All right, we're good. This is a podcast. You know, Chris, he always calls his audience babies. Babies?
Okay, babies, let's talk. No, I've never, it's hilarious. I only watch his clips. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast, and then unsubscribe and subscribe again so we climb up the charts.
Yes, we're climbing. I think we were top 50, a few days ago when I checked. We were 65 and then we were creeping to 55, so I saw some good movement there. It's like the movies where there, it's like a band is like climbing up the billboard charts and they show like, exactly where they're going.
The clips that we're posting on our social, they're not getting as much traction as I wish. Like, what do you, views or comments or what? Well, I only care about views and comments in order to get more podcasts. Right.
Listen, yeah, so I guess there you would need people, sometimes like tagging their friends or you need to start showing up and discover. Yeah, and it's still starting. I also have noticed that when I have a smaller following than our branded channels, but when I share something, it gets way more engagement than the brand. So I need to- Yeah, people like following people and listening to people more.
I also don't ever share it. So I should share it to that big 9,000 Twitter followers I got. And you have 500 more than me, you have 500 more than me, but I'm gonna beat you in the next four days. I also bought 5,000 a long time ago.
Me too. I don't know if I want to see accounts, but when I bought the 5,000, I got way more followers per day. Same. Because people wanted to follow somebody who already has a lot.
So I'm averaging 200 new people a day. I'm gonna check. I don't even check. All right.
What do we got? I want to talk about this idea. It's not even an idea. It's a company arsenic.
Yeah, they've been around for about four years now. Yeah. I know. I don't know how they're doing.
Do you know if they're doing well? They were doing okay. Basically, the way that I knew some like media people who talked about them and knew them, and I'm almost positive that it's run like it looks like it's run, which is a bunch of kids who are good looking at the mansion and they just do like the pottery and shit. The idea is arsenic is essentially playboy for the Snapchat generation.
And so they have a Snapchat channel. Because the idea is like, okay, playboy is a big deal. What would playboy be like today? It would not be a magazine.
It would be a Snapchat channel. And so they created the Snapchat channel, which is perfect because it's like, if you follow it, you get it. It's not in your face. So it's not like Facebook would be a little weird.
Instagram would be a little weird. And they have email too. And they just have this mansion and they have all these models and it's not porn, but it's definitely models we're good looking. And they just have one model like sort of takeover the channel.
At least this is what it was three years ago. I just think it's a great idea. They raised three million bucks. I don't know how they're doing.
So they've got books. They do like tours. I think that it could be doing the idea is cool. I think it's a cash cow.
I think it, well, I, because they were getting millions of views back then on their videos, I can only assume it's grown on my Snapchat blog. But they're not outside the bounds of what's that allowed. So Snapchat allows porn, right? No, they don't allow porn, but they see a lot of porn.
They allow nudity. If you're putting on your stories, you'll get banned eventually. If you do, they don't do nudity. They don't do nudity.
For a private account, you can do it. Eventually, if it gets flagged, they'll take it down. Well, that's why I have only fans. Yeah.
Love it. So explain only fans. Only fans. Basically, what happened is on Snapchat, all these porn stars were putting up porn.
Yeah, like, well, it's not for porn. I don't think it was like sex, but like pay me $10. I'll let you follow me. Right.
And all of my account where I post nudes. And only fans launched. And what they did was it was a platform where they, I don't think they started with porn, but now it is that. Yeah.
So just embrace it. But basically, if you, I don't even think it's porn. I think it's like web girls, like web cam girls. And you pay $20 however much they want you to.
And you get access to their private video feeds. Yeah, it's like Patreon on porn basis. So you pay, you become a contributor, and then you get their private photos and videos. It's taken off.
Yeah. And the reason, yeah, because I was doing it. Like, who cares if I consume it or not from a business point of view? That's how I know about it.
We all care. You can do that. And. I mean, no surprise.
I did research on it. I did research on it. Yeah. But so here's, you know why I think these things take off is the people who don't take care of the creators, they, they, they, for these types of things, they go away.
Yes. And so. There's always demand. So the demand is always there.
The question is does the platform allow the supply to do what they want to do? But only fans, I, for sure, but I would bet you for sure they're in north of 100 million in subscription revenue. And then they take their cut. That's insane.
At one point in time, we had a, we had lab like live streaming product and it wasn't working. We had a pivot and we pivoted it into video gaming. But I definitely laid out a case to the company that's an investor. I was like, look, porn is the porn is where this would be the best.
Like, they're not fucking on camera. I don't think. Okay. Well, whatever you want to call it, like software porn or whatever, but like going after the sort of the cam girl market is a pretty, it's a big market and the websites that are there really, really suck.
And so it's not like, well, we had kind of a hard to heart. We're like, is this what we want to build? And like, go find her felt a certain way. The investors felt a certain way.
What did Furcon want to do? He was like, not down to that. I'm so down with that. Yeah.
So I think it's, you got to make a personal choice. Are you? I've had a bunch of entrepreneurs reach out being like, Hey, we saw you did blab. We read your postmortem.
You guys got to four million users, but it didn't work. I have a very similar concept. I think it's going to work. Can you give me some advice?
I tell them from the bat jump. I'm like, this version is not going to work. Consider porn. I think it could work.
That's the one stone. We didn't turn when we were considering where to pivot this thing to make it. I would for sure do that because think all these like, patreon, all the shit, they're like, we're going to power creators. Okay, I'm behind that.
But even though a lot of time, I think they don't. But if you're going to empower a creator, imagine this like woman who can just crush it by not breaking the law and just using her own body. I'm philosophically. I'm so in favor of that.
Yeah, I think as a business person, I'm definitely in favor of it. I think it's a. I love it as just like a human being. I'm like, yeah.
It's their body's two little ideas are trans off this. So one, there's this fund called vice ventures that's basically investing in things. We've covered it on trends that other investors won't invest in because like investors typically if you're a VC your investors They're called LPs they are typically not just like rich individuals their institutions So it'll be like a pension fund for firefighters in New York or this you know the school endowment will give you Twenty dollars so you can't so they won't want their money going into certain types of companies This is why cannabis investments started to take off because only alternative investors investors had a little more freedom We're able to go into big investors knew there were good spaces But they weren't able to move on it as quickly because they had to worry about their LPs So vice ventures came out and they're like look you know sex drugs alcohol whatever Rightly they're basically like taking sort of the seven sins and they were like we specifically look for companies that are doing business in this In these areas and we'll invest in them and I think it's a very I think it's a if you're gonna do a venture fund You can either just make another cookie cutter Hey, we're a seed fund come to us instead of all these other guys or you take a focus and build a brand around being different And I think it was a very very smart approach. I like it.
I invested in this company called Lucy Yeah, it's a nicotine replacement or it's basically the correct home We got to get wasn't Dave Dave we have to get him on because when I met him for the first time through you After hustle con he spit off seven ideas and when we were just standing there talking And I was like I asked for one and he gave me like a dope idea and I was like you got more of those Yeah, I got a list and he started reading off his ideas and they were fantastic We got to get him on the couch doing here a quick porn story. Yeah, okay, so I worked out of this I work out of this office called the founders no Joe and it was the greatest thing ever I'll tell another story about it But basically it was if you've seen the TV show Silicon Valley it was early we had early Bachman It was an early Bachman type of guy named Dave who's a great guy but totally inappropriate and disgusting in a good way and the office was filthy and There was this guy I have to get his name Roteesh and Chris Oh, yeah, and I remember that and it was this little skinny Indian guy and he was crazy and awesome And he was like the stereotypical Silicon Valley hacker where he could get a job at any big company and make $200,000 a year But he was like no fuck that I'm like not I'm fuck the corporate pigs Right and so he would sleep at that office and David buying pizza all the time because he was like get one to be poor and do this thing And so he created a app or no a site a website that would crawl Tumblr no, I think all the internet okay for the fastest for the GIFs that had the highest velocity of growth And so if a Jeff launch popular Jiffs he would tell you right away which one's gonna be the most popular and then you would see it on the screen And it was called the worst drug the worst drug TV It's not there anymore and that sounds like a silly thing But that's not why he did it He did it because what he was trying to do was a find the fastest like technology like find fast growing stuff And if you would go to the worst drug time You could type in something like dog and the search feature would autofill like wicked fast like way faster And then you click enter and it would be bam a high-def Jeff High-def is full-screen and it was a laser fast so the technology is very like pod-piper like the technology wasn't like whatever Piper did it was the fact that it was all behind these scenes like a bunch of nerds being like yeah Are gyps load the fastest and like look it's like HD and it happened in nanosites And he would spend nights and I would come back and it'd be just a tiny improvement But we don't gather on it well So here's the cut the story turns out the most popular gyps on the internet 99% of them are super hardcore raunchy porn like real raunchy porn and so Because when I went to the site it was all porn there wasn't like porn and then some basketball jails all fine It was only porn And so at the office at the dojo we would have these huge screens of his workstation and the way that he sat with everyone To see it and we kind of got immune to it But it was like the raunchy shanever and we would he would guys check this out early morning We would come in 11 a day at which was early and he'd be rubbing his eyes and shit and he'd be like Check this out and all eight of us would gather out this high-def screen and be like and he would type in the word like like facial And like watch out fastest loads and we were just so immune We're like we're not looking at the concert like oh yeah, wow you can like see the shine in the liquid like it was like It was so funny and we would have like these like lawyers coming to the office and people who are actually like investors We're trying to raise money for the other companies and we would forget that this was on the big screen The site the worst drug got millions and millions of millions of visitors the the engagement was stupidly like good He couldn't monetize it. They couldn't use so there were so many restrictions no ad network We're a lot of use it and so even though the site I think it was getting at least for sure millions I think maybe tens of millions of monthly uniques and it made zero money and only cost them a lot of money and the story ends with like someone in Bulgaria or Latvia like this like communist ex-communist country wanted to buy the site and it was all weird they flew him out there and he's like wait these guys are like mobsters and They ended up like bailing and they just shut it down because it was No, I've never seen him I've never seen him. I had a skateboard.
I left at the office. He stole it and I've never seen a way to get away Dude, I've never seen a transfer Raj. That's the same Raj. I've never seen Raj I'm gonna have this guy down because that guy's gonna build something amazing or it's gonna be very saddening But either way it's gonna be not average not the use he was like if you think of like this idea of what Silicon Valley is that was that right?
Wow, okay, that's incredible. I like that story. Okay, we were talking about a quick idea So what they're doing is the Playboy on Snapchat if that's working and I don't know if it's working So go look into it But if it is working in a big way, I don't think that there's just gonna be one of those So like in the same way that there's all these porn brands right there's like girls gone wild it focuses on college age things Somebody out there could create arsenic for college or for a different like whatever genre and so I just Our snick is not porn modeling Scantie modeling more like playboy and maximum current playboy exactly So you could build playboy but of other genres and just or you could just literally clone them I think it would be very low cost and I think you would be able to do a lot of you be able to drive a lot of Use and I ultimately get a lot of sponsorships in the same way that Max and the playboy were able to make pretty big businesses out of what they do now They had subscriptions, so I don't know if you would do subscriptions. Maybe use only fans I'm not sure but we should figure it out.
Yeah, I'm gonna look at the old me fans. I'm interested in this I Have a lot of ideas. I'm gonna come back a little more prepared on this because I think there is something there What else you got okay, so you have HQ so HQ died obviously Yeah, I thought like it could have been cool I'm like they could be like Jeopardy Jeopardy's huge So if you don't know what he was it was a mobile app was a game show like real fortune Jeopardy, whatever But that was all done on a mobile app which was when I saw this product some our friend Eric Who does tribe socks he showed me this app? He was like dude my friend went to go work at this company It's really interesting check this out.
He pulls it up So at 6 p.m. Every day they would do the game show so you can notification at 6 you open the app There's a host live got you know live live game show host on live streaming and you would ask trivia questions That you would push the button you have 10 seconds to answer you push the button real quick to answer if you got all 10 or 12 Questions, right? You'd win the prize at the end which at that time It was there was 400 players and the prize was like $500 this thing grew like crazy They had games with over a million concurrent players It's like something to have and exactly over a million players and I believe they had over a million dollars in prize money over time And so this thing had this run and they got tons of funding founders fun I'm like $10 million and $100 million valuation and then they had big time brands launched stuff on there So they were like you know this game is sponsored by Nike It's all trivia about athletes and we're gonna drop the shoe the new shoe release is happening live on HQ That's the prize. They were doing some interesting stuff, but it was kind of a fad and Which everyone knew which everyone knew because it was like games all have this hype cycle and then this decline over time The games aren't super super sticky most of them and this was definitely that so this big novelty grew like crazy viral product In many ways as somebody makes products is very inspiring because it was like so simple yet so awesome And I actually felt like there I'm not trying to be hyperbolic I felt like there was some revolutionary things for sure It was like oh I'm looking at the future this is what the future looks like I still think that's what the future looks like HQ died for many reasons Scott founders are fucking crazy one founder died he overdosed on drugs the other founders they are sort of always infighting They were both sort of like kind of come across at least from outside as sort of like moody artists Yeah, one of them I believe started fine also Russ.
Yeah, they're both of them They are both the founders of mine. So definitely sort of brilliant guys in a way But everyone says that Russ is a dick Yeah, and he got removed a CEO because he had some problems You know he was a dick or whatever the other guy got removed also never figured it out and the game show Scott became this kind of like cult sensation because he was the host of him every day and he tweeted out when it shut down recently He was just like this company died for one reason alone and that's the sort of incompetence and arrogance of the founders I was like, yeah, damn that is like you don't usually hear that like everybody's so PC and always just worried about their Creators. He's a comedian. He didn't give a fuck.
Yeah, he definitely did not give a fuck because that was that's pretty brutal on the day So let's say can I tell you what I would do? Yes? Okay, so I would I have no idea if they did this or not I would have built this knowing that's gonna die and so it's like it's my thing is I'm gonna be a hit machine Right and I'm gonna use this formula and I always thought about this with a member like cronut Yeah, okay, you know how like these viral food things like these food things go viral I like one day sat down. I'm like what makes them go viral So it's and I've like broke it down to a handful categories, which is like it's either a it's gotta be a food That's typically a side, but you're gonna eat it in excess So for example only cookie dough instead of so ice cream.
That's just cookie dough, right or make the side you make the topping domain Yep, so like one formula you could use. Yep, another like or like fondue So like fun to certainly an appetizer fondue only right another thing is you take the shape of it and you make it a ridiculous shape Yes, easy including small to big like there's Bob's dough and that's what I think so you make something small big a big small Right the fifth or fourth thing is color rainbow riggles. You just pick the color green ketchup Instagramable. Yes Yes, and then I had a fifth one which was some mashups, which is cronut, right?
Oh, yeah, and then that was the fifth one you take the Doritos Locos Taco one of the most successful fast food thing in like the last 10 years was this Doritos Taco and then every fast food chain hired these agencies to be like find me the next Doritos Right, and so those are the five like categories that I discovered and then it's like okay So you just make it go viral by you have to have distribution via a thrill list of buzzfeed and then eventually it's like We'll just have your own handle and then you're gonna make these go and they're gonna have a small shop outside Outside in Brooklyn or in Manhattan and you're just gonna you're always putting out bangers Yeah, you're just gonna fucking knock out the park and you're gonna have a line all the time and then three months later Boom that one shutdown switch now. We're doing cookie-dough ice cream every season you come out with a new one viral sensation Yeah, it's like all right now. We're doing rainbow cake now or green ketchup and hot dogs like you just like okay So if I was I've always thought about like man, that's what you just have a small You're just banging these out and then for the ones that last that are hits like cronut might be a hit I mean that's kind of like it's on category now. Yeah, then you that's like one of your temple franchises Right, it's always available.
Yeah, that's what I would do and it's with HQ trivia. I would have the same thing So this is like supreme for food. It's like you have this Limited scarce kind of like out there thing what you're doing is you're making these these sort of wild concoctions on the food side using these five different Yeah, it's all formula. Yeah, it's just like all of these five formula thinga and then you do a limited edition drop You basically say you know you tweet out at 1 a.m.
It's live you get a huge line people cover the fact that there's a line and then it becomes a thing In a hipster town. Yeah, this is so easy like bagel bites like pizza on bagel This is back when you were doing your hot dogs and if you knew everything you know now But you still needed to do hot dogs and you would end up doing something more like this like green ketchup like that My shake the ketchup would only be green right And what I did back then was I had what I did was like you just have a little shtick like Mine was my onions. I would boil them in Coca Cola, which a lot of people do I would just tell everyone I did that right and so there's this is actually a famous copywriting trick which has have you ever heard of um Oh a time like a watch like a wristwatch being described as like with quartz movement. Yes They all have fucking quartz movement right they all do all of them do or like space age aluminum They all that's not even a thing first of all like what's that madman line?
It's like our filters are rolled or something like yeah, and they're like well everyone's is and they're like well They don't know it right so space age aluminum that means nothing first of all all First of all nonsense. Yeah, it's like a whole quartz movement every single watch has that right And so the idea here is you just take something that they don't know Even though all the insiders know just tell them right we did this experiment when we were doing the sushi restaurant where we took the descriptions of our food So it'd be like, you know, you take a philadelphia roll, which is like this americanized it's salmon It's cream cheese and it's cucumber in a sushi roll and then we would just uh so Dan area with one of our advisors And he's the guy wrote pretty rational And so he would he told us like hey one of the reasons why he charges this premium is because they created a whole language around what they do You need to create a language around sushi so that people who start to learn about it feel like they know more and they want to pay more so they can have the better Thing just teach of what is the better thing and so we would you know we started just adding words as one experiment We would have one version of our website where it was all online ordering So it's one version of our website would be the normal website then our ab test was the other variation was our philadelphia roll would be called Like if you call the philadelphia roll in the description would be like at lannick fresh You know never frozen salmon with you know philadelphia authentic philadelphia cream cheese and they finally sliced cucumber And we would raise the price and we would get like more orders even despite the higher price That's crazy. And so it's just like a psychological thing around yeah, that shit works Yeah around the descriptions around things. Okay back to you for a second So they did try to release other games they came out with like a word scramble type game I think they kind of ran out of time and also they have built the hype too much and lessons to be learned when you build this much hype Um, if you start to fail you death spiral way faster because the high the pressure of your expectations and hype will crush you Well, so that's what I mean is I would have built this company expecting that like we discussed that a claw game and they're like Well, they're building it so they're gonna just capture all the value up front and then let it die So if you would have built that right like built that into it it would have been it could have been a company kind of like I imagine seeing it as us which is they just have like all right this game going to last 80 days maybe right So two quick ideas on this HQ thing so hq died, um, okay, you know, rest in peace But uh two things that you could do if you wanted to make make use of this of the insights that were found in this Um, I think you can do this on top of twitch or youtube or any live stream platform that already has audience So you don't need to be your own app You should just host create a channel that's hosting a show and give away the prize money and promote it in the same way So I think somebody could build this on top of one of the existing platforms Not have to build your own tech and not have to acquire downloads of your app Which is really expensive and I think if you just did this every day at 7pm on twitch I think a bunch of people would tune in um second idea around this is Maybe the hq format which is this live video streaming with this charismatic host and question and answer could be used in education And so I would love to see somebody create an after-school game That parents actually pay three dollars a week to subscribe to where your kid learns science through some bill Not a science guy type of host and it's trivia interactive and they get sort of points as they I thought about starting that company, but I really think that that could work I think it might also have the sort of faith and interest but I remember as a kid I love brain quest and I played all these like learning games that they were great And so I think this is a modern day that's interesting that is quite sticky I think that as we get all there I mean your kids not all enough so you'll imagine you'll learn this once she gets all the enough But these things that we use as we are kids are just huge.
Yes huge I'm into that And you wouldn't need tens of millions of people because you're not advertising you'd be on subscription because parents would be like Oh, I don't have to go drop my kid off at tutoring And I don't have to like learn this myself my kid more he wants to sit in front of the iPad all day So okay, here's an iPad game that I feel good about because you're learning It's kind of cool because it's live and interactive and I can play with you And I'll pay three bucks a week for that Do you want to hear what I've been in that same category that um I'll come back with some more research but I was just surfing around and saw it is um That but for allowance Okay, tell me more so a friend Ramones kid had I was like Victor just your dad give you allowance like he better be giving you some money, right? And he goes yeah, but it's all in this app I was like what do you mean? He's like well It is automated and I get $10 a week if I do everything and I have a list of everything I gotta do and then it just sends me this $10 but sends it into an account and I could use those on the Places that he's already approved that I could spend it on or if he wants I can get this debit card that only works out of handful of places That's a great idea. Yeah, I was like, oh, of course.
That's obvious. That's of course idea I can mad at myself for not thinking of it So I'm gonna go I haven't thought I haven't seen their financials or anything. I've done I'm going to yeah when he told me that I was like, oh, okay, obviously great, right So on trends we released this on Tuesday two things were interesting that our guys found Steph and our guys so men and women found Which one have two people so uh So your guy and gal found that Two things. I'm like thinking about all of it first Everyone talks about meditation being like the most popular like being a huge trend right now People searching for sleep is actually significantly more like like sleep products and not in this state makes total sense because calm I'm a subscriber to calm They're they're pushing sleep like crazy.
Yeah, sleep stories. I think was the breakout product for the breakout feature for that's crazy And so I didn't realize this until they like pointed out and I'm like, oh, yeah, that does make sense sleep is way bigger than meditation meditation is huge Sleep is also a lot of people search for it because So for meditation you're trying to teach and you have it sleep everybody does also for sleep a lot of you have problem sleeping So they will actively search for and pay for solutions that will help them sleep I pay for a bunch of them I pay for a what your sleep an Alexa app called nature sounds and they have like 26 sounds and I pay extra money to combine them So my the one I sleep to is winter railroad and so It's a train go like the mountains in winter. What's the winter for what is the sound of winter? You're like with I love it.
I'm sure it's only very personal there. I love it. I go Alexa play nature sounds Or sometimes I'll do ship in winter because it sounds like an icebreaker and then Alexa turn off in 20 minutes This is also like one of these, um, you know hackathon projects or some developers like okay Watch this just say two words and I go search in it for sounds and I smash them together and it makes an audio thing Yeah, like this is a work on the next hackathon. They should build this like I don't even know what you're gonna be like chickens in China street What I was a Sarah she doesn't like this you like to sound with it She's down with it.
Um, so do you take any sleep aids like like a like a vitamin or supplement or CBD or something melatonin melatonin? Yeah, um, help her. Yeah, it does. Um, if I really can't sleep.
I'll take one of those you know my computer diet. I think it died one of my um, Una, you know gel is that what it's called? Unisoft? It's uh, it's basically like a mild dosage of uh, night quill without the medicine part Oh, that's good.
So, okay, so it's the way some people take night quill just asleep. This is the just a sleep part. I have a cough Yeah, it's a light version. You don't take that stuff.
I heard this for a day. I could sleep in a ditch So I just when I decided to go to sleep I instantly fall asleep and I do not wake up at night Ever and so I'm blessed. You know, I am typically like that as well, but not as bad. Um, there's this guy that we should profile He um, he uh, he's a Japanese billionaire or sorry, uh, Chinese billionaire and he started a uh, uh So he's a big shot now and he owns like half a bank and all this shit And he got rich by creating a melatonin He just took melatonin and rebranded it made it sexy and called it a sleep aid and whatever It got huge and then he launched the zinga of china Um, and he ended up buying like the building that they lived in just like zinga And they worked in it again this huge thing We'll have to do i'll have to bring him up because I love him because he's reckless and he's built a fortune and lost it all like three times Right.
Yeah, you love that. I love those guys. Um, okay, and then we also talked about uh, do it yourself perfume Uh, so apparently that's a huge community is doing yourself perfume and there's not a ton of companies in this thing So what's happening? What are these people trying to do?
Okay, so they don't buy perfume They want to mix their own at home. Yeah, so basically perfume is a huge business. Um, Paris Hilton A lot of people forget about her. She has sold roughly five billion dollars of her perfume cycling back to the porn conversation earlier.
Okay, Paris Hilton. Yes And let's say her stuff calls $100, which it doesn't it's typically 90 margin Yeah, incredible So huge fat margins and everyone now knows this. Um, and so the idea here is that people are trying to make their own perfume at home And it's got there's a lot of sub sub-rides around a lot of communities who discuss different Perfume like how to create your own perfume, but there aren't too many companies that are making it easy to make your own perfume and formulas Something like that to that makes a lot of sense. Um, this is like one of those industries where when you hear about the winner later You're like, oh, okay was set up for success.
So for example, warby parker, you know One of the reasons warby parker works so well was that the existing eyewear eyeglass, you know, industry was all owned by this one conglomerate That had price pricing power and was marking shit up like crazy So they didn't have to like invent something to lower the price They just had to not be greedy and be like, oh, yeah, we can offer this at a fair price and still have margin and so um, if you own cologne I own cologne and um, so what you're saying is basically cologne vastly marked up in the same way razors are super marked up and dollar Shave club came in but instead of somebody just making a dollar shave club version of cologne They're giving you a DIY kit and then there's like probably reddit communities of home brewers, uh for perfume Yeah, it's actually pretty great. There's an infinite number of recipes of scents. So you're gonna Yeah, what would you know if I bought it if you took it a step further an interesting sense could be sold already? Yeah, so you could create a marketplace where you could sell yours You just need to your own friends family you could create a kit for people to do this make a better kit Sure, this one that exists.
Well, another idea. You know, we were talking about kids that earlier Like my niece would love to mix her own perfume She would that would be like a great afternoon and my sister would buy her you know This little kid friendly perfume making kit It's like one of the arts and crafts things that she gets to do as she makes it and everyone who comes over she gets to show them their I think you could do this for kids and be a big deal Here's another angle that we found in trends is soap do yourself soap big thing people want to make their own soap and what was the third one? Uh, juice, but we already know that's right. Josing.
Yeah, okay. Um, okay So a topic that we talked about yesterday that you wanted me to look into more was auctions auctions. Yes I had never heard of this company that you showed me heritage auctions. Yeah, um, I think that auctions particularly marketplaces I would love someone to criticize this because I want to hear the downsides I think that they are potentially one of the top like two or three business models Octions or well auctions and marketplaces for sure.
Yeah, but Auction style marketplaces. I think they were one of the best. Yeah, you've seen a bunch of them Yeah, I think they're being the sort of classic. Yeah, and I think it sucks by the way Someone's totally gonna crush them.
I mean, they're gonna be dead not dead, but somebody told me this is half half Information somebody told me that has had like a revival and they don't do the auction stuff as much anymore They're all like it's basically Amazonish. Yeah, I hate it. I hate it But somebody said that their numbers have turned around. I don't know if that's well, they're a pikimeth They're not going anywhere anytime soon.
I mean they're like google like you're like oh, they're sucking like, okay I mean they're gonna last for another 50 years at least. Yeah, so anyway, um, I love auctions I like and I love niche auctions and heritage which you pointed out they do that You got that you got that pulled up Henry and you can pull it up on your phone. So they did 800 million dollars in sales. So It's not on the screen.
Yeah, so let's look at their top categories. Do you have it on your phone? Yeah, so coins? I think was their top, right?
Yeah, so they do I think 300 million dollars in currency, right? Okay, but look at some of the more interesting ones Movie posters 10 million 10 million dollars in sales. What was comics comics is on there? Yeah, I just pull it up What's it say for comics Henry?
Comics 50 Sports 60 million for collectibles basically Luxury real estate 19 million wine 10 million crazy, right tons crazy and here's what I like about it This is a big idea. We talk a lot in fact I have a pet peeve we talk a lot about these like small little business arbitrage is hacks little businesses This would be a big big company if you could get this right and so what so I love I love marketplaces and I love auctions I love auctions because there's a time component to it and that urgency makes you buy more and What I think is even better and so for heritage auctions I think roughly half of their sales of 800 million dollar sales are online and the other half are in person You want to know another in-person auction that's doing wonderfully? Barrett Jackson have you heard of Barrett Jackson? No, so Barrett Jackson is based in Arizona is bootstrapped on by one guy.
Um, is that his name? Barrett Barrett is dead Jackson is alive. Okay, or it could be the way around one of them is dead Um, but what they do is they actually have a they put us on TV all the time. I watch it all the time Um, what they do is sell cars to classic cars, right?
Not all classic cars, but just like rare or like interesting cars You can buy like a $10,000 car there, but so they'll have a car on and they'll say like this Ferrari There was only 500 of them this it sells for $200,000 in the show and you're like, oh, awesome That's so just happening three minutes. That was great And so they'll they do I believe 68 shows a year and they make hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue It's a huge business and I love that and so another one is bring a trailer They do cars as well and the guy who started bring a trailer also started a mailbox Uh, junky underwood so he's like he sold a drop box, right? And so I like these auction places and first of all, I like niche auctions So I like watches anything that's niche, but what do you what is another and I have one idea idea? What's a current marketplace that's very illiquid and hard to sell and you wish I could go way faster?
Houses is one luxury house. Okay, put on here because it takes a while to sell a house In general and so open door trying to make that instant as a market as a real estate company Not as much as an auction. I have a friend who did this with sneakers. He people are doing that now I think it's working well.
He did it as a 90 minute auction So he would say the sneaker goes live. It's 90 minutes and we're gonna get you your guaranteed price Or we basically offer the seller. They're like we will buy it at this price if the auction doesn't go higher So if you agree to that you start the process in 90 minutes. What else?
What else you got small businesses? Okay, just flip my business And this is a maybe would just fall flat. This is one of those it could be amazing or would just be a horribly idea But if I were quiet like brokerage responses or if I were another brokerage I would 100 percent have an event and try to gather a thousand people and We're gonna auction off these businesses. My idea from yesterday the first dibs where you're auctioning future the future first Future first whatever you're gonna create.
I think that would work really well with this Business is the hard part is you have there's so many hard parts about it There's a lot of hard parts one is just the diligence right so like when I buy the The movie poster whenever if it has sort of the certification the person who's selling it sort of says this is authentic I don't need to look too much more into it whereas with a business you really have to sort of understand all these different components I think that's hard. I agree. It's hard But I think it's interesting because like if someone just like if I knew Shopify apps or something And there's this gathering and they're just auctioning off a shit ton of them and it's kind of like a storage war words Like which you're not sure what you get but let's just find out like it could be fun to gamble tens of thousands of dollars Yeah, just storage units that would be interesting like a mystery box basically That would be fun. Yeah, that would be really fun and interesting.
It had to be cheap enough. That's interesting Someone doing storage unit like blind auctions. Yeah, yeah, surely they have to be right I don't know but you can tell you some of these ideas together right so like what HQ showed where they did basically They took a traditional TV show and turned into a live stream mobile app where the game shows on your phone This is the future of TV like you can do a qvc or I don't know what show you talked about you watch the auctions on but like Well, that's where Jack. But there's another one called on turn these into mobile live stream shows and you can essentially sell these all through through You know, you can take it so one way to look at this approach show that's not thinking about right So one way to look at this is you start selling some item That's not currently sold on these auction places might be hard because a lot of time has passed and sort of like You know the law of supply demand has pulled things that want to be sold this way into the market But maybe you could find a new niche or you just take the existing platforms and you make them smaller more lightweight and mobile focused You just win that way and so like I don't know if you do no top hat or Yeah, what do they do?
Incredible company it's wish so it's a mobile app where you see a bunch of really cheap stuff from china random stuff It can be like a back brace and a ring and a you know, whatever a poster a dollar store crap dollar It's like the it's like a wish crap, which is like random electronics and memorabilia And items laser pointers and class rings and like, you know, whatever Um, but what they do is interesting is it's a They start so you open up the app and you see all these things and like you've never seen your adrenaline spike like this And I'm a lot before all the prices are starting at like what are $50 and they just start dropping And then somebody just hits buy and then they buy it and so you kind of want to wait to get it lower But you don't want to wait too long somebody else is gonna buy it so top hatters are start up here in San Francisco And they do hundreds of millions of dollars right? Very good. Very interesting business I don't know how profitable it is how sticky it is blah blah blah But when you go into the app, it's like a it's like being in like this high stakes tiny Those dollar auction like those penny auctions things It's a little bit like that but they but you don't have to buy credits and stuff like that it's more like wish But instead of what they tap into is instead of browsing and picking they pick they like injected to your fomo You know part of your brain and so you're like, okay, this item Do I want it? No one for six bucks five bucks?
I'll take it and you're buying a whole bunch of shit And it's just a bunch of moms who are bored at home that are just shopping on this thing And they're feeling like hey, we're getting tons of value, but like this is stuff you didn't even know you want it You know what this is shit. I'm gonna download it and buy some stuff. I'm gonna shit all the time. I've had her school Um, we want to do one more or end it there.
Um, let's see one quick one. So, uh, I have this career advice So there's this great line. I think she else and berg said a while back which was Um, if you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask which chair You just sit down and buckle up something like that That's her quote and um, I see people get this wrong all the time And so you're making let's say you're listening to this and you're making career choices So we talk a lot about businesses business ideas, but a lot of people who are listening to this are not yet They haven't you know, they have a job and they haven't yet, you know, sorry they're on company necessarily So when it comes to job selection, if you think about the companies you're thinking about joining I want you to classify them into cars Rocketships or tectonics and basically you got the goal in your career advice is not to look at the role You know, like what does the job description say? It's not even really to look at the compensation package.
Um, although, you know, there should be a minimum there Um, but you want to optimize for getting onto rocket ships And so a rocket ship is a company that's growing really really fast They figured out what they're doing and there's still a whole bunch of problems to be solved and they're the right type of problems A bad problem is nobody wants our product We have to figure out how to get them to want it a good type of problem is too many people want our product We have to make sure we can keep up with this demand And so you want to you want to find a rocket ship and you want to take whatever roles you can get on that rocket ship You want to sit down you want to buckle up because what ends up happening these fast-growing companies is if you're good And you kill it for even two months you'll get moved and promoted to a better spot because they'll be like oh This person can actually do something we have so many fires to put out Okay, we thought you were junior but like hey junior you're now working on this thing because you're the best we got and we I've seen you problem solve so far And so what the mistake people make is they try to pick a role that's a higher ranking role initially or better competition initially But they join either a slow moving company where they're not going to learn it's not going to grow or they join a Titanic Which is just you know about the sink, but hey, I got the best seat on the Titanic You don't want that either and so my advice is find the rocket ship companies take whatever seat they'll give you crush it and then they'll move you up Great. Um, I think that to add to that analogy A lot of people shouldn't join that fast-growing thing or do they want that fast-growing thing But they want something that's mildly growing. Is that what that car is? Yeah, I think that's where yeah, I'm speaking to the people that like someone that is trying to max out But they're currently in the job track so if you're trying to max out and you're not starting your own business This is the next best thing in my opinion.
Yes, like not a lot some people a lot of people don't want to max They have kids and they're like I want a nice life Right, I don't want a high risk high reward life right and to those people that advice doesn't apply Right and I'm just guessing a lot of those people don't listen to the podcast because if you're that person you probably listen to like I don't know a bunch of your work You don't listen to like a podcast about business and ideas and all that stuff sure I think we've self-selected at least I think that's good advice And by the way, when you so have you had a job? Have you been employed let's say not like kind of like college age but like since they are you just done businesses of your own? Uh, we have like an acquisition and I was kind of employed there, but you haven't gone and just interviewed for jobs I interviewed once a couple times. I never got them.
What'd you interview for? For fungal for Jack Smith my best friend I interviewed for a job and I didn't get it They didn't call me back. I started a bag. Yeah, the guy who's like my best friend now I didn't know him I interviewed at the job.
Oh, you didn't know him at the time I didn't know him okay, they interviewed me and they didn't hire me and then two years later we came best friends And you were trying to be a salesperson. I don't remember. I think so. Um, by the way, I have a similar story I applied to stripe.
I think I might have told this already so apologize if I did but 2012 I applied to I was gonna apply for a job for the first time in my life I had started two companies before that I was like I'm moving to Silicon Valley. I'm gonna get a job I'm gonna learn from other people rather than start my own thing and I only applied two jobs one was stripe and I got to the phone screen And I really had it made because the guy who was interviewing me his mentor in life Was one of my former advisors in my startup and had written a blog post being like this guy Sean is like He said it's specifically his highest bias for action of any entrepreneur I met He made a warm intro to this guy. I was like trust me this guy's legit. You should hire this kid Fuck did you not get that job?
And so I thought I was cruising too and maybe that's why I didn't get it But I get to the part of the interview where he was like all right, you know This job has a lot of sort of sales and persuasion stuff. Um, so you know we're piece of software So I want you to you know, we're gonna do a little roleplay You're gonna sell me a piece of software and he's like you can pick any software you like whatever you're familiar with Oh, you probably got creative or something and I was just like um, I was like, okay, so I here's what I would do I would talk to you about this. No, no, don't tell me what you would do like I'm the customer Hello, I just picked up the phone go and I was like fuck and so I was like, hey, you know I'm telling you about I picked base camp as my software big mistake Cuz I don't even know base camp very well and so I just like pull I didn't call you back for that reason by the end of that roleplay He was just like yeah, I don't think this is for you. I was being honest with you Like I just don't think you're you know, I'll get you for this that was eight years ago So I'm yeah, I was like 23 or 24 at the time how Fuck how I blew it wasn't they're bad like I definitely blew that interview how early of an employee would you have been so I think they were at like Maybe 50 people less or $5 million.
Well, yeah, I don't know how much equity I would have had to do the rocket ship thing I would have had to start in the crappy seat crush it and get into a good seat to get equity But I did that with uber and air B&B I had job interviews at air B&B and uber 100 people and one of them I got one of them I got the offer but then they rescinded it because I lied about my resume And the other one I did get past the I had a criminal record I told I didn't Oh At least you had good eye for picking these companies and then I applied at fun goal and they sold for $800 million So I always tell people find out where I want to work at who will also deny me and invest there Okay, let's start with where would you want to work at today if you were you back then where'd you be applying today? Great question. Do you have an answer? Do you want to go first a couple years ago?
I answer this I was like the only place I would be really interested working with angelist at the time No, that'd be horrible at the place to work So I thought angels was doing really interesting shit and I think it's gonna be big It did end up becoming big and this was like seven years ago So it was a while ago. Yeah, no, that would be a horrible place to work though because that involved guy is fucking crazy Really? I don't know what I'm gonna buy. He seems like a brilliant genius So a great person wasn't do but a horrible person to manage you if okay if I had a work somewhere I probably Probably just somewhere with really good managers Most startups have horrible managers in it like when you were looking at uber Airbnb, you didn't know the managers So you weren't using that criteria then no, but and I don't know if it would have been successful Sarah My wife works at Airbnb and she loves her managers and you know how everyone's like so what do you do next?
They always say that and she's like what do you mean by what you're doing next is awesome would be for a really long time Right and I would love to have that feeling I would probably now look for a company that's I would go find all the most interesting Biotech based companies. So anybody doing something with genetics genomics modification anything like that I think that's a big wave that's coming I'd go try to be early there self-driving cars if there's someone who's awesome there I'd do something in that or It's hard though. It's really hard if I wanted to make a lot of money. Let's say I wanted to like a big I'm gonna try and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next three years of work Or what well Facebook Google or an enterprise sales role at a super boring B2B Enterprise software company right where the where the average deal is like three or four hundred thousand dollars a year Right.
That's what I would do. So if I took my own advice, I would look for who's a rocket ship So I would try to maybe like land a school. I think it's interesting I would just basically try to go find who's the fastest growing startup right now That's at maybe 50 people or 20 people or 10 people whatever they are I would go try to find them and then I'd be like hey, I'll come solve any problem You got like we'll figure it out I went to the sub stack office the other day. They just raised $16 million in money.
You know, I mean please they have Five five I would that would be an interesting place to work. Okay. Who does better than the long term only fans or sub stack? Okay, so for creating the owner's wealth only fans for creating a valuable company that could potentially sell for more sub stack by far So take both paths right sub-types can either have to sell or go public and only fans might just you know spit off cash So where would I work?
No, no, which business do you think nets more more money in the end? Which business only fans because the likelihood that sub stack is gonna succeed is low, but if they do it right? I think it could be really big. Yeah, I was talking to the guy Hamish I think he came to here the other day.
Okay cool. I was trying to get him on this podcast. I already asked him He said no. Yeah, he was like, oh, you know, my first million I don't want to tell me to do it.
I was like you're overthinking this dude. You're just doing interesting things We just want to talk about your shit in front of a bunch of people who are interested and he was like overthinking a little bit Nice guy, but I went in with him and the old CEO we could probably get him on there just engineering door Cool, right and then I think they're gonna have the same problem patreon has which is gonna be an awesome product that supports a lot of people It's a really valuable tool, but they're taking a very small cut of a very small amount of money Yeah, so what I'm trying to do is tell them to pivot my guys will pay you a fuck ton of money if you create pay walls for Bigger companies, right? They're not good. They've raised their money and they they have their dream.
We're a few meetings in we'll see Yeah, I think it's a 10% chance. Okay, that's pretty good. Okay, cool What else we got anything else? No, we're cool.
We'll end it now. All right, thank you for listening