Not gonna lie, haven't heard of words since we said leverage to the tits. I should have waited for us to talk about that. Quick break. It was like, you know, today I'm gonna wear a turtleneck.
And I might try to say leverage to the tits. Like, you know what I'm saying? Getting a new hair guy. Like affirmations.
That's my bandhole song. Leverage to the tits is my version of having bangs. You know what I mean? I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I can be what I want to. I put my own in it like days off. The role that's traveling, never looking back. Sam, it's just me and you, no guests.
This is nice. It's like a date night for us. We're kids are out of the house. Well, let's deep breathe.
I have done a few things. Do you want to go back and forth of the interesting people that we hung out with? I have got like two or three. How many do you have?
Yeah, I have three or four, but I have a theme with mine. I don't know if yours would fit this, but the theme with mine is all people who are contrarians in some way. And what I mean by that is not contrarian, like, you know, it's like an annoying kind of contrarian. Not like if you call yourself a contrarian, it's like you're not contrarian, right?
Correct. Exactly. They wouldn't say this about themselves. I would say it about them, which is what makes it kosher.
The way I would say it is they're all independent thinkers. When I hear the stories of what they're doing, I don't even want to ask about the thing. It's like, how do you even think of doing that thing? You know what I mean?
It's like, all right, before you tell me all the details, how did you even get into that situation? Why were you even looking there? Why were you even deciding to do that? Okay.
I can fit within that framework. Okay. Yeah, I'll go first. So I hosted this dinner in San Francisco and invited maybe out of 15, 20 people to this thing.
You did? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know. You've always grown up friends and hosting things.
In the city, you drove to the city of Dervis. I drove to the city, yes. It's true facts. And so we go there and there's a guy there who, um, I'm friends with, his name is Justin, Justin Colbeck.
Justin is a tremendous investor. He was an investor early on in like grub hub, snapchat, stitch fix, like boom, like just like a bunch of companies that have done really well. So let me tell you the story. So I was talking about, um, some of his big win investments.
So I'll tell you a quick one. So there was a grub hub one. I was like, how'd you get into grub hub? He said, oh, grub hub was a, he's like, there's a funny story.
Like they were doing well, but nobody knew them. I don't think they had raised much money yet. And I tried to get a whole, I called, emailed them. I called, called them.
I called the office. I was like, I'm going to get ahold of them. So I just flew to Chicago. I just hung out on the lobby till I bumped into the guys.
And I was like, Hey guys, I'm just really a believer in this thing. Sorry to bother you, but I just really believe in this thing ends up doing that deal. Okay. Classic, classic, neat cute.
I was like, how does Snapchat one happen? And he told this great story. He goes, I met Evan and he's like, I will just never forget meeting him. He's like, I walked out of that meeting being like this guy.
He's one of them. He's like one of the people that's going to build this like legendary companies at the time. I think he was still a student at Stanford student college. I go, what's Snapchat taking off?
Was it like a rocket ship? He goes, no, no, it was like really small. He's like, it had maybe like 150,000 users. Wasn't growing fast.
And everybody on the outside viewed it as this like this silly little thing. It was like this toy. It's like, oh, is it just used for disappearing photos must be for inappropriate pictures or it's just a stupid college thing. And he's like, so how did you invest?
And he tells the story. He's like, you know, first I met Evan, I heard him out and he he shared the story that he's like, Snapchat, people think it's about photos. And when they hear photos, they think about Facebook and Instagram. It's like permanent public photos that are for your memories.
And he's like, but actually we use photos for communication. It's like a back and forth. And so just goes, so it's like messaging. He's like, yeah, messaging.
He goes, OK. And so he goes home and he does some research. He goes, I think everybody's been comparing this to Instagram and Facebook. And because of that, the metrics don't look as good.
But if you compare this to I message, I wonder what this looks like or WhatsApp. So he hustles and he gets in touch with somebody at Apple and he's like, hey, I just have a good question for you. If somebody sends an I message, how many, what percentage of them send an I message every day for the next seven days? And they run the query for him?
Yeah, like if you use I message every day, that's how you use messaging apps. He asks somebody at WhatsApp, same question. He asks somebody and he gets in touch with somebody from Instagram. And he's like, hey, for Instagram, if you post a photo, what do the odds you post a photo the next seven days?
They're like, oh, super low. He's like, what about even just using the app? That's a reasonable, healthy number. And he goes back to Snapchat, he asks them the number and Evan, like, I don't know.
He looks it up. He's got the I message number and he's like, this is communication. And nobody else was really that eager to invest. And he was like, I got to go all in on this thing and sure enough he did.
And you hung out with him and he told you that story at dinner? Yeah. Did you have any other interesting people at your dinner that you want to talk about or no? Yeah, there's a couple of guys.
So there's one guy Will who's coming on the podcast. Will O'Brien, he's a Irish guy. And he's coming on the podcast because he had this sentence that caught my attention. He goes, the ocean is the ocean is the next space.
I always have the next space. What do you guys like about it? Well, you know how recently all this, you know, there's a bunch of investment now in space tech. So space X, obviously first, but then after that, there've been more and more companies that have been funded, Varda and others that are all about rockets and satellites and getting to space mining asteroids, mining minerals, whatever it is.
And he goes, the ocean is the next space. Like the ocean is this other vast, mostly unexplored, mostly untouched by tech space. And he's building an ocean tech company. And he told me about four or five other ocean tech companies.
And it was a finger to the lips. You got to come on the podcast and talk about them there. Don't waste the Senate dinner. That's actually a really interesting concept because right now space is hot.
Robots so hot right now. Having a moment is oceans the new it girl. I'm looking for it, bro. I'm looking for it.
I'm like, what's going to be hot? Is it like is she like the hot girl who just has like glasses on for some reason? She's still a nerd and it's someone's going to like take her glasses off. I'd be like, make over done.
You're the rom-com where all you had to do was take her hair out of the boat tail and you have to go to glasses. Yeah. You're now beautiful. I'm like, oh shit.
Right now. How is that? That's Callie. No.
She was a bit pro. It's not a new girl. Imagine them giving their pitch to their LPs or to their investors. You know what I'm thinking of.
I'm just like, what have you seen she's all that? How about that? I hate about you. Yeah.
Then my friend, what is it? It just it's interesting to our new ocean startup. You get it. That's great because he's just thinking a lot and living in a space that I can sort of write under your nose but you never really think about.
That's pretty cool. All right. So, what's up? Yeah, give me one.
All right. So, we had this guy on the MoneyWise podcast a month or something ago and he's like, it is 60s. He's like Steve Houghton. He's a billionaire.
I had a great time talking to him on the podcast and the podcast we were talking about making money and all that traditional career shit. He's a billionaire from what? Yeah. So, he says it on the podcast.
He's worth something like $2 billion. He made his initial money doing door-to-door sales selling something and I forget what he sold, but he made like a hundred grand. And with that hundred grand, the savings and loan crisis hit. You know what that was in the 80s.
I don't completely understand it, but basically a bunch of cheap land became available. He got leveraged to the tits and bought all this property and that made $3 million. The $3 million, he then bought some storage units that turned into like nine and then using that nine, he bought a bunch of, they say, oil and gas. I don't know what these Dallas guys say, oil and gas, but basically that means you buy lease rights, meaning you like, not going to lie.
Haven't heard of words since we said leverage to the tits. I should have waited for us to talk about that. Quick break break. That's my favorite book.
Discuss that. I kind of liked it. I'm trying to get on. I'm trying to get on.
It was like, you know, today I'm going to wear a turtleneck and I just say leverage to the tits. You know, I was like getting a new haircut. You know, like affirmations. That's my bandhole song.
Leveraged to the tits is my version of having bangs. You know what I mean? All right. So makes a bunch of money, oil and gas and land.
Got it. So you didn't just talk to him on the podcast. Then you went and you did an absolutely normal human thing. You invited yourself to his family reunion or something.
Well, after the pot, I was like, can I come over? Like, can I come and just like hang out with you? And he was like, yes, absolutely you can. And so basically he lives in Dallas.
He has this huge mansion. I know that because I look the way I look, a lot of people think that I know about like skiing, but I don't. But he was like, I have a skiing ski out house, which I didn't even know what that meant. I've never skied in my life.
And I had to like figure all this out. But we went to Utah at his huge mansion. It was a ski and ski out thing, which if you do ski, that's like a fancy thing or whatever. And I learned a few things.
The first thing that I learned, I had no idea, but his three daughters are famous. So his wife and two daughters are famous. So his wife is Jen Houghton. She's got an Instagram called Turtle Creek Lane.
I think he has 1.5 million subscribers and basically your followers. And basically what she does is she decorates their home in like the most crazy over the top way. Like so for example, for Christmas, like it looks like a Christmas doll house, but that's like her real house. And so she got famous doing doing that via Instagram and then brought in the other two daughters to do, you know, their stick, which I don't actually don't know what their stick is, but I know that a million people follow them because when I was around them, I was like, they're just living and people just like love watching them.
Were they just like snapping content constantly or what? No, that's funny. They weren't. I mean, they did a bit, but it wasn't any different than anyone else who has like a thousand followers, you know, or like it was not obnoxious.
And they actually had mentioned that they worked with you and a company you invested in. And they were like his company that he invested in. They did a great job of hooking us up. So they knew you.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
I didn't know. I think they do a good job in their personal, the daughters like personal content. It doesn't look like I have the daughter of a billionaire type of thing, right? It's like super relatable.
It's fun. It's, you know, it's easy to follow, easy to like. So I didn't know that they were like these famous people. The second thing I didn't really know, I didn't know they were Mormon, but they weren't just Mormon.
He was like King Mormon, like he's on the board of BYU. And so I think I learned this the first morning when Sarah and I get up at 7 a.m. to go hang out and everyone were sitting around the kitchen and we're just kind of like patiently waiting for them to get the coffee ready. You're just vaping.
You're just faping. You're just faping the kitchen. I'm just like sitting in this kitchen and we're like, do you guys do coffee? What's up with that?
They had to tell me that they don't drink coffee and they're like, but we went and bought coffee beans to accommodate you. And we had this coffee machine. We even went and bought a coffee machine. We don't know how to use it, but it's like over here.
And like they had to like, and like I don't even know if they bought the right beans. Like they literally had never gone to this experience, which is like imagine like not knowing like you get the beans, you get the grounds, you know, like how does it, like you need to ground the beans, like is this the right machine or is this like a, there's a five different times. And so they had to do a comedy that's which was hilarious. But when I learned with the Instagram stuff is dude, middle America moms who's they're following so much more profitable, profitable than like comedy, like doing comedy bits for like millennials or Gen Z, you know what I mean?
They made, they kill it and they would like post like these gummies that they got or this candy or this other widget that someone had sent them. And they were like showing me how many of the products that they sell. And it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. Like it was like, why are the people listening to this podcast?
They're like, I want to do things for the trader economy. No, just you ever at least said Oklahoma. I'm a mother economy. That's what you want to sell.
Oh my God. I mean, they were like super Mormon and I am, I'm not into religion. I don't like religion in particular, particularly, but I learned a lot. And the one thing that I learned was they like explicitly stated their values.
Like you know when you're with your family and you'll make jokes with your sister like, yeah, you know, like you'll, you'll, you'll bring her down. You'll be like, Hey, you said you're on a diet. Why are you eating that? Or like you just like mess with her.
Like just teasing. There was not one, bring them down joke. And I was like, and I asked them about that. I'm like, you guys haven't made fun of each other once.
And they were like, well, like, you know we're taught in this religion that you got to treat, like, you know, you got to be Christ like and like, he doesn't make fun of people. So we don't make fun of people. And they had like all these like, I would ask them a variety of different questions. Why don't you do this?
Why don't you do that? And they all have like very explicit answers. It wasn't ever like, ah, it just feels good or I don't know. It was all like well mapped out.
And I thought that was really cool to be like super intentional about living when I asked them. I was like, why don't you guys drink coffee? And they're like, well, we're taught not to like, you know, try not to be addicted to things or try not to like overly rely on stuff. And I was like, all right, that's a good reason.
And so it was crazy to learn about all that stuff. But here's a, let me say this last thing that I learned from this family. It was like a 15,000 square foot house. And I learned that you know, you've heard me talk on this pod and I think you feel the same way about like owning stuff in a big house.
It's kind of like, it's like, ah, it's a lot of work. I don't want to do that. Dude, it's such a life hack for like being around your family. Like it's the greatest thing ever.
And like, I've noticed this amongst this family, but also a bunch of other really wealthy families that if you can like acquire a home that's big enough for your grandkids and everyone's super comfortable to stay there, they will want to stay there more. And thus you will spend more time with your family. And like, they didn't have a private chef. We didn't do anything.
The whole most entire weekend was us just sitting around a kitchen table and we like cooked our own meals and just hung out. And it was like the way to live. And that's like. Was it awkward being at their like family reunion or what was?
Dude, they were so, they were like, come on in and like they'd be even more awkward. They're so nice also. They were so nice. I just think these guys are nice all the time and I asked them.
I was like, why are you so nice? And I was like, why do you guys have so much fun? Like they had like activities like we went like, like let's go in the pole pole and get in the hot tub and then we're going to go do like they had activities planned. They all do this with family.
I was like, what are you guys doing? It's fun to be the center of everything we do. And it was just like. This is amazing.
This is like the opposite of like, you know, when you're a bad kid in school and they take you to like jail and they want to like shock value like show you what your life could look like if you just keep going down this path. Yeah, I just got like hard. It's like the opposite. You're like, hey, I want to see what a really healthy family dynamic looks like.
It was for a weekend immersion. It was the healthiest family. I have never seen anything like this. And then they have a subreddit.
There's a subreddit dedicated to making fun of them. And it's never seen this. So first of all, do you know why there's so many Mormon influencers? Basically, Mormons are explicitly told you should journal.
You know, journaling is a good way to reflect on life and it slows you down. That led to Mormon mommy bloggers, which they're like inherently kind of interesting because they're really into like, I think Mormons are told they need to prepare for the end of the world. Fucking awesome content, right? Like talking about like your packing system for like all your nuts and stuff.
Like that's really good content. Partly that into Instagram. And that is one of the reasons why there are so many freakin Mormon influencers. And I didn't know that.
But they have and so because of that, they have a whole subreddit. It's called like turtle Creek Lane Snark or something like that. And every time that they would post something, people make fun of them for the silliest stuff. Like one time we were like in the house and like one of the kids was eating a piece of cheese in like, for some reason, a two year old shouldn't have cheese.
I don't know why, but that was a post that so when they fun of them. Or there was one time where Sarah, my wife made it in the background of one of the photos and they're like, who's this person? As if she was like a new cast member. And they were like, we're googling her and like listening out her name.
It was crazy. And I asked them, I was like, does this stuff bother you? And they just, it totally like, they were like, no, like what they care about us is their business. It doesn't bother us at all.
And so this family had the most positive outlook on life and it did wear off on me to be honest. Like, you know, I'm not about to go and like become a Mormon or anything, but I want to hang out with him a whole lot more. Right. This is wild.
Like, didn't he get in like a helicopter accident? Like the next week or something? The week after. Yeah.
He, he, he, he on the podcast, I'm only wise he talked about how much he loves flying helicopters. I don't know all the details, but like three days afterwards, they were flying a helicopter. I think he was flying himself. He, in this particular case, he does, but in this particular case, he was the passenger and the gutter wreck and it was not good.
And he survived. He's going to be fine, but it was a bad, it was a bad wreck. And like, if you go to their Instagram, you'll see like all 10 other family members like surrounding him at the hospital. And so yeah, he's going to have a lot of issues to deal with.
But like, this was like the kindest, sweetest family I've ever been around. Do you know Raleigh Williams? He came to and it was like me and Raleigh Williams and then the Houghton family and Raleigh Williams, his kid was amazing. She's 10 years old and I was, she was the most articulate little girl I've ever talked to.
I was like, how, how'd you learn how to talk this good? And she was like, I, you know, for the church, they teach us how to do like a homily. That's what we call the Catholic Church. I don't know what the woman's called.
We talk and burn like 500 people at church. And she was like, and doing that, I learned that I need to like, and like, told me like all like the principles to like speaking confidently. And I was like, you're the greatest person. I was like, I'm maybe my next daughter, Navy, because of you.
But this freaking family was awesome. It was so, it felt honestly like I was in a reality TV show, but there's no drama. There was zero drama. It was like the happiest thing I've ever seen.
And the husbands by the way, are the managers of, so the husbands are the managers of the two daughters. They were like, one guy was like, yeah, you swear I got Amazon. I helped create, I think Alexa or something like that. But then when I saw the potential for like this influencer stuff, I quit right away and now we make and they tell me how much money.
And it was just an astronomical amount of money. It was crazy. So that was my weekend with a billionaire Mormon family and it was awesome. All right.
Where can we go from here? This might feel like a let down after that. Let's see. All right.
I'm just going to give you three numbers of paper. I have three people on this list. You want number one, number two or number three? Number one.
Or maybe I can rapid fire these and then you can tell me which one you want to talk about. Okay. I hung out with my friend James Currier. He's, we did podcast together.
It's going to come out soon. He has this one bit that I just really liked. So he's all about his fund is called NFX as a network effects. He's all about network effects.
Like nobody knows more about network effects than this guy. And he has this great blog post and this thing that we talked about, which is called like your life on network effects. I'm not really thought of it this way, but he, the contrary thing he said was he was talking about leaving San Francisco. We had a bunch of friends who we used to hang out with that have moved out of San Francisco during COVID because they were like, Oh, everything's online now.
So we'll just leave and then it'll be like good for taxes. And he goes, he's like everybody, you know, personal choices do whatever's like, but if you wanted to be here and you left because of taxes and because you thought it's the same, it's same on zoom. He's like, that's idiotic. You know, you could, he's like, you're just going to save 13% on your taxes and you're going to lose 13.
You're going to make 13x less money on that same, just on that same money saving decision. Moving for taxes. I think they're stupid. I think that's a really, that's a foolish thing to do.
Do you agree with this? There's a lot of people that do that. I think it's foolish. Sorry, they're not stupid.
I think that decision's foolish or rather I don't agree with it. That decision and actually several other decisions they make probably also. Don't you agree? Like the point of like succeeding is to do what you want not to have to live to Puerto Rico.
If you want to live to Puerto Rico, then great. Do it. Exactly. But if taxes is the number one reason, I think that that is your, your, what's that phrase?
You can't see the forest and the trees or something like that. I mean, I kind of agree. I'm still here, but, but yeah, so I thought I was interesting. He's going to talk about your life on network.
If his idea is basically everything, if you could take all your decisions you make and instead of thinking of them as things you did or decisions you made or just like events in your life, if you looked at it as you either joined a network or you left a network, you either added into a network or you subtracted out of a network. So for example, where you choose to go to college, it's not just a college. It's not just an education. You're picking a network to join.
I joined the Duke alumni network and that alumni network is going to have certain benefits down the road. It's also going to lead me to maybe certain careers that that network tends to go towards, which is like Wall Street, finance, things like that, you know, where you live, obviously is a huge one. If you join the Hollywood network, you're going to be joining a certain lifestyle, certain career opportunities, et cetera. And when you leave, you're opting out of that network or you're getting yourself away from the White Hot Center of the network, even just skills you pick.
Like let's say you want to learn, you learn marketing. Well, you're actually joining a network of other people who know marketing and that's what you're going to hang out with, those opportunities you're going to get. And that's the sort of the next decision that we have to be influenced by the network decisions that you make, the initial network decisions that you're making. And what, like, did that make you reflect on the decision that you've made or thinking that you did the right thing or the wrong thing or how will you implement this?
Because if that makes me, I don't regret. I moved mostly because of family, only because of family, but I do wish I was a company. Which is the phone network, right? You like opted into your own par family network or whatever.
You opted into, you opted to like be more dense there and have more connectivity there, which is going to be great for your family raising and all that. But you opted out of the tech network of San Francisco, let's say. Which by the way, if I could live anywhere, like if family weren't a thing, it would either be an SF or a suburb, like a 20 minutes away. But I would live there in a heartbeat.
And what did it make you feel like? Well, he kind of points out, there's some things that you don't choose, like where you're born, right? Things like that. And that's a lot of what you start to choose to do.
And even little things like, you know, language is a network. So, you know, if you're in China right now, like choosing to join the English network is actually like a really powerful decision you can make that's going to like completely change the director of your life, being able to do that. If you start to look at things, English is not just a language, it's a network. It's a network of people who all can communicate with each other using certain syllables and words and phrases, right?
Money is a network, right? So joining the Bitcoin network early on turned out to be a really profitable decision because you picked, hey, we're a bunch of people who all believe that this thing is going to be valuable network, right? So it just made me more aware of that. And maybe, you know, why did I host that dinner in San Francisco?
Partly because James was like, yeah, one of the big mistakes I made earlier in my career was I got successful and I kind of siloed myself. I kind of just wanted to do my own thing on the edge of network. He's like, it was great for creativity because I was just in my bunker just doing my thing, but it was terrible because he's like, you know, I turned down that lunch meeting with Travis when he was starting Uber. And I, you know, I was too egotistical to take that job at Facebook early on when Mark was trying to recruit me because I just thought like, I'm going to be off in my own land, creating my own little castle over here.
And he's like, again, fun for creativity and for learning, but a little bit foolish to the how extreme I was with that. And so for me, for example, I move 45 minutes out of San Francisco. That reduced a lot of the serendipitous meetings I could have in the network of people that I like to be around, interesting and vicious people. Would you move closer than?
Well, I don't think I'll move closer because like the family network's out here and it's just better, like the school that we're in and all that stuff is better out here. But I'm like, yeah, I could definitely like drive to SF twice a month and have like, you know, host a dinner, do a couple of live podcasts with people there. That'll be great. And that's not that much of an effort but just to stay, just to keep one, almost like a in the diagram, right, one line connected to the White Hot center of the network.
Yeah, and I mean, you live near Bart, right? I do, but Bart, Bart, Bart's a network. I don't want to be a part of that. You're laughing out of that one.
Yeah, I don't. All right, I have another person. So basically I don't speak at conferences unless my wife wants to come with me if Neville wants to join and do it with me. And if Nick Ray will attend those three things have to happen.
You know, I do buy on a trash. All three or one of the three. All three have to happen. All three have to happen.
That's your like, I only green skittles. That's your writer. That's my writer is Sarah's got the reason I don't like traveling, but I like to travel if it's for a conference because I love going somewhere in the first two days or conferences. The next few days are fun because you meet someone at the event who's going to tell you cool shit to do.
And also I just like doing some of my friends. And so I went and spoke at this thing called the newsletter conference, which was pretty wild because like 15 of my ex employees were speakers and are all like many of them are millionaires or making a whole lot of money doing newsletter stuff and that like made me feel proud. But I met James Altager. You know who James Altager is?
Yeah, he's been on the podcast. He's like he's an author. So is like title in life. I think James might be the craziest person that I've met in the last six months.
So if you Google James Altager, you're going to see that he's like the thing that sticks out is his hair. He's got this like crazy haircut and in real life, he sort of looks like a rock star. Like he kind of like, like he's not trying, but he looks so different that he looks super cool and awesome. And so James is the type of guy who, well, he's got the story.
I don't know his full background, but he's like created a startup, made a bunch of money, blew it all on stocks or bad investments, did another startup, made a bunch of money, lost it all. And now I think he's on like mountain three and he's got, he has a thing called choose yourself financial. It started out just as a newsletter where he would just write about his interesting opinions and things like that. He sold a portion or all of it to Agora.
Agora is a large newsletter business that makes something like one or two billion dollars a year in revenue. I don't like their company. I think that they have like 15 or 20. It basically, it started in the 80s as one newsletter.
Now they have like 20 and they acquire other people's newsletters and I think they do a lot of nefarious stuff. So I'm not trying to promote those guys, but they're not all bad. And he sold to them and now he's their highest or one of their highest earning newsletters. And his newsletter, choose yourself financial, did 130 million in revenue last year.
And it's like crazy. The numbers are crazy, very profitable. And he said all this on stage, everything I'm saying is public. And so I hung out with him and his wife and we had a great time.
He said one thing to me. He said it in passing and I was like the record skipped. He was like, yeah, I love DoorDash because I don't leave my house for like three or six weeks at a time. If I need a pen, they just bring me a pen.
And I was like, what? Did you just say that you don't leave your house for like three to six weeks at a time? And he told me he's like, yeah, sometimes I just get so into something that I literally will not step foot outside for like four weeks at a time. And so he said like five other things like that where he just was so fascinating.
And it was proof that you know how like, I think it was in the Peter Teal, what's his book called? One One. Zero to One. It's like a bar chart or something like that where it's like extreme success means that you're likely going to have extreme personality traits.
And those extreme personality traits like come off as weird or undesirable in many settings. You know, you could be like, Elon, which means you're going to be kind of mean sometimes you could be like Albert Einstein, which means you're like forgetful all the time and like we're two different socks or whatever. Like he has these examples. James is that guy.
He very much has the like brilliant but forgetful and quirky scientist vibe to him. And it was just wild seeing him just have normal conversations because his opinion and the way he looked at things was 100% fresh and different from how I looked at the most like normal for example, when he said he didn't leave his house, I was like, that's horrible. He was shocked that I was criticizing him, which is pretty funny because he should live his life and be happy and that made him happy. And it was like, or in the green room, he was playing chess the whole time at Steph Smith, who was also there.
I was like, you guys know each other? And they're like, well, we've never actually met, but we played chess constantly together online. And he meets a lot of his friends playing chess online. And there was just so many little tidbits about this guy that made him so fascinating to me.
And by the way, if you saw, if you know Agora, they're famous for these long form sales pages and incredibly aggressive advertising. Do you remember in like 2020 or 2019, James's face was everywhere? Yeah. He was like, I hate that.
I hated it. I hated it. I hate Arlani pages. I hate how long they are.
I hate how they look too aggressive. And he was like, I try to write differently and like make my own landing pages. None of them could ever convert nearly as good as like the crazy shit that they would write. So did he make a ton of money off that Agora thing?
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Or maybe the yes.
And also, I think the answer is still. And it's still, okay, gotcha. All right, I like that one. James, I have another one that's less weird but more side questy.
So, Shiel, Shiel Monat who came on the podcast recently, you can see his episode. The numbers crushed. Yeah, he did really well. So he was at the dinner too.
And she'll tell these stories and you're just kind of like, if you just listen to the stories, you're like, wow, this guy is fascinating. You would never know his day job because Shiel is an epic side-questard. So his day job is he's a VC, invests in FinTech companies. That's his job.
And there's a lot of that. The weird thing is that if you listen to him, he's like, oh yeah, I am taking like courses or whatever, I'm getting certified to be a travel agent now. So I can access all these travel discounts. He's been doing that.
I actually looked at buying the ambassadorship position for being an ambassador of a country because it has these perks. He's basically your friend who's really good with credit card points, but for everything, including credit card points, by the way. I think all the podcast, he gave us a pretty good credit card point tip. But he just has all these epic side quests he's gone down over and over again.
He's like, yeah, I got married in the metaverse. And like, Taco Bell sponsored it. Oh, and hey, guess what else I did? I started this auction company to go and buy and sell the domain endings.app and dot photography.
That was his business. He's like, these aren't even normal, even his businesses, aren't normal businesses. They're just weird side quests that made money. I think his side is this all his is that it?
Yeah, this was another one. He's like, oh, yeah. So the story he told on the thing was he was like, I was interested in this like food delivery space. I'm really hot, spring, et cetera.
I was ordering from all of them. But I just thought there's no way this thing's making money. So then as a side quest, I signed up and became a driver for a month and I drove around. It was amazing.
I met all these people and I learned the model. And I realized this thing's never going to make money. And he was right. It's working out of business.
I said, all the other stuff we're doing it. He's like, but we could do this other thing. This all and I got my friend to do it. And now this all is like, I forgot what he said on the podcast.
Like absurd. I think it's like 100 million plus. 100 million plus revenue. And I was like, wow, this guy is just always on side quest.
So for example, he was talking about, he's like, oh, yeah, Mr. Beast posted this video about like, I'm on this abandoned island or whatever, like this. This abandoned island, I'm the only one here. And there's nothing here.
And she was like, hold on, I've been to that island. But without the video, and he's like, no, wait, that's not abandoned. There's like a bar, like three minutes away from where he is and there's this motel. So he tweeted about this.
And then Jimmy calls him and is like, hey, man, like what are you talking about? That is an abandoned island. He's like, no, it's three minutes away from a bar. Like he's like, no, technically it's abandoned.
If you look at XYZ and I was like, this guy just constantly gets himself into situations. Jimmy called him because Jimmy like felt his integrity was under attack. Yeah. And he was like, did you give me my number?
I was like, no, I didn't even know this happened. And she yelled it back down. He was like, no, it's not an abandoned island. Or when they felt right.
He's like, where are you worth? He's like, look at it. Three minutes away. There's a place.
There's a pub. It's like it's not abandoned. And I think technically maybe there was something where it's like the border or like I don't know what this, but I think it's a place where they're owned amusement. And I'll bring this home with a little TikTok I saw.
It was a TikTok was like this TikTok had gone viral. And I'm glad it went viral because it means that other people are similarly really attractive to people who just do shit for their own amusement and really for no other reason. So the TikTok that went viral was like, I forgot the name of the dance, but it was basically like, shout out to my boy, Willie, for spending all of our bachelor party weekend trying to learn this dance. And I guess there's like some dance.
And it's like this awkward looking white guy. And there's like two black friends trying to show him how to do this dance. And it's just like everywhere they went during the bachelor party, he's just practicing this dance just to like, see if he can learn it in a weekend. And then they cut to the wedding and he's doing the same dance just for fun on his own on the side of the dance floor.
Like not part of a performance. Just like just doing this thing over there. And I respect that. I think I respect that more than I respect like someone's achievements in life.
I kind of respect people that value their own amusement as the highest order bit. And I think she is an example of that. Like the shit he does, he's not doing it because there's some outcome he's seeking. He's just amused by it.
And therefore like follows it and he ends up in these situations that at the end become really good stories. But I don't think that's why he's doing it. I think we've done close to 700 of these episodes. She would be in my top 10 of people who I admire most.
I think that she'll do this. Like people, I don't even know if we mentioned this one. Do you know that she'll say that Justin Bieber music video? Of course he is.
Why wouldn't he be in the Justin Bieber music video? I don't know. Like I was watching from the outside. So I think the way it happened was during COVID, she'll created an online version of Bachelor.
Like the Bachelor. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I watched this. It was great.
What was it exactly? It was was this during COVID or bachelor on Zoom? I think it was called the Zoom bachelor or something like that. She'll the bachelor and there was a bunch of women that would pop up and then he would like eliminate, give out roses and eliminate them and he'd fix them on the end.
He went on a date or something. And somehow, I could be confusing all the stories, but somehow this it was a hit. It was awesome. And then he then there's a video of him where he's turned around like this and it looks like he's making out with someone like this.
And the video? Yeah. So he I think he was watching this all from outside. I think he posted that video and then he turns around and he smiles and he looks so happy.
And that clip made it in to a Justin Bieber music video. And if you go and watch the music video, his clip, she'll clip is the best clip. Oh, I have it. I have it.
It's there. What was it called? Love Yourself. Was it Love Yourself?
He's like, it looks like he's making out with someone. Play that clip and like, watch that. Oh my god, it's so funny. Turns around.
He's got a huge mustache for some reason. And he's just cheesing. Do you know another crazy thing about him? By the way, you know, the podcast startup on Gimlet Media?
I think he created that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think he did. I mean, he had his hands in it. Maybe we'll say that. Yeah.
He just has had so many weird things happen to him. Let me tell you another one. Another person who I think is doing their own thing. So my buddy Furkan, who you know, he's also been on the back guess.
So Furkan and I, we were co-founders. We tried to start a bunch of companies together for like, you know, six or seven years. And now Furkan super well. One of the things about Furkan is that he is, he's just a grinder.
And it doesn't matter how like successful or wealthy he's gotten. I mean, his last company, AppLovin, is like $100 billion company. And it's like a third. And he was like, why is that taking off so much, by the way?
Like AppLovin, for years, it was sort of a joke because when you would drive in San Francisco, they had billboards where they were trying to recruit engineers. And the name AppLovin came out right or we still associated it with Nick Levin. And it was like, is this a real company? You know what I mean?
And now it's one of the most valuable companies in the world. So he's been so so Furkan has been early into a bunch of like tech things, right? He's basically like a hacker hacker. So he was really into crypto before crypto was cool.
Like I remember literally being at the office and he was like, not paying attention because he was buying into the Ethereum ICO at like, you know, 17 cents or something like that. And I was like, Ethereum, like literally like dorkiest fucking they never got to work. So I didn't buy it because you boys are genius. And that's why I'm a podcaster now.
And he's a billionaire. And so it's for kind of billionaire now or I don't know if he is or is it? But he's a billion dollar company. I don't know.
He's not like he's not like three zip codes away. Maybe he's two. I don't know. So he's getting close.
So he got into crypto early on. And then when web three happened, I remember when web three happened and everybody was like, like piling into web three. And Furkan was building a company that's literally going to be sold their web. And he was just really into the actual technology behind it.
He's like, Oh, I think I can make these tools easier to use for developers and blah, blah, blah. Good. What time he like did a talk on? Remember the Raspberry Pi?
Raspberry Pi. Yeah. Yeah. And like he like sometimes spent like 45 minutes explaining to me all about it.
And he knew everything about it. Yeah. Yeah. He knows everything about everything.
So he's. And the second thing he got really into was VR. So he bought me an Oculus just because he was like, I don't want to tell you about this and like hope that you go try it out here. Here's the new Oculus headset.
Go home and put this on. So okay. That's that's not a friend you need. And so I go home and I put it on and blown away and I'm like, wow, this thing's getting really good.
And then I think he bought me like another one when it got better. And then I started buying and I'm like, oh, paying attention to VR. But you know, I'm like every other lemming out there. It's like, I pay attention with shit.
It's hot. And Furkan, the reason why Furkan is so great is because he doesn't pay attention with things that hot. He's like in the hardcore nerd bucket where he's like, I pay attention because it's interesting to me. I don't care if it's popular or not.
I don't care if it's hot about it. I don't care if it's here or not. I want to be on this train the whole time. And so he was telling me about his history.
He got this lab called Effing and he was telling me first about the third web house growing and how it had real revenues now. So wow, that's great. Then he's telling me about VR and like Sam, like how many people do you know that are interested in VR right now? Like everybody who is interested in tech is interested in AI.
Where's your Oculus sitting right now? Dude, where's the biggest pile of dust in my room? I think it's back there. Yes, gone.
Same. My, I mean, like I did what everyone did. They got it. This is awesome.
This is going to change the world. It's going to change everything. I don't know what the charger is. It's in my drawer somewhere.
Yeah. I'll go back to scrolling on my phone. Yeah. And he didn't do that.
He's like, he would tell me like we would hang out and he's like, I'm working in VR today once a week. I go co-work in VR. But what? And so guess what?