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Okay, these are the five most interesting businessmen alive.
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These are going to be eccentric billionaires, people who not only have a crazy business life and have just done a variety of wild [ __ ] These are people that they should be making movies about. So, we got a list.
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Can I start off with number five?
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We're going to go five to one, one being who we crown as the the most interesting man alive.
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The criteria for this, by the way, is they got to be interesting.
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So, not just rich, not just successful, but fascinating, interesting.
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Um that can be good and bad. They have to be men.
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We have a separate list coming for women.
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And they have to be alive.
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So, nobody who is, you know, some dead historical figure. Fair enough?
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Yeah, you're going to kick it off? Yeah, I'll kick it off. Okay.
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So, number five is a guy who won the game twice and on his way out the second time is just flipping the bird to everybody.
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And this is a guy named Pavel Durov.
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I call this guy James Bond with Wi-Fi. Okay.
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this guy's Instagram, you'll know why I said it.
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He looks like James Bond.
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He travels around the world.
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He's an international man of mystery.
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But, he he built his his claim to fame as, you know, using his laptop, using Wi-Fi.
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So, this guy's basically the Russian Mark Zuckerberg.
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He It's even more impressive than Zuck.
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So, when he was young, he built um the Facebook of Russia. And it was called VK.
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And what's cool about this is is two things.
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Number one, he actually beat Facebook.
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So, there were many countries in the world where somebody built the Facebook of Brazil, the Facebook of Africa, the Facebook of Europe.
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We There has been tons of these.
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And in every single one of them, the end game was, "No, no, no.
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Facebook is the Facebook of Brazil.
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Facebook is the Facebook of India."
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And Facebook dominated everywhere.
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The one place they couldn't dominate was Russia.
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And in an interview, Zuck was talking to Sam Altman and he even said, he's like, "God, the only ones we could never beat were the Russians.
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He was like, it was insane.
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He's like, we would make a change and literally like 12 minutes later, they would have that update on their on their side.
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Like if we moved a pixel, they moved that pixel."
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And he's like, these guys were just the most prolific copiers we've ever seen and we just could not figure out how are we ever going to overtake them if they're the world's smartest mathematicians and programmers who have dedicated who are dedicated 24/7 to beating us or cloning us and doing exactly what we do if if they can't get come up with a better idea.
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And he so, he gave them you know, a hat tip.
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So, he creates VK, it becomes the Facebook of Russia. He won.
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But, he had to sell it because one day, the Russian government approaches him and says, "Pavel, we need some information."
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He's like, "Cool, what do you need to know?"
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They're like, "We need some information about all your users and what they're saying." He's like, "Uh what? Why?"
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And they're like, "Well, they've been you know, there's been some users who are saying some anti-government things.
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As you know, that's not how we do [ __ ] around here.
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So, give us some names and uh we'll make sure that they get quiet."
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And he's like, you're at it, drop your pants and bend over and cough.
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So, he doesn't want to do it.
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And so, what Pavel does, and by the way, this is not like um you know, this is not just a business move.
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This is not a lawyer sending you a cease and desist.
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When the Russian government comes knocking, there's a pretty uh serious there's serious consequences for what you decide to do after that. You comply, great.
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Uh if you don't comply, there's not only consequences for those people they were after, now there's consequences for you.
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And so, what he does is he not only does it comply, he flips the bird.
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So, he goes and he posts on VK the government request, the memo that they the secret like kind of letter that they sent him telling him what they needed.
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And he said, "They're asking for your data. I'll never do it.
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And here's my official They asked, you know, here's my official response and he posted a picture of a dog wearing a hoodie.
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And that's this famous picture of a dog in a hoodie that he posted.
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He's like, here's what I have to say about this.
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And he just posted a dog with a hoodie.
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And so immediately, he's now in trouble.
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I you know, they they they raid his apartment.
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He ends up losing this company, has to flee the country, never allowed back in Russia.
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You know, cost him basically everything.
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His entire life gets completely uprooted.
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And his It's not like he was just like, you know, a guy.
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He had something to lose here.
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And so at the end of all this, he says and I would do it all again without hesitation. And I love that. I love this guy.
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And so what he does, he now gets kicked out of Russia. He loses his company.
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He does get $300 million cuz he sells it on the way out to some other guy who is going to comply.
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So I don't know fully if I if I you know, what happened to your principles.
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I'm not sure I'm sure what happened after that.
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But whatever, he gets $300 million and and he he's he hasn't fully left Russia yet.
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Uh but he's like kind of like figuring out his way out.
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But he's like, dude, I can't even message my brother who to tell him like what, you know, what we're going to do because they'll just see these messages.
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Like they they want to see my our message, they're going to see all these messages.
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So his brother who is a double PhD in math is like, you know what?
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Let's make a encrypted protocol, encrypted messaging protocol so that we can communicate.
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Like this is [ __ ] that they can just read all our goddamn messages.
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And this becomes the the precursor to Telegram, which is now one of the biggest messaging apps in the world.
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So this guy not only invented Facebook, he then got kicked It's like if the Winklevosses had beat up Mark in the locker room, took Facebook from him, kicked him off Harvard campus, and then he goes and creates WhatsApp.
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Cuz that's basically what he did.
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How how big is is Telegram?
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I I know it's huge, but I don't use it. Do you use it? I use it. I love it.
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It's probably my favorite messaging app of all messaging apps.
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It's an incredible product.
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It's got got users, dude.
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What's so good about it other than the encryption thing, which is huge?
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I mean, the encryption thing is huge.
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Um it's just like really well-made.
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Like the app is really fast, works really well.
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It's got a ton of features.
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Like, you know, you can do a broadcast channel where it's like Twitter and you're broadcasting to a bunch of followers.
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You can just message each other. You can do huge groups. You can have admins.
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You can send like stickers and memes and like you can send a ton of different types of messages.
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It's a it's a really well-made app.
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And has a billion people using it?
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Yeah, about a billion users now.
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Last I think I heard was like 800 million, but like I think recently he said something like we have about a billion users. Never runs ads.
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He's refused to sell any equity in the company.
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He took about a billion dollars of debt, but he never sells any equity.
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Just him and his brother own the whole thing.
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He's got 30 full-time employees.
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So, he's got 30 employees running a service that a billion people use all around the world and every government attacks them and tries to like break their encryption or ban them because no government wants this.
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Nobody government wants the citizens to be able to speak freely.
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He is the sole director, equity holder, and he's the sole product manager.
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He works directly with every engineer and designer himself. He has no HR.
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He only recruits people through something called contest.
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com, which is a contest platform where he puts up engineering challenges and the people who are the best at cracking his engineering challenges get hired.
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They get an offer to come work at Telegram. Is it a Russian company?
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No, he's like it's crazy.
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Everyone calls us a Russian company.
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We have no office in Russia, we have no employees in Russia, we have no servers in Russia, but the media just will be like, "Oh, Russian founder, blah blah blah."
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He's like, "Dude, I've He basically for a while he just moved around the world every 3 months living in different Airbnbs.
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Um and then finally he now settled in Dubai.
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This guy's worth about 15 billion dollars.
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So, he's the richest expat in Dubai.
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He's one of the you know, top 150 richest men in the world.
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And then you go look at his Instagram.
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You're going to love this, dude. The guy's ripped. He's absolutely ripped.
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And every photo, there's never another human being in any photo with him.
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Every photo is him alone with his shirt off doing something manly as hell. It's hilarious.
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It All the photos look AI generated.
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It's like if I said, "Hey, generate a um rich billionaire living in Dubai who uh is on the Brian Johnson protocol and wants to become Instagram famous."
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This is what DALL-E would give me.
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He's literally on a pirate ship on some of these photos.
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Yeah, I have a bunch Um another quote I love from him.
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So, yeah, he says uh they're like, "You know, you're a billionaire, billionaire, billionaire."
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He's like, "Dude, this billionaire thing is like a little overplayed."
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He's like, he's like, "Yes, it's true.
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I've had a few hundred million dollars of both uh dollars and Bitcoin in a bank account for 10 years and I've never touched it."
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He goes, "Yeah, that's true."
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He's like, "But I don't own any jets or yachts or mega mansions.
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Like, I don't do any of that [ __ ] I would rather make decisions that would influence how a billion people are going to communicate rather than sitting there choosing the color of the seats in my house that only me and my relatives are ever going to see." That's amazing.
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I read an I read another interview with him where he goes, "I went to San Francisco to see if I wanted to open an office there and I met with Jack Dorsey and it was great and I went to the Twitter office, which the Twitter office is in the epicenter of kind of bad stuff where uh crime is happening in San Francisco.
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I used to live down the block from it.
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And he said, "After the meeting, I was walking around and three guys tried to mug me."
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And the interviewer was like, "Well, how did it go?"
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He goes, "Blood was spilled."
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But he doesn't That That He doesn't say like whose blood.
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He just said, "There There was blood."
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Well, he he he was like, "Yeah, three three guys tried to steal my phone.
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I fought off the robbers."
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And then he posted it on Twitter.
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He's like, "I I He's like, my goal was I was trying to tweet out I just hung out with Jack Dorsey."
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Cuz Jack Dorsey made Twitter.
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He's like, "That's what I was trying to do on my phone when they did this."
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So, he posts a pic a picture of his bloody knuckles reaching for a book, which is just a hilarious thing.
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He goes, and this is the tweet he goes, "Just got to a fight with guys who tried to grab my phone near Mission 980. Scary neighborhood?" Question mark. "Not for a Russian." That's amazing.
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Yeah, this guy's pretty badass and the idea that San Francisco is like the nice quaint neighborhood in Russia.
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It's the nice clean family family area of Russia.
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Yeah, I read that and and it was so funny.
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Yeah, he he's clearly uh manicuring his social presence, but I think I believe it. Yeah, the guy's amazing.
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And he just flexes on everybody.
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His Instagram is just a pure flex.
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Yeah, I mean he's awesome. This guy's a good one.
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Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses, made their first million off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy. That's wild.
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That's why we want to do the show.
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And we want to see more of that.
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One of the questions we get asked over and over again is is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about?
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Well, the answer is finally yes.
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The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50-plus business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free.
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You can click the link in the description below and get the database for you.
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All right, now back to the show.
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How does uh Telegram make money? Or do they?
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They uh they basically don't make money.
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They've made I I read somewhere I I don't know if this is 100% true.
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I'm trying to find it, but like um two things.
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One, they take donations.
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And so I read something that they've had over a billion dollars in donations from users, and that's been part of what keeps it going and like, you know, it's 30 people and then it's the the the server costs, right?
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So it's like, you know, there's there's burn, but it's not like he's running a 3,000-person or 30,000-person company.
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Um in addition to that, he raised a billion-dollar uh debt bond, uh which is basically like a pre-IPO coupon.
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So he was basically like, "We're going to make money someday, and we need money now to get there."
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He had offers to sell 10% at a $30 billion valuation.
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He turned it down, so he turned down 3 billion.
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Then they came back and said, "We'll buy 10% at a $40 billion valuation, so $4 billion." He turned it down.
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And he said, "I don't want to sell any equity.
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I'm scared of what an investor will do for this."
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He did a uh crypto token back when crypto was really hot, and he raised over a billion dollars for um their crypto coin, but then the SEC came after him and was like, "This was basically like you were selling equity.
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Like you call it a token and it has a utility, but like this is equity."
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So, he had to return a bunch of money, and that that that token project never got off the ground cuz he had raised And I think the minimum at the time, cuz I was looking into investing in it, is you had to buy in chunks of minimum 20 million. Oh my god.
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So, basically, people were forming syndicates.
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It was like, "Oh, you want to come in for 500k? All right, cool.
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We're trying to get to 20 million so we can buy some some of the Telegram token."
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Because you had an app that actually had a ton of usage.
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The most brilliant uh you know, like engineering team probably that exists on Earth, or you know, one of the top 20 engineering teams on Earth.
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And um and now they were going to do a token to try to make money, and um you know, figure out like basically you'd be able to to use the token to to do things inside the app.
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So, anyways, that's kind of some of the things they've tried, but you know, he has you know, quote-unquote some plan of how they're going to make money that doesn't involve you selling user data. This guy's really cool.
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All right, that's a good one. Yeah, who's number four? Who do you got? All right.
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So, my goal with this was to pick people who you have no idea who they are, and hopefully most of our audience has no idea who they are either.
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And so, we did not talk before this.
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So, it's just a coincidence that my guy is also Russian.
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I call him the Russian Richard Branson. His name is Oleg Tinkov.
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So, he grew up as a in a mining family, so very like humble beginnings, but he goes to the city because he wants to experience freedom.
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And he gets into cycling.
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For some reason he's into cycling, and he goes abroad for a bike race, and he sees someone wearing blue jeans.
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And this is in the '80s in the Soviet Union.
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The Soviet Union's about to uh crumble and become Russia.
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And he starts bringing home these blue jeans and selling them.
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And he's like, all right, it looks like people in Russia really want this like Western fashion.
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And so he opens up a chain of stores where he starts selling blue jeans, but then everything else, perfume, VCRs, electronics.
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This is right in '89, '90 where the the Soviet Union's crashing and these people actually want to be able to buy stuff from from Western countries. And he kills it.
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And so in his early 20s, he sells that business and he makes something like $7 million.
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And then he does something that you'd expect him to do.
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He starts a ravioli business.
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Is this guy just watching commercials in the States?
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He's like, Levi's, got it.
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Okay, next one, ravioli, cool.
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We'll we'll do that, too.
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Well, what he does is he goes to America every once in a while and he like he like he says he goes every 5 years to learn what's popular in America, like different advertising, whatever.
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And he like basically brings that to Russia.
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Have you ever heard of the phrase it's a it's a word baba baba babushka.
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I can't even say it right.
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It means Russia it's like a Russian grandmother.
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It's like when you think of like Fiddler on the Roof, it's like a abushka. Yeah, babushka.
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It's like a Russian grandmother with like a scarf over her head.
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So typically, raviolis, they have a different word for them in Russia, but the raviolis were made by that type of person.
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And it was like a comfort food.
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And so he gets the idea where he's like, we're going to do something sexy.
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We're going to make this like really stand out.
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And so he buys this huge ad and it's just a woman's bare ass and it says something like raviolis not made by your grandmother.
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It's like a woman's bare ass with flour on it.
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As if I guess this woman's ass is pounding out the flour, I don't know.
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Which is kind of weird when you think about it.
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I don't want ravioli like that.
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Like I don't understand, but I'm hungry. Yeah. But it takes off. It works. This business works.
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He eventually sells it for $21 million.
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So his next thing is that he's in California and he actually meets with Dan Gordon from Gordon Biersch.
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That's interesting to you and I because Gordon Biersch was a microbrewery outside of San Francisco.
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One of the co-founders or at the time CEOs was actually Lorenzo Fertitta from UFC.
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And he starts seeing this trend in the '90s where these microbreweries are quite popular.
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And so he opens up a microbrewery in Russia.
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And he calls it Tinkoff Breweries and it's kind of like Sam Adams beer where at the time beer in Russia was like not that good tasting and he goes we're going to actually going to charge four or five times the price of normal beer and we're going to make this thing very Americanized.
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And he says like he's got this famous phrase where he says beer and freedom go great together.
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And he's all into like freedom and like not in line with what Russia wants him to do.
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And so he starts this brewery. It takes off.
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So they started in 1997 but by 2003 it's doing 35 million in sales.
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Two years later 2005 it's doing 200 million dollars in sales and that year he sells it for 200 million dollars which is a huge sum.
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He owns most of the company.
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So he's just sold sells his company.
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He's immediately in Necker Necker Island with Richard Branson.
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And Oleg is talking to Richard.
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He goes Richard, I was in America recently.
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I moved there for just like a few months and I was able to get a credit card.
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It was so amazing how easy I got a credit card. We need this in Russia.
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And Richard's like you should start it.
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And so that's exactly what he does like six months after selling his beer company.
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He starts this credit card company.
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It's called Tinkoff Bank I guess is how it translates but it's or Bank of Tinkoff and he for some reason names everything after himself because he's great at marketing and his name is popular.
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And so he starts this bank with 70 million dollars of his own money and he actually buys a bank.
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And the reason why this guy is interesting is because or this bank is interesting is we know what Mercury is.
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We know what a bunch of these neo banks are. He beat all of them.
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He started this in 2005 and it gets huge to the point where Goldman invest into it.
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He invest 70 million dollars of his own money.
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A bunch of people invest in it and it becomes massive.
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And so, the business takes off.
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It's up until recently, 2021, it was the second largest issuer of credit cards in Russia.
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It was the largest digital bank in the world.
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And the idea being like we don't need branches, we don't need any of that.
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It's just all going to be online and we'll send you your card.
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And so, it goes public and his stake in it is worth $10 billion. dollars.
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And here's where the story gets kind of crazy.
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Just like Pavel, Russia does not like Oleg.
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He talks a ton of [ __ ] Basically, at one point when they invade the Ukraine, he's very anti-the war.
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He says he just says, "Putin, you're full of [ __ ] All these oligarchs in Russia, you're all full of shit." He tweets this out.
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He goes, "The generals, they wake up with a hangover and realize they have a shitty army.
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How can the army be any good when our when the rest of our country is also shit?"
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Like he says these things on He tweets this out.
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He says all this crazy stuff.
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And eventually, they delist Tinkoff Bank.
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So, it's no longer public and he loses most all of his money.
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And so, at this point, he's worth I think he's he was able to like force sell some of his shares and he walked away with like $200 million.
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And he's now he has leukemia and he's dying. He's going to die soon.
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And he basically is still talking mad [ __ ] He says like, "They wanted to punish me for this.
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And to that, I say [ __ ] off.
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I want to die with good karma and for people to remember me for being strong and fair."
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And so, he's paid the price for being outspoken and he's still being outspoken.
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And he's been completely screwed, but he's doing a good job of kind of still sticking it to the man.
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The other thing that he's done, he's always done he's done really well at challenging the status quo.
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The reason I have found this guy is he owned a very successful cycling team.
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Cycling is not a very popular sport.
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I'm one of the few guys that watches it, but he did a great job of like getting into the cycling game and he like criticized the Tour de France for tons of stuff.
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They eventually changed tons of rules.
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And finally, he's a [ __ ] in the best possible way.
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So, there's this famous story where for his microbreweries, he wanted to name the street that the brewery was on Tinkoff.
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He wanted it to to have the same name of his restaurant.
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And so, what he did was he got a basically a version of an encyclopedia and he made a fake encyclopedia that said, "Years ago in the 1700s, there was a brewery on this street named Tinkoff.
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And so, we need to do it justice by naming the street at it after it because this is a historical thing."
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And so, they named the street after it.
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Years later, he admits he made the he made one page in an encyclopedia, he just put it in there and they totally went for it.
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And so, he's done tons of things like this and he's going to die soon.
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They He says that he's he's he basically has said he's going to die soon and he's donated what's left of his big fortune, it's now a small fortune, to leukemia.
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Uh and so, he's young and if you look him up, he uh he's famous for dying his hair.
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He kind of he looks like Richard Branson, actually.
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And so, he's very Richard Branson-esque.
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He dyes his hair purple because that's the color for his cycling team.
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He's pretty eccentric, very unique guy.
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Uh he also wrote a book, but the book's hard to read because it's uh it was translated, but he's a columnist.
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And he and he writes a lot, so you can read a lot of his work.
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Speaking of which, this is my cue for you.
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You know, books are cool, but books are a little little heavy for me.
20:44
If any of these people wanted to to put their thoughts out there, they would have great newsletters.
20:47
And if they wanted a great newsletter, they would use a great newsletter platform like Beehiiv.
20:52
And that is our thrill of the shill this week.
20:53
The most interesting men in the world, if they were ever going to write a newsletter, they would write it on Beehiiv. Back to the show.
21:01
Um anyway, so what do you think of Oleg? He's an interesting guy.
21:03
You've never heard of him, I think, right? Fascinating. Never heard of him. Well done.
21:06
You you got me with that one. I like that.
21:08
Um yeah, this is this is super cool.
21:10
And I also like just the idea the the move of I'm just going to export Western culture.
21:15
export Western culture. I feel like this is a common blueprint for coming up with, you know, really uh really big businesses, which is you go to Japan, you observe Japanese culture, you find the most interesting bits of it, and
21:27
then you export that culture to a different country that doesn't quite yet have it, but you but you know, most humans are pretty similar and um and you can sort of create the demand, especially when some cultures just tend to be net net exporters. Like I think
21:39
Like I think the US is a net exporter in you know, movies and entertainment and you know, has certain strong values like freedom and whatever else.
21:47
So, you can like use those and bringing that to a place that's sort of uh you know, deficient in those areas.
21:53
Um and so, I think that's a that's just a cool model is exporting culture from one one place to another. And that's what he did.
21:59
He went and studied business for some classes at Berkeley and he would just see what's going on in San Francisco in the Bay Area, what's interesting, what's neat, and he was inspired by that.
22:08
And he said every 5 years I go to America to learn these things and I don't want to bring them back. Right.
22:13
Huge coincidence that we both chose Russian Russian guys, Russian expats sort of.
22:19
Uh I guess that kind of tells our stance on sticking it to the man, sticking it to Putin. All right.
22:25
My next uh I think I'm going to do a back-to-back here cuz I have uh one extra one to do do.
22:28
So, number three for me, I call him the walking middle finger.
22:33
Number three is Sean Parker.
22:35
And Sean Parker is um a fascinating guy.
22:39
So, a lot of people know him because in the Social Network movie, Justin Timberlake is supposed to be Sean Parker and he's this like super charismatic, kind of know-it-all guy that uh you know, tells them to hey, drop drop the the in the Facebook.
22:52
Just make it just Facebook. It's cleaner, right?
22:54
Do you think that's real? Yeah, so that is real.
22:57
Um but a lot of that role is not how Sean Parker actually is.
23:01
Like he he's like I'm a They were like, "What do you think the movie got right?"
23:04
He's like, "Well, they got some some of the stuff right, but the most of the character he's like, "I'm not like Justin Timberlake."
23:09
He's like, "I'm not cool and smooth."
23:10
He's like, "I'm weird and insecure.
23:12
I'm He's like, "I'm a lot more eccentric."
23:15
Like they made him seem like cool and normal. I'm not cool and normal.
23:20
He's like, "I might be cool, but I'm I'm definitely not normal."
23:21
And I want to just tell you a little bit about this guy.
23:24
So, one of the commonalities I had when I was searching for for people like this, and you'll see the next guy I have has the same story, is that when he was in his teens, hack was a hacker.
23:35
Hacked into something and got arrested.
23:37
So, I don't know if you know this, but basically when he was a kid, he was 16 years old, and he basically got tracked down by the FBI because he hacked into like a Fortune 500 company's network.
23:45
And they were like, "Hey, you He got offered He eventually got offered a job with like I think the CIA." He turned it down.
23:51
He was like, "No, no, no.
23:53
I'm like, you know, I'm on the rebel side.
23:54
You guys are the are the authority. I'm I'm rebel."
23:57
And so, he creates, of course, Napster.
24:00
And Napster is just like one of the coolest {slash} like biggest middle finger companies that I I think has ever existed.
24:09
Um you know, obviously if people today probably There's probably some a generation of people today who don't even know what Napster is, but Napster was like the first place before Spotify.
24:16
The first place where you could just go and you could just like get access to all of the world's music.
24:20
And then movies and other things, too, but like really music was the main thing. And it was illegal.
24:27
You could upload the songs you had, other people could download those songs, and it was music file sharing.
24:31
And it got mega mega popular, and then it got sued out of existence.
24:38
And to like let the young people know, this was game-changing.
24:39
I think you and I must have been in grade school, like 12 and 11 and 14 when this came out.
24:47
This was such a big deal.
24:47
It got to the point where artists would even release fake music that were auto Remember that when they were scrambled after 10 seconds they get scrambled cuz they want the fake song to go viral. Yep. Yep, exactly.
24:59
Or like a comedians I remember a friend who it was it was like Dane Cook. Yeah, Dane Cook.
25:02
Basically be like Chris Rock comedy special featuring Dane Cook.
25:08
And like people just read Chris Rock comedy special and the first 3 minutes were Chris Rock doing comedy and they're like and now Dane Cook.
25:12
And Dane Cook got mega mega popular by basically it's a growth hack of a genius growth hack.
25:18
Which is to say, oh how do I basically like hijack the SEO, the search intent of Chris Rock in order to distribute my own, you know, comedy virus to to everybody else.
25:27
So, Napster was super cool he gets sued out of existence.
25:31
But the thing I like about Sean Parker is that um there's this phrase that uh Kevin Van Trump said once and we're going to have him on the pod.
25:38
He's he's the guy who um What's his newsletter called? The farming newsletter?
25:42
I forgot what it's called but he basically writes the biggest newsletter for farmers in the in the country and he has FarmCon and a bunch of different things.
25:48
But he said something to us once he goes, you know, the the train always comes back a second time.
25:55
And we're like, what do you mean?
25:55
He's like, for all of the best possible deals, investments, trends, opportunities you overlook it the first time very common.
26:06
And you think you totally missed it. Oh, I missed the boat.
26:08
He's like but I he's like I just see it over and over again.
26:11
The train comes back around.
26:11
You know, maybe um you know, you you didn't invest in Facebook but then the stock tanks for a couple months.
26:19
That's your time to get back on.
26:19
He's like it's not always going to be the same price as it was the first time.
26:21
But for the truly great things the train has such a long runway.
26:25
It's a so much upside that even if you just get on the second time you still get filthy rich.
26:31
And he's like the same thing happened with Bitcoin.
26:34
The people who just kicked themselves for not buying Bitcoin the first time they heard it at $150 instead of just buying it at 500 they just kept telling the story about how they missed it at 150 and then they missed it at 600 700 800 1000 and now it's at 60000 and they're still missing it.
26:48
He's like but the smart people are like well, the train came back around let me hop let hop on.
26:51
I do I would now recognize the value in this thing.
26:55
And I feel like Sean Parker did that with his career.
26:59
So, for a period of time, Sean Parker was seen as this kind of like bad boy, but like kind of untouchable.
27:04
Like you couldn't invest in Sean Parker. He's too rebellious.
27:08
He's getting sued out of existence.
27:10
The big companies hate him.
27:11
The government's after him.
27:11
He was like an untouchable.
27:14
And then later, it was like, oh, Sean Parker, this guy was the you know, he he led the round into Facebook and he was the early huge investor in Spotify.
27:22
He was did this and that.
27:22
And he became the guy who could do no wrong.
27:25
But those weren't his companies.
27:27
But he recognized that those companies were winners and actually made his fortune not on the thing he did, Napster, but in recognizing the brilliance of the next Sean Parker.
27:37
And that was, you know, Daniel Ek for Spotify or Mark he was like he did this when he was like he was an elder at 25.
27:44
Yeah, yeah, and every hacker looked up to him cuz he's guy's an icon.
27:48
He used the reputation, but not necessarily the money to make all his money.
27:53
Usually you use your money to make money.
27:55
He used his reputation to make money.
27:56
So, couple of things that this guy did that was that's pretty fascinating.
27:59
So, first I'm going to give you some lifestyle things and then I'm going to give you the career story.
28:01
So, crazy lifestyle thing.
28:03
So, I met somebody who went to his wedding.
28:05
Have you ever heard about his wedding? Yeah, man.
28:07
He got a ton of [ __ ] for it in like the heyday of Silicon Valley.
28:11
So, this guy basically spent somewhere between 5 and 10 million dollars on his wedding.
28:15
And he was like And so, the interesting thing here is just like weird people are not just like they're not just like crazy in their business and super chill in their normal life. Most of them.
28:28
All If you're If you're wired a certain way, you just apply that to everything that comes your way.
28:31
So, for example, when it came to time to get married, he's like, all right, the budget no budget.
28:36
Let's just do the sickest thing we can imagine.
28:37
So, they're like, we're going to go to a forest in the Big Sur.
28:41
And it's not just going to be a wedding, it's going to be like a like an immersive theater experience.
28:43
I got to have people who were there and they're like, it was crazy.
28:45
You walk in and like you could see the stars above you, but it was daytime.
28:49
It's like, how the hell are there stars?
28:50
And like there was rabbits running around, like wild rabbits that were just like, you know, there because we're in the forest.
28:54
And they're like, but it was all planned.
28:57
They had the the costume designer from Lord of the Rings made everybody's outfits.
29:02
Uh you know, he ended up paying like two or three million dollars in fines because you just you're not allowed to just use like the most beautiful public like forest for your own wedding, but he was like, [ __ ] it, I'm doing it. To propose? Sean, are you sure?
29:16
And they were like, uh does there a permit?
29:17
And he's like, put on your put on your costume and get in here.
29:22
Um to propose, he baked his wedding ring into an onion. Gave it to his wife. She's like, what?
29:28
Do you know what this is?
29:28
Dude, it's like being it's like being mad at a UFC fighter for getting like drunk in a fight in the street.
29:33
It's like, yeah, he's an animal. What do you expect?
29:37
Right, the guy who gets caged up in his underwear and fights another man to the death.
29:41
Like he he wasn't super chill outside the octagon. That's weird.
29:46
Um he bought this $55 million house in LA from Ellen DeGeneres and then like tricked it out.
29:51
Um he's just got like his houses are crazy.
29:52
Like it's worth a 30-minute dive just to go look at his houses.
29:56
But even in his other stuff, like, you know, rich people do philanthropy, but like how you do it is also interesting.
30:01
So for him, he's like, I want to bet on He's like, I'm going to take a venture capital approach to philanthropy.
30:07
So he's like, I'm not just going to donate to the Red Cross or whatever.
30:10
He's like, I'm going to find the people that are trying to cure cancer in the most interesting ways and then nobody will fund them because it's too crazy, it's too unproven.
30:17
They have to like they'd have to convince the whole world that their crazy approach is going to work.
30:21
He's like, but that's what that's like in the startup world, that's exactly what happens.
30:24
Some crazy kid has a crazy approach that like, you know, most likely will not work, but if it does, it's going to change the game. And that's what VCs do. They bet on that.
30:32
He's like, I'm going to do that in you know, for curing cancer.
30:35
And so he's poured in tons and tons of money into unorthodox cancer treatments. How wealthy is he? He's very wealthy.
30:43
So, when he identified Facebook as like a thing and he was like, um, you know what?
30:50
I want to, you know, invest in this, be a part of this. Mark really liked him.
30:52
He's the one who connected Mark to Peter Thiel to make to get the investment, um, the first 500k investment.
30:59
He's the one who convinced them, I think, to move to Palo Alto and leave Boston, which then let them, you know, recruit the best talent, which let them, you know, succeed when other social networks like Friendster and MySpace were failing.
31:11
Um, so Sean ended up owning 4% of Facebook, which is like became worth like, I don't know, four or five billion dollars, um, just on his Facebook stock.
31:19
Then, there's an interesting story of how he invested in Spotify.
31:24
Have you ever read this email that Sean Parker sent to the Spotify founder?
31:29
Wasn't it something like, this is Napster but done legally? Exactly.
31:34
So, he just cold emails them in 2009.
31:37
Spotify launched in like kind of like '06, '07 range.
31:40
Spotify launched in Europe.
31:43
So, so Daniel, I think, lived in Sweden.
31:46
And then, on top of that, uh, you know, they had only launched in Europe because the rules allowed them to do it in Europe, but he he knew he had to build up enough critical mass before entering the United States market.
31:54
It's like one of the the weird reasons that Spotify worked and all of the other music sharing services never worked cuz they all tried to start in the United States.
32:02
And all of the music labels were so ready to just sue the [ __ ] out of everybody from Napster that like you couldn't have done that.
32:07
That was not it would they would come after you when you were just a a baby, an infant.
32:12
So, he writes him this email and it's just subject line, "Thoughts."
32:13
And he's like, "Daniel and Shacky, goes, I've been playing around with Spotify.
32:18
You've built an amazing experience.
32:19
As you saw, Zuck really likes it, too.
32:21
I've been trying to get him to understand your model and I think he just needed to try it to see it for himself."
32:25
Then he talks a little bit about the Facebook and he's like, you know, we should partner because we can integrate like, you know, Spotify's music stuff with Facebook's social graph, all that.
32:33
But then he's he just compliments me.
32:35
He's like, "Your your design is clean, elegant, tight, and fast.
32:38
It's clearly lacking some important features like the social stuff, but I think you've done a great job sequencing.
32:42
You've nailed the core experience, blah blah blah.
32:44
Ever since Napster, I've dreamt of building a product similar to Spotify.
32:47
I might have tried had I not been {quote} sidetracked with Facebook, Founders Fund, and you know, like this dope [ __ ] that I've been doing."
32:54
And he's like, "To be fair, um I also was like, you know, pretty scarred from the record labels."
33:00
Um He's like and he's like, you know, "So, I've adopted a watch watch and wait thing to try to see A, when the labels would come to their senses and realize that they need something to distribute music.
33:10
And two, until a product that would come in that would fix all the things we got wrong with Napster."
33:14
And he's like, "You have done that."
33:16
And then he just goes on and he articulates from a product point of view what they have done right and what they need to change.
33:22
And he's like, "I can help you do this shit."
33:24
And he ends up leading a $15 million investment into Spotify, um which is like, you know, an amazing investment.
33:31
I want to read you one other Sean Parker story.
33:32
So, the guy's pretty magnetic.
33:34
And actually, this story comes from you.
33:38
A long time ago, you posted on The Hustle a blog post about the this famous story of the painter who took stock in Facebook.
33:45
I guess he was like supposed to get paid 60 grand, and instead of taking the 60 grand for the painting he did on Facebook's office wall, he took stock, and the stock ended up becoming worth $200 million.
33:56
I almost chose him for this segment because he David Choe, I think. He's a crazy man. He's a crazy man.
34:00
And he did this interview on Howard Stern.
34:02
And what that's cool about it, so I knew the story.
34:06
I think everybody kind of knows the story of the painter.
34:07
What I didn't know is why he took the stock.
34:08
And the answer to why he took the stock is that [ __ ] Sean Parker.
34:13
And he's like, that guy he And so, he's like, "Dude, and so Howard Stern is like, "Why did you pick the stock?
34:19
Like, you know, were they offering not a lot of money?"
34:21
And he's like, "No, they were I told them the price is 60,000. They said yes."
34:26
He's like, "That's a lot of money."
34:26
He's like, "Yeah, I just I decided that's what it was going to be worth."
34:29
And I I he was like coming out of jail or something at the time.
34:31
And Sean Parker loved this artist was like, "No, no, no.
34:34
This artist has to be the guy."
34:34
And he had tried to get him to do something for Plaxo, his other company, but they didn't have any money.
34:39
He's like, finally he hit him up.
34:40
He's like, "Yo, we finally have money.
34:42
I'm at this new thing called the Facebook.
34:44
Uh we've I think we have enough money. Come on.
34:46
I want you only you can do this painting." So he comes over. He's like, "Cool. It'll be 60 grand.
34:50
You want to paint this whole building? It'll be 60 grand."
34:52
Uh by the way, if you if you I've been to the Facebook office and they've redone it, but like parts of the ceiling they used the same drywall, so you can actually still see the painting. Right.
35:02
And so the artist is like, "What happened?
35:03
Like they they didn't have the cash?"
35:04
He's like, "No, no, they had the cash."
35:06
He's like, "So why'd you take the stock?
35:08
Did you Did you believe in this you you you Are you like an investor?
35:09
Did you believe in this?"
35:10
He's like, "Dude, I never invested anything in my life."
35:14
He's like, they He's like, "I asked Sean.
35:15
I was like, what's this company?"
35:16
He starts describing you know what Facebook is, a social network for college kids.
35:21
And I was like, "Dude, that's lame as shit."
35:22
And he's like he's like, "I wasn't on Friendster. I wasn't on MySpace. I hate that shit."
35:25
He goes, um "And this is for college students? Oh, even worse. I hate education. I hate college. I never went.
35:31
I don't even like college students."
35:33
He's like, "So you hate no social networking. You hate college."
35:37
He's like, "Yeah, I dropped out of school.
35:38
I hate everything about school."
35:40
And he's like, "And it's only starting on Harvard and Stanford campus?
35:42
Oh man, like I hate Harvard. I hate Stanford.
35:46
I'm like an anti anti all all those things that they stand for."
35:48
He's like, "So why did you do it?"
35:51
He's like, "Cuz every time I'd hang out with Sean Parker, he would just tell me like, 'Yo, I'm going to make some [ __ ] happen.'
35:55
He's like, before he went and met with Peter Thiel, he says, 'Oh, I got to go.
35:59
I got to raise money for Facebook.'
36:00
And he goes, 'I'm going to bend these fuckers' minds.'
36:02
He's like and he came back and he's like and he's like, 'Yeah, the rich He's like, those [ __ ] ended up being like the richest men in America.'
36:08
Like you know, like you have Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.
36:12
And he's like, "Dude, this little nerd, this scrawny nerd, he's got a lot of swag and confidence."
36:15
And he's like, he's just And he came back he had raised the money from them.
36:20
And he's like, "Okay, interesting."
36:20
And he's like, "So He's like, you want the cash or you want stock?"
36:25
He's like, "You're You're in this?" He's like, "Yeah." He's like, "All right.
36:28
I He's like, I sized him up and I'm like, this guy's going somewhere."
36:31
He's like, "So, that that's why I took the stock." That's awesome. That is so awesome.
36:34
And it ended up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
36:38
I don't know what he sold and when he sold it, but that's insane.
36:43
And that's what, you know, these people are They have a sort of magnetic a magnetic trait to them uh that I think is is pretty common.
36:48
Um and that's a good example of it.
36:50
Were you going to talk about his career?
36:53
Or is that the career part?
36:53
Well, that's mostly the career part, right?
36:56
know that he's done a few other things that a bunch of things that failed.
36:57
He had Plaxo, he had air airtime, he had uh you know, a bunch of things like that.
37:02
Then he was a managing partner of Founders Fund. That's all I know. What What else is there?
37:05
Have you heard of opportunity zones for real estate? Mhm.
37:09
You know, I believe he invented that.
37:11
So, basically, I'm I I I read this a long time ago. I'm going off the cuff.
37:15
But, basically, opportunity zones, if I remember correctly, they're zones designated by the government that show these places are impoverished or they're like warehouse spaces and we want to incentivize investors to open up, I believe, residential build build stuff there.
37:30
And I think it was his idea and he and he lobbied the he lobbied the government and he turned it into a reality.
37:38
Opportunity zones are the brainchild of Sean Parker.
37:41
He um in the in the early 2000s, he was Facebook's first president and he wanted to minimize his capital gains on his tech stock fortune.
37:47
So, he lobbied the government to create this idea of opportunity zones so that investors would be incentivized to invest in areas that, you know, were were not receiving enough investment. And uh and he did it.
37:59
That's pretty That's pretty fascinating.
38:01
Yeah, he convinced the Obama administration, I think it was, to make this a reality.
38:04
And now it's a thing where billions and billions and billions of dollars go to this.
38:09
And it was his idea and he didn't just come up with the idea.
38:12
He He lobbied the government and he changed the law, uh which is really fascinating that he did that.
38:17
So, he's done a bunch of interesting stuff.
38:18
And I think, in fact, I think he also played a hand in Obama getting elected a little bit or something like that.
38:23
I mean he's a political guy.
38:25
Uh so he's he's done a bunch of interesting stuff.
38:28
All right, let me do number two, then you do number one. All right.
38:30
So um number two is Tom Anderson, aka Tom from MySpace.
38:37
And I call him the guy who won the game and simply stopped playing, which is really critical.
38:42
Almost all these guys Like you talked about Oleg and stuff.
38:45
He did this and then he went bigger and then he went bigger.
38:48
And I think that's the common thing.
38:51
But Tom had one thing those guys will never have. He had enough.
38:55
And he was able to walk away.
38:57
And so Tom's story is pretty wild.
38:59
I didn't I didn't know the backstory.
38:59
So also age 14, hacks Chase Bank.
39:01
Gets root access into Chase Bank.
39:05
All of the names, the bank accounts, the the um the the the amounts in them.
39:10
He could have wired as much money as he wanted out of it. He did not.
39:13
Uh he knew their mortgages, he knew everything.
39:16
And he was basically the leader of a hacking crew.
39:20
And his nickname was Lord Flathead.
39:20
And so Lord Flathead gets root access and he leaves a message in in Chase Bank and he says um basically you need to let me keep my access um or I will, you know, expose all this information.
39:35
I will leak all this blah blah blah.
39:36
Like you need to give me give me full access.
39:38
Even even you know, just uh acknowledge that I won and give me access to this thing.
39:43
And he starts bragging about it.
39:45
So he tells 40 of his friends, he shows them exactly how he did it, how he hacked Chase Bank at age 14.
39:52
And this is why the FBI conducted one of the biggest raids they've ever done.
39:54
A simultaneous raid of 40 different people, all happening at 7:00 p. m.
39:58
, all in one area cuz they didn't know who was the the kind of the the mastermind behind it, but they knew who all had, you know, had seen it or had access to it or was talking about it.
40:07
And so they raid everybody at 7:00 p. m.
40:09
, they steal his computer, they take all his stuff, but they leave him alone cuz they're like, "The guy's 14. What are we going to do? We can't charge him." And so he gets off.
40:16
and he agrees, "Okay, I'm not going to hack stuff anymore." That's his origin story.
40:22
So now he ends up creating MySpace.
40:24
MySpace obviously was one of the biggest social networks in the world.
40:25
And uh MySpace was dope for a bunch of reasons that don't even exist anymore.
40:30
So, you know, if there's he's on our top five, but he was in everybody's top eight on MySpace, which was like, you know, my top eight friends.
40:39
And he was the first friend to everybody on MySpace.
40:40
He has the iconic picture of him turning away from a whiteboard wearing his white shirt.
40:46
Everybody knows that photo, everybody who's our age at least I grew up on MySpace.
40:48
And MySpace like was kind of a culture shifter.
40:51
Um like something that Facebook never really actually captured was that MySpace actually was cool for bands and getting, you know, discovery for music and talent and art.
40:59
And um and MySpace was kind of amazing.
41:02
And he sells MySpace for $580 million dollars. And he pieces out. He bounces.
41:08
He he he has a quote where he's like, "Yeah, before the acquisition I could do whatever I wanted. It was pretty fun."
41:15
He's like, "Now I have it takes all this time to get anybody to agree on things cuz they sold to News Corp, I think.
41:18
And he says um you know, there's like a budget review and a process for everything. It's a pain. So, I'm out."
41:24
So, he he pieces out and he's I think 38 years old or something when this happens. He's pretty young.
41:32
And instead of doing what almost every other business guy does, which is like, "Cool.
41:36
And now I shall, you know, change cancer, free speech, I'll take rockets to Mars."
41:42
Tom's like, "No, I'm going to travel the world and uh and just take a bunch of pictures."
41:49
He's like, "I'm just going to go have fun."
41:50
So, I'm going to read you what I admire about this guy.
41:51
A, his Twitter bio is not it doesn't say, "I'm Tom. I invented MySpace.
41:55
I exited to News Corp for $580 million dollars.
41:57
Currently a VC and, you know, professional dad, uh you know, husband of two, uh you know, husband of one, father of two, you know, he doesn't do all that shit." Virtual signal.
42:09
He just says, "Enjoying the good life.
42:11
My new hobbies are surfing, architecture, photography, and golf.
42:14
And what he does is, you know, basically he's like, "I'm not going to waste my time just debating politics or like trying to be the next big, you know, venture capitalist or whatever."
42:22
He's like, "Oh, I'm too bitty busy like, you know, my eyes are too busy blinded by the by the reflection from the Maldives sea.
42:29
I can't I can't be bothered with all that [ __ ] I'm just going to go travel the world, do awesome things, and take awesome pictures."
42:35
And so he becomes, if you go to his Instagram, he becomes like a world-famous photographer.
42:40
Dude, he has set almost 700,000 followers.
42:41
And he takes beautiful pictures.
42:44
Like his his Instagram is amazing.
42:46
And it's just pictures from his life traveling the world.
42:50
And he even he's surprised.
42:50
He's like, "I I didn't have a big background in this."
42:53
He's like, "But I took a few photos I was traveling."
42:54
And he's like, "I couldn't believe what was coming out of the camera."
42:57
He's like, "I couldn't believe that this was coming out of my camera."
42:59
So he's like, "Yeah, I decided I'm going to post this stuff."
43:01
And so, you know, he starts posting, it gets popular.
43:05
So his second act was as was as this.
43:08
The reason I put him on this list is because I was on Airchat the other night and somebody shared a story about him.
43:13
They go, "You know, the They go, 'Tom is a hero of mine.
43:14
Of all the tech heroes, he's one of the biggest cuz he was able to win the game and then bounce.'"
43:19
And they go, "Not only did he win the tech game, but he won the photography game and then he bounced from that, too."
43:24
So if you go to his Instagram, his last photo that he posted was like 300 weeks ago.
43:31
So you're like, "What happened? Where did he go? Why did he stop?"
43:34
And why did he stop was cuz Tom has the ability to have enough.
43:35
And what happened was this guy goes, "I I ran into Tom."
43:39
And I was like, "Tom, why aren't you posting pictures anymore?"
43:42
He goes, "Oh, dude, I was traveling one time.
43:43
I was in uh whatever, Thailand and I was um He's like, 'I I keep all my camera stuff in my locker.'"
43:48
"And my locker got jacked."
43:48
And he's like, "Somebody stole all my cameras."
43:51
So I was like, "All right." The hobby's done. Moving on.
43:58
Can you imagine like not only winning the business game, then you win the social media game and you're super popular and everything you post you get the dopamine rush of hundreds of thousands of likes and comments saying how beautiful it is, how they're so jealous of your life.
44:10
And then someone steals your camera, and of course you could afford another one, but you're like, "Ah, maybe it's a sign.
44:14
Time for the next adventure."
44:14
And he just moved on to the next adventure. So, what's he doing now?
44:18
So, uh the last thing I could find, cuz I was like, I needed to know this answer, and I went into um By the way, he does reply to some tweets.
44:25
I did I did remember he replied to one of mine, and if you go to his replies, or maybe he didn't, but I I somehow he came up on my Twitter.
44:32
recently, and it was like the last time somebody had heard from him, and he just replied like with emojis um to somebody, and people were like, "Oh, Tom, he's back."
44:38
And somebody on Reddit was like, "I bumped into him in Hawaii."
44:41
He's like, "And I basically got the sense that this guy is literally just like swimming, taking pictures, doing like kind of like um you know, he's just like swimming, hanging out."
44:49
Um he's like they're like, "I think he's just like, you know, hooking up with like smoking hot uh women, and I think he's just having a great time, and he's like not bothered by anything."
44:58
They're like, "That's the vibe I got from him from my uh 30-second encounter."
45:01
And that was the last information I could find about Tom.
45:04
Look at this picture I just posted.
45:07
Tom's on that longevity protocol.
45:07
This guy's in his 50s now. And uh look at him. He looks great. He's young. He looks fresh. He looks happy.
45:13
He But he looks like he's in his 30s. He looks really good.
45:16
Yeah, without uh you know, life hacking every you know, bio-optimizing and taking 96 pills a day and like cold plunging for 10 minutes in every morning like he's just like, "Cool, I'll just live a stress-free happy life and get a lot of sun and hang out and eat good food and meet cool people."
45:31
Dude, when I think of hackers at 14, I don't think guys who look like Sean Parker or or Tom.
45:38
So, God bless these guys.
45:38
What do you think they look like? Hairier, rounder.
45:46
Like for sure hairier and for sure rounder.
45:48
These guys aren't that hairy or round. They look great. So, they've won.
45:53
Yeah, that's part of why we put him on this list, cuz they're awesome in more ways than just uh just their uh you know, the net worth.
45:59
All right, I'll I'll bring it home.
46:01
Uh like I said, I tried to pick people who you or the listeners would not have any idea who they are.
46:07
There's a 5% chance that you've had a run-in with this guy though.
46:08
And I only put maybe 10% because I think he would have ran in the circles of Michael Birch.
46:15
But basically his name is Vivi Nevo.
46:18
So v i v i space n e v o.
46:22
Google this guy for me really quick.
46:23
Tell me who you think he looks like.
46:23
You probably don't know pop culture enough so I'm actually going to say it.
46:27
He looks exactly like Sting. Okay.
46:33
He definitely looks like a rock and roll icon or like you know, what I think the guy who invented Zara should look like. Yes, exactly. Exactly.
46:39
That's a great which by the way, Google the guy who looks like who who started Zara. Doesn't look like that.
46:45
Looks like what I think a hacker looks like.
46:49
So I call this guy the Israeli Greek Gatsby.
46:53
And so I need to tell you this guy's story because he's incredibly mysterious.
46:58
So this guy, he's famous for being an investor.
47:01
He claims to be and many people including New York Times claim that he was the largest shareholder in Time Warner.
47:06
He was a very large shareholder in Goldman Sachs so he like runs in all these amazing circles.
47:10
He's the godparent of some of Rupert Murdoch's kids and he's like incredibly well connected.
47:18
The reason I heard about him was do you know how there's that famous like Bohemian Grove like who's who of of the world conference called Allen & Co?
47:27
Like the Sun Valley Allen & Co conference where everyone walks out in their vest.
47:32
You know what I'm talking about and they have those high-def photos?
47:33
Every photo on Google Images is him at the Allen & Co conference. He sticks out.
47:38
He's a really good looking guy and he does not look he looks like a rock star and I thought it was Sting at first and they said his name was Vivi Nevo and I was like who the hell is this guy?
47:47
So I started researching him. So here's his backstory.
47:52
He was born in Romania, eventually moves to Is- Israel and his parents die when he's in his 20s.
47:58
And his parents were very successful.
48:00
They owned a chemical company.
48:02
And they leave him something like $3 million dollars.
48:04
And he was obsessed with Hollywood.
48:06
And so he moves to LA and he's like, somehow I want to make it into the entertainment business.
48:13
And so the story is is that he got some type of low-paying like not low-paying, but he got he convinced some guy who he met at a gym to hire him at this man's investment bank.
48:22
Cuz Vivi was like, look, I like investing.
48:25
I know a thing or two about it.
48:26
I've been investing my parents' money. Hire me.
48:30
And so this guy eventually goes on record. His last name is Burke.
48:32
And he goes, somehow he this guy just starts showing up at my office.
48:35
And he was incredibly engaging.
48:37
However, he didn't do anything.
48:40
And that was his whole point is that he did nothing.
48:41
He was kind of a gofer and he didn't really do anything.
48:45
And all of the traders and money management guys were like, what the hell does this guy even do?
48:48
He doesn't keep a schedule.
48:49
He can't he he's like a hummingbird. He's so ADD.
48:51
He just jumps around from thing to thing.
48:55
And I didn't even know what he was doing, but he just showed up at my office.
48:57
Until suddenly he quit showing up.
49:00
And I don't see this guy for years.
49:02
I went to his apartment to see if he's okay.
49:04
He moved out of his apartment.
49:04
I couldn't find any records for him.
49:06
I just I was looking all over the place in yellow pages.
49:09
I couldn't find this guy.
49:11
He comes back into my life like 3 years later and he's totally different. He dresses fancy.
49:15
He starts hanging out with celebrities.
49:17
And we have no idea what what he did in those two, three, four, five years.
49:22
And so the rumors about this guy and there's all these articles about what the hell does this guy do for a living?
49:27
None of us can figure it out because he basically has said that he's one of the largest shareholders of Time Warner, which was eventually sold for tens of billions of dollars.
49:36
Like I said, he was one of the largest shareholders of Goldman.
49:40
And he's hanging out with all of these celebrities.
49:42
And so he's like I said, he's friends with the Rupert Murdoch.
49:44
Uh Vivi, he owns homes in New York City.
49:46
He owns home in Beverly Hills.
49:49
He owns these mansions in Malibu.
49:51
And Lenny Kravitz eventually lives in one of his guest homes. That's how fancy it is.
49:56
And a reporter goes to like check out his house because it's like this amazing piece of architecture.
50:01
And they're like, "What do you do for a living?"
50:03
And he won't tell anyone what he has done for a living.
50:06
It even comes out that he is engaged to the actress from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
50:11
This woman is like one of the top five most famous women in China and he's engaged to her.
50:16
And everyone's like, "Dude, what the hell has this guy done?"
50:21
Like we have no idea what he's done for a living.
50:23
And it turns out he's also one of the larger investors of Twitter, one of the larger investors in Square.
50:28
And if you Google him, you'll see there's all types of photos of him with Leonardo DiCaprio, with all these like young, amazing, attractive women even though he's like 65 now.
50:37
He hangs out with all these celebrities, the who's who of everyone.
50:42
And these reporters are like, "I have no idea how this guy is everywhere.
50:44
He's always at the biggest events.
50:46
I don't know what he does for work.
50:48
I can't figure anything out about this guy."
50:49
And he's a prolific investor now in startups.
50:53
He's That's how I thought you would have known him.
50:57
And he owns homes that are worth tens of millions of dollars, many of them.
51:00
You know, he's got one in I think Beverly Hills that he tried selling recently for like 50 or sorry, that he bought recently for $48 million.
51:09
The homes are filled with the most amazing art, you know, these things by Basquiat, Keith Haring, like tens of millions of dollars worth of artwork.
51:16
And he claims to be a startup investor.
51:19
He claims to be a public equities investor.
51:23
Have you ever heard of this guy?
51:25
I've never heard of this guy.
51:25
And also, I'm still unclear.
51:28
Are you saying you don't think he is those things?
51:31
Cuz you're kind of like, he claims to be this, he claims to be that, but like the story doesn't fully add up.
51:36
So, what's the what what's your take here?
51:38
The story doesn't fully add up because if you own more than 5% of a publicly traded company, you have to be listed as that.
51:46
And and New York Times have asked Time Warner and a bunch of his people they go he is a shareholder.
51:53
That's just all they'll say.
51:54
They'll say he is in fact a shareholder.
51:55
And he's in the ears of the CEOs.
51:57
And the CEOs of Time Warner will be like hey Vivi is really important to our operation. He's been a big deal.
52:02
Now a lot of people think there's rumors that he's part of the Mossad which is basically like the Israeli like secret service.
52:09
Because no one actually understands what he does.
52:11
And you'll see him with all these interesting celebrities. He looks super fit.
52:14
And they all say the same thing about the guy.
52:18
They go he's the most charismatic person we have ever met.
52:20
And like story after story after story.
52:23
It's billionaire after billionaire after billionaire saying oh Vivi he's one of my best friends.
52:27
And they'll say well do you know what he does for a living?
52:29
You know we don't really talk about that.
52:32
But he's the most engaging guy we will ever you'll ever talk to.
52:34
He's the least boring person.
52:36
And they go we're best friends because just like this person this person and this person who will say the same thing.
52:41
He came up one day and he sat next to me and I couldn't stop listening to what he had to say cuz he was so interesting to talk to.
52:47
And so my theory is that he is in fact very wealthy.
52:51
And he's wealthy because he made connections to a bunch of different people and he connected them and would get little bits of equity into the variety of businesses.
52:58
And he's fascinating to me is because he's completely kind of made up this fake persona that has become a reality.
53:04
And you know if you read that book 48 Laws of Power one of the rules is to change your image constantly.
53:11
And he basically disappeared in his 30s and he came back with a new persona and he became that person.
53:19
And many like Hollywood people have been like this guy needs a movie.
53:21
If you guys would know had the greatest New Year's resolution of all time.
53:27
He's like all right new year new me. Literally everything.
53:29
Now I'm the most charismatic interesting well connected romantic and richest person in the world. Fantastic.
53:37
You've never had run-ins with him?
53:38
No I've never I've never bumped into this guy.
53:40
Have you um And I'm glad too, cuz it sounds like Have you ever seen Eric Weinstein talk about Jeffrey Epstein like the first time he met him? What did he say? That he was charismatic? Well, no.
53:51
He's like, "The hair on my neck stood up immediately."
53:52
He's like, "It didn't add up.
53:54
Like, you know, where did this guy you know, how have I never heard of this guy?
53:58
Where did he get his wealth?
54:00
How did he create this hedge fund?
54:01
What How is he splashing cash around like this?
54:03
How does it Why does nobody know him from like before a certain time?"
54:06
And he's like he's like, "Jeffrey Epstein was a government construct."
54:10
Like, he was basically a a government, you know, created entity that was meant to, you know, ultimately like get, you know, compromise like, you know, blackmail on a whole bunch of rich successful people.
54:22
And that's what he goes around talking about on podcasts.
54:25
Um I don't know this guy at all, but it just reminded me of of of that like the the mystery of like, "Who is this person?
54:33
How How does this all add up?
54:33
Like, okay, you your mom left you 10 million bucks, but then how did you become such a big shareholder in all these things?"
54:39
Like, that's not a a big starting amount of capital to be able to to accumulate big stakes and things.
54:46
It's also interesting that like, you know, he was one way that he came back years later as like a totally different guy with a totally different personality and a and a different persona.
54:53
Dude, the New York Times said he's the single largest shareholder of Time Warner, which is a big deal.
54:58
That's that's billions of dollars.
55:01
And it's amazing that in today's age that you can't find out this guy's background. No one really knows. No one talks about it.
55:11
at this picture I put into the doc.
55:11
It's him at the Allen & Co.
55:14
conference riding a bike while the two people he's talking to are walking.
55:21
Yeah, and he's like dictating to them. possible, dude.
55:22
How are you going to ride a bike and then how are people going to walk and talk next to you?
55:25
You can't even I've tried that.
55:28
You can't ride slow enough where they could do that, and they can't walk fast enough for you to do this.
55:33
This just added to the allure to me in a way that nobody else will really understand. This is impossible.
55:36
He is defying physics to be able to socialize like this.
55:41
And you see him with literally the most powerful people on Earth and he is always talking with his hands flailing.
55:49
Yeah, he's gesturing like crazy in all these pictures.
55:51
And and the people who are the most powerful people on Earth are are leaning in, listening.
55:54
There's a fit photo of Tim Cook stroking his chin, leaning in like, "Oh, what's your opinion on this?"
56:02
And he's just engaged them wildly.
56:04
And so this guy like he is like somehow in the ear of the most powerful people on Earth, but no one knows who he is.
56:13
it's hilarious that we ended this list with a guy that we basically know nothing about.
56:16
No one knows anything about.
56:17
May not actually be an interesting guy.
56:19
And we're also massively reading into these signals of like from these like random photos where we're like, "Look at the way that lean is happening.
56:27
Ooh, he must be charismatic."
56:28
Or like I'm like, "Look at this bike.
56:30
Look at how he's biking while other people are walking. How can he even do that?
56:33
Wow, this guy is is is fantastic."
56:35
We have so little to go on.
56:37
We are grasping for straws on this guy. grasping. He's I'm grasping. You're grasping, too.
56:42
There's something here about I There's something here about this person.
56:46
I need someone to message me information about him.
56:47
Surely people in our audience know who this person is.
56:52
I need that on a t-shirt, by the way.
56:53
I'm not grasping, you're grasping.
56:57
That's our version of like you can't triple stamp a double stamp.
57:02
All right, well that's that's the list.
57:03
I think the real list uh here is basically that these are the most interesting billionaires you've never heard of. That's right.
57:11
I agree I agree with that.
57:13
Um all right, that's the pod.