I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like a Days on the Road Less Traveled never looking back.
All right. I think we're live how we live but live you look really bad.
Thank you.
Yes, a very cold very tired. I think it shows
this is tangentially related to business, but I wanted to bring something up to you. I've lived in Austin now for a bit in my house that I just bought for like 5 days. I've been living in the city for six weeks now. I don't know how long everyone is talking about moving to Miami and Austin and maybe a little bit of Nashville where else
I think that's right. I hear Austin and Miami the most
I hear Austin Miami the most and I hear Austin the most and basically for anyone who's not in our little silly bubble, which I bet actually most people are people are leaving New York San Francisco and la and maybe a little Chicago and they are moving to Austin and so far. I'm going to sound like a snob but so far my takeaway is that Austin is cool. It sucks right now. It's a very ugly City in the winter. It's a nice place to live. It's
Easier living but I miss a lot of the I don't know how to describe it worldly stuff of New York and San Francisco and la like for example when I go and get coffee from a famous coffee place in New York or do something in San Francisco or something in La that's supposed to be like the hottest thing going it's safe to assume that that person might be in the top 5% of their category in the country. And I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that or as it.
Austin I've been here and there's been multiple times and I'm not that snobby of a person but I'll ask for like a particular type of coffee like really simple like an Americano. Like I said, I don't think that that's considered snobby anymore. Right and they don't do it
doesn't that mean I don't drink coffee isn't that the most basic coffee does not just mean like just coffee and then the fancy shit. It's like the
third most basic thing. So there's like drip coffee and then there's like fancy versions of that like pour over and an Americano is just hot water and espresso. So you need a you need an espresso.
Machine, which see it's not like that fancy anymore. It was considered fancy, but now it's just table Stakes but like small stuff like that. It makes me appreciate San
Francisco. There's a little bit of bougie in you and that little bit of bujji is missing the bougie treats that you get in San Francisco and New York.
Well and also like for example Austin's been pretty good, but do you realize that all of our friends at San Francisco and almost all of my friends in New York and like my
Family friends in New York, they're all immigrants who came from a variety of different places a lots of different religions tons of different ethnicities, and it was so cool. And like a lot of people like you went to Duke we have friends who went to some like really Elite universities and then we have friends who are high school dropouts and that like, I don't know what you want. Yeah. I love that. I love it. I love it. I love it and it was and it's awesome and I haven't had that here yet.
Well, I hope you miss it. And I hope that people move back to the Bay Area at some point, but
I feel like this was a one-way ticket for from most I
believe I am not sure yet. Maybe maybe not I think come when the weather gets warmer. I think Austin is going to be so fun and so great. But I don't know, you know, maybe now's a good time to buy a place in San Francisco or New
York. Yeah, you know, I think there's definitely like a closer knit thing now of the people who are left like when I do a call a my God, where are you based like Barry? I'm like, oh me too. It's like a novel thing where
before you even ask the questions like yeah, of course, like if you're in the tech industry, you're almost always here unless you know, I can tell that you're somewhere else and now it's like oh, you're still here cool cool. We should meet we should you want to go for a walk. It's like there's like I think a lot of us who are still here are like alright, fuck it. Fuck everyone who left we're gonna become like clothes and we're going to like create the you know, we're going to build this thing from scratch again.
And I think I think that should happen. I you know, San Francisco and California in general La there's like so many great things about it.
But there's way more worse things about it and I would be really nice if some of the worst things could get redone a little yeah, that would be good. But the things that are great are really great. Like I'm driving around here in Texas in the winter time. It's very gray. It's very ugly. Whereas on the coast of California. I mean, that's like the greatest thing ever even New York. It can be. Okay sometimes although I have a lot of negative things to say about that place. But anyway, I just wanted to say an update on that. Everyone's talking about Austin in Miami and I was
want to say it's lovely but those are the places that were shitting on are cool too.
Okay, cool. Let's let's talk about something else. What else you want to talk about or do you want to try the thing where a Bray you pick stuff off the list and people wanted more Abreu. And so I think we give them or bring you and let him throught topics. The only thing is he's going to throw some topics that we don't know shit about because he looked it up he researched it and I guess we'll just roll with it if that
happens. Let's do the Billy thing because I would love to talk about that. Okay, which one?
I have two on here Dan Gilbert and I have a follow-up for Dan. Okay,
so Dan Gilbert so Billy of the week, by the way, I like that. We were like oh, but you pick the topic in Sam's like fuck that. I'm picking it.
You just told me to or he told me
okay.
He just said you guys
start. Okay. I thought he was saying I'll pick the ones that you guys wrote. Anyways, it doesn't matter. Oh, my bad do Billy of the week? So Dan Gilbert is a guy who I know because he owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, so he owns basketball team.
He owns the company that names their Arena which is Quicken Loans. They do the rocket mortgage commercials if you've ever seen those he also is notorious because and I don't know if you know this when LeBron left Cleveland, he wrote this letter did you ever see
that? Yeah, I think he was really angry.
Right? He's really angry and he wrote it and he printed it or I published it as I can image and it was written in Comic Sans like like a blue or red Comic Sans font, which just made his angry letter seem super.
Oddish and
ridiculous. Why why did he do? Was that a
joke? What? No, that's just like what he was writing in he didn't do it knowing that that was like a weird thing. So I found that to be hilarious and most people did because he was like going off at LeBron. He's like, you know, this self-proclaimed King, you know, I promise I guarantee we will win before LeBron does and then LeBron one like two years later and you know the cats were the worst team in the league so it didn't really work out for him that way but anyways, this guy's got like a pretty epic business Empire so I didn't actually look up his
Whole story but
I'll tell you what was interesting. So when I tweeted out that thing that we talked about which was the youth combine Force for Youth Sports. I got a message from somebody who's an exec at a company that is called Zenith football Zenith.com with an X. So Zenith football, they make football helmets and pads and I was like, oh that's interesting. Like again, it's one of those things where if you just look around you everything around you a business, you know brought to you. And so if you look at like, you know little league Pop Warner football and the
Pads and the helmets that they're wearing or high school football like the stuff that the school has to buy who do they buy it from like there's the maker so I started talking to this guy about this company. So he's like, yeah, there's three or four big players. We're in that mix of like top three. He's like this company was started by Dan Gilbert and I was like, oh thank over started this company and that was the second time. I had heard this because the other company that Dan Gilbert started or helped start was stock X, which is a yeah billion dollar.
What a babe, as of today. It's a two and a half billion dollar company. They just raise more money.
Okay, perfect. So and it's kind of crazy. It's not like he was just like an investor like he literally was like, this is the story now. I don't know how much of this is true versus Like You Know Rich guys invites their own narrative, but the story was like, oh I see my kids are super into sneakers like crazy and to sneakers like they're all about it and that he met this guy who had this like kind of like sneaker store type of thing called something else.
Yes, and he convinced him. Hey, let's create an online Marketplace a stock exchange for these sneakers because these sneakers are appreciating in value like a stock. So let's make it where you can buy and sell these sneakers this way and they created they renamed that guy's company or that he brought that guy into like kind of do the operations brought in another guy to do the tech and they co-founded he's considered a co-founder of stock X because he kind of likes spurred the idea which is kind of amazing anytime. Somebody has multiple billion dollar hits.
It's like this person is the the you know, they're the elite of the elite when it comes to business. And so what do you what do you know about this guy that I
don't well, let me just say I'll tell you this real quick and then we'll go to the beginning of a story because I know for a little bit about them, you know
Fathead wall stickers
things. Yeah, he owns it. I don't know if he bought it or started it. He may be started it but he owns it for sure. Wow. Yeah, so I think he owns like 50 different things and you probably know of a bunch of them, but he owns Fathead. He may be started it so Dan Gilbert,
Is interesting I used web are newspapers.com and I went and read about them from these old articles but basically in like 1985, he started a mortgage business where they would originate loans for mortgages. And I don't know if that means the bank or if they're connecting you with the bank. It was called Rock financial and he grew it and I think in the year 11, it went public with like 80 million in revenues like a really good company that was in 1995. So let's multiply that by two and that's maybe like you
Current revenues are the equivalent and he took a public and then I think into it bought it for about six hundred million dollars and I think two years later he bought it back for 65 million bucks in doing that. He made it huge and they recently went public again and it knocked it out the park. So he's been doing the same business for a while and he kind of pulled a fast one not a fast one, but he should teach actually was really talented and made it work.
He also by the way into his late 2018. He bought the
online dictionary online dictionaries dictionary.com and thesaurus.com like this guy do it - you don't those two that's hilarious that like
dictionary.com would be a great big.
It's a great. It's a great business. I actually have talked to somebody about it, but it's just funny that he's involved in that like that is feel like he's got his hands and several different pots that are completely unrelated. Right? He was like one of those kind of biggest investors in hundred thieves, which is a big Esports team. So he's very interesting as a business person. I think he's lame as
Do that letter like that showed me everything. I need to know about the guy but like I think his business stuff is pretty epic and
well, why do you think he's lame? I mean that was just like a 55 year old baby, you know, no he's just like 50 like I don't know they all also what's this is it to Cleveland? That's a city. I mean, I think he owns a
he's actually is from Detroit. He just owns the Cavs. The Cleveland Cavaliers are here.
I was in Detroit that he's
a big Detroit guy and owns a bunch of real estate in Detroit and stuff like that. But he owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Clears because he couldn't own the Pistons. So he bought in where he could buy in
he seems okay enough. I've actually seen interviews with them. He seems fine enough. I don't know but that's actually a question. I wanted to bring up to you. And so you wanted to bring up. What's his name Dan Gilbert another. I think his name is also damn that reminds me of him, and I don't know anything about football. So I think but I think that people hate this guy Dan Snyder the owner of the Redskins he's saying yes, like what is he a cheapskate or something? Yeah. He's like bad. This is like a cheapskate.
Decisions. Yeah, that's like okay, you know why they people hate these owners is when they do
that. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know anything about that. I'm not like a man's man. I don't really pay attention to that. But he's kind of like Dan Gilbert in that at the age of like 21. He started a non sexy business this business. What they did was at first they would go to doctors offices and by Advertiser like by the wall or something like you would like purchase the wall or purchase the space and he would get pharmaceutical companies to advertise at the
doctor's office and they would take a cut and I think it was called Snyder Communications and I'm not actually reading this off the top of my head. I gotta remember it. But I think that in a matter of like seven years, it went public with a billion dollars in revenue and he was the youngest publicly-traded CEO at age 32 and then eventually sold the company for two or three billion dollars to a large advertising company, very similar as Dan Gilbert, and my question to you is
People like at my age let alone 22 23 25. I don't like like these guys like a lot of times they grew through like really sophisticated Financial prowess like Dan Snyder like a choir like 18 companies roll them together. Like I did my brain doesn't work in such a way that I can like. I understand like some of that the financial Arbitrage. What do you think is in these types of people and that's what Dan Gilbert did you know, he's that's a financial company. How do you think they do this and understand?
How this all works. I mean, it's like really fascinating.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a question for them. Like obviously, I don't know what in their background led him to start, you know mortgage origination company. That's not what the average 25 year old thinks about doing or even has any knowledge about and so so I don't know what it is, but I do know that like it's a thing we're talking about last week our last episode where I said once you see it 12, it's hard to unsee and I meant it in terms of like when you see somebody who's truly great at something you now know what it means to be truly great.
I think like before you thought the bar was here. And actually they've raised what the bar can be. I think it's kind of the same thing. Once you see somebody make money in a certain way or make a certain amount of money. If you're if you're sufficiently motivated and smart, you can learn really quickly how to go down that path. So for example, I remember when I first heard, you know what people were doing with buying secondary stock through S PV s what I hurt her do Chris sacca has basically accumulated so much Twitter stock by the time I went public that
You know, he was the largest or second largest shareholder of Twitter, even though he was not a not a you know, co-founder of the company it was because this guy who didn't have that much money use this vehicle called an SPV and found capital and like was super aggressive. And so that to me was like, wow, I'm nowhere near that aggressive or you know, like I'm not even pouncing opportunities like that. I didn't even know that there's a mechanism called an SUV to do it, but now I do and so then I started looking at how can I do that? What I found was like usually it's not the same.
Exact game that you can play like dobbert, for example people right now doing specs, you know, they're getting fabulously rich off specs. I don't in three years ago. It was ico's people going fabulously rich off ico's and these windows closed and like kind of the opportunity to be kind of a first mover in them, you know slows down. It becomes less easy to win when you see the SPV thing then you know that when the SPAC thing starts, you're like, oh, I see the pattern. This is kind of like that or when you see the Ico thing you're like, oh this is kind of like that if you decide to jump in
Aggressively you can rise to be like the top one percent early on it's just like kind of like how Jack was talking about new platforms. Like okay. I saw that when the Facebook platform launched there were all these winners, you know, when the app store opened up there were all these winners. And so when slack launches their platform, you're like, oh shit. There's going to be some winners on the slack platform. It's worth a bet to go early on to new platforms. And so I think you just sort of see patterns. I would guess that these guys kind of early on got exposed to either by reading or meeting somebody somebody who had made their money.
That way and it got them thinking. Okay. I maybe I can make my money that way too.
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Seamless portal guides customers through intuitive import experience that automatically structures and fixes messy spreadsheet data, so it's clean and ready to use if you're interested in testing out flat file portal. Check it out at flat file dot IO / hustle flat file dot IO / hustle. I agree with that. I think that having a role model or a big brother or a parent or a mentor to kind of show you the way and you start seeing what's possible. That's great. What is curious?
Me is how they these guys some people are able to do this at such a young age, you know have such maturity to pull it off at a young age is astounding and second of all, I don't know how to explain this but with these facts and these things like that. I am such a skeptic and I'm like, there's no way this can work. I am II default to pessimism and like this is fake and stupid and bullshit. Right and it's like, all right, there's no way that there's value here. There's no way that anyone's ever going to do it and I'm
Wrong all the time. And so the fact that like people who default to. Oh, yeah, it's going to work. I admire that and it's quite fascinating what the difference between those two types of personality
is good assessment I would have of that is that that's a leak in your game, right? That's like poker terminology where you go back and you look at you. Look at the hands you play it over this last session and you're like shit every time this happens. I'm making this mistake in it's costing me money. I think that's the way to look at this now, which is like even if some of these things are overhyped or they're not going to
Long-term or whatever clearly there's people who profit from every single one of these these like cycles that they go through and whether you want to do it or not, that's up to you. But I think I used to be more like you where I used to be more I used to love being the one who said it's not going to work and the beautiful thing about that is you're right nine times out of ten. It is stupid. It's not going to work or it's a scam or whatever but one out of every ten you're wrong and it actually would have been great and that one pays for for all the times. You know that you're
Oh these things and so so I think that like I've learned it's profitable to be an
optimist speaking of that. You tweeted out two weeks ago ten days ago that you put a large percentage of your net worth at a Bitcoin now, it's at $20,000. Is there a coincidence as Sean pumping and dumping I'm moving the market I everything is your 50,000 followers that our listeners like did you just effectively move the market and Bitcoin
I hope so that's the beauty of Bitcoin the more people who buy and then tell everybody how great of a
It is the more the it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And there's no accountability. There's no such thing as overhype when it comes to money. You know, I mean, we can all say Bitcoins the greatest thing and that we're all groan all in Bitcoin and the more people that say it the more people start piling in and all that happens is the price goes up it successfully fulfills its Destiny. It's not like a stock where you say. Oh, for example that Nicola stock right which is like this want to be Tesla. It's like oh Nicholas the next Tesla Nicholas in this text, so you'll get some hype but as certain
I have like five nobody buys their cars or their trucks. Like they have no revenues. They have no profits and you know the House of Cards falls down but money that as they say is the bubble that never pops. There is no fundamentals. There are no profits and revenues that you need to think about. It's just price and so the beautiful thing about it just being measured on prices the more speculation that happens the higher the price goes the more people that but Pile in the higher the price goes that is the beauty of Bitcoin and that is the beauty of money in general as a
concept. I
Agree with you. I just find it hard to
brother question the question I got to ask you. Are you going to get rich when Bitcoin goes up to $250,000 per coin? That's what you do. Okay, if you're in you're in that's all you need to
buy I got in very early. I've never bought or sold anymore since then, but I it's a substantial amount of this point, but I think I only paid 5 or 10 grand at the time. So but that was in 2012. I pray you what do you want to do? Well, it's continue with the Bitcoin conversations shot.
Has Michael sailor on here? What do you want to talk about
there? He's kind of another Billy of the week. So if you've heard of this guy Michael sailor, uh, it's gotten famous lately because he came out before I moved with the market myself single-handedly. He also induced, you know, some some bullishness and people because this guy owns this thing called microstrategy.
Oh, yes. Yes.
Yes, so he owns a company called microstrategy microstrategy's I don't know what it's worth Bridge looks at it for me, but it's a it's a public
company. It's like a one or two.
And I
think yeah, so, you know one or two billion dollar company and they kind of do like, you know, it's one of those Enterprise companies you go to the website and you have no fucking clue what they do. They're like a billion dollar plus company which makes me just think I know nothing about marketing. I know nothing about communication. I know nothing about nothing.
It's been around. I think they've been around for close to 20
years. Yeah, like if you go to qualtrics website, you're like, I don't know what the fuck this is. Nobody would use this. This makes no sense. And then of course everybody uses it so microstrategy is kind of the same way, but he came out recently and basically bought he took
400 425 million dollars off their balance sheet and just bought Bitcoin which is kind of a crazy move for a company to do and so people were like do this the crazy move but because this guy kind of started it built it, you know, he has like quite a lot of autonomy with what he wants to do with his company and he's like, well, I looked at it. We have a lot of cash and the government just printed like, you know, I don't know thirteen trillion dollars or something crazy the seven trillion dollars like some absurd amount basically like they inflated like, you know, they pretty
The equivalent of like 20 to 25 to 30 percent of the monetary Supply so he's like okay holding cash is no good. I'm getting it, you know, my cash is becoming worthless bonds will yields are zero interest rates are zero, you know, maybe going negative. I looked at gold golden option. I could I could buy gold with this but he basically wanted to have a he wanted to put his money in a way that would be protected and he's like, you know, the further I went down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole the further I got convinced that this is a the best way to protect
Checked the money we have as a treasury asset for our company and the second thing is I think this might be like one of the best investments cuz I think there's a lot of other people who are gonna do exactly what I'm doing and that's going to cause the price to go up. So he first invested 495 million of their own money. Then he issued new shares just to borrow money to buy more Bitcoins. So he bought like a billion dollars more of Bitcoin
since and he's already up probably what 2011 12 percent.
Yeah. He's up and probably 10% already, you know, so
Up 40 50 million bucks easily on his investment. I found him kind of interesting. So he's done a bunch of interesting things. So I went back and I was kind of like stalking him and trying to figure out like who the fuck is this guy? And like why have I never heard of Michael sailor before today? So a couple things first is go to Hope.com
Type it in and tell me what
happens hope.com. It goes straight to microstrategy
bitcoin. Right? Do you owns all these domains? Because early on when the internet was early also, he was like dude, I think this internet thing is going to be huge and I don't get why nobody's paying attention to this. So I'm going to buy up all the domains I can and so he bought hope.com wisdom.com alert.com Glory.com all these names like William and Emma and like Usher and Arthur and like strategy.com speaker.com courage.com
Michael.com he owns all these domains and he bought them all for like dirt cheap early on because he was convinced that the internet was going to be a big deal before everybody was convinced that the internet was going to be a big deal. So that was like one of his original big calls that he made and then he since has had several of those companies. It's not just like he owns a domain he squats on it. For example Angel.com was one of the domains that he owned they turned it into like kind of like a voice operated customer service thing again. This was early he was like, oh
I think that's cool. You can talk to a computer and the computer can understand you and talk back like kind of like Siri early on before the SEC wasn't any good music that's going to be a big deal. And so he built Angel come and they ended up selling it for a hundred million dollars in cash. And
yeah, if I remember correctly didn't he also start because he own a domain name. Did he start like an alarm company?
Yes alert.com I believe is one of his or alarm.com one of the
alarm.com. Yeah what she I think sold for hundreds of billions.
Yeah, exactly. So this guy has had multiple again.
Multiple wins and multiple in this case early calls, I would say so there's a book. He wrote called. What is it called? Michael sailor? It's called like the mobile wave. I think he wrote this book called The Mobile wave and he published this win. This was I believe fairly early on a bracelet. Tell me if you find
by the way you are making me so hyped on this person. He just sounds so bold, although on his Wikipedia. I just pulled it up. I think he he got in trouble a little bit or he's been
Accused of some weird stuff, which it's just an accusation. I don't know. What's true or what isn't but I did I'd me to stuff or what do you mean? No no SCC stuff. So he had to pay three and fifty thousand and fines for I don't know it
just that's just a tip. He leaves the SEC. That's nothing so him so he started off. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. He tells the stories I early on I thought these seen a 4/5 professions were cool. I thought fighter pilot was super cool. I thought business owner was super cool. I CEO that sounds like a good job to have
Professor I think that could be cool and so he went and basically tried each one. So he tried to be a fighter pilot goes goes into the whatever Army-Navy whatever and but then he gets medically released because he has a heart murmur and he's like shit. Okay, I can't do that. Alright, so back to the drawing board. What's number two? Okay. I'm going to do I'm going to be a CEO and so and so he went through several of these and he tells these stories. He says like some pretty interesting stories. I encourage people to check them out. I'm not going to repeat his whole interview, but he wrote this book to mobile wave.
What 2012 I think Bray is that is that right or
no? We got to get this guy on I'm looking at him to went to MIT clearly super bright guy, very interesting
and he's kind of got this like great no fucks given attitude when he does his interviews, which is just because out there like, you know, because with this Bitcoin thing a lot of people were trying to like, you know debate him on it and he's like well and he just like breaks down the case in a absolute no fucks given Manner and and he tells you stories. He's like, yeah when we were starting he's like I started
Consulting company this technology consulting company. I didn't know anything about technology because like I told my professor. Hey, I'm doing this technology consulting company and we're doing it in, you know Visual Basic and the professor was like, oh Visual Basic sucks for all these reasons. You should do it in C++. That's where the future is and he's like you might be right but like see if us is too complicated for me. I don't understand it. So I'm just going to do visible Visual Basic for now and like we'll figure it out later. He's like, so we grew from like, you know know Millions to like 9 million a year in doing Visual Basic stuff. He's like and the
I was right like C++ was getting more popular. It was going to be the right thing. So then like when we're at nine million we were like, okay, we got to figure out the C++ thing now like, you know, it was time to make a shift to he's like, so then we shipped it to that. He's like and then we were doing this other thing and my professor was like no. No that's stupid. Go to this other thing. He's like, I don't know about that. I'm gonna try but like I'm just going to keep making money. He's like my professor. He had his like Consulting business that stayed at 350 thousand a year in Revenue every five years. I would go back and he would tell me what the next wave is and I would
Look into it and I'll try but like he's like he stayed at 350,000 and I built mine to like a 50 million dollar company during that same time. He's like there's a big difference between people who kind of like intellectually know where the world is going and people who can actually like run on the treadmill, you know, while the world is going that
direction two things. First of all, what is your source for this because I would like to learn more about this person, but it doesn't look like he has like a biography he's not he's only 55 years old.
So I read almost no biographies. I just watch YouTube interviews with people it was a
YouTube Interview with him and this guy who's interviewing about Bitcoin and it was like an hour-long thing that I watched
and if you are interested in this Google the guy Michael sailor sa y Lor and then if you scroll down into I always find the references part of Wikipedia because they typically have old interviews. I think that's like the most interesting thing to read so he's got like a cool couple cool articles and the Washington Washingtonian, which I don't know what that is the 7 billion dollar man. He's got a bunch of cool stuff. And then the
Things that I was going to ask you which is
by the way, I'll make a little tip about how I do this because I think people do the stuff wrong What A lot of people do is they say, oh this person successful and Rich and then they say a thing today. All right. It's probably true. It might be true. Right? Okay, not not a terrible assumption, right? If you don't know shit. Okay, at least just follow some smart people and rich people, you know, you probably end up better than not knowing anything not doing anything. But one thing I like to do is I go and I've read your old shitty to I read their interviews.
Jews and their their books from 1012 years ago and I see what they predicted then like for example our buddy and you will get some really like Bill Ackman and he turned me on to Bill Ackman. I'm kind of ignorant of like the traditional Financial world. I kind of only no Silicon Valley stuff. And so I was like, oh, who's this Bill Ackman guy never heard of them as I go. Well, he owns is like, you know multi-billion dollar hedge fund in, you know Pershing Square. He's got this really interesting back story will do him one week for Billy of the week and he was like and I was like, so Andrew, how do you like, you know this guy he invested
Anders company and I was like, what do you you know, do you like Pershing Square? He's like, yeah go to their net assets thing and you can see like basically owned several public companies. So you can see what those companies add up to and you can compare that to the stock price and if the stock price is lower than what the actual assets they hold are just clearly value behind right so I went and I bought on that trade but I said, let me go look at this guy a little bit more right? I want to do my own independent thinking about this Bill Ackman guy. So I went back and I watched his talks from this thing called Besson conference, which is like this conference one.
A year for like Rich hedge fund guys and then you go on stage and you just make a pretty you make a call. You're like this stock is the stock and so I went back and I watched his from like the last 10 years and I went and charted their
performance. No way. What did you do this at in Google Sheets?
Yeah. It's a Google Sheets. And so I go back and I say, oh he talks about Howard Hughes and he like gives us talk at the Sun Conference and I'm like by minute 14. I'm like, I'm trying to by Howard Hughes stock, you know, like now even though he gave this talk a talk eight years ago and
It's very convincing as he talks about, you know construction and why this company is well positioned whatever and I go back and I look at the stock and it's like flat for eight years, right? You know, he has these like really famous calls against Herbalife and whatever and he like, you know, lost his
shoes laws. Yeah, and
so it reminds you a like. Nobody knows everything Rich smart people are totally wrong on several things. So, you know, you cannot just take their take everything at sort of their word. The second thing is there's a lot of like back testing you can do to like look at
somebody's track record beyond their one or two successes that made them big doesn't mean that they're dumb but it's just a really good counter balance because when you read all their successes, you're like, oh my God, I'm inferior. This person's got the Midas touch everything. They do works. I should just kind of blindly follow and what you really want to do is learn how they think learn how they talk and you want to like back test some of their predictions just so that you have a kind of a balanced view of them. So I think more people should do that.
So what's your take on Bill Ackman you like them or not? I mean,
I think he's incredibly smart. I think it's very impressive.
Of what he's built his track record. He's had so many down years. It's not somebody where I look at and I say, okay this person has this track record of consistent returns. That's not him. He's had some blowout return two years and then he said several years where he was kind of like, you know below Market or worse and getting his ass kicked.
I think it helps that I think that it helps a lot if you're a good-looking dude as well. He's like a charismatic good-looking
guy. He's a well spoken. He know he's a master of saying
Provocative things I believe like he knows how to manipulate the Press. He's very he's like shimoff. He is Tomas of the finance world as far as I'm concerned not too much trying to go into the finance world, but they're very similar to us not as good looking but he is also very charismatic very well-spoken. Very convincing when you hear him say something. You're like, oh
shit. Yeah. Well when you see Bill Ackman, he just has that look. He looks like he is.
Okay. We should talk about this by the way, so a couple podcast ago we were joking about this. I've apologized basically we were talking about
Somebody who I had met talked about their company kind of like a, you know, like a pitch meeting or whatever. We were joking because their name was a certain way. The look was a certain way.
Wait. Well, let's recap we joked so the guy who shot talked about I guessed accurately that he was probably really good-looking. He was probably shredded. It was any probably had a noob like Tucker Erickson, which I just made up. I don't know it so it was mostly
compliments. Yeah, like they weren't like negative things.
Yes, but but I was saying it like, you know, I was making fun of him right now. I was teasing him and so he sent me a really angry TM afterwards and I felt bad because I don't mind like if I'm going to make fun of somebody I'd rather make fun of myself than anybody else and I'm not here to make people feel bad. So I so I do apologize to him and and in general, I think it was not a great moment. I was trying to just have some fun and joke around but I can definitely see if you're on the other side of that but that sucks and so it's you know, it's a lot less funny to that person and it was to me in the moment.
And probably to people who listening who just kind of heard it forgot about it. So I kind of fucked up on
that one. That's okay. That's good. We were a little rude but I don't even know who the guy is. So I think I'm in the clear. Yeah. Yeah people right now. So I don't know if you can hear me. Oh, he's that angry.
Yeah. You said be like a really long rebuttal and then blocked me and I was like, okay. Well, I can't damn back to just be like, hey, sorry like yeah, that's not how I meant it to be but got carried away with the joke in the moment should have
done it. All right, I bring you what you want to do.
So we talk about high tech. This doesn't seem high tech Sam you have Sunday lawn care on here. What's that? Let me pull that up. I wrote there. I think I wrote that two weeks ago, but basically this business interest me. So there's a company called Sunday lawn care Abra. What's the headline that I pulled up but they just raised another 15 million
bucks. Yeah, they've raised like 15 20 million dollars from Sequoia. I think was their last
round they've raised 20 million in total. So Sunday lawn care. I'm not a customer of it. So
Basing this off their website, but basically they sell lawn care supplies. So to have a healthy lawn you I don't know. I guess you spray different chemicals on it, but their whole shtick is that it's like chemicals that you shouldn't be nervous that your dogs running around while the chemicals are on the grass and I think it's crazy fascinating and I went and looked at some of the biggest folks in the space. The biggest one in the space is Orkin do not working. No, sorry not working Roundup Roundup, you know round.
Up. Yes, you know round up so they actually got in trouble about two years ago because a janitor I think a janitor at a university got cancer and I think Roundup is I think it's owned by Monsanto. He sued um, and the won a lot of money yada yada, but they're famous was around up but they make five billion in Revenue off Roundup and 2 billion in profit. It's a crazy big business Roundup is somewhat Roundup is is it just like a pretty harsh chemical that's supposed to get rid of
weeds. I don't think
And another one is another interesting one and let me pull this up that's is a similar space is Orkin do not working does no Orkin is pest control and so it's been around since 1901. It's a huge business is now owned by this thing called Rollins, which is a family-owned business. One of the biggest family owned businesses in America. I believe it's a franchise and so whenever you have a raccoon or some dead animal in your attic you call Orkin and they come and get rid of it.
It and it makes billions of year a year in Revenue. So I saw the Sunday lawn care and I was very fascinated by lawn care supplies particularly the niche of this no chemical thing and there's a lot of really really really great examples of that. So for example, you know a guy named Eric
Ryan. Yes. Well, I heard him at housing hon. Yeah, that's
how yeah, so this guy named Eric Ryan. He started method soap which you've seen Target maybe Target bottom actually, but you see them in Target all the time and it's basically soap.
Without chemicals I buy I love it. Then he started Welly and then he started Ali and I think Welly is like Band-Aids that look cute and also some type of chemical free stuff and then Ali which is kind of like bullshit free vitamins for children this whole thing of like going against chemicals, whatever that's like pretty straightforward it but I thought it was really cool in the category of lawn care. I think it could be potentially really cool for Pest Control particularly raid do no
raid. Yes, so
Oh, I saw a pitch deck for a company. That was like where the deed to see we're method soap in the category of you know, like bug spray
was it called Aunt Fanny?
No, I think it's called something else. It was this was there early on they were like just you know, not too far
in well, there's a company called Aunt Fanny and they're trying to do that. It's pretty interesting. Have you ever seen a raid can yes, I have read. Yeah, it very clearly looks like something that if you inhale it's going to kill you. Yeah,
like we had to get rid of it because I know we have a baby and a dog now. I'm like, you know, let's not kill them.
Let's let's let's avoid killing
them. Yes, and I think it's interesting. We had I was at this Airbnb and there was like lady bugs in the house a lot of them and they had to come and clean it out and they're like, but you have to leave for like 45 minutes and I was like, but if I have to leave for 45 minutes because this is dangerous to me right? It's probably still going to be dangerous. It's going to be there. It's six hours like that is kind of weird. What do you think about that? And so anyway, very interesting categories that I've been paying attention to
should we let it slide that you had a ladybug issue and
had to call somebody
I don't know is that I think I think I think the something in Texas like there's like like literally there's like hundreds of ladybugs and we just like called our Airbnb host and were like, oh she's like, oh that have you
seen a cock a Texas cockroach yet?
No, is that like what the Texas cockroach? It? Sounds like you'll know
because it looks like a fucking bird. They fly. I don't think the Cockroaches and other places fly but in Texas cockroaches fly around which is disgusting.
No, I've not seen the
strongest shit like you could step on one and then you get off and they push back he's just like
His neck a little bit like oh, that's all you got pussy like become
harder than that. Maybe I do need the rate down here, but super interesting categories. Particularly Orchid. I'm very fascinated by Orkin who would have thought that a pest control business would be that big.
Yeah. I mean anytime you take care of something people don't want to do themselves, you know, you sort of have pricing power there. So I like Sunday, I think it's a good idea. Like, I think there's a deed to see if occasionally everything right what I think you know is really happening with these DDC products like the common themes.
Obviously, they're basically saying yeah forget trying to be sold forget trying to get on the shelf and Target and Lowe's and Home Depot or whatever else like let's just get on the Shelf of Facebook. Okay, we can control that. We could push a button we can put ourselves on the Shelf. That's the first piece the second piece is hey consumer tastes have changed but these Brands like raid and whatever they're stuck in the past. And so hey people now like think about the stuff like that think about like how toxic these chemicals might be and if there's a clean alternative that's like good for the environment. It's good for me. There's a market of people who will pay more.
To have more they're slicing up these big old Brands like that that neither sell online nor, you know take into account these different taste profiles that people
have well you want to go to another one of are you sure this is one that I had put down. Have you guys heard of copy dot AI yes, they've just sent me a free trial they reached out but I haven't had a chance to play with it. Yeah. I thought it was pretty interesting. We talked about GPT 3 a few months ago and this person actually kind of did something about it.
So we used them we use them yesterday. Actually I said, oh can we use like one of these GPT 3 products to generate a bunch of reviews? Right? We had let's say 20 customer reviews of something and I thought oh what if we just put those in and then connect generate like 200 more variations of those same reviews because that would be awesome. It's like the easiest way to like kind of like fake reviews basically take Real reviews and then just get more of them for through this automated thing.
Can I guess what happened? Yeah. It was okay and there were some usable ones but most of them
weren't
And the reason it wasn't was because it's just like a stupid thing that trick the computer like one of the words it like one of the name of the brand it thought meant like the literal meaning of that word. And so all the reviews were about like something else altogether because it just interpreted. You know, it's like if you interpret I don't know like let's say it's called like Cloud something and it's like a software for Enterprise and it's about Cloud software but interprets Cloud as like actual clouds in the sky.
It just wrote all the reviews about the sky instead of about clouds off
work. Do you know how I describe GP what's called gp3 or whatever that stuff is free. So like in the 1940s when there was like German spies, they like could like do all this amazing stuff like speak perfectly about you know, and have is very little accent. But then if you did like you could do like two things you be like hey by the way, German spy guy who's Mickey Mouse's wife, right? And they're like, huh? Right Mickey Mouse. What's up? What's up?
Masters wife's name like it here and subscribe or like if you say like to hold up the number of the what comes after one and they go to you know, instead of two. You know what I mean with the Rednecks like these little German Nazi spy things. Yeah. That's the Tells that GPT 3 still has they don't know Mickey Mouse's
wife, right? Yeah. That's that's that's exactly is a great way of describing it. I have another topic that I want to get your opinion on this is kind of like not a new idea. But every time I hear it, I'm like seems like a good idea. Why doesn't that really?
Just a big way yet. I have a friend who's an engineer and they just got a new job and they were basically like hey, I got this job offer. I'm relieved. I just went through this interview process. I kind of don't know if this offers Fair it seems like a good offer. But like how much was it? I could probably get more I don't remember it was like a hundred and seventy k+ like, you know, sign-on bonus of a little bit and some stock the like, I think this is a good offer. I can probably negotiate feels kind of awkward. I don't have to ask for what you guys think. Should I do this and then he's just like I
I can just have like an agent who would just like when I get the job. I just say great talk to my agent and my agent basically negotiates it for me and look they get a cut for negotiating anything above whatever the initial offer was. They can keep 10% and you know, they only need to work for like, you know, the three days that were negotiating this thing for me and you know, the more Engineers that they work with the more they know what the like kind of like what the more data points right like in any negotiation the side with more information. There's
Like a there's what they call information asymmetry when one side knows more than the other but an agent would help balance that where the agent would also know, you know, what a bunch of different candidates got paid and they'll know where what's fair and what's not so what do you think this idea?
Well, let me ask you this question. How many people work at twitch? Mm? Yeah base pay only how many of them do you think of the 2,000 people make over half a million a year in cash base pay only like cat in bonuses. Sorry. I meant cash not stock
very few Amazon has a limit. You can only make a hundred and eighty-five thousand.
A year on your salary and then you can get cash but the majority of it is stock Amazon
stock. Okay, how many of the mm make half a million a year in cash and
stock I would say
of the mm maybe 10% a little more than that. I'd say like 15% Yeah, so 15% would be 300 people.
Sorry. So that's way too. I sorry. I would say I got my percentages wrong. So of the two thousand people I would say like maybe 25.
The 30 people get that amount. So whatever that is one way, you know 2% not
20% So I think that this is an interesting idea, but I think it would only work for people who make like in the 300 400 500 thousand dollar range and you can say give me eight percent of
that so but let's say you're this person right you're going to make us a total comp is 200k in a year, which is a normal engineering. Yeah take home. So let's say 200 K and if I can get you
Ooh an extra 20K per year. Are you willing to give up 20% of that for the extra that I got you so I can make $5,000 off this client working, you know for a grand total of four four days.
I don't think that's how it would work. I think you need more context to have no,
but you don't even need to know the person you just need to attempt to negotiate you say this person got this many years of experience. They're being hired at this level. And by the way, they're
moving. So I hear you. I just think that that's stupid. I think that the way it would work my
Or the idea is that it would have to be more personality driven sort of like an agent for a football player words, like no look my guy. I've known him for years like he comes from this type of family and and this isn't gonna do this isn't going to work with them. You got to do something better. I
don't think that's half of all ages work either. I
think I don't know. I'm just I just bought a referencing Ballers,
right?
Like I said in the printer the first thing that I don't know anything about sports,
I think that these things are all really standard and there's a
Age like literally if I go into our HR portal today, alright, because I hire people I could say. Hey, I'm hiring for this role. What's the band the band means there's sort of a minimum and a maximum for that level that they're hiring at we never offer the max of the band. We never you know, it's usually don't offer the minimum either we offer somewhere in the middle depending on kind of like where they're
at. How do I find these bands? Give me just give me the
bands and then there we have some negotiating leverage which is if we go to them and they say no or they say, hey I have another offer then I can go back and I can go to the backs of my band and that's what I
Make the offer
at if did to do so, what's the percentage band? Like? What's the now that you've seen this? How much can you go up 20 percent
percentage is hard. But yeah, it'll range like let's say anywhere between 20 K and like, you know, it could be as much as a hundred K.
So then if I'm getting offered a job at a huge company, I should always ask for like 50 k more
always ask for more for sure and you should just say, you know judging by my other conversations what I think the fair market value is do you have flexibility to do that? Or you could say I have an i
another offer that's higher. Is this the maximum that you guys could do I really want to work with you guys, but I have another offer that's higher and meaningfully higher it matters to
me. So a lot of people listening to this are probably like me now or like you two years ago where they have very little experience at a big company. I've asked you this many times and I like asking you because you always have new answers what has changed about your perception of big companies and how that
works anything inside. Are you being just like this process?
Like for example the pay like
Very process-oriented. We're like the guy like you or me, or at least me now, maybe you a few years ago. You'd be like look, I'm just gonna pay you whatever I want. You know, I don't negotiate in the same way a company does where it's like a set process. Do you think that's a good move or a bad move?
So I won't answer that question. I don't know and I was count think about something else while you're talking but I guess I would say one realization that's become more and more clear over time. Is that when you're in a small company you're fighting the market and when you're in a big company, you're basically competing against each other, so
Yeah, I should say financially
competing other big companies are internal when
you're at a start-up you're competing against the market other companies big and small and when you're a big company, you're competing against other people inside your company ultimately like if you want to get paid more the way to do it in a start-up is to win more market share the way to do it in a big company truly and this is like kind of horrible to say and you know, a big company person would say no, that's not how it works. You know you the more impact you drive the more you'll get rewarded in reality?
It is the internal perception that's going to matter way more than the external results. And therefore you spend way more of your time on internal perception then external results. There are so many times where I'm like we should just try this we should just decide and go we don't need to get their approval. We don't need get their buy-in. Let's just make it happen. What if the best way to get the result is for us to change the process or for us to not have like consensus and whatever and the reason people don't want to do it is because there's two things one. There's a trade-off even if we win the battle we might
lose the war meaning even if we get good results the internal damage and disputes that will happen because of the way we did it aren't worth it in the long run. It's you know, we'll break down our cooperation. The second is look for me to move forward. I need these people to like me. I need these people to vouch for me. I need these people to promote me. Therefore. I'm only going to take a certain amount of risk, and I'm only going to move at a certain Pace because what's rewarded is not risk-taking nor Pace what's rewarded is the perception of people internally. So one big
For example is like let's say you guys are launching our you're projecting Trends next year when you think about your predicting Trends Revenue. What do you base? Your how do you come up with that number? What do you think about what are the
considerations? I take a guess based off of previous results and I say I think we can improve this and it's just I guess
right and now you have again there's a band there's a range it's like there's a conservative amount and then there's like a really aggressive amount. How do you decide whether to be really conservative really
aggressive? Well, I hope for the best and I plan for the worst, but
when you've set a number you said it
Target, where do you set your target? I just kind of make it up. Is it more on the conservative side or more on the aggressive
side for you aggressive
right at a company you would get penalized every time you do that because you're not actually setting a projection you're sending an expectation is just like, you know, when the stock results get reported the quarterly earnings. It's like they beat analysts Expectations by six percent and it's like so what like who are these analysts who cares about their expectations? That's how a big company Works to you set expectations internally. We're going to get this
Done by this date at this level this number and so your reward for beating expectations, but you set the expectations yourself. So optimal strategy inside of a company sadly if you just for trying to get like further ahead inside your company, it would be to sandbag all your projections and your expectations and say it's going to take long. It's gonna take a long time. It's only going to deliver this much results and you want to get as much of that as you can get away with because sometimes they'll push you and say can't you do it faster and can't you get more and you're like, yeah we can but it's tough and we have all these other
Proprieties you want me to drop those? They're like no. No don't drop those you like well, then this is the best I can do and then you want to beat that and if you repeat that you'll be seen as a hero. There's no like absolute. It's all just relative to your expectations and everybody is incentivized to sandbag. But in a small company is the opposite you choose the ambitious targets and you chase after them you don't do that same step of sandbagging.
I love hearing these types of stories because this is something that is so foreign to me. I know inevitably one day I'll probably will have some experience at a big company. So it feels like I'm
I feel like I'm going I'm going to practice by hearing you
by the way. Here's the other thing that's crazy at a big company is just the planning Cycles. Like we were having a meeting yesterday planning for the next year. And then the person in charge was sort of like I think in the future, we need to start our annual planning and June. So basically like by June of next year, we'll start planning for the following year, which means you're making your roadmaps. You're getting your budget you're asking for your resources your drafting it
up, which is so challenging to do super challenging to do we've had people
I'll try to buy our company or invest in our company or just like in potential employees and they're like, so where do you guys like? Where do you see yourself like next year and in three years and in five years, I'm like, well that's like, you know, like one more cup. It was only two years old. I'm like that's triple the time that we've existed maybe this but I have no idea. I hope will be alive
exactly and it's crazy because if you're planning in June, you only have a few months of execution even under your belt by then of what you did this year. So your put your project
Next year, but you're not even done with this year. You only just like implemented the start of this you don't even know what it's going to do yet and also the time it takes to plan is like quite robust like takes weeks for the all the leadership team to just like spend just doing planning and so it's a very different type of thing, but I could see how it's a kind of like a necessary way to do things. I guess like I'm sure there's some other radical things but this isn't done out of stupidity. It's done out of necessity for the size of the ship as
It's so counterintuitive to what I would have what I knew based on my background before
this. I want to keep like a running segment of things that you're learning at big companies. I think it's good to learn. I'm also always curious like if Emmett I forget the guys name who started twitch. Who's the CEO Emmett Shear or like how has someone evolved from being a little scrappy 20-something to the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that does have this process like how they're possibly able to evolve into that position because that sounds very
Challenging and it's cool to see someone do it. So
two things I texted him and I said like two days ago I said, hey Sam come on the podcast and so we'll see you when we can we can get them all but we're going to get them on and then the second thing is some other guy was interviewing him because he went back and spoke at like Yale where he went to school and that guy who was doing the interview reached out to me and said, what question would you ask Evan and I said, it would be exactly what you said like gimme an example of a situation where you know, 24 year-old have it handled it one way or whatever.
Six-year-old Emmett handle it one way and 34 year old hermit handles that same situation differently and he answered. I don't know how interesting this stuff is for other people. But like I find it really interesting and so he goes let's say, you know early on I used to be super hands on the product or you know, as that change like that. We started hiring people who now they decide on the product. He's like so they, you know, every company has some version of like what they call like a green light meeting. It's like you come in with your plan your proposal for what you're going to do and then like basically the kind of CEO or executive a turn a is giving a
Renee like yeah, let's go forward with that or no for whatever reason the way I used to handle those were very different. He's like first I used to basically
like Grill them and try to catch them like to be wrong.
Yeah, like I used to just like I would read it and within 10 seconds, I know like either this is a your this is an A but now we have an hour-long meeting and he's like I used to either like, you know, like challenge them on a whole bunch of points or like offer my idea instead and I used to do it directly in the meeting in front of everybody. He's like and now instead of saying
This is stupid. Here's the better way. He's like I have learned the proper way to do. This is to then say is that just ask questions everything that I think is stupid. It's not stupid because they are stupid. These are smart people. So I have to understand why did they think of this thing that I think is stupid either. They know something. I don't and it's good. I should learn it or they haven't sufficiently done the work and we're going to find that out as I ask questions. So now he's like now I ask I see that you mentioned this. How did you arrive at this or what are the solutions? Did you consider?
Is like that little switch of going from like this is dumb. Why don't we do it this way too? Why did you come up with this idea and tell me walk me through your thinking or what are the things that you consider? And why did you settle on this? He's like that changes everything and these like then afterwards I'll pull that person aside whoever I think is like kind of the key driver of it on their side, you know, one-on-one when we're not in a big group. I'm not like kind of humiliating him in front of other people. I'll say, you know, hey like this either, you know just wasn't up to the standard we need you know, or like, you know, I
just really disagree with this one point and here's my perspective. I just want to give this to you and then as you go back for v2, like you'll have you know my opinion here, but it's just an opinion, you know, like but here's here's what I'm thinking that's been a big difference for
me. Well, I think that's I fall and I hope to have them on so I can ask him all about that. Yeah, because he started his company as I think a freshly out of school and probably has ever had a different job. So it'll be exciting to hear what he has to say.
Yeah. I love it. Okay, cool. We're out of time. So that's all for today.
I'm very how we do. What was good. What was
bad? I like the billionaire talk we were light on ideas this time. Well, yeah, but it's your fucking fault I go for you guys. Give me okay. Well, I'll send you the recording.
All right. Thank you for listening. So
yeah.
