The Wild Story of Mike Lynch’s Rise From Janitor to Tech Billionaire

Well, I have a different billionaire story that's kind of crazy that I want to tell you about. So check this out. This is, this is a wild story. I'm just going to tell you, brace yourself. Okay. Let's start with this. I'm going to read you a snippet from an article first. So in July, in early 2022, the courts ruled that this person, Mike Lynch, owed $4 billion in damages that are still pending. Okay, so court rules that Mike Lynch owes $4 billion. Next line. At the same time, the US tried to extradite Lynch. He was in the UK. The, the US says, no, no, no, we're going to come try you over here. They bring him over and he arrives in San Francisco in May of 2023, and he is released on a $100 million bail and consigned to house arrest in a rental home. With cameras installed in every room, two armed guards on duty, on duty around the clock. Now what's interesting about this is that that rental home with cameras installed in every room and armed guards on duty around the clock is my dad's house. I don't know if you know this. That guy stayed at my dad's Airbnb when he was on trial.

Your dad owns an air, uh, like a home in the South? My dad's actual house.

He'll Airbnb out for periods of time. He'll go if he gets a booking that's like, you know, at the right price point. He'll go get to, he'll go to like a motel at a hotel, like in, you know, Fremont or something like that to go stay there for the night. And then he'll be like so happy that he made some money. But my dad didn't know this. He gets a booking. He says, man, this guy wants, uh, this guy just booked 3 months. And 3 months, by the way, is the max you can even do when you're Airbnb-ing your own house in San Francisco. It's like that you have 90 days. So he's like, wow, I got the whole year from one guy. This is great. So he's like, where am I going to go for 3 months? And he's figuring it out. I'll go travel, whatever. And then he texts me and he is like, hey, can you check the Ring camera real quick? And I check the Ring and there's these bodyguards standing outside the house.

What?

What's going on? And so he texts the guy and he is like, hey Mike, hope you got into the house okay from the lockbox. Curious, what are these guards doing outside the house? And he says, oh, I'm actually on house arrest. I'm awaiting my trial. And for the duration of this, I can't leave the house. You know, that's why I wanted your Airbnb. You have this nice backyard, hard to get a nice backyard in San Francisco. So, and my dad's like, what the hell? So he starts Googling the case. We all start Googling the case and this guy's story is fascinating.

And is this for autonomy?

Yeah. So I'll give you the end of the story, which is, which is kind of interesting, right? I don't know if you've, have you heard the latest update on this?

No, but not the latest, but I know that it's weird. There's a lot of weird stuff going on.

So I'll, I'll start with the end, then we'll go back to the beginning. The end of the story is At some point my dad's like, hey, I gotta go back to live in my house. Your trial's not over. The guy's like, okay, okay, I'll ask the judge if I can move Airbnbs. So he moves Airbnbs, he finishes the trial, he's acquitted on all charges. He's a free man. To celebrate him, his family, his lawyers, they all get on a yacht. He owns this $30 million yacht and this person that he used to work with, a guy who was his character witness, his lawyer, his wife, the lawyer's wife, they all get on this boat and they start sailing. And mysteriously, 2 months after being acquitted of all charges, there's a freak yacht accident and he dies. He's killed on this boat. At the same time, 48 hours later, the other guy in the case, his co-founder, who was also acquitted on the same day of all the charges, is going for a run and gets hit by a car and also dies. And so it's kind of strange that this guy who was in this multi-billion dollar fraud suit, the day, you know, 48 hours apart, just a couple months after being acquitted, him and the co-founder both killed in freak accidents. Hmm. All right. So now let's go back to the beginning. I Googled this guy. So this guy's story is actually pretty fascinating. He is called the British Bill Gates. And the reason he's called the British Bill Gates is that this guy was brilliant. So he grew up super poor. Basically, he's, he's so poor, but he's, he's a hard worker. He's smart. And he ends up getting a scholarship to go to school because he, and he said this, he goes, there was a guy, like a lord in the 1600s who, when he died, he left his wealth specifically for one purpose, for the education of poor boys. And he's like, I was a poor boy and I got to have this scholarship, which let me go to a school. And so when he's 11, he gets into a private school. He starts working really hard. At 16, he becomes a janitor at a hospital. And he's mopping the floors. And during the trial, he's talking about his childhood or growing up. And they said, he's like, at 16, I used to work in this hospital mopping the floors. I was, I was, and actually I still am, I'm a demon mopper, so I could do that. And the lawyer goes, your credibility is on the line here, Dr. Lynch. And he goes, throw me a mop. I'll show you right now. And the whole audience at the courthouse starts laughing. And he tells a story at the hospital. He's working his way up. So he goes from janitor mopping the floors to porter, which he's, he's wheeling the people from room to room. He's moving the beds around. Finally, he gets the prestigious job of serving tea and sandwiches. And he says, this is the most important thing that happened in my life was age 16. I spent a lot of time with people who were 95-year-old, basically people on the way out. And I used to sit with them and I used to serve them tea and sandwiches. And these people had nobody to talk to and they were at the end of their life and they opened up to me about their life and about things that they've never told anybody. And he goes, at 16, I thought that life is, I'm indestructible and life seems like it's forever when you're 16. And he's like, every day I was reminded life is really short. I want to really make something of my life. Then he says, he gets into Cambridge. He goes into Cambridge and he gets a PhD in neural networks, artificial intelligence and neural networks. And this is, he's old. This is way before AI and neural networks were a thing. So let's fast forward. He starts this company called Autonomy. And Autonomy was basically like one of these, like machine learning, big data, take, take a bunch of data, find patterns that the human eye is not going to be able to see. And they sell this to both companies as well as governments and agencies, sort of like a Palantir-esque company. So he starts this company. He ends up selling it to HP for $11 billion. So Hewlett-Packard, who's like a hardware company, wants to go to software and they get really hot and heavy and they, the company was already public, but they offered a 60% premium. So They said, we'll give you 60% more than your stock price to take this deal. He says, all right. You know, he's like, if I had not taken that deal, my shareholders would've been, you know, it would've sounded like a herd of elephants stampeding towards me. Why didn't you take this deal? So of course I took the deal. He takes the deal. A couple years later, HP ends up writing off $8.5 billion of that acquisition. And they say, you guys cooked the books. So you inflated your revenues, your profits, your balance sheet. So they sue him and in the suit, a couple of things happen. The CFO pleads guilty for wire fraud. So he's in jail for, I don't know, 5, 7 years, something like that. The co-founder volunteers to work with them and he gets a pretty light sentence. And this guy, Mike, avoids, he tries to avoid being in court with these guys. So he's trying to avoid extradition, all this stuff for like a period of time. Finally, they get him.

And what's like the, what's the he says, she says, like, so HP says, Your revenue wasn't what it really was, or you billed people wrong. What's—

It's a very complicated thing. So they said that, hey, you misrepresented your revenues and the profitability profile of this business and something on the balance sheet. The he said, she said. So during the court case, they asked him about this and he says, if you take a microscope into any kitchen, even the cleanest ones, you will find bacteria.

Okay. Which is great analogy, but the most guilty shit I've ever heard.

So that sounds horrible. So I don't know all the details. During the court case, they had 15 million financial documents that they had submitted as exhibits. And it was so complicated that during this case, one juror kept falling asleep. And the lawyer looks over at him and he goes, I know this is not fascinating, but you got to tell me, can you stay awake for the next 8 weeks of this trial? The juror goes, that's a negative. I can't. And he gets replaced. And so He ends up getting acquitted, which is amazing. And by the way, him testifying and telling that story about him and the janitor and the— they think it helped him. And it was very rare. Most people do not testify for their own defense. They tell you, don't go on the stand.

So basically he has charisma.

He has some charisma. Exactly. So he gets on the stage. Anyways, he gets acquitted. Now this death has all these weird circumstances. So at first when I heard this, it just sounded like some real Epstein stuff, right? It was like, wait, these two people get acquitted on the fraud case and then both die within, you know, 48 hours of each other in these quote unquote freak accidents.

Yeah. And like the accident that they described, it was like basically, if I remember correctly, like a water tornado. They're like, he was sailing and there was like a tornado that like tipped over this huge sailboat.

Uh, well, the crazy thing is, yeah. So then you read about it. So I'm on, this is me last night, this swaying as I'm reading the details of this case. So. On one hand, okay, it sounded like he got killed. No, he didn't get killed. The boat sank and the boat sank due to this like natural disaster. Okay. That sounds pretty— what, what are you going to say?

Somebody caused a water tornado and a bunch of people survived it and people survived it.

Exactly. So he could have just as easily survived. On the other hand, there's stuff that came out that was like, uh, they didn't secure like the sort of the, the, the ship in the right way as you would when you had that forecast. So like, why didn't they do that? That's a little bit strange. Also the guy who got hit by the car, the other guy running, for it to happen in that time span. And the lady who hit him, she's this 49-year-old woman who hit him with the car. She was like, I couldn't see. And it was like, wow, okay. She's cooperating with authorities. She doesn't look like a hitman. And then if you go in the subreddit, the r/conspiracy subreddits, it's like, of course they made it look like that. That's exactly how this works. They make it a little— they look for a weather pattern. That could be, uh, could be believed, and then they'll sink the boat, and then you, it seems like the boat sank due to natural disasters, or they find these people who don't look like hitmen, but they're hitmen. It's like, all right, I don't know what to believe in all this.

All right, so when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like 2 million subscribers, and we made money through advertising, and we didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember sitting down and I'm like, What are all the different ways that I can make money off the hustle that aren't advertising? And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake, Sean, me, and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research. And we call it very appropriately, we call it the Business Monetization Playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're gonna see a link to that, uh, Business Monetization Playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link and you can see it. Back to the episode.

Conspiracy aside, incredibly wild story that this is how this all played out. And by the way, during this time, so he sells Autonomy in 2011, something like that. 2013, he starts a new company, Darktrace. And Darktrace is this cybersecurity company that—

this name does not help this whole conspiracy.

That's what I'm saying. There's more to it. So If you look up what Darktrace does, Darktrace, I think, was started back when WikiLeaks happened. And the idea was, we're going to go to, like, government agencies. And when Snowden and the WikiLeaks stuff started happening, it was basically, I'll make sure WikiLeaks and the Snowden leaks never happen to you. And so they were working with all kinds of, you know, secret agencies to try to prevent that from being possible. And that's what Darktrace is. Darktrace was also a $5 billion company that was acquired. It was acquired for $5 billion. And so this guy was like really prolific as an entrepreneur. At the same time, this incredible, you know, either tragedy, conspiracy, or freak accident. It's hard to say, but isn't that wild that this guy was just living in my dad's house?

How much is your dad? Okay. I don't know. The answer of this could be, I don't want to give too much information to my father, but let's just presume that this guy, Mike Lynch, is worth billions. How much do you think he was paying per month?

So that's actually a funny thing. So my dad's normal rate, I think a normal rate on his Airbnb is like $750 a night, something like that. Because it's a house with multiple rooms. So it's like, it's cheaper than it would be if you were, if you're a group. And by the way, my dad's super desperate. So he'll, he'll put it up for $750. Someone comes in for $500. He's like, ah, it's still $500. $500 is great. You know, that's a lot of money. I got to say yes to this. And we're always telling him, we're like, dude, like, you're like, you're old now. Don't inconvenience your life like this. And he's, he'll do it, whatever. So when this happened, of course, my first instinct is, hey, maybe you don't want whatever. This seems like a pretty tense situation. We don't know. We don't have a lot of information here. There's somebody who's like, you know, on trial. This is like a criminal living in your house. What's going on? Maybe you should ask him to leave. And my dad's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gonna do that. Calls the guy, calls me back, like, so what happened? Does he agree to leave? Like, are you going to have to refund him or what? He's like, no, he's paying triple now. And I was like, what? And my dad's like, yeah, I was going to ask him to leave. And then I just told him, like, this is really stressing me out. Like, I don't know what to do. Can you just, like, this is going to cost more. And he's like, sure, what do you want? He's like, how about triple? He's like, okay. No problem. So my dad was over the moon about this whole situation. Most Indian thing I've ever heard.

That's first of all, that's insane. By the way, uh, I have a friend who just rented out their home for a Netflix show and they were spent, they, the home was worth like $5 million and the Netflix crew to be there and all this, they were spending, I believe, $200,000 a month. That was the rental price for 3 months, uh, which, like, freaking insane. And so your dad was almost getting—

yeah, he was getting that reality TV money, and it was just one guy sitting in the house all day. It's kind of amazing.

Wow. First of all, there's so many— there's so many weird things, uh, about the story. When you looked into it, what do you think happened?

Well, I was— I was— I'm telling you, I was really thinking conspiracy, and then I go into the subreddit and the top comment was so funny. It goes, I'm sorry, but if Hewlett-Packard arranged the hit, they'd still be waiting for the correct driver to be installed. And I was like, no, that's true. HP is not ordering a hit. So I don't, I don't believe that's the case.

I have studied history for a long time. I'm into all this stuff. Conspiracy theories are always fun to read about. Here's my takeaway with conspiracies. One, they do exist sometimes. So for example, do you remember the O.J. Simpson trial and how there was Mark Fuhrman? He was the, uh, one of these police officers who planted The glove there. Yeah, that is, that's an example of a conspiracy that I believe like was true. The problem with conspiracies, there's two problems with them. One, secrets are really hard to keep, you know what I mean? Like if, so if 50 people know that they had to work together to do X, Y, and Z, it's really hard, particularly over decades, to keep that a secret, you know what I mean? That's, that's a, that's a huge challenge. And the second thing is that when you have to hire people to do these things, they're typically lower income. For example, someone who works at the security, as a security prisoner, or, um, a corrections, uh, facility, they're probably like, they don't have that many options. They don't make a lot of money. And convincing this person to shut up for 50 years, that's really fucking hard. It's just, it's like logistically to pull off a conspiracy like that is effective. It's really, really hard. Or like, let's say you're doing it with like a bunch of military people, still like 100 just infantry people, or you think they're going to be able to keep their mouth shut?

It's just challenging. But it, it does happen. And also with like, for example, the Epstein thing is like, oh, and then the cameras stopped working that day. It's like, all right, this seems extremely suspect. It's like the guards happened to leave and the cameras shut off and he got his hands on a rope or whatever. I don't know the details, but like Some of these, they make you do this, the goatee pinch. Huh? What's going on here?

Well, and then, but there's a lot of times there's re— have you heard of the Kennedy curse about how they all die?

No.

You know, there's like Joe Kennedy was the patriarch. He had 9 kids and roughly 6 of them died. And then like the grandkids, they all died.

Like died early, you mean?

Died early. Yeah. For example, assassinations, died in plane crashes. And then you like look at like the story of each one and you're like, oh, this isn't a curse. You guys are just risk takers. Like this guy was flying a plane when he just got his pilot's license and he was flying like a jet when he should have been flying like a much slower plane or this person. He got assassinated because he was president and like 10% of all presidents have been assassinated. You know what I mean? Like there's like, there's oftentimes there's a story where it like each one individually can kind of make sense, but add it up together, it may seem too good to be true, but they're actually, things make sense when you look down. So anyway, that's my opinion on conspiracies, but this story is so fascinating. I remember reading about Mike Lynch and this is A, crazy stayed at your dad's house and B, I also, I kind of don't know how I feel about the story. I don't know what happened.

Yeah, neither do I. And by the way, for conspiracies, I, it's like, For most things in life, you just either choose to believe or you choose not to believe, right? It's a choice whether you believe in something. And some things, when you choose to believe them, they may believe in them, like luck. Like, I'm a lucky person. I believe that because I believe that I'm going to do different things than somebody who believes they're an unlucky person will do. And so it's actually less important to figure out what's true and what's not as it is to figure out what's useful to believe and what's not useful to believe in life. And so some things, like for example, conspiracies are useful to believe only for their entertainment value more so than anything else, or to say, I'm not going to take everything at face value. I understand that there is an, just like there is an error rate in every prediction or poll, just like there's an error rate in every scientific process, there is a conspiracy rate in every, you know, series of historical events where some number between, you know, 0.1 and 5% of all things that have a conspiracy are actually true. So choosing to believe for entertainment value is kind of where I land on it.

Single-engine airplanes or helicopters and boats, like huge yachts, two things I don't touch them. I think those things are so, I'm so afraid of those things. Have you ever been on a cruise? Like a big ship? Like it's like, it's frightening. Do you know how many people die on cruises every year? Like a huge amount because they jump off. Like, you know what I mean? Like they get lost at sea.

They jump off. Oh, like they're just going for a swim.

Yeah. Or they're, or they're drunk and they fall over the side. Like there's like this website called like Missing at Sea. I forget what it was. And it was like all the people who go missing from cruise ships every year. It's like a, it's like, it's like a, it's a huge number.

Uh, it's like the dead version of Facebook. It's like this group of people that are missing at sea.

Yeah. It's like a pretty disgusting thing. Like, I'm not doing that. I can't stand cruises. So, but this, this story is pretty wild. This is, this is a wild story. That's why he stayed at your dad's place.

All right. Where do we go from here?

All right. So for the last 15 years, you and I have studied like making money. Would you agree? Like that's been like the 90% of our waking time.

I have agreed. I would agree with that.

That's cool. That's great and everything. But, um, I think that I have kind of have, I've learned how to do it. Would you agree that you kind of understand like intellectually how it's done?

I understand intellectually. Yes.

Like it's, it's hard.

But there's like 3 phases. There's understanding intellectually, realizing you thought you understood intellectually, and then now you actually know intellectually, and then there's doing it. And I think I finally got past the 3rd stage and now I'm thinking the 4th stage is either is being done with it, being, getting over it or being less interested in it as you go.

Yeah, for sure. Which by the way, like, uh, I, I actually think that that's a great like arc and something that like I've always loved about studying making money is the idea of nothing to something. And it just so happened that capitalism and making money, that is a very practical way of nothing to something. Like, it's a very straightforward way, uh, and, and we've studied it. A new thing that I'm being a little bit obsessed with about how someone goes from nothing to something is politics. And not that, like, I actually care. I don't ever want to, like, become political. I don't want to become the president.

We're pivoting to the All In podcast.

No, I don't want to do any of that. It doesn't actually interest me. But like when Trump became president, I was like, you know, isn't that insane that like in his head, I think he was like, this is just like a bit. And then it, but it kind of like came to fruition that like, you like became powerful. And I'm like, that's like insane how that happens, how someone goes from nothing to something, particularly in the political arena. And so I moved to this small town and I thought, you know, like it's only a 30,000 person town. I'm going to, email the mayor and I just want to become friends with her and just like learn about how she became mayor. So I emailed her and I just said like, hey, my name's Sam. I have this podcast, I have this internet company that I started, and I'm basically just saying this to impress you, but can I come in and just introduce myself? And she did. She said, yeah. And so I went and met with her and I thought it'd be funny. I could just like do a little recap of this meeting, but I said a few things. That I look back and I'm like, what the hell? Why would I ever say that?

So set the scene. You go to her office, you guys go out to lunch, you go for a stroll. What are you doing?

She's like, uh, you know, come over, we'll go out to lunch. I'm like, no, I don't want to go for lunch. I want to like come to your office. Like, I want to see— like, I want to see where the sausage is made, my friend. Like, I want to see it. So I get there at like 8:45. She's walking in right about then for our 9 o'clock. So we just start talking, we sit down. She's nice. Her name's, uh, Jennifer Tucker. She introduced herself as Jen, so I guess I'll call her that. We're friends now. And I just started talking to her and I kind of got nervous, you know, like I got— did you ever have to do a thing where you get married and you have to meet like with the priest in advance?

Yeah. Dude, you're like, wait, can this guy cancel our marriage right now if I say the wrong thing?

I, it was the exact same thing. The guy's like, do you guys go to church? And I'm like, dude, I go to church like every day, easily every day. You know what I mean? I had that like same energy.

Favorite part of the Bible? So many to choose from. All of them.

It's hard. Yeah. It was like the same thing where I'm like, I just want to impress her. But I've said, she was like, how do you like the town? And I was like, you know, Warren Buffett says this amazing thing where he is like, you got to build a business so good that a dummy can run it because eventually a dummy will. I kind of feel like this town is like that. Like it's so perfect. Like there's nothing to complain. And like any idiot can run it. And I was like, shit. Not that you're an idiot. It's just, you know what I mean?

And so, wait, you said that or she said that?

I said that.

No, you said the Buffett quote about an idiot running it. Yes.

I was like, wait, I'm sorry, I didn't— I was like, I meant this in a nice way. The town is like perfect. Like there's nothing to complain about. And so I put my foot in my mouth there. And then she was like, oh, you know, that's funny. I used to work for Warren Buffett. And I was like, oh, tell me about that. Was he awesome? I heard he's a real cheap ass. And I'm like, sorry, I don't know why I'm talking like this. I don't mean— and so she starts telling stories about that and I'm like, it seems like if you worked for Warren Buffett as an executive, you must have been pretty rich. Why would you quit that and take this crappy job? And she again kind of laughed, but I was saying things that 10 seconds after I said it, I'm like, What am I doing right now? And she laughed at all of them. And so it was really kind of funny to like see like my first interaction went just horribly, but she was into it.

You remind me, um, before you finish your story, so my daughter, uh, is— she just turned 5, so she just started going to school for the first time. Like she's going to TK, transitional kindergarten. And as a parent, you're like helpless because you don't know what your kids like You kind of give her advice, but then she crosses the gate, she goes into the class and you're like, remember, like, make friends, ask people questions. They like that. And like, you know, I'm trying to give her a way to socialize because she's smart. She's fine with the school part, but at the beginning she was super uncomfortable with kids and she started to do. And so, but I didn't know as a parent, you never really know how they're behaving. And so we would run into these scenarios where we'd be at a coffee shop and then there's a kid who would be like, hi, like say her name. I'm like, oh, do you know him? Is that like a kid from your school? And I get really excited. And then she would do what you just did. Which is she would just suddenly start saying and doing the funniest things. Like, we'll be standing there and I'll be like, like, she won't say anything first. I'm like, say something. Is he in your class? Yeah.

Okay.

Like, who's this kid? And then I'll be like, hey, I like your watch. Like your shoes, man. Spider-Man. Cool. And then she's not saying anything. And then she'll just go, why am I so tired? And then she goes, I need to go to sleep. And then she laid down on the sidewalk and like pretended to go to sleep in front of me. And now I'm just talking to this And so this happened 3 different times with 3 kids. Why am I so tired? And she just would say this thing out of nowhere. It's like a panic response. And I feel like you just had your panic response in front of the mayor where you're like, Warren Buffett says, and then you just parroted some shitty Buffett quote.

Yeah. I'm like, I don't even like Buffett. What am I, why am I bringing this up? And I just called her an idiot.

It's like you take an exit off the highway and you're like, this is not my destination, but now I'm stuck here.

And then she was like, she was like, she told me what her politics was. I guess she's like, she's like, I'm a Republican, but like, I'm just barely right of center. And most of our town is Democrat. And I was like, yeah, but that doesn't really matter. All you do is like fill potholes and make sure the beach is, make sure the beach is clean. Like, why do your politics matter?

What do your beliefs have to do with this?

Yeah. I'm like, one of those things where just 10 seconds after I said that, I was like, I'm blowing this. Like, I just am insulting you constantly. I'm not meaning to.

You're like, how long have I been on Twitter? Like, I've just been on the internet for too long. I can't like function in society anymore.

Yeah. And so anyway, I just thought it was like a horrible meeting that I blew, but she handled it well. By the way, the last time I met with a mayor, it was in San Francisco. And so I met with London Breed. She was just a council person, whatever district, I don't even know what it was called. Literally 8 hours later, I met with her at like 5 PM that night, Ed Lee died and she became mayor. And so I told this woman as I was leaving, I was like, hey, last time I met with the mayor, this woman in London became mayor because the real mayor died. And I was like, Shit, which means you're either going to die or— and I was like, forget I said that. Uh, it's like I just, I blew it.

Like the Men in Black pen at the end to just flash her memory and just erase the entire conversation.

Oh man, it was horrible. Uh, but anyway, I thought it was fun. Um, have you, have you been interested in politics at all or are you just totally on the sideline?

I'm only interested in politics from a marketing point of view, meaning it's like something you watch in a movie. It's like when you watch The Hunger Games and you're like, that's ridiculous. It's so crazy. Like this concept is so ridiculous. People just sort of like fighting for the death for the amusement of others. And then I watch like UFC 306 the next, next day and I'm like, oh, I guess that's kind of similar. Or there'll be like a politician who's kind of like, you know, actually catering to the rich, but just trying to keep the poor, like the masses, you know, like just subdued enough so that they don't revolt. And then you see kind of what some of the politicians do. See, It's interesting to me that this is real life, that this is actually how things go. Like, I watched a full Trump rally the other day, like end to end. I don't know if you've ever seen one of these, but like, I started where before anyone's on stage and I'm like, what's the setlist? Like, who's the DJ of this? Because it goes Macho Man. So it's like, macho, macho man. This is like nobody on the stage and the whole crowd is sitting there. They're all enjoying it. And I was like, there's like 30 minutes of just like a set. And that musical set, that playlist should be on Spotify.

It was like Macho Man, the song, that was the song that he came out to.

No, that was the one, like the warm-up, the crowd one before he comes out.

Which is funny because Macho Man is by the Village People, which is like a gay band.

Yeah, but they played them all. YMCA. They put all the hits actually.

Another village. Yeah.

And then you see the son comes out, the daughter comes out, whatever. Anyways, there's a whole— so I am interested only in the, like the theater of the whole thing. All right. Let me tell you one other quick story. I met the, I met Ed Lee one time. The guy I was working for, Michael Birch, he got invited to this thing and he was like, I don't want to go to this political thing. You should go as my proxy.

Ed Lee being the mayor of San Francisco up until like 18 or 20 or something. Yeah.

So, so this was when he was the mayor and the room was Ron Conway, who is like a big shot, super, super angel investor invested in like pretty much every hit Silicon Valley startup. Probably the most respected angel investor in Silicon Valley. And Mark Pincus, the guy who created Zynga, Jeremy Stoppelman, who created Yelp. And it's basically like 8 of those people and then me. And they were just, they just assumed I was like, you know, the scribe who's there to write meeting notes. And that's kind of what I actually was.

How old were you?

I'm 25 years old, maybe 26 years old at the time. But it's pretty fascinating to see what happens in these meetings. I thought it's just kind of going to be a luncheon. Me some sandwiches, some small talk, whatever. And a couple of things stood out. One, Ron Conway is famous for taking notes. I don't know if you've heard this before, but he carries with him a giant yellow legal pad. And basically everywhere he goes, he's just like furiously taking notes and he's taking notes often for like, he's actually like very quick with people. Meaning if you'd, hey Ron, I just wanted to introduce myself. He's like, what can I do for you, man? And then you're like, I just need an introduction to this person. He's like, tell me about your business real quick. And you tell him and he's like, cool, I'll make the intro. And he just like moves on. Like he's very quick because he's, a lot of people want his time, but he's just furiously taking notes at all times. That was the first thing that stood out. Second thing was Pinkus and Jeremy Stoppelman basically just ripped Ed Lee a new one to his face, which I thought was pretty amazing.

What did they say?

They were like, how do you expect us to run a business here? They were like, it's so expensive. None of my employees can live in the city. On top of that, if they did live in the city, there's just like incredible homelessness and like, you know, drugs and open-air drug markets in the middle of the city. What are you doing? What is this? Like, and they, you know, they were not as hostile as that, but they were very pointed. And then I got to watch, you know, a politician do what a politician does where they say a lot of words that don't mean a whole lot.

And is that what he did?

I was like, okay, cool. So I see that even in the private off-air supposed to be productive meeting. Like, what is he going to do? This guy's not going to, he's not going to actually say anything of substance, nor is he going to do anything of substance. And that was kind of my takeaway from the meeting.

Horrible takeaway. I mean, I mean, like, right? Yeah.

And I don't mean it like, I don't think he had any malintentions. It was just like, these are hard problems to solve in the first place. Figuring out the solution and then actually being able to do anything about the solution would take like so much It's how I felt when I was in a big company. It's like you would see something and you're like, we should not do that. We should do something about it. We should do this better. And then you might even try a little bit and then the forces of bureaucracy are just weighing down on you at all times. It's just a lot easier to just like say F it and move on.

You know, you're like, well, my computer battery just is on low battery and that email might take longer than this computer battery has. So we'll just forget about it. You know what I mean?

Do you remember we did an episode really early on in the podcast back when we used to record in your office in that tiny room with a table and one microphone? Microphone in between the two of us and we had Daniel Gross come by and then it became three stooges on three stools sitting around one table. And one thing he said, he got acquired by Apple. His company got acquired by Apple when he was really young. I don't know, 22 years old or something like that. And he got advice from somebody. I forgot who it was, like some super legit Silicon Valley person. He's like, hey, we just got acquired by Apple. What's your advice for me when I'm there? And he was like, The guy told him, he goes, don't give yourself brain damage. He goes, what? He goes, you're going to be in this company and you're going to see so many things that could be so much better. And you're going to try to do them. And for the first year, you're going to try to do them. You're actually going to make a little bit of headway, but you're not going to actually get the results that you want. And it's still going to be slow. And he's like, basically, you're going to just keep ramming your head against the wall, trying to change this giant, enormous company. Don't give yourself brain damage. Like, find a way to enjoy your time there. Meet cool people. Learn from them, pick up the technologies, but don't try to change, don't try to turn the direction of the ship. And then he goes, and then I did exactly, I made that exact mistake. I went and tried to like turn it around and like change the way we did things and all that. He's like, that person was right. I shouldn't have given myself brain damage.

And that, that he was a kid when we talked to him. I think he was 25 or 26 or something. Uh, he's amazing by the way.

That was, uh, he was amazing then too.

Yeah, that he was one of those good finds early on. Can I tell you about something that I read this week? So I read about this in, I think, The Atlantic, but have you ever heard of this podcast called Philosophize This? Philosophize This is what it's called.

Well, you texted it just before this and I checked it out, but I had never heard of it.

All right, so let me tell you this story. This is pretty amazing. And there's a takeaway in this article that is a little bit different, but his name's Steven West and he's the, he's the host of this podcast and the podcast talks about like different philosophies and things like that. Because the thing about philosophy is like, even if it's interesting, it's pretty academic and like, it's not exactly applicable to like real life. And it's also snooty. And there's a lot of people talking about ideas that don't really change my day to day. And he has this podcast that does the opposite of that. Like it's fairly applicable. It's fun to listen to, whatever. Now the thing about that's interesting about this guy is that he was actually In his, I think he got taken away from his parents at the age of 9 and he was like homeless off and on for a little while and then left high school at the age of 16. And then starting in 2013, he started stocking shelves inside of a grocery store. Like it was a pretty crappy job, but he was able to like find meaning in these books. He would listen to an audiobook. He said 7 hours a day. He goes, I would listen to audiobooks on philosophy 7 hours a day. And the last hour of the day, I would do just a silly podcast. It was manual physical labor, but I loved it because I was able to listen to these books all the time. And so by the time, like, a few years, a few years had passed, but he had listened to so many of these audiobooks that he kind of was like, I devoured Western philosophy and like, I felt like I knew all about it and I loved it. And so he read Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek book about life design. Do you remember like the concept of life, life design, which is like You can build any life that you want to build, you know, but you have to map out like, what does my day look like? How much money do I think I need? What does this all look like? And he got really inspired by that, which is kind of funny that this like deep philosophy nerd got into like Tim Ferriss. And so he launched this podcast called Philosophize This. It, it kind of took off. And so this podcast now has like 2 or 3 million monthly downloads. The YouTube has 150,000 subscribers. But Stephen West, the guy who is the host, there's not too much information out there on him. Like, I think he has a Twitter, but he basically just tweets out, uh, when there's a new episode. But what interested me a ton is that the article said, uh, the article was written about this author who's like, her father was in philosophy, but he was kind of, uh, unsuccessful. Like he just like studied all day and how the idea of a podcasting being, being possible right now, someone like Steven West, he's able to make a full-time living doing this now based off of like just a hobby. And there's this quote there that says, Steven doesn't preen or preach or teach. He just talks to you like a smart, curious adult. And I read that line and that reminded me of something. Do you remember what the old pitch for was at The Hustle?

Yeah, you're smart, no bullshit friend, right? Something like that.

Yeah, you're smart, no bullshit friend telling you what you need to know about the world of tech and business news.

Right.

And that was also the line for the Milk Road. It was like your smart, no-nonsense friend telling you about all the news that's going on in the crypto world.

No coincidence.

Yes. No coincidence.

Heavily inspired by the Hustles.

Heavily inspired. But there's like, now that line is used a ton and I'm sure I stole that from someone else as well. And I read this biography, uh, about Gideon Gartner. He's the guy who started Gartner, which is a research firm that is worth publicly traded $40 billion, does billions a year in revenue. His whole shtick early on was I want to, I want to treat my customers like they're adults and I'm just going to talk to them in a fun way, but in a professional way. And we're going to keep things short. And the idea is we're going to treat you just like a smart adult and we're your friend. That's kind of like an interesting takeaway because in business there's like, you can come up with the new technology or whatever that takes off. You can come up with a better product. But one way I think to stick out is branding. And branding is kind of a nebulous thing where it's like, it's kind of challenging. What's a good brand? And this whole idea of we're just going to treat our customers like smart adults and we're going to be casual about them. That is a shtick that I've seen work in so many different industries and it has worked consistently. He does that wonderfully. You and I do that wonderfully. That podcast Founders, which I love, does that wonderfully. There's so many different content niches that do that wonderfully, but there's so many different brands that do that wonderfully with this idea of like, we're going to be cool, but not like actual cool, but more like casual. We're going to be your friend. Do you know what I mean?

Right, dude. The, uh, when I went to Austin to record all those podcasts, I had a list of the people that were doing the podcast with, and I was supposed to be excited about them. It was like, oh, I'm going to do a podcast with Tim Ferriss and with Mohnish Pabrai and Joe Lonsdale. Right. Then there was all these meetings in between. And then there was one meeting that came up at the last second that I got super excited about. And it was to meet Tim Urban. Tim Urban's the guy who writes Wait But Why. He's wrote a bunch of books now. And so he's got this blog that I love. So we go and we meet with Tim Urban and I'm like, dude, I go, isn't it insane that you have this little blog on the internet and you used to just write whatever was interesting to you and then one day the richest, greatest entrepreneur in the world slid into your DMs and was like, yo, I like your stuff. And it was like, you wanna hang out?

And then, and you're referring to Elon Musk is a huge fan of Tim Urban.

Elon was like, hey, this is awesome. You're awesome. This is awesome. I'd love to meet.

And the background being Tim Urban runs a blog called Wait But Why, which when you and I were in our 20s, it was the hottest thing going and it's still popular, but it's like an intellectual blog, but silly.

It's kind of the same description of what you said, right? Yeah. It's a, it's a guy who's smart. He's writing about the stuff that's on his mind. And he's honest the way he writes it and he treats you well, whatever. So he was like, yeah, it was crazy. Then Elon meets him and Elon basically says, I would love for you to write. He's like, a bunch of people want to interview me. You know, they want me on 60 Minutes. They want me on this. They want me on that. But I actually want you to write about what we're doing with AI, with Neuralink, with Tesla, with SpaceX, like all of these things. I would love you and you, you could write whatever you want. I'm not saying write something positive. but I like your writing. I'd like you to write. So then he wrote these series with Elon, basically. He wrote a Neuralink series. He wrote like an AI series. He wrote like all these things and they were super popular. And I was like, how crazy is that? Could you have imagined that when you started just writing on your random blog that one day the richest, most powerful entrepreneur in the world will just slide into your DMs and just say that to you? He's like, no, he's like, no, I obviously couldn't have imagined that. But he goes, I did always have a rule. Which is my rule when I write is write for equals. And I said, write for equals. That's, I immediately, I was like, ah, I love that. What is that? And he goes, it's a big temptation on the internet, which is to create content that you think is for the masses. Let me tell you about how this all works. I know you don't know. I'll dumb this down. I'll sort of water this down. I'll shave off some of the edges. I won't tell you about anything of the unknown. I'll tell you all the known stuff. Because that's what you want, because you need a Lunchable and you want your cracker and your cheese, and then you want your ham, and then you're going to put those 3 together and that's what you're going to get for lunch. And he goes, I also don't want to go the other way, which is I'm trying to impress all these people and therefore I'm going to act out of character trying to write to impress people who I think are more advanced than me. And I'm going to fluff up my language, use all this jargon and try to make it sound smarter than it really is. Instead, I just sit down. I just try to write for equals. And he goes, the beautiful thing, and he didn't say all this, but the beautiful thing of that is when you actually put yourself out there, you will attract by definition like-minded people. You'll attract the people who like what you do will be the people who like you. And then you could just keep being you, which is a lot easier than trying to guess what other people might like. And so there's like this flywheel that starts, and I would say this is probably the most common mistake. That I've made, every content creator makes, is this feeling that maybe I should bend my content to the masses, or maybe I should bend it to impress these folks rather than just the simple write for equals. 3 words. I thought it was wonderful.

But my, and my point in bringing this up is that this goes beyond content. This is about running your company a certain way. And Tilman Fertitta, you know, he's this guy who, um, what does he own?

He owns, uh, Landry's and a bunch of restaurant chains that are super popular, a ton of restaurant chains, steakhouses and stuff.

I read his biography and he told the story, he's like, let me explain like a little bit about my philosophy. And he apparently it was like 11:30 or something at one of his restaurants and someone ordered an omelet and the rule was like breakfast ends at 11 or 10:30 or something. And they like turned the customer down and he heard about this. He goes, dude, The eggs are right there. Just say like, I'm going to go scramble you some eggs. Like, I got you. Let me take care of you. And it's just this idea of like following rules versus treating someone like a human. And it's like a huge deal. And it's real. And what I'm saying is so simple, but it's actually hard. At Hampton, we only have 20 employees, but I still have to remind people. I go, just act like we're a mom-and-pop business. Like treat people a certain way where you're like, they're just like, you know, you own like a corner bodega and you see the same people every day. Like, oh, you want the usual? Like, I got you. And that's actually really hard to do. Uh, it's hard to teach people how to do that because they want to act a certain way. But here's a certain, here's another good example. Anand, our friend Anand, who runs a company called CB Insights. I don't know how big they are, but they're around the idea. They're around, let's say, $100 million a year in revenue. And so CB Insights makes a very professional enterprise-level business that costs $100,000 a year. Their website, up until recently, the homepage said Without data, you're just an idiot with an opinion. And they have a newsletter that he sends once a week to all their customers as well as their potential clients. And at the end of the email, he signs it with, I love you, Anant. Or like they would say things like, please buy a subscription because I owe people money.

Like they would use this, like a lot of money. Yeah.

He would like use these funny things and I would see that and I'm like, not everyone's shtick is to be funny. But everyone's shtick should be like to not change necessarily from just treating people like a human. And so when I saw this line about philosophy, which is like a very like lame thing, like I've tried to learn about it and it's like, they have like, like they don't want you to, to like approach this topic because it's very guarded. And I love that this guy's doing this and it reminded me that we should be doing this with a lot of different things.

There's also another angle of this, which is a lot of people when they go into a business will start thinking about what industry do I like, what product do I like? And they, when you're told to kind of like follow what you like, you sort of typically think, oh, I'm interested in healthcare, or, um, you know, I really like media. And you just pick, pick at this like really like 9,000-foot level. And a different way to do it is work backwards from your customers. So Which customers do you respect? Which customers do you love? Which customers do you want to understand? And which customers would you want to hang out with? Right? So pick your customer and then work backwards from that. So instead of picking an industry and trying to find a business, you could pick a customer and try to find a pain point that could become your business. I think with Hampton, you did a good job of this, which is you want to hang out with all of your customers. They're cool people. Those are the type of people you like to hang out with, you know, business owners and people who are somewhat successful and trying to do interesting things in their life. So you picked a business where you like, understand, and are attracted to that customer. And therefore you'll always sort of stay in love with that business. Another version of that, that I found for myself is most of the time for any business, you're not building product most of the time. Actually, as an entrepreneur, like when you sign up to start a business, you're actually signing up to try to grow a thing.

Yeah, you're selling most of the time.

You're selling most of the time. Paul Graham wrote a blog post, Startups Equals Growth. Like, what is the differentiator between a small business and a startup? It's that a startup is designed to grow fast and a small business is, might be like a barbershop or a nail salon. It doesn't have to grow fast. And so if you're going to be focused on growth, 90% of your brain and that therefore selling, then it actually makes sense to work backwards from what is the type of sale I will need to do to make this successful. So for example, I've had ideas where I'm like, oh, that would be a great product. I would love to make that product and companies would benefit from that product. But the problem is to do that product, to make that product grow, I would need to do enterprise sales, something I do not know anything about, nor would I want to know anything about. I'm not curious about that. Right. And so actually that business is not that product. It's enterprise sales. And do I want to do enterprise sales every day for the next 7 years? Do I want to build a team that's really good at doing enterprise sales for the next 7 years? I found for myself, for example, I love running ads. Like the first time I started doing an e-commerce business and I was like, wow, I can just set up this one ad and this dude is like a money machine.

It's a money machine.

He works all night. I don't even have to think about this business. My calendar doesn't need to be booked with calls. I don't need to send cold emails every day. This ad will just keep hustling out there. I'm sending out these armies to the corners and they're selling for me, right? And all I need to do—

Do you like talk to the ad? Like, hey sweetheart, how are you? Nice to see this morning.

I love my ads. I'm like, thank you so much. You take this tiny commission, this small CPM fee, and in exchange, you can sell 24/7 around the clock to every single city in every single country and all around the world. You are an amazing employee, the ad. And so I work backwards from ad companies or content, right? I love creating content. So if the main way to grow this business is content, then dope, I want to do that. So picking your business based on What is the sales method is a far better way to build a business that you love and that will actually succeed than to pick the product or the industry that you think you're— that you think you like.

Yeah, I completely agree. You said something earlier. You said you start studying how you make money and then you realize you don't know shit and then you kind of learn it and then you start like, all right, I know it. I just got to give myself 10 years and then I care less about it than I thought. Are you in that stage?

In and out. So I think every, by the way, everything goes through that stage. I want to know it. I know it. Ah, shit. I thought I knew it. I didn't know it at all. And then you finally get to the point where you actually know it, but you only know it in your head. You don't know it in your hands. You don't know how to actually do it. Right? It's that example I gave one time on the podcast of, I watched this guy make this amazing scrambled egg and it was fluffy and it was perfect and it had chives and it just looked so good. And watching that, I was like, I know step by step what he did because he showed me step by step what he did with the camera, with the audio, with the instructions on the screen. But if I went and tried to make that egg right now, I'd make a horrible mess everywhere. And so first you go from, I intellectually know the blueprint and I know it in my head, then I know it in my hands. And then at a certain point, you still enjoy maybe the craftsmanship of doing it. But the novelty of figuring out how to do it, of solving the puzzle, that goes away because you kind of solve the puzzle more and more. And I think a good thing in life is to sort of seek new puzzles. So right now, for example, the puzzles I'm seeking, the things I'm more fascinated about rather than how did this business get to $5 million ARR with 60% EBITDA margins is the creative process. How do the most creative people in the world who create dope shit, how do they live their life? What do they do? How do they think? How do they What is the conversation they have in their head? Which is the same thing I used to ask about entrepreneurs. I just find myself more gravitating towards creative people who are living maybe a unique life or an artist-based life. And then what are they doing? That's where my current fascination is.

You're drifting towards these beatnik artists. I'm wondering how the politicians gain all this power. Golly, we are sellouts, aren't we?

No, we're not sellouts. We're grownups. All right. Where do we go from here?

I guess that's it. That's the pod.