0:00
Yep, PubMed is the government database of all scholastic, biomedical literature. So, 36 million papers.
Search this video
0:03
If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire.
0:09
It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting and sifting and sifting, which most people do don't have the patience, desire, willpower to do, but every single biomedical innovation is is logged in on PubMed. What's up?
0:30
We just had a conversation with Martin Shkreli.
0:31
If you don't know who he is, you can just Google his name and you'll find that he is quote-unquote the most hated man in America, or he is the Pharma Bro.
0:38
And he's you know, he touches kind of a bunch of different things, you know, the bingo card for My First Million.
0:43
He's made hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:45
He's super controversial, and some people love him, some people hate him.
0:49
He went to prison for something that he did with his his hedge fund, and he comes on here and he tells us a bunch of things.
0:55
He tells us how he made his first million.
0:56
He gave his side of the story on why he bought that drug and raised the price, and why maybe it wasn't so evil as as it was portrayed.
1:06
Um, why he hates sort of vanilla CEOs that that just only speak in corporate speak, and why he refuses to do that.
1:13
Uh, why he thinks Mark Cuban is full of [ __ ] Uh, he also unveils his new startup in the AI space for the first time ever.
1:19
So, pretty interesting conversation with Martin.
1:21
He is uh he's one thing, he's not boring.
1:25
You will you will look I think we can all agree on that.
1:26
Uh, some people love him, some people hate him.
1:28
I think you see in this episode, you can see a couple different sides of him.
1:31
And so, I'm curious to hear what you guys think.
1:33
I'd love for you to put in the comments whether you you loved this episode, you hated this episode, or somewhere in between.
1:37
And you know, we always commit that on this pod, you know, when we bring people on, we're not saying this is the best person ever or the worst.
1:43
We just want to have interesting conversations with interesting people.
1:46
I want to get into their mind and find out why they are the way they are, how they think, how they operate, and then you can decide for yourself whether this is somebody you um you're into or not.
1:55
So, uh that's this episode Martin Shkreli.
1:57
It's about a 2-hour interview and uh enjoy.
2:02
Sam, where do you want to start?
2:02
We can either go more on the AI stuff or there's there's some interesting stuff in your your kind of start of your career that I think is kind of fun like you worked you worked with Jim Cramer, is that right?
2:13
When you were 16 years old you worked for Cramer, the guy who's always yelling on on CNBC. Uh what was that like? What's Cramer like?
2:22
Cramer's great, you know, uh hedge fund for a different world back then.
2:24
It was a very very small asset class, maybe 50 billion, 100 billion total.
2:32
Um you know, any private partnership is is technically kind of a hedge fund, right?
2:37
If you have outside investors and you're charging them one and 20 or two and 20 and you're shorting stocks and doing exotic stuff, you know, that's a hedge fund, uh whether you call it that or not.
2:47
So, Warren Buffett had a hedge fund, other folks had a hedge fund, but at the time the biggest hedge funds were Galleon Group, SAC Capital, you know, a handful kind of like Tiger, Soros, you know, it was sort of the wild time for the hedge fund industry, kind of, you know, very very small industry, maybe 30 or 40 or 50 firms of of any significance.
3:08
Uh and that means like, you know, 100 million dollars or more.
3:10
And so, Cramer was one of those firms. I got to work there. I was very lucky.
3:13
Um You you were in high school at the time?
3:18
I I was sort of in this like weird state of both being a high school dropout, a high school graduate, and a high school, you know, continuing, you know, kind of education. It was very weird.
3:28
I had I went to this very special school called Hunter where I fulfilled all my degree requirements pretty early, so I was ready sort of graduated in the state's eyes, but I continued to sort of like go to the school and um pick up credits and like go to college at the same time.
3:44
So, it was just a weird like mishmash of education.
3:47
And um sort of hard to explain, but I Were you kind of like you're almost like a class Were you kind of like you're almost like a class clown of society now?
3:56
Were you like that in high school, or were you just like a straight-laced kid at that this in high school.
4:03
Again, I was if If there was somebody that needed sort of dressing down or including, you know, teacher, principal, whatever.
4:10
I remember my first day of school, I actually dressed down the principal a bit.
4:13
That was sort of a funny you know, thing to do.
4:17
You know, I I guess I have the like fearlessness of But did your parents like discipline you?
4:22
Were they like, "Dude, what the [ __ ] Show some respect." Yeah.
4:27
You know, I I think really.
4:30
You know, I don't know, you know, I I think there's like this, you know, I've always had this, you know, opinion that people take themselves too seriously and and take authority too seriously.
4:39
And of course, you know, I I landed myself in prison.
4:41
But yeah, I think that, you know, there's uh And And And you are right.
4:46
They do take themselves seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:49
Another prediction I remember one one time Martin was on Blab, and again, the numbers were going crazy.
4:55
I got I was like, "I got to see what happened."
4:56
He must be acting a fool or something.
4:59
I don't know what's going on.
5:02
And uh I go in, and there a CNN reporter was demanding like an interview with him.
5:07
He was like She was like, "You should Martin, I've been watching this. It's really interesting.
5:12
I would love to have a conversation with you on CNN."
5:15
And he's like, "No, no, you come on my show. This is my show.
5:19
You want to interview me?
5:19
We can do it right here."
5:21
And she's like, "Okay, I'm not going to do that, but if you come on CNN."
5:24
He's like, "No, no, come on the show."
5:26
And then she's like refusing or whatever.
5:28
He's like, And then she she starts like trying to like have a moment to like tell him how bad he is, and then he asked her He's like, "I'm going to the gala tonight.
5:37
You want to be my plus one?"
5:39
And then he like bought her a plane ticket.
5:41
Yeah, didn't you end up going out Didn't you go out with No, not this one, but uh I just thought, "Wow, what a like you know, they don't teach that in PR school.
5:49
Just ask him on a date if it's not going if the interview's not going well."
5:54
Break Breaking down the fourth wall is like my specialty, right?
5:56
Like, you know, I Well, Elon sort of did that to that BBC guy the other day.
6:00
Like, I I would always ask I remember one of my analysts who was on the sell side before joining me on the buy side.
6:08
They brought a management team to come over to This sort of skipping ahead in my career a little bit to to having my own funds.
6:16
Uh they brought a management team over to you know, pitch some stock or pitch a pipe or something and I I asked the CEO why he didn't he didn't own any stock in his company.
6:26
And he you know, he sort of like humming and hawing like you know, this that temperature is kind of getting hot.
6:30
And I said, you know, cuz I I have your proxy right here and I I put it down on the table and I said, "It looks like you make $550,000 a year.
6:36
That's That's a good amount of money.
6:39
Can you promise me today that you'll buy like 10,000 or 20,000 dollars of your stock at least?"
6:45
And and the guy is just sort of like, you know, the most uncomfortable meeting in the history of Wall Street, you know, cuz I kept like hammering on him.
6:50
I was like, "No, but just tell me like why can't you afford to spend $10,000 and buy your own stock?
6:56
The stock price will go up. Everyone wins.
6:58
You'll show confidence that, you know."
7:00
And I just wouldn't like for 20 minutes let it go.
7:04
Uh and it was just, you know, one of these like, you know, breaking down that fourth wall.
7:07
You're not like you're not supposed to do that, you know, his personal finances are up to him is what most portfolio managers would say, you know.
7:14
He He's allowed to not own his stock.
7:16
It's It's really his call.
7:16
But, you know, being able to sort of like you know, cut to the chase on half these things and like, you know, address the elephant in the room is kind of the thing that I like to do even if it's really uncomfortable or or difficult or embarrassing or you know, a faux pas.
7:32
You know, it's it's something that you know, I'll I'll just sort of, you know, cut to the chase with.
7:35
Well, I remember when you got arrested or the the headline was like you had to put up like your Fidelity account or something like that that had like $60 million in it.
7:43
And at the time you were I don't know how old that you were, 32 or something?
7:48
I mean, early 30s, very young.
7:51
And you I mean, that was a it was a significant amount of money and that didn't That was just your Fidelity account, let alone like your uh you know, the touring uh you know, the the the farm the farmer companies that you'd founded.
8:03
Was Did you make your first bit of money when you started the hedge funds?
8:06
And how did that come to be or were you already doing well just being the hedge funds where you worked?
8:11
Oh, it's a great question.
8:13
So, I never made money at hedge funds.
8:15
I didn't never really made a dollar um Working at or owning? Both.
8:19
So, when I started at hedge funds, I was young and you know, didn't really earn money uh which was fine.
8:26
You know, I wasn't optimizing for that, you know?
8:31
Was optimizing for learning stuff, experience, uh good relationships.
8:33
Uh I mostly succeeded in that, I think.
8:37
You know, probably messed up some relationships, but regardless, you know, I did the best I could as a young guy.
8:43
Started my own fund um pretty pretty terrible at doing the fund management business.
8:49
You know, investing, being a good investor, and being a good fund manager are kind of like pretty different things is what I think most hedge fund entrepreneurs kind of learn.
8:58
You know, um you know, there you can be a really brilliant investor and and not manage the actual business well.
9:03
And the business is to grow your assets as much as possible, provide the best sort of adjusted returns possible, and satisfy your clients.
9:11
And I didn't really want to do any of that.
9:13
You know, I just wanted to invest.
9:14
And um I never took fees from any of my funds, which was very like, you know, sort of bizarre.
9:21
Uh and there were there sort of technical or legal reasons for that, but so I never really made any money uh in hedge funds.
9:26
When I started my first drug company called Retrophin, which is now called Travere, this is about 10 years ago, uh that's sort of where everything for sort of came together for me.
9:36
I I learned pharma by being a hedge fund person for 10 years and in hedge funds studying pharma starting with the early Jim Cramer days where I was just figuring out what a stock and a bond was and then moving on to, you know, trading these things and working at hedge funds and stuff like that and then starting my own.
9:53
I I really mastered pharmaceuticals.
9:55
I I knew everything about pharma.
9:57
And I pressed a lot of people in pharma who were working in the field or working hedge funds.
10:03
And, you know, it was easy for me to sort of start of our company and find some really good assets.
10:08
The first asset I found actually received FDA approval just just a couple months ago.
10:11
So, I'm really proud of that.
10:14
And um when our company went public, uh you know, I was a millionaire.
10:18
How how how old were you? It was 2012.
10:20
Um you know, so I was born in '83. So, I guess I was 29.
10:22
And um I was a CEO of a publicly traded company and um the market cap of that company like I said now is, you know, 1. 5 billion roughly.
10:35
And uh the drug got FDA approved.
10:36
So, I'm really happy about that.
10:38
Like so often in biotech, people start companies.
10:39
They kind of extract some equity value out of them as they go public and then the company's drugs don't work and they kind of move on.
10:48
And there are people that have like coasted in biotech doing that like every three five years.
10:53
You know, I I I I'd name some names, but it it doesn't matter.
10:56
You know, and getting a drug FDA approved and for me kind of on my first try was, you know, sort of like a very, you know, a very like nice feather in my cap.
11:04
And I'm happy for the people that are now getting this prescription for this kidney disease.
11:09
Um really delighted by that.
11:12
But the, you know, the it was a lot of fun to to see that.
11:14
So, when people ask me like, "Where'd you make your first million?"
11:16
I made my first like 25 million all in one You still on the same day.
11:21
You know, like it wasn't like, "Okay, you make You like one of my great friends start off making um you know, he's great story.
11:29
And um one day maybe he'll have him on this podcast.
11:33
Uh he started off trading uh uh sneakers and um he was like 13 or something.
11:36
And then he started trading cars and he ended up trading stocks and he he sort of went from 1,000 bucks to 5,000 to 100,000 to a million to 5 million, you know, etc. etc.
11:47
And you know, that that road isn't what everyone does, right?
11:51
Like some people I was like literally almost like starving, you know, and then like broke, you know, trying to get that big big win and it came through.
11:59
And so you you said a couple things I want to uh quickly clarify.
12:01
You said you didn't make much money in investing cuz you weren't really good at or interested in the fund management, but presumably if you're good at or interested in the investing side, you would still generate returns.
12:12
So what was it like didn't didn't do so hot in the on the investing side either or what happened there?
12:19
Yeah, I had a sort of like a mix of of issues.
12:22
You know, like when you run a small fund, you have like costs and stuff like that.
12:25
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:27
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:29
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:29
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:31
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:32
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:34
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:35
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:36
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:37
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:39
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:40
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:41
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:42
So, you know, you have startup costs and stuff like that.
12:45
issues happened along the way that that led to that prosecution and stuff like that that sort of limited our our ability to to do really well financially.
12:53
Um and again, we we didn't take any fees either because again, we had this sort of big issue that that came about and we just decided to not take fees at all.
13:02
But in the end, our investors did fairly well.
13:04
Um you know, the record shows that our investors all made money in our funds.
13:08
So, I was really happy to deliver that, but you know, along the way there were a lot of twists and turns and hiccups that are they're not worth going into, but hedge funds for me were kind of like a just sort of like a roller coaster of of issues that were just over, you know, and over again kind of like various like, you know, unexpected twists and turns that didn't really add up to profit.
13:29
Some people at hedge funds like, if you get off to like a good start for your first like three or six months, often you can get this momentum raising more capital and raising more capital and you get this like virtuous cycle.
13:41
But you can also go in the other direction where, you know, if you, you know, many funds are started by good investors and they end up failing and those investors sort of come back and take take few years off and start a fund again.
13:51
Um you know, hedge funds have like the shortest lifespan.
13:53
You know, if you look at the top hedge funds from the '90s, almost none of them exist today.
14:00
Uh and I think of those like top 10 hedge funds of all time, like five were shut down by regulatory intervention.
14:05
So like it's a very hazardous job.
14:07
You know, there's there's a, you know, 10% chance of going going to jail being a hedge fund manager.
14:13
It's it's uh it's a really, it's you know, kind of dangerous job to be in.
14:17
And uh you know, you're dealing with the markets and you're dealing with representations to investors.
14:22
Just how to mark privates, right, is is kind of like one of these like real debates.
14:26
I know a guy who went to jail for that uh fairly recently.
14:28
Um you know, anybody looking at your books can basically say, "Oh, well, you marked this too high.
14:34
You know, therefore you, you know, you're you're defrauding your investors for charging them too much."
14:39
Well, you marked it too low.
14:39
Well, now you're defrauding them because, you know, you're you're you're preferencing the other investors who are coming into the fund.
14:46
So you you really can't can't win.
14:48
It's a very tough business.
14:48
You don't build any actual lasting value.
14:50
As you know, almost no hedge funds have gone public.
14:53
So this is kind of a crummy business in general and like I I I don't recommend anyone kind of get into it unless they're so interested in stocks that they can't you know, help but like spend their whole time looking at stocks.
15:06
Like Cramer back then, Cramer's like a stock addict, right?
15:08
So this guy, the guy I I consider him, you know, not quite a friend, but like I I I I have a fond memory of working with him.
15:17
I mean he is like a a drug addict to their drug.
15:23
He is like that to securities.
15:23
Like he cannot get away from it.
15:25
There's nothing he loves more in the world than stocks.
15:29
And you think about people like Warren Buffett and say maybe that's that's kind of like them.
15:32
And the average person who wants to get into hedge funds, they wanted to get into it because oh I I can make 10 million bucks or I can make 50 million bucks in a year. Wow, look at that.
15:39
Jim Simons made a billion dollars. I can be like that. That sounds great.
15:42
And you know, that's a terrible terrible terrible way to look at it, right?
15:44
If you wake up in the middle of night thinking about S&P earnings estimates, you should be a hedge fund, right?
15:48
But if you don't care on a Sunday, you know, what's what the news is going to be on Monday in the stock market or what, you know, your favorite company's CEO is doing that night, you know, that's it's not for you.
15:59
And I think there are people that the hedge fund industry has grown so much.
16:02
People come to finance not understanding that.
16:05
In the '90s and the '80s, the only people that were in hedge funds were people like Jim and Buffett and people like like that that were just like so intensely insanely possessed by the gyrations of the market.
16:15
And if that's not you, it's it's kind of not a good industry.
16:18
But for me, I I was sort of intensely possessed with pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical assets, which are drugs and medicines.
16:25
And, you know, it was actually a better fit to do private equity um, you know, kind of style investing, where you actually buy whole medicines, whole companies.
16:35
You know, that that worked really well for me.
16:38
And I've seen a lot of people in hedge funds sort of transition to that model of well, I can buy 5% of a software company.
16:43
Why can't I buy 100% of a software company, right?
16:45
That that makes more sense to me.
16:47
And for me, you lose that like one of the things I was very bad at at at trading and investing was kind of that impulse, right?
16:52
Where you have to have this insanely good discipline as a trader.
16:57
And my partner had this really really great discipline. I didn't.
17:01
So, I could value a security as good as anyone, and but when it came time to like executing and actually deploying capital and risk management and stuff like that, it was it was much harder for me to be good at that.
17:12
Um, so when it came time Wait, what is that?
17:15
What what what what does that mean?
17:16
You're you're not patient, you you wanted the dopamine hit you wanted the dopamine hit and you're you're just you're just you're just like a you have normal anxiety like a lot of people is is that what that means?
17:27
I think that like to ask somebody to manage a portfolio well is one of the most impossible tasks in like human psychology because the there's this great book.
17:35
I've gotten better at it over the years for this worth and my my personal trading is as paradoxically like sort of profit as my you know, I basically couldn't do that in in private investing.
17:47
Uh the the hardest thing to do is is really to fight two or three different for me specific demons that are psychologically based but everyone has their own demon.
17:56
For me it's avoiding this this desire to double down.
17:59
So the market is like this really tough psychological battle where you're constantly going to be humbled that your opinion is wrong.
18:09
That your thesis is wrong.
18:12
That this stock is not cheap. You're wrong.
18:13
It's not cheap at all and you got to sell it and that's really hard cognitively to embrace every day.
18:22
You can embrace it every now and then.
18:23
Oh yeah, obviously I I I I bought this crap stock and I'm wrong.
18:25
Uh but when you're right, you do get that dopamine hit and you don't want to confront that loss of the dopamine hit or even worse the acknowledgement that you were wrong and you're going to be wrong like 40 50% of the time at best, you know, say 35 40% of the time and most people don't want to be wrong ever.
18:45
So the desire is sometimes to double down and just say no, I'm I know I'm right.
18:49
This isn't even better opportunity than it was before.
18:52
And if you keep doing that, you you basically will will go bankrupt.
18:54
Um and I it's it's like the fastest way to go bankrupt.
19:00
And you know, I've learned that trick, you know, a couple times now and and I think that you know, I've gotten better at sort of not doubling down but it to be really great trader, you got to not just not double down.
19:09
You also have to get out, you know, before all the damage is done.
19:12
And so I so I've started to do that well, too.
19:14
But, you know, these these pains are not pains your investors want you to learn on their dime, right?
19:21
They're They're pains you have to sort of, you know, be ready, you know, when you start your own fund.
19:25
So, I sort of started my fund too early and stuff like that.
19:27
But, I think that I wouldn't I wouldn't change a lot in the sense that when you have a fund, you learn more about your industry, if you do it right, I think.
19:36
You learn more about your industry than than than any other sort of job other than actually being in that industry.
19:41
So, you you learn a ton about what Wall Street wants.
19:45
So, let's say if you're a software analyst, it's really great to then have a software company because you know exactly kind of what the exit looks like and what like public company investors want to see.
19:52
And the same thing works in biotech.
19:54
And in biotech, to handicap like will this company or stock be a good stock, well, you got to figure out will this drug be a good drug?
20:01
And that's the exact same skill set you have to do when you're CEO.
20:02
So, you have that like, you know, um crossover that's happening quite a bit more in biotech. I've I've seen that.
20:11
You know, it doesn't happen so much in tech.
20:12
People who invest in tech generally don't want to be operators.
20:15
And the tricks that you have to learn on operating side in tech are very different from biotech.
20:19
In biotech, you can actually like learn pick up most of the operating stuff from being an investor.
20:25
Uh whereas I think in tech like, you know, being an investor in software company certainly doesn't make you a programmer.
20:29
You know, so you know, there's And and And that's what I was going to ask you because you you you were like, well, I started a pharmaceutical company because I love the asset and I learned through it through finance, which is way different than like, for example, my friend Kara started this company Hint, which does like water because she was like, my skin was bad and I didn't want to drink Gatorade or Coke anymore.
20:46
So, I like went and formed I went and boiled fruit peels and made this fruit water that's like tastes good, it's good for you. And we grew from there.
20:52
Your founding story was like, oh, I found assets that were interesting.
20:56
Like it's like That's like foreign to me. You know what I mean?
21:00
Yeah, so like if if there was a company, for example, uh my first hedge fund we bought 10% of this company, publicly traded company, and they had bought this asset from Bristol Myers, a major major drug company in New Jersey.
21:11
And Bristol Myers spent like 50 million bucks developing this drug, and they quit.
21:17
They basically said, "This doesn't fit our portfolio.
21:18
We're not really going after the disease they were trying to go after was hypertension, which is very boring and not does not need another medicine.
21:25
There's like 60 hypertension drugs, you know, does not need this to be a 61st."
21:28
And they they just quit on the drug.
21:31
Um there are people who have like really bad resistant hypertension and so forth.
21:36
So I really like this asset.
21:37
I like the way it worked, and I after Bristol Myers quit on it, the the publicly traded company in the financial crisis, they merged with another publicly traded company.
21:44
So I went to the publicly traded company, and again, I only thing I have is a head shot moment.
21:48
And I said, "Let me buy."
21:48
And nobody's told this story, by the way, so this is a good good time to tell it cuz it's really, you know, it's basically a story about how we went to this company with $2 million and turned it into over a billion.
22:00
Um you know, which is is kind of remarkable, but people do this in pharma every day, and my friend uh and at the time he was actually my biggest investor, Vivek Ramaswamy, he's now running for president.
22:09
He basically took our our business model and supersized it.
22:13
And again, um you know, who who influenced who is is a matter will left will be left to history, but the the point is we went to uh this company that had the license from Bristol, and they had they were doing anything with it, and we said, "Lis- listen, we'll take this. We'll find investors.
22:29
We'll build a company around it, and uh I'm going to figure out how to how to make this work."
22:32
And they said, "Okay, sure, you know, we we got this asset sitting here doing nothing.
22:36
If you pay us $2 million bucks, we'll we'll send you the $2 million bucks."
22:40
Now, we sent them a million dollars, which was really catastrophic because you never want to sort of go back on your word, uh but it was really like a dire circumstance where I forgot what happened exactly, but we just couldn't come up with the money.
22:51
And it was like we sent them a million, and they're like, "What the [ __ ] You know, you can't do this this, you know?"
22:55
And I I was sort of like, you know, "Geez, this is a you know, huge embarrassment, and problem, but she's going to have to give us like 30 days or 90 days.
23:04
And, you know, we we worked it out and we were able to give them the second million, but it was like this colossal embarrassment at right at the start.
23:12
And, um you know, [ __ ] does happen, but you know, ideally shouldn't happen like that.
23:16
Um and again, really embarrassing and tough, but we got them the 2 million.
23:19
And we decided I I sort of did all this research and said, "Instead of hypertension, we should go with this rare kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis."
23:29
And if you just go on PubMed and you have the willpower, you can learn a lot about medicine and you can dive in and really PubMed PubMed just being like a database of articles. Yeah, PubMed is I guess. Yep.
23:39
PubMed is the government database of all scholastic biomedical literature. So, 36 million papers.
23:46
If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire.
23:49
It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting and sifting and sifting, which most people do don't have the patience, desire, willpower to do, but every single biomedical innovation is is logged in on PubMed and And you were sifting for what?
24:01
What were you looking for when you went on PubMed?
24:04
Yeah, you you have to put the pieces together.
24:06
So, the the this drug was an endothelin receptor antagonist.
24:08
Uh and what does that mean?
24:11
It it it inhibits a protein called endothelin and its function.
24:15
Well, what will that do, right?
24:17
You have to decide, well, you have to learn, where is endothelin expressed in the body? How does it work? What does it do?
24:22
If I stop endothelin from working, what benefits will that have?
24:25
What problems will that result in?
24:27
And you have to look at the history of, okay, well, other companies have tried this. What have they seen?
24:30
What have they discovered?
24:31
And what's what's interesting about pharma is that you think that these companies cover the waterfront, but they really just prod and poke a little bit.
24:37
There's actually probably 10 diseases that this drug could be beneficial for.
24:41
And uh I made a list of those and I said, "Okay, well, which one of these is going to work for sure?"
24:46
And there are companies that like got half the answer and stuff like that.
24:50
And you just have to keep poking.
24:50
And we found like these handful of diseases that really made a lot of sense.
24:54
Now, the problem was nobody on Wall Street really liked it.
24:57
Um, you know, it was very you know, kind of early, you know, there was this sort of tough problem of if you reduce the amount of protein in the urine of a patient, does that really save their kidney?
25:10
And I thought I convinced everyone that I could reduce the amount of protein in the urine, which was a a very big endpoint to me, but not as conclusive as, okay, am I am I saving their lives?
25:21
Am I am I preventing dialysis and kidney failure?
25:25
Which is really the the so-called hard endpoint.
25:26
So, I had the soft endpoint that like seemed like almost certain I was right.
25:29
I was starting to convince companies like AbbVie and and Vertex and other like big biopharmas that, you know, I was onto something.
25:35
But nobody wanted to write a check, you know, so I basically got one of the management teams that I I I used to deal with on on on Wall Street, uh, Ten Baste, and I slowly kind of cobbled together some money, uh, met folks like Peter Thiel and others to to try to sort of get some investors, did a reverse merger.
25:52
What what's Peter Thiel like?
25:54
Peter's great, you know, it was you know, 10 10 plus years ago, he'd never done pharma.
25:59
Um, so we we got to meet him, and this was going to be basically like his first pharma deal ever.
26:03
Uh, we didn't end up doing the deal, but it was a it was a very funny thing because like there was this East Coast versus West Coast mentality.
26:11
Uh, you know, I was a Wall Street guy, he was, you know, he's obviously, you know, one of the top VC type guys, and this is the time where like he had Clarium, you know, their their Founders Fund was just getting started and stuff like that.
26:23
And, uh, you know, the wheeling dealing like Wall Street sort of style of like, oh, we're going to do a reverse merger, which is basically kind of like a SPAC with no money.
26:31
Um, you know, it's like even worse than a SPAC.
26:34
Um, you know, you do the you do the listing and then you raise the money.
26:38
Uh, but it's a way to go public, and and we did it, and he was like, ah, you can't go public in a year or two.
26:43
And, you know, the reality is you you kind of can, in especially in biopharma, where the assets are like these very modular systems.
26:50
They're not like a base business that has X dollars revenue and is growing at X rate.
26:54
These are like, okay, this asset's worth something dead or alive.
26:58
In other words, if it's being developed or not, if you develop it, it's worth something.
27:03
You know, especially with the right business plan, it could be worth a lot.
27:05
So, anyway, we we we decided go public, we raised some money, we started doing clinical trials.
27:09
The trial worked and the rest is history, but it took, you know, it takes hundreds of million dollars to to develop a drug.
27:17
Again, the value of the company is is 1.
27:18
5 value of that drug specifically is probably around 1 billion.
27:23
Again, whether it actually achieves the sales goals or beats them or disappoints, we'll we'll see as the drug launches.
27:28
And I'm rooting for the company, uh, but uh, we So, you you didn't even you didn't even get the drug in this example, you didn't get the drug to the point where people were buying it or using it.
27:38
It was you made money off just the the fact that this will exist hopefully in 10 or whatever years.
27:45
Yeah, and this is where well, a lot of people don't know my story about medicine.
27:48
A lot of people think that I take medicines and raise prices.
27:51
Well, this drug was barely in human beings.
27:53
It had been in like 30 or 50 people um, up up until that point and you know, I I made most of my money in in sort of developments in in in pharma on the research side.
28:04
So, you know, this is a drug in clinical research.
28:06
So, no, it's not it hadn't been FDA approved.
28:08
It would take 10 years to get it FDA approved.
28:11
So, it was a long marathon of running studies, getting the evidence, running more studies, getting more evidence and continuing that process and you know, as we started to do that, the value of the company increased and people said, okay, I think I get this.
28:24
And then as the data came in, now it's FDA approved. It's called Filspari.
28:28
I named the drug Sparsentan.
28:31
You know, gave it its first chemical name and you know, it's it's you know, it I'm so happy it's it's FDA approved.
28:37
Now, I left the company halfway through this process, so I should acknowledge that, but you know, all the same plans and and so forth, you know, continued.
28:44
Did you did you own most of it at the time or what was that did you have to divest when all the [ __ ] went down?
28:50
So I went from 90, you know, when I when you started it to 50 when we're public at the around 40 or 50% after our first financing down to 30 and our second financing down to 20.
28:59
You know, so at time of our IPO we we when you do a reverse merger you often don't get on on NASDAQ.
29:04
So we we did an IPO on NASDAQ 2014.
29:09
And the company was worth like three or 400 million and I had about 15 20% of it.
29:12
And again, this is where I made my first wealth ever.
29:15
But the funny thing is as you guys maybe know, you have a situation like that.
29:19
You actually don't have any capital. Yeah, you're not liquid. Yeah, you can't sell it.
29:23
So you know, I I've got millions of shares of the stock, but you know, I'm sitting there saying, okay, well You're like how am I going to buy this Wu-Tang album?
29:31
Yeah, cuz I well, you know, well before that you think about like how am I going to buy this $5,000 a month apartment and go to the $7,000 a month apartment, which is like a very funny discussion for somebody that you know, has 50 or 100 million dollars of of of stock value.
29:45
And I would go to these banks and say, listen, can I borrow 5% you know, of my money of my stock value? And they would say, no.
29:52
And you know, I I'd say, you know, you know, why not?
29:56
You know, and they'd say, well, you know, it's a new stock, you know, it's it's kind of you know, still you know, a little bit unseasoned.
30:02
You're the big shareholder, you know, we're not comfortable with it.
30:04
And I was like sitting there like, oh my god, you know, this is insane cuz I don't want to sell my stock cuz it sends a like kind of a bad signal to the market.
30:14
You know, but I don't want to you know, uh also be starving.
30:17
So it was very like funny thing.
30:19
And I don't want to be one of those greedy CEOs that has, you know, an insane salary where you don't need it.
30:26
So it was very just sort of a funny circumstance, but eventually we had a big squabble at the company. I ended up leaving.
30:34
It's very tumultuous and and uh traumatic story in a lot of ways.
30:37
And it led to my prosecution.
30:39
Uh you know, there was this fight with with the board and it got very so nasty that the the the board, you know, kind of evil people here, but the board sort of went to law enforcement as kind of one of their ways to win this fight.
30:53
And you know, one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is that there's this big revolving door between corporate law and law enforcement.
31:00
When I say law enforcement, I mean the attorney general sorry, AUSAs, the associate US attorneys that work in the Department of Justice.
31:10
And it's not hard if you go to a law firm, you know, like a Cooley, Cleary, Gottlieb, Skadden, Arps, pick your Paul Weiss, pick your biggest law firm.
31:17
They say, "Hey, we have this guy. He did something bad.
31:20
You know, look into this."
31:22
You know, usually you'll get an indictment pretty fast.
31:24
This happened with the Google guy that had the left Waymo. Yeah, Andrew.
31:29
This happened to a Goldman Sachs trader that stole some source code like emailed emailed himself home to work on the source code.
31:38
Then he went to another hedge fund.
31:39
They said, "See, he he stole intellectual property."
31:41
The FBI got him in in 48 hours.
31:42
Goldman makes a phone call.
31:44
They'll act on it quickly.
31:47
Google makes a phone call, they'll act on it quickly.
31:49
You're a big enough law firm customer, you're paying law firm 10 million bucks.
31:52
And all those law firm partners worked in government, right?
31:57
They worked literally in the job they could get you indicted.
31:58
So they could pick up a phone and get it and make it happen.
32:00
And I actually have like the person's name who picked up the phone.
32:03
You know, and it's it's like so ridiculous because a boardroom battle, corporate squabble shouldn't turn into, you know, okay, let me just make call and get, you know, get this guy arrested, then we'll win the fight, right?
32:15
And it's like, you know, I I was actually acquitted of those charges.
32:18
And I'm so proud of that um to this day.
32:22
It's like the most the happiest thing that I have to look forward to or to talk about because like it was this clash of like these old hand old older incompetent sort of biotech people and this these younger sort of like aggressive executives that that I shepherded and the older guys kind of won in terms of control of the company, but the stock never went up again really.
32:45
And you know, it it just was sort of this company that they were able to sort of siphon millions of dollars out out of uh which is like for for a lot of talentless executives, like that's that's really exciting.
32:56
Like getting a uh a five five million dollar paycheck a year plus a, you know, golden parachute, plus all the perks and the power of being the CEO.
33:06
Like I None of that stuff mattered to me.
33:08
I just wanted to make really big money and really big advances.
33:12
And for a lot of people like, you know, getting that the thing I just discussed was like that's their life goal.
33:18
That's their career goal.
33:19
There's no no need to do anything else.
33:21
They'd rather preside over company that does nothing but pays them five million bucks a year than a company that makes a huge advance in in a treatment or whatever.
33:30
So, it was this big fight and and I just basically said, "I'll I'll start a new company. I don't need you guys." And I started uh Turing.
33:37
We should uh let you explain kind of the thing cuz if if people listening to this have basically only heard of you as the guy who jacked up the price of the drugs.
33:44
And I've heard you explain this before many times where again uh I said you were entertaining because somebody would come on and be like, "You're the worst. You're like you're evil. You did this."
33:55
And then you would say, "So, explain to me what I did exactly."
33:59
And then they would immediately not know what the hell to say.
34:01
They're like, "You you raised the price of the drug and now people can't get it."
34:04
You're like, "Tell me, who can't get it?
34:05
Where are you getting that data from?
34:06
Like what what And you would walk them through almost like the Socratic method of what actually happened, why what your perspective was on it.
34:14
And so, I want you to share that because I think a lot of people have heard the other perspective, which is guy buys drug, raises price, he's evil. That's one perspective.
34:22
I'd like you to share your perspective and then people can decide for themselves which they feel to be more true.
34:26
So, And you You even and and there was another funny part related to that is you didn't even go to prison for that reason.
34:33
You you if I remember correctly you admitted you were wrong for a bunch of things uh but it wasn't even related. Unrelated.
34:40
Your persona was removed.
34:41
Your your Yeah, yeah, yeah, but your I think you being smug and being an [ __ ] when maybe you should have just been like yes ma'am, I'm sorry was maybe probably the more appropriate answer but you were kind of like being smug and you got a lot of [ __ ] for that.
34:51
So I think that hurt your your your thing but you didn't even get prosecuted you didn't get prosecuted for that.
34:55
No, yeah, it's not a it's I mean I think that's why it was so small cuz it's a crime to choose the price of your product, you know, if you guys wanted to charge for for this podcast, right?
35:05
You you know, whether it's an advertiser or partner or or the listener.
35:10
You can pick whatever price you want.
35:11
You know, that's your call.
35:13
You know, it's your job to explore the frontier of that price and volume curve.
35:17
And it's your job to sort of find the maximum revenue.
35:22
Uh you can choose to do that or not do that.
35:23
And I think that's why American capitalism is so great is like it's it's really the only person's call is the firm owner and the firm and management team's call, right?
35:32
It's not a politician's call.
35:33
It's not the media's call.
35:35
It's not the guy in the you know, in the sort of grandstands call, you know, you know, hooting and hollering at you.
35:42
It's it's not even the patient's call even though they're your core constituent and we care the most about them.
35:47
It's it's your call as management team, right? You set that price.
35:50
When you email the distributor, that's the price that matters.
35:54
It's the price that you picked and nobody can tell you what that price is and any And what was that what was that logic that you that Sean was referring to that you were going through?
36:04
would be you Yes, yes, you had the right to raise the price.
36:06
That doesn't mean you're not a jerk or that people weren't hurt by that because they now couldn't afford it.
36:12
So now address that part of it.
36:13
So the reverse psychology is is super important.
36:16
I'll go through that in a second but I think the most you know, what you said is is really important because it's this like inviolable right.
36:23
And I I was really pissed off quite frankly that there was this effort by by Paul wannabe would-be politicians that didn't end up winning uh and and others to try to sort of take that right away uh through like this regulation by embarrassment right?
36:38
Like it was all of this like we'll shame you until you change your mind.
36:42
It's like no, you're not going to shame me into changing my mind.
36:45
It's like, you know, that that's insane.
36:47
You're trying to take my my right away.
36:49
It's my right to run my business how I see fit.
36:51
Now we'll go through all the logic of why I think it was a good idea and a tenable idea and it's not something a jerk would do.
36:58
It's not something an [ __ ] would do.
36:59
But just first and foremost, you know, how dare you try to tell me, you know, what my price should be because ultimately every person in America is working for some business that sets their price.
37:09
And you're basically saying, well, if you do it to me, well, you can do it to Apple next or you going to tell them that the iPhone's too expensive or you going to do it to your podcast where an advertiser says, "Oh my god, you want $50,000 to post a an ad on my podcast? Well, that's not right.
37:20
I want that for $25,000."
37:22
Well, that's bull, you know, you're not getting the ad.
37:24
And you know, I think that there's this special difference when it comes to health care.
37:28
And I I've learned this, I processed it slowly.
37:30
And like I said, I'll tell you briefly about my new company in a minute.
37:33
But people treat health care products and services in a different part of the mind.
37:37
You know, a friend of mine worked at Amex and got to talk to Buffett about this where he said Buffett likes businesses where consumers think about the brand with a different part of their mind.
37:46
They don't think about it with the rational part.
37:47
They think about it with the emotional part.
37:50
And Amex is an emotional product.
37:52
Coca-Cola is an emotional product.
37:52
You don't think about it and say, "Oh, this soda water costs, you know, sugar water costs 20 cents to make.
37:57
I don't know if I want to buy this for a dollar."
37:59
You know, you you just buy the soda because you love Coca-Cola.
38:02
And and the more that you can make people think with that side of their the brain, the better.
38:06
In health care, you kind of get this like very visceral like entitlement of like no, I need this drug.
38:12
I don't care what it costs for the producer.
38:15
I don't care any like this is my right to get this medicine.
38:18
And obviously, you know, that they're that's not quite right in my opinion.
38:22
So, getting back to to sort of just again getting past my just annoyance that there be people that sort of felt like, you know, they had a right to tell you what your prices should be without knowing anything about your business in the first place.
38:33
Uh I think the biggest thing that worked on with that Socratic method is just showing people how little they know about their in this industry, right?
38:41
Most people don't know much about the pharma industry.
38:43
I don't blame them for that, right?
38:45
This is the industry that I spent my life in.
38:46
Uh to know that it's in in and out of pharma, you know, I would I would have be I'd be surprised if anybody did.
38:51
So, the first thing I tend to ask is, "Well, what price do you think product should be?"
38:57
And this is sort of where like it all falls apart for for the interlocutor because the average pharmaceutical price would shock most people.
39:04
You know, there are rare disease drugs uh like Spinraza and the AveXis product for SMA, they're millions of dollars.
39:11
You know, it's a million dollars for a drug a year.
39:14
You know, so every year for the rest of your life, you got to pay a million bucks.
39:17
You know, there are drugs like that.
39:19
But you you don't pay that directly out of pocket, right?
39:21
It's Nobody's paying out of pocket for anything in this You know, that's that's an You know, the the you know, it's passed down insurance company, not to the end patient. Correct.
39:30
You know, we have this convoluted crazy system that generally needs to kind of be broken in half.
39:34
Uh but, you know, and again, I'll show you my product in a minute that unlike Mark Cuban's garbage is is might actually help.
39:42
Uh the uh the uh you know, the the first question I always ask people is like, "Well, what what do you Where do you price the drug?
39:50
Where you have I had a I had a drug at Retrophin. 60 people took it. 6 0.
39:52
And they needed it to save their life.
39:56
What what price should that be?
39:57
Should it be the price of Viagra? No.
40:01
Yeah, yeah, I but I believe in this thing called utility theory of price, which I probably studied in in economics a long time ago, but forgot.
40:07
But this this this idea is that price has three or four different theories of of price.
40:15
There's theory of kind of value, there's theory of utility, and there's sort of other types of theories like it should cost a lot of people sort of like would give me their theories in in lay terms like, "Well, it should cost what you made it plus a comfortable margin."
40:26
I was like, "Okay, that that sounds interesting."
40:29
And other people would say, "Well, it should cost what it's worth to the user."
40:34
And and that's kind of how most medicine is priced.
40:35
If you can forego some terrible operation, you know, then and that operation's really expensive, by taking this medicine, it should sort of cost the price of you foregoing that operation.
40:48
And it's like what for analysis, right?
40:50
So, for a lot of rare diseases, it's like, "Well, but for this drug, you would be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
40:54
So, it's kind of a bargain at say $100,000, cuz otherwise the insurance is going to spend half a million on you, you know, going to the hospital every week and so forth and so forth."
41:03
If you price it on based on what it would cost, like, "Okay, well, price it at break even."
41:06
Well, I don't have a lot of incentive to make a medicine like that, right?
41:09
You want to kind of want this windfall profit if you're a drug company because you have this risk that this shit's not going to work.
41:15
And you know, you'll you'll be a you'll be a applying to a job at Pfizer, you know, after your biotech startup fails.
41:20
So, if you do win, you can't just break even, you know, you have to overcome the risks and the risk-adjusted probability that you would have failed.
41:29
Otherwise, nobody would invest in companies like this if all the benefit was you would break even.
41:34
So, you have to have this extra return.
41:35
And so, when you do the pricing, I think that the best logical thing to do is pick a price that the alternative care, in other words, a world without this drug, you would forego all those costs for this drug.
41:48
And so, I think that price works.
41:48
There are people who are, you know, just literally legitimately out of their mind that say, "Oh, the drug should be just should just be free."
41:53
And of course, you know, where where who's going to pay for the office?
41:56
Who's going to Who's going to pay for the accountant?
41:57
Who's going to pay for the next drug?
41:58
Who's going to pay for the next drug, right?
42:00
If if every drug is free, then nobody's going to want to go make drugs.
42:03
And again, I if the if that's the system society dictated to me, you know, I'll follow those rules.
42:08
But the society the the the system society dictated was it's your choice what to price your product at.
42:13
It's the insurance choice to pay for it.
42:15
It's the doctor's choice to prescribe it.
42:16
And there are countries like there's this miracle drug by Vertex, one of my favorite drug companies, for cystic fibrosis. Miracle product.
42:23
Literally a cure for cystic fibrosis. Amazing.
42:27
Cystic is no longer a medical problem for 90% of people with cystic fibrosis.
42:31
This company should have parades.
42:34
Parades every year for it, right?
42:34
But instead, they get [ __ ] for it.
42:36
And I have friends that have their lives have been saved.
42:40
One of my friends in high school died of cystic fibrosis at 19.
42:44
And these guys have doing I I use this term very carefully, God's work by by saving people CF.
42:49
There are countries that refuse to pay for the medicine right now.
42:52
Cuz it's $300,000 a year.
42:52
And my drug, I ask people all the time, well, how much is my drug?
42:57
Well, I say they go, "Oh, it's 750."
42:59
That's not what I'm asking.
43:00
In pharma, we don't worry about what the price per bullets.
43:02
We worry about what does it cost for somebody to have to pay for this medicine out of pocket?
43:06
What is insurance paying for a full course or full year? Right?
43:11
And they say, "Well, I don't know.
43:13
How many pills do you do you have to take when you take this drug that you raised the price up?"
43:16
And I said, "Well, why are you ready to criticize me when you don't know what the total cost is?"
43:21
You know, you're you're ready jumping down But you know why they're criticizing you, which is like as I'm listening to this this you talk, like you have this very classic uh issue which is both an uh it's uh an asset and a liability, which is you're quite uh logical.
43:35
So, you're like this one guy, I forget the guy's name, the the guy who's running for president, he just did what I did and he did it times 10, but I did it early on, which is like you follow the very logical thing, which is we hear this all the time and we have friends like this where it's like "Well, I thought it could work because of X, Y, and Z."
43:50
And in most people's heads, they would say to themselves, "Yeah, but no one else is doing it, therefore it's impossible."
43:55
In your head, which is a very common thing in entrepreneurs like you, which is no, like if A, then B, then C.
43:59
Like it's a very logical approach.
44:02
But where you've have [ __ ] up is you weren't It's like It's like you're so smart at studying the logic that you also kind of [ __ ] up by studying like, okay, but if I do that, then people will hate me.
44:16
Therefore, I should probably use these words or smile this way when they confront me.
44:19
And like that was like a a you're It's kind of like what Elon's doing.
44:23
It's like, dude, you're so [ __ ] smart, Elon.
44:24
You're doing all this amazing [ __ ] Don't call Twitter Titter.
44:28
Like think of a different troll that's a like that's a net positive, not a net negative.
44:32
And that was it what it seemed like was your thing, which is like, yeah, dude, you're logical.
44:34
You're not wrong about this, this, and this.
44:38
But you're just being a [ __ ] idiot when you're talking about it and you're not like like what Don't smile that way in Congress, you know?
44:43
Even if you're I respect it cuz I'm like I think you know, and I'm sure you were told by people what the correct way to frame and spin this is.
44:53
And if whatever executive does I So so I I can be I can be just like the guy at Pfizer, right?
44:59
Just like the Like the right?
45:01
And I can And I And I think it's cool that you're not that guy, but it's like Well, that's the issue.
45:05
You could You could have saved 7 years of your life maybe and only gotten like less if you just would have been up just like be a little bit more likable sometimes to save your own ass.
45:12
And sure, and and you know, I I wanted to straddle that line, but like how much or like when I when I talk at Ivy League schools, I get standing ovations because I think that the kids realize that their the life their personality is about to be choked out by the the big pharma, big corporate world, right?
45:29
Whether they're going to pharma or they're going to to to finance, their life is is over.
45:32
You know, their ability to express themselves the way they see fit is done, right?
45:39
Their their ability to wear what they want to work is over.
45:41
And I think that I represent that fresh fresh fresh air that's like, okay, maybe you can actually keep a personality.
45:48
Maybe you can actually be somebody real instead of, you know, look look at the average CEO of corporate America.
45:55
Look at the Budweiser CEO and Anheuser-Busch CEO.
45:58
It's like, oh, I I got to say what is the maximally the least interesting and the least offensive possible road to walk and they can't have a real personality because if I do, you know, someone's going to have an issue with it and it's going to be a problem for my business.
46:12
And I just hate the that the corporate world has gotten to that point where, you know, showing who you are or or the kind of person you are or having an opinion of any kind can be held against you.
46:21
I agree and the world wants you to be vanilla.
46:23
I'm on Look, this is why people like our pod.
46:26
I also see the other side where it's like, yeah, dude, but you just [ __ ] up all those like I I don't know if this is true, but maybe it is.
46:33
You just messed up all the people who wanted this drug because you got locked up and or you hurt your family or you hurt people who cared about you all because of you want to express yourself.
46:43
If you want to express yourself, get a [ __ ] dog.
46:44
Go hang out with your cat. Like talk to them.
46:45
Like, you know what I mean?
46:47
Like that's that's that's the other other argument which Let me ask you one question.
46:50
One question How many people could not afford or did not were not able to access the drug that previously could when the price was lower because the price got raised?
46:58
Was it um 1% 10% 50% 75% of people could no longer afford the drug cuz that's the key, right? percent. Zero. Zero percent.
47:08
And so so that's the thing that like You know, not how far works.
47:10
So explain that part because I think that's the key consideration.
47:14
Uh is if you raise the price of the drug and these people who needed it to pay for their their illness could no longer afford it and now they were sort of out you know, [ __ ] out of luck cuz you bought the drug and and decided to reprice it.
47:25
That would have been one thing.
47:26
I think there's a I think that would support the argument against in a way at least the emotional argument against.
47:32
But when you add the fact that nobody lost access to the drug or a very small percentage, if that's true, I don't know if it's true.
47:37
I don't do I don't do the research on this, but you're saying that that's true.
47:40
That completely changes the argument in my opinion.
47:43
I I think so, too and and that's why like I was so bold and and to to Sam's point, you know, seemingly like tone deaf, right?
47:51
About this because I wanted people to see, well, this is not a stupid person.
47:55
Why is he being so tone-deaf and obstinate?
47:57
Hopefully, it's because he's right and and let me look into that. And some people did.
48:01
You know, and that's why I've got fans.
48:02
Uh and I'm not Billy McFarland or somebody like that.
48:07
You know, I've been able to raise money and start a new business because, you know, I accomplished things and I'm a skilled guy.
48:11
Uh it's it's this like failure to it's this desire to want to buy a narrative from media or buy buy anger or rent anger that that's sort of accumulated here.
48:25
People When it comes to medicine, like like I said, there are drugs far more expensive than Daraprim.
48:29
And uh like $500,000 or more per year.
48:33
Daraprim's a one-time one course, right?
48:36
So, there's not an insurer in the world that didn't cover Daraprim because if you don't pay the $50,000 roughly what Daraprim costs for a whole course, forget per pill.
48:45
About 50 grand if you end up needing Daraprim.
48:47
Uh if you don't pay that, you're going to pay for the guy's funeral.
48:51
You're going to pay for his ICU visits.
48:52
You're paying for his, you know, you're going to pay for a million bucks of this guy being in ICU for the next 6 months.
48:57
It doesn't make sense, right, financially to not pay for Daraprim.
49:00
The other thing is it's such a small medicine. This was less than 0.
49:02
1% of an insurer's budget, right?
49:06
[ __ ] not even not even a policy is being formed at Aetna or United Healthcare because it's like No, they have automated policies for this stuff.
49:13
Like until the drug ends up being like a couple more basis points, you know, several dozen basis points, it's just not going to be a factor, right?
49:21
They're more worried about is somebody taking insulin when they could be taking metformin, which is much cheaper, right?
49:27
Make them make 20,000 people move from insulin to metformin.
49:30
You know, or 50,000 or 500,000 people.
49:32
Our policy is you got to take OTC before you get this that's prescription.
49:37
That's the kind of policies healthcare health insurance care about.
49:40
Again, you wouldn't know that unless you're in the healthcare industry, right?
49:42
And the problem is when you have people that are that are shooting at you, you know, and they don't know what your industry is about, you know, it it's it's akin to me telling like a database programmer, well, you know, no SQL databases are better than SQL databases. And he's like, why?
49:55
Where why are you saying that?
49:57
Well, and he starts putting out all these data.
49:58
I'm like, oh, that's just that's just how I feel.
49:59
You know, it's better to have a a no a no SQL than a SQL.
50:02
I think I wouldn't do that cuz I'm not that intellectually dishonest.
50:06
But people are very willing to be intellectually dishonest when it comes to things they don't know about because, you know, it's a personal thing.
50:11
And again, my my goal is to better understand how personal healthcare is to people that it actually is this cherished good and service. It's not like food.
50:21
It doesn't have the elasticity of other things.
50:22
It's a very unique product that we put in a different place.
50:29
And, you know, my my new company is as sort of an effort to sort of understand that, make make amends, make penance in a in a way because I think that again, healthcare is one of these goods that unlike most other goods, there's a marginal the marginal demand demand for marginal healthcare is virtually infinite.
50:45
Well, amongst the three of us, nobody is willing to sacrifice marginal healthcare, right?
50:49
You You and I are probably willing to sacrifice marginal, you know, uh clothing, right?
50:53
There's only so much money I'm going to spend on clothing.
50:55
There's only so much money I'm going to spend on on this or that.
50:57
But if you had infinite money, like the thing you'd probably prioritize is your health, you know, your your likelihood and well-being.
51:03
And I think that that makes it kind of the special good and service.
51:06
And that's why we spent we've gone from spending 5% of our GDP on healthcare to 20%.
51:09
And I think that's going to go to 15% over time because our basic goods and needs, our Maslowian kind of needs are met, you know, we can eat, we can have shelter, etc.
51:19
, we ultimately just want to live forever.
51:21
There's no There's reason why the Silicon Valley billionaires, they want longevity, right?
51:26
They want like they they want to be around forever because, you know, Larry Ellison, who I grew up kind of, you know, a little bit fanboying or worshipping, you know, his his life goal is to live forever and he's not going to make it.
51:37
But this this idea that all these guys sort of have in their minds that if they spend their billions, they'll they'll live forever, it's it's there because they love their life, right?
51:47
The the average person in Africa probably doesn't think about it that way.
51:50
I think they they like to, but their their life's a lot harder.
51:53
Uh in America, we we're really lucky.
51:53
We want to live forever because of that, and I think that makes health, you know, one of these things where it's demand-side driven.
52:00
You know, we like to think that healthcare expenses are going up because of people like me or people like the Mylan CEO or the Pfizer CEO.
52:07
They're going up because we all demand healthcare.
52:08
We want health for everyone, our families, our friends, our progeny.
52:11
We all want healthcare, uh you know, to to We're going to consume more and more of it over time, I think.
52:19
Our software's the worst.
52:19
Have you heard of HubSpot?
52:21
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
52:27
I think I love our new CRM. Our software's the best. HubSpot, grow better.
52:34
I I want to ask you about your new thing, and then I want to ask about your predictions.
52:37
But first, when you got out of prison, how much of that nut did you still have left?
52:42
And what do you do with your money now?
52:43
What are you investing in now?
52:44
Or are you just doing like Are you even allowed to trade?
52:47
And are you just doing like boring index funds?
52:50
Are you doing more risky stuff? What are you doing?
52:51
Yeah, so I got into a very interesting litigation.
52:54
So I was able to pay my court my my criminal fines very very relatively easily.
52:58
It was around 8 million bucks.
53:01
Um in that process, I I decided to sell the Wu-Tang album, which is a funny thing cuz there's this NFT bubble.
53:07
And I basically said, "Well, look, if I turn this into an NFT or sell it to a crypto bro, like you know, I'll I'll I might even get my money back on this thing cuz it was basically just, you know, a lark, and I didn't think I'd uh I I I marked it as down like 75%, but I was able to actually turn a profit on it.
53:25
So it was I was happy to time that bubble well.
53:26
Um so I was able to pay my criminal fines off, but then I got into this litigation with the FTC.
53:33
Uh the Federal Trade Commission actually personally sued me for monopoly.
53:37
I'm the first person in American history to Sherman Act, which is 125 years old, the first person to personally be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is very odd, because John D.
53:48
Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, couple of people who are accused of monopolies, their firms got sued.
53:55
I was actually the first person to personally be sued as a monopolist. Uh which is very odd. Uh and they won.
54:02
So, I'm appealing that, but they won a $60 million hit against me.
54:04
So, until I figure that out, I'm sort of not not in the market.
54:09
Um it's very like bizarre ruling that I think will get overturned.
54:13
But again, it shows you that kind of like animus.
54:15
Like this judge that made that ruling just Well, and will will that make you broke?
54:21
If if I had to pay the 60, I think I I could pay the 60, but it's it's just like a colossal [ __ ] you know, just a colossal like hit, you know.
54:31
It hit in the gears of like stopping like the production basically.
54:33
So, uh the company I also am indemnified, so the company will probably have to pay it, but it's it's just a big like [ __ ] at the moment.
54:41
So, you know, I'm I'm sort of focused Again, the nice thing about being an entrepreneur and and having faith in your talent and things like that is that even if you wiped me out and started at zero, I wouldn't have a problem, I think, you know, getting making several hundred million dollars.
54:57
I I I think that any business I start, uh you know, it may not be this one or the next one, but eventually with perseverance I'll have some great success.
55:04
And I think that there's not, you know, bone in my body that doesn't believe that.
55:07
And I think when you can find great assets or great people and put capital together with that, that, you know, magic starts to happen.
55:14
And and it's a it's a infectious and contagious.
55:17
And, you know, as long as you have your sort of mooring straight, you should be able to do it.
55:20
And I think that we we've already started that process.
55:23
So, whether this litigation turns out that I'll have to pay, you know, six some amount of that's been paid by the company.
55:28
And if I don't have indemnification, somebody can be I mean, maybe I'll have to pay 30 or 40 million bucks. And it would suck, sure.
55:32
You know, I'd have to sell my foreign assets.
55:36
I'd have to, you know, make room.
55:37
Would I come be able to cover it or not?
55:39
I'm not even 100% sure, but you know, it all depends on the sell price.
55:44
Uh but you know, even even if you sort of took everything from me, you know, and and added another 100 million, I'd sort of be, you know, you know, cheery about it and say, all right, it's a big challenge, but I'll do it, you know, and I think that, you know, I don't I don't view sort of wealth and and and success as as symmetrical or the same thing.
55:58
I sort of say that, you know, um you know, it it's sort of almost like, you know, a challenge to sort of like do it the other way.
56:08
I know a lot of people like they make money to be comfortable.
56:12
Like I always feel like I make money to be uncomfortable.
56:13
Like I want I want the the bigger challenges, the harder things to do.
56:17
Like you'll get Elon Musk and you got you you got to ask yourself, like why is this guy making his life so much harder?
56:23
New businesses, new ideas.
56:23
Like what is going on in his head that he wants more pain?
56:27
Cuz it's very painful to deal with all the headaches at these companies.
56:32
Oh, half your advertisers just left at Twitter.
56:34
Oh, by the way, you still have to pay the interest on those bonds.
56:36
Like I just be sitting there like, oh my god, you know, this is so much pain.
56:40
Like why add this on top of my Tesla issues?
56:42
Cuz you know, there's 100 issues with that company.
56:45
You know, there's 100 issues with SpaceX.
56:46
Then again, business is going great at those companies, but there's still intense issues that you have to deal with every day.
56:51
And you've got other lawsuits, and you've got other things going on in your personal life. You have eight kids.
56:56
I mean, why add more [ __ ] to your to your to your thing?
57:00
And and I think the answer for me is like, I love it.
57:02
You know, I I I love the game.
57:04
And, you know, whether or not, you know, my bank accounts got this many zeros that many zeros, I you know, it's it's not like you're going to be spending it, you know, it's it's a it's just work, you know, I I I sit in a room with like my team and I I work all day, and that's it.
57:18
So, for me it's it's like Do you I don't know if you follow Naval, but he has this great quote.
57:22
Uh he has this like Twitter thread called how to get rich without getting lucky, and he says something in there that I love, which he goes, um I don't want to just get rich.
57:29
I want to be a person who gets rich.
57:30
meaning uh if you could drop if if you took everything away from me and you dropped me, you know, sort of like butt naked in a third world country in 10 years, I want to be wealthy again.
57:40
And I think I have this I have built the skills in order to do that.
57:44
And so that sort of reminds me of what you're talking about, which is like look, you might lose everything that you made in the last decade or have have have this sort of like reset, but it give you 10 years, you'll build back up.
57:58
And I think most great entrepreneurs are are built that way and wired that way and almost in a sick way kind of relish that that opportunity.
58:07
When that misfortune strikes, there is some fortune in that misfortune.
58:11
When when a situation like that Yeah, it's it's sort of fun.
58:13
I mean, in some ways like I think a lot of people, you know, like a comeback story, too.
58:18
You you talked about the like, you know, you didn't want to be the Pfizer CEO.
58:22
You didn't want you kind of knew what you needed you could have said and you decided like F that.
58:25
Like I don't want to I don't want to do business.
58:29
I'll put put words in your mouth a little bit, but it's sort of like I don't want to be a CEO, that type of CEO.
58:32
And I don't want to play the game of entrepreneurship.
58:35
I don't like the world when it's less interesting when people don't actually say what's on their mind or can speak like a normal human being versus being like this like very tightly wound, you know, corporate, you know, duck.
58:46
And so I don't know if you've seen this, but have you see have you guys seen this movement that happened at Stanford, the fun strikes back movement?
58:54
So, have you heard about this? No. No, what is that?
58:57
Yeah, like the student body election, I guess.
59:01
And I don't know the full story cuz I just read about this I was reading about this this morning.
59:04
I was supposed to be prepping for this, but the story fascinated me instead.
59:06
And um basically there was a group of people that are at Stanford, a group of students that were running at Stanford and they won the election on this movement that they're calling fun strikes back.
59:16
And they're basically like, "Dude, the you know, the campus and the university has just drained us of our personality.
59:22
It is trying to shut down all the fun things."
59:25
And they're like, we are pro athletics, we're pro fraternities, we are pro partying, and we are pro weirdness.
59:31
And they basically talk about like the the story they do a great job telling the story.
59:35
They're like, you know, back in 1981, um the you know, there's this frat party where that they threw every year where there was sand all over the house.
59:45
Like a beach party or whatever.
59:45
And at the end of the night, like the the party was over, people left, but the sand was still there.
59:50
They're like, [ __ ] what are we going to do with all this sand?
59:52
We still have so much sand.
59:52
They're like, what if we built an island with the sand?
59:56
And they're like, there's this little lake.
59:57
What if we took all the sand to the middle of the lake, we made an island?
1:00:00
And that could be our island.
1:00:02
And they like rallied at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, and they go there, and then the groundskeeper's like, guys, you can't bring a bulldozer here, like an excavator to like dump this here.
1:00:08
And they're like, sir, we want to do this for this reason. This is our moment. This is our legacy. Like, think about this.
1:00:16
Years from now, people will wonder how the hell this island was built, and tonight is that night.
1:00:19
And the guy's like, all right, go ahead.
1:00:20
All right, and he like lets them in, they build the island, and it's this epic party or whatever. It's the epic finish.
1:00:27
And then like fast forward to today, like uh the island got the island is gone, the lake is gone.
1:00:32
They shut everything down.
1:00:34
Nobody can visit that that little pond or that lake anymore because it there was like an endangered salamander there.
1:00:39
So they're like, no, no, no, shut it down, guys.
1:00:41
And then like one by one they've kicked off all the fraternities from from the from the campus for like whatever violation they hit a violation, they remove them from campus.
1:00:48
They like scraped all the like each each neighborhood used to have its own name and its own like weird weirdness.
1:00:53
They like scraped it all off, and now it's just like numbered cells.
1:00:56
It's like, you're on the D block 657.
1:01:03
They're like, dude, we used to have like the biggest party of the year was this anything but clothes party, and they decided that that's too risky, and it's not fair to everybody.
1:01:09
And they're like, And I I always wondered, Sean, like, who are the pro Like, what did my prosecutors and like judges and like regulators and people like Elizabeth Warren, what did they do in college?
1:01:20
This is what they did in college.
1:01:20
They they shut down the party and they're like, you know, this is offensive.
1:01:22
We got to shut this party down.
1:01:24
You know, and it's it's like who are these people and why why do we ever let any of them have any power?
1:01:29
And it's it's frustrating to me that like, you know, schools like Stanford and many others have had to like go through this like identity crisis of like I'm scared to say what I want because, you know, uh what if somebody's going to be offended?
1:01:42
And it it gets becomes this meta game where like we were talking about like, yeah, could I like do the party line and say, you know, I'm really sorry my actions have caused, you know, uh some misunderstanding and blah blah blah and have this non-apology apology.
1:01:51
But then the like Japan, the way you say no can be found to be insulting.
1:01:56
So, you just move the meta to like the next, you know, level where it's like, oh, he saw the way he said no, he didn't really mean it, you know, where where he said I'm sorry wasn't really apologetic.
1:02:07
There's a real way to say I'm sorry.
1:02:07
You got to bow a little bit deeper.
1:02:09
And it's like, okay, well, well, so it's it's it's it's an insane meta where you're constantly just like getting to the next point of of like inhibiting your personality and and what are you really saying?
1:02:20
And just come on and say it, you know, and I think that that's a really freeing, you know, thing to do.
1:02:26
Yeah, I don't know if it's on Substack, but I'm on your newsletter and like you made some wild predictions.
1:02:29
I don't remember all the predictions, but like you made you you actually had a really good post where you said like this is going to happen, I think in 2023, this will happen in 2030, I think in 50 years this will happen.
1:02:41
And I I it would be actually be fun to look back at some of your predictions so far turning out to be true, but it's very interesting and you were you're pretty good at writing actually.
1:02:49
You're you're quite good actually.
1:02:51
Thanks a lot, you know, it's it's hard to write um you know, uh professionally like you guys uh I know Sam um well, I I know Shawn does for sure.
1:03:02
If you when you're an entrepreneur doing anything other than working on your business seems like a waste of time and and like a a really uh painful thing to do uh because you have to provide for your investors, your co-workers, your own family, the business you love, you know, it's it's uh it's hard to to do a lot of writing.
1:03:19
Uh in prison was a lot easier, you know, it's it's uh you know, I had more time to think, but even then I was I was actually really busy.
1:03:27
People will ask me if I was, you know, uh you know, bored in prison and like it was the furthest thing from it.
1:03:32
A lot of people asked me, "Why didn't you get jacked up, you know, in in in prison?"
1:03:34
I didn't have the time, you know, uh I was I was working the whole time.
1:03:39
So, you know, it's it's always hard to write.
1:03:41
I love writing, but but to to do anything A lot of people ask me if I don't why don't I want to do a podcast and it's the same reason.
1:03:48
And, you know, the predictions about AI are are, you know, some of them echo kind of like other people's predictions, you know, in a lot of ways.
1:03:55
We have large language models now.
1:03:57
They're really interesting.
1:03:57
Uh they certainly provide for more eye-opening potential predictions, you know, probably some of the craziest ones I've I've made including include things like they'll they'll be kind of interspecies marriage between AI and humans.
1:04:10
They'll be AI fundamental rights for for for voting and things like that that'll kind of reshape society.
1:04:17
So, they're they're pretty wild predictions, but I do think they'll happen years from now and I do think we're starting to see some of those things pull in and get accelerated.
1:04:25
Uh one of my favorite people, John Carmack, recently upgraded his estimate of AGI, so-called artificial general intelligence, from 50% by 2030 to 60%.
1:04:38
You know, John is like this very precise, you know, calculating nerd who's, you know, you know, created the first-person shooter.
1:04:44
He, you know, is brilliant guy and he's working on his own company which nobody's talking about uh called Keen Technologies.
1:04:53
Uh and I think he's the only employee, if I'm not mistaken.
1:04:55
So, he's just sitting there like trying to create like this this brain uh and, you know, who knows?
1:05:01
I think he's a good dark horse for this race.
1:05:02
But, no, AGI is like how it's super captivating to everyone, right?
1:05:06
to everyone, right? Like it's it's to me if you look at the history of humanity next to maybe relativity or, you know a couple of other like magnetism electricity like this is like probably more important and it's the first time humans will have created a mind from from nothing that's stronger than a human and it's really like just so profound that you know I don't think
1:05:28
anybody can afford to to ignore it it's more profound than the internet you know it's it's really you know something wild now we don't know when we'll get it we'll get a partial version of it or we already seeing a partial version of it you know it's sort of early days but while I was in prison I was able to think sort of zoom out and think about that a little bit more than maybe the
1:05:46
average person and it's funny if you look at sort of open AI and some of the other startups that are coming out uh these are these sort of companies like Google and Facebook you see that they kind of did that zooming out many years ago and the companies that are sort of missing this and messing it up or kind of like too close to the to to sort of reality and and the day-to-day product management to even
1:06:05
see it and really understand it that people wanted this you know Microsoft both both Facebook and Google had the sort of equivalent technology to open AI in my opinion years ago and they just still just haven't sort of seen the the actual product you know making sense of of launching and um anyway you know it's it's really interesting time obviously. What's your what's the new thing?
1:06:28
What's your what's the new thing?
1:06:30
So I'm releasing in the next uh day or two maybe even today an AI physician.
1:06:35
This this will go live tomorrow this will go live tomorrow so it might be up so what what what is there URL?
1:06:40
So you're you're breaking the news and it's so funny and happenstance cuz we're talking to like TechCrunch and like all these places we never we didn't really find like the perfect reporter who could report on this so here we go it's called Dr. Gupta.
1:06:53
ai it's a the first of its kind AI physician um it's basically going to be what I hope something that could drastically reduce health care costs and drastically improve health care quality uh by providing an AI physician mimic basically sort of a synthetic AI doctor that that will can give you medical information.
1:07:16
And I think that, you know, most Is there a Is there a site with your doctor or what?
1:07:20
Doctor Gupta, like g u p oh dot a i right.
1:07:28
He happens to be Indian, but it's also GPT, so Gupta.
1:07:29
Um so anyway, Doctor Gupta will give you medical information.
1:07:34
And uh you can talk to him, it's free.
1:07:38
Um it's uh to me what a lot of people didn't understand about my price increase and stuff like that, one of the other reasons I was offered it, there were like 50 of them, is that 90% of health care costs come from physicians. 10% come from pharma.
1:07:51
What What do you mean come from? What does that mean?
1:07:56
We spend $4 trillion on health care in this country.
1:07:57
Most of that money goes to physicians and health care workers.
1:08:01
And a lot of that I love doctors, I love nurses, and I'm not anything against them.
1:08:07
A lot of those decisions can be done by machines.
1:08:11
A lot of those decisions, thanks to Open AI and and deep learning and LLM models, can be done by AI.
1:08:16
So can we take that $4 trillion and make it $2 trillion?
1:08:19
That would be a big deal.
1:08:21
You know, the whatever Cuban's doing is not going to save anybody any money and it's not going to make Mark any money either.
1:08:26
But this could actually change the curve on health care.
1:08:31
Give us a 30 seconds on Give us a 30 seconds on why Cuban's thing you you you you've referenced a couple times how it might be dumb or or or not that It's such a [ __ ] show.
1:08:38
Like so so he's basically running a pharmacy, right?
1:08:41
So he's trying to source drugs for cheaper.
1:08:47
That mind you, every other pharmacy is pretty good at sourcing medicine.
1:08:48
And I don't know how he's going to get a deal on, you know, say Teva or Sandoz generics any better than than CVS or Walgreens.
1:08:58
It seemed kind of hard to do that, right?
1:09:00
He's They They eat his have the volume they have.
1:09:03
Get that deal and then somehow get a margin.
1:09:05
Pharmacy margins are razor razor freaking thin, right?
1:09:08
You cannot take a $3 drug and charge 100 bucks for a pharmacy. They're razor.
1:09:12
Just look at the 10-K for Walgreens and CVS.
1:09:14
Like, they're not making a fortune here.
1:09:16
And so, he's going to somehow get a margin out of that.
1:09:20
There There's just It's just hocus pocus.
1:09:22
There's no actual way to do that.
1:09:23
You know, it's it's a bunch of lies, basically. He's being dishonest. So, I'm on Dr. Gupta Dr. Gupta AI. Uh so, I see the thing.
1:09:31
So, it I I tell it my age, how tall I am, my weight, some of my vitals.
1:09:36
If I have lab results, I enter it in.
1:09:37
And then what's going to happen next?
1:09:39
It's going to say like, you should check out You should work on this, this, and this.
1:09:42
No, you don't actually even have to enter any of your vitals.
1:09:45
You can just have a conversation.
1:09:46
And we've programmed it using these like very, you know, intricate techniques.
1:09:50
I was actually you know, a lot of people are talking about AutoGPT and and BabyGPT.
1:09:54
And I talked to Yohei and I talked to all of the people that invented that stuff.
1:10:01
You never know what people are doing privately, but we started doing the auto-reflective GPT stuff 6 months ago.
1:10:06
And we were able to discover that depending on the technique you use, you can get better chat results than ChatGPT.
1:10:12
And I don't think OpenAI disputes this.
1:10:15
We've screened thousands of messages that we tried with the system and we get better better performance than ChatGPT by making it kind of like auto-reflect and do other kind of methods that again are our secret sauce that get the chatbot to succeed.
1:10:29
So, it's not so much about that medical view.
1:10:31
It's you can get physician quality advice for free at any time, any hour.
1:10:36
So, you and I may be able to call a doctor friend, but most people cannot just decide at midnight that if they have a medical question that they can get an answer.
1:10:45
You have to go on Google. You got to go ask WebMD.
1:10:47
And you're you don't know what you're reading half the time if if you're the average Joe, you know, you're not trained in medicine.
1:10:51
If you say, "Well, what about my chest pain? What should I do?"
1:10:54
You want to talk to somebody.
1:10:55
You want to actually have a conversation. LLMs do that amazingly.
1:10:58
This is an is a is an attraction of GPT-4.
1:11:01
They'll actually let you have a natural dialogue with something that, as you guys know, GPT-4 scores 90% on the USMLE. It's a 90% performing.
1:11:12
Most doctors don't score 90% on the boards.
1:11:14
GPT is a ace doctor when it comes to medical knowledge.
1:11:18
So, being able to ask an ace doctor at any time for free about medical information, medical advice, you know, it's pretty profound product, I think, because again, we spend trillions dollars on physicians.
1:11:27
A lot of the physicians work can be done by AI, and it's an uncomfortable truth that, you know, again, it doesn't mean that we don't need doctors ever again.
1:11:36
In my world, in my vision, 50 years from now, there's no such thing as a medical doctor.
1:11:41
There's no such thing as a physician. Oh. That's my future. site.
1:11:46
I can I can get 50 messages for free, or I pay 20 bucks a month.
1:11:48
What's the end game here?
1:11:50
Do you think this is going to be a massive company, or is this like a thing where you're like, I don't know what's going to happen, let's let's figure it out, or you're trying to get after it?
1:11:57
What what are you trying to do in the next 5 or 10 years with this business?
1:12:00
Yeah, I'm trying to make it a massive company.
1:12:01
I think that, you know, I you know, it will be a massive company.
1:12:07
You never say never in business, but, you know, we're we're certainly going to try our hardest, because I do think that you can audit This is why technology has never really bent the curve for health care.
1:12:16
The cost of sending a megabyte, the cost of sending, you know, storing data, the cost of computer, all that has dropped by not just like 90%, it's dropped by like 99 and and six more nines percent.
1:12:25
Health care has not moved a bit. Why?
1:12:27
It's because of this lobby that exists.
1:12:29
The AMA restricts the amount of people who could become doctors.
1:12:36
The supply is constrained.
1:12:36
You cannot just graduate a million more doctors tomorrow.
1:12:40
If we could do that, what would happen?
1:12:41
The price of medical services would drop like a rock.
1:12:43
We our country would be saved.
1:12:46
Medicare and Medicaid wouldn't be going bankrupt.
1:12:47
We have huge wouldn't be bankrupt bankrupting us.
1:12:51
If we had a million more doctors tomorrow, healthcare wouldn't be a problem in America.
1:12:54
The problem is we don't have a million more doctors in America.
1:12:57
One of the reasons is there's not going to be a million people who pass med school.
1:13:00
The other problem is the AMA specifically says there's only this many med schools, there's only this many doctors graduating per med school, and we're going to make it really hard to become a doctor.
1:13:10
Even though AI can do all these things very easily, and you're going to see a lot of industries collapse because of GPT, I think, whether it's law, medicine, accounting, there's going to be a huge change in society thanks to AI and and GPT, I think.
1:13:24
So, how is this not like self-driving cars where even though self-driving is almost like better than a human in in in a bunch of different circumstances, maybe not certain weather conditions?
1:13:32
Uh but if it gets one thing wrong, it's, you know, all the news and all the lawsuits, and so they need to be not just better, they need to be so much better that they can kind of overcome that.
1:13:43
Like, how do you not just get sued out of existence for the, you know, the the the, you know, one mistaken medical diagnosis or or, um, you know, treatment plan or or whatever it is here.
1:13:54
How do you How do you avoid that problem? Sure.
1:13:56
I I think it's a lot like like self-driving cars where if you gave me the story where there's 50,000 auto fatalities a year, right, in America, and I can press this button right here, and there's going to be 20,000.
1:14:08
There's two types of people in the world.
1:14:10
There's the first type of person who says, "That's amazing.
1:14:13
30,000 lives saved, 30,000 less funerals, 30,000 less torn families destroyed by needless, you know, terrible, you know, automobile fatality.
1:14:25
What a horrible, you know, thing. I'm so happy.
1:14:27
I can't wait to push that button.
1:14:29
You know, anything stop me from pushing that button is is insane, right?
1:14:31
So, why would you delay that for half a second?"
1:14:34
And then you've got the kind of person, similar to the Stanford party, who says, "Well, wait a second.
1:14:40
Are there going to be 20,000 deaths from from this? That's an outrage. I can't believe it. Don't push that button."
1:14:44
And obviously one side is right, and one side's wrong.
1:14:47
You know, but the the the technical progress of of the world cannot be stopped.
1:14:52
I'm part of this EAC group, effective accelerationism, which is this like new movement that's counter effective altruism.
1:14:59
So, you see the E {forward slash} ACC.
1:15:01
We've got a lot of really exciting members, some of the biggest people in technology.
1:15:07
Uh and it's this sort of like underground movement of people who don't want to slow down AI, who people who don't want to slow down uh technology.
1:15:15
And I think that um you know, the idea that we're here to stop progress because the technology might make one mistake.
1:15:23
And remember, that's sort of like stopping the automobile because the automobile itself was an improvement over the horse.
1:15:28
We have to move forward in the world.
1:15:30
We can't look back and and nitpick on every single mistake in life.
1:15:33
And I think that's that's sort of I know that's not how you feel, Shawn, but that kind of criticism and that kind of like attitude is such a terrible pernicious threat to to our well-being that like we have to look at that glass not just half full, cuz it's 90% full.
1:15:46
We can't look at the 10% that's empty. Right.
1:15:48
Yeah, I mean, I get it philosophically.
1:15:51
It's like the trolley problem.
1:15:52
It's like 10 people, the train's going to run over 10 people.
1:15:55
If I pull this lever, it'll run over those other two.
1:15:57
And uh you know, there's a uh whatever.
1:16:00
People have People feel different ways about that.
1:16:02
I guess what I mean is like practically speaking, like for this company, like how does this company not die because something like that's going to happen?
1:16:10
What do What are you going to do?
1:16:10
Like what what do you think is going to play out there?
1:16:14
Our purpose policies make sure that you understand that this is medical advice. Dr.
1:16:17
Coop is not a real doctor.
1:16:17
That if you uh use our website for medical information, it's simply for informational purposes only, and you have to I mean, I could read you the whole disclaimer.
1:16:25
But the reality of the matter is that do you want somebody who's 75 years old, okay, who has uh pneumonia, but doesn't know that they have pneumonia?
1:16:36
Uh they have a cough, but they're going to die of pneumonia if they don't go to hospital next 3 days.
1:16:40
Do you want that person running around Google trying to figure out if that's them or not?
1:16:44
Or do you want them to to go to an LLM? What's better?
1:16:47
If you don't have the LLM, they're going to go to Google.
1:16:49
They're going to go to WebMD.
1:16:49
They're going to try to read it on their own.
1:16:52
They're going to mess it up. There's a decent chance.
1:16:53
Whereas, if you go to the LLM, you might actually get the superior technology that may save their life.
1:17:00
So, you're net improving it.
1:17:02
And if you don't want a net improvement, then you're Elizabeth Warren, you're a Luddite, you're etc. etc.
1:17:06
And if you want the improvement, you're on the side right side of history.
1:17:10
And I think that if you look at the way technology informs regulation, not the other way around, right?
1:17:16
Regulation has to serve the people.
1:17:18
If the people are getting the benefit, the people will demand the right side.
1:17:22
If you have people that want to stand in the way of of improvement, that's up to them.
1:17:26
Listen, if if it were told, you got to lock Dr.
1:17:28
Gupta in this state or this country, okay.
1:17:30
The Philippines will have it.
1:17:32
Remember, GPT is is is um knows every single language.
1:17:37
It's It's lingual in every single language in the world.
1:17:40
So, Japan will have this. Feel free tomorrow. It's like Pitbull. It's Mr. Worldwide, right?
1:17:45
It's a global product, and that's the amazing thing about it.
1:17:47
As being a developer, you normally have to worry about localization, right? Language, all that crap. It's gone now with GPT. This Dr.
1:17:54
Gupta knows every language.
1:17:54
He knows We beta test this in Spanish.
1:17:56
We did We might localize him and make him like Dr.
1:18:02
somebody else in in in Latin America. But Dr. Gupta matches GPT. Our other option was Dr. Lim, LLM.
1:18:10
So, you know, we picked Dr. Dr.
1:18:10
Gupta cuz he's literally Dr. GPT.
1:18:16
Honestly, it's kind of a genius name.
1:18:16
As an Indian person, I I will give it my seal of approval.
1:18:19
Uh I think that's is very very clever.
1:18:22
Um Now, 6 months ago or 9 months ago, I was talking to you and you had a crypto company that was like a 3D modeling company for drugs.
1:18:30
What happened to that company?
1:18:32
Did you ditch it or is it You doing both or what's It's It's all under one hood.
1:18:35
So, our company is called Deal Software.
1:18:39
We've raised some some money from from some really well-known people in in in the valley.
1:18:43
It's been you know again an interesting dilemma where you have like people who want to support you.
1:18:47
Like all these people actually said that my YouTube finance videos you mentioned content creating that it got them through like a stint in venture capital.
1:18:56
I watched a ton of those. I watched all those. Thank you.
1:18:58
And and like I'm so lucky that these people some of whom started some of the biggest software companies in our industry.
1:19:07
The literally like maybe the top five unicorns in software like three of the four CEOs and all like that were were like I messaged these guys they're like oh you're my teacher.
1:19:15
I'm like so flattered you know that these billionaires are are are like on my side.
1:19:20
And they're like yeah I Sorry. Did that really happen? Yeah. A billionaire?
1:19:27
Several billionaires you know several billionaires are are investors in our Several billionaires have smashed the subscribe button hit the turn notifications on leave a leave a message in the comments on YouTube. I love it.
1:19:37
It's really really humbling because it's like you know you know you couldn't find that kind of content where like you could you could talk to somebody who was a publicly traded company CEO showing you like step-by-step kind of what their job was like.
1:19:49
And I think more than just like how to read a balance sheet I taught an attitude too that kind of the one thing I learned from Grammer which is like this hardcore attitude of like you love this stuff you're up like people would watch me stream like 4:00 in the morning like getting ready to go you know tear tear the world a new [ __ ] cuz I'm so like excited about doing my job.
1:20:06
And I think it got a lot of people out of a funk or out of like a a hard time and like just pushing people to like push harder push harder.
1:20:13
That worked for so many people at at these at these unicorns these mega unicorns these like 10x unicorns that that Yeah that's why I said you're amazing at content because you have the the trifecta.
1:20:23
There's three things it takes to be great at content.
1:20:28
The first is unique perspective or unique POV. Right?
1:20:30
So So, you have unique a unique specific set of knowledge that the average person doesn't have.
1:20:36
Okay, that's most people would expect that.
1:20:37
Now, here's the unexpected ones.
1:20:40
You do energy transmission.
1:20:40
So, uh most content is actually just a transfer of my energy and excitement or outrage about whatever it is to you.
1:20:48
And if I'm able to express it, if I can show you that I'm juiced up about this, I've watched you at your computer that you like get up, you do push-ups on the ground, you're like pumped up about whatever or you're you're somebody out or whatever it is, it's energy transmission.
1:21:02
And the last thing, you're like a reality TV person.
1:21:04
You kind of know what you're supposed to say, but you don't really care and you want to say what you like you don't really care you care more about like uh saying the thing than what people will think of you saying the thing.
1:21:17
And some for some reality TV people it's cuz they're just not aware. They don't know it.
1:21:21
You know it and you just don't care.
1:21:23
You like override that sensor and you're like, "No, that sensor doesn't get to decide what's going on here."
1:21:28
And so, you have you have all three and I think that that's what makes your streams so impressive.
1:21:35
Like you said at the beginning of this, "I don't do the like just wing it."
1:21:37
But I I've seen you just wing it and I actually think that's your best content.
1:21:41
So, I don't know what you meant by that.
1:21:44
We're just like closing loop on it.
1:21:44
Like I only started those streams because, you know, I didn't want people to think I was the farmer bro, which I was like being characterized as.
1:21:52
And I basically wanted people to like judge for themselves.
1:21:56
Like see a day in my life.
1:21:57
See if like you think I'm a dick or not.
1:22:00
And some people said, "Yeah, I still think you're a dick."
1:22:01
But some people said, "Yeah, I kind of like this guy."
1:22:03
And you know, maybe this is like a little bit of what I want to be like.
1:22:05
Um and so, the point is like I'm so lucky that the people who watched that in 2015, 2016, obviously not all of them became successful, but a handful of them, the top couple of people became unbelievably successful.
1:22:16
And that's maybe cuz of me, maybe not cuz of me, maybe it's in spite of me.
1:22:20
You know, but the the the whole point that they some of them thank me for it is as I'm really lucky for that.
1:22:25
I have three software products under our sort of umbrella here, but I think that like the key thing with our company is is getting amazing talent, you know, in in any industry, but especially in tech.
1:22:37
Like the only really thing that matters is this combination of capital and people.
1:22:40
And you know, the capital is easy to get.
1:22:42
You know, there's there's infinite capital in the world.
1:22:43
It's it's about, you know, do you have the people to execute the plan?
1:22:47
And and I'm so lucky that like a little bit of this personal profile gets great engineers to come to the table and talk.
1:22:52
Doesn't always get them in the door, but the fact that like we can do that and the like the one skill I have as a manager to your to your to your point is that energy transfer.
1:23:00
Like getting people like can you can I pump you up about making a synthetic doctor?
1:23:04
Well, to some people that might be really boring.
1:23:06
And if you pitch it the wrong way, if you're like at a big health care company, you're like, "Well, we're going to make a medical information, you know, diagnostic tools, etc. etc."
1:23:14
Sounds like [ __ ] You know, but if you if you do it the right way and you explain to the engineer that there's if we do our jobs right, there's no such thing as a doctor in 30 years.
1:23:24
That every operation, every prescription, every piece of medical advice you ever get from now on comes from a machine and it costs 10 cents. That changes the world.
1:23:32
That's something that you're going to leave a legacy.
1:23:36
We're going to make a fortune.
1:23:36
We're going to have a lot of fun.
1:23:37
And it's going to change the world for everyone.
1:23:39
For the Indonesian that can't see a doctor for 30 days and the doctor they're seeing is a very questionable variety, you know, in in and provenance.
1:23:48
To be able to get the best medical expertise of an American physician. That's insane, right?
1:23:52
And and we're getting that tomorrow.
1:23:54
And I think that again, you can't get a prescription from Dr.
1:23:57
Gupta and he's not going to cut out your bunion, but I think that the fact that we can even talk to have a touch 5 10% of health care costs, that's hundreds of billions of dollars.
1:24:05
It's bigger than Google's TAM.
1:24:09
It's a whole like, you know, health care is one of these just gigantic spots that just never been chunked by by technology despite the best attempts of Sand Hill Road.
1:24:16
Like a billion dollars flew into digital health.
1:24:18
There's just no obvious way to take a sledgehammer to this.
1:24:22
You have to understand that healthcare is is basically all money that goes to people who just slouch around for this like very AI simple simple problem for AI for that little advice of yeah, you should take this beta blocker or should not take this beta blocker or we should do the surgery or not do the surgery.
1:24:38
And that human advice is really important, but at the same time like, you know, a good chunk of it could probably be automated.
1:24:45
The last thing I wanted to bring up was like so I I ran this company called The Hustle which we wrote about you and you actually were homies with Breena this woman who worked for me and you were like at one point you were like, "Hey, come visit me in San Diego."
1:24:55
Yiannis I remember like Yiannis Troung, yeah.
1:24:57
And I remember like right when your story broke it was Pharma Bro and then I got to like I we you and I chatted on Blab before and I I don't know if you remember we talked before.
1:25:06
I'm like it's funny this guy's not really a bro at all.
1:25:10
Like he's he's just a nerd.
1:25:10
He's just like care he like, you know, he talks a lot like and he's confident but he's like like a pretty nerdy guy and the reason it's so funny about media perception.
1:25:21
The reason your story did I think the way it all like started was you have this picture.
1:25:26
I'm looking at at it now.
1:25:28
It's you wearing like Ray-Bans and a red polo and you have like a picture of what looks like Flo Rida in the back like on a music video to Bugatti and you're like pointing down like this and you like your jawline looks cut and you look like
1:25:41
the bro-iest of bros and I remember when we wrote this story in The Hustle we tried a bunch of different photos and that photo did best because it's just like you're just like giving into this big old stereotype. And uh we just we
1:25:51
And uh we just we just made We just made this That [ __ ] picture ruined you, man.
1:25:57
So the backstory is funny like we had just done this stock trade.
1:26:01
It was in my personal account.
1:26:01
We made $20 million shorting uh the stock called Vital Therapies.
1:26:06
They were developing a liver dialysis machine.
1:26:08
We spent day and night stalking this company and figuring out everything about the attempt to make a liver dialysis machine.
1:26:16
Works for a kidney really well.
1:26:18
They wanted to take that same idea and apply it to the liver. Sounds good, right? Doesn't work.
1:26:20
There are a lot of technical reasons.
1:26:22
Me and two colleagues spent day in, day out stalking, figuring this coming out.
1:26:26
We wrote a 40-page report. We put the report out.
1:26:29
The stock fell like 40% just on the report.
1:26:33
Two weeks later, the drug the device ended up proving that it didn't work.
1:26:37
It didn't help anybody with severe liver disease.
1:26:39
Then the stock went down like 90%.
1:26:40
And we were short the stock.
1:26:42
And so the day it went down, we did that uh the Flo Rida song is called it's going down or something like that.
1:26:48
And so I was like, you know, doing this like thing cuz like we thought these guys were basically fraudsters, you know, lying about their liver device which had proven that it doesn't even help people. It probably hurts them.
1:26:58
But they're still trying to get through that like venture capital grind and and and public company grind of like lying and trying to make [ __ ] stick and and make put the best, you know, spin on things.
1:27:08
And so when we shorted it and it went down, we were it's going down, you know.
1:27:12
That was the kind of joke.
1:27:14
And I was like, oh, how funny would it be if I, you know, dressed up like a bro for a second and like we had a friend in the trade, too.
1:27:20
We had a couple friends in the trade.
1:27:21
Like putting it on Twitter was was kind of like a oh, check it out like it's going down cuz of us cuz we wrote the short report.
1:27:27
And again, what the next like two weeks the same I made it like my profile pic and like next two weeks like that that's what everyone seized on.
1:27:35
It's like, oh, who is my man in this picture? Yeah.
1:27:37
Like this picture is like it's just so funny.
1:27:41
Like I I don't know the whole fact of your story and you admitted admitted wrong doing and everything, but it's like it was it was amplified and this picture was like the beginning of the end for you. This one picture.
1:27:50
That's what it seemed cuz I remember this one picture going The beginning of an interesting story.
1:27:58
I Like I I To me like I'll I'll take it and try like you would look at it and many other people look at it as the beginning of the end.
1:28:03
I look at it as life's a just a crazy ride. It's a crazy movie.
1:28:07
You know, it would be very boring to like be a value investor for like 50 years and make a hundred billion dollars doing Graham and Dodd stock picking.
1:28:16
Like so it's right for somebody else.
1:28:19
Not right for my life and it is the path I chose, you know, not like you know, it was an intentional choice, you know, maybe not the wisest choice, but it is the choice for me and you know, I I don't regret having had like a really interesting exciting life.
1:28:30
There are moments of it that weren't fun, but there's it's still the one of these things where I'm not like deeply ashamed of like something I did or something like that.
1:28:40
Like it's a conscious choice I made to sort of like do the things I did.
1:28:44
The photo was, you know, it was alarming to me that the media could take like an image and say, okay, this is this person.
1:28:50
Let's let's cast it this way.
1:28:52
And I think it sort of backfired in the long run, you know, I I'm sort of more popular than ever and you know, kind of doing just fine.
1:28:57
So So if you there's a price to be paid. You paid it. Yeah.
1:29:03
If you could go back, would you have advised you you know, if you can go back and kind of whisper in the ear of yourself at any point in time, you know, would you have told yourself, hey, if you're going on TV, don't don't don't say that thing. Don't don't be smug. Don't do this. Don't do that.
1:29:15
Would you have played it differently knowing what you know now?
1:29:20
I think I I think like you know, there's two sides of the story with like the rationalist would say, of course, you know, like tone it down here, you know, tuck in your you know, tuck that in there.
1:29:29
Tuck in your shirt there, you know, straighten up there uh metaphorically.
1:29:33
But the the I think the the oldest wisdom is know thyself, right?
1:29:37
And it's like just be yourself. Know yourself. Be be be who you are.
1:29:39
And like if you spend the rest of your life trying to make somebody else happy and and conforming to society, it's going to be not a life worth living.
1:29:47
And if you spend your life answering to your own conscience, I think then, you know, you you can no matter what happens, no matter stick put your jail for less than your life, you'll you'll have the at least have something nobody can take away from you, which is like your your your own identity and your own personality.
1:30:03
And I think there's a lot like William Wallace, man.
1:30:06
Like William Wallace in in Braveheart, you know, they'll take our freedom but or what do they say?
1:30:09
They'll take our life but they'll never take our freedom.
1:30:12
You know, there's there's there's a point in time where you have to be a real person and and I think like if you want to be a corporate sort of like mimic of like every other corporate person in the world, you know, that's it that's a life.
1:30:23
If that's the life you want that that's the life you want.
1:30:24
I There's just only so much of that life that that I can take and for me I had it when it came to like the media, like you said, you know, with with the flow right of picture or or whatever, the typecasting.
1:30:35
It was like, you know, I I can't That's that's all I am. It was too much for me.
1:30:39
So, I think it it's it's probably more reactive than anything else.
1:30:42
Like Hillary Clinton tweeting at me and stuff like that.
1:30:44
It was like so surreal, like me?
1:30:45
You know, the mild-mannered pharmaceutical executive.
1:30:49
You I'm I'm the object of your [ __ ] scorn?
1:30:51
You know, this is nuts, you know?
1:30:54
So, a lot of it was that like provoke and and be provoked.
1:30:56
Like it you know, it it it was not like easy to to sit there and just do nothing.
1:31:01
So, like it's easy like yeah, turn it on you guys.
1:31:05
Like it's very easy to sort of throw advice out, but when you're in the hot seat and somebody says, "Oh, aren't you this and aren't you that?"
1:31:12
And you know, you say, "Well, you know, I'm sorry I caused some disturbance here and I'm just really, you know, it's really hard to do that, you know, sometimes.
1:31:20
You um First of all, that's hilarious.
1:31:24
Second of all, you don't know super well but best before our old kind of podcast setup, Sam used to have these photos on the wall of like his hall of his like personal hall of fame.
1:31:34
And it'd be like, you know, some inspirations from business like Sam before he started the hustle, he really loved Ted Turner.
1:31:38
He's like, "Dude, this guy like made the [ __ ] news business and he's a baller.
1:31:43
Like he he attacked it in this way."
1:31:45
He had Nate Diaz up there.
1:31:45
He's like, "Ah, I love this guy. He's a UFC fighter.
1:31:48
He's like just a badass and just that takes this attitude into into life that's that we like.
1:31:52
You know, I like Conor McGregor and I think, you know, he's interesting and I like, you know, certain things that he's done about his like, you know, I don't like all of these people.
1:31:59
I just like certain things I took inspiration from certain things at certain periods of certain people's lives.
1:32:04
Who were kind of Who are some people that you were inspired by either in the business world or the non-business world that that you think are you sort of have admired or you've gone down the YouTube rabbit hole and just, you know, uh binged a bunch of their content or whatever.
1:32:19
I'll start with Vince McMahon.
1:32:19
Um, you know, so when when I started to be this like bad guy and I realized that there was nothing I could do to change that narrative.
1:32:28
Like I could do a 2-hour interview with ABC and they would take the 30 seconds that [ __ ] me and and make the 30 seconds loop and like forget the other, you know, 119 minutes.
1:32:38
Those 30 seconds are are the ones that are going to be on TV.
1:32:42
I realized like there's no way out of this and I'm going to have to embrace being the bad guy and some people will get the joke and and some people won't.
1:32:49
Uh but, you know, [ __ ] it.
1:32:51
If if if if that's what people want, then I'll be a bad guy and I sort of embraced that of being this jerk and trying to dress down, you know, the so-called authority uh figures um by by sort of pointing, you know, pointing the the mirror back at them.
1:33:04
Um, so Vince Vince sort of like had that like kayfabe wrestling, you know, they call it a heel in wrestling uh where, you know, he's he's the owner of the company, but he's also kind of like breaking down the fourth wall of like some of the stuff he's talking
1:33:18
about on the show is like related to actual boardroom battles and like some of the you know, stuff on the show is is completely contrived and, you know, it's just a fantastic product and I like the company and what they've done with it over the years. So, you know, I'm a big
1:33:29
So, you know, I'm a big fan of Vince's.
1:33:31
Um you know, I I I like a lot of the like different scientists and stuff like that.
1:33:36
Um, you know, so business people themselves, you know, there there aren't a whole lot that I like point to and say, "Oh, that's somebody I'd like to be like or something like that."
1:33:44
But growing up, I always liked Bill Gates who was kind of this, you know, smug, hated, by the way, in '94 Bill Gates was was sued for monopoly, but his company was, not him.
1:33:56
And people wanted to tear this guy apart and I was just sort of coming up. I was like 11 years old. I love computers. I started programming.
1:34:04
And I was like, "Well, everyone hates Bill Gates."
1:34:05
And the hacker community hated Bill Gates.
1:34:06
And and it's because he wanted to make money.
1:34:09
And he was not apologetic about it.
1:34:11
And I kind of liked this guy.
1:34:13
I liked the contrarianism of being like, "You know what? I like Microsoft. I like Bill Gates."
1:34:16
No one's willing to say that.
1:34:18
And like we wouldn't have these things.
1:34:19
Like we're all using Microsoft products, right?
1:34:20
And like what would we be doing without it?
1:34:24
And you know, the Linux nerds would be like, "Well, you know, we can we don't have to use them."
1:34:27
And it's like, "Well, the whole world's using them for a reason.
1:34:30
They're pretty good products."
1:34:31
And I I just sort of liked taking that bad guy.
1:34:33
And at the time he was so really hated.
1:34:36
And sort of saying, "You know, I'm on his side."
1:34:38
You know, the media was on his case because he was the richest guy in the world but couldn't afford a good haircut.
1:34:43
You know, they always just dog him for no reason.
1:34:44
And he spent the rest of his life like trying to walk back on that.
1:34:48
And like how cool it would have been if he sort of embraced the narrative.
1:34:52
Like, "Yeah, you know, cuz privately he doesn't embrace the narrative, right?
1:34:55
It's just an it's just sort of this public image of like, "No, no, I'm I'm this benevolent philanthropist. You don't understand."
1:35:02
You know, privately the guy's still just as ruthless, still just as vicious, and and just as energetic and intense as he was when he was a kid.
1:35:09
So, you know, it's it's all this like, you know, imagery for for nothing.
1:35:11
Um and you know, there's a number of other folks like Henry Nicholas who started Broadcom.
1:35:17
You know, I I mean I there's just so many people that, you know, I've studied in business over the years that I like Tom Pendergast from Interactive Brokers.
1:35:23
Um so many people I admire that that did did things their way um and and made it work.
1:35:28
Uh people especially who who sort of have come from nothing or came from like with very little on their back.
1:35:34
A lot of people dog George Soros, uh you know, who's, you know, a true American success story.
1:35:40
And people sort of forget that, you know, they don't understand that like all this stuff in politics and like George Soros funded prosecutors and stuff like that.
1:35:49
That barely pays attention to [ __ ] You know, I think that like the idea that he's spending his day like plotting with, you know, the you know, the World Economic Forum to like run the world is this like right-wing meme that's just not not based in reality.
1:35:59
And, you know, the guy's work in hedge funds and investing is is like truly remarkable how he came from like sort of the you know, World War basically to to America to become truly successful.
1:36:10
So, people like that I admire.
1:36:12
You know, anyone who sort of had this against all odds type of success.
1:36:18
Um you know, even people like uh Robert Smith, you know, who runs Vista.
1:36:20
Um you know, people who have like really bucked, you know, any conventions and expectations of them to to be really successful.
1:36:27
So, there's so many people that I have up there on that wall.
1:36:32
Uh and again, it's not, you know, every like you said, it's not every piece of their life, but little pieces of of sort of made me grow up.
1:36:38
on mine because of the the interview where about the chair, jumping over the chair. over the chair.
1:36:45
One of the I still think that's the most gangster like CEO interview moment.
1:36:47
I don't even know how this came up, and then he he's She I think the interviewer was like, I heard a rumor that you could you know how to jump over a chair. He goes, yeah.
1:36:59
He goes, No, no, he goes, Do it.
1:37:01
well, it depends on the height of the chair.
1:37:02
And then it cuts to a chair and him clearing it like Tony Hawk.
1:37:08
And I have no explanation why this was like, is this what TV interviews were like back then?
1:37:11
Like I can't imagine something like that's like being like Donald Trump like, is it true you could win an arm wrestling match against anyone?
1:37:18
He's like, well, rolls up a sleeve and just like punks the punks the guy and wins. this video, by the way.
1:37:23
The It's not that impressive. It's not a big chair.
1:37:28
You don't think he could jump over a chair?
1:37:29
would have thought He's such a nerdy nerdy shrimpy guy. He's actually 5'11.
1:37:34
Uh but like there's this like look like he can jump over that chair. Yeah. Dude, he takes a step.
1:37:39
I bet you could jump over a chair, bro.
1:37:41
You need a chair, I'll get you a chair. We'll jump this chair.
1:37:44
want to recreate this scene.
1:37:44
We'll put it on our YouTube.
1:37:45
I don't think I could jump over this chair and I was like I I I played basketball.
1:37:49
I think I I was I would in my head I'm more athletic than Bill Gates, but honestly I can't claim that until I do this chair. I don't know, man.
1:37:57
He's probably only 35 in this video. I think you can jump it.
1:38:00
Dude, I turn 35 next week. It's perfect.
1:38:02
Me versus Bill Gates head-to-head pay-per-view. We got to do it.
1:38:08
Uh Martin, thanks for doing this, man. Um we appreciate it.
1:38:09
We um I know that like I don't I won't out you, but I know that you've got like some anonymous accounts online.
1:38:15
Normally we would say, "Where can people find you?"
1:38:18
But for you, you get banned every like third week, so it's not that useful.
1:38:21
And we were like, "Is Are we even talking to the real Martin?
1:38:25
Is he even going to come? Like what is he?"
1:38:26
We weren't even sure if we were talking to the right guy.
1:38:29
The interesting thing about that is I think the world's changing quite a bit.
1:38:33
Like like the sensitivity of banning people on Twitter has now given away.
1:38:37
So I'm actually starting to talk to Twitter.
1:38:39
I'm still need my old Twitter account is @MartinShkreli.
1:38:43
It's in the process hopefully being unbanned, but any anybody that can help me get that unbanned, I'd I'd really appreciate it.
1:38:49
Um right now I'm at Marty_Catboy, which an ex-girlfriend made for me, which you know, has stock for some reason.
1:38:57
That's my proudest Twitter handle.
1:38:58
And on Instagram I'm MartinShkreli15.
1:39:00
But yeah, I I love social media, but you know, getting banned from I'm banned from Tinder and Hinge and you know, like so many odd, you know, social medias.
1:39:11
On YouTube Wait, you're banned from Tinder? Why? know.
1:39:13
I think like part of it is this um That's like the definition of a [ __ ] block, right?
1:39:18
Like they they just banned you from dating? What's going on?
1:39:22
I I think this cancel cancel culture like extends into virtually anything, right?
1:39:27
And for Tinder it's it's you know, you can argue that like well, how do we know it's the real person, right?
1:39:34
That that's sort of one argument.
1:39:36
But even then like I just think there's somebody at the Match Group that just didn't like me.
1:39:40
But you know, it is what it is.
1:39:43
I'll live, but yeah, Twitter is is like this my lifelong goal is to get on banned from Twitter because it's been 7 years and I actually went to jail for a shorter period of time than I've been in Twitter jail.
1:39:53
So like, you know, I was banned, went to prison, came out and I'm still banned for you.
1:39:59
It's just like you like asked somebody to get you a lock of Hillary Clinton's hair.
1:40:03
Wasn't that the the reason why? It wasn't that.
1:40:05
It was it was I was teasing this woman who who I was using like this very left-wing journalist and I was kind of like ribbing her a little bit over politics and stuff like that and apparently I went too far, but like it was obviously, you know, selective bias.
1:40:19
I mean, it was like insanely selective for a lifetime ban, you know, it was a joke I made about her husband or something and it was just like too far.
1:40:29
And it's like, look, words aren't that dangerous, you know, they Nobody's getting hurt by these words, you know, and and they're going back and forth.
1:40:36
It's a two-way street, you know, but it you know, what I did was way too over the line and what she did was totally fine, you know, it was just this like insane perspective.
1:40:45
So I'm hoping you honor somebody can get me unbanned because it's been 7 years and I was skyrocketing with followers and views and that's the thing about cancel culture, right?
1:40:53
You have somebody who's taking off, their narrative is is boosting, they're improving.
1:40:59
I was improving my reputation.
1:41:00
Dairyland was starting to look like the rearview mirror of it.
1:41:02
I was moving on, the controversy was over, our revenue was doing fine and then, you know, Twitter said, "No, can't can't let you keep going, right?"
1:41:12
And it's like if you try to stop people from like taking back their narrative and you you you get halt them like that.
1:41:18
It's a very dangerous thing for tech to be able to censor people like that.
1:41:20
Like imagine having somebody become really controversial and say, "No, I want to tell my side of the story."
1:41:25
And somebody says, "No, you don't get that chance."
1:41:28
You know, it's kind of a disgusting thing.
1:41:31
Well, dude, we appreciate this, man.
1:41:32
That you're you're a fascinating person and we hope that I imagine we'll be talking more.
1:41:38
I'm very curious to see how Dr. Dr.
1:41:40
Gupta is going to do, but thank you for for coming and doing this.
1:41:43
We were like I said, we were like, I'm not sure if he's coming or not.
1:41:47
We're not It was 50/50 chance, so I'm happy we made this happen and we appreciate you. Thank you so much, guys.
1:41:52
All right, we'll talk soon. Awesome. That's it. That's the pod.