0:00
There's like stories where she's raising funding and a guy leans over the table and was like, "So, why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company?"
Search this video
0:06
And she leans back over, she goes, "Cuz I'm a complete and total animal."
0:10
And the guy leans back and he's like, "All right, I'm in." Okay, what's up?
0:27
We're here and I got two little special announcements for you. First one, we got merch. The boys got merch.
0:34
We're a little late to the game, we're a little slow.
0:39
Uh, most people start selling merch as soon as they get a following.
0:42
Took us 4 years, but Sam, we figured it out.
0:43
You got to sell t-shirts on the internet.
0:46
And hoodies, but that's I think that's all we have.
0:48
Uh, we'll we'll we'll add we'll add more stuff, but we have a few stuff.
0:53
It's pretty stupid that neither of us are wearing it today.
0:55
Mine's in the in the dryer at the moment. Again, slow and stupid. Yeah.
1:02
But yeah, it's pretty cool.
1:02
We have stuff that's has some of our uh favorite sayings and uh dude, this no small boy stuff shockingly caught on.
1:10
Caught caught on in a big way. I'll tell you something.
1:12
I don't know if you listen, but I did an episode with Samir from Colin and Samir and they basically are like they're YouTubers that study other YouTubers.
1:18
So, they're like always studying creators.
1:19
And he handed me two things when he came to the interview.
1:24
He handed me a newspaper.
1:24
Did I Did I tell you about this? No.
1:27
He He handed me a newspaper that was They made their own newspaper edition like one one edition, special edition for their like They hit some milestone, so they printed a a newspaper and it was like all of the like kind of content or interviews from their show were like It's like here's the here's the monthly magazine or whatever.
1:47
Here's the thing for for our stuff. Dude, let's do that. That's a great idea. It's a great idea.
1:52
Looked like a normal thing, but they they made it using their content. I was like, I love this. He gave me one.
1:56
He's like, this is the last one we have.
1:59
I don't know if that's true or not, but man, you know how to make a boy feel special when you say that.
2:02
Uh the second thing he handed me this hat that was a dope hat that says uh Press Publish.
2:06
It's like this blue hat they have. It's super high quality.
2:09
And I was like, oh, this is like much higher quality than normal merch.
2:12
And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah.
2:13
Here's how I think about merch.
2:16
He goes, if you're Logan Paul or you're Mr.
2:18
Beast, you make consumables.
2:18
Think Prime energy drink. It's a consumable.
2:24
I'm selling this to you, you're going to drink it, use it, whatever. And he goes, uh Mr. Beast chocolate.
2:29
He's going to or even Mr.
2:29
Beast merch, just t-shirts.
2:30
These are all just consumables.
2:33
And he goes, we don't make consumables, we make collectibles.
2:35
He goes, and if you're a creator, you should pick one of the two paths.
2:39
And I love this collectibles idea.
2:39
He's like, because what you want is you want a way you're Look, you don't need to make a You're not going to make a fortune.
2:46
You don't need to make a fortune through your merch.
2:47
And which is why we've never done merch cuz it's like, I don't know, do we We don't really care about making a couple thousand bucks on on t-shirt sales.
2:56
Never been the Never been a motivator for us.
2:58
Um cuz we're rich, if you missed that part.
3:01
All right, so But the reason is Oh my god, what a Should we play it like Is that the our new collectible like Douchebags R Us?
3:10
Yeah, yeah, we're coming to a store near you.
3:13
Um But the collectibles thing made total sense to me where he's like, you want the people who are like kind of your your thousand most most like kind of devoted people.
3:22
People who actually give a [ __ ] about what you do.
3:26
They're all about what you're all about.
3:28
They think the way you think.
3:30
They act the way you act.
3:30
They're very similar to you.
3:31
They're like, for them this is like collectible badge of honor.
3:35
So, make a limited edition number of units.
3:39
Um and when it's gone, it's gone. It never comes back.
3:43
And on top of that, you um it's a signal so that anytime anybody else sees them with that, they know, oh, They know you're part of the tribe.
3:50
They know you're part of the tribe.
3:50
Like if I meet somebody, uh Ben said this to me the other day, he goes he goes, "Oh, you know what I like cuz he what he'll do often is he'll talk to people who come through my DMs or email us or whatever.
4:00
He loves to go meet them and talk to them.
4:02
And I'm like, um that's great.
4:02
You get a lot of energy from that.
4:04
I'm more introverted, don't like doing that as much.
4:07
Um but he goes, "No, it's he goes the reason I like it is like normally I don't like just talking to strangers.
4:13
But he's like, if you like MFM, there's like a 95% chance we're going to be friends."
4:17
He's like, "Cuz it's filters in people who think the way we think and act the way we act and like you got a sense of humor and there's like you're not going to like this content if you don't if you're not a business total business junkie and nerd.
4:27
You don't like to nerd if you if you like don't like to learn nerd about business, you're not going to like this podcast.
4:31
And if you like everything buttoned up and serious, you're also not going to like this podcast.
4:36
And so it's a great filter.
4:39
It's sort of like when I see another grown man drinking a glass of whole milk for dinner. You know what I mean? Like at dinner.
4:44
Like, oh, hey, we probably have similar values. Cheers.
4:51
Good good Catholic, what's up?
4:53
Uh so, yeah, I I feel that.
4:53
If you got a favorite flavor of Skittles, Sam Sam knows you're his guy.
5:01
What's the second thing you have?
5:01
So, um okay, that's the first surprise.
5:03
Second surprise is a clips channel.
5:05
So, this one actually we should have done a long time ago. Um if you go to clipmfm. com.
5:14
So, this is our new clips channel.
5:16
Which is basically you we do these podcasts are about an hour each.
5:21
What clipmfm does is it's a YouTube channel for only clips of the best bits from the pod.
5:25
Clipped out for you so that you can watch them in sort of like three, four-minute bursts.
5:30
And for every episode, we're only pulling out the one to three moments that actually mattered.
5:35
So, where somebody told a great story, had an amazing idea, or shared something about the the way their business works, or broke something down in a level of satisfying detail.
5:45
And um at first I wanted to outsource this and then I was like, "No, [ __ ] that.
5:49
I'm going to hand curate these clips myself cuz I'm like, I want the channel that I would want to watch."
5:55
Because this is how I consume a lot of podcasts.
5:57
Like if you're like, "Oh, do you like Lex Fridman?" Yeah, like it. Love the pod. Great pod.
6:02
I never actually watch the full ones.
6:03
What do you search to find it?
6:03
If you just go to clipmfm.
6:05
com, that'll take you there or the you can just search my first million clips. And I tweeted it out.
6:09
It's got like 700 subscribers now, but I need this to get into the 10 of subscribers.
6:15
Cuz if you listen to this podcast, you're going to want to like why would you not want to just get the best stuff faster or like in a more simple way?
6:25
So yeah, anyways, that's my that's my sales pitch for both the merch and the merch is collectibles, limited number of units and it's it's just a way for our tribe to kind of signal to each other, "Hey, this is what you know, I'm in the I'm in the club."
6:36
And on the other side we have the clips channel.
6:40
How did I do with my sales pitch?
6:40
That was a great pitch and the Skittles joke was very funny and you made me feel very guilty because my wife listen listen, my wife has her birthday is this Sunday and I was going to surprise her with a piñata.
6:53
Hopefully she doesn't listen to this episode and I have a closet here in this studio room that is where I've hidden the piñata and I've also hidden tons of bags of candy that I went and bought from Party City. Lots of Skittles.
7:05
On Unfortunately, I've got to go back to Party City today because I've eaten all of the bags of Skittles. So, you nailed that one.
7:15
It's all they're all empty.
7:17
There's a there's a a a whole bunch of empty Skittle bags over here.
7:21
a raccoon went through that bag.
7:21
That's not even like a small hole.
7:22
You Why did you need a fist-size hole in that bag?
7:26
Because when I do nighttime eating, I go into bear mode and I'm like I'm like a bear getting like like a like a beehive, you know, I'm just like I'm just like imagine just like using your fist instead of your fingers.
7:36
That's like what I am at night.
7:37
My sister says this thing to her girls like she wanted them to like just go to their room and take put themselves to bed.
7:44
So, she invented something called night time sister play time so that they would feel excited about it.
7:49
Like, "Oh, do you guys want to do night time sister play time?"
7:50
And they're like, "Oh my god, yeah, night time sister play time."
7:52
So, they go to their room by themselves, they play, and they fall asleep.
7:56
And so, I created night time daddy play time, which is just when my kids are gone and I get to just eat and be on the internet.
8:04
And that's night time daddy play time, and I celebrate it every single night.
8:06
Dude, I like I'm like putting my fist in a in a jar of peanut butter at night.
8:10
Like, I wake up and there's like bear claws all over the place.
8:14
So, listen, I want to bring up a topic.
8:15
You put it on your list, and it's so funny you put it on your list.
8:19
Don't say what it is yet, but you put it on your list and I did a ton of research on this topic, and it's incredibly fascinating.
8:26
So, I want to tell you about this, all right? to give credit.
8:28
There was a reason we both have it on our list. Someone tweeted at us.
8:32
They go, "You should do a" They just said, "You should break down this particular company."
8:34
And I was like, "That's one of the very few times where I go, that's a great idea, sir.
8:37
That's a That's a good one. We're going to do that."
8:40
So, let me tell you how I got started. It's super fascinating.
8:43
So, there's this guy named Steven Brill.
8:44
You have no idea who he is, but I bet you know Court TV.
8:46
He started Court TV, one of my all-time favorites, you know, predecessor of Cops, my favorite show of all time.
8:52
And uh turns it into a huge success.
8:55
And then he also starts American Lawyer Media, which is like a six or eight hundred million-dollar lawyer media company that he sells.
9:02
So, his next company, it's called Verify Identity Pass.
9:07
It started in '03 after 9/11.
9:10
And he wants an interesting way to make getting onto a plane easier and safer.
9:15
He comes up with this thing where it's like a credit card and you could swipe it uh in in order to like prove that you're I guess not a terrorist, something like that.
9:22
And it gets, you know, a little bit of traction.
9:25
He raises a hundred million dollars to start this business.
9:29
He gets uh two hundred thousand pe- people to sign up. It flops. Doesn't work out.
9:34
So, uh there's this woman, her name's Karen.
9:38
I forget Caryn's last name actually, but she's got this hedge fund, very successful hedge fund.
9:43
What are you laughing at? That her name is Caryn?
9:44
named Caryn, I just always think, "Damn, what a what a side swipe they got in life by by this this trend that just started in whatever 2022, and all of a sudden their name was never the same again."
9:55
She spells it c a r y n, which somehow makes it better, to be honest. too.
10:02
Yeah, it does it makes it better.
10:05
if I was if I was named Caryn.
10:05
I'd just have to make that slight like, you know, pronunciation change.
10:12
Yeah, like how I call like La Quinta Hotels the Quita.
10:16
It's just a slight rebrand.
10:19
So, anyway, she has this hedge fund, it's successful and all, but she hears about this company going out of business, and she's like, "You know, this is actually interesting, and I think they made a a mistake.
10:25
They didn't brand it correctly.
10:27
I think this should be more of a luxury good company."
10:29
And so, she buys the business out of bankruptcy for $6 million, then she goes on and raises $50 million, and she renames the company, and she calls it Clear.
10:38
Clear is that thing that a lot of you folks see at the airport.
10:42
They are at around 53 airports, I think.
10:45
It's kind of confusing at first when you see it, because you're like, "Oh, there's two lines.
10:48
There's a TSA line, there's a Clear line.
10:50
What the hell's going on?"
10:51
Turns out, this company is crazy successful, and it actually has a lot more implications than I ever imagined.
10:57
So, Clear does something like $600 million a year revenue, market cap of $3 billion.
11:01
And what they do is they built this technology at that stand, where it looks at your eye, and it uses biometrics.
11:07
So, it looks at your eye to figure out who you are.
11:10
It looks at your fingerprint, and they like fast-track you in that line.
11:15
But, have you ever wondered how they like get these contracts at these airports? It's like a monopoly.
11:19
Yeah, I don't know how they do it.
11:20
So, they give away 10 to 13% of their revenue to the airports.
11:24
And what that comes out to be is something like of their revenue in 2019, they were doing like 350 million in revenue, they gave out $35 million to airports.
11:33
The most popular airport was LAX, that made them around $25 million in subscriptions, of which they gave 3 million back to LAX.
11:40
And so, they're kind of like in bed with the government a little bit, and they have all these people on their board who are they took money from Delta and they have Delta employees on their board.
11:49
So, like the head of Delta, they have like the former head of TSA security on their board.
11:54
And it's crazy fascinating because what they're doing now Wait, but Sam, I was doing bad listening cuz I was looking at it while you were talking.
12:01
How did they get into the What like what was the thing that got them in?
12:03
Cuz it's like seems like once you're into the airport and you're the you're the one of course this is an amazing business.
12:11
But what did they do to get in?
12:11
What did she What was the miracle that they pulled off there?
12:14
They promised airports that they would give them a percentage of the revenue.
12:18
So, they would open up a new revenue stream.
12:20
And also, what they did was they took funding from a couple airlines and they on their board they added like former head of TSA and things like that.
12:29
And so, like they like Some old-fashioned gentleman's agreement. Yeah.
12:35
Yeah, so it's pretty fascinating what they did.
12:37
But what's even crazier A Karen's actually pretty amazing.
12:42
There's like stories where she's raising funding and a guy leans over the table and was like, "So, why should I trust you to be the CEO of this company?"
12:49
And she leans back over, she goes "Cuz I'm a complete and total animal."
12:53
And the guy leans back and he's like "All right, I'm in."
13:02
And so, they're but they're killing it now.
13:03
They have 17 million users.
13:03
But here's where it gets really interesting.
13:07
What they're doing and I went and read a bunch of their like annual reports, it's it's super fascinating and also scary.
13:12
What they're doing is you can now sign in to LinkedIn using CLEAR.
13:14
So, you can create an account verifying your identity.
13:17
You can also go to certain stadiums and buy beer using just your your eyes.
13:23
And so, her whole theory is like, "Look, we're going to start with the airport, but eventually you're not going to use a wallet anymore.
13:28
You might use Apple Pay for some stuff for but for something that involves your identity, you don't need to pull out your license anymore.
13:35
We're just going to look at your eyes.
13:36
And it's super fascinating what these guys have pulled off, and I didn't realize I kind of thought it was like a douchey company because I'm like uh this is $50 for TSA for 5 years.
13:44
This other thing is like 150 bucks for 1 year.
13:49
Why do I need this thing? But people still buy it.
13:52
I I think I was with you one time and you bought it.
13:54
You didn't know what it was, right? Well, we were late.
13:56
We were about to me and you were about to miss a flight to Miami, and so I was like, all right.
14:02
My guy with this line, how do we do this?
14:03
Okay, let me just sign up for CLEAR real quick and see if we could jump the line, and it it worked.
14:06
You had TSA, I didn't have it.
14:07
And so I cleared my way in, and we we got on the plane. It totally worked.
14:13
And so it saves you just a little bit of time, but like what's crazy is that uh their vision is huge, and it actually is like a super interesting vision that they have on how this business is going to be can be much bigger than it is now.
14:27
And it's just like goes way more in depth than I ever thought.
14:28
Yeah, I'm not sure I'm a believer in the rest of that vision cuz like I don't care uh like the amount of effort it would take for the you're at a ball game and you want to buy a beer, and now each beer vendor is going to buy hardware to uh scan my retinas, and I have to stand still for 7 seconds while it scans my eyes just to verify my age.
14:49
Like I feel like that's not the right payoff.
14:51
Like the airport one makes sense cuz it's like hey look, airport security, it's big deal.
14:54
Okay, you can skip this line, and if you're business traveler, you're going to miss a flight, those are high stakes. Um that's important.
15:02
And so it seems like the right payoff to kind of like work ratio.
15:06
I wonder where else that really exists where you actually need to on the spot verify your identity.
15:10
So last summer um a new law was enacted.
15:14
And so right now, if you live in, I believe it's Virginia, and you go to pornhub.
15:18
com uh or a bunch of other porn sites. Yeah, go for it. Uh I see you typing.
15:27
Interesting interesting website you referred me to. I'll bookmark this one.
15:31
So, there was a new law enacted that for people in Virginia, you have to verify your identity in order to go to certain porn websites to prove that you're over 18.
15:40
And so, it like brings up like a camera where it wants to take your picture from your computer lens to like check your identity. you?
15:49
It just starts shaming you.
15:49
It starts coming through your headphones.
15:53
Like Game of Thrones, shame. Yeah. Shame. Shame.
15:55
Yeah, like the avatar is like a is like a nun holding a rosary.
15:59
And she's like, "Are you sure?"
16:02
Um But but like there's like a few instances where this actually is interesting.
16:06
By the way, those porn companies some of the thing that they're doing is they're putting it on They're they're making it so if even if you're outside of Virginia, some porn websites are still making you register in order to like make you pissed off at Virginia congressman who approved this.
16:20
So, you like They should put it in a banner.
16:23
Hey, Mark Ingram in Virginia is forcing you to open your eyes and get scanned before you watch porn.
16:30
If you feel any kind of way about that, push this button.
16:34
They even have like a Gmail login for some of these porn It's it's weird.
16:37
It's weird is what it is. But like I It's crazy.
16:42
But there are a few instances.
16:44
But the most crazy thing about CLEAR is like this is a total monopoly that they have in airports.
16:47
And I'm shocked that they've had this.
16:49
I don't know anything about public valuations.
16:54
It seems potentially like an undervalued company. What is it valued at?
16:56
And what was the revenue again?
16:57
It's in the five or six hundred million dollar range.
17:01
They claim they have 90% retention.
17:01
So, it's not like as good retention as software.
17:05
But it looks like uh their market cap as of today is three billion dollars.
17:10
I mean, that's kind of an amazing like a three billion dollar company that does such a simple thing.
17:16
And you said they're only in like 63 airports or something like that.
17:18
That's That's crazy that it's so so big with such a small footprint and it's such a simple product. Very impressive.
17:25
Yeah, they're in 53 airports in They're They're the trailing 12 months they've done $530 million in revenue. Wow, that's impressive.
17:34
Here's a random related startup.
17:37
Did you ever see this company called Evolve?
17:38
They They make metal detectors. No.
17:41
So, their big thing was they're like It's one of these businesses like One of the meta takeaways of of this podcast is all the businesses are hidden in plain sight.
17:52
They're right in front of you.
17:53
And if you just start Once you start paying attention, you're like, "Oh, this didn't just get here.
17:56
Who put this metal detector here?
17:58
There's a company that does this. How do they work?
18:01
Is this the same company at all of these places?
18:02
How did they get that contract?"
18:04
And so, metal detectors are at every big venue, right?
18:07
Um you know, stadiums, concert for whether it's for concerts or sports, airports, that sort of thing.
18:14
And so, there's a company that had raised money from Lux Lux Capital like a a VC firm that does like whatever.
18:20
Slightly hard tech or or hard tech.
18:20
Um And what these guys did was they were made of metal detectors.
18:26
Good Good pitch for them.
18:28
They do I don't know, whatever.
18:28
Well, I was going to say like cutting edge hard tech and then I was going to tell tell you about this metal detector and it was like I mean Those guys Those guys at the beach who are nuts are also holding metal detectors.
18:41
I can't really call this cutting edge.
18:43
Um We do slightly hard stuff. Yeah. Harder than e-commerce.
18:49
So, they But they Their actual demo is pretty cool.
18:55
So, what they're doing is it's a metal detector that can let you just walk straight through much faster.
18:58
So, like you don't need to I think it's like you don't need to like take You don't need to take out everything from your pockets and you don't need to um like you know, like I guess like it could just detect it faster so the flow of traffic is faster than a a traditional metal detector.
19:18
Um and that's kind of just crazy to me that that's like such a simple idea that I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I guess like I guess that's true.
19:24
Like if somebody just made a better metal detector, going forward, they're going to win a bunch of contracts."
19:31
All right, I got to tell you about one thing that's one of the great joys of my life.
19:33
You know, I'm not a cars guy, I'm not a watch guy, but there's one thing that gives me a lot of joy and that is having a virtual assistant.
19:38
Uh you know, here's the scenario.
19:41
I'm running my companies and even though I'm supposed to be this uh CEO, we all know I spend 20 30% of my time just doing random [ __ ] Stuff that is not high value, but it's just tedious.
19:51
The stuff that has to get done, but it's not creativity.
19:54
It doesn't require me and it doesn't add a bunch of value to the business. It's just stuff.
19:59
Just stuff that has to get done.
19:59
And so that stuff is what a virtual assistant does.
20:02
Like just this week alone, you know, I lose my wallet, so she goes to the DMV website, fills out a bunch of forms, gets me a new license.
20:07
Or um you know, every morning, people have their morning coffee, I have my morning metrics.
20:12
And my morning metrics are basically all the business metrics that I care about compiled.
20:15
She goes, she finds them for all the different sources, puts it in an Excel sheet, takes a screenshot, texts it to me.
20:20
So that when I wake up in the morning, I don't go on Twitter or check my email, I'm looking at where are where are the metrics at and what do I need to do?
20:26
I'm focused on the right things.
20:28
So having a virtual assistant is a no-brainer.
20:31
Whether it's travel booking, email inbox, or just knocking stuff off your personal to-do list that would have just lingered there forever, um I think it's a no-brainer.
20:38
If you're a business owner, you should definitely do it.
20:41
Um I I think one of the best places to find an uh assistant is Shepherd.
20:45
So go to supportshepherd. com.
20:47
You know, I pay my assistant, I think $8 an hour, something like that.
20:49
That's double what she was making in her previous job, so it's a win for her.
20:51
And for me, it's super affordable.
20:53
It's something that um you know, you don't need to have the biggest business ever, be the biggest big shot in order to afford it. So it's amazing.
20:59
I now do this for my COO and my CMO, too.
21:01
Like I just give them assistants without them even asking because I know it makes them more productive.
21:07
That's it does that for me.
21:08
So of course it's going to do that for them, too.
21:09
So go to supportshepherd.
21:11
com, check them out, get an assistant, and tell them I sent you.
21:15
They'll take good care of you if you do that. So supportshepherd. com, check it out.
21:17
I have this thing called Cricket I want to tell you about. They spelled this funny.
21:20
Do you know what this is, by the way?
21:22
Have you Have you ever Have you ever heard of a Cricket machine? No.
21:24
So it's c r i c u t No, what is that? yeah.
21:31
Uh Ari new producer Ari is here, by the way. First episode.
21:33
So if you uh if you like how this this episode's going, if you like how it's edited, credit to Ari.
21:40
If you hate this episode, blame on Ari.
21:42
All right, so Ari, have you ever heard of this machine, the Cricket machine? I have not.
21:49
Okay, this is it's a DIY like home crafting machine. It's 20 years old.
21:56
This company makes a billion dollars a year in revenue.
21:59
A hundred million dollars of free cash flow a year, Sam. How does that sound?
22:01
I like the sound of that.
22:03
And what it is is it's basically a cutter.
22:05
So you put in some material.
22:06
Could be plastic, could be sticker like paper.
22:11
And then it'll cut the shape for you.
22:11
So you can do like die cuts like sticker or whatever.
22:15
And by the way, I barely understand how this works.
22:17
So I'm going to butcher some of this I'm I'm looking at it now.
22:19
It it it looks like a printer, but I guess it It's like a printer, but it it's more for cutting than for printing.
22:24
Yeah, so it's basically a way to cut different shapes of things.
22:28
So you want to put something on a water bottle, you want to make a label, you can cut it using your Cricket home home Cricket.
22:35
Is this an invention that they made, or is this a style and is this like a Kleenex tissue type of thing?
22:39
No, it's more like um when Steve Jobs like I want you know, every Bill Gates or whoever was like, you know, every home was going to have a personal computer.
22:48
He's like, you know, a computer on every desk.
22:51
And that that's basically what these guys did.
22:53
So there was like these machines were there before for for you know, for people for industrial application.
22:58
And then they st- what the that started it was called like Provocraft or something like that.
23:04
They were making these machines for craft shops.
23:06
So, you would take your design to a craft shop and you'd say, "Hey, I'd like you guys to cut this for me this way."
23:11
And they would have the machine on the on the countertop to cut it for you cuz you're not going to have your own machine. These are expensive.
23:17
What these guys did was they made it smaller and made it more affordable so that people could just have these at home.
23:22
And um And so, you know, if you go look at Etsy, you go look at things like this, a lot of those people know all about the Cricut machine cuz they have them at home and they use it to make their goods.
23:31
So, how do they cut your name out in this cool-looking font?
23:33
They don't do it by hand.
23:35
They have a Cricut machine that will cut it for you.
23:37
And so, just incredible business and um I saw uh I heard about this because we were looking at an investment.
23:43
So, we're looking at investment from some of the original guys who were early there.
23:48
And they've spun off and they're doing like a new a new like better version of of the Cricut machine.
23:53
And I'm like, "Yeah, I just don't know how big this space can be."
23:55
He's like, "Well, I think it's going to be bigger than Cricut, which does a billion dollars a year and is a spinning off a hundred million of free cash flow and you know, is a public company."
24:04
And I was like, "Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. So, uh my bad."
24:06
And he's he was telling me some pretty incredible things about the crafting community.
24:09
So, he's like, "You know stores like Michaels?
24:11
Um they he goes, 'Michaels, if you go read their kind of like uh talk to their leadership or read their earnings statements or whatever, he's like, Michaels believes that every single person who walks through their door is an Etsy seller.
24:23
Their default assumption is that if you come to a Michaels, you are just going to sell on Etsy.'
24:30
And because it's like more of the majority than the minority, which is kind of amazing.
24:33
And Etsy's this obviously this marketplace to go sell your goods.
24:36
But if you look, okay, if that's how you sell your goods, well, then how do you make them underneath that?
24:41
And so, I am very tempted to invest in this uh space because it is such a big space. What's their product do?
24:47
Um I don't want to give it up uh just because it's like kind of proprietary, but it's like Som- something like Cricut?
24:51
Something like Cricut, but better. It does more things.
24:54
So, the Cricut just cuts, this does other things in addition to cut. Got it.
24:58
So now this came by the way through our buddy Al Done.
25:00
So if you go back and listen to the episode with Big Al Done, Al and his mom start a company in the quilting space.
25:08
Um and the little breadcrumb trail is we have Patrick Campbell on the podcast.
25:13
Patrick Campbell runs a payments company called ProfitWell and we were like, "Hey, you see the payments of like lots of companies like any cool trends in the payment space that we wouldn't have thought of?" He's like, "quilting." We're like, "What?"
25:26
He's like, "Quilting is enormous."
25:26
It's like, "Quilting like the grandma hobby?" He's like, "Yes." "Enormous.
25:31
There are companies that do blah blah blah."
25:33
So he told us about that.
25:34
Afterwards I get a DM from Al Done.
25:36
He's like, "Hey, I'm one of those companies that we make 100 you know 100 million plus a year.
25:42
My mom you know Jenny Jenny Done or whatever started this business and I joined her and like yeah, we sell like kind of crafts for quilters home quilters." right?
25:53
They sell like the squares.
25:55
squares, the the fabrics and they do like a daily flash deal.
25:57
It's like, "Oh, here's the quilting thing of the day."
26:00
And like that's how they do it.
26:00
And so they built this huge thing to the point where he now bought a small town and he turned it into like the Mecca of quilting.
26:06
The Disneyland for quilters.
26:10
The Disneyland for quilters.
26:10
It's like if you're a quilter and you want to take a trip to like indulge in your hobby, this is where you go.
26:15
And I'm like, "Wow, this guy's thinking big. I love this guy. He's a funny guy."
26:19
And so he was talking about quilting and then he introduces this deal.
26:21
He's like, "Yeah, I'm investing in this thing cuz I'm in this craft space and I you know this is like one of the best kind of concepts we could do here."
26:30
So I'm just getting I'm just scratching the surface on like this space I know nothing about, but I'm very fascinated by this and I wanted to share that with you.
26:36
Dude, the Etsy platform is wild.
26:39
Have you looked into like how big some of these sellers are?
26:41
My mother-in-law started an Etsy store and she's making hundreds of thousands of dollars uh selling pillows on Etsy. Right.
26:47
And one of the cool things about Etsy is you can go to the store and they'll show you how many lifetime sales, how many transactions have happened to that store.
26:55
It's visible on every profile.
26:58
Yeah, and you'll like look up something very obscure and you'll see that they've sold 50,000 versions of whatever they're whatever they have.
27:04
It it's wild how powerful Etsy is.
27:07
By the way, I believe this is how Moiz started Native Deodorant.
27:09
So I think the like public story is like my sister got pregnant and I was concerned for her health and I wanted her to have aluminum and paraben-free deodorant.
27:19
I interviewed him about that. The real story is what?
27:20
Basically, he was just looking I think he was like maybe I'll do mattresses.
27:25
A lot of people are buying mattresses.
27:26
This all This is right when Casper was getting going and and he called that.
27:29
So he's like, yeah, mattresses.
27:30
But then he's like [ __ ] these are heavy, this is hard to ship, I don't know if there's like a lot of repeat buying on this.
27:35
And then he randomly came across a lady selling uh chemical-free deodorant on Etsy.
27:39
He ordered that and then he ordered like five or 10 other ones.
27:44
And he asked everyone in the office like, put this under your arms. How's this feel?
27:46
And it like some of it was good and he's like, some of it was was bad, but he found one that was great and he goes, "Hey lady, can I uh slap a Native label on this and we just resell your stuff?"
27:58
And that's how it starts and then eventually he gets big and gets traction he's like, "All right, now we're going to make our own. Thank you very much."
28:04
And I think I think she helped him like formulate it and and or something Well, she she couldn't keep up with the demand.
28:09
She was like, "Dude, I don't want I'm not trying to scale this to this level like I'm you know, my fingers hurt, so like you know, can I can I take a break here?"
28:18
And um she was like, "How about this?
28:20
How about I buy the formula" He's like, "How about I buy the formula off you and you help me figure this out and then we'll we'll bring this to a manufacturer cuz we've outgrown your scale now like a thousand times."
28:29
he and then after two years he sells the business for a hundred million dollars in cash and he That was like you know, I think the business probably does like 200 million a year in sales.
28:36
So you could argue it was early, but I think he turned out all right.
28:39
But he like sold the business like right before and maybe two years, three years before like the whole D2C thing was like, "All right, this is more challenging than we thought.
28:47
But but one of the insights was this is I think it I think natural deodorant was one of the top selling products on Etsy and that's why he he had market validation that there's something here.
28:56
Aluminum-free deodorant, I think was the thing.
28:59
not like him and many other people do this where like, you know, the business has this this you know, touching origin story.
29:06
This is this wonderful back story, but like these are often you know, reverse engineered later.
29:10
You know, the that's not how a lot of these business work.
29:14
One of my fun things is like let's just be honest on this podcast and like say what it is.
29:18
You know, like I started it like started the Milk Road because I was interested in crypto.
29:21
I saw what you did with the Hustle and I was like, oh, I get it.
29:25
I could do that and I just did that with uh with Milk Road.
29:29
The Hustle for crypto and then just like went down that road and did it and my goal was to make a business that made a bunch of money, right?
29:36
Like that's the that's the thing and I thought, oh, cool.
29:37
Doing this I'll learn about a bunch about crypto.
29:39
That's my that's the transparent story.
29:40
There wasn't like some some origin story where, you know, my cousin needed help. And then it hit me. And then it hit me.
29:46
I should just write this email for my cousin.
29:48
You know, and and I didn't stop there.
29:50
I decided, you know, let's just open up for friends. You're all my cousins. Yeah, exactly.
29:57
And so like I think you could do that again on Etsy.
29:58
I think you could always go back to Etsy and look for top selling products and use that as inspiration for for thing.
30:04
And then you know, for Mois, I'm sure I don't know this, but like I'll I'll put a guess out there which is that like an arranged marriage, he had a checklist.
30:11
He's like what is under 1 lb for shipping?
30:12
What is a recurring purchase? That's consumable.
30:17
What is something that has a, you know, differentiation against a a big market but has a unique differentiator like natural deodorant that's chemical-free versus what Old Spice and these other guys are doing.
30:26
And like he had a checklist and he's like, oh, good.
30:30
Deodorant, lightweight you know, um repeat purchase with a clear differentiator. Got it.
30:35
By the way, these cricket machines are awesome.
30:36
I'm I think I might get one of these. These are sick.
30:40
They're they're expensive.
30:42
They're at like a a grand.
30:44
Use promo code Sean Craft at checkout for uh for, you know, 10 cents off. These are awesome. That's a good find.
30:49
I mean, it's not like it was like some like rare thing, but it's rare to us, I guess. But this is a good find.
30:54
Yeah, this is out of our bubble, um for sure.
31:00
I invested in this company that does this for um for bathrooms.
31:04
And so they they make uh women's like hygiene products, so like tampons, pads that go in um that go into Like the vending machine. W- women's restroom.
31:15
It's installed on the wall.
31:16
And so uh it's just like a better uh a better version of um of what used to be there.
31:23
There's always something there, and it was just like kind of it looked like a something a janitor designed, and then they just made like a really beautiful version of one that was like easier to use, more friendly, just looked cleaner, like it looks more hygienic, and then what happened is that every state started enacting laws saying that, "Hey, yeah, every women's restroom needs to carry these products."
31:43
Just like you you know you have toilet paper, whatever you need to carry these products.
31:45
And so state by state this is rolling out, and what they're doing is they're going state by state into um uh into these uh stadiums or schools, universities, and they're getting these multi, you know, multi-million dollar contracts for installing their thing.
32:03
And once they're installed, they're not going to take them out. It's sort of like Clear.
32:06
It's like these little monopolies that you can you can get if you're the right product in the right place at the right time with the right sales pitch, because once it's installed, I don't think they're ever going to go uninstall these things and change vendors because somebody has a slightly nicer design. Is that company working?
32:22
Uh yeah, like I mean, I haven't seen I I can't share their like numbers right away.
32:25
Um It's like those disgusting baby changing stations. What are those called?
32:29
Kangaroo Jack or something? yeah, exactly. Those are filthy.
32:34
Yeah, uh her name's Claire Coder.
32:34
She's very like uh, she's a very strong, uh, like leader kind of personality type person.
32:39
And so, she she does a great job. Like, she's on LinkedIn.
32:43
She's like super active with it.
32:45
Um, it's called The company, by the way, is called Aunt Flow.
32:47
And so, uh, has like a more more, uh, you know, friendly name versus like what was there before.
32:53
And when she described kind of like what the process was before versus after, um, you're like, "Oh, I get it."
32:58
And I get why other people haven't attacked this space because if, you know, most of the VC funding is going towards men, a lot of, uh, founders who are trying to start these venture scale companies are men, they're not even aware of this issue.
33:12
They've never even been in the bathroom.
33:13
They you can't you wouldn't even know that this problem exists.
33:17
Uh, but she's done an amazing job of like identifying the problem and then building a like super, uh, like uh, just a likable brand and a likable story where it's like if you could choose between the default alternative or this, like, you'd obviously pick this. That's cool.
33:30
I got pitched on a bunch of those.
33:32
I passed on all of them because I don't know, but like that that sounds good that it's working.
33:37
Hopefully, it it makes some money.
33:39
I mean, getting those I when I saw I was like, "I don't know, man.
33:42
It's only like two dollar things in the bathroom.
33:44
It can't that be a big thing?"
33:45
But you said they're getting million dollar contracts. Who pays for it? The facility.
33:49
The facility has to has to do that.
33:51
So, like, the facility needs to stock uh, this product.
33:53
And it's a recurring thing, right?
33:55
They install the dispenser for let's just call it like $500.
33:58
So, it's $500 to install the dispenser.
34:00
And then you're every, you know, every month or every quarter you're going to like have to do refills.
34:05
And again, that thing's going to sit on the wall forever.
34:06
Uh, it's not going to go anywhere.
34:08
And so, to me, this is like owning a piece of real estate in all these that's going to pay you rent.
34:13
And I think that that's just like I don't know if this becomes like a $10 billion company, you know, that that's like different next level stuff.
34:19
But it's clear that this is a defensible business.
34:23
It's clear that it's going to have recurring revenue.
34:24
It's clear that, um, while there's a lot of facilities out there and they're all going to have women's restrooms, multiple of them per building, and each one of those is going to need to have this in it.
34:32
So, you starts to add up pretty quick.
34:39
Our software is the worst.
34:39
Have you heard of HubSpot?
34:41
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
34:47
I think I love our new CRM.
34:49
Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.
34:54
Okay, so let me tell this story.
34:54
You know, actually, these guys much better than I do.
34:57
I only know it secondhand, but I'm a I'm a fan of this.
35:00
So, back in the day, when you were doing the hustle, one of the very first things, before I knew you, one of the very first things you created was this infographic about a business that I found fascinating.
35:10
And it was a business called iCracked.
35:12
And I think what you were doing was you were trying to sell uh tickets to your conference. He was a speaker. And Yeah.
35:20
in your genius, you were like, "Okay, instead of saying come to my conference, buy tickets."
35:23
You said, "Look at this incredible story of iCracked.
35:27
These guys were in their you know, whatever, college dorm room, AJ and Tony, and they realized that smartphones are taking off.
35:34
And so, they decide, "Hey, everyone else is building apps.
35:39
Let's just try to fix people's cracked phones, cuz there's the more cell phones there are, there's more cracked phones there's going to be."
35:43
And they made this like on-demand service.
35:46
So, if you crack your phone, same day, they know that's a big problem for most people.
35:49
Same day, they'll come to you, grab your phone, and fix your phone.
35:53
And it had this crazy NPS score, and it starts scaling.
35:55
They get to like, I think in the first um you know, they only raised 500k, and they get to 7 and 1/2 million in uh revenue.
36:04
And you write this you make this great infographic, and I'm like, in the infographic heyday.
36:08
Infographics were like the thing back then. Were they?
36:12
I You were the only one I saw doing them, but they were great.
36:13
You and uh what's his name, John?
36:15
I think he was your design He was the design guy.
36:16
You guys did an amazing job.
36:18
It was just you two doing the hustle.
36:19
Um and so, and then you would What you did was you're like, "Love this story.
36:23
Want to hear more stories like this?
36:25
In fact, want to hear AJ tell this story himself?
36:29
He's speaking at Hustle Con in 3 weeks. Buy your ticket.
36:30
And then, you know, I didn't one, I'm not just going to buy a ticket, but you would release one every what? Like week or so? Uh yeah, one a week. week.
36:38
And by the third week, I was like, "Damn, I love these stories.
36:40
I don't I All right, I'll go to this conference.
36:43
Like sounds like sounds like these are great stories."
36:46
And so, I went to Hustle Con.
36:48
And I met you and that, you know, this story, uh you know, happy has a happy ending.
36:51
So, these guys, okay, so So, let me finish their story now cuz they're what they're doing is pretty interesting.
36:55
So, they go they What they realize is, "Okay, we need People are going to have cracked phones. We need to scale."
37:00
And they scale through colleges.
37:02
So, they're like they looked at this business like uh iTech, I guess, which is like, you know, sort of like a Geek Squad type thing.
37:10
And they were like, "All right, um basically, we just need to copy-paste what we're doing to like uh Actually, I don't know if iTech was the company they're copying or that's what they called their people, but like they looked at like how to scale this.
37:21
They figured it out on one college campus.
37:23
They're like, "Okay, we need these runners.
37:24
We're going to be able to cover this radius and repair these phones this way."
37:29
And they just copy-pasted it across college campuses.
37:30
And they basically they they taught college kids how to repair phones and iCracked would send them the leads and they're like, "All right, you got to go show up at this guy's house.
37:38
You're going to charge him $300.
37:39
It's all done on the phone.
37:39
You get 100, we get 200, whatever it was." Something like that.
37:43
just So, to scale, they blitzed and in 30 days, they were on 28 college campuses, which is amazing.
37:47
They had booted up 28 campuses in 30 days, which I love. Uh they get into YC.
37:53
They're one of the only non-technical teams to even get into YC.
37:56
And it's because this hustle was like obviously very appealing.
38:00
And um And so, At one point, they even buy like uh 200 smart cars that they like wrap in their iCracked logo and they give to their iTechs and they're So, they're all running around San Francisco fixing iPhones and [ __ ] It was pretty cool.
38:15
he uh he's like, "Okay, so how did you scale from there?"
38:16
They go, "Well, we started using SEO and press."
38:18
And they're like, "We realized that the press loves to talk about the following headline.
38:25
24-year-old making millions doing relatable thing."
38:27
And it's like He's like, "So started out of his college college dorm room." college dorm room.
38:32
And they're just doing something that all of us need, repairing your cracked phone.
38:34
And these 24-year-olds say they're making millions.
38:39
And so they just took that story and they did it at the local level.
38:43
So these Cincinnati uh you know, these Cincinnati uh this guy grew up in Cincinnati. He's making millions.
38:50
Other guy grew up in wherever. He's making millions.
38:52
Whatever college they went to, they did it locally there.
38:56
Um and oh, they just booted up at this college campus.
38:58
And they did it locally, then they did it nationally.
38:59
And they started stacking so that when you searched fixed cracked iPhone, they could show up organically at the top through SEO from these high-authority publications that were writing puff pieces about them. Loved it. So these guys are great.
39:15
Now here comes the problem.
39:17
They're They've only raised 500k. They're at 7. 5 million.
39:19
It's profitable business and growing fast.
39:23
They never announce this, but they go and they raise $50 million to scale the business.
39:28
And that 50 million gets them to go international.
39:29
And at peak, they get to 36 million in run rate, but it's just getting harder and harder to keep the to keep up with the growth monster.
39:36
And the growth monster's demanding that they get to 100 million in revenue cuz you raise 50 million, that means you got to go huge.
39:43
You've You've cut off your options.
39:45
And so they just couldn't do it.
39:47
And they just could not scale the business beyond that.
39:49
And uh they end up selling it to Allstate. Yeah, insurance company.
39:53
And so they one of the guys, he stays there for 3 years, he earns out uh his deal and he decides, all right, after year three, I'm going to quit start my next company.
40:01
And that takes us to Cloud Poker Night. I used it.
40:05
I'm a good buddy of the founder.
40:08
Yeah, well, we tested it.
40:08
I was in a beta user and it didn't quite work out when we start when You would be a beta user. I am beta.
40:17
They called the right guy. We need a beta.
40:18
Yeah, get Sam on the phone.
40:21
It It was a little rough when we first started cuz he was only a few weeks in, but I think now he like nailed it.
40:24
And it was actually really fun.
40:25
So, I want to do two things.
40:27
I want to show the homepage because I love what they wrote as the landing page.
40:33
The copy on this homepage. Have you been to it? It's so good. Read it Read it off.
40:36
So, it says, "Poker is the new sport for business minds.
40:39
Golf is yesterday's news. Request access."
40:42
And then there's a photo.
40:46
It's a cute dealer dealing to um That's Anthony's wife.
40:49
That's the founder's wife doing it. Okay, great. By the way. Cute dealer.
40:53
Um so she So, and then there's like whatever, people playing and you get you get a demo of the product.
40:56
So, super strong landing uh landing page.
40:57
Then you scroll down it says, "Business minds who love poker."
41:01
So, just think about the positioning.
41:02
So, almost everybody would be like, "Online poker night, right?
41:05
Cloud-based poker for you know, poker software." Right?
41:11
Like this is like the generic shitty way to market this.
41:12
But instead they Not only say the benefit of it, they go even bigger.
41:16
They just say, "Big picture. Golf is the old way.
41:19
Poker is the new sport for business people.
41:22
That's the um That's the we don't sell saddles here We don't sell saddles here here uh mantra.
41:29
Like when Stewart Butterfield created Slack, he wrote this great memo.
41:34
If you've never read it, go read it.
41:35
It's called We Don't Sell Saddles Here.
41:36
And he's like, "Look, guys, we made Slack. We know it's awesome.
41:39
Now our job is to teach the world that this is awesome. Here's the problem.
41:45
Most people you talk to that run a company are not in the business for chat software.
41:48
They're not looking for a team chat tool.
41:50
It's just not a thing they even do.
41:52
They're not even looking for it.
41:54
So, even if we say we're the best team chat software, doesn't matter. They don't care. They're not into it.
41:57
He's like, "Lululemon made you want to do yoga, to live the yoga lifestyle."
42:02
And he's like, "We need to do the same thing.
42:05
We need to We need to sell Instead of selling saddles and saying we make the best saddles, we need to sell the joy of horseback riding.
42:11
And then when they once they fall in love with the idea of horseback riding, they're going to say, "Where do I get a saddle?"
42:18
And we're going to say, "We provide Yeah, we sell the best saddles." And so, same thing here.
42:20
I love what he's doing by saying, "Poker is the new sport for business people."
42:24
Um that's the that's the selling the dream.
42:27
And then okay, how are we going to go play poker? Use our software.
42:29
And they all they they have all these like quotes about uh you know, successful people who have played poker.
42:37
And I I recognize a few of these people.
42:39
There's Warren Buffett, there's Sam Altman, there's Paul Graham, Peter Thiel.
42:43
And look at that, there's the chairman of the Milk Road is on their website. Have you noticed it? Uh that's it. You're on there. idea. You're on the site. up for that.
42:53
I did not I did not know that.
42:55
I'm on the page two of the carousel if you swipe.
42:57
So, I never got that far.
42:57
But what they did was they go, "Business minds love poker."
43:01
And then it's a quote and it says, "Which leader said this?
43:03
Warren Buffett, Chamath, or Paul Graham?"
43:05
And you're like, "Oh, that sounds like Chamath."
43:06
Uh nope, it was Paul Graham. Okay, cool.
43:08
And then it it shows you another one.
43:10
So, again, uh using sort of the the people you already trust to say that poker they're not saying Cloud Poker Night is great, but they're saying poker is the is the sport for business people.
43:20
Um and then it's why poker is so great, blah blah blah.
43:24
And then it says, "Why you should use our software?" which I love.
43:27
So, I think this landing page is amazing.
43:29
But you have to explain how it works.
43:30
So, basically I I mean I've used it.
43:32
So, what it is is you uh we're going to use it for Hampton and and we're still going to, but we did it for a team night.
43:37
And the way it works is it's almost like Zoom meets poker.
43:41
So, they have like a professional setup in in my case when I use it it was Anthony, the founder.
43:44
He's got this like home setup that's a that's a card table and then there's a camera on him and you see him dealing the cards and you see him talking to you and interacting with you and you could see all your other teammates also playing, but he puts the cards over another camera of which only you your you know, the user you see your own card.
44:02
So, it's really like live poker uh and there's even a dealer who's like shooting the [ __ ] with you and like asking if you want to hit it. It's It's really fun. It's very interactive. It's awesome.
44:11
I think this is a great business idea uh for a bootstrap business. I love this idea.
44:15
Um Yeah, and I love poker.
44:17
I played poker my whole life.
44:18
I I really I think this is a cool idea.
44:20
I would love to do an MFM version of this.
44:22
So, like That's a great idea. Let me hold on.
44:23
Let I think they did make one for us.
44:25
I asked the guy this morning.
44:26
I go, "Hey, this would be amazing.
44:29
I don't like like the live shows we did were cool cuz we got to meet people who listen to the pod. That's awesome.
44:36
But, I don't like traveling.
44:36
I don't like leaving my house.
44:37
And so, this is great cuz we get to play poker.
44:39
We get to be on camera, meet other people who are um listeners to the show.
44:42
And we can just host our own tournament.
44:44
And so, I think he's going to do uh cloudpokernight. com/mfm.
44:50
So, there will be a uh uh something there, he says, to to uh RSVP for this.
44:56
So, if anyone wants to play in a poker night, we should do that with people who listen to the pod.
44:58
I think that'd be that'd be kind of amazing.
44:59
By the way, the other founder, so you talked about Anthony, Anthony Martin.
45:03
He's one of the co-founders of I cracked.
45:05
The other co-founder, AJ, is one of my great friends. He's a crazy person.
45:08
He's one of the wildest people I've hung out with.
45:11
His other company, or his new company that he started, it's a They call it a like what Headline called it, the Tesla for chicken coops. So, if you go to coop.
45:19
farm, it's a smart chicken coop.
45:21
And he like he's into like beekeeping, and he's always had chickens and animals and [ __ ] like that.
45:28
So, he made a smart chicken coop that like opens the doors automatically and feeds the chickens automatically. It's pretty funny.
45:34
Um I almost invested in it, but I'll explain one of the reasons that got made me nervous is the like the day or a few weeks or something like that before the round closed when the Ukraine thing happened, AJ went to Poland for like a month and was a volunteer helping like Ukrainian refugees. And uh the guy is crazy. Is he Ukrainian? No.
45:58
He just is into that [ __ ] He just does wild [ __ ] all the time.
46:00
Like I'll be hanging out with him and he's like Didn't he used to boat to work?
46:03
Yeah, he he lived right near Oracle and the office his I cracked office was in Redwood City, but it was across this little bay and he would take this little boat to work, but every once in a while they had offices in Soma and he would ride his This is like a small boat, literally fit two people.
46:19
He would ride this little boat 20 miles up the bay to Soma and dock his boat there. The guy's crazy.
46:26
He would do crazy No, and when I say boat you told me that like a decade ago and I still remember you were like, "Yeah, my friend, he's kayaking to work."
46:33
By the way, boat's not the best word.
46:35
It's better to describe it as a jet ski that you stand up on.
46:40
So, like he would jet ski to work basically.
46:42
That's how small this thing was.
46:46
So, was he paddling or it was a motor? No, it had a motor.
46:48
It had a motor and he would like motor It was like a jet ski.
46:51
He was like he was like Kenny Powers.
46:52
He would like jet jet ski to work. Uh he's AJ's crazy.
46:54
He's a he's a crazy person.
46:59
Didn't he raise a bunch of money from Peter Thiel? That's so Yes.
47:01
Yeah, they raised money from Peter Thiel.
47:03
Like "Peter, I see your crazy and I raise you."
47:10
He's like, "Say it with me, Peter. Chicken coop."
47:16
It's It's a It's a It's a weird business, but I think it could work. Yeah, that's amazing.
47:20
Um so, I think this is a really cool business.
47:22
So, I want to see how this goes.
47:23
I would actually want to invest in this.
47:25
I would I wish I could own a piece of this and just host parties cuz one of the great things about businesses like this is um the virality.
47:34
So, I'm very interested in products that can grow virally and most people get this wrong.
47:39
Products that grow virally are not products that succeed through word of mouth.
47:42
Like, if you talk to a normal person, "Oh, yeah, it spread virally.
47:45
People used to go tell their friends cuz they loved it so much." No, no, no.
47:48
That's called word of mouth.
47:49
Viral is literally like the word sounds. It's like a virus.
47:52
You You're not even trying to get it on other people, but it gets on They catch it from you.
47:57
So, like the classic example of this was Hotmail.
47:59
Um at the end of every email, it was signed like, you know, sent through Hotmail.
48:05
You know, sent with love through Hotmail or something like that.
48:07
So, you weren't trying to tell somebody, "Hey, you should start a Hotmail account."
48:10
But, it was added to every email as almost like, you know, a little little virus that was attached to the email that basically said, "Sent through Hotmail.
48:18
Get your free account today."
48:19
And so, people started signing up and had this crazy viral coefficient.
48:22
And products like Cloud Poker Night have a different kind of virality, which I think I don't know what what it's called, but group virality or something.
48:30
Um similar to how Eventbrite grows or meetup.
48:32
com grows, which is an attendee becomes a host.
48:35
So, a host creates an event.
48:38
Naturally, they need to invite a bunch of other people cuz that's how an event works.
48:41
And then you might be in the 100 people that attend some event.
48:45
And if you liked that experience, the next time you're thinking about hosting an event, you'll go use that same product cuz you got sort of it was incepted to your brain through somebody else.
48:53
So, I think the same thing will happen here.
48:55
What I would want to do is I'd want to host a bunch of these for fun using the MFM community. But, then guess what?
48:59
The MFM community, when they have a good experience as a player, would then host it for their team bonding night or their corporate events or sales sales events or whatever um for their businesses.
49:10
And I think that's how these businesses can grow. Yeah, I think it's cool.
49:13
What's uh what What do you want to do?
49:16
Cricket Cricket Cut or Gamer Dating Idea?
49:19
I'll do the Gamer Dating.
49:19
Okay, so um Sam, here's why you should date a gamer. I know you're married.
49:25
But, if you could go back, here's why you should have dated a gamer. And me, too.
49:29
I my wife, she doesn't play any games.
49:30
Um I just bought a PS5 hoping that maybe that would sway her.
49:35
She instead just got upset.
49:36
So, here's why you should date a gamer.
49:38
You're not a gamer, are you?
49:41
I'm like the least gamer gamer.
49:41
But, I'm in the club, but just barely. I'm by the door.
49:46
I'm by the I'm by the exit door.
49:49
I played Call of Duty last night for like the first time in a year. It's just impossible. These kids are too good. it's so difficult. I'm unbelievably good. It's so It sucks.
49:57
Also, all the popular games now, they're like PUBG, it's like yeah, you jump out of an airplane.
50:01
I'm like, oh wow, that sounds exciting.
50:02
And then it's like you land.
50:04
And now, you just sort of walk around. You live for 20 minutes.
50:09
And then, you're not going to see anybody during that whole time.
50:12
You're just going to be collecting supplies.
50:14
I'm like, okay, cool, but for what?
50:15
It's like, cuz then when you do see someone, I'm like, but I never see anyone.
50:18
They're like, yeah, that's the problem.
50:20
You're just going to get shot in the head and then it's going to start again.
50:22
And it's like, these games where nothing happens, it's crazy.
50:26
Um anyways, here's why you should date a Dude, by the way, I I I played I played Call of Duty last night and I played this thing where there's three guys where on a team and we have to do [ __ ] together.
50:33
And it was two guys that must have been friends and they were just talking to each other in Spanish and I was so I was so bad that I couldn't see or hear or understand their writing.
50:42
I couldn't understand any of the words that they were saying other than bot. This is a bot. He's so bad it's a bot. Vámonos.
50:49
And they quit on me because I was so bad. Just bot. Vámonos.
50:51
Like that's all That's how bad I was.
50:53
I remember I got called a bot and I thought it was a good thing cuz I was like, oh, aimbot, I must be on like unlocked that they're calling me a bot.
51:03
And then I was like, no, this is they're they're saying this cuz like a NPC.
51:07
All right, so here let me do my bit here.
51:09
Here's why you should date a gamer. They're smart.
51:11
They um you'll never have to worry about where they are on a Friday night.
51:13
You know, they're just going to be in the room playing.
51:15
You know, they're not at the club, they're not not doing anything scandalous.
51:18
Um They'll fight for you. Should date a gamer.
51:21
They'll they'll stand up for you.
51:22
They're used to going to war on these things.
51:25
Um They're easy to trick into doing things cuz you just give them a a badge or a level or some sort of, you know, medallion and they'll just grind for that for that prize. Uh they're tech-savvy.
51:36
They can set up your internet, fix stuff whenever anything is broken.
51:38
Um and they'll always give you space.
51:41
If you if you're the type of person that needs space, they'll give you space. But here's the problem.
51:44
You may want to date a gamer after that great sales pitch, but the problem is there's no gamer dating app, and that's my idea.
51:51
I think there should be an app for gamers to meet other gamers. Here's why this matters.
51:58
Wouldn't it be a sausage fest?
51:58
I mean, how many gamers are women?
51:59
All dating apps are sausage fest. That's the trick.
52:03
They The guys only see the girls, the girls only see the guys unless you switch the settings, right?
52:06
So, it's like Um yes, like all dating apps, the ratio will be 30 to 1. That's That's expected.
52:13
Uh but that's that's normal for a dating app.
52:17
Here's why I think it's cool.
52:17
Um I think gamers have a lot in common.
52:20
I think gamers are pretty big market.
52:23
There's hundreds and hundreds of millions of gamers out there.
52:24
Like gaming The gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood, right?
52:26
So, it's like if you think people like movies, people like games more.
52:29
Um but there's no easy way to meet a gamer.
52:34
And if you meet a gamer, you actually have a lot in common, and you might have things to do in common.
52:36
And so, I think one of the hard parts about dating apps is that they're all profiles um and flirt and not really dates.
52:42
And then a bunch of companies came in and were like, "We're going to get you on a date."
52:48
Um but then the reality was like getting people out in the real world to go on a date is kind of like really really high friction.
52:53
And matching them was a pain in the ass. I did a bunch of those.
52:55
that gamer dating would work because you could be like, "Cool. You matched.
52:58
You guys are both interested in each other."
53:02
And you might play You have some games in common cuz that's part of your profile of what games you guys both like to already play. Go squad up. Play a game.
53:07
Go play Call of Duty together.
53:08
And in doing so, you're going to be talking.
53:10
You're going to be doing something together.
53:11
It's like going bowling or going putt-putt golf, but just more fun.
53:13
And so, I think somebody could I This is a legit idea.
53:18
At first, I was going to save this for a drunk ideas episode.
53:21
And then it kind of grew on me. I was like, "No, no, no.
53:22
This could actually work."
53:23
Like if you think this can't work, let me remind you that there is a dating app called FarmersOnly. Right?
53:30
There's There's dating apps called BlackPeopleMeet. And those Those work.
53:33
If you think those could work and gamer dating can't work, you're nuts.
53:37
Gamer dating could definitely work, and it could definitely be big.
53:40
Definitely go sell it to Match for like $75 million in 3 years.
53:42
Is Farmers Only still a thing?
53:47
Uh you know, I haven't checked in on a little while, but they used to run like TV commercials.
53:52
You haven't been keeping tabs?
53:52
Their website looks very old.
53:56
Still paying the the hosting All right, they're doing 700k in monthly visits, so not bad. That's so funny.
54:02
Um what's your name for it?
54:04
Uh I don't have one just yet.
54:06
You know, working title TBD. Um open to suggestions.
54:08
Yeah, I think it's a pretty bad idea.
54:13
Well, I sold it pretty hard, so I mean, maybe dude dating dating apps suck.
54:23
That's the worst business there is, man.
54:25
Cuz only like three or four of them It's like a winner-take-all market. You know what I mean?
54:29
Not a winner-take-all market.
54:29
There's tons of dating apps.
54:30
I mean Who's the winner that took all? Tinder? No. What Bumble? No. Uh Match? EHarmony? No. OkCupid?
54:39
It's like social media where it's like there could be you know, there's a hundreds of social media platforms, but there's like four that matter. Um you know what I mean?
54:47
when I was at Monkey Inferno, a guy came to the office, guy named KJ.
54:49
And he's like, "I'm going to make an Indian like you know, there's Jewish dating apps, there's farmer dating apps, there's black people dating apps.
54:57
I'm going to make an Indian dating app."
54:58
I was like, "All right, that's a good idea, I guess."
55:01
And I was like, "Do you have any background in this?"
55:03
He's like, "I'm Indian and I'm trying to date."
55:05
And he's like, "You know, that's my background."
55:08
I was like, "Okay, I guess super qualified."
55:09
And then he's like, um He's like, "Here's what we're going to do differently."
55:13
And he's like, I was like, "So what are the features?
55:16
Like what do you have to do to to differentiate?"
55:18
He's like, "Well, I told you, it's an Indian dating app.
55:20
So the app's going to say, 'This is for Indians trying to meet other Indians.'"
55:25
I was like, "Oh, he's right.
55:25
That is actually the main feature is that you're going to curate the people and sort of filter for people who want to meet other Indians, for farmers who want to meet other farmers, whatever.
55:32
For Jewish people who want to meet other Jewish people."
55:34
And so I was like, "Okay, I guess that is already better than Tinder if you're an Indian person who wants to be with an Indian cuz you're going to get a 100% hit rate here versus maybe a 5% hit rate on a on a generic dating app.
55:46
And I was like, okay, so how do you make money?
55:47
He's like, do you know how much people pay for dating apps?
55:49
Like the is it I'll do the same business model.
55:51
I was like, all right, I'm trying to poke holes, but he's just got it covered.
55:53
And I was like, but how are you going to like I was like, what do Indians care about more than others?
55:57
And he goes, oh, that's where I'm going to do something different. I go, okay, here it is. What's the big feature?
56:01
What's the big tech breakthrough?
56:02
He's like, like your mom is your like co-user.
56:04
You log in with LinkedIn. And I go, what?
56:08
And he goes, yeah, and he's like he goes, I don't know if people know this, but like Indian culture, it's like a big deal for like uh there's like a check Indian people date on like a checklist.
56:15
Kind of stems from like the arranged marriage background where literally you marry on a checklist.
56:20
You know what the pickup line is for like I have most of my friends are Indian because you and Neville, my best friend's Indian.
56:26
The pickup line when you're around other Indians is, so what do you do?
56:30
That's basically like that's like what they do.
56:37
Yeah, so basically he's like, you're going to log in with LinkedIn so we know that you have a like a legit job.
56:40
And uh I was like, okay, and then?
56:43
He's like, yeah, that's like the main thing that you know, helps separate people, you know, I was like, whoa.
56:49
Um so he builds this app.
56:50
It's called Dil Mil and he uh which means like hearts meet. Um How do you spell it? D I L M I L.
56:59
He builds this app and I'll keep track of the this guy and he uh and sure enough he just starts going into like all the niche communities, newsletters, blogs, YouTubers start promoting it, running ads, basically saying, hey, if you're an Indian person you're tired of striking out on dating apps cuz Indian people have like terrible success rates on Indian apps on on normal dating apps.
57:18
I think OKCupid said that like the worst like in the in the free market of dating, I think the absolute worst was an Indian male, second a close second was like Chinese male.
57:28
Um they were like the two least desirable according to the OKCupid match data that they released back you know what the highest was?
57:35
I think the highest, the most liked person I think was an Asian woman. Yeah, exactly.
57:40
I think it was a Asian woman was was number one.
57:41
Um cuz they were getting all the attention from the Asian guys and the white guys I think.
57:47
That was like the the data what it what it showed is like they get like it's like top preference amongst two big user groups or something.
57:52
And there's this like weird stereotype that like Asian women are supposed to be more submissive and dumb [ __ ] like that and I think that there's like some weird like kinks out there of of Spoken like a true white guy.
58:02
Um Of like No, it's like men who have had like oppressive like mothers. The average white male.
58:11
So Hey, it's on the it's on Christian Rudder wrote that blog post, the founder of OKCupid.
58:15
I think that's like the whole thing.
58:16
Their blog posts were great.
58:16
That was a great strategy they had.
58:17
Um anyway, so he and whatever.
58:19
Five years later he he sells this thing.
58:22
I think he sold it for 75 or 100 million dollars to to the Match Group. No way.
58:26
And they were like, yeah, we Match Group is a collection of dating apps.
58:30
We have our our generic catch-all mass market app, Tinder um uh and uh what's the other one? Um match. com.
58:37
And then they have like all the niche apps.
58:42
And so they own like 20 dating apps or something like that.
58:44
And so if you just fill one of those verticals that they don't have a winner in, um they'll buy you at like a preset multiple.
58:50
And I was like, wow, that's pretty impressive.
58:53
They paid 50 million dollars for it. I don't know, man.
58:55
This guy KJ is pretty good looking and now he's rich.
58:57
I think he I think he He's probably doing all right I I met up with him the other day and he was like, you didn't believe.
59:02
And I was like I was like, well, you're right.
59:05
I didn't believe and uh actually sort of, you know when I didn't believe I really wanted to be right. I'm sorry about that.
59:14
I was kind of rooting against you in a way, but then you proved me wrong and you were absolutely right. Congratulations. You did a great job.
59:20
Have Have you seen the Indian Netflix show where it's like your parents are setting you up with like this matchmaker.
59:28
Dude, so at first I thought that [ __ ] was the worst where you know, like your parents are just telling you what to do.
59:34
But when you think about it, it's kind of like it's kind of like the paradox of choice, right?
59:39
Where they're just like, "This is it. This is the one. You are doing this."
59:44
You kind of are forced to find happiness in that.
59:46
And it doesn't seem actually maybe the worst arranged marriages, are they? I have no idea. Are they bad?
59:52
Or is it kind of they can can be and they can't be.
59:55
I think the stats show it's about the same divorce rate as in America, but what that doesn't show is that any people don't get divorced.
1:00:02
They like, you know, they're like, "We will suffer in this unhappy marriage rather than get divorced and be happy."
1:00:07
And but have society know that we failed at our marriage or whatever whatever.
1:00:10
So I I don't think there's a way to really know how successful or unsuccessful it is.
1:00:16
Um Me and me and by the way, a quick Indian story.
1:00:19
Me and Naval were out to dinner with Dharmesh at HubSpot.
1:00:22
And Naval was saying how he doesn't he's like, "Man, India like that's where I'm from and I go back there and it makes you grateful to be in America because like these guys got nothing and like it's not very nice over there.
1:00:33
This and that and Dharma and he was like not insulting like poor Indians, but like saying like it's like a pain in the butt to be in that situation.
1:00:41
And Dharmesh was like, "Yeah, that was me. I was that guy.
1:00:42
I had nothing and I came here we were I was like one of those guys like you know, we had nothing."
1:00:49
And they were all just talking about India.
1:00:51
India sounds like a wild place, man. It just seems wild.
1:00:57
things like that cuz how do you you know, you can only agree with that.
1:01:02
You can't really disagree with X is a wild place.
1:01:04
It's the same thing as our business pitch of like, "It's this just beautifully done."
1:01:07
We're just going to do it beautifully.
1:01:10
It's the same thing it's like Dude, that's a wild place. It's like what? The food? The culture? The crime?
1:01:17
What are we talking about here?
1:01:17
Here's the story you told.
1:01:19
The The you told is that when your mom came to America, I don't know if you were joking or not, you said two things that blew my mind.
1:01:26
You said the first thing you said she had never used utensils. You said that.
1:01:30
Do you remember saying that?
1:01:33
You This is all on record.
1:01:33
You're like, she didn't use utensils.
1:01:35
That's what you told That's what you said on this pod and Mom, if you're listening, I know you never said that. I didn't say that.
1:01:41
I'm being bullied by Sam.
1:01:44
You No, I am not I'm not putting any judgment here.
1:01:47
I am repeating what you said.
1:01:49
The second thing you said, you go wait when she went to hang up the phone, she didn't know how to hang up the phone so she just let it like hang on the payphone and it was wild to hear that story.
1:01:59
That that was It was like It made me love your mom is what it did. She told me the story. It was unbelievable.
1:02:04
She's like, I got on the plane.
1:02:05
I've never been on a plane before.
1:02:07
My parents had dropped me off at the airport. I'm 17 years old.
1:02:10
I've never been on a plane before.
1:02:10
Don't even know what a plane is, really.
1:02:12
Uh I just get shuffled along.
1:02:14
I show somebody my ticket, they send me here, they send me there.
1:02:17
Okay, I get on a plane and she's like, I think it's like a train.
1:02:20
That's all I've ever seen is a train.
1:02:22
And so I'm just thinking this is going to be like a train ride and she's flying like 14 hours.
1:02:26
her that it goes in the air?
1:02:28
Her parents didn't know either.
1:02:28
They never been on a train a plane either.
1:02:30
They were just like, this is how you get to America.
1:02:31
And she's like, okay, didn't ask don't ask too many questions.
1:02:32
I said she said she's like, I you know plane seat belts are kind of funky. She's like, I did it.
1:02:39
I just like put it pushed it and I went in on the first try somehow miraculously and the person next to me looked at me and was like, "Oh, you've flown before."
1:02:45
And she's like, I was like, "Oh my god, I don't even know what I'm getting myself into.
1:02:50
No, I have no idea what I just did.
1:02:52
I have no idea how I'll get this off."
1:02:53
And um whatever, I guess I have a few hours to figure out how to unbuckle this by the time I need to get off to at my stop.
1:02:59
So then for 14 hours she's flying and she stays awake cuz she's like, "I don't want to miss my stop."
1:03:05
And she's like, "This thing's not stopping. What's going on?"
1:03:08
She's like doesn't know how planes work. It was crazy.
1:03:09
The whole thing was insane.
1:03:12
Doesn't that make you feel soft?
1:03:13
Your mom Your mother is so much more brave than we are.
1:03:17
It makes me feel uh incredibly lucky that you know she did all the hard stuff so that I don't have to do it. Yeah, shout out. Shout out mom.
1:03:25
bird moms like chew food and then just spit it in their baby's mouth so they don't have to chew.
1:03:28
That's what I feel like she did with life.
1:03:30
She just like chewed life for me and then spit it in my mouth and I just have like the easy life.
1:03:37
Um And on that visual Um all right, well thank you. That's the pod. What is it? mfm.
1:03:44
com we got the merch and then what what's the clip website? Uh clip clipmfm.
1:03:50
com or just go to YouTube and search my first million clips and please subscribe.
1:03:54
clips and please subscribe. That way we'll have the like when there's 500 subscribers we don't have a lot of incentive to do the work of cutting you know picking the perfect parts, trimming them down, cutting them and titling them and making them like
1:04:05
available to you if you don't have time to watch the full episode or you want to share just the best bit bit with somebody cuz you know sharing an hour long podcast with somebody is like assigning some you know asking somebody to help you move on Saturday. Like it's
1:04:14
Like it's just a tough ask but sharing a clip is like doing somebody a favor and so go subscribe to that thing so that we um yeah we're we're like motivated to get to do that.
1:04:25
I want to see that thing grow. All right, check it out. That's the pod.