I Lost Respect For Richard Branson After Watching This Video

I think Richard Branson is not a wonderful person. So before the, before the podcast, there's this video of him. What year is that video? '99 or something? Is it in the— yeah, it's in, it's in, um, it's on YouTube. And if you Google Richard Branson Selma Hayek, it's Richard Branson is on the Conan O'Brien Show. Salma Hayek, obviously, like one of those beautiful, awesome women on earth. Richard Branson comes on, sits Salma on his lap and like is clearly flirting. I think he's like kissing her neck. Like, it's fucking embarrassing is what it is. And I, whenever I saw that video, I was like, oh, I don't look up to you anymore. That was pretty bad. You watch that video?

Yeah, I did. You sent it. I watched part of it. It was kind of uncomfortable, so I just stopped watching it because he kind of like Like, are they friends? Are they cool? Like, you know, dude, even if you are cool, that's weird to me.

That behavior is weird to me.

And then I'm like, was this cool in 1998? Did people do this type of thing in 1998? No, I don't really remember.

Even the crowd is like, mm, like it's uncomfortable and it's on live TV and she's trying to like be polite and not make a big deal out of it.

Yeah, you could tell she's not like down with that.

And I read his book. I read his book and like, so I'm not on board with him anymore, actually. So that's what— that's— I'll leave it at that. Is that a fair assessment?

No, hold on. What did you read in his book? Or is that irrelevant to what you're—

oh, he was just cheating on his wives and, and he just seemed like a guy who— it's okay that he has his lifestyle, but I could see how that could put a lot of people uncomfortable and easily cross lines, even if his intentions aren't to cross a line, you know what I mean? Like, he was like a hippie a little bit, you know what I'm saying?

So this is truly the player haters ball because you're hating the player here, right? Like, yeah, this guy, you know, clearly, like, Richard Branson. First of all, the guy looks like he's always having a great time. You ever watch this guy on Necker Island? You go see these videos.

I think that's part of the shtick.

Yeah, there's definitely like, once the Jeffrey Epstein stuff came out, you're like, oh wait, what are these really rich people doing on these islands? Like, what's going on over here? Do I need to like you know, like make a note, you know, tell my daughter like never ever go with a billionaire to an island. Like, you know what?

I think that's a safe rule. I think that's a safe rule, right? That's a good rule. I'm down with that.

Write that one down.

Yeah, put that on the refrigerator. I'm okay with that one.

Yeah, so I don't know, like, I don't know what wrongdoing he's been accused of. He's pretty inspiring as well. Oh, I'm buying that, guys.

And that's what I'm saying. I don't know if there's any accusations. I've got zero proof of anything I'm saying other than just one video and just a vibe. It's just a vibe. It's just an energy.

Yeah. You're coming in strong with a pretty wild, wild portrayal of the vibe.

No, I'm saying it's all energy. I'm saying that there's zero proof other than this one video that I saw. That's it. That's all I'm saying. Okay. And the second one. So there's this guy named Naveen Jain. Do you know who this guy is? He's always on like the COVID of Inc. and he's always on like these Tony Robbins things and he's incredibly charismatic. He's got a good smile. Let me tell you about this guy. So do you know anything about him?

I know a lot about him, but I want you to— I want you to say the story because I don't think most people know anything about him.

All right. So even to this day, he's considered a billionaire and he's like I said, he's on the COVID of all these magazines as this like wonderful entrepreneur. So I'm going to give like a high-level summary of his background. So started at Microsoft in '89, probably got wealthy from that. Uh, in the early or mid to late '90s, he started a company called InfoSpace. InfoSpace went public and he eventually was worth like $8 billion. What InfoSpace did was— it's kind of hard to explain because it's so old and we don't even use that anymore. But like they like helped to make like directories and maps that you would put on your website. So like just stuff that isn't even relevant anymore, but it was just like a dot-com business and the stock went public and crushed. It was at $138 and then it completely crashed. And in March of 2000, it was now worth $1.56. And InfoSpace, they used a ton of controversial accounting methodologies. And so they said that they made $46 million in profit, but they got sued and people got angry at them. And because in reality they actually lost almost $300 million and a ton of their employees filed suit along with a lot of their shareholders filed suit because they promised employees like different stock options and it just went to shit and it was kind of built on like a bunch of lies and a little bit of vaporware. So that happens in 2003. This guy, Jane, is ordered to pay $250 million for violations. I don't know what—

sure, I don't know if you— I don't know if you said this, but basically the stockholders or the employees, the stockholders, they all lost their money, but he ended up making out rich off of InfoSpace. You said that part or no?

No, but yeah, that was like the biggest part. So like he sold a lot of his stock and he made a huge sum of money. A lot of the other people did not, right? Then after that, he starts this other company. Have you heard of this other company called, uh, how do you pronounce it? Intelis?

Intelius?

Intelius. The best way to describe it, and I think a lot of people know what this is, but whenever you get like a scam phone number to your phone and you Google it and you search on Google and it says like which number came up and you type it in and it's like, well, and you get all these ads like for the background check of this person, just enter in their information. And you inevitably enter in your mom and dad's information to see like, oh, have my parents ever been arrested? Let's find out. And it says like, well, we found Donna Parr in Missouri. You can, for only $18, you can get her criminal history report. And you're tricked into buying a $19 a month subscription. And I actually posted in a picture. If you look at the picture on the doc of the actual scam, but basically this company grew to be really big, hundreds of millions in revenue, and then it came out that they were getting sued constantly because consumers were like, I didn't know that I was signing up for this and I've been getting billed $20 a month.

$20. Yeah, $20 subscription I'm getting billed for because the font in like size 2 underneath the checkbox said like, by the way, this is going to charge you money every month.

Yes. And the actual landing page that I sent to you, it's a screenshot and it says something like Get $10 for giving us information about yourself. But then also underneath that, in a really small writing, it says, and after that we charge you $19 a month, like for this and that. And so it's pretty scammy. Now here's the reason. One of the reasons why he's on the COVID of all these magazines is he's starting a company that helps mine minerals on different planets. That sounds cool and everything, but the fact that like he has had this history of, of shadiness. I think I'm not, I'm not on board with that.

Yeah, so just to kind of like recap here, I think the, uh, the story is he, um, he was found guilty of insider trading. He then tried to sue his law firm saying you didn't provide me adequate legal coverage, blah blah blah. And then he ended up getting hit with a $247 million, uh, I don't know if he got $24— $247 million or he made $247 million.

No, he had to settle. He had to pay.

He had to pay $100 million, I think. Um, I'm not, I'm not 100% sure on that. I gotta, I gotta go look for that. Um, and then Intelius just sold to a private equity company after all that kind of like, uh, you know, after all that, that hot water. Um, and then now is he— so he's doing the moon mining thing. I've seen that.

He has another thing that measures, right, your, your— I think it just like measures your poop, doesn't it? It's like your gut stuff. And, um, I don't know much about that.

Yeah, that one, uh, the— you saw that one, like the, the FBI or somebody, they get that— the whole company's got— office got raided because the founders were like, um, you know, like basically lying or cheating or some crime basically. And then the founders got kicked out. This company had raised a bunch of money. Um, I don't know the exact story here. Let me, let me look that up.

No, I think you're thinking of Biome versus Viome.

Oh, okay.

And I think they did the exact same thing, but, uh, so that's why I said I thought the same thing. I was like, I remember this couple, they looked like a couple and they got arrested.

It was a couple. Okay, so that's Biome, not Viome, I think.

But that doesn't even matter. I think that if you are like this prolific in terms of like, even if you're accused this often of stuff, it doesn't mean you did it, but it means like Hmm, like, why does this— what's the common denominator here? It's you, right? What's going on here? Yeah, so anyway, that's, that's my list.