there. Basically an artificial intelligence platform. That's, I think they launched ChatGPT, ChatGPT, and I think got 10 million users in like 10 days or something ridiculous like that.

It's worth $40 billion.

The company's worth somewhere between $20, $40 billion now. And he's the, you know, the leader of that thing too. Plus he's a prolific investor, was investing in a bunch of things.

All right.

So I got some of those facts coming, but that's— and most people know Sam Altman. I'm not bringing up a surprise. If you listen to this pod, you probably know who he is. Okay. But here's some of the things I didn't know. I was listening to this interview and they go, you invested in this Fusion company. And I'm thinking, okay, Fusion, I still don't know what the hell that is, but I know smart people talk about it. Okay, great. And they go, "You led the investment." Okay, that's fine. He led the investment. "You wrote a $375 million check into Helium." And I was like, "What?" Rewind. What did this person just say? And I literally went back and I relistened to it and I was like, "Oh, I didn't know Sam Altman has a giant venture fund. Surely he's not writing a $375 million check himself." As far as I could tell, that is what he did. He wrote a $375 million check himself. And that got me down this rabbit hole of where did, how did Sam Altman get so wealthy? Because I've heard several stories now. So for example, when he started OpenAI, or even when he was president of YC, he donated $10 million to a science research, like a project that he created, right? Like science research nonprofit. To donate $10 million means you got a lot more than $10 million. And at that time I was like, how did he get $10 million? Because again, his first startup, which he was like, whatever, 18 or 19, sold for $41 million. Out of that, he said that he got $5 million. So somehow he parlayed $5 million and in a very short amount of time, about 4 or 5 years, was now donating $10 million. So that was the first thing.

Oh, wow. It was that short.

That didn't make sense. And I was like, okay, so he's, you know, this is now, you know, maybe 6 years max later. Okay, then what else did he do? He also donated to, you know, when he started OpenAI, but they didn't say how much. And then this $375 million check. So I started going back and trying to figure out what's going on. So starts Loopd, sells it, nets about $5 million from there.

How old was he at that $5 million? Like 22, 23?

Yeah, something like that. I don't have the exact timeline, but I think he's in his young, early, early 20s is pretty safe to say there. He then starts investing in startups, and so he's investing in startups. Second investment is, drum roll please, the best investment of the decade, Stripe. So he is one of the first investors in Stripe. That was his second investment. And, and there's this like thing that I've noticed, which is in D2C brands, they call your first kind of like couple months your golden cohort. It's like, I noticed this about our customers and my, my e-com brand, but I noticed this across many brands, uh, which is your first, that first batch of customers you get, for some reason their LTV is way higher. And it kind of makes sense cuz it's actually like the people who immediately get it with your message are willing to adopt your thing before you're a big brand. They probably really have the problem or they're heavy enthusiasts. Um, there's some, there's the equivalent thing in investing. For some reason it's very common for people's first 5 to 10 investments to do extremely well in the world of angel investing. When you're— for great investors, often their best hits come early. Like Chris Sacca, who's one of the best early-stage investors of all time, his— one of some of his earliest investments were basically, you know, the combination of Twitter, Uber, Instagram, you know, things like that. And they came in kind of the first 10, 15 deals that he did.

And I feel like that's the only stuff he did. Like those were the hits and then everything—

He did so well, he retired, right? He became a billionaire and essentially retired from the game because he was like, well, My first fund was like a whatever, 6,000x. I'm good. Sam said that in his first 40 deals at that, at that time he had invested in 40 deals. He was 2 years in and he said that 5 of the companies were doing really good. And then it was like, what's really good? I mean, it was over 100x.

So, so what's that?

That's not really good. That's ridiculously good.

So what's a, what's a $50,000? How big of it? Maybe $25,000. What's 100 times $25,000? Well, you're violating the no public math rule, but is that 2.5 or 25 million?

So $50,000 turns into $5 million for 100x.

Wow. Okay.

And so you stack 5 of those. That's pretty good. Right off that, I was like, okay, where do you get all this money? How was he doing all these deals? Was he just investing out of that $5 million? And the reality was, yes, he was investing personally, but I texted a friend. So I was like, yo, I'm looking up Sam Altman. Like, where did he write this check personally? How did he get all this money? And this is somebody else who's young, smart, and friends with Sam and that crew. And he is like, I think it was, I think this check was personal, this $375 million check. He's like, I think so, but it might have been an SPV. And I was like, I was like, dude, I feel like there's some underground, you know, like teen prodigy thing where like—

There is.

If you turn 18 years old and you're like a phenom, Peter Thiel just gives you $100 million. And I was like, I was laughing and I was like, you know, I think you're in that club too. And he was just laughing. He's like, ah, yeah, Peter does actually back it. So I go and I Google it. Sure enough, Sam Altman, right after he sold his first thing, raises a $21 million fund from Peter Thiel. This is like—

there 100% is, dude. I know a few of these prodigies. There is, there is a club. They exist. So people talk about like, uh, like, you know, oh, it's just like, it's, what do they say? Uh, you know, it's that boys club and I can't ever break into it. Unfortunately, that's true. It's real. They exist. You and I aren't in that club. Maybe we have our own club, but these type of like elite clubs, they're real. They're 100% real.

So somebody said something, they were like, you know, Sam, they were asking Paul Graham, I think they were like, what's, what stood out to you about Sam? Because from the very beginning, I've talked about this before, from the very beginning, I think 2007, 2008, Paul Graham wrote a blog post about like, who are the 5 most impressive people he's met in Silicon Valley or who, who does he admire or look up to or whatever? And it was like Steve Jobs. Larry and Sergey from Google and Sam Altman. And it was like, what? One of these does not belong. One guy invented Apple, another guy invented Google. Who's this kid I've never heard of? And he was like, um, when I talk to Sam Altman, I think, oh, this is what it would've been like to talk to Bill Gates when he was 20 years old. And I was just like, what an epic call for a guy who's now gone on to do some pretty amazing things. There was a story I'd never heard though, or two stories I thought were pretty remarkable. Um, I think there was a situation where at his school, when he was in high school, there was a protest from like the Christian or Catholic, you know, some, some protesters that were like, you know, uh, protesting the— I forgot exactly what it was.

He's from my hometown. He probably went to— he's from St. Louis where I'm from. And, uh, he, he went to a Catholic school.

I, I, if I had to bet, I think it was a, um, I don't remember exactly what the, what the protest was, but it was like, uh, you know, Here we go. So basically, a Christian group boycotted an assembly about sexuality. So they're going to have an assembly about sexuality at his prep school, John Burroughs.

Yeah, John Burroughs in St. Louis.

And so Sam Altman basically takes the mic, announces that he's gay, and then asks the school whether they want to be a repressive place or a place open to different ideas.

Baller. And then baller, right?

And then the college counselor goes, what Sam did changed the school. It felt like somebody opened up a big box and then all the kids— And then all kids of all kinds got to be let out into the world. Like, you know, it just kind of like he drew a line publicly.

That's a really good way to describe it, by the way.

And that is just an amazing story. I love that story. He also talked about like, okay, I want to read you some other amazing quotables because this guy's kind of remarkable and we just respect people who kind of like, what'd you say? Let their freak flag fly. That people who just like do life their way and their way happens to be different than like the conventional way.

The craziest thing that he did was he did a speech about announcing something big and he wore 2 double popped collars that were pink and green. I love that guy.

I saw, I remember seeing that on the girls conference, like a big deal, a life highlight for most people. Um, there's all these amazing anecdotes from these, these articles that I was reading. So one goes, um, so they got, uh, so they got in, uh, him and his brother. So he's got, uh, brothers Jack and Max. Max. And so they, uh, one of them started this company called Lattice and like, you know, he had some phrase about what Lattice was doing. And so Sam invests in Asana, a different company, and he writes this blog post about like, you know, just quickly, you know, the morning of kind of writes this, writes this blog post where he goes, how did he go? He goes, he goes, yeah, I, you know, I invest in Asana 'cause I think it's great. It's gonna make people more productive 'cause they do A, B, and C. And it turns out that A, B, and C were like the same marketing material that Jack, his brother, was using for Lattice. And so the article's talking about— it's like Jack's like super pissed. He's like, dude, you just invested in them for the exact— you know, that's our mission statement. Why are you saying they do it? And Sam's like, oh dude, like, I'm so— I totally— I must have just totally spaced. Like, I must have heard you say that so many times over the years that like it just kind of became like a set of words I know. I totally didn't intend that. Edit it. But Jack's mad, calls the mom, and it's like, you know, Sam did this.

And they're—

and Sam's like, are you still mad at me or whatever? And they're fighting. And then they're like— and then the end of the story goes like, uh, they're like— and then Jack looks over at a board game called Samurai that's on their bookshelf in their home and says, you know, Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids and always declared himself the Samurai leader because he's— he always has to win. He's always in charge of everything. This is all— and then says, uh, Sam Altman shot back, you want to play speed chess right now? I read this and I was like, that's literally like if Chat— I told ChatGPT to like make up a story about like young Silicon Valley nerds who are comp— have a competitive streak, you know?

Like, oh yeah, it's called Alpha Land.

You wanna take this outside and play some speed chess instead of see who's the real man around here?

Yeah, that's Alpha Land in Silicon Valley.

Yeah. So I thought that was hilarious. There's another one that I thought was a, a kind of amazing thing. So did you know that at some point he basically sold, what did he do? He sold, um, Yeah. So he, the, the story goes, he decided to get rid of all his, you know, comforts except for the, you know, 3 or 4 things. So he kept a 4-bedroom house in San Francisco. He kept his cars cuz he loves cars.

It was like a McLaren, like a race car.

He has 2 McLarens and, and something else. He kept a property on Big Sur in case the, the world ends. And, and then he has a reserve of $10 million and he's like, the, the annual interest should cover my living expenses and I can just spend the rest of my money and the rest of my time trying to improve humanity. And so he's like, I just whittle it down to what are the things I really care about?

Yeah. The essentials.

And what do I need? The essentials. You know, my McLarens, my $10 million, you know, whatever. And it sounds a little like trite cuz it's like, oh yeah, dude, like that's it. But in reality, like if you know people in Silicon Valley, like there's a never-ending appetite for more, more fame, more money, more everything. And I actually think that somebody who can sort of figure out, well, dude, just accruing these these money points doesn't do anything past a certain score. So what am I gonna do with this money and my time to like make sure I use my, you know, my time on this, this little blueberry called Earth to, to the best advantage, right? So I, I like that he had that. Another thing that he said about being a prepper that I think you'll like, let me read this quote to you.

Dude, I think he like, didn't he like, wasn't he like saying, you know, in case there's like a pandemic or something like that, I want a place to go to.

Exactly. Exactly. So, So somebody goes like, he goes up to these, there's a story. He goes up to these guys at this conference or like whatever, at this hangout meetup or whatever. He's like, so what do you guys do? And they're like, we just kind of work and whatever. They're like, what do you do for fun? He goes, well, I like racing cars. I got 5 cars. I have 2 McLarens, an old Tesla. I like to fly rented planes all around California. Oh, and one weird one, I like to prep for survival. And they're like, survival? What? He goes, yeah, I have a lot of friends that are constantly getting drunk and telling me about all the ways that the world's going to end. And I read that this Dutch lab had modified the H5N1 bird flu virus 5 years ago, and it was super contagious. By the way, this is pre-pandemic, right? It's pre-COVID. So he goes, I read about the, this lab that was modifying this thing, making it really contagious. And I realized that the chance of a lethal, a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next 20 years was, well, non-zero.

And non-zero. That's such a, that, that whenever I hear that phrase, that, that's like, oh, you either are smart or you're trying to be smart. Either way, you've got my attention.

Dude, I have another one that when I was reading this, that I was like, he kept saying orders of magnitude, orders of magnitude.

I love that.

I just decided that that's going to be the name of my gang. And so if you want to join my gang, it's called Orders of Magnitude and we fuck shit up at levels that are 10x. Yeah. 10x the previous level, dude.

I'm going to have like the subcommittee on that. We're going to call it Parabolic or something like that. Like I'm just going to come up with like crazy names. Like, oh, you guys want to join the Exponentials or not?

Exactly. Yeah. It's the Orders of Magnitude versus, that's the Crips and Bloods. Against the exponentials. So then he also says this before OpenAI, he goes, the other one is that AI might get really powerful, it'd be used to attack us and nations will use it. And then people are getting, he goes, you know, I try not to think about it too much, but I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, a gas mask from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur that I can fly to if the world ever ends.

Dude, that's crazy. What a baller. There's also a story of him walking around with Brian Chesky. Brian Chesky was about to, uh, pitch at YC, and this is Brian Chesky started Airbnb. Airbnb, it was just getting going. And Brian was explaining the idea to Sam. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. I think it's great. Can I see your presentation? He shows him the presentation. He goes, yeah, I think we can make like $100 million a year doing this. He goes, Brian, do me a favor. Can you add a zero to every single number that you have up there? I need to see a billion in revenue, not $100 million.

He goes, change all your Ms to Bs.

Yeah. Change all your Ms to Bs. And, uh, that, that's good. That, that's actually going to be my new—

Small boy stuff, as we say. Sam, you just needed our phrase. No small boys. Change all your Ms to Bs.

When I was a—

Mic drop.

I used to work at this office and they took the exit sign. So, you know, how there's exit signs and, uh, at offices, like, uh, above the door, they changed the exit sign to say, uh, they like molded it in such a way. So it said IPO. So the exit was an IPO. So, oh, it's the IPO side, the exit side. Uh, and I always thought that was awesome. And we need a new sign that says change the M's to B's. And, uh, that's what he did with Brian Chesky when he was—

Fire marshal would like a word, but yeah, only nerds will survive.

Only nerds will get that joke.

So he had another, um, he had another, um, quote about that, the M's to B's thing. He goes, he goes, he goes, look, I listened to your whole presentation and, uh, you need to change that. They're like, are you sure? And he goes, Look, either you don't believe what you told me, or I'm dumb and I didn't understand what you told me, or I don't know math. One of those three is what's true here. Like, either you're ashamed to say it, you don't believe it, or I'm dumb and I don't know math. And I thought that's great. That's a pretty baller way to say things. I want to read you some of the other little, like, you know, isms. Okay, let me give you some more. So Here's some like quick Chad advice. So, so I'm pretty into my meme of the year is that, that what I call the Midwit meme. You can throw this up on YouTube so you can see it, but it's basically like there's the dumb, the ignorant kind of beginner on one side, there's the Jedi master on the other, and every in between is the kind of sort of like stressor Type A personality that's like overanalyzing everything. And my goal for the, for the year slash life is to live life like either the dumb beginner or the Jedi master. It doesn't matter. They, they think the same way. And so, and, and not be the stressor, stressor, achiever, Type A, over-analyzer type person. And, and I'm just seeing that meme everywhere. When I meet people, I just classify them instantaneously. Say, are they being right now?

Where do you think you've been historically?

I started off for sure as the dumb, the dumb troll. Like my first, my sushi restaurant startup that I thought was the greatest thing in the world. My next thing, yes. Even just when I applied for my job and Sam moved to Silicon Valley and got a job with a billionaire, like, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I was so dumb that I like, my approach was correct. I was like, well, I'll just reach out to the guy and I'll just send him a letter saying why I'm the right guy for the job. And then I'm not really gonna apply for other jobs. I'm just gonna prove to this guy, this is, I'm good at this job. And I just, that was my job search, right? Like I didn't do any of the traditional things. I just did what just seemed like the dumb thing to do. But that would also be the Jedi move too. In that case, it's like, you know, find the thing you really want and chase it with reckless abandon. Don't like, just put a resume on 500 desks and see who calls you for the job.

So, so, you know, I, I'm still a mouth breather. I think I'm still pretty far left on that. On that. I'm still pretty stupid.

Yeah. So I'm glad I do it from time to time. I, I'll often do it with my e-com biz. Like, Suli is my like, kind of like mentor coach on that side. And I feel like he's the Jedi guy. I know he's the Jedi guy cuz he's like, he says something about frameworks. He goes, everyone in Silicon Valley talks about frameworks. I don't know what a framework is. And at first I used to think maybe I'm too dumb. Like, should I learn this thing? I don't understand what everyone's talking about. And now I realize they're all dumb. And I think he's 100% right. Like, I'd be like, you know, hey, should we do influencer marketing for the brand? Blah, blah, blah. He's like, remember I told you Facebook ads? Just write the word Facebook ads on your computer. And then every time you think about doing anything else besides Facebook ads, look at that sticky note again.

That's hilarious.

And he'd be like, if you're gonna call me and talk to me about another idea, You better have to be doing $500,000 a month and don't call me about another idea until Facebook ads has got you to $500,000 a month. And it's like the Jedi simplicity is something I like, you know, revere now. So he had a few Jedi quotes in this. I'm gonna read you. He goes, founders will come to me and be like, oh, you know what? What if, you know, I'm worried about saying this to my investors because then they're gonna think this, that might affect our Series B raise, blah, blah. He goes, just tell them. And then he goes, people are worried about, you know, you don't know how your customers are gonna feel about this. Just ask 'em. You're worried about competitors. Don't worry about them until they're beating you in the market. And he is like, oh, you want to do these 5 things you're trying to decide? Like, just pick one and do it. Most people just simply do too many things. Do a few things relentlessly. Another one, he goes, you need to every, every year you need to think about how you're gonna add one zero to what you're doing, but don't think beyond one zero. And I thought that's a good Jedi-ism. It's like a way to think big without being kind of like just a delusional talker and like, you know, living in fantasy land. Um, so you had a bunch of those as I was reading this, uh, that I thought was, was pretty dope.

Um, he's, um, he's great, man. He, I always see pictures. There's that famous conference in Idaho, like the Sun Valley thing. And you'll see pictures of him.

Uh, oh no, the rich guy one.

The rich guy one. It's like, we're like, it's almost like a Davos, but, or something like that. But it's like all like the who's who. I think it's mostly media though, which includes everyone. Like the Murdoch family and like the people who run CNN. And you see like, you know, there's ex-presidents there. And then you see Sam Altman and he's wearing like cool running shoes with like cool sunglasses and like his hair is all disheveled. He is, he's very, he's a very interesting character. Sam Altman's cool. He's kind of been like a little bit under the radar while he's been building his company. But he said something the other day. Someone was like, we're really hyped about GPT-4. Can you tell us? He goes, all I can say is like people are setting themselves up for a lot of disappointment. I don't think we're going to live up to your expectations or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's a pretty cool response. Now, now I'm interested. Yeah.

He goes with, he goes with AI. There's people who think, um, AI's changed the whole game and everything. Google search is dead. AI's gonna change everything. GPT-4 is gonna be like, you know, freaking, uh, sentient and whatever. It's gonna be amazing. He goes, that's, that's wrong. And people who think, oh, ChatGPT, this thing's overrated. It's a big nothing burger. It's, uh, you know, look, it makes this mistake. It makes this mistake. It can, you could trick it into saying this stupid thing. He goes, they're also wrong. They're also being dumb, but in a different way. You know, they're being dumb because they're not realizing how fast this thing's going to improve. And the other guy's being dumb because they think it's already there, but it's not there yet. You know, the truth is like somewhere in the middle. And I just thought that was like a, you know, a much better like reply. I also thought there was like a couple of kind of remarkable little things that I want to share as well, things that I didn't know about Sam Altman. So, That first fund that Peter Thiel gave him $21 million for, in I think 3 years or so, let's see, 3 years or so, 4 years, the fund was up 10x already. So that's what people want after a 10-year period, and in 4 years he had done that. The second thing was, how did he do it? He made pretty ridiculous bets. So he was like, all right, If I want to, if I want to help create like, you know, trillions of dollars of progress, that's going to come from science and technology, not just like the next random app. And so he's like, all right, I got to invest in more science technology. So he goes for, he goes to Cruise, which was a self-driving car company that eventually got bought by GM for $1 billion. But at the time, nobody was funding Cruise. Nobody was funding self-driving cars. It just seemed too hard.

Like hardware seems like an obvious bet now looking back, right? I mean, that team was like A+.

Completely non-obvious back then, and they were struggling. He puts $3 million directly into that one company. And the same thing with this $375 million check. They're like, the lady was like, most people can't write that big of a check. He goes, especially not into an extremely risky thing like nuclear fusion. And it's completely right. Like, that's going to be like, you know, a zero or massive. And he's writing massive checks into it. And he did this several times. He puts like millions of dollars into single bets. That he like had conviction on. He then reflected on it. He goes, of all the biggest winners, he goes, I looked at the 5 biggest winners that I have had in that early portfolio. He goes, 4 of the 5, nobody wanted to fund. They were not oversubscribed. People generally thought they were bad ideas. In fact, I almost got talked out of doing them because smart people were telling me why these are bad ideas. Only one, Optimizely, was an idea everybody thought was a good idea that turned out to be a good idea.

It didn't even do that well, I think.

Well, it did okay. I think Optimizely did go public, I think in the end.

So, you know, it did make it, but Maybe, maybe I'm wrong about that, but like, I thought it got bought by PE, but like, it was, it compared to the other, oh no, it says they have 1,000 employees. I'm wrong. Yeah, it must've been a hit.

So, so the other ones, you know, Zenefits, Cruise, you know, things like that. Basically he was like Stripe. He's like at the time now Stripe's everything, but he's like at the time it was 18-year-old kids saying we're going to like work with banks and change the payments industry. And the, everybody was like, these guys don't know what they're getting into except for like you know, a handful of people that believed in them. Same thing with Airbnb. He was an early investor in Airbnb that was non-obvious. So he kind of got really into this like non-obvious but correct mentality, which is the Peter Thiel school of thought too. Like he's like, the investments that didn't work out, people also told me those were bad ideas. So it's not that all bad ideas are good ideas, it's that some bad ideas are actually great ideas and that that's where all the returns are. And so you need to be willing to go where it's unpopular, which is so easy to like talk about.

And it sounds like, oh yeah, just do non-obvious things. Therefore, any bad idea I see, I should invest in. I get so many bad ideas and I think I would say no, these are actually all bad ideas. That's such a challenging thing to figure out. That's, uh, that requires so much talent or skill. I don't know what it is, but it's really, really, really impressive and really hard because looking back. Airbnb, that sounds, that sounds incredibly obvious, but, uh, it's just crazy that he was able to pull that off.

Yeah, it's insane. So anyways, that's a giant, you know, Sam Altman-gasm, but, uh, the guy's just really interesting. He is one of the more interesting characters I think that exists in the tech world. So, uh, so yeah, I like some of those quotes.

I think this was a 10 outta 10 pod, you know, so here's how I know it's a good pod. So it's, uh, 12:30 in Texas where I'm recording this. Usually I go and take a nap till about 2 o'clock after we have a good pod. Um, I, I require, I require sleep and rest. And that's how I feel after this pod. I'm like, I need to take a nap and that's how I know it's good. All right.

Great. Glad to hear it. Um, oh, and by the way, I'm going to show my tax return on the YouTube channel, go subscribe and then you'll see it go. My First Million on YouTube. Go, go. If you wanna see it, yeah, go subscribe.

And if you find the glitch, uh, you might be able to see his, uh, social security number. It's somewhere in there. Uh, 10 outta 10.