Sam Parr pitched his venture at a private Rupert Murdoch summit during CES with CEOs from News Corp, Google, Slack, and Facebook. Murdoch sat through eight hours straight without breaks, asking sharp questions that set the tone for candid conversations among the most powerful media and tech leaders in the room.
Literally CEO of Google, CEO of Slack, number 3 guy at Facebook, just back to back to back.
The CEO of Google was the one getting grilled. Yeah, you gotta like—
so I got a Rupert Murdoch story cuz you said Murdoch. Um, I'm so impressed with this dude. So he gets a lot of hate cuz like his business practices and whatnot. People think he's like a tyrant in a way. Uh, he is, and he is, and like the show Succession Succession is basically about their family. Um, good show. So we had this opportunity to pitch Rupert Murdoch. So, uh, Michael, who's my investor, comes to me and says, hey, we got invited to this thing. Um, basically every year during CES, Rupert Murdoch, uh, brings all the CEOs of his companies, um, through News Corp. So they own Wall Street Journal, I think, or New York, uh, New York Post, Fox, and Sky, and then they own Penguin Publishing, right?
They own Realtor.com.
So he is the media mogul, right? Like, that's cool. So basically, once a year they all get together. It's during CES. They go to the Wynn and they rent out the entire top floor of Wynn. And so all the rooms there are all the execs, and they have the biggest suite, the penthouse suite of the Wynn. And what they do is they— and I really admire this— they go from 8:00 a.m. to about 7:00 p.m. every single day for 2 days straight. And every hour is just— they just bring in a speaker. Not like a speaker. It's like an industry leader from something. And they just— they just grill them. So it's like, you start by just telling me a little bit about your business. And then it's 30 minutes of Q&A from the CEOs of all these companies because they're trying to figure out, okay, how do we play into this? So when I was there, it was like literally CEO of Google, CEO of Slack, number 3 guy at Facebook, just back to back to back.
The CEO of Google was the one getting grilled.
Yeah, he would go and he would explain, here's what, here's where we're going next year.
That guy isn't that guy because these are big media partners for them.
They, they want to have these media partners working with them. So they'll say, here's where we're going next year. Uh, uh, but it's off the record, right? So it's more candid than you're ever gonna get these guys. And I, uh, they told me you can just come for your slot, you know, this 45-minute slot.
But Rupert's here the whole day.
But I was like, I'm sitting here the whole day. Like, this is why, why did you get to sit there? Because we were gonna present at the end of the day. And so we had access. So I just sat there at 8 AM. I'm there with my seat. So here's what I noticed during the day. A lot of the CEOs, you know, they'd be interested in certain people, but for the most part, you know, they get hungry, they go to the bathroom. Rupert Murdoch, I don't know how old he is. This guy's like 80s. Like he looks old and he is old. And that guy sat right up front with a paper and a pencil, did not get up, did not take a break. He was the most— didn't take a piss. He was the most attentive. He asked the best questions. He was like a machine. And I was like, that's why this guy's Rupert Murdoch. I was so impressed by this guy. Um, his just endurance really. And also just his level of focus where everybody else was wandering, um, throughout the day. Cuz that's what you normally do. And that's kind of contagious.
Did he ask questions?
But I loved how the leader was like on point because it held everybody else like closer to that standard.
Did he ask questions?
He asked good questions. Yeah.
Which is funny cuz if you're the CEO of one of his companies, you're already maybe a billion, and some of them might be billionaire.
I mean, you're, you're, you're up there. I, I don't know if you're billionaire, but yeah, you're maybe doing super well if you sold. Like, it'd be like your, it was like the CEO of Fox Studios, like, oh yeah, we make these movies for this year. And it's like, oh, whatever, you know, Marvel. Well, like, it's like these are big individual brands.
You're, you're a big, you're a big swinging dick. You're a big guy.
So that was incredible. I just thought that was really cool. And I gotta give him props for that. I was, I was very impressed.
That's crazy. Uh.
