I Went To A Billionaire’s Dinner... Here Are 3 Things I Learned (#460)

AI is obviously all the rage. The entire menu was created by ChatGPT. So the host basically just typed in, I appreciate that. I'm hosting a dinner for a bunch of tech people, X number of tech people, create a menu for an epic dinner party. And it created a full menu.

Okay, that's cool.

And then it's like, cool, like generate an image using DALL-E or whatever. And then basically created the whole menu that way. And the chef had to cook whatever ChatGPT had created, which was pretty clever. What up? Before we go into this episode, I got to say, I'm doing a workshop with our boy Nick Huber. Do you see this?

Just say the W word for me.

It's a workshop. It's not a—

No. Say that other W word.

It's on the web. It might be a webinar. I might be doing a webinar.

Is it similar to a seminar on the web?

I didn't even realize that's what a webinar's from.

Yeah.

I'm doing one of the lamest things one man can do with another, and that's a webinar. All right.

Well, what's this webinar about?

Basically, both of us are total, um, I don't know, nerds, or we're just obsessed with hiring internationally. Like for both of our companies, I think we both had a moment where we're like, wait, I'm pretty sure I could find somebody for 10 times less, you know, cost 10 times less. And the secret part that most people don't realize, everybody gets that if you hire somebody overseas, they're cheaper. What I found, I don't know if you, how much you do this, but they're way less.

Does overseas mean like, like across like the Mississippi River in Missouri? Where I'm from? Across the Mason-Dixon line?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's overseas like the sea, like overseas like for you at the California, you're going to come into, you know, like Hannibal, Missouri.

No, basically I have, let's see, I got. In one of my, in my e-commerce business, I think I have 6 or 7 people in the Philippines plus 2 in Latin America. So those are kind of the 2 hotspots. Latin America, you get the same time zone. Um, and they're good for certain types of roles. Like we have like data analytics and stuff like that. And then the Philippines, we have all of our customer support plus like anything that's like sales and outreach. So we'll just be like, hey, we want to go get every influencer on board. I'm not even going to talk to you. Just go, go make that happen. And every morning report. How many influencers are on board? Show me the pipeline. Show me the, hey, we want this many wholesalers to start selling our stuff. Go make this happen. And they're just like an automated sales machine, which is pretty amazing. But anyways, we're doing this webinar because we just want to give away kind of like, yeah, you got to call it a webinar.

Yeah, we're going to do it on the web. Anyways, we decided we'll do one.

We'll teach anybody who, it's like Delegation 101. But if you want to do it, if you want to join or whatever, it's on the 6th, I think, 6th of June.

Well, how do people find it?

Go to, all right, we're going to put on the screen a giant link in the description. It'll be the top link in the podcast description and, or the YouTube notes. But if you don't see it in either those places, you can just go to my website, seanperry.com, and it'll, there'll be a little banner if you want to do it. Because for doing this thing, might as well, if we're doing it for free, just might as well have as many people as we can sign up. And if you sign up, even though you can't make it live, you'll just get the recording. So if you ever want to then hire internationally, you'll have the recording and all of our like kind of, uh, our cheat codes of after doing this for, I don't know, 10 years, here's what works. Here's what doesn't.

All right. So we've started on one end of the spectrum. Can we please go to the other end of the spectrum and tell me about a dinner you had?

Yeah, I had this dinner. I thought I already talked about it, but I don't think I did.

Billionaire dinner is a great way to go when we started with webinar.

Yeah, exactly. See, what happens is you hire people for low cost, then you go to these billionaire dinners. That's basically what I did. So I went to a dinner at a billionaire's place and I can't say exactly who, but I want to share 3 takeaways from this thing.

Are they a billionaire from being early at a tech company or for starting something?

Starting their own tech companies.

So do they sell it or is it still?

Yeah. At this dinner, there was somebody who sold their business for, I think I could say some of the people who were there. So, uh, let me, let me try to do that. There was, uh, The guy who created Figma was there, so sold his company recently for $20 billion. So he was there. There was people that were like really internet OGs, like they were like their first internet company was in '98 or something like that. And so I, well, that's the part I actually loved. I was talking to them. So that's the story I want to share with you.

Those people are the best.

They're the best. Because I was like, what was it like back in the early days? And I'm going to tell you one thing that he told me. But before I do that, a couple of interesting things now. I've done a couple of these dinners.

Hold on.

Yeah.

How did you get invited to this?

I know one of the people there. So they, they're, what they do is they host these regularly, um, with the same crew, but then whoever is the host for that month gets to invite guests. So they were, they get to invite 3 or 4 guests that are not in the main group to kind of spice up the dinner. But then the main group is like been going for 10 years plus. So it's kind of aspirational. I was like, oh, I'm going to start one of these too. It's a, a once a month dinner with the core crew. And then whoever's the host for that month gets to pick the food. And I think you do like a special gift. Like Reid Hoffman, who's the creator of LinkedIn, was in the group or whatever. And when it was his turn to host, I remember that he created like his own board game of like an anti— like it was like Cards Against Trump. His own version of Cards Against Humanity, but it was just Trump jokes. And he gave one to every guest. Right. So just like baller shit like that. So anyways, I'm at this dinner and I would say 3 observations. I've been to a couple of these dinners. Somehow every dinner I go to in San Francisco is like at least 30% to 50% people talking about psychedelics. And yeah, your boy's never done psychedelics. Sober as a cat.

Not once.

No, not once. Way too scared to do it. Uh, have you ever done psychedelics? I don't even really honestly know what would count as psychedelics. I think it's like LSD. I think it's like MDMA. I think it's DMT. These are all the letters, but I, I don't, I don't partake in any acronyms like this.

On one time I met this girl, uh, and we went out on like a first or maybe it was the second date and this is when I was still drinking. So we were a little drunk and then we also took shrooms and a little bit of a Ecstasy or Molly or MDMA, or I don't even know if there's a channel of them. So I felt, I definitely felt a little bit of all of them, but I was also like pretty intoxicated too. So I like, it was, you know, a little bit, you know, maybe 50% of the potency, but that was the only time I've ever done it. And that was, uh, you know, 15 years ago.

The only acronym I've done is DARE and that kept me off all of this. So, but I, but I got to say, so I've done 3 of these dinners now in San Francisco with like entrepreneurial types, successful Silicon Valley types. And it's crazy how much people talk about psychedelics. Like, half the table is regular users of psychedelics, or like, you know, regular meaning it wasn't like your story of like, I did it once and it was cool, but not for me or whatever.

Dude, I wasn't trying to like find myself. I was just trying to like, you know, have a freaky night, find her. Yeah, we were trying to find something, but it wasn't myself. I was trying to find myself like You know, like with each other later that evening, but that's about it.

And so in these conversations, to me, there's what's coming up is not like, it's not, bro, I got so drunk. It's not a brag like that. It's, I, the conversation is like this weird intellectual thing where it's like one-third talking about how psychedelics or LSD is cool. One-third talking about public policy. Like, I can't believe these are outlawed. It's crazy. This is— there's— and then one-third is science. It's like, there's— dude, I don't give a shit about any of those topics. There is so much research about how this can like cure PTSD and like blah, blah, blah. And it just keeps happening. Every dinner I've gone to in San Francisco, 3 in a row now, half the conversation is talking about this, which tells me one of 2 things.

It's a potpourri in the middle of the table, like fart flavored. Is that like— is that what this place is like?

I'll tell you about the food in a second. They, um, The thing with these is I've had this experience once before or twice before where a lot of people in Silicon Valley are talking about something that I'm like, ah, this seems weird. And then like 5 years later, it's the norm or 7 years later, it's the total norm. So there is this thing that's like, Paul Graham says, if you want to invent the future, you first just live in it. And I think that's one of the things that Silicon Valley is pretty good at is people here will do things whether it's like what you're doing, biohacking, where you're wearing continuous glucose monitors. Like, Tim Ferriss was wearing a continuous glucose monitor back in 2008 or something like that. And then a decade later, now it's like a thing that a lot of fitness people are doing. There's whole startups that are built around letting you do this, like Nutrisense or Levels or whatever. But it was very strange at the time, but there were this small community of people doing it. Same thing with crypto. Back in 2012, there was people going to these meetups that were like all about Bitcoin, and then they seemed like, you know, the biggest kind of freaks at the time, uh, 2011, 2012. And then a decade later, it's on CNBC every day. And so like, I've seen this a few times in Silicon Valley where they're somewhat ahead of the curve, but of course it's like anything, uh, that's at a, like, you know, a little bit contrarian. It's not always just because it's weird doesn't mean it's always going to be a thing.

But the psychedelic conversation, that was cool 10 years ago. Now it's, it's, I mean, you can go to, I mean, I see everyone on Facebook saying, I just got back from some country where we did an ayahuasca retreat. I mean, like, I don't think that's normal for most people.

I think that's like your circle and my circle a little bit more than it is the average person. All right. So that was one, one piece of it. Second, AI is obviously all the rage. The entire menu was created by ChatGPT. So the host basically just typed in, I appreciate that. I'm hosting a dinner for a bunch of tech people, X number of tech people, create a menu. For an epic dinner party. And it created a full menu.

Okay, that's cool.

And he goes, write the whole thing like a Shakespearean play. And so it just translated the menu into this very flowery poem, basically. And then it's like, cool, generate an image using DALL·E or whatever. And then basically created the whole menu that way. And the chef had to cook whatever ChatGPT had created, which was pretty clever, including the drinks and whatever. So I thought that was fun. And then the last thing I want to say is I was talking to one guy and I didn't ask him if I could say this, so I don't want to say his name necessarily, but he was one of those internet OGs. And I was like, I was like, so what's your story? And he's like, well, I started a business back in, he says the name of this company that like I've heard of from the dot-com boom. And then like, you know, disappeared after that. And I was like, oh wow, like that's interesting. And I was like, so what was it like back then, you know, doing a startup here? He's like, he's like, it was crazy. He's like, I knew every single person doing a startup. He's like, he's like, we used to have like, uh, like in San Francisco here, we used to have these meetups. He's like, we would meet up once a month. And he's like, it started out with just me and this one guy. He named the guy. I think I can name this guy who's the guy who started Nextdoor. Um, this guy, Nirav Tolia. And he's like, me and Nirav were like, hey, let's get together a bunch of anybody else who you know that's like interested in this tech, like internet thing.

Our fellow nerds.

Yeah. Like if they, if you, if you know anybody doing internet stuff, let's invite them to this thing. And then they created this group and he's like, dude, the group was insane. He's like, it was the guy who went to go, you know, like the guy who created, um, Zynga, then the guy who created LinkedIn, the guy who created YouTube, the guy who created PayPal, like all of them. He's like, we would just hang out. Like, it was just like, like, you know, we used to do those mastermind dinners in San Francisco. He's like, it was like that. They, he's like, at that time you didn't know who any of these people were. You didn't know who's special, who wasn't. You just knew we're all super into the internet.

So add 3 zeros to like our success. And that was, it was basically the same thing.

Exactly. And so he's like, um, he's like, we would get together and it was just like debates about like what's going on with the internet and like what cool stuff you're seeing. And he's like, we would just shoot the shit late into the night. He's like, and then afterwards, uh, it started growing. He's like, so it started growing. Then we had like too many people for one table. So we made two tables. I was the host of one and the other guy was the host of the other table. Let's lead that discussion. Then afterwards, we would compare notes and be like, who should we invite back? He's like, the key was the internet started growing in popularity like crazy. Like a lot of people wanted to do internet companies. The way that we made the community work was we started pruning hardcore. So he's like, we were like, the bigger the overall community gets, the more high level this one needs to get. So let's, let's only invite back people that we think are like the most dynamic, the people who are going to do the most interesting things. He's like, so dude, he's like, this would have been the best venture portfolio of all time. Like it was every internet company that's big now, they were there. And then even the people who were like, you'll have like a Jack Dorsey or something like that. It's like they hadn't even done their big thing yet. And they're kind of the junior guy at this thing hanging out. That's, I don't know if he specifically was doing it, but he gave me some, some names of, of some examples of people that were there. Cause I was like, who could you tell? At that time was going to do something.

And who did he say?

He's like, it felt like half the group. He's like, basically we, as he's like, what we did was when somebody like stood out as somebody that, that really kind of knew where the puck was going, we made them a table host. So they would host their own table. By the end, we had like 8, 9 tables going and there were—

Did he say of anyone? The question I would have asked is the opposite is who's a mega success who you thought, oh, that doofus. I can't believe he turned into something.

Yeah, and I, he did tell me a couple of stories, but on both directions, people he thought was just, this person's an animal, they're going to do great things. And somebody who's a little overrated, I don't want to say, because, you know, if they figured out that, I don't want them to be upset or whatever. But I would say, like, one of the things he told me was it wasn't, it wasn't the people who were working on ideas that sounded big. So all the people that ended up with a big thing, the things they were working on weren't the things that sounded like important businesses from day one.

And they became important. They eventually iterated to the— no, no, no.

Like it was a bigger space than we all realized. Um, it was like, it was basically the person that was like kind of like doing the thing that was most interesting to them and not necessarily the like, okay, internet's going to be a big deal. So therefore I'm going to create this important sounding real world business on the internet. It wasn't that it was like, Okay. Yeah, this is cool that people are doing this. Like, like social networking at the time was not seen as a space that was going to yield $100 billion companies, right? Like it wasn't, that wasn't a thing that was, uh, that sounded like the frivolous fun thing. It's like, oh cool. You like, you can like create a profile and like take a quiz that you can like write something silly on their wall or whatever. Like that didn't seem like the big ideas. It, like, all the big ideas seem like, you know, even like things like, um, so it was like breaking into 3 categories, like things that you didn't think were going to happen on the internet, selling cars, booking travel, like, you know, it wasn't like, it's like, are people going to do that? Or maybe they'll do like homes, home buying. It's like, ah, I don't know, maybe that seems like something you really want to do in the real world. It's like, those seemed like kind of fringe because I don't know if people will do it. It was social networking that seemed fringe and small and that's fun. But not that interesting because it's free. How are we going to make a big business out of this? What are you going to do with all these free users that are just going on there and goofing off? And then there was the things that were actually important sounding businesses. So I thought that was kind of interesting too. And it reminds me of, have you seen this clip? This is my last thing on this. Look up NFX on TikTok. So NFX is an investment fund.

NSX Insights.

Insights. That's exactly right.

Yeah. Okay. I'm on their page.

Watch that first video. We'll put this in the YouTube video, but, uh, watch this first video real quick of James Currier standing there.

All right. It says everyone in SNF is all in on generative AI. So there's an underground scene of startups. This kind of revolution happens every 14 years and builders are here to change the world. And it's James Currier. He's on a stage or like a, he's on a chair in a room full of like 20 guys. Share your key performance indicators with each other. And he's saying to people, share your ideas, the speed at which you move. Is what gives you and this town and this community its advantage. And it's 65% of all money invested in AI. It's being invested in San Francisco right now. So he's giving this pump-up speech where he's trying to say like, you know, years ago there was like the Facebooks, but just to let you know, this is happening right now with AI. And he's in a room with people like giving this cool speech and everyone's like staring up at him and they seem like they're super into it.

It's so cool. So he's literally like, you can see a staircase coming down. So he's somewhere downstairs in like a basement. He's standing on a chair and he's in a room full of people and he's like, basically gives them a rally speech of like, look, this is where the magic happens. He's like, you're in this town, you're in this room, you're with a bunch of builders. And what he says is every 14 years or so, one of these waves happen and they last somewhere between 24 to 36 months. And he's talking about AI. He's like, we've seen this before with mobile. So mobile comes out, there's this 3-year window between kind of like 2009 to 2012. It happened with the internet and it was like, you know, kind of like '99, 2000 to kind of 2003, 2004. And he is like, you get 36 to maybe 48 months max to, um, to take advantage of this moment. And you're in this room, you're with other people. There's some like, basically like there's somebody in this room right now who's building the next big thing. I, you know, I hope it's you, but you want to trade ideas, trade strategies, trade what you're like doing, find interesting people, work on projects with them, invest in each other. Like, this is your time to focus. These windows only open up for a small period of time. Move as fast as you can. And I thought it was pretty dope to see this kind of like, I don't know, this like, I don't know, rally cry. And it really does seem like that's what's happening with artificial intelligence right now. Like, there's a window. The big shit's going to get built right now. The next kind of Facebooks of the world are being built right now. And it just kind of rehighlights the intensity of the moment if you're an entrepreneur.

Have you heard that parable about like, there's this guy who he's, there's a big flood and he's on this roof and a guy with a boat comes by and goes, hey, come on, get in my boat. I could, I need to save you. And the guy on the roof goes, no, no, no. I'm praying to God. I'm a religious guy. God's going to save me. And I go, all right, fine. Another guy comes on the boat, says the same thing, and he goes, no, no, no, I'm not going to get in that boat. I'm going to wait for the, uh, guy to come and save me. That happens 2 or 3 times. The guy eventually drowns and dies. He goes to heaven. He goes, God, what the hell? Why didn't you come and save me? And God goes, dude, I had 4 boats come and get you. Like, why didn't you, why didn't you just hop in? That was me. This video, the reason it's similar to that is there's this like James Currier who he's wearing like pretty much an ugly shirt. It's like a, he's wearing like a He's wearing like a tucked in t-shirt into blue jeans, kind of dad jeans. I mean, he looks like a dad.

He's probably, he is a dad.

Yeah, he's 55, so he looks like he should. And he's wearing like kind of an ugly shirt and he's like just a normal looking guy, I guess is what I mean. And he's giving this really nice speech, but in a basement. And it's that same thing where like everyone's looking for some big opportunity and from like grand, like epiphany moment. It's like, no, it's just some guy who dresses like this. He's in a basement. And he's telling you like, the message is here.

The message is here and the message is clear. He's trying to shake you by the, he's trying to grab you by the collar and shake you and be like, hey, this is like, playtime is over. The window is open. Go. And I love it. I think that's, I think it's 100% true. And I want to leave with two controversial opinions.

It's a video with 6,000 views. This is, this is the man in the boat trying to save you from drowning.

Yeah. But by the way, the best stuff, like the best content I consume, The most insightful, meaningful content I consume is all like this. It's got like 1,200 views on YouTube. It's got, you know, 6,000 views on TikTok. The best stuff is not the most popular stuff when it comes to like business stuff. You used to host HustleCon and people had to fly out to San Francisco, pay a couple hundred bucks for their tickets, spend all day, do that. Not everybody could do that. Not everybody could afford the flight, the hotel, the ticket. Take a day off work, blah, blah, blah. You put all the talks up on YouTube. Every single one of them was on YouTube. It's, in fact, it's on our channel on YouTube. If you just scroll back all the way to the oldest videos, all the talks are there. And all the talks have like 400 views. And it's crazy. It's like, oh, you want to be successful? Oh, really? Same thing. Like Harvard's whole curriculum is like online. You can go take any Harvard class you want online. And people will cry about not like not having the opportunities that the rich Harvard kids have. What are you talking about? All the classes are online.

You can take every single computer science course right now.

Have the same education that Gates had, that Zuckerberg had access to. You got access to all of it. And they'll have like 900 views. And it just shows you that like the real ones are going to go do the thing. Those 900 views are like the valuable people. Like I want to go meet all 900 people that are watching those videos because those are the people that are actually finding.

So that's takeaway one.

That's, oh no, my two controversial things. San Francisco is back, baby. And the second thing is this whole like idea of moving away to lower your taxes and moving away to be remote. The best teams are going to be working together. They're going to be in the room with each other, especially pre-product market fit. But I will take any team that's co-located over a remote team any day, just head to head. If it was a competition, I would take the team that's going to be in there every day having a bunch of serendipitous conversations, whiteboarding ideas, getting to know each other better because they're just spending an absurd, obscene amount of time together. I would rather have those people that are willing to commit and go all in like that over a distributed remote team where you're spending half your day actually walking your dog and taking care of your kids and doing all that stuff. I think they're just going to outperform. And I think that San Francisco is going to outperform. I think that going to the dense city And it's like the people who care about the extra 10% in taxes or the people who are like, oh, I don't want to live here because I don't like the DA's policy on crime. I just think that it's insane that people in a game where the upside is like 1000x returns, that people optimize for a 10% break in state income tax. It's crazy to me.

Yeah, but bro, you don't even live in San Francisco.

Oh, close enough. I'm a stone's throw away, as they say. I'm across the bridge.

What person can throw a rock that far?

I don't know.

You got a catapult for that?

I'm one easy pass away.

Yeah, you're one easy 50-mile throw away. Um, I agree with everything you're saying. I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned.

No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot.

Grow better.

All right.

This next segment, we're going to call it Three Killer Asians, and it's about three people. Uh, one of those, two of those people is a couple that you're going to talk about, but I'll go first. And then the reason I'm bringing this up, so this week, So let me preface by saying I don't know anything about public markets. I'm an index investor. I don't do anything crazy, and so I don't know much. But this week I paid attention to my portfolio. Did you pay attention to yours? There was a nice little bump.

I have not checked what's going on.

So stocks are doing well. The tech sector is doing well. And I emailed my banker, I texted him, I go, Griffin, what's going on, man? Why do I have so much more money than I did the day before? And he said, Nvidia just crushed their earnings. And like a lot of people out there, I know the name Nvidia. I know that Nvidia is a company, but I don't really know what they do. Do you know what Nvidia does?

They make chips. They make the chips that go into your, uh, like if you buy a gaming PC, the graphics, the GPU in there is going to be made by Nvidia. It's like Intel makes chips and Nvidia makes chips and AMD makes chips. There's like 3 companies that make chips.

Okay, so do me a favor. Do you have Google up? Google Gary Oldman. So the word Gary and then Oldman. O-L-E-M-A-N. You know who, you see who that is? E-M-A-N. Old man, like old man. You see it?

Uh, it's pulling up an actor. Gary Oldman.

Yeah, you see it? You see it? Yeah, you see, you see Gary? All right, you recognize Gary?

Yeah, I see this guy around.

Yeah, okay. Type in another guy named Gary Cole. You see Gary Cole?

Yeah, another actor. Okay.

And what's your reaction when you see him?

I have no reaction to this guy. What am I supposed to be reacting to?

You just like seeing him around, right?

Oh yeah, sure. He looks like a guy.

NVIDIA is like the Garys of the tech world. Gary Oldman.

I have no idea where you're going with that.

So Gary Oldman, for those of you who aren't into computer, Gary Oldman was the chief on Dark Knight, like the cop in Dark Knight.

The guy who puts up the Bat Signal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was also Winston Churchill in like that The Darkest Hour movie. He plays all these roles where like you see him and you're like, oh, that guy's great. He's awesome. He's always there. He always has a good performance and everything he's in is probably pretty good, but like he's never like the guy and he's never like, I can't tell you who he is. I would have to look it up. Same with like, you know, there's a bunch of these actors who are like that. That's what NVIDIA is of the tech world. So basically. And this is going to sound like obvious to anyone who's like, is in deep tech, but for someone like me, who's not, I had to like figure out what NVIDIA is. So basically the story is, is that they create GPU, is it GPU chips or just GPU? They invented it. So prior to NVIDIA, there was like these other chip companies and they like Intel was one of them, just like the big dogs who you have heard about the '70s and '80s and they just make chips that ran your computer, whatever. But then as computers got a little bit better, uh, Jensen Huang, the founder, he was like, look, we need to have a 3D chip for 3D or a chip for 3D video and graphic processing. So basically like we can like our screens will be more interactive and all that. And so he invents this chip and he runs the company now for 30 years. So he's been CEO for of this company longer than any other like newish tech company. And he made this bet. And it wasn't that big of a bet. So when he launched in 1993, he raised a $2 million round of funding at a $6 million valuation. So this wasn't like some, like, you're going to crush this. Like, it was just a normal startup at the time. But he makes this bet that he thinks that, um, that, uh, CPUs, which is what people used to use, that that's going to be like a little bit less popular. And GPUs, which is for graphics and like more general use, that's going to be like the thing. And so the first people who start using it are gamers. So in like different gaming PCs, people start using it and then Apple, Microsoft, whatever, they're like, oh man, we actually also want some of these chips. So we're going to use that, but now it's expanded way beyond that. So like Tesla uses their chips. So like when you want to like do self-driving, they've got an NVIDIA chip that helps them figure out like where people are. You know, the camera will, will use the GPU chip and then it will put like, you know, when you're on a Tesla, you can see people walking across the street. Uh, and then now they're even using it for artificial intelligence. So anyone who's using like OpenAI, Amazon Web Services, things like that, they're also using GPU. And so this company, it's one of those companies that you don't really think about because it's a B2B company. But at this point, and this is what shocked me, NVIDIA is now either the 7th or 8th largest company in the world. Is that insane?

Wow.

And so like this company, because their stock did well, the whole NASDAQ, which is like a tech a tech-based index.

The market cap is almost $1 trillion. It's $963 billion right now.

It's insane, right? So because NVIDIA popped, the whole NASDAQ, the whole NASDAQ, which is a tech-based, a tech-forward stock exchange, that's what I meant, not index. They're killing it because of that. And so I had no idea. I heard that name NVIDIA. I'm like, what is this little gaming company? How is this moving the stock market? And that's what it is. And this guy, the founder, the, um, the Acquired guys have a really good episode on him. His name's Jensen. He's like really interesting. So he was a Taiwanese immigrant and he, his parents didn't have any money. So they sent him to like a boarding school, which is like a reform school for kids who had issues. And like his roommate was this guy who had just got out of prison at the age of like 16 or 17. And he had been stabbed like 15 times. And so the guy was like, hey, teach me how to use your computers and I'll show you how to lift weights. And so if you look at this guy now, Jensen, he's like a pretty buff guy. And he also has like the word Nvidia, the Nvidia logo tattooed on him. And he like says all these like really wild things. Like he'll say, my will to survive is greater than almost anyone's will to kill me. And like, yeah, all these phrases where he just says like, I'm all in, baby. And so he's a really interesting entrepreneur, but he's like the Gary Ulman of the world where we don't actually like, he's not up there. Like we're not watching videos of him, like Mark Zuckerberg doing jiu-jitsu because he's not like a mainstream facing guy. But now I think it's going to change because they are absolutely crushing it. And I'm one of the many people who probably had no idea what they do. Yeah.

When the Acquired guys came on our pod, I think you asked them, you're like, hey, you studied all these companies, you studied all these epic titans of business. And I think you said like, who would you not want to compete with? Or who would you want to compete with the least? And they said this guy, Jensen Huang. They were like, Jensen, the guy from NVIDIA, the leather jacket wearing CEO who's got the NVIDIA tattoo on his shoulder, who has just been like, you know, a monster for like, you know, 20 years with this company. And that was not the answer. Like, I wouldn't have guessed that that's who they would've said.

And it was an unfulfilling answer because I was like, well, I don't know anything about this guy. And I bet most of our listeners were like, Oh, I thought you would have said Mark Zuckerberg or someone famous. And this guy's just quietly kind of behind the scenes, although he is like a loud personality. He's not, he doesn't seem obnoxious, but he wears like a cool leather jacket and he looks like very confident, but he's just been quietly behind the scenes kind of killing it. I don't know what his net worth is now, but I bet you he's one of the, like the top 30 or 50 richest people in America or in the world at the moment.

And he just gave a talk at like the Taiwanese, like national university or something like that. and he, I haven't seen it yet, but it's like his commencement speech. Um, and like, you remember the Steve Jobs, like the great one, like the, the one he did at Stanford that was like, just like incredible. Um, he, he gave a talk. I haven't seen the whole thing, but there's a couple of lessons some people have tweeted out. I wanna share, share a couple with you. So he's like, uh, he goes, lesson number 1, humility. He goes, confront failure head on and ask for help. So he says, back in the day, or the, One year in the early days of NVIDIA, they got their first big chip contract and it was with Sega, the video game console. And he goes, after a year of development, they realized that they had picked the wrong technical strategy to make the chip that was going to do the things that Sega needed to fulfill the contract. And he's like, we realized our architecture was the wrong strategy. He's like, uh, you know, we didn't know what to do. Should we scramble, try to make it work? Should we just deliver something that's not great? Like, What should we do? Should we start over? We don't have time. He's like, so I just called the CEO of Sega and I was like, hey, I think you have to find another partner, um, but I also need you to keep paying us on the contract. He's like, what? He's like, I hate to even ask this, I'm embarrassed. If you like, if we don't have this money, we're gonna go out of business. Um, like, if you just please pay out the rest of this contract, like, I'm embarrassed to even ask you this, but, um, We need these 6 months to survive. And, uh, we, we screwed up. Uh, you know, I'll do everything in my power to help you do this and I'll, I'm trying to make it right after this. But like, if we don't have this, if you don't pay this contract, it's over. The show's over for us. And the CEO of Sega agreed. He actually paid it out. They gave him 6 months to survive. He's like, you got to confront your mistakes head on with humility and ask for help. That saved Nvidia. Um, he's like, this is the hardest thing to learn for somebody who's the the smart and successful type. They try to, uh, you know, avoid failure or be in denial or, uh, or hide from it.

What else did it say?

He goes, second is, uh, lesson number 2, you have to endure the pain and suffering to realize your dream. So he goes, uh, in 2007, we announced, um, CUDA, this like new way to like kind of like program your GPUs. I think that's the real key for NVIDIA. They don't just make the chips, they make the pro— they make the— this CUDA thing is important. So it's basically the way that people developers can use GPUs and like, uh, control the GPU to do what they want.

So he's like, by the way, they don't even make the chips. They like design them and they have a partnership with this other Taiwanese company, which is why like sometimes you'll say like, you'll hear things like, well, if Taiwan gets invaded by China, we're at risk. The 8th largest company in the world is going to be kind of screwed, which means X, Y, and Z for the rest. Yeah.

Especially all the companies that need chips. Uh, like, oh, all of our cars need chips. All of our computers need chips. All of our phones need chips. If we lose control of the chips, it's like losing the nukes or it's like losing access to oil. It's like a big deal. So anyways, um, so he goes, he goes, you know, we basically, we, we tried to create this thing back in 2007. Uh, it was super hard, super expensive. Our, our profits took a huge hit and we had many years of poor performance and our shareholders were skeptical. Like, dude, why are you spending all this money on this stupid, like GPUs, CUDA thing? Like you need to improve profitability, blah, blah, blah. He's like, but we just said, no, we're going to keep doing this. And basically it took like 3 or 4 years before there was even a market for this. But by the time there was a market for this, they were so far ahead. He's like, so then the phone comes out and the phone's become a huge success. Now phones need GPUs. And by 2010, they had the lead in the mobile chip market. So, uh, chips for phones. And he's like, that was huge. And, um, oh no, sorry. The, uh, I screwed up this story. The GPUs thing becomes a big deal as gaming continues to go that direction and like all the AI machine learning stuff. But like that was, it took like, you know, almost 10 years for that to come through, but they like stuck to their guns and stuck with it even though the shareholders and the public markets were punishing them for it. And then the last one, he's like, you know, we were in the mobile chip market, we were the leader. And he's like, um, but it just became so competitive. It was so many people fighting for the same pie. They basically decided to like sacrifice sacrifice the mobile market and leave that in order to do, to, uh, to go for like, you know, a different market, this kind of AI machine learning market. And again, it seemed like a terrible strategic bet. It's like you're leaving the biggest market, cell phones, in order to go for this like unknown, like, you know, risky thing. And that strategic bet paid off because they became, you know, the, by far the leader in this field. And, uh, and now that became like, you know, the biggest market, the market everybody's bullish about. And the reason their stock is up so much is because they like gave guidance, like they had like a revenue target or forecast or whatever. There was a revenue forecast and they like just came out like, actually, we think we're going to crush that by like 30%. And they're like, wait, 30% on a number that's already in the multi-billions? And they're like, yes. And so the stock took off after that.

Dude, it's awesome. So I'm a big fan of it. I'm a big fan of the Sky Soaps.

Is it Hong?

Or, or I don't know, the silent H's are always a challenge for me, but Mr. Jensen up at NVIDIA, you are today's killer agent number 1. Sean, tell me who are killer agents number 2 and 3. All right.

We're going from a guy who makes GPUs and AI, artificial intelligence, to orange chicken.

MSG.

To MSG. I butchered the joke. It was too good.

GPU to MSG.

So I met somebody who was like a real estate person and they were like, I was like, yeah, you know, how's the real estate thing going? They're like, oh dude, it's going great. We're growing, growing, growing. I was like, so you're still just doing this all with your own money? And he's like, yeah, although there's one person who wants to put money in that I'll take. And I was like, but you've always said no to anybody's money. Like why? Who's this one person and why are you interested? He goes, it's the guy who started Panda Express. This guy's a billion, like multi-billionaire. And he's got so much money. He's got an unbelievable amount of money that he doesn't know what to do with it. I was like, you know, he's like, needs a place to invest this money. And I was like, Panda Express? Like, how much money are they making? And I kind of looked into it. So this segment is Panda Express, the $10 billion mom and pop. So I don't know how much you know about Panda Express, but a bit. It does. I know you've tested the goods. So basically it's a privately owned company. So it's just owned by this husband and wife. It does about $5 billion a year in sales, $5.3 billion last year. There are no franchises like of this thing. So they kind of independently own, I think almost all, there might be like 100 that are like in international territories that they don't control. But for the most part, they have grown this thing to a huge international chain. It's, I think the third biggest fast food chain or something like that. It's like, you know, just behind, uh, you know, sort of like the huge ones, the McDonald's, the Chick-fil-A's of the world. And they are on track to become a $10 billion mom-and-pop company, which is just kind of insane. And my friend who was telling me—

What are their names?

What's that? What are their names? It's Andrew, like, Cherng. I don't know how you say it exactly. It's like Cherng. It's C-H-E-R-N-G or something like that. It's him and his wife, and they They've owned this thing, they've run this thing. So he started the first one. It was like called like the Panda Inn back in the day. It was like a normal restaurant. I think he was not fast food.

I think he started it. Yeah, I think his dad had one.

His dad was the chef. So, so his dad was a, was a chef and he, he opened up Panda Inn and his dad was the chef of that restaurant. And then he, then fast food started taking off and Andrew got pretty fascinated with this idea of fast food and was like, okay, what if we did Chinese fast food. And so they— the second or third location they did was this like Express, this like fast.

And it was in California, right? Yeah, there was more Asians.

And they, um, and they start doing a bunch of things that are smart. So some of the strategic smart things that they did was, uh, um, they opened up a bunch of locations as they grew in airports and military bases, which a lot of people weren't doing at the time. But they were like, oh, this is a great way to build awareness, like these are like huge hubs that a lot of people come through. If we're here, we will become like known and normal as like a cuisine, basically. And so they did those, even though those weren't the most profitable locations, they did it kind of like for the brand. The second thing, his wife was like a food engineer or something like that. And so she was one of the first people in Chinese restaurants to use a whole bunch of tech. So tech to monitor inventory or measure speed for operations. And that's why they became so efficient. And they call themselves McDonald's of the East because they're as efficient as a McDonald's, even though almost every other kind of like Chinese restaurant was a traditional mom and pop. They didn't, you know, they write down the orders by hand. They, you know, they track inventory by going and open up the fridge and eyeballing everything and being like, I think we need to order more eggs. Whereas they turned this into kind of like a machine and they would find things that were working in one store. So like this guy in Hawaii who owned one of the, who was running one of the stores, the chef there, he created orange chicken and he's like, oh, I think I could take, you know, that one beef dish that's an appetizer that uses the orange peels. I think I could use that orange thing on the General Tso's chicken and like combine the two, have this fried chicken that's got the orange flavor.

So Panda Express invented orange chicken.

That's what it sounded like from my reading. Now, I don't know if there's others that are debating that, but that's That's how they frame it at least. And they sell 100 million pounds of orange chicken a year. It's like some crazy number. And so, uh, yeah, just this insane thing. So I think they do almost like $800 million of EBITDA. And so I know someone, it's like an incredible amount of money.

I know someone who knows him and he told me the same number. Yeah. He told me, he goes, he goes, they're knocking on the door. He goes, they're knocking on the door of a billion in EBITDA. Exactly. That's how much cash flow they have.

And then I said, well, what do you do with all this money? And the people are people ask them, like, are you going to take it public? And the CFO is like, never. This is going to be a family business. They'll pass it down from generation to generation. Our job is to make this a multi-generational family-owned business. And I think that's really cool. Like, there's so few of those that, like, refuse to go public. And why do they need to? They're rolling in profits, right? Like, they don't, they don't need the liquidity of the markets. They don't have investors that they need to pull off. I couldn't find if there was, like, some angel investors early on that they're probably was something. I don't know if they own literally 100%, but it is, uh, it seems like it's either 100% or close to it in terms of their ownership, which I think is, it's kind of insane.

He also does a few other things. So, um, if I remember correctly, I might get some of the details wrong, but I think that he's the day you start working there. I believe he like, even like as a, I think this is like as a cashier, not just like HQ, but as like a, a, a retail worker. I think he buys you the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie because he said that when he, I don't know if he is, I think he might be an immigrant, but his parents were for sure immigrants and he was like trying to figure out how to like assimilate and how to like be more likable and charismatic so he could like get along with Americans and he read How to Win Friends and Influence People and it like changed his life. I also think he read like Think and Grow Rich and so he like gives people these books and he also sponsors tons of his employees to go to Tony Robbins stuff. So he's like all about this like self-help stuff, which is cool.

We got a bunch in common.

We got a bunch in common. And he likes that for his employees. And so I think if I had to guess, when you get to be the size of 100 million pounds of orange chicken, you're no longer like a product company or just like a restaurant company. You're a collecting people and making sure that they all behave in a very particular type of way, as well as like a logistics company. And so in terms of like, you know, like there's a reason why McDonald's, whenever they announce something, it's like, oh, that's this huge announcement just because you have a McRib. It's like, dude, because they have to go and like get like, you know, 500 pounds of pork in order to like make this. It's like a huge ordeal. But in terms of treating his people well and like collecting people, he like invests, I heard, into them a whole lot. So he's kind of like a really interesting guy. I don't know if this is like PR spun stuff where it all, you know, he looks great all the time. Just from the outside, but he seems like he does a lot of really good, good stuff.

There's a— I, I just asked ChatGPT for some fun facts. I said, give me some fun anecdotes about them. And they said the thing about the, the books. It says he buys thousands of copies of his favorite books. One is like Awakening the Buddha Within and gives it to his employees. Another thing that it says is according to a Forbes article, Staff members often start the day with affirmations like, people are depending on me to be at my best. I believe in myself and my abilities. Opportunities are everywhere. And I don't know if that's truly how they start their day, but it's a hell of a lot better than just saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I think we should put this in schools. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, 2,000-plus stores as a kind of family-owned, private, and non-franchised out business is mind-boggling level of scale to reach.

He also—

and it's him and his wife Peggy that just like still kind of like own the thing.

And he does the total opposite of what you just said before. He moved to Nevada. He now lives in Nevada because he's making so much income. But yeah, I know that he— I think Nevada is now— it was like a big deal when he left California to Nevada. That's his home state now.

To be clear, my thing is about tech entrepreneurs. If you are going to build a Silicon Valley-style venture startup, this is the place to be for that. I'm not saying everybody in the world should live in California. If you're slinging 100 million pounds of orange chicken, you can live wherever the hell you want. That's rule number 3.

I want you to tell me, we're going to move into the last section here. I want you to tell me, you got a little ambitious here. You titled this section famous people who are back with new companies. I don't want to call them famous. Maybe notable, somewhat popular, notable, notable, notable is a better one. Let's do notable. Tell me what you got.

I don't know if you've seen this, but there's a few people who are well known in our industry for a bunch of reasons that are doing interesting things. I want to get your quick reaction to each of them. So I don't know if you've seen all these, but, uh, but we'll start with, uh, Naval. So Naval is, uh, kind of like the, I don't know, one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley. He's been here again since that kind of like pre-dot-com boom days. He did a startup that went public and then he famously got in a big dispute with a bunch of people about it. He created a blog that was called Venture Hacks and then him and his partner Nivi and that eventually sort of led to AngelList, which is a multi-billion dollar startup that's like LinkedIn for the tech industry. And he's known, he's got like, I don't know, a million plus followers on Twitter because very insightful guy. So Naval's awesome. He's got a new app.

He turned into like a he's like a self-appointed guru, which is brilliant, right?

I think he's actually the opposite. I think he's a non-self-appointed guru. I think other people appoint him a guru and he's like, that makes me a little uncomfortable, but I kind of like it.

He leaned into it. He leaned into it hard.

But as somebody who's consumed, I think every word that Naval has said somehow, like I've watched all his live streams, his podcasts, all that stuff, right? Love his stuff. He many times will be like, people, you know, why don't people be like, why don't you do more or have your own things? And he's like, I don't want, I don't, I don't like this playing this role of this guru thing. I don't like how much I like it. And I have to be very careful that I don't fall into that. I don't want that to be my life and my identity and get excited about, oh, I'm gonna, I'm just excited about learning this thing because I'm going to go tell everybody about it. And then everybody's going to think I'm so smart. He's like, no, I don't want that. I want to learn the thing because I like to learn it and that's it. And he is like, you know, he is like, I, you know, like it's like junk food when he is like, I get on here and I give random advice to people. It's my junk food. It's not what I want to be eating.

And people base their lives on it, but it is far. Yeah.

Jetson's got the Nvidia tattoo. I got the Naval tattoo on my arm.

Okay, so what's AirChat? His thing.

Have you seen it? Have you played with it?

Okay. Yeah. Isn't it just like an, a little bit, but is it, it almost felt like an AI friend. Is that what it is?

No, not at all. So it's an app. It's kind of like a social media app. So you open it up and there's these like rooms. And so you can go into a room that's like, it might be people talk about AI and it's sort of like, uh, it's audio, but it's recorded. So I could go on there and I could be like, you know, I was playing with this ChatGPT thing. One of the cool things that I've been doing is this. Has anybody tried anything that's blown their mind? That blew my mind. And then another person who follows me can just reply, be like, dude, you're totally right. Here's what I did. And you're hearing their voice. It's like voice plus the transcription of it. So it's kind of like a way to have almost like a podcasty style thing where you're having a conversation, but it's open. Like anybody can kind of hop in that you allow into your room and the conversation goes wherever it is, wherever it goes. It's like a little bit of like a dinner party in a way. And so there's like, for example, one of the rooms I liked was the guy Nivi telling the origin story of AngelList, which I had never heard before, but he was like, all right, I'm going to go back and I'm going to tell you the origin story of AngelList. And it's actually like not what I had thought. He's like, we had Venture Hacks, the blog, and that was kind of popular. And then I was like, I was trying to figure out what to do. Like, how do we turn this into a business? And so I emailed Naval and Naval owned 10% of it. And I was like, all right, Naval, hey, I don't know what you think about this, but like, I'm thinking about selling this PDF. Like, okay, Venture Hacks is a free blog, but then here's this PDF. Like, we were joking about like the webinar thing. It's like, dude, even some of these awesome people did it. And he's like, I'm gonna sell this PDF that will like just give people like templates. And Naval's like, okay, that's cool. You know, for my 10%, just keep it with how this, like this awesome PDF thing you're gonna try to do. Like, Go ahead and hold on to my 10%. I don't need it. You need it more than I do. And then he's like, then we were driving home from some event after I had told him about the PDF thing. I was like, ready to go do that. And Naval had this, like, I, you know, like we were shooting the shit and we had this idea like, oh, you know what I really want is like, I want a list of investors and just what they invest in, what check size. Because people are always asking us due to Venture Hacks, like, hey, do you know any investors that would invest in my startup? He's like, I just want a list that I can refer to as like, here's all the investors I know, here's what they invest in, and here's a check size. So when someone asks for an intro, I can go look at the list and make the intro. And then maybe he's like, yeah, that's cool. I don't think that's a business. Like it's good. That's going to make less money than my PDF, but like, you're right. That would be really useful for us. So he's like, so I went home that night. He's like, I made a form and I emailed it out to every investor I know that was like, yo, what do you invest in? What's your average check size and what's your email address? And like, you know, are you open to people contacting you about like for introductions for deals? He's like, and I sent it to people and they immediately filled it in. It was the ugliest form. I didn't even pay for the premium. He's like, just a reminder that like, you know, you just need to start, you need to get it out there and like get momentum going. And he's like, now, um, I, I, with any project, if I can't like launch some version of it in the first 24 hours, it like kind of like bothers me a lot. Like, I don't really want to do projects where I can't do that. He's like, so that was the first, that was V1 of AngelList. We got this, these people back and then we put it on a, we put it on our website and then we like got some like press coverage because it was like, oh, here's a list of all the angels. And it was like, and all their emails were there. So that was bad. So we had to take that off and then hide their emails because people were just getting spamming them. He's like, and then that became like the precursor to what AngelList was, which is now this like multi-billion dollar company was like, just this list of angel investors. And that was the simplest, like, useful thing. And he's like, uh, and so he's telling the story in the AirChat and he's like, if you guys want, by the way, like, I could tell you the two other ideas that we, like, you know, two other paths that we looked at that, like, turned out to not be true, not be good ideas. But, um, you know, let me know. And then you could see that this, now I'm like, oh, great. I'm going to follow along. I kind of want to hear this oral history of AngelList. And so it's cool in that way, right? Like, it's a, it's a cool new app. So he's coming out with this and he's like, I'm a co-founder of this. And the other guy I think who's behind it is that guy Brian Norgaard. I don't know how you say his last name exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's kind of like well-respected in the tech scene as like a product guy, product designer guy.

Didn't he like work at Tinder or something?

Yeah, he basically like, he started a couple of things that like had a bunch of hype but didn't fully pan out but were cool products. Like didn't work but were cool. And then ended up like had a product at like the Match Group or something like that at IAC. And so then he like ran Tinder. Um, and now he's like doing this, I guess. So that's kind of like one, one app. So give me your, I don't, you haven't played with it. So it's hard to get your quick reaction.

Well, I, yeah, you gotta like sign up for a waitlist. It's also, that's cool. Rub it in. Do you, do you think that, uh, do you think that this is going to be like a thing?

I do not. So. I think it's going to be— it actually reminds me a lot of Clubhouse in that early on Clubhouse was awesome. It was awesome because it was such a curated community and it was like they brute-forced only dope people onto the platform because that's who their friend group was. And so early on with Clubhouse, you would go into any room and it'd be like super interesting conversation. You could just hop in and meet people. and you could build. And I told my friend this, there was a guy who used to work for me, Jason. And I was like, Jason, he was still at Twitch after he got acquired and was kind of like spinning his wheels a little bit. And I go, Jason, you should just forget about Twitch. I said, every night you should go on Clubhouse and hang out there for like 5 hours. You will build the best network in Silicon Valley in the next 2 months if you just do that. Because I was like, you're an awesome talker. People love you when they meet you, but it's just hard to go meet Like the power players. Clubhouse is this place where all the power players are hanging out and they want to be talking to randos because that's what Clubhouse is and that they're excited about Clubhouse. Therefore, they're excited about talking to randos. I was like, you can go in there and go from rando to friend in like 2 months. And he did exactly that. He went in there and he started hanging out and he built this awesome friend group. They still hang out in real life today. He ended up raising a fund. Out of that group of people like, dude, you seem like you know a lot about crypto. Like, can you invest some of my money in crypto? And he's like, I don't know. And ended up raising like a few million dollar fund, invested it, made these guys money triple. I think he doubled or tripled their money and paid it all back and gave, stopped the fund within like a year, which is like incredible. And yeah, he just like had this awesome networking experience. So to me, AirChat's like that right now. You go in there, everybody's smart and awesome and like the who's who of the tech world. And so it's great for me as a user right now. I don't think it'll stick like that. And I also don't think it'll catch on to be a mainstream social media thing because for one reason, audio is too slow. People can like scroll and read, I don't know, some crazy, like 3 or 5 times faster than audio. And so there is, uh, it's too slow. Any social media, you're now competing with TikTok. It's like, how do you compete with the entertainment per second that you get rate that you get from an Instagram or TikTok or even a Twitter. It's all short form bite-sized, just instant dopamine hits. And it's like podcasts, it's very hard to compete with that though. It'll never be as like, you know, billions of people are just opening this thing up all the time because audio is too slow and you get too few like hits of awesomeness per, uh, per minute that you compared to your other options, your other buttons on your phone. So that's why I don't think it'll become like a mainstream thing.

Tell me about this tradie thing.

Okay, so Dom, who was the founder of Fast.com, which was a funny story.

What's the 30-second story of Fast?

30-second story of Fast. Guy gets his domain Fast.com, comes out with crazy hype on Twitter of just Fast is going to be the, like, the next big thing. It's one-click instant checkout. What Amazon did. With one-click checkout we're going to do for the rest of the internet. And they're just pumping on Twitter how fast it's going to be awesome. They raise a bunch of money at a huge valuation. They're bragging about how—

Hundreds of millions, right?

Hundreds of millions.

Hundreds of millions.

Pre-launch. Uh, yeah. Pre, pre-traction basically. And a few of us were kind of like, I don't know, man. I'm not sure. Like, where's the customers? Why? What's going on? And, uh, sure enough, the bubble pops, people sort of realize that Fast.com has basically no traction. It had like, I don't know, like tens of thousands in revenue as it had like, you know, almost a billion dollar valuation. And the product doesn't really work that great. The team is like, whatever, it all just falls apart. I don't remember the exact details of how it fell apart, like, but it fell apart. They were burning, I think, $10 million a month of investor money at one point. Something like that, between $3 and $10 million. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they were burning an absurd amount of money. He couldn't raise anymore because they had no traction. At a certain point, the investors want to see traction. And so Fast just combusts. And then it comes out that, oh, this guy Dom previously had built a company in Australia called Tow.com that was supposed to be Uber for towing your car and tow truck drivers. And basically, like, that company also had a dope domain, tow.com.au, and raised money, got a bunch of press, got some users but not a lot, ran up a bill that he couldn't pay, like a $13 million bill or something like that. He's getting sued for by the government there because of towing contracts that he couldn't fulfill and ended up just leaving Australia and starting for— he used to be Dominic Holland and he rebranded as Dom in the US and did Fast.com. So it's kind of like, okay, this guy's track record. So now he's got trady.com, another quick domain name. Have you seen this thing? Trady, like, uh, as in tradesman.

And yeah. And so explain what it is and I'll tell you what I heard about it.

So it kind of looked on the surface like most of Dom's ideas, it sounds kind of like a good idea. So it says the fastest way to grow your trade business. And he just shows a bunch of like, you know, blue collar types. Oh, this guy does like landscaping. This guy's got like a tractor. Um, and it's like, hey, We give you a website, we let you do your customers book you and pay for you online. We give you easy way to do invoicing. You know, if you're a professional, you know, tradesperson, you should be using Tradee. That's the pitch. It's not a bad pitch. I think it's a good idea. Now tell what you heard about it, because I think we heard the same thing.

Okay, so here, I'll read it. So someone tweeted, they go, looking at Tradee.com, so far 80% of the businesses I've contacted from the site, meaning there's a bunch of businesses that were listed as testimonials.

I think he said, it looks like Dom's at it again, right? That's the frame.

Yeah, he goes, Dom, he goes, he's at it again. He goes, 80% of the companies that contacted from the site don't seem to be real. They're shell companies with fake Yelp and Google listings, and 90% of them didn't poke up, uh, didn't pick up the phone. Uh, a tradie said one tradie made their landing page without permit. Oh, one person who was listed on the website said that tradie made the landing page without that company's permission. and 2 so far seem to actually be using the product, but Tradie is giving it to them for free and sponsoring them. And then he shows like all the domain names that the same LLC that owns Tradie has also bought all these other domain names that were listed on the website of tradie.com.

Yeah, this is guy Justin Mitchell. J Mitch is the guy who, who tweeted this out. And so, So yeah, like straight off the bat. And now, by the way, I think all those are gone from the Tradie website.

So, so with that, and again, my takeaway is run. No, I'm not touching this thing.

Instant reaction. All right.

And the next two, Tip Top and Bay Area Times.

Yeah. Let's skip that one. Let's do the Pomp one. So, uh, Pomp, friend of the pod, is doing something interesting. I don't know the full story. I haven't talked to him about this. Have you talked to him about this Bay Area Times thing?

No, not yet.

Do you know what I didn't even know about it?

I don't even know what it is.

Okay. So go to bayareatimes.com. It looks like—

So Pump is famous for, he was one of the early guys who was very vocal about crypto. He started a podcast, YouTube channel, and now he's a whole personality. He's pivoted away a little bit from crypto. So now he's just talking about business, but also a little bit politics and sports and all types of stuff.

Yeah. His kind of relaunch I want to talk to you about, which is basically like How do you think that's going and going to go? So he was the Bitcoin bull. He popped off in terms of, he's built his audience around Bitcoin and saying how amazing crypto is. And then people will note, like, you know, the kind of like the crypto kind of haters basically will be like, dude, look at this. He removed the red laser eyes. He removed all mention of Bitcoin from his bio. And now like he hosted a real estate conference the other day. He's hosting like, you know, startup events, you know, just like normal startup things. He's doing this, like his media stuff is not about crypto anymore. And so, you know, I think he's diversifying and kind of shifting away from—

I think it's working really well too.

Yeah. And like, I would just say this, I think for most people it's a very hard transition. I would not want to bet against Pomp. I think he is a very formidable, smart person who is going to be successful in whatever he chooses to be successful at. And I think he's chosen I'd like to build my whole co to be about these things instead of just this one. And I think it's a very hard pivot to make and he's making it very well. He's doing it very well so far from what I can tell. So here's the thing.

And so basically he owns, right now he owns, I think he owns an executive recruiting company, a research company, job board, what else?

A job board.

Like a job board. Yeah, a job board.

And like a course that trains you to get jobs in crypto.

And then what? And then maybe like 2 more.

Well, his media companies. Um, and then I think he's investing beyond that. So here's what he said. He goes, introducing the Bay Area Times. This is a new product that uses data and visuals to analyze what's happening across business, finance, and tech on a daily basis. So you can go to bayareatimes.com and he basically says narratives dominate the headlines on other platforms. Writers spend paragraphs regurgitating the same points over and over again. These legacy products take too long to read. They bury the, the data deep in the paragraphs and it's hard to recall the information. But what if you just want cold hard facts? What if you wanna see the data in a single chart? What if you don't have 10 minutes to read every morning? That's what we built this for. So every morning they send out an email that's got 5 big stories. It's got a visual, which is like a chart or a graph along with a few bullet points. No hidden agenda, no twisted facts, no biased narrative. That's his claim. He says he's been testing this with 20,000 readers and the feedback has been phenomenal.

Go for it.

Right. And so you could see it looks like it's built on Substack.

Beehive.

Oh yeah. Sorry. This is Beehive. So let me go to the first one. All right. So like the one that he sent out 3 days ago, it's basically, here's the data. It's like what's going on in the stock market, what's going on with Bitcoin, gold, Ethereum, et cetera. And then it'll be like, here's a chart on life expectancy. And it says life expectancy has been stagnant for the past 20 years. After the COVID drop, it's at 77 years old, which is the same level as 2003, right? So that's like the one big chart and then they put bullet points underneath it.

So he's basically using visuals to, and data to explain what's going on in the news. I think it's cool. I think the worst case scenario here for him is that this makes like $2 or $3 million a year and it's very, very profitable. The best case, it becomes Hustle, Morning Brew, whatever. It gets millions of subscribers and makes tens of millions or however much more. I think it's cool. What do you think?

I kind of wish this was an actual printed thing. I like people that are going into like newspapers and magazines right now. I think those are very interesting.

So there's Agora, the newsletter company I always talk about. They would say that they would charge like $2,000 a year and they would send you like a newsletter, but it was a financial newsletter, except when they say newsletter, they would literally mail it to you and they still do that. And it was just printed on like printer paper. And it was kind of cool for that reason.

Right.

And I actually agree with you. I think that could be cool where you just like literally mail someone and it comes in like one of those tan envelopes and it looks like it's almost like, uh, here's like the, here's like, um, like, uh, I think the president every day gets like a briefing. It's like a presidential briefing where it's like, here's what you need to know. And like oftentimes I'm like just a piece of paper, like just give me that. But at my house.

Totally.

And I actually do think that would be cool.

Did we talk about this jumbo mail marketing thing?

What's up?

So I saw this on Twitter. It's pretty cool. So basically, um, they, they go, the tagline is this: have you ever received a package in the mail and thrown it away without opening it? Neither have we. And basically they're like, 90% of people, 90+ percent of people who receive like a stuffed envelope, like a stuffed package, will rip the thing off and open it. So if you go to, um, The Twitter is @MailJumbo. It's basically this, the icon's this elephant and it goes, we create jumbo chunky mail that's guaranteed to reach your audience. It's good for real estate investors, home services, and business buyers. And basically what they do is like, they just do direct mail, like kind of like, you know, here, oh, we got a bunch of, you know, like spam in the mail, like, oh, whatever. We want to buy your business or we're a real estate agent, whatever. But they do it in these jumbo packages just to increase your response rate. So they're like, yeah, it costs more, but you're actually going to get more people to, to read your thing. And I thought this is like a brilliant, simple, like side hustle style business that I think also will get to, you know, mid-seven figures in revenue and be a profitable bootstrap business of just jumbo mail marketing.

There's this guy named Sam Ovens who we've talked about that like 10 years ago, he had this course called consulting.com and he would teach you how to become a consultant, whether it's like how to do SEO for companies. I don't know what services the consultant would do, but he would teach you how to start a consultancy business. And he has one big thing that he, I don't know if he says he invented it, but he goes, this is like my shtick is I do this thing called lumpy mail where I send just a normal envelope, but I put something lumpy in it. Like, uh, I forget what he would put, but like a figurine or a pen. I forget whatever it was, but it would make it feel like the envelope had a little bit of weight to it. And he goes, the reason I do that is because when lumpy mail gets opened way more and I can get your attention way more. And so what these guys are doing, he used to call it Lumpy, they're calling it Jumbo. I saw that, they like learned about it from him. Um, but, and he claims that it was amazing.

Well, the guy who's behind it, one of the guys who's behind it, is the same guy that does, uh, is the mobile home, mobile home park guy on Twitter. Um, who also does like 9 other businesses and is like completely— he's like, if somebody downloaded the podcast into their brain and then their brain said Let's do all of them. He's doing like 9 ideas at once at all times. He's kind of a madman, but this is one of his ideas. And he did it because when he was trying to buy businesses, like, I think, like the mobile home, like buy these mobile parks, mobile home parks, he needed to do mass outreach and he wanted to increase his response rate of, are they actually even seeing my offer or that I want to buy their business and how do I get them to reply? And so I think this was part of the inspiration for that.

I think we should wrap up here, but as before we do, I want to give you kudos. You said something last pod that was very funny that totally flew under the radar. And if you made it this far, 60 minutes in, I'm going to give you a piece of gold that you can go, this joke that you're going to tell your friends. We said something about like breaking up with someone. Maybe it was like breaking up with the business relationship. I don't remember, but I said something like, it's not you, it's me. And you said, Yeah, it's not you, it's me in that I think you're horrible. And I regurgitated that joke this weekend. Killed it.

The room, they loved it.

I looked so funny. It was such a, you said that line and it totally like went under the radar. It's like, look, it's not you, it's me in that I think you're the worst. So that is like a free joke. I've just given you something.

All right.

There you go. I've given you, the listener, something. Hey, what do they give us when we give them something, right?

Nobody just takes, right? You don't want to be a taker. That would be—

Yes, that would go against our agreement that we have with our listeners. I've just given you something. Sean gave you something that I now gifted to you. Now I want you to go to our YouTube page and our— I always call it the iTunes page, and that just shows how old I am. I don't know what the podcast app, like the Apple Podcast app, go to both of them and click subscribe because if you've listened to this we've given you that.

And by the way, drop comments on the YouTube. That is now my favorite part of the podcast because we did this for 2 years with no YouTube and there's no feedback loop. You don't get any comments on the podcast app, but on YouTube people leave comments. So now we get, I don't know, I don't know how many it is, like maybe 30, 40 comments per video. I read every single one of them every single time. Like, no joke, it's like my only way to kind of like interact.

Dude, they're all saying They're all saying you look ripped now.

I do like that part of the comments, not going to lie. That is a good, good feeling. They're like, wow. But it's also one of those, like, what do you call it? I had a before before and now I'm a before photo.

You had a way before picture.

Yeah, exactly. I used to be the way before and now I'm just the before. And I think people recognize that.

No, you look good.

I appreciate them for that.

You can see you definitely have some, some, you got some set definition, bicep, triceps. You got the seps.

I got sepsis over here. But I'm going to start commenting back to anybody that says something interesting. And to that spammer out there that keeps trying to trick all of our people into a WhatsApp group, I'm hunting you. I'm coming for you because the YouTube algorithm can't get you. I will get you. I will find you.

I tried. It's hard.

I have a unique set of skills. That have prepared me for this moment to find you on every single video and remove your comments.

Yeah, 10 years of Googling has prepared you to reverse image search and figure out where they've made their mistake. Um, all right, we're out of here. That's the pod. We'll see you all soon.