How a $25 Million a Year Sweepstakes Business Works | My First Million #193

And you're like, dude, I believe in you. If you were just going to start a new startup, I'm in for $25K. Like no questions asked.

Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

All right everyone, we have a new episode. This one was pretty good. So we talked about a couple things. The first thing we talked about was Oasis, which is this interesting new product that kind of a, it's like a deepfake, but for Zoom. That's not the best description, but check it out. Sean says it's one of the biggest ideas that he's ever heard of. Second, we break down the sweepstake business. If you want to make a company that makes like half a million dollars a month in profit and you want to have it start and launch inside the next probably 2 years, like, uh, or sorry, 2 months and then grow in the next 1, 2, 3 years to half a million dollars a month in profit. I think This is an interesting idea. We break it down and then we talk about Sean's prediction. So he predicts what's going to be the next Apple, Facebook, Amazon, 7-Eleven, Netflix, Pornhub, Domino's. Those are all separate predictions. Not one company can do all of them, but that would be cool. And it's a great episode. Give it a listen. And by the way, have you clicked subscribe yet on YouTube? And have you clicked subscribe on iTunes? A lot of people say like, hey, you guys are awesome. Thank you for doing all that work. Then pay me back. I don't want money though. All I want is for you to hit subscribe on iTunes, hit follow on Spotify, hit subscribe on our YouTube page. That's all I want. And we're going to keep doing it for free. All right, let's get to the episode. What's going on?

I am— look at me now. I'm in a chick palace here.

What's a chick palace?

I mean, like, I went from like a manly industrial look to like everything is glitter and gold now.

Yeah, that doesn't look like your style. That doesn't even look like it's your wife's style.

Yeah, I don't know whose style this is, but that's the style we got today.

Have you ever thought about creating a, uh, brick-and-mortar business, by the way? Oh wait, actually, first, two things, two things before we get anything.

Everybody like and subscribe and tell a friend, tell 5 friends.

Yes, but, um, Wednesday, do we have a guest on Wednesday?

I don't think so.

Okay. Uh, oh, okay. Damn it. Okay. Not this Wednesday on Monday after that. Let's do the investor episode.

We have another guest.

We have a guest on Monday too. Yeah. Dan Held is coming in on Monday.

All right. So we got two guests.

Okay. Then we're going to find— then forget that. Second thing. I have this episode coming out. You know, I've been doing these Monday things.

Yeah.

So what I'm doing is I'm splicing together clips. I'm going to splice together like 5 to 10, and I'm going to talk in between each one. And each clip is going to be from a YouTube video or from a podcast. And the topic is, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm obsessed with time right now because I'm quite impatient and I'm trying to work on it. And the topic is on actually patience and how like great things that I admire actually took much longer than I thought.

Right. And so you, so what, what is, okay, so if I listen to this episode, what am I gonna get? I'm gonna get Sam talking about time.

Yeah. And you gotta turn your mic down a little bit. Okay. Um, no, so what you're gonna get is you're gonna get me. Um, so you, you, all right. So Uh, Travis Kalanick, before he started Uber, he had this thing called the Red Swoosh. You know what that was?

Uh, I don't even know what it did, but I've heard the story.

I don't even know what it did either, to be honest. It was a peer-to-peer— it was like, it's not relevant anymore because it was like Napster, but it was like Napster but different. And he sold it for like $20 million, but it took like 8 years or something like that, like crazy. And I, and I found that I have this amazing YouTube, um, video of him giving a talk, like a 40-minute talk, but like the first like 3 minutes is about Red Swoosh. And it's like He explains how hard it was. I'm like, oh my God, that took forever. And I've got like 8 or 9 of those clips that I've saved of people I admire saying they're going to take a lot. It's taken a long time and I'm putting them together. So it's a however long the podcast is going to be with like 2 to 3 minute clips with me like making it, giving you the background of each story, right?

Okay. Uh, I like it.

So we'll see if it's interesting.

So have you ever seen, um, the Joe Rogan thing where it's like Joe, Joe Rogan watches the internet or something like that? Have you ever seen these YouTube videos?

No, but is it good?

Yeah, they're funny. It's like a, it's a compilation of basically Joe watching YouTube videos and just reacting to them. Uh, but all the videos are really interesting, kind of like random ass stuff from the internet. And then his reaction is like good. He's not trying to be like super over the top. It's like his genuine, genuine reaction to it. So I kind of see this as like the business version of that, where you're taking one theme and then you see what a bunch of different interesting people have said about that theme. And it's sort of like Sam Surfs the Internet where you're going to like kind of go into and out of each of those clips and just be talking.

We'll see if it's any good. So in, in over the next couple days, if you have an example of a talk that you've listened to or a story that amazed you, send it to me.

Okay, sounds good. By the way, you said something about Travis Kalanick. Have you ever read this blog post he did called like, um, how to do South by Southwest on a budget or something like that? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, so he had this old— or see, yes, maybe which I don't even think you could find in a blog anymore. And he basically wrote like, you know, if you show up at this time, you can get free this, you can get a discounted cab if you do X, Y, and Z.

Right.

Yeah. Like he was like being pretty scrappy and like saving, like pinching pennies, right?

Yeah, exactly. It was, I think it was like CES or South by Southwest. And he was basically like, yo, if you're going to these things, here's how to do it. Like here's how to ball out on a budget. And then he had all those little like, tips and tricks of like, you don't need to get VIP pass to go here, just wear like an orange vest and then you can walk through, or, you know, that type of thing.

Yeah, he was like scrappy.

Yeah.

Oh, I was just listening to this podcast, uh, Theo Von, the Theo Von podcast. I don't even know what it's called. And he had the founder of Raising Cane's on there. Do you know what Raising Cane's is?

Yeah, dude, I've met the founder of Raising Cane's at a random— I was at a table, I was eating lunch one day and the founder was, was right next to me.

And you just said, uh, what's up?

Or, I mean, yeah, I was like, hey, well, you know, this is kind of like this old, it was a, it was a restaurant conference. So it wasn't like super random. Uh, but there's just kind of this nice, nice, you know, like slightly older Southern guy. Uh, I think he was the owner of the founder, the CEO.

Um, well, there's two guys who started it. One of them is about 50, but he looks quite young. Maybe it was the other guy. And I was listening to this podcast with him. He's Southern, lives in Louisiana, and they have hundreds of restaurants at this point and north of a billion dollars in sales. And he, the way that he makes, makes it sound, he's like, I just loved running the fryer. I loved being at the place. It sounds so much, and the grass is always greener. It sounds so much more fun than sitting behind a computer. Have you ever thought about doing—

In what way? Well, how is that more fun sitting? Have you ever been at a restaurant back in like the back, back kitchen of a restaurant next to the fryer? I mean, I was, I was like shitty.

I was a busboy. I was a busboy and I was never old enough to be a waiter, but yeah, I worked in the service industry. It is fun just like being in the, being in that, being in the action. It just sounded cool. So would you ever do a brick and mortar or like a—

I did, and I regretted every second of it. Um, you know, the, the part that is fun actually is the camaraderie because that's what I'm saying, the kitchen crew, this, the bond is different than like just your normal friends or like your coworkers. Like if you go to your office today and you have a coworker who sits, you know, 3 desks down and both you have your headphones on and you're typing on your Mac, you know, you have a, and you go to, you go to get your free lunch together at the cafeteria. Like this is the tech industry, right? It's like totally different vibe than you're in the restaurant. It's Friday night, the restaurant's rocking, you're banging out orders as fast as you can. And you, um, you know, it's 1 AM when you're finally done cleaning up and it's like, all right, now let's go eat. And then, you know, you go to some restaurant and the restaurant's closed, but they let you in because you're from the restaurant industry and you get to go eat with them. Like that's just a different level of camaraderie. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

It's exciting. It's fun. You're in the thick of it. I I love it.

Yeah, but I would never want to do it again. Uh, it was like, it's like, you know, when people are like, yeah, going to the Army was one of my most, uh, you know, formidable times. It's like, would you ever want to go back again through that boot camp, through Hell Week again?

Like, just so you know, I, I read this book called Tribe, and it's all because I was curious about what type of neighborhood would be best to live in and like what makes, what makes you happy when finding a place to live. And it's a, it's, you know, I don't know this, I've never been in the military, but so I know it from like an academic story point of view that when you're in the military, a lot of guys, a huge amount of the guys, when they get out, they miss it like crazy because they're like, all right, it was hard. I was risking my life. Yeah, that's true. But I felt like I had a crew of guys. We were always doing something. I had a mission and I, and I, and life is so lame and boring without it.

Yeah. I could see that. But, um, also, there's a lot of people when you talk to them, it's like, man, that was the best and hardest time in my life. Would I go back and do it again? No, I don't want to do it again, but it was an amazing time at that time. And, uh, you know, this sort of like when astronauts come back from space is what you're describing. It's like, yeah, they're kind of like, well, now what? I, you know, I fricking went to the moon. That was my life mission. And now every day seems quite boring and like, you know, uneventful and not, not really having a purpose as I did before. Um, but anyways, I guess like brick and mortar. So what, you know, what would you want to do if you were doing brick and mortar?

I think I could crush a— I think I could, I could, I could operate a hotel or a restaurant really well.

Hospitality.

Yeah. I think I could crush that. And I, and I maybe I will want to do that one day. I, but I think I can kill it. I'm looking at buying another house and turning it into a, a rental. Um, cause I'm do— I already did it with this one. Um, and I'm seeing one later today. but I think I could crush it.

And what, uh, okay. Okay. Uh, so I was going to say, what was Theo Vaughn talking about? So Theo Vaughn was just, he just interviewed the guy. Okay. Gotcha. Um, all right. Yeah, I wouldn't, uh, I'm, I'm more like even with e-commerce, I'm like, ah, this business is great except for all the physical products. Like, you know, right now there's a situation going on where, um, I think I forgot what the exact tweet is, but it was sort of like, The— there's boats, or, you know, everyone saw that, that one boat got stuck in the canal.

Yeah, what are you like feeling? You're like feeling the, the pain now?

Well, it's not really that. There's just like another situation where the biggest port in China is backed up, and, uh, they're just like— they just— there was a COVID outbreak, and so for a week they were operating at 30% capacity. And this is like the biggest throughput, uh, like logistics place in in the world. And so the knock-on effects of that are gonna like last, I don't know, like months basically. And so basically what you're seeing now is that boats couldn't get out on time. They were just idling in the water. And, uh, Ryan Peterson, who we're gonna have on the pod, cuz he tweeted this out, he goes, you know, it's crazy. The average, you know, wait time now, or the average number of boats that's waiting is blah, blah, blah. And I asked him, I go, I tweeted back, I said, What's the cost per day of that boat just sitting idle, right? With all this cargo on top and just sitting in the water, not being unloaded. And he did the math. He's like, it's about $1 million a day that the shipping company is losing just by being stuck. And then for all the downstream people, like, you know, if I have my goods on a ship, on a boat that's not here, well, now I'm delayed. Now I'm out of inventory. And because I'm out of inventory, I'm out of sales. And there's just one after another sort of like knock-on effects of this. And so For me, even e-commerce, which is pretty, pretty like internetty, is, uh, like the, you know, the only bad part about it is all these physical goods. Like, oh, you had a product, but then, uh, the wheels are broken or the zippers are not working.

Are customers understanding of that at all? Like, like when I, like, I'm so now I do Amazon, you know, 2-day delivery, 1-day delivery, whatever it is. But if something comes like in 7 or 10 days, I think I'm mostly cool with it. Right.

Um, maybe, uh, during COVID people were understanding because it was just like, dude, it's COVID, like everything is backed up. And if this is not like a mission-critical thing, then, uh, you know, then I understand. But like people's kind of COVID patience wore off, I think. And, um, and also if not everything is backed up, it's just your stuff, then you look really bad. And, you know, even if it's not, even if they understand, like you lose sales and losing like 2 weeks of sales is like pretty devastating for your month's revenue, which is like, you know, uh, pretty bad for your, your annual revenue when you're operating on like 10, 15% EBITDA. And so, so yeah, by the way, the, the tweet was 5.5% of the world's container fleet is waiting outside of a port. And then he said, I asked, what is the cost per day to be waiting idle? He goes, one trip, round trip from Asia on a, on one of these shipping boats is $50 million of profit. So every, every day that they're sitting out, you know, sitting out, sitting idle. And it's a 30-day trip. And so, you know, so that's about $1 million per day per ship that's idle. And then I was like, holy shit, these ships make $50 million in profit for a single round trip from Asia. And, uh, and then, you know, people were replying, people who know about the shipping industry, they're like, yeah, it's crazy. Like the top, um, the top 10 shipping companies will make like $100 billion in profit this year. Um, but like in the last 10 years, they've lost $100 billion in profit. Like it's, it's a very volatile, volatile, volatile space based on, you know, volumes and costs and all this stuff. Like right now, a shipping container is twice as much as it was last year just because supply demand is so out of whack.

That's crazy. I'm excited to have him on.

Yeah. So we'll nerd out with him about that.

So you want to talk about some ideas? We have a bunch here. We, where do you want to start?

So some of the, some of the ideas that I wrote down, so I wrote down 2, I think I said I have, or I have 3. One is Oasis, which I think is one of the biggest startup ideas, most, most interesting startup ideas out there. Uh, Nuggs, which is in the fake chicken nugget market, and I have some thoughts around that. And then I have a prediction section where I'm going to predict what the next Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Netflix will look like. And so, uh, those are my 3, uh, actually I have another one, but maybe we'll save that one for the next pod. So those are my 3 we could do today.

Let's do Oasis, Carper, uh, uh, Oasis. Giveaway business, no, and predictions.

All right, sounds good. So Oasis. So you know what this is, but I think most, almost everybody, 99% of people listening to this have no idea what this is. So let me explain the concept. I, um, or I'll tell the story of how I bumped into this guy. I was on Twitter and I saw this guy, Matt, and he was teasing kind of like, you know, people do this on Twitter where they have like, my stealth thing is kind of coming, or they post a screenshot or like a GIF. It's kind of ambiguous, but it looks interesting. It looks provocative. Or they're just retweeting people. I think this is what I saw. He retweeted our mutual friend Siki, who was like, dude, just got an Oasis demo. Mind blown. This is the future. And so he retweeted that and I'm like, okay, hook, line, and sinker. Like, tell me about, like, how do I get that demo? I also would like my mind blown. And he's like, all right, yeah, hop in the Zoom. So I hopped into a Zoom and he showed me something that was honestly pretty mind-blowing. And what it was was he was like, okay, so I'm talking to you on Zoom right now. Here's my face. And, um, but you know, the problem with Zoom is that you always gotta look good. Uh, and people get, you know, people get, um, nervous about that. And so, you know, over 60% of people don't actually turn their camera on in, in North America because they're self-conscious of how they look. And, um, that kind of sucks. And now we're video calling without the video, right? And he's like, so What if instead you could have a representation of you that wasn't like cartoony? It's not like an emoji or an animoji or whatever the Apple thing is. It literally looks like you. And we'll show a screenshot of this, um, on the screen. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, which is just youtube.com/hustlecon, uh, you'll see the video of this. It's kind of amazing. So the video, the GIF that I wanna show is it says, never worry about how you look on camera again. and it's a video of the founder, Matt. He's in the shower holding up his phone, and on the left side is what he actually looks like. It's a dude in the shower. Um, and on the right side is like the digital representation of it. It's him, but he doesn't look like he's in the shower. It looks like him, like in front of a perfect backdrop, just talking, and it's tracking his mouth perfectly. And, um, so I thought, oh, this is kind of amazing. Like if I could be on video without actually having to be on video, if I could kind of like a filter, but if I could just automatically have the best looking version of myself on camera, God, that would save me a lot of time and energy and thought around how I look. And he's like, it gets even better. So not only does it let you do that, you could also show up as a different person. So say you're, you know, um, a minority, you don't want to be discriminated against. You could, you could show yourself as, you know, a tall white male and nobody would ever know what you actually look like. So this empowers like working pseudonymously, which is something we've talked about. The last thing is He's like, here's the best bit. This works on like the worst connections, uh, worst connection phones in the world. I said, well, how do you do that? This seems like pretty high powered. He goes, there's no video being transferred. I said, what? He goes, yeah, it's like a video game. The screen on my side is tracking my face, every pixel of my face, how my lips are moving, my nose, my eyes, et cetera. And then instead of sending my video across the internet, it just sends how those pixels are moving like a video game. And so then on the other side, it recreates the video just using those pixel coordinates. And so the idea here is that even on really shitty internet, low bandwidth scenarios, you could have awesome looking video and without you having to like, you could be rolling out of bed and you look like a million bucks. So what do you think of this idea?

I think it's pretty big. I was pitched this as well and I passed. Did you, did you pass or no?

Uh, I didn't even really get to— I have a call scheduled with the guy. I just saw the demo. This was months and months ago. It wasn't like in an investable spot at that moment. Um, or like they weren't raising or something like that, but I'm looking at it now. You know, it does have a high evaluation and it's pretty—

it's got a very high valuation. I don't know. Are we— is it— I don't—

let's not say, okay.

Um, it's got a high valuation. Um, and it's like 6 guys working on this. It's pretty wild. And I— so here's what, here's what I think about this. I think the way, the way that it's set up now is not the way that it could be a huge thing. Okay, and what you mean, so a lot of times when I either invest in stuff or I want to get involved in a project, whether I'm starting it or not, I'm very comfortable taking the leap of faith of saying this is just how I'm going to start and I'm very comfortable in saying one of two things. I know how it's going to end, or rather like I want to create a massive media company that covers this, this, and this. I'm going to start with an email. I don't know the middle ground, but I'm, I'm pretty confident I'm going to figure it out. Or I'm also okay with not even having an ending point of like, I created something cool. It feels powerful and strong. Yeah. I think I could figure it out where to go. And this, business, I think was that second one. So I saw the technology, I played with it, I got the demo and he basically was talking to me and I got it. I was like, oh, okay. So like, to me, this is like pretty like unlimited, unlimited on what the options are. And so the bet I'm having to make is, is this founder great? And can they figure out exactly how to deploy this technology? And I wasn't sure if I wasn't sure if it was worth trying to figure out if they could get it.

Yeah, well, also the price matters, right? So like, that's why I'm saying you don't want to pay a 'I figured it out' price when they haven't figured it out yet, right? You want to pay the 'Oh, this is cool and promising' price, which should be like 10 times lower. Uh, but I get why this has a high valuation because to me, you see something like Zoom. Zoom is a $100 billion company. Zoom is letting you call, um, you know, do, do video calls with people all around the internet for business purposes. I think that the future Zoom, like the leapfrog of Zoom, is not Zoom with slightly better features or the recording is better, the audio quality is a little better. It's— this is a video call where I don't actually have to be on video, but it looks like I'm on video. Everybody looks great. Everybody's presenting their professional self regardless of how they actually look at home. And secondly, this works on extremely low bandwidth, shitty internet, uh, circumstances because it's not even transferring video. It's just transferring pixel coordinates. That to me is like a leapfrog. And that means what does— if Zoom's $100 billion today and somebody built what I believe, if you did this, it would be a better Zoom. Um, obviously it doesn't have the network effects, doesn't have the brand, doesn't have many things that you need to do to get it big, but it has the magic trick. And I think when you have a magic trick, you can get a lot of users pretty quickly. And the magic trick here is pretty impressive.

We were both pretty impressed with the magic, but it sounds like we're saying the same thing.

But I guess my difference would be, I think I know what the endpoint looks like. The endpoint looks like this is how business calls are done. You have your—

dude, that's not that big. Is that that big of a market? I don't— I disagree with you. I don't know, man. If I was this, I'd be using this for movies or for, you know, I actually don't even know what I would use it for, but I can't imagine business calls would be the number one thing.

Dude, Zoom is massive. Zoom is like humongous, right? $100 billion company. How much bigger do you want, right? $1 trillion? Okay, you can get to a trillion, but—

but this, you're not making Zoom. This is a plugin for Zoom.

I think you could make the new Zoom using this, right? Why would I use Zoom when instead I could use this where I always look like a million bucks? So already it's better than Zoom. And the second thing is it works better on any internet conditions because it's not transferring heavy video across the wire.

Regardless, I'm into this. I'm into this. I just was unwilling to bet my own money at that high of a valuation.

Yeah, I think that's totally fair. Uh, the, the reason this stuck out to me was I was like, I had this doc I've talked about before, which is called the biggest idea in my head right now, which is basically if I was totally free, I could drop everything I was doing and I was gonna work on the biggest startup idea in my head at any given month. What is it? And I just keep track month by month and sometimes it's the same for 2 months straight, 3 months straight, and sometimes it changes. This became the biggest startup idea in my head, um, because I think it's basically taking novel technology, going after a really big market. And it's doing it in a way that is like complete, like the incumbents would have to sort of re-architect their whole shit to be able to do this. I think, I don't think you could just make a plugin to do this. And so, um, so anyways, I thought this was like one of the bigger ideas, so I just wanted to bring it up. I don't really have any more besides that.

All right, let's move on then. You wanna talk about something that's way less of a big idea, but a surefire way to make a lot of money?

Yes.

Okay. Let's talk about the giveaway business. Also known as the sweepstake business. And I'm interested in this business because, well, because I've used it a lot.

Because it seems easy and awesome and you've done it, you've dabbled.

Yeah. So with The Hustle, one way that we, we grew, we grew in a bunch of ways, but we did two things that are related to this. The first, we would pay companies, or no, I'll start with this one. The first, we would give stuff away. We would give a Tesla away. We would give a 3D printer away, which we're giving now. And if you share an email or you get other people to join, like, and they use your unique URL, you get more entries. And if a car costs us $30,000 and we acquire 30,000 emails, that's a dollar to acquire an email. That's a really good deal for us. 'Cause we make, let's say, $10 off every email. No brainer. The second thing that we did is we paid some of these companies and I want to explain how they work. So do me a favor and go to bold.org. Can you do that right now?

Okay, I'm on it.

What's it say?

Fighting student debt. That's it.

Yeah. And how does it say it does it?

Um, let's see. So scholarships, philanthropy. I don't know. It just looks like donations or something like that, right?

So what you do, and because they may get all— click, um, scholarships for, uh, nursing or something.

Okay. Uh, scholarships for nursing students. I'm there. 5 great scholarships for future nurses. Great.

All right. So bold.org, what they do is they go and they get, they either create scholarships or they find people who have scholarships and they aggregate it into one area, into one platform. Not that hard to do in itself. Then what they do is they go get loads of people to sign up for the scholarship. So they advertise to nurses and nursing Facebook groups on Google and they get people to sign up and enter all this information. Um, and here's how they make money. When you are a nurse, or let's say you're, uh, applying to get your MBA, if you have tens of thousands of people apply to get their MBA, uh, an MBA scholarship, that's a pretty cool, pretty high qualified lead list. Right?

Right.

Same with nurses. Same with, I mean, pretty much any of these niches. And what they do is as you sign up for this thing at the end, they go, also, do you want to opt in for this, this, or this, or this? And companies like The Hustle, I would pay them money. I think at one point we were paying them maybe 50 to 100 grand a month. Wow. And that's how many leads that they were getting us.

That's amazing. So, so basically they go, they pay for peop— so they, they go and they spend money to get people to apply for a scholarship and people are like, oh, fantastic, thank you so much. And then when they're applying, they're basically like, hey, would you like to opt in? And why does a person wanna opt in? Or is it like, hey, do this and you get some increased odds of the scholarship, or how does it work?

I believe both. Yeah. So like, they just like show offers that are interesting. And also, uh, I believe that it's just like, it's— you're automatically in unless you opt out in the flow, and you get more likelihood if you opt into stuff.

Dude, how did you even find this? How did you think, oh, you know what, I'm gonna go— like, when you, when you, you were trying to make the connection between sweepstakes and giveaways, and you were like, go to bold.org, this like nonprofit-looking, you know, scholarships for nurses in Africa. I was like, what does this have to do with How did you even figure out this is how you grow an email list?

So there's a bunch of ways that I know how to do this. The first, there's this guy named Dennis Gross who we're going to have to get on this podcast. So Dennis started WiseGeek, which you and I are both probably too young to have used it, but it was like a Web 1.0 thing. It made a lot of money. And then he started loads of other things, including investing into lots of different startups like Thumbtack. But then he started BestReviews.com. Do you remember that? Or do you know what BestReviews.com is? It sold for $160 million to Tribune like 3 or 4 years ago. So this guy named Dennis, he's very, very wealthy and he started loads of companies and he stays way below the radar. And he created this thing called Mechanism, which is like an Idea Lab, except he's like an SEO guru and like a lead gen guru. So he's launched all these companies and the co-founder of Mechanism is Brendan, who's the founder of Toptal. And I'm friends with both of those guys and I saw what they're getting into and he pitched me and sold me on using bold.org and it was pretty good. Random.

So that's how— first, I can't find this guy. Dennis Gross, is that his name?

Go to bold.org/about. He spells his name D-I-N-I-S space G-R-O-S-Z.

Gotcha. Okay. So he's— oh, he actually did Bold.

Okay.

So that's how you found out.

So here's where, here's, here's what I'm getting at here. So this got me interested into giveaways. Actually, you have to call them sweepstakes. There's a lot of legality around this. And so what I learned was you— and we, when we did sweepstakes, we would have to call it sweepstakes. You have to have rules that are approved by your lawyer.

And I got kind of like, it's like, uh, you could buy entries or if you just mail us this form, we have to let you apply. We have to give you the equivalent entry. Right.

So it's like, there's all types of technicalities.

You can't make it pay to play otherwise it's like a lottery or something.

And you can't, uh, yeah, it can't be a lottery. You can't. Now I don't, this is just an example. I don't know if this is actually the rule. You can't use the word like free or you can't do like, there's a bunch of like technicality stuff that you have to follow. But I got in, uh, very interested in giveaways. And so I did some research on a bunch of them. So there's loads of giveaway businesses. The, there's, uh, 3 ways that I've seen it work. The first, you buy entries. So I've seen, um, like buythishouse.com, I believe it's called, or buy, buysanfranciscohome.com, where a company buys a San Francisco house. Then they put ads all over the subway. They put ads all over the billboard and they sell entries for $100 and it's a raffle. The second way that this business works is you do what Bold did, which is the audience is the product and you sell their information. You know those cars that are at malls?

Yeah. Okay.

So what happens at those businesses is they pay the mall— a marketing company pays the mall a rental fee to use that real estate space, right? Yeah. Then loads of people enter their information to join and buy that car. They look at all the leads and names now that they have, the birthdate, things like that. And they categorize them and then they sell them to different companies and those companies cold call those people to sell them X, Y, and Z.

Right.

Okay. So the third way that you make money off of this is you can sell merch. And when you sell merch, you get X more entries into the giveaway. And I found this one company that's doing car giveaways and I got ahold of these financials. And if you're listening to this, actually there's a— the takeaway here is that this about this business, but the second takeaway is sign up for brokerage website that, that sell, that sells—

way to learn.

Yeah, an amazing way to learn. You go to Quiet Light Brokerage, you go to— what's the name of this one?

Yeah, you go to Flippa, Empire Flippers, you Quiet Light Brokerage, you can go to like one of many, uh, all, you know, FE International or whatever. There's a whole bunch of places where you can go and you can basically look at internet businesses. The beauty of it is if you want to, if you're on the outside, you're like, dude, I've never actually been inside of a successful business, never run one, never owned one. Never sold one. You can go on here and it's a great way to get business ideas because you're just going to see a bunch of business you never thought about. Like, oh, these guys sell, you know, you know, it's a D2C diabetes brand. They sell, you know, products for diabetic, diabetic patients and they're doing $8 million a year of revenue, $4 million of profit. And here's their top 3 SKUs and here's how they grow and here's their P&L because they're trying to sell their business. So they had to package everything up and make it a book that you can go look at as a buyer. The beauty of the online ones is they don't know if you're a serious buyer or if you're a 21-year-old kid just trying to learn about business. And so I've looked through probably hundreds of these at this point, um, just to learn, right? So that's like how I feed my business brain is, is one of these, one of the tactics is to go look at businesses that are for sale and read their books.

So I was interested in sweepstakes and it just so happened I saw one for sale and I went and found this one. So here's a sweepstakes and what they do, if you Google car sweepstakes, I'm not going to say the name of the company, very likely they come up on the top 10 of Google on the front page. So I am just off that, I imagine they're one of the big dogs. Did you Google Car Giveaway?

I'm doing it right now. Yep, I see them.

Okay. And the last 12 months revenue was $26,700,000. The last 12 months of net profit was $5.8 million. And in this document that I have, there's like a Q&A where someone's just asking them questions and they explain how it works. And what it works is they have a warehouse and they have like 30 employees, all warehouse workers mostly. And you, they run ads on, let's just say, um, we'll say this is for a car one. They run ads and sponsored videos on YouTube, car, car YouTube channels. And before the guy shows off his car, he goes, by the way, this one is sponsored by blank company, they're giving away a car. If you want the car, click the link below. You go to that link and it says, great, you're going to be entered to win this car. By the way, if you buy this sweatshirt for $40, you're going to get 10 more entries. If you buy this hat, you're going to get X amount more entries. And so they make a profit off of— it's just an e-commerce store basically. And it's amazing. I mean, I don't, I don't think it's actually sketchy. I think that it's a— you're kind of preying on vulnerable people a bit. And they said that in this document that the person one time, or first of all, the repeat customer rate is 50%. So 50% of people who sign up for one eventually do another. And they have guys that will spend $8,000 on merch in order to get more entries into these cars.

Wow. Yeah, it's, it's, this is definitely one of those where it's pretty polarizing. You know, some people will say this is, this is shady, this is messed up. Um, I find it. Fascinating that a business like this even exists. $25 million a year in revenue, $5 million a year in profit. And, uh, very, very simple business. You know what I mean? Like, and this is what I call, like, you gotta know how internet plumbing works. They're like, oh, okay, I can plug a pipe into YouTube and, uh, that gives me a lead. And then with the lead, I plug that into an e-commerce store and that gives me this. And then I'll plug into this, like, sweepstakes law that will allow me to do this legally. And, uh, I've seen the same thing, by the way, in the gun space. So people do this for guns.

Giveaway?

Giveaway for guns. Um, there's a lot of people who are like really passionate about guns and ammunition and things like that. There's also ones that are, so cars, probably the biggest one. There's houses. When I was going to sell my house, it was right when COVID hit and it was like the worst time to sell a house. And so I looked into, could I raffle my house off? And actually, could I get a better price raffling my house? And then there's all these rules against it. Like you gotta like, basically like churches can do it and not a lot of other people are allowed to do this. Um, so yeah, so basically there's, there's a lot of these that you wouldn't otherwise expect. And, uh, yeah, I've seen, I've seen somebody doing this with cars at a pretty big scale.

And I'm looking at this company now and just—

I should say, by the way, I have a friend or a friend of a friend who's doing this with cars. And like, there was 3 months where they were just like, oh my God, this is printing money. This is the best business in the world. And then we check back in 6 months later and they're like, this is such a hard business, dude. It's like, you know, and so I think that it's not, um, it's like many things where it's not as easy as it sounds. And there's also like a thin line of like, at some point you, you can fatigue out your customers, right? You could fatigue out the buyers who get disillusioned that they're not going to win, or you, um, the ad costs go up and then the business all of a sudden went from working beautifully to kind of upside down.

Yeah. Okay. So this business, they're doing 5, sorry, $6 million nearly in profit. And they're only selling— the asking price was $24 million.

Right.

So there's some, they're asking 5 times profit, 1 times revenue. And there's a reason for that. 5 times profit to me is actually quite good for this kind of business. I would think they would want to get way less. And it looks like the only true asset they have is the website, which anyone could copy probably with $10 grand, maybe. 40 grand. Then they have a 300,000-person email list and then they have 300,000 SMS subscribers, which is baller. So is that good?

Yeah, that's huge. And I bet that works extremely well for this because if it's like basically, hey, look at this amazing car, do you want it? And you're just sitting there on the bus. It's like, well, I'm not doing anything else right now. Click and you go enter the, enter the giveaway each time. I could see how that hook would work because SMS You know, SMS gets like an 80% open rate and email gets like an 8% open rate. So it's like, it's, you know, 10 times better.

So I, similar to your thing, I don't really have any ideas for this cuz I think they're kind of limitless, but I thought it was interesting and I wanted to bring it up because I think this is like a little bit on like the dark side of the internet that not a lot of people know about. And I thought it was crazy fascinating. I don't think it has to be like bold.org, incredibly ethical, uh, straightforward. There's no tricks. I know the guys who run it. It's— I'm a customer there. It's—

how was the like kind of— okay, so somebody's there for BOLD, they're trying to get a scholarship, right? They're not thinking about the hustle. Maybe hustle's like auto-checked in something which is like, share, share your information with our marketing partners who make this possible, you know? And you're like, great, now you got their email on a list. Did you see that they performed?

Yeah, they were okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, so let's do the math here. So let's just say that— and all these numbers are— I'm making up hypothetical So let's just say that I acquire a user from Facebook for $2,000 or $2 and they have a 50% open rate. That means I'm spending $4 for a 50% open rate or sorry for a—

$4 for a reader. Yeah.

For a reader. And let's just say that like the way that we used to track it is that we knew right away if they read the first 5, the likelihood that they're gonna stay for 18 months or whatever it is was very high.

Yeah.

Okay. So I paid $4 for that 50% person. We'll call it a— we call it— we have a gold, silver, bronze. That's like we internally— so a gold user just costs us $4. Okay. Now let's just say that on bold.org, I've got to get 10 people, but I get those 10 people for a dollar and one of them becomes a gold reader. So I just paid $1 for a gold reader. So you get a lot of volume, but you make up for it because it's cheap.

Right, right. And, and you basically just set your rate with them or they, they just have a rate and you have to figure it out. Like, do you say, oh, this much per lead, or how does it work?

A lot of these companies, the smart guys, they don't have a set rate. They give you a ballpark and then they— but they first want to hear what's it worth to you.

Yeah, of course.

And then they try to sell you. They're like, oh, okay, these are worth this to you. Okay, we're going to set it at this budget. And then what you do is You go out and do it for a month and then you renegotiate.

Yeah, I think this is a fascinating business. I also think that giveaways and sweepstakes are just a useful marketing tool. So even if this is not your business—

oh, by the way, I just went, I just went through it. I just went through the funnel while we were talking.

Yeah.

So by getting halfway through the scholarship flow, I earned 50 Bold points and then you can get 5 more Bold points for signing up for this. You can get 10 more Bold points for doing this.

And how big is this Bold thing?

Bolt.org, like the—

like, how big is this business?

Well, I don't know. I mean, they never told me the revenue.

I think a pretty baller business.

I imagine it's very, very, very pro. If you told me it made half a million to a million a month in profit, I wouldn't be surprised.

This is like somebody who has a black belt in the internet. They're like, ah, here's what—

that's this guy Dennis, man.

This guy Dennis, feel good, feel good story on the front end, dope lucrative business model on the back end, right? I love, I love this. This is clear. This is an internet black belt.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing. This is a— it's an amazing thing. And I wanted to— I just had to bring this up because this is one that, like, this doesn't sound sexy, right? Um, this doesn't sound like, like, oh, I want to do this when I get older, but it just makes loads and loads of money. Another one is Omaze. O-M-A-Z-E. Have you heard of that?

Yeah, that's like a— it's like a platform to do raffles and whatnot, right?

Yes, but they act like it's a charity thing. So it's like, like Snoop Dogg's gonna give away a car and all the money, or like some of the money goes to charity or something like that. In reality, Omaze gets their cut in the same way that I've just outlined the 3 business models.

Yeah, that's fascinating. I feel like we could do an even deeper dive on this because I feel like you just touched on like 10 interesting things that, that we should probably like— I feel like we should do a separate episode, like kind of like the deep dive into this sweepstakes giveaways thing. I bet that would go pretty viral, honestly.

And I'm going through the, the, the Bold flow. They asked so many questions like, what's your estimated current annual income? What's your dream? Like, what job do you want to have? How much money do you want to make? How many— how— I mean, they ask so many questions.

So for money right now, would you say yes? Yes. Okay, great.

So like, basically what they're doing is they're getting like crazy amounts of qual—

it's all about enriched, enriched lists, basically.

Yes. And this is crazy.

All right, I got another one. Have you seen this company Nuggs?

Yeah. They changed their name though.

Yeah, they— well, I think they have like a parent company and then the product is called Nuggs. So the product parent company is called Simulate, I think. Um, and that's because they're basically simulating real meat. And so Nuggs is one of— it fits into this category of like alt meats or fake meats. So you have Beyond Meat, you have the Impossible Burger, and what Nuggs is doing is— Nuggs is chicken nuggets.

No, by the way, they changed the product's name is different. What's it called now?

Oh really? It's not called—

I just Googled Nuggs. I can't even find it.

Uh, I think it's still called that. Is Nuggs with two Gs? No, dude, if you go to simulate.com, you'll see the, uh, the product. And it basically, it says the Tesla of chicken. Um, oh my God. And so, so you can see that the, like, if you go to their, go to simulate.com/nuggs. So it says the original Nuggs, $45 for a box and there's 50 for, for two boxes and there's 50 pieces per box. So basically $45 for 100 nuggets. And they have two flavors. There's original and spicy. And, um, and their landing page is like kind of like cheeky. Like the, the, instead of saying it's good for you, it says kills you slower. That's pretty good. It's higher in protein and lower in fat than animal-based nuggets. Um, you know, you can get this fast. Here you go. Blah, blah, blah. So they started as, uh, kind of like a D2C brand type of thing. But I think either during COVID or be— or before, right before COVID they switched to basically just selling to retail. And so I saw them because they raised $50 million recently, like a month ago or something like that. And the guy who's behind this is this guy, he's a young guy, Ben Pasternak. And this guy's pretty clever. So he was really young. I think when he was 18 or 19, he had built this app called Monkey. I don't know if you ever saw it. It was kind of chat roulette, but for your iPhone. So you'd get on there, it'd randomly match you in a video chat with somebody else, and then you could skip. To, to somebody else. And, um, I saw this because I was like, oh, that's kind of clever. Like, I don't think it's going to work, but like, I like the branding. Um, I like that this guy was able to like kind of game the App Store charts. So he was climbing the charts, but you could tell this wasn't a sticky product. Uh, so I, you know, reached out to him, had a chat, seemed super smart guy.

And I was like, how long ago was this?

Maybe 5, 6 years ago. Wow. So he might be 20s. I don't know. He might be 20. 21, 22 now. He was like 17 at the time, something like that. I don't know, somewhere around that range. He was like 17 or 18. And I remember just thinking, wow, this kid's like a superstar or the future superstar. I gave him the highest compliment I could give him, which is I didn't even recruit him. I was like, you know what, you're better than me. You're ready to just do this on your own. Like, don't, don't even waste the time coming and working inside my thing. Like, if we work together, we build one company. If we're apart, you're going to build two companies. But I really liked the guy. And it reminded me of this question. So I actually don't even really want to talk about the fake chicken nuggets thing, although good market to be in, I would say. Um, the part that I think was interesting is like, I meet a lot of people like this who are like clearly special, gonna do big things. It's probably not their first app. Like it's probably not Monkey, but it's probably Nuggs. It's probably their second or third attempt that's going to hit. And it got me thinking like, could you basically as a founder like buy an option? Could you buy options? Could you buy future contracts on founders? And what does this mean? So most people, when they think of this, they think ISAs. Oh, it's an income share agreement. I'm not even saying that. I'm saying there's a, it's, it's that juicy of a market of founders like this that you could actually just sell the right to invest in my next thing.

Yeah.

Because, because otherwise it's hard to even just keep tabs on people. You don't know when they're pivoting. You don't know when they have a new idea. You don't know when they're launching. And you're like, dude, I believe in you. If you were just going to start a new startup, I'm in for $25K, like no questions asked. Just put me in the pre-seed round. So it's like the lower valuation of the, of the others. So I think I would have paid $10 grand just for the option to invest in this guy's next company over the next 5 years. Right. So I think, you know, $10 grand, $25 grand, I think you could sell to investors. I think you could sell to investors just the right of first refusal, basically to invest in my future company. It's not equity. It's not an income share agreement. I don't even have to start another company. But I think, I think real investors would basically have a budget of maybe single-digit millions of dollars where they're just placing options, they're just buying option contracts on like high performers they see in the tech industry to say, hey, next time you start your thing, I get the first dibs at investing.

So this is something I'm looking this up. So I, I think it was, it was either Jerry Seinfeld or Joe Rogan was talking about the '90s in TV, and I believe they were telling a story about Roseanne, um, and how basically they're like, it was the golden age of TV because even though the content nowadays is probably better, but basically if you wrote like an okay script or just a pilot or a screenplay, a company would pay you a quarter of a million dollars a year. And the only thing that you had to do was not do it. Like they bought the option and they'd be like, yeah, sometimes we would, they would just buy the option and we would never even do it. So I was just getting like a quarter of a million dollar a year salary for 3 years, and I have all the roles, I just don't do anything, right?

It's like a retainer, or like kind of like a— it's like a— it's almost like an advance on a book deal in a way.

And I don't actually know— I know nothing about Hollywood, and I don't know if that still exists. Of course it does, but I think it was more common then when cable company— or when cable's crushing. But I think this is actually a fantastic idea, and basically it would be like I have the option. Let's see, how would it work? Anytime you raise money or anytime you own more than 50% of an entity, I get, I get the, I get first right of refusal. I think it's a really, really great idea.

Yeah. Like, I don't know how the math works exactly, but I can sort of see like it turns entrepreneurship into a job. Um, and it gives you a floor. So let's say, uh, like I think if I did this, I think if I went and I said, hey, You know, hey, I left my job at Twitch, by the way. I, as of today, officially am no longer, no longer employed. I'm a free, free man.

Congratulations. I wasn't sure when we were going to bring that up.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So if I was basically like, hey, I don't know when I'm going to start my next company, but, you know, if anybody's interested, here's a place where you could go. Here's a website you can go to and you can basically buy a future option on being in the pre-seed round. So let's say, um, I'm selling slots for, I don't know, $15K a pop. So $15K for your right to invest in my next round. And I basically sent that to every VC or every seed fund I know. I think I could probably get 10 people to opt into that. They'd say, cool, I'll give you $10K right now. I'll give you $15K right now.

Easy.

And, um, in the next 18 months, I'm gonna be thinking about a business. And then when I'm ready, You get the first dibs and, you know, the round might be like a $3 million round and you get to invest in this. And so I get $150K floor to go do my search for my next business. And they get, they get, they get the guaranteed locked in deal flow. And I don't know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm underpricing it. Maybe it could be more, or maybe it's an annual thing. I'm not sure, but like, I'm pretty sure out of a fund, you know, they would allocate a few hundred thousand dollars to placing bets on 25 founders that they're like, yeah. I'll, I'll be in your next round.

Can you also do this? So, uh, did you pay attention to what happened with the NCAA today?

No, what happened?

So I, I wish that you would have because I don't actually know the full details, uh, but yeah, me neither. Uh, um, the, the Supreme Court basically— well, I know what happened. So the Supreme Court— here's the headline: the Supreme Court unanimously sides with former college players in dispute with NCAA about compensation. So basically, uh, I, I don't know if there was any firm rules, but basically, um, the door is now open for how NCAA athletes can make money. And when I think of options, I mean, I definitely think, uh, athletes are the best.

Yes, definitely. So yeah, so, so basically the thing— here's what I'm reading here. It says they unanimously ruled that the current cap on education-related benefits such as scholarships, graduate school, musical instruments, tutoring violates federal antitrust laws and must be lifted. So that means that this is just for, uh, there was limits on how much you could be compensated for, you know, tuition, room and board, stuff like that. Um, so that's lifted, but it's not yet salaries for athletes, but that's coming because they've also passed the— there's also been a rule passed around the athlete themselves being able to monetize their name and likeness. You know, like, I'm in a— I'm in a college town in North Carolina. Well, the local car dealership can like use my name and face on their ads and I can make money from it. Um, you know, things like that. That's, that's what's coming. So I think there's definitely a big opportunity there, uh, just in general. Yeah.

So here we are talking about future contracts. Yeah, I'm on board. I think it's great.

Okay, cool.

I don't have anything else to say except great.

Last topic, I want to give you some predictions.

Um, so I've been thinking about this and I think you're bold for doing this, by the way. You're making it very easy to look stupid.

Well, that's the beauty of predictions. It's like, uh, uh, you know, the best predictions, I think most predictions when you're wrong, people forget unless you're Scott Galloway. Uh, you know, when you're small, when you're small, you should make predictions because, uh, the cost of being wrong is very low, but the cost of being right, all of a sudden you're the guy who called it. Um, you know, like it's like my Clubhouse thread, like as that gets proven right, then it'll be like, oh, he called it. But if I was already big, then if I was wrong, it would be like kind of like everybody would be waiting to rub it in my face. Um, okay, so let me get— let me run you through what I think the next, um—

when did you come up with these? Is this like some Twitter thread you're gonna do?

Yeah, I am gonna do it as a thread, but I was just one day— so I could see the timestamp on this, 11:27 PM. So this is the type of shit I think about at midnight. Um, and I started typing on my phone. I said, I said, okay, what's Apple becoming? Because I see Apple— Apple's shifting into like health in a pretty big way with these like wearable devices. And so let's just say Apple, which today the core benefit is they give you this ultra personal device, your little personal supercomputer that's going to help you with life. So I don't think the next Apple is a phone company. I think the next Apple, the next Apple, which is going to be a trillion dollar company that has, uh, that gives you kind of like a consumer device. I think it's going to be a healthcare monitor. I think it's going to be something that is going to be measuring what's going on inside your body. And feeding that data back to you. Okay. And so that's my, that's my prediction. The next, what the next Apple looks like, not a phone company, healthcare monitoring device. Next, Facebook. Okay. Facebook today, people think Facebook is an app. It's a social network. It's where you go right on a newsfeed or you post photos. I think Facebook, the core of Facebook, the guts of Facebook is basically cameras. It's content sharing. So it's basically photo taking or video taking. And sharing with people who you care, who you want to share that stuff with. And that's why Instagram is something they own, WhatsApp, et cetera, et cetera. And, um, so I think the next Facebook is not going to be an app. It's not going to be another social network. It's going to be some kind of hands-free, always-on camera. So it's going to be something you wear, either glasses or a lapel or something, a fucking drone that's floating above you at all times. I don't know what it is. Probably glasses because it's at your eye level. And it's gonna be basically like a super memory. So it's gonna let you capture photos and videos of whatever you're looking at hands-free and instantaneously. And then once you've captured it, be able to share that or save that as like a super memory for yourself or with any friends. And so I think anybody who's trying to create the next Facebook, you're not creating an app where you add friends. You should be creating a hands-free camera that makes it way easier to capture content and you'll bypass Facebook altogether. Because that place where you capture content will just be for sharing. Similar to the way Snapchat attacked Facebook. Snapchat made an app that when you open it, the camera's on right away and you take the photo first and then you just share that photo with somebody. So they skipped the whole Facebook process. So I think that's what the next Facebook is, a hands-free, always-on camera. Next, Amazon. This one's stolen from Mark Lory. Next Amazon. So Amazon, a place to shop. It's not going to be a website where you, uh, where you type in a word and then you get 5,000 images as a result and then you got to sort through them. The next Amazon is conversational shopping in your house. It's just saying what you need and having something go get it for you. Um, so basically it's just saying, hey, uh, we need more pee pads for the dog. And it says, you want the same ones as last time? I say yes, and then it's boom, it's ordered, right? I didn't have to type anything in, didn't have to enter a credit card. It's all on file, and it's just a hands-free voice assistant that helps me shop for things. And when I don't know what it is, it could say— I could say, hey, I need a, you know, the best camera for my webcam. And it could say something like, do you want the ones that most of the YouTubers use? Do you want the ones your friends bought the most? Or do you want the one that's the best value or the highest price? And I'm like, ah, what do my friends have? Sam has this one. Would you like to ask him how it is? Yes. It asks Sam and then Sam says it's amazing. And then I buy the thing, right? Conversational commerce, something like that. That's the future. That's the next Amazon. Next, Netflix. Okay, Netflix.

You skipped over 7-Eleven.

Oh, I'm gonna do 7-Eleven too. Okay, 7-Eleven. The next 7-Eleven— what is 7-Eleven? It's a corner store that has like— it's a little local convenience store. This one's easy. This one is, um, it's a cloud corner store, so you don't need a real location. It's just going to be 500 square feet that's within 1 mile of you. It might be in this back alley place. It doesn't need a good location, and it's going to deliver to you with small lightweight drones. So small little pass— a small little carrier drone going to bring you something within 15 minutes of ordering. No human being involved. And the whole, the whole 500 square foot place doesn't need good real estate and is gonna be automated so that, um, you know, when I push the button to order it, there's no human being in the place. It just pops out like a vending machine. The drone takes it straight to me and it lands on a little landing pad that I have in my front lawn for, uh, drone deliveries. And as soon as it's there, I go outside, I pick it up.

Okay. And then, uh, keep going. I'm just listening. I think this is fascinating. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm taking notes. I'm gonna tweet this just like as you're talking. You're gonna steal my thread?

Okay, great. Um, all right, the next Netflix— next Netflix I think is gonna be, um, one of two things. One is it's either in VR and it's more like it's a hybrid, it feels like a game. So you put the headset on, you enter the world, and then you walk around and you sort of experience a movie. Um, so it's either VR or, or, because I think I'm not sure about that one, um, or it's machine-generated movies, which is basically something personalized to you. So right now a movie is like a really specific story that gets filmed, edited, produced, has actors, blah, blah, blah. I think you might be able to just sit down and be like, I want something that's like Breaking Bad but with casinos. And then it just generates, it just machine generates a movie for you based off of basically it's like a mashup. And you've seen this with music. So Google released this thing called Composer or whatever. It's like this AI that basically writes classical music that sounds like it's made by Bach and Mozart. And, um, and it's basically just, it's just taking all the stuff that exists out there, it studies it, and then it creates remixes and mashups of all those things in a way that's— maybe it could be one time. It's like I get this thing and it's like a one-time movie for me. Um, that could be kind of crazy.

Remember that band Girl Talk?

Yeah, mashups.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I used to love those things, man.

I still work out to that. That's my go-to for workouts.

Same. I love that too. It was like Feed the Animal or something. Like that.

That's— yeah, that's a great track.

Yeah, I love that shit. I'm on board.

So similarly, uh, the next Pornhub is not a website you go to and you see a bunch of like pre-made porn movies. I think it's all deepfakes. So I think you just go in there and you just have a fantasy. So you put on your VR device and you just think of something you want to see. You think, oh, uh, Mila Kunis, um, she's my waitress, go. And like it basically deepfakes a porno, uh, for you with Mila Kunis's face on it. If you don't know what a deepfake is, it's a It's a computer-generated movie where the, like, the actor on the screen was never there. Like, it'll make Obama look like Obama's— you can make Obama go to a baseball game and pee in the crowd, right? Because, uh, it could just take any—

which, by the way, like that, put Obama's head on it, it looks real. That, that's why it's scary.

Yeah, deepfakes are scary, uh, for many reasons. You're not gonna be able to trust video anymore because I agree video can be faked just like any photo can be Photoshopped. Any video can be video shopped now. Um, all right, last one. Uh, the next Domino's— so the next pizza company is going to be a fleet of self-driving cars that are just going around that have an oven baked in the, in the trunk. So, um, your food is going to be baked fresh. It's going to arrive to you with a driverless car, and you're going to hop out. Uh, you're going to come out to the front, you're going to meet the car, uh, and the— it's going to pop up in the trunk, and there's going to be a pizza that was baked during the drive time for you.

Basically like a, like a, like a mobile food truck type, or like a food truck that Which, by the way, when our friend Gagan— our friend Gagan launched this company called Sprig. I think it was only in San Francisco, or maybe San Francisco and Chicago, and he raised $60 million, all this money. He launched it early though, 2014, and that was what he goes— he goes, I want to have ovens in the car, that's the future. And I actually think he was right. I just think that it was a little early.

Totally true. Uh, this guy David Langer, he started Zesty. It was like a food catering company that was like super fast growing at a time. And I asked him, I go, oh yeah, what do you think of food delivery? It seems hot. He goes, he just jumps straight to the end. He goes, yeah, the end answer is cars with ovens in the trunk. It's really the only solution that's gonna work like at mass that will replace like kind of like the whole infrastructure that exists today is when you can get the food to be baked in the car and kept hot in the car and ready hot coming out of the car. And when you do that, it also reduces the delivery time 'cause you're not going to a brick and mortar place, loading the food into the car and then driving to a place. You're just constantly circling around an area and as you get an order, you pop the thing into bake and then when it's ready, you're at the door. So there was zero lag time. So deliveries get faster and fresher. So this is my segment of basically Sean time travels to the future because if you think about it, right, I'm born in 1988, not that long ago, '88 to like '96 or '97. Like I remember that time Michael Jordan was like winning championships during that time. There was, for the average person, there was no internet, or we were just getting like AOL chat rooms and shit like that, right? I was putting AOL CDs into the computer that was in my computer room because the house had one computer, right?

And yeah, we all had computer rooms, remember that?

Computer rooms, exactly. And so then like that sort of changed over time. It's like, oh, computer rooms become laptops, laptops become phones, phones have friggin like HD video streaming live, you know, basketball games from the internet now. To my phone and I'm watching that while I'm in my car. Like, that seemed absurd. I remember actually even the first time I saw someone reading on their phone and I used to have like a Nokia, you know, like the old phone that had Snake on it. And I was just like, what? Reading on your phone? Who would want to do that? Like, the text is so small and so shitty. Like, who would ever watch a video on their phone?

Who could type? Who could like, when they just had 9 or 10, 10, 10 buttons and you had to like click 3 times to get the third letter.

Yeah. What was that thing called? Or you had to like, it's like SmarterText or some shit like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it would autofill. Yeah.

I was like, but that seems so farfetched. And that was in, that was not that long ago. Like I was just like, that was like 20 years ago. And so in 20 years, like kind of some amazing things have happened. And so if I fast forward 20 years, these things that today sound farfetched, it's like, that's going to happen because it's the consumer benefit is there. Uh, you know, if the delivery is faster and fresher, people are going to do that. Right? If shopping gets easier and I don't have to search and read and be at a computer, I just say what I want when I want it and I get it. Like, you know, I get it in less than an hour. That was the part I forgot to say. It was that Prime 2-day delivery is going to seem like incredibly slow. Like, ordering everything from Amazon is going to be just as fast today as today ordering DoorDash is going to be. It'll be here in 45 minutes. Oh, you need an HDMI cable? Here, push this button. It's here in 40 minutes. Delivered via drone. And so, um, yeah, I think that's what the future looks like. So that's my time traveler section. What do you think? Which one did you think I was most on or off about?

You're— I think you're most on about Apple. I think you're most off on—

so I gave you Facebook, the hands-free camera. Always—

I'm looking at it now. Yeah, I have all the notes. I think you're on about Apple. I think Amazon, you're not totally right. Facebook was, um, what was Facebook?

The hands-free, always-on camera, instant capture of anything that's going on in your world. You don't need—

Yeah, I think you're wrong actually about that capture. I think there's a world where we go in reverse and we get less tech-driven and people want less contact with people. I think, I think it could go the other way. So I think you're wrong about that. I think you're totally right about Apple. Uh, 7-Eleven, I think you're right. Netflix, I actually think you're right. Pornhub, I think you're right. Domino's, I think you're right.

I think I'm right on all of them, bro. I think I got them all right. It's just a question. The, the great quote is Don't confuse a clear view for a short distance. I love that quote. That's like one of my—

what's that mean?

Like, imagine you see something on the— you're driving, you see something on the horizon. It's like, oh, there it is. It's just because you see it doesn't mean you're near it, right? Objects in the front view are maybe further than they appear. And that's what often happens with the future is you can kind of see what the world's going to do and what it's going to look like, but you overestimate how soon it's going to come and then you get sort of disillusioned and then eventually it does show up.

You know, I think it, I think it'll be capable of that. I think the thing is, is what I've learned reading history is that it typically repeats itself or like what's, what's old becomes new and what's new becomes old and it goes back and forth. And when we were, now that, you know, people our age and young, a little bit younger are always connected. I think it's going to go the opposite that they're going to be one, they're going to want less connection. Right. You know, that's why motels, like motels in America are booming right now because it's like nostalgia. And it's interesting again.

And so I do think that the pendulum does swing, but, um, I don't know, I think both happen at the same time. I think that, um, the world—

I agree with that—

on demand and more digital, and then people crave physical experiences, and both exist at the same time. Uh, it's sort of like the Clearview short distance thing. A great example of this is like Webvan, you know, year 2000. It's like, oh, grocery delivery online! What if you could buy your groceries online instead of through a store? And then it like gets all this hype and then it crashes. And then for like 20 years, nobody, nobody really touches this. Nobody really tries this again. And then, and then here we are with Instacart as a multibillion-dollar company taking that same idea but putting it in a fresh way with new tech tools and technology like mobile phones.

Yeah, I, I'm on board with a lot of that.

All right. We should call it here. And yeah. All right. That's the end of the episode. Uh-huh.

Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.