All right, we're live. We're good. Yo, you're in Utah. Yeah, I am I'm in Salt not what's the other place Park City?
I'm in Park City nice hasn't been so far you're great adventures begun It's okay. I definitely want to just be in my home, but it's okay Yeah, it's good like it hasn't hurt productivity, but I could see how it could meaning what why we hurt Because you're trying to dunk Okay, so I don't want to make this too much about me, but I'm going to because that was kind of cool They had a basketball court and I post on Twitter dunking shockingly close right very close. I if you had told me hey Can Sam almost dunk? I don't like what are you talking about?
No? No Sam can't almost dunk but you can almost dunk here Like very very close which was extremely surprising to me. I don't think it's a matter of jumping height That's preventing me anymore. I think it's a matter of maybe I'm a little chubby I could lose if I lost 10 pounds I get it, but it's just a strict like I'm not coordinated enough like the way I'm doing it right all the limbs have to move in sequence Like I like I'm like running into stopping and using two feet and just like right No, it's cool.
You should go to Sam's Twitter and watch him almost done I was really shocked. I've gotten that close to dunking when I was I think 19 I was super close to dunking and then I like blew out my knee the next like two months later And I've never been even remotely close since then and it's not because the knee is just I never like got fit again In that same way to be able to potentially do it if you did it 19 work a little hard I mean work hard and try to do it like when I was um 20 and 19 I could like I couldn't like put it between my legs, but I could like go up and like do all types of weird shit So you could do it before yeah, and no one believe me like no one who knows me now believe me and so I'm like fuck I'm gonna do it. Just show you guys Amazing okay, so that's going good Kind of yeah, so that was the issue those two days ago Yeah, I got a whole bunch of crazy stuff going on in the work world and then like Sonya yesterday was having like crazy ass Cramps and I'm like oh shit, okay, I gotta like learn how to take care of this baby cuz right now We have like a you know a two-party system like I know how to do my role She knows how to do her role and I'm definitely like the Steve Curran She's like Michael Jordan of baby care and so when Michael Jordan gets the flu you're like oh shit I now I got a score and I don't know how to score I haven't tried this all year and so there's some moments like that Just pop up throughout the week and it's always during like you know some other work thing I'm like okay works not important. I gotta learn how to be that hold on.
That's all right Well, we're happy to have you back. I did a little bit of the heavy lifting without you and I didn't like it I missed you for sure we heard it was good though the editor was like this is an a episode and I was like wait Is it possible without me? Oh shit, okay? Well, it didn't feel like an a when I was recording it It was not as fun, but I will tell you want to do a recap on him.
Well, I didn't get to listen to it yet So I have it cute up. Okay. Yeah, give it to me. Okay, so check this out So I met this guy either in trends or on Twitter I met him somehow only two weeks ago and we just went shoot the phone.
It was like online dating and like calls You started calling each other. Yeah, so This guy but I have kind of known up him a little bit, but he started this his name's Ryan B He got mad at me a little bit cuz I kind of described it in a disrespectful way But it's an event but these guys are wild and they would rent the cruise ship and it's like a lot of young tech folks And then they eventually were like, you know, what if we like let's not I don't want the party to end Let's buy a location to do this right and these guys were like Four of them were the main guys or maybe five I think four and they go What if we convinced a whole bunch at this point? They probably had five thousand attendees across other events like over the lifetime over four years and they go What if we convinced like 50 of these people to help us buy a mountain because someone had come to them a friend of a friend I'd be like hey, there's this mountain in Utah and they're like going bankrupt or they went out and they go, okay Well, let's each let's convince 50 people to give us a million dollars each and well It was just like a plot of land that was like dirt like there's nothing there And what if we like convince them somehow to like buy into this and they did and they got like yeah successful people like rehasting and like all these like tycoon folks and They didn't know anything they were 28 29 I think 26 something like that They knew nothing it was very impulsive it sounds like and they go let's convince these people to give us money So people wired the money and they bought this mountain and then they've over the past eight years have been selling plots of land But it's still not complete yet. There's sounds like there's a long ways to go But they built roads they built fire hydrants like things you don't think about they It was literally a plot dirt.
They didn't even know like I don't think they fully understood zoning laws I don't think they fully understood like frankly understood anything, but Yeah, what's cool is they took the okay rich people kind of want to vacation home in Utah like that kind of makes sense Like okay, it's a kind of up in the mountains I can have a vacation home out there But in this case they merged two things It's like what if there was also this kind of entrepreneurial village and it was your vacation home Would you be willing to pay kind of up front for that dream and like yes? They were they were willing to do that and I think that they like they had to do so like it sounds like they had a lot of like They're these rich guys and I mean I imagine they're rich now, but at the time he was like, you know, we didn't have a lot like We didn't have anything really and so it was really cool here how he bootstrapped this like resort I guess I don't know what you want to call it and it was great and they would tell stories about like are you there? Is that where you are so he this guy he's married Ryan's married But his wife was gone and he had the 6,000 square foot home that he was renting and he goes, you know If you would say I want to stay here I have two levels so we could still like be safe come and stay here So I stayed there for three nights And he took and we drove around and did a driving tour of the mountain And then I have already had a Airbnb booked and so I just went to my Airbnb on Monday or Tuesday And so is the the place that they bought all that land is that now like kind of developed? Is it happening or is it still like nobody lives here yet?
Some people live there. There's a lot of work to go They have roads they rented out for like races and 5ks and they have events there still I don't know if you've heard into events but there but some of our friends have like they have buildings I think they have like 40 homes that are completed and you can live in Our friends Xavier did the boss move he saw what they were doing and he was like, okay This is a genius of them at B. I don't want to pay the premium to like buy this plot on pattern mountain So he just bought his own little vacation house like a little further down the mountain like right below where they were because he's like Do these guys are gonna put in like 50 million dollars to like making this whole area amazing So he just bought his own little house at like, you know half the price or whatever right next to their plot land It's pretty amazing and short. Let me show you why it's amazing the listeners can't see this look at what I'm looking at my window right now There's this like a there's a straight up a deer just eating plants like four feet away from Sam Yeah, that's incredible You see that deer yeah, it's amazing sounds like you tuz dope.
I really like the story So I know you did the whole podcast with him so we shouldn't talk too much about it But I just gotta say my two senses. This is one of their like You know on my respect meter what those guys did at summit series is super high up because they had no name no background No nothing and then they created summit series Which was great bringing people together and then they elevated the vision like 20x Where most people would have been extremely satisfied and kind of stopped it like hey This is cool like whatever, you know bill clinton comes to our, you know summit series events and chills on hot tub on this You know at our event, but then they're like no, let's buy the mountain creative village raise 50 million dollars Let's build roads like that's kind of it's ballsing in a way that I really respect And i'm sure there's people who are much smarter and much more accomplished But you know you are what you admire and I really admire what they're doing I agree and frankly the verdict still out. I think of this is gonna work Yeah, like totally flopped and I would still respect it just as much because I respect the attempt that's empty so uh unique that you know I gotta say that that's kind of amazing. Most people would not have done that Yeah, like but with covid and just the powers that be like it seems like it's gonna work But just they didn't say this but for my understanding i'm like this definitely could still fail but like It's pretty baller.
Right. Um, so it's amazing and how'd pop go so Sean was on pop at pop on twitter I don't know what his real name is even Anthony pump leon. Oh, I think his name was that good Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So I I I prepped so I normally don't do any prep for pretty much anything in life And I like okay, that's a good way to get good at winging it But I was like every morning when I wake up I you know ask myself i'm like, okay What's the one thing i'm gonna do today that if I just crush that one thing then today was a success And like if even if I fuck up everything else or I have to do everything else it won't matter this one will carry my whole day to be a success So I look at my calendar usually i'm like, okay, I have this meeting or I gotta make this pitch or whatever Um, and I usually decide my thing and so when I woke up, I was like the podcast i'm gonna crush the podcast So i was like, all right.
Well, what do I do? I got like two hours here And so I did something kind of unusual I basically sent him a email beforehand because I was like this guy doesn't really know me Like he's heard the podcast a few times seeing each other on twitter But like he doesn't know me he's just booking people her first podcast anything will help his you know That is listeners want to listen to and just like we do many times right? So I sent him the letter that I wish I got from a guest which I was like Hey, i'm pumped you know here we go here's something that will help you, you know make this a good show And I was like, you know first like my name here's how you pronounce it Because that's always the thing like here's what your listeners need to know about me kind of in a nutshell It's like i'm the guy who blank and I like my blankety blank and filled it in And I was like here's like five kind of controversial things that I believe and i'm happy to talk about any of these Um, here's you know three or four kind of amazing stories that i've done in my life And if you want to talk about any of those I can kind of go into any of those and um, you know Here's my kind of mission on why i'm even going on your podcast because I like to spread the word about x and you know Cool, let's do this. And so the podcast was awesome.
I think because of that Prep and I would say the reason I share this is because hey in general I think you can do that for whatever your version of whatever whatever's your thing you're trying to crush and your life But when I was doing it, I was like what am I gonna say like if it's like if you think about yourself as like a product And you need to like quickly explain yourself to the customer and they're gonna be like, okay I get it I get what this is and I either decide if I like it or don't I was like, how am I gonna what's my angle and like, you know, I kind of went through this little exercise That's in some ways pretty fucking cheesy, which is like kind of like a personal branding exercise where it's like, okay Well, what's the one thing that people should know about me? What's the core? What do I say for what makes me different than anybody else? Why should you listen to me on this podcast?
And so I went through this exercise and I came up with kind of what I thought mine was And so I'm curious like do you ever think about that or do you feel like you have kind of a personal brand? And do you like I don't know do you like work on it? Like what's your angle, you know, if somebody should be like, all right Who's Sam's the guy who does Sam's the guy who is X? No, that's why you should listen I don't think I work on it, but I think I probably should but no I don't I think I don't know I think maybe my reputation is like people kind of consider me like a southern person and I'm like that's not really true But whatever I won't correct you and and maybe they consider me a loose cannon which may or may not be true But besides that, I don't know if I think about it at all So like you you did an appearance on Jason Calicana's podcast Which I think it's a bigger podcast in ours.
It's been around for 10 years or something like that And I thought you crushed it. You came out the gate hot You had a whole bunch of interesting stories information. You kind of were a straight talker And I thought that was really good. I was like that's kind of like part of the appeal But when he you know, I think for you your thing is like I'm the owner of the hustle the hustle is a You know a media company that you know, we tell the news and we do the same called trends and where we have, you know Million plus subscribers and we make you know tens of millions of dollars whatever I think that's kind of like your that's who I am and then the reason people like you is probably the like Straight talker has interesting stories to tell and um Noble shit kind of guy so you know, that's that's kind of I think that works for you But when I did the other day, I sort of was became very obvious to me Man, if I really sharpened this up, it could be a lot better like my story could be a lot better and I think I Well, I think that's more interesting people.
I think you're in an evil You're you're at a slight turning point with your who you are, right? Um, like you're you had a thing you don't have that thing anymore and you're somewhere else, right? and Without I mean, I'm not actually it's like I'm breaking news, but Chances are you're probably gonna move on and do more things one day, right? Which I don't by the way to the listeners.
I have no idea if that's true. I'm just making this up No inside of it. Just just yeah Yeah, and I also think that you valued yourself as like a starter for a big guy But now you're obsessed with these like smaller things and that's a transition for you But one thing that's remained constant is your this framework you're like this wisdom This doesn't this is a good thing You're like this wisdom guru and this framework guru that inspires people and that has remained consistent So I would kind of lean into that if I were you right? Yeah, so I the two angles that I came up with were I was like I think I was like either I should I should kind of explain myself as kind of like a an idea machine because you know I ran an idea lab for five years built like 20 different products ideas out of that raised $15 million plus So that's like you know I ran an idea lab I'm and we have this podcast which is all about shooting brain-solving ideas And then I invested like other people's ideas and you know, so that's just like who I am is what I'm interested in is what I talk about That's one angle and then the other one was I was like, okay, you know, like I'm also super into frameworks more than anybody else I know Yeah, it's the way I think and I was like, you know, there's I said this on podcast I was like, you know, I would try to like want to be you know My goal could be like to be like the framework done But you know frameworks are so nerdy you can't be a don if you're in frameworks And so, you know, it's something one of those two I think is the most like true And I've done a bunch of shit that that sometimes fits into that sometimes it doesn't but anyways I thought it was a fun experience to like go through that process of like cool If I was gonna distill myself down in the way that you got to like, you know Be simple and understandable and like interesting to a whole new audience of people how would I do it and that was fun experience?
Alright today's episode is brought to you by tempo tempo.fit is the website I actually use this I've used this for a few months now And it's this machine that has a touch screen in this 3D sensor And what it does is they give you weights like 115 pounds of weights and it's for strength training So what it is is it measures your body and it sees how much weight you're lifting It sees how many reps you're doing and how much effort you're putting in what your heart rate is It's pretty amazing and then you have a coach on screen walking you through what to lift how many to lift what work out to do Whether you want to do a 20 minute 10 minute 15 minute workout, it's pretty amazing But the best part is the leaderboard the other stuff all the features that they have that's cool But I'm obsessed with the leaderboard because it measures how many reps you're doing and how much volume you're doing and you can compete With other people who have taken the same class, so it's maybe want to work harder Lift more weight or have more endurance It's just pretty frickin fun And the whole point of working hard is to have money so you can spend it on stuff that will make you live longer And this product tempo it checks that box for me So the response to today if you use the code tempo hustle you'll get $100 off So tempo that bit is the URL and tempo hustle one word you'll get $100 off so check it out I use it if you look me up on Twitter You'll see I'm always filming videos where I'm talking about company say I'm trying to crush their employees on the leaderboard Because I actually love this thing and I use it all the time so check it out Let's get through some ideas. So so I saw this idea on Twitter that I thought was pretty interesting But we work for warehouses so this guy Jay tweeted about this and I would say it's last name But it's like a crazy Indian last night that I actually don't how to pronounce But he's a good follow on Twitter I'll pull this thing up But basically he he was saying like look in e-commerce you sort of have this you have two kind of options as your main your main options Option one is you own your own warehouse You basically lease a space or buy a space you put in all the equipment You have to hire staff to run it you have to figure out you buy the software to run your warehouse all that stuff And what most people do is not that most people do a 3PL Which is a third party logistics company Basically you just send them your inventory and then they charge you per order that they pick pack and ship And so that's how much people do it But like the problem with the 3PL is that it's not it's their staff not yours So they don't actually really care about your customer experience. I don't really know your product very well They make mistakes they go slow they charge quite a bit per order That can like really hurt your margins And so Jay was basically saying like why isn't there a we work for warehouses where it's like you That they have the space they have the building and then they have let's say that like kind of And we work it would be like the desks and chairs and meeting rooms and conference tables and whiteboards You know warehouse that'd be like you know the shelves and the forklift and whatever else But you actually rent your subsection of it and you you run it you operate it with your own staff And so they and so you don't get charged per per order that you're doing stuff And this is not like the newest concept like obviously there you can go rent parts of warehouses But nobody's built like a brand and a bunch of different real estate where you can go do this and make it make it really turnkey So that was a dope idea and I saw some people who were trying to do it This thing called saltbox seems like the closest bet but they have like one location and I don't know Pittsburgh or Florida or something like that And so it seems like there's more opportunity to do this. I'm doing research as you're speaking So um, nothing's salt box.
Okay. So on that thread they say that salt box Spaceville and dark store right do something similar and I'm trying to look them up and there is such little information about them So it's really hard to understand anything, but there is okay So what you were just grabbing earlier is called shitmunk. Do you know what they I mean? They're a company that they're a free pl Yeah, and I don't know if this is crazy profitable, but I do know It's very expensive for a customer and according to a quick google search They do something like 84 million dollars in revenue and I don't know how that revenue if that's like I don't know anything about this.
That's not like gmv That's like that's that's like their revenue and then they have their people cost and then they have their leases So like I wouldn't be surprised if you know, they're doing 15 million a year already, but I was like that Wow, okay, so it seems like a good business Forbes, which they quoted the founder in Forbes 3030 So I think that would be reputable shitmunk made four million in sales in 2016 expects to do 10 million in 17 So, yeah, I don't know where they're at. I don't know how big they are, but I know that they Like they I talked to them yesterday actually and they said that they invested 10 million dollars into automation for their warehouses this year So if they're investing 10 million dollars, they're not at four million in sales anymore So sure definitely way about that. So it's an that's an interesting idea One of our friends bought is renting a warehouse in vegas Do some of these warehouses are so cheap that you have to imagine that there is significant margin there Like it's something is it is it I think it's as cheap or cheaper than a dollar per square foot So you can get a 20,000 square foot warehouse in vegas like near the strip Or kind of near For 20 grand and so I imagine if you you get like a hundred thousand square feet I bet for like $60,000 or less and I don't and I've been into one of these 20,000 square foot warehouses They are so big. Yeah, like I'm like there is so much opportunity here just off that arbitrage That's that's an interesting idea.
So what would you do? I don't know if I would do anything here because I think it's not the it's not the most attractive opportunity But I think if you're a e-commerce shop, I could definitely see the appeal of why you would want to have more control and lower cost than a 3PL But less headache than like building and leasing your own thing and being on the hook for the whole thing The flexibility like we work like we work shoved in between office space, you know Like renting your own office space and like having no office space that came in somewhere between So I can definitely see that there should be something like this For from a customer's point of view. I don't know how great of a business it would be But um, I think you could do this and I think you could layer on a 3PL service on top of it So you could you know, you have a space and then you just offer somebody either We can fulfill for you or you can fulfill yourself if you want to do it this way But I just think there's a lot of opportunity in this this whole the whole e-commerce logistics space is just insanely big returns is insanely big Warehouse and fulfillment is insanely big and um because just a huge portion of retail has moved to e-commerce Like there's this like hockey stick curve of how much how much retail spending is now happening, you know over the internet And it's the if you're an infrastructure company, you're gonna get a piece of that pie And it's not gonna be one company dominates because there's like a physical component to the whole thing So it's not like a Facebook or something where the software just scales instantly and one company takes all It's gonna be you know, market by market building building What what do you think it would take to make it so every e-com site could have Amazon Prime? Yeah, that's what they're trying to do, right?
So that's what that's what 3PLs try to do And so if you break it down, what does Amazon Prime really offer? It offers free 2-day shipping And then offers kind of the hassle-free sort of return policy, right? And you know, if you talk to ship on there like we ship within 24 hours Now it doesn't mean it arrives within 24 hours because you're still depending on USPS or UPS or you know, dHL or something to deliver it But Amazon does the same they deliver some of their own they have some of their own trucks And then they like have hijacked the entire US Postal Service to be like an Amazon fulfillment warehouse So I don't think there's that big of a difference between e-commerce today and Amazon on the on the fulfillment side And on the return side, you know, that takes capital because you got to be willing to eat losses and deal with fraud There's this guy and I'm trying to find it he emailed me and he said um, he goes I'm a VC I listen to guys podcast and I turns on whatever and I only invest in trucking like logistics specifically trucking And I'm trying to find his email and he's like I just invested in this company that is trying to give Every small mountain pop place a a two day shipping that you know, that's my goal and it's pretty interesting and I mean obviously that's interesting That makes total sense. I have no idea what it would take to pull off But it's pretty cool and I like what you're suggesting is almost a logistics base in the logistics base and shipping space I think that like if I was starting from scratch I think I would for sure go into the trucking or Logistics base because I do think that that is probably the biggest market in America And I don't think it's gonna go away.
Yeah, I don't know about that part I don't know if it's a biggest America because that's whatever that could be many things, but it's definitely big enough It's definitely humongous and um, yeah, there's a lot that can be done there But there's also, you know, what's the angle right like there's a whole bunch of people trying to do driverless trucks and they're all kind of failing And it'll take time for that to ever come to fruition And then there's people trying to like I just invested in this drone company that just does you know drone deliveries Not for consumers. It's not not like, you know, you buy something on Amazon or brings it to you This is like somebody in remote Africa, you know, on a oil well They need a replacement part and so then they use these high speed drones that can carry 100 100 pound part to that location And those people will pay like you know thousands of dollars for that delivery because it's so remote and they need it for their They need it for their operations. They're losing money every day that they're that the machine is down And so and this company's, you know phenomenal They're doing tons of revenue and big opportunity And that's just in like one kind of niche space where they're doing medical supplies and and mechanical supply deliveries in like, you know, Africa right now That's interesting was it a high valuation? Yeah, it's a more proven company So I just got in because my friend my friend did the seed round And I participated in the A and now they're raising their B and it's like a 250 million dollar plus valuation But it's like way more de-risked like the drone works.
They have customers. They have big contracts So, you know, it's just a question of how big will it be so I I want to talk about this so related I I will preface this by saying I really don't know anything about venture capital I have a lot of friends who are investors. I do some small deals I'm pretty much a nude when it comes to BC So I might sound like a moron but you seem like you kind of know what you're talking about whenever we discuss it There was this funny thing floating around where people and I don't know if it's just circle jerk Twitter But where people were like the next big thing is gonna be like these young people with big followings who have met your capital firms Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about so it's not young people with big following exactly They're basically talking about solo solo capitalists. Is this what you're talking about?
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yes And a guy who I like and maybe I'll tease him because he's funny, but I actually really like him a lot I don't know what he stands for. It's cool is Sahel Yeah, so he started this company called gum road and gum road. I started using it 2012 or like right when it came out It's pretty amazing.
It's like the easiest way to sell a PDF And he raised a bunch of money and I don't know what happened But he said I fuck this like you investors suck and fired all of his employees and he's still running the company like a loan And he talked about it He basically they couldn't live up to the growth expectations of it I was like okay, this company's either gonna die because we've all these people and we're not growing fast enough to raise more money Or I get rid of all these people and I don't raise money But I get it to like profitability and I kind of run this like a business instead of like a venture out of venture backed company And then for the last several years he kind of so he was like humiliated laid people off You know went back to investors kind of told him what the deal was went down to like I think just him working on it And now there's a small team working on it and like kind of rebooted the business while it was still mid-flight And so today he announced that he has a five million dollar VC fund. Yes, and this is totally a circle jerk bubble Like I love that you're saying this by the way because I'm gonna raise one of these exact same funds next week Well, we we will say we are in that circle jerk So I could hate on it because I am in it and Honestly, it might work. Yeah, so so okay the idea So what's actually happening? So what they're saying is so you've had you know angel investors or people investing their own money kind of 25k checks at a time And they had VC funds which are like using other people's money They can raise you know somewhere between 10 million bucks to billion dollars and their fund and they're like professional investors And um the in between those two is being filled out more and more and more every year So there were small VC funds like kind of seed funds micro funds microvices all these different terms people use Anyways, the more like interesting part of this is just that there are now individuals like we had Daniel gross on the podcast There are now individuals who have a good reputation founders love them Founders talk to them so they see a bunch of deals and now they're like, you know what?
Like instead of just making the intro to the VC. Why don't I just be the VC like instead of investing 25k my money? Why don't I invest 250k every time and I'll raise my little fund and I'm not gonna operate it like a I'm not gonna be a professional investor full-time where this is you know I have like an assistant so we have an office and all this stuff like I'm gonna keep doing whatever I do that's Getting my name out there, right building my company or building my community or running my podcast or whatever it is But now I'm gonna get you know four or five million bucks behind me And I'm gonna deploy that across 20 companies and like let's see what happens And so there's a handful of people doing this and is really hit or miss like I know almost all these people doing it I wouldn't invest in half of them and then I did invest in two other ones So I invested like Ryan Hoover does this so Ryan whoever has the weekend fund Which is you know, he has a full-time gig at product time But obviously he sees a shit ton of deals because he's super well-known and he built product on done He's that angelist all that good stuff and so I know this guy I know he's smart I know he sees a bunch of deals earlier than most people and so I became an LP and his fun because for me I wanted to do it just to learn so I realized pretty early on that I can learn a lot about investing If I can see the deals and I can see the thought process So the first way I did that was I went on angelist and I joined every smart person syndicate I could find because I realized with a syndicate you don't commit anybody you say I'm I could invest 50k But I'm not and you've got every single deal memo so for years, you know, like five years I've just been reading all the deal memos of these guys and I invested in a couple of the companies But most of them I'm just oh, this is how they think about things. This is the quality of the deals This is how much traction these companies have it was just amazing insights as an entrepreneur or a potential investor But for the funds so that's for syndicates, but the more you know, the better the investor the less you'll do syndicates So Ryan's not a syndicate.
It's fun So if I wanted to see those deals and I wanted to be a part of kind of his portfolio then I needed to put some money in and so Have you seen any returns? No, because it's like a year old or two years old or something like that So, you know, it takes like seven years to return so that was the thing I was like I put a lot of money into this a little So I went and asked my friends who are LPs in funds like Andre's and Horowitz or you know, you know, a whole bunch of different famous You know like SV angel founders on whatever and I asked him I said is this a good way to make money and they go basically the answer I got was You know, if it's just purely for returns, I wouldn't do either angel investing or being an LP in these funds You know, you can make money you would expect to make good money But if you take that capital and you deploy it into a business you own or into you know, the stock market You keep it liquid or real estate and you have different different sort of return profile You can do better, but they said, you know, the reason I said so why the hell do you do this? And they go oh I do it because a I like innovation B by being an LP I get to see all their stuff So it's a huge learning advantage which in the end makes a lot more money for me at the end and so Yeah, it makes money on the returns itself But then I also get to learn throughout the whole process because I'm on the inside of these deals And so that's why I was like, okay, so I took that strategy so I went lightweight So I became LP in three or four different funds But I lowered my my dollar amount in each because I wanted to start by saying okay Let me see. Let me see what this is like.
Do I get a bunch of information by being on the inside? Did you um, are you actually gonna raise your own thing? Yeah, so next week, uh, hopefully so I talked to the angel this guy's because they I thought about this for a while and I never did it because Probably raising a fund is raising a fund you have to go and solicit and go and be like hey I need to go raise five million dollars I was like okay cool I can do that if I ever have a spare, you know, three to six months But I never had that three to six month gap where I could just focus on going and raising five to 10 million dollars So I didn't do it. Um, and along the way, I've just been investing my own money as an angel investor Basically 25 to 50k checks at a time and I've been enjoying it, but um What they what angeles came out was this thing called the rolling fund and the key with the rolling fund is you don't have to raise all the money up front So I can open up so that my idea is next week I'm talking to angeles guys who run this because it's kind of like invite only at the moment But let's say let's just pretend that we from now they really like my account and I can open it up So at that point I could basically say hey anybody who wants to encode basic invest in deals that I see You can give me a check that check can be as little as 5k per quarter or it can be as much as you want You can give me a million bucks doesn't matter and you can either come in today and you'll I'm gonna start investing in companies I see but like I don't have to go raise five ten million bucks up front.
I can raise it over time So it's more it's more as you go thing and for the investor It's also easier because you don't have to give me you know 100,000 or 250,000 all up front. You'll be like cool This is great. I'll invest you know 10k per quarter. I'll commit, you know, whatever 40k a year And it's a less less less heavy commitment on their side too So I really like this thing they innovated with so that's why I'm gonna do it now And how do you how will you earn from that?
Well, I earn money when the investments are make money right So you can take like a management fee or whatever like whatever two percent or something like that But that's not really gonna much but it's basically hey, I'm gonna go invest in a bunch of great companies I'm gonna be able to buy bigger stakes now So today when I go invest 25k into a company like I invested this one company that I love It's a background checks company and they're doing awesome like ever since I invested there They're doing better and better and I'm really excited about them But I own so little because I invested 25k into it I wish I'd invested 250k into it But for me financially that would have been too risky to be deploying 250k per random startup investment I want to do so so I make money basically when these deals exit So like as these companies get acquired or go public then I earn my carry on the deal So first the investors get their money back And then we split the return and the typical carry is I would get 20% of the profits after they get their money back And they get 80% of the profits And how do you think and you explain this to me one time? So let's say that you do have a $50 million fund How does that I don't even know how you make money off that? As the investor? Yeah So you take 2% a year as your management fee So 2% of 50 million is what million bucks?
So you're gonna take so a million bucks per year for like eight years You're gonna take off the table if you raise a 50 million dollar fund Now that's going to you it's going to the fund administration legal cost as well as any partners or associates You have to do diligence right so like that ends up being like let's call it 500k in salary for the investor I don't know that's just rough math So like I just I understand that but I'm like that seems too good to be true Yeah, it's a rigged game for sure But you know the reason they're able to do that is because You know people are willing to give them money Why are people willing to give them their money because most people today don't have access into technology companies And it's pretty clear that technology companies dominate the landscape Like you just go look at the most valuable companies in the world They're all technology companies now If you want high growth right if you want to invest your money you want to invest into high growth ideally High growth typically is coming nowadays from technology And so you have people that like they own their own house They have their 401k they have some stocks maybe they have a rental property But they have zero exposure to tech and what they the worst thing they could do is be like cool I'm gonna become an angel investor. I don't know the first thing about how to structure these deals I'm not seeing the best deals. I'm only seeing kind of like whatever comes to me and I have no name brand I have no access I've no personal network And so they're playing you know basically against the house and that would be a bad thing So what ends up happening is you have people who have made money in either their own business or their job as a doctor or lawyer or whatever it is And they can now invest personally in funds like these I think that's the way you know They're gonna invest some small percentage of their total network like five to 10% of their money or something like that Into a fund that they believe in and they say okay I believe in this person's judgment and their network and I want to learn about high growth high tech investing And I'm gonna be getting these deal memos on it'd be getting smarter due to it. That's why I would do it if I was them Well, maybe one day I'll join For bigger funds they're getting money from like pension fund You know like the firefighter pension in New York or teachers, you know the teacher pension or whatever This is like institutional capital.
That's how the guys who raise like billion dollar funds or hundreds of billion dollar funds It's not like their uncle who's a doctor who gives them you know Trichika it's these huge institutions that are mostly invested in the public markets And then as a hedge they take a small percentage of the total like kind of value that they have and they put it into Risky kind of you see investing. Let's talk about female as a differentiator I have thoughts on that so you want to you I think you wrote that you want to talk about what it says Yeah, I just wrote that because I was like to do so many products that if you just said it's that but really geared towards women I think you can make a whole new product just off of that And so it was inspired actually by something I read in trends There was a woman in the group who I think had a facebook group called the solo female traveler network And I was kind of amazed like I forgot the numbers in off top my head I don't know if you have it in front of you, but like I think she was doing like a million dollars plus a year Basically she built up this big group of females who love to travel But when females travel like they have to think about safety You know what are the different activities I'm going to enjoy and so I think she had a group and then layered on top of that Like kind of a tourist business where it's like cool when you go to the city You can pay and go do this awesome kind of female oriented trip or tour I was my understanding of it at least and I was like man, that's a fucking awesome business like good for her That's great. What else could be done this way and I started thinking I said oh, there's just bumble Which is a dating app geared towards where women get to kind of do the outreach versus men And that was like the core differentiator. There's the wing which is a co-working space for women There's I think circle or something like a mastermind group.
It's a YPO for women And I just thought this is interesting. This is interesting for end to pull on. What do you think about this? Yeah, so I'm pulling up circle.
What's I don't know if it's the circle circles something like that They're not again. This is a deal. I saw the pitch deck for I don't even know if they're public. Oh, yeah I think this one shield was into maybe yeah, okay, so I think about this all the time and here's what I think it is Anytime it's best if you're gonna build up like a Attention or attention getting business or like a brand or something that you need people to kind of build a cult It's far better to make it in us versus them and the us needs to be like a downtrodden Forgotten minority.
So in this case, it's women So when we're like, you know, we we're sick and tired of being pushed around we're sick and tired of this and that and that's like the easiest Stick in order to get big, you know, trumped it this with uh, even though technically like everyone says that the silent What do they say? Are we the silent majority of it? I would say with a silent majority. It's like, well, you're kind of like the louder majority, but whatever like Or they'll say like yeah, like we're like we're the forgotten group like I'm like I'm gonna make up the mass population.
Yeah, or like fox news always does this they go You don't stick a mainstream media, but it's like silencing us. Yeah, it's like aren't you the biggest news Yeah, it's like you're bragging about that you're the biggest viewership yet, right? You're like you're calling someone else mainstream and so That's hilarious. They do that.
That's so funny. They go like you know the mainstream media what's it's like dude You you are the main it's like people always like you know, we have to stick it to the man It's like But it turns out like a shtick. It's like the best it works. It always works Like in the steps to build a cult it like they're like there's like a definitive like steps It's like there has to be a clear leader there has to be some type of rituals around the the experience There has to be a bunch of other things right of passage.
There needs to be a right of passage Just like what fraternities and sororities do and that's one of the reasons why they bond for life And one of them also has to be an us versus them like either you are with us or you against us and like you guys Many times it's what you can join but until you join you're not on our team Right and women is a great category for that, you know, they're not represented enough in a variety of places of business And so they say you know, we're gonna help each other. We're gonna get through this and we're gonna bond. It's so that's a great I love that move. I think it is a I wouldn't I mean women the women differentiator That is just one of many wonderful examples of what you can do.
Yeah, exactly. It's a I just wrote female as a differentiator And that's kind of all I had there. What's an example of somewhere that you could do this? Um, you could you could do lots of different races.
Um, I think that like no, no, I'm saying the female thing like what's a What's a product category today that is not differentiated in this way that potentially could be where you could gear it towards females in a stronger way? So, okay, well, this was not female, but do you remember how you just try anything? Do you remember how you told me about your friend who was a Muslim or was he Hindu where they like generated loans only? Yeah, halal financing halal is that as halal?
Remember so most people. Yeah, they you know, they call out me and this is a halal financing Which means sort of a blessed and approved by the religious community and elders. I guess so I think there's a lot of finance you could do that And you know, we there's elvests so elvests. They they're a financial company for women.
Yeah, what's the what's the female bank? Is there a female bank if not there should be a female bank? You absolutely could do a female bank elvests is taking a stat at that They've raised tens of millions of dollars and will likely be something like a Robin Hood or what do they do? I think they're like so they become a member and get access to investing banking and on-demand learning financial planning and career coaching and you know what that sounds like What we had her on here.
Yeah, what was it called? Learnvest? Yeah, was it learnvest and my takeaway was that business didn't completely work out, but I can exit but business wasn't you know wasn't gangbusters? But yeah, but I think you could still do that.
So the skin did it wonderfully. They're at least mildly successful. So they did it with news What else could you do? I mean I think that like there's if you built like a women's only Social club it'll work.
It'll be a some type of mild success at least This guy in our either trends group or podcast group. I forget which group created this thing where he's doing He's doing audio books for women and and he said that he's already at 5,000 a month in revenue in the first six weeks So I think that there's a lot of space for that. It's basically like porn for women. I think there's a lot of space for that.
What else is interesting? banking I don't know Yeah, a lot of people do it with content so the founder of Bleacher Report is named Brian He founded Bleacher Report Right and he sold it for a whole lot of money and six months or a year after selling that he launched bustle and bustle is a Refinery 29 competitor. He was like I want to be like a new vanity fair And he created a women's public network of publications and he did so because I think it's because he had a not I imagine he had a non compete Or like don't do don't do 10 sports The US TLE It's probably makes 50 to 100 million sales and I think what happened is and I'm just guessing I imagine what he saw was that the engagement from women on digital content is significantly better So I've been involved I can say soap hub the soap opera website that I was involved in a little bit that my friend owned The engagement on that was mostly all women and it was it dwarfed most right like the founder of Bleacher Report Not Brian but everyone looked at the metrics and he goes oh this is the best engagement I've ever seen in my life And so engagement amongst women consumers is typically much higher than men Yeah, I feel like yeah, somebody should just map out all the big categories and like, you know, why is there not a credit card that I know of that is like Catering itself to women and it's something like, you know, like for example There's this product that my wife buys these like these little like dolls And I'm like it's like these little handmade things by these women in Peru And basically the dolls are cute, but she loves the story is basically that like there's this whole community in Peru That was struggling. These women they know how to like knitting is a part of the culture there and they knit the hand knit these dolls And you know, yeah, the dolls are a little expensive, but you're basically funding this woman's business as you do so and like Why is there not like a credit card that's sort of like that where it's like, okay, cool You're an American woman in the US use this credit card and like part of your cashback or whatever Goes as a micro loan to you know a woman in Uganda who's trying to, you know start her own vegetable standard whatever it's going to be right like Women empowering women women funding women through financial services Like I just think you could go through a bunch of different categories like obviously the cpg brands did this right like or the you know shampoo, you know for women and like each all the consumer package goods So it got different to pretty early, but seems like they're still categories like media like you know financial services that are less touched by this Yes, but I think that there's here's what I have found and we had a we someone in our trends group A woman was like who you know, we're all the women in here I want to speak to where women and all hundreds commented in there and they all connected became friends and what they were saying is And I I agree well, I'm not a demographic but from an outsider.
I agree which was they were they were saying like I hate how women only brands Pandered to them and like be like well because you're a woman you like want me to talk like a millennial and you want me to say like cute Shit and they're like not really like we're like we're alphas as well And we don't want to be like patronized and a lot of brands Treat them that way and I totally understand that and that was my frustration with a lot of female only brands are female focused brands They treat them like I saw this in your comments on the hustle about the scam a whole bunch of people How much women were commenting in the hustle like thread being like oh my god Don't give me a start on the scam like you don't have to talk to me like I don't understand the first thing about business or like you know Like don't don't patronize me and um yeah to say that's definitely like let's say the the double-edged sword of going down this path is you have to find the Sweet spot where you're doing this authentically and you're not babying you know any group that you talk that you actually think that's where the market is Which is there could be a market like for some reason when women products oftentimes they like lean into that What I don't know what you call it, but there needs to be an opposite where it is women centric But like alpha and like they don't call themselves like a girl boss That is that is quite patronizing I think but do you know what I mean? I don't know how to put my finger on it, but I think that actually could it just reminds me of a this one There was a quote from this woman who worked at uber and they were like are you sad travis lee is leaving and they're like Yeah, I'm super sad uber was the only place that I could work where I could be me and being me was like being pretty alpha And when I worked at this company that company if I was if I would interrupt someone or if I would do something a man would do They would call me a bitch But at uber like they didn't tell me to be quiet They told me to be loud and speak up and say my opinion and no one called me like a bitch They just like treated me like a like a woman who was assertive and anyway I think that there is actually there's not enough brands who are leaning into that Demographic or cyclographic and that is quite interesting to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think we're not the right ones to do this But I do think it's an interesting like area for somebody to explore Cool good catch up dude enjoy enjoy you tell and then we'll be back with another episode in a few days