Martin Shkreli Reveals How He Made His First $100M

Yep, PubMed is the government database of all scholastic biomedical Literature. So thirty six million papers. If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire. It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting and sifting and sifting, which most people do don't have the patience. desire or willpower to do.

But every single biomedical innovation is is One day I'm partners. What's up? We just had a conversation with Martin Shrele. If you don't know who he is, you can just Google his name and you'll find that he is quote unquote, the most hated man in America. Or he is the pharma bro. And he's uh you know, he touches kind of a bunch of different things. You know, the bingo card for my first million he's made.

hundreds of millions of dollars. He's super controversial and some people love him, some people hate him. He went to prison for something that he did with his his hedge fund. And he comes on here and he tells us a bunch of things. He tells us how he made his first million. He gave his side of the story on why he bought that drug and raised the price and why maybe it wasn't so evil as uh as it was portrayed.

Um, why he hates sort of vanilla CEOs that that uh just only speak and corporate speaking, why he refuses to do that. Uh while he thinks Mark Cuban is full of shit. Uh he also unveils his new startup in the AI space for the first time ever. So uh pretty interesting conversation with Martin. He is uh He's one thing, he's not boring. You'll you will look I think we can all agree on that. Uh some people love him, some people hate him. I think you see in this episode, you can see a couple different sides of them. And so I'm curious to hear what you guys think. I would love for you to put in the comments. Whether you uh you love this episode, you hated this episode, or somewhere in between.

And um you know, we always commit that on this pod You know, when we bring people on, we're not saying this is the best person ever or the worst. We just want to have interesting conversations with interesting people. I want to get into their mind and find out why they are the way they are. uh how they think, how they operate. And then you can decide for yourself whether this is somebody you uh you're into or not. So uh that's this episode Martin Shrley. It's about a two hour interview and uh enjoy.

Sam, where do you want to start? Uh we could either go more on the AI stuff or There's some interesting stuff in your your kind of start of your career that I think is kinda fun. Like You worked you worked with Jim Cramer, is that right? When you were sixteen years old, you worked for Kramer, the guy who's always yelling on on CNBC. Uh What was that like? What's Kramer like?

You know, uh hedge funds were a different world back then. It was a very, very small asset class, maybe fifty billion, a hundred billion totals. Um you know any private partnership is is technically kind of a hedge fund, right? If you have outside investors and you're Charging them one and twenty. Two and twenty.

And you're shorting stocks and doing exotic stuff, you know, that's a hedge fund, uh, whether you call it that or not. So Warren Buffett had a hedge fund. all the folks had a hedge fund, but at the time the biggest hedge funds were Gallian Group. SACL. You know a handful of kind of like

Tiger, Soros. You know, it was sort of the wild time for the hedge fund industry kind of you know, very, very small industry, maybe thirty or forty Or fifty forms of s have in any significance. Uh, and that means like, you know, a hundred million dollars or more.

And so Craner is one of those firms. I got to work there. I was very lucky. Um You you were in high school at the time? I I was sort of in this like weird state of both being a high school dropout High school graduate and a high school you know, continuing, you know, kind of education. It was very weird. I had

I went to this very special school called Hunter. Where I fulfilled all my degree requirements. pretty early, so I was ready sort of graduated in the state's eyes. But I

continue to sort of like go to the school and um pick up credits and like go to college at the same time. So It was just a weird Like Mishmash of education. And um Sort of hard to explain, but you're almost like a classic clown of society now.

Were you like that? In high school, or were you just like a straight lace Shit at that time. Yeah, absolutely. I was like just like this in high school. I mean, I was if if there was somebody that needed sort of dressing down Or

Including, yeah, teacher, principal, whatever. I remember my first day of school, I actually dressed down the principal a a bit. That was sort of a funny You know, thing to do. You know, I I guess I have the like fearlessness of No. But did your parents like discipline you were they like Dude, what the fuck? Show some respect. Yeah.

You know I I think it's not. I don't know. You know I've I think there's like this, you know I've always had this you know opinion that people take themselves too seriously and and take authority too seriously. And of course, you know, I I landed myself in prison. Well yeah, I think that you know there's uh

And and and you are right. They do take that saucer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I gotta see what happened. He he must be acting a fool or something. I don't know what's going on. And uh I go in and they're a CNN reporter.

Was demanding like an interview with him. He was like, She was like, You should, Martin, uh, I've been watching this. It's really interesting. I would love to have a conversation with you at CNN. And he's like, No no, you come on my show. This is my show. You wanna interview me? We can do it right here. And she's like, Okay, I'm not gonna do that, but if you come on CNN, He's like no no come on the show. And then she's like refusing or whatever. He's like she's she starts like trying to like Have a moment to like tell'em how

that he is and then he asked her he's like I'm going to the gala tonight. You want to be my plus one? Yeah, didn't you end up going out didn't you go out? No, not this one, but uh I just thought, wow, what a like You know, they don't teach that in PR school. Just ask them on a date. If it's not going if the interview's not going well. Break breaking down the fourth wall is like my specialty, right? Like, you know, I I and what Elon sort of did that to that BBC guy the other day. Like I

I would always ask um I remember one of my analysts, uh is on the sell side before Joining me on the buy side. He brought a management team to come over.

to this sort of skipping ahead in my career a little bit to to having my own phones. Uh He brought a management team over to, you know pitch some stock or pitch a pipe or something and I I asked the C CEO why he didn't he didn't own any stock in his company.

And he you know, he sort of is like hemming and hawing, like, you know, this that temperature's kinda getting hot. And I said. No,'cause I I have your proxy right here. I I put it down the table and I said It looked like you make five hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. That's It's a good amount of money. Can you

Promise me today that you'll buy Like ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars of your stock at least. And and the guy's just sort of like, you know, the most uncomfortable meeting i in the history of Wall Street, you know, because I kept like hammering on. I was like, no, but just tell me like why. Can't you afford to spend. Ten thousand dollars and buy your own stock.

Stock price will go up, everyone wins, you'll show confidence that, you know. And I just wouldn't like for twenty minutes let it go. Uh, and it was just, you know, one of these like you know, breaking down and forth Well, you're not like I'm not supposed to do that, you know, his personal finances are Up to him. Is what most

portfolio managers would say, you know. Yeah, he's allowed to not On the stock. It's it's really his call. But you know, being able to sort of like you know, cut to the chase on half these things and like, you know, address the elephant in the room.

is kinda the thing that I like to do, even if it's really uncomfortable or or difficult or embarrassing or You know, full power. Yeah it's It's something that, you know, I'll I'll I'll just sort of, you know, cut to the chase with. Well I remember when you got arrested, or the he the headline was like uh

you had to put up like your Fidelity account or something like that that had like sixty million dollars in it. And at the time you were I don't know how old you were, thirty two or something? I mean early thirties, very young. And you I mean it was a it was a significant amount of money and that didn't that was just your Fidelity account, let alone like your uh you know, the touring five uh you know, the the the farm

Pharma company said you had found it. Was did you make your first bit of money when you started the hedge funds and how did that come to be? Or were you already doing well just being Yeah. the hedge funds where you worked.

Oh, it's a great question. So I never made money at hedge funds. I never never really made a dollar. Um Working at or owning. Uh. So when I started at hedge funds, I was young and you know didn't really earn Money, uh, which was fine.

you know, I wasn't optimizing for that, you know. was optimizing for learning stuff. Experience, uh good relationships. Uh I mostly succeeded in that, I think, you know, probably messed up some relationships. But regardless, you know, did the best I could as a young guy. Started my own fund. Um

Pretty pretty. Terrible at doing the fund management business. You know, investing. Being a good investor and being a good fund manager are kind of like pretty different things. is what I think most hedge fund entrepreneurs kinda learn.

You know, um you know, there you can be a really brilliant investor and and not manage the actual business well. And the business is to grow your assets as much as possible. Provide the best service. adjusted returns possible and satisfy your clients and I didn't really want to do any of that. You know, I just wanted to invest. And

Um, I never took fees from any of my funds, which was very like You know sort of bizarre. Uh and there they're sort of technical or legal reasons for that. But So I never really made any money uh in hedge funds.

When I started my first drug company called Retropan, which is now called Trevere. This is about ten years ago. Uh, that's sort of where everything f sort of came together for me. I I learned Pharma by being a hedge fund person for ten years in in hedge funds, studying pharma, starting with the early Jim Kramer days where I was just figuring out what a stock in a bond was.

And then moving on to, you know, trading these things and working at hedge funds and stuff like that. And then starting my own, I I really mastered pharmaceuticals. I I knew everything about pharmaceu And I impressed a lot of people in Pharma. Who are working in the field or working hedge funds.

And you know, it was easy for me to sort of start a drug company and find some really good assets. The first acid I found actually received FDA approval just just a couple months ago. So I'm really proud of that. And um when our company went public, uh, you know, as a millionaire.

How how how old were you? It was twenty twelve. Um You know, so I was born in eighty three, so I guess I was twenty nine. And um

I was a CEO of publicly traded company. And um the market cap company, like I said, now is you know, one point Five billion roughly. And uh

the drug got FDA approved. So I'm really happy about that. Like so often in biotech People start companies. They kind of extract some equity value out of them as they go public and then the company's drugs don't work and they kinda move on. And there are people that have like coasted in biotech doing that like every three, five years. You know, I I

I I'd name some names, but It it doesn't matter. You know, and getting a drug FDA approved and for me kind of on my first try. was you know, sort of like a very you know it's a a a very like nice feather in my cap.

And I'm happy for the people that are now getting this prescription for this kidney disease. I'm really delighted by that. But the You know, the it was a lot of fun to to see that. So when people ask me, like, where'd you make your first million? I made my first like twenty five million all once. You still on the same day? You know, like it it wasn't like

Okay, you make Like one of my great friends. Start off making Um You know, he's a great story and one day maybe you'll have him on his podcast.

Uh He started off trading uh sneakers. And um he was like thirteen or something. And then he started trading cars and he ended up trading stocks and he He sort of went from

A thousand bucks to five thousand, to a hundred thousand, to a million to five million, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And you know that that road isn't When everyone does, right? Like some people I was like literally almost like starving, you know, and like broke, you know, trying to Get that big, big win and it came through.

And so you you said a couple of things I wanna uh quickly clarify. You say you didn't make much money in investing because you weren't really good at or interested in the fund management. But Presumably if you're good at or interested in the investing side, you would still generate return. So what ha was it like Didn didn't do so hot in the on the investing side either, or w what happened there?

Yeah, I had a sort of like a mix of of issues. Yeah, like when you run a small fund, you have like costs and stuff like that. So You know, you have started. How big was the phone? I had about eight million. Um Yeah, ever since I started.

So like, you know, you just can't like even with good investing, you just kinda can't do that well. With respect to to returns if you have other costs and things like that. And You know, we had

Like all kinds of like Issues happened along the way that that led to that prosecution and stuff like that. that sort of limited our our ability to to do really well financially. Um, and again we we didn't take any fees either because again, we had this sort of big issue that that came about in We decided to not take fees at all.

But in the end our investors did fairly well. Um, you know, the record shows that our investors all make money. In our funds, so was really happy. But you know, along the way there are a lot of twists and turns and hiccups that are they're not worth going into but Edge funds for me were kind of like a

Just sort of like a roller coaster of Oh. Issues that were just over You know, and over again kind of like various like

you know, unexpected twists and turns that didn't really Add up to profit. Some people hedge funds like If you get off to like a good start. your first like three or six months, often you can get this momentum of raising more capital. And raising more capital and you get this like virtuous cycle.

But you can also go in the other direction where, you know, if you you know, many funds are started by good investors and they end up failing And those investors sort of come back and take take a few years off and start a fund again. Um, you know. hedge funds have like the shortest lifespan. Top hedge fronts from the nineties.

Almost none of them exist today. Uh and I think of those like top ten hedge funds of all time, like five were shut down by regulatory. intervention. It's like it's a very hazardous job. You know, there's there's a you know, ten percent chance of on the going going to jail being a headphone anger. It's it's uh it's a really Did you know? kind of dangerous job to be in. And uh you know, you're dealing with the markets and you're dealing with representations to investors.

Just how to mark privates, right? Is is kinda like one of these like real Debates. I know a guy who went to jail for that. uh fairly recently, um, you know, anybody looking at your books can basically say, Oh, well, you marked this too high. You know, there for you. You know, you're you're from defrauding your investors for charging them too much. Well, you marked it too low. Well

Now you're defrauding them because, you know You're you're you're preferencing the other investors who are coming into the fund. So You really can't can't win. It's a very tough business. You don't build any actual lasting value, as you know, almost no hedge funds have gone public. So it's just kind of a crummy business in general and like I I I don't recommend anyone kinda get into it unless they're so

Interested in stocks. That they can't you know, help but like spend their whole time looking at stocks like Cramer. Back then. Kramer's like a stock addict.

So this guy Again, I I consider him, you know, not quite a friend, but like I I I I have a fond memory of working with a I mean He is like a a drug addict to their drug. He is like that to securities. Like he cannot get away from it. There's nothing he loves more in the world than stocks.

And you think about people like Warren Buffett and say, maybe that's that's kinda like that. And the average person who wants to get into hedge funds, they want to get into it because oh I I can make ten million bucks or I can make fifty million bucks in a year. Wow, look at that. Jim Simon made a billion dollars. I can be like that. That sounds great. And you know, that's a terrible, terrible, terrible way to look at it, right? If you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about SP earnings estimates, You should be a hatchbots.

Right. But if you don't care on a Sunday you know, what's what the news is gonna be on Monday in the stock market or what, you know, your favorite company CEO is doing that night. You know, th that's that it's not for you. And I think there are people that The headphone industry has grown so much, people come to finance Not understanding that, in the nineties and the eighties, the only people that were in hedge funds were people like Jim

And Buffet and people like like that that were just like so intensely insanely possessed by the gyrations of the market. And If that's not you, it it's it's kind of not a good industry. But for me I I was sort of Intensely possessed with pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical assets.

Medicines And you know, it was actually a better fit to do private equity. um, you know, kind of style investing where you actually buy whole medicines, whole companies. You know, that that worked really well for me. And I've seen a lot of people

in hedge funds sort of transition to that model of Well, if I can buy five percent of a software company, why can't I buy a hundred percent of a software company, right? That that makes more sense to me. And for me, you lose that like one of the things I was very bad at at and trading and investing. was kind of that impulse, right? Where you have to have this insanely good discipline.

as a trader. And my partner had this really, really great discipline. I didn't. So I could value security as good as anyone. But when it came time to like executing and actually deploying capital and risk management and stuff like that.

It was it was much more. harder for me to be good at that. Um so when it came back. You're you're not patient. You you wanted the dopamine you wanted the dopamine. You're just you're just like a You have normal a anxiety like a lot of people. Is is that what that means? I think that like

Gee. Ask somebody to manage a portfolio well is one of the most impossible tasks in like human psychology because the and there's this great book. I've gotten better at it over the years for what it's worth. And my my personal trading is as paradoxically like sword and profit as my, you know. I basically couldn't do that in in private investing.

Uh The the hardest thing to do is is really to fight two or three different, for me, specific demons that are psychologically based, but everyone has their own demon. For me, It's we're avoiding this this desire to double down. So the market is like this really

tough psychological uh battle where You're constantly gonna be humbled. That your opinion Is wrong. that your thesis is wrong, that this stock is not cheap. You're wrong. It's not cheap at all.

And you gotta sell it. And that's really hard cognitively to embrace. Every day. uh you can embrace it every now and then. Oh yeah, obviously I I I I bought this crap stock and I'm wrong. Uh but when you're right, you do get that dopamine hit and you don't

want to confront that loss of the dopamine hit or even worse, the uh acknowledgement that you were wrong. And you're gonna be wrong, like forty, fifty percent of the time at best, you know, we'll say thirty five, forty percent of the time. And Most people don't want him drawn ever.

So The desire is sometimes to double down and just say, No, I'm I know I'm right. This is an even better opportunity than it was before. If you keep doing that, you you basically will will go bankrupt. Um And

Uh I it's it's like the fastest way to go bankrupt. And you know, I've learned that trick, you know, a couple of times now. And and I think that you know, I've gotten better at sort of not doubling down, but y to be a really great trader, you gotta not just not double down, you also have to get out. you know, before all the damage is done. And so I started to do that well too. But you know, these these pains are not pains your investors want you to learn on their buy.

Right. pains you have to sort of, you know, be ready, you know. when you start your own bone. So I sort of start my fun too early and stuff like that. But I think the I wouldn't I wouldn't change a lot. In the sense that When you have a fund

You learn more about your industry if you do it right, I think. You learn more about your industry than than than any other sort of job other than actually being in that industry. So you you learn a ton about what Wall Street wants. So let's say if you're a software analyst, it's really great to then have a software company because you know exactly kind of what the exit looks like and what like public company investors want to see. And the same thing works in biotech, and in biotech to handicap like all this

Company or stock be a good stock. Well, gotta figure out will this drug be a good drug? And that's the exact same skill set you have to do. When you're CEO. So You have that like you know, um crossover. That's happening quite a bit more in biotech. I've I've seen that.

You know, it doesn't happen so much in tech. People who invest in tech generally don't want to be operators. And the tricks that you have to learn on the operating side in tech are very different from biotech, and biotech You can actually like lower pick up most of the operating stuff from being an investor. Uh, whereas I think in tech like

You know, being an investor in a software company certainly doesn't make you a programmer. So you know there's and and that's what I was gonna ask you because you You were like, Well, I started a pharmaceutical company because I love the asset. And I learned through it from finance, which is way different than like, for example, my friend Kara started this company, Hint, which does like Water because she was like, My skin was bad, I didn't want to drink Gatorator Coke anymore. So I like went and formed I went and boiled fruit peels and made this fruit water. That's like tastes good, it's good for you. And we grew from there.

Your Founding story was like Oh, I found assets that were interesting. Like it's like That's like foreign to me. You know what I mean? Yeah, so like

If if There was a company, for example, uh my first hedge fund, we bought ten percent of this company, publicly traded company. And they had bought this asset from Bristol Myers, the major major drug company in New Jersey. And Bristol Meyer spent like fifty million bucks developing this drug and they quit. They basically said, This doesn't fit our portfolio. We're not really going after the disease they were trying to go after was hypertension, which is very boring and not does not need more another medicine. There's like sixty hypertension drugs. You know, there does not need to be a sixty first.

And they they just quit. on the drug. Um, there are people who have like really bad resistant hypertension. And so forth. So I really like this asset. I like the way it worked and I after Bryce Myers quit on it, the c the publicly traded company in the financial crisis, they murdered with another public trade company.

So I went to the publicly traded company and again I only think I have is a hedgehog moment. And I said, Let me buy. And nobody's told a story, by the way, so this is a good good time to tell'cause it's really You know, it's basically a story about how we went to this company

with two million dollars and turned it into over a billion. Um, you know, which is is kind of remarkable. But people do this in pharma every day and my friend Uh and at the time it was actually my biggest investor, Vivek Ramaswamy, he's now running for president. He basically took our our business model and supersized it. And again, um, you know, who who would influence two is is a matter

Well left really left to history, but The the point is we went to uh this company that had the license from Bristol. And they they weren't doing anything with it. And we said, Let's listen, we'll take this. We'll find investors, we'll build a company around it and Uh I'm gonna figure out how to how to make this work.

And they said, Okay, sure, you know, we we got this asset. Two million bucks will We'll send you the two million bucks. Now We sent them a million dollars, which was really catastrophic because you never want to sort of go back in your word.

Uh, but it was really like a dire circumstance where I forgot what happened exactly, but we just couldn't come up with any and It was like we sent them a million and they're like, What the fuck? You know, you can't do this you know. And I I was sort of like you know. Geez, this is a Yeah, huge embarrassment and huge problem. But she's gonna have to give us like

Thirty days or ninety days. And you know, we we worked it out and we were able to give them a second million. But it was like this colossal embarrassment at right at the start. And um You know, shit does happen, but you know, it ideally shouldn't happen like that. Um, and again, really embarrassing and tough, but we got them to two million. And we decided I I sort of did all this research and said instead of hypertension, we should go with this rare kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosurosis.

And if you just don't have the willpower You can learn a lot about medicine and you can dive in and really PubMed PubMed just being like a database of articles. Yeah, I guess. Yep, PubMed is the government database of all scholastic biomedical literature so thirty six million papers.

If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire. It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting and sifting and sifting, which most people do don't have the patience. Desire or willpower to do. But every single biomedical innovation is is Logged in on PubMed and

And you were shifting for what? What were you looking for when you went on PubMed? Yeah, you you have to put the pieces together. So the the this drug was an endothelian receptor antagonist. Uh And What does that mean? It it it inhibits a protein called endothelin and its function. Well what will that do? Right. You have to decide well

You have to learn. Where is endothelin expressed in the body? How does it work? What does it do? If I stop endotheline from working. What benefits will that have, what problems will that result in? And you have to look at the history of okay, well other companies have tried this.

What have they seen? What have they discovered? And what's what's interesting about Pharma is that You think that these companies cover the waterfront, but they really just prod and poke a little bit. There's actually probably ten diseases that this drug could be beneficial for. And uh I made a list of those and I said, Okay, well which one of these is gonna work for sure?

And they're companies that like got half the answer and stuff like that. And you just have to keep poking. And we found like these handful of diseases that really made A lot of sense. Now the problem was nobody on Wall Street really liked it.

Um You know, it was very You know, kind of early. You know, there was this sort of Tough problem of

If you reduce the amount of protein in the urine of a patient. Does that really save their kidney? And I thought I convinced everyone that I could reduce the amount of protein. In the urine.

Which was it? A very big endpoint to me. But not as conclusive as okay, am I am I saving their lives? Am I am I preventing dialysis and kidney failure, which is really the the so called hard end point. So I had the soft endpoint that like seemed like almost certain I was right. And I was starting to convince companies like Abbey and and Bertex and other like big bio farmas.

That you know, I was on to something. But nobody wanted to write a check. You know, so I I basically got one of the management teams that I I I used to deal with on on on Wall Street, uh to invest. And

I slowly kind of cobbled together some money. Uh met folks like Peter Thiel and others to to try to sort of get some investors. Did reverse merger. What what's Peter Teel like? Meter was great, you know it's you know, ten ten plus years ago. He had never done pharma.

Um, so we we got to meet and this was gonna be basically like his first pharma deal ever. Uh we didn't end up Doing the deal. But it was uh It was a very funny thing because like there was this east coast versus west coast.

mentality. Uh, you know, as a Wall Street guy He was you know, he's obviously, you know, one of the the top V C type guys and This is a time where like he had Clarium, you know, their their founder's font was just getting started and stuff like that. And uh Yeah.

The wheeling dealing like Wall Street. sort of style of like, Oh, we're gonna do a reverse merger, which is basically kind of like a spAC with no money. Um it's like even worse than SPAC. Um you know, you do the you do the listing and then you raise the money. Uh but it's a way to go public and and we did it. And he was like, Ah, you can't go public in a year or two.

And you know, the reality is you you kinda can in especially in bio pharma. Where the assets are like these very modular systems. They're not like A base business that has X dollars revenue and is growing at X rate. These are like okay, this asset's worth

something dead or alive. In other words, if it's being developed or not being developed, it's worth something. Uh you know, especially with the right business plan, uh it could be worth a lot. So anyway, we we we decided So public, we raise some money, we started doing clinical trials. The trial worked. Uh and the rest is history.

But it took you know, it takes hundreds of million dollars to to develop a drug. Uh again, the value of the company is is one point five. value of that drug specifically is probably around one billion. Uh again, whether it actually achieves the sales goals or beats them or disappoints, we'll we'll see as the drug launches.

And I'm rooting for the company. Uh but uh we you you didn't even you didn't even get the drug. In this e example, you didn't get the drug to the point where People are buying it or using it. It was y you made money off just the

The fact that This will exist hopefully in ten or whatever years. Yeah. Well, a lot of people don't know My story about medicine, a lot of people think that I take medicines and raise prices. Well, this drug was barely in human beings. It'd been in like thirty or fifty. People.

Um up until that point. And You know I I've made most of my money. uh in in sort of developments in in environment on the research side. So You know, this is a drug in clinical research. So no it's not It hadn't been F DA approved. It would take ten years to get it S D A approved.

So it was a long marathon of running studies. Getting the evidence, running more studies, getting more evidence. And continuing that process and You know, uh as we started to do that, the value of the company increased and people said, Okay, I think I get this. And then as the data came in, now it's FDA approved. It's called Phil Sparry.

Uh I named the drug sparsentan. Um You know, gave it its first chemical name. And um you know it's it's you know, it I'm so happy it's it's F D A approved. Now I left the company halfway through this process, so I should acknowledge that. But you know, all the same lands and and so forth, you know, continued. Did did you did you own most of it at the time or or was that and did you have to divest when all the shit went down?

So I went for ninety You know when I when you started it to fifty Uh when we're public, I think around forty or fifty percent after our first financing down to thirty, after our second financing, down to twenty. You know, so time over IPO we re we when you do a reverse merger, you often don't get on on Nasdaq, so me we did an IPO on Nasdaq twenty fourteen.

And the company was worth like three or four hundred million. And I own about fifteen, twenty percent of it. And uh again, this is sort of like my first wealth ever. But the funny thing is As you guys maybe know. You have a situation like that, you actually don't have any cash. You're not liquid.

Yeah, you can't sell it. So you know, I've I've got millions of shares of the stock, but You know, I'm sitting there saying, Okay, well am I gonna buy album Yeah, because well, you know, but well before that, you think about like How am I gonna

Buy this. five thousand dollar a month apartment and go to the seven thousand dollar a month apartment. Which is like a very funny discussion for somebody that, you know, has fifty or a hundred million dollars. Uh of of of stock value. And I would go to these banks and say, listen

Can I borrow five percent? You know, on my money. Oh, my stock value. And they would say no. And you know, I'd I'd say, you know, uh You know, why not? You know, and they'd say, Well here it's a new stock, you know, it's it's kind of, you know, still

you know, a little bit unseasoned, you're the big shareholder, you know, we're just not comfortable with it. And it's like sitting there like Oh my God, you know, this is Insane'cause I don't want to sell my stock'cause it sounds a like kind of a bad signal. Um

You know, but I don't wanna, you know, uh also be starving. So it was a very like funny thing. Um and I don't want to be one of those greedy CEOs that has You know, an insane salary. Uh Where you don't need it. So it's very just sort of a funny

circumstance, but eventually Uh, we had a big squabble with the company. Uh I ended up leaving. Uh very t tumultuous and and Uh traumatic story in a lot of ways, and it led to my prosecution. Uh

You know, there was this fight with with the board. And it got very so nasty that the the The board. You know kind of. Evil people here, but the board.

sort of went to Law enforcement. uh as kind of one of their ways to win this fight. And you know, one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is that There's this big revolving door between corporate law and law enforcement. When I say law enforcement, I mean the attorney general.

Sorry, A USA is the associate US attorneys that work in the Department of Justice. And it's not hard if you go to a law firm You know, like a coolie, cleary, got leads, Gadden Arbs, pick Paul Weiss. Pick your biggest law firm.

You say, Hey, we have this guy, he did something bad. You know, look into this. You know, usually you'll get in a diet bed pretty fast. This happened to the Google guy. That uh had the uh Uh left Waymo. Yeah.

Andrew. Uh, this happened to a Goldman Sachs trader. That Stole some source code, email emailed himself home. uh to work on the source code, then he went to another hedge fund. They said, see, he he stole an electricity. The FBI got him in in forty eight hours.

Goldman makes a phone call. Uh th they'll act on it quickly. Google makes a phone, they'll act on it quickly. You're a big enough law firm customer, you're paying law firm ten million bucks. And all those law firm partners worked in government, right? They worked literally in the job they could get united. So they could pick up a phone and get it and make it happen. And I actually have like the person's name who picked up the phone. You know, and it's it's like so ridiculous because

A boardroom battle, a corporate squabble. shouldn't turn into you know Okay, we'll just make a call and get, you know, get this guy arrested, then we'll win the fight, right? And it's like You know, I I was actually acquitted of those charges.

And I'm so proud of that. Um To this day is like the the most the happiest thing that I have to look forward to or to talk about because like It was this clash of like These old hand old

Older incompetent sort of biotech people and this these younger sort of like aggressive executives that that I sheparted. And the older guys kinda won. In terms of control of the company.

But the stock never went up again, really. And you know, it it it just was sort of this company that they were able to sort of cite millions of dollars out uh out of. Uh which is like for for a lot of talentless executives. Like that's that's really exciting. Like getting a

Uh a f uh five million dollar Paycheck a year plus a You know Golden Parachute. Plus all the perks and the power of being the CEO. Like none of that stuff mattered to me. I just wanted to make

Really big money and really big advances. And For a lot of people like You know getting that the thing I just discussed was like that's their life goal. That's their career goal. There's no

No need to do anything else. They'd they'd rather preside over a company that does nothing. but pays them five million bucks a year, then a company that makes a huge advance in in a treatment. Or whatever. So It was this big fight and and it it I just basically said, I'll I'll start a new company. I don't need you guys. And I started uh touring. We should uh let you explain kind of the thing. Because if if people listening to this have basically only heard of you as the guy who jacked up the price of the drugs, and I've heard you explain this before many times where again

Uh I said you were entertaining because somebody would come on and be like, You're the worst, you're you're evil, you did this, and then you would say So explain to me what I did exactly. And then they would immediately not know what the hell to say. Like you you raised the price of the drug and now people can't get it. You're like, tell me who can't get it? Where are you getting that data from? Like what what And you would Walk them through almost like the Socratic method.

Of um What actually happened, why what your perspective was on it. And so I want you to share that because I think a lot of people have heard the other perspective, which is Guy buys drug, raises price, he's evil. That's one perspective. I'd like you to share your perspective, and then people can decide for themselves. Which they feel to be more true. So And you didn't even and and it was another funny part related to that is you didn't even go to prison for that reason. Right. If I remember correctly, you admitted you were wrong for a bunch of things.

Uh but it wasn't even related. Your persona was related Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're s I think you being smug and being an asshole when maybe you should have just been like, Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry was maybe probably the more appropriate answer, but you weren't kinda like being smug and you got a lot of shit for that. So I think that hurt your your your thing, but you didn't even get prose you didn't get prosecuted for that. No, yeah, it's not a it's I mean, I I think that's why I was so small, because it's not a crime to choose the price. You know. If you guys wanted to charge for

this podcast, right? You you know, whether it's an advertiser or partner or Or or the listener. You can pick whatever price you want. You know, that's your call. You know, it's your job to explore the frontier of that. Price and volume curve. And it your job to sort of

Find the maximum revenue. Uh you can choose to do that or not do that. And I think that's why American capitalism is so great is like it's it's really the only person's call. Is the firm owner. And the phone management team's call, right? It's not a politician's call.

It's not the media's call. It's not the guy in the you know, in the sort of uh grandstand's call, you know You know, hooting and hollering at you. It's it's not even the patient's call. Even though they're your core constituent and we care the most about them.

It's it's your call as management team, right? You set that price. When you email the distributor, that's the price that matters. It's the price that you picked. And nobody can tell you. what for that price is. And any business. What was that logic that you that Sean was afraid to that you're going to do? The criticism would be you you yes, yes, you had the right to raise the price. That doesn't mean you're not a jerk or that people weren't hurt by that because they now couldn't afford it. So now address that part of it.

The reverse psychology is is super important. I'll go through that in a second, but I think the most of you know what you said is is really important because It's this like inviolable right. And I I was really pissed off, quite frankly, that there was this effort by by Paul wannabe would be politicians that didn't end up winning. uh and and others to try to sort of Take that right away.

Uh through like this Regulation by embarrassment? Right? Like it was this like we'll shame you until you change your Mine. Like you know, that that's insane. You're trying to take

My my right away. It's my right to run my business how I see fit. Now we'll go through all the logic of why I think it was a good idea. And a tenable idea and it's not Something a jerk would do, it's not something an asshole would do.

But just first and foremost. You know, how dare you? Try to tell me. You know what my price should be because ultimately Every person in America is working.

For some business that sets their price. And you're basically saying, Well, if you do it to me Well you can do it to Apple next, or you gonna tell them that the iPhone's too expensive? Are you gonna do it to your podcast where an advertiser says, Oh my god, you want fifty thousand dollars to post a And out of my podcast? Well that's all right. I want that for twenty five thousand. You know we try getting the ad.

And you know, I think that there's the special difference. When it comes to healthcare. And I I've learned this and processed it slowly. And like I said, I'll tell you briefly about my new company in a minute. But people treat healthcare products and services in a different part of their mind. You know, a friend of mine worked at Amex and got to talk to Buffett about this, where he said

Buffett likes businesses where Consumers think about the brand with a different part of their mind. They don't think about it with the rational part. They think about it with the emotional part. And Amex is an emotional product. Coca Cola is an important product. You don't think about it and say, Well it's Soda water costs you know, sugar water costs twenty cents to make. I don't know if I wanna buy this for a dollar.

You know, you you just buy the soda because you love Coca Cola. And and the more that You can make people think with that side of their their brain, the better. In healthcare you kinda get this like very visceral like entitlement of like no I meet

This drug I don't care what costs for the producer. I don't care any like this is my right to get this medicine. And obviously, you know, they're they're that's not quite right in my opinion. So Getting back to to sort of just like um getting past my just annoyance that there'd be People that sort of felt like, you know, they had a right to tell you what your prices should be.

without knowing anything about your business in the first place. Uh I think the biggest thing that works Sean with that Socratic method is just showing people how little they know about They're in this industry, right? Most people don't know much about the farm industry. I don't blame them for that, right? This is the industry I spent my life in. Uh to know that it's an it's and out of pharma.

You know, I wouldn't s I wouldn't be I'd be surprised if anybody did. So the first thing I tend to ask is Well what price? Do you think Product should be.

And this is sort of where like it all falls apart for for the interlocutor because The average pharmaceutical price would shock most people. You know, there are rare disease drugs, uh like Spin Raza. And the Avexis product for SMA.

They're millions of dollars. You know, it's a million dollars for a drug. A year. You know, so every year for the rest of your life, you gotta pay a million bucks. You know, there are drugs like that.

But you don't I think that's really out of pocket, right? It's Nobody's paying out of pocket for anything. Correct. You know, we have this convoluted crazy system. that generally needs to kind of be broken in half. Uh but

You know, and again, I'll show you my product in a minute, that unlike more Cubans, garbage is is might actually help. Uh The um You know, the the first question I always ask people is like, Well what what do you where do you price a drug where you have? I've been I had a drug at Retrofin. Sixty people.

Six zero. And they needed it to save their life. What what price should that be? Should it be the price of Viagra? No. Yeah, yeah, I b I believe in this thing called utility theory of price. Which I probably studied in in economics a long time ago, but forgot but

This this This idea is that Price has three or four different theories of of price. There's theory of kind of value. There's theory of utility.

And there's sort of other types of theories like It should cost a lot of people sort of like would give me their theories in in lay terms like Well it should cost what you made it plus a comfortable Margin. Okay, that that sounds interesting. And other people would say, Well, it should cost what it's worth to the user.

And and that's kind of how most medicine is priced. If you can forego Some terrible operation. You know, then And that operation's really expensive by taking this medicine

It should sort of cost the price of you for going And it's like what for analysis, right? So for a lot of rare diseases, it's like Well, but for this drug, you would be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So it's kind of a bargain at say a hundred thousand dollars. Because otherwise the insurance is gonna spend half a million on you. You know, going to the hospital every week and so forth and so forth. If you price it on based on what it would cost, like okay, well Price of their break even. Well,

Not a lot of incentive to make a medicine like that, right? You want to kinda want this windfall profit. If you're a drug company because you have this risk that This shit's not gonna work. And Yeah, well you'll you'll be a you'll be on uh uh applying to a job advisor.

You know, after your biotech startup fails. So If you do win, you can't just break even. You know, you have to overcome the risks and the risk adjusted possibility that you would have failed. Otherwise nobody would invest in companies like this if all the benefit was You would break even. So you have to have this extra return.

And so if when you do the pricing, I think that the best logical thing to do is pick a price that The alternative care. In other words, a world without this drug. You would forego all those costs for this drug.

And so I think that price works. There are people who are you know, just liter legitimately out of their mind that say, Oh, the drug should be just Should just be free. And of course, you know, we're who's gonna pay for the office, who's gonna pay for layers, who's gonna pay for the accountants who's gonna pay for the research. Who's gonna pay for the next drug, right? If if every drug is free, then nobody's gonna wanna go make drugs. And again, I if the if that's the system society dictated to me

I I you know, I'll follow those rules. But the soci the the the system society dictated was It's your choice what the price your product at. It's the insurer's choice to pay for it. It's the doctor's choice to prescribe it. And there are countries like there's this Miracle Drug by Vertex, one of my favorite drug companies. Cystic fibrosis. Miracle product. Literally cure.

For cystic fibrosis. Amazing. Cystic is no longer medical problem for ninety percent of people with cis fibrosis. This company should have parades. Parades every year for it. Right?

But instead they get shoot for it. And I have friends that have their lives have been saved. One of my friends in high school died of cystic fibrosis at nineteen. And These guys that are doing I I use this term very carefully, God's work. By by saving people's CF.

There are countries that refuse to pay for the medicine, right? This is three hundred thousand dollars a year. And my drug, I ask people all the time, Well how much is my drug? Well I say that we've seven fifty pill I That's not what I'm asking. In Pharma.

We don't worry about what the price but bullets. We worry about What does it cost for somebody to have to pay for this medicine out of pocket? What is the insurance paying for a full course or full year? Right. And they said, Well, I don't know. How many pills do you do you When you take this drug.

And I said, Well, Why are you ready to criticize me when you don't know what the total thought is? You know, you're you're already jumping on. But you know why they're criticizing you, which is like as I'm listening to this this you talk Like you have this very class uh Issue which is both an uh uh uh it's uh

an asset and a liability, which is you're quite uh logical. So you're like this one guy, I forget the guy's name, the the guy who's running for president, he just did what I did and he did it times ten, but I did it early on, which is like you follow the very logical thing, which is we hear this all the time and we have friends like this where it's like Well, I thought it could work because of X, Y, and Z. And in most people's heads, they would say to themselves, Yeah, but no one else is doing it, therefore it's impossible. In your head, which is a very common thing in entrepreneurs like you, which is No, like If A, then B, then C. Like the very logical approach. But

Where you have fucked up. Is You weren't It's like It's like you're so smart at studying the logic.

that you also kinda fucked up by studying like Okay, but if I do that, then people will hate me. Therefore I should probably use these words or smile this way when they confront me. And like that was like a a it's kinda like what Elon's doing. It's like, dude You're so fucking smart, Elon. You're doing all this amazing shit. Don't call Twitter titter. Like think of a different troll that's a like That's a net.

positive, not a net negative, and that and that was it what it seemed like was your thing, which is like, yeah, dude, you're logical. You're not wrong about this, this, and this. But You're just being a fucking idiot when you're talking about it and you're not like like w don't smile that way in progress, you know, even if you're I I respect it'cause I'm like, I think you know And I'm sure you were told by people what the correct way to frame and spin this is and it's every executive

I can be just like the guy at Pfizer. Right. Just like right. And I can and I and I think it's cool that you're not that guy, but it's like Well that's the thing. You could you could have saved seven years of your life, maybe, and only gotten like less if you just wouldn't have been up. Just like be a little bit more likable sometimes to save your own ass. And sure. And and you know, I I wanted to straddle that line, but like how much are like when I when I talk at Ivy League schools, I get standing ovations because I think That The kids realize that they're

The wife. Their personality's about to be choked out. by the the big pharma, big corporate world, right? Where they're going to pharma or they're going to uh to to finance. Their life is a is older. You know, their ability to express themselves.

The way they see fit. Is done. Right. Their the their ability to wear what they want to work. It's over. And I think that I represent that fresh a breast of fresh air that's like

Okay, maybe they actually Keep a personality. Maybe you can actually Be somebody real, instead of You know, look at look at the our CEO of Corporate America. Look at Weiser CEO, and her Bush CEO. It's like

No, I I gotta say what is the maximally the least interesting and the least offensive possible road to walk and they can't have a real personality. Because if I do You know someone's gonna have an issue with it and it's gonna be a problem for my business. And I I just hate the that the corporate world has gotten to that point.

Where You know showing who you are or or the kind of person you are or having an opinion. I agree. And the world wants you to be vanilla. I'm on look, uh this is why people like our pod.

I also see the other side where it's like Yeah, dude, but you just fucked up all those like I I don't know if this is true, but maybe it is. You just messed up all the people who wanted this drug because you got locked up and or you hurt Your family. Are you hurt?

people who cared about you all because of you wanting to express yourself. If you want to express yourself, get a fucking dog, go hang out with your cat, like Talk to them. Like you know what I mean? That's that that's that's it. Let me answer our question. One question that's really important. How many people could not afford or did not were not able to access the drug that previously could when the price was lower. Because the price got raised. Was it

Um One percent, ten percent, fifty percent, seventy five percent of people could no longer afford the drug'cause that's the key, right? Zero per zero. Zero percent. And so so that's the thing that like You know, how far it works. So explain that part because I think that's the key consideration. Uh Is

If you raise the price of the drug and these people who needed it to pay for their their illness could no longer afford it and now they were sort of out you know, shit out of luck because you bought the drug and and decided to reprice it, that would have been one thing. I think there's a I think that would support the argument against in a way, uh at least the emotional argument against But when you add the fact that nobody lost access to the drug or a very small percentage, if that's true, I don't know if it's true. I don't do I don't do the research on this, but you're saying that that's true. That completely changes the argument, in my opinion. I I think so too. And and that's why like I was so bold and and to to Sam's point, you know

Seemingly like Tone death. Right about this because I wanted people to see, well It's not a stupid person. Why is he being so tone deaf and obstinate?

Hopefully it's because he's right. And And let me look into that. And some people did. You know, and that's why I've got fans. Uh, and I'm not Billy McFarland or sh somebody like that. You know, able to raise money and start a new business because you know, I accomplish things and I'm a skilled guy. Uh it's it's this like

Failure to It's this desire to want to buy a narrative. from media or by Buy anger or rent anger. Uh that that sort of a accumulated here.

People when it comes to medicine, like like I said, there are drugs far more expensive than Dereprim. and uh like five hundred thousand dollars or more per year. Darebrand's a one time One course, right? So There's not an insurer in the world that didn't cover Derebro.

Because If you don't pay the fifty thousand dollars roughly what their from costs Forget Pro Pill. About fifty grand if if you end up needing Derebrum. Uh if you don't pay that, you're gonna pay for the guy's funerals. You're gonna pay for his actually U visits. You're pay for his

You know, you're gonna pay for a million bucks of this guy being the ICU for the next six months. It doesn't make sense, right, financially to not pay for Derebro. The other thing is it's such a small medicine. This was less than zero point one percent. of an insurer's budget. Right? Not even not even a policy is being formed at Aetna or United Healthcare.

Because it's like No, they have automation policies for this stuff. Like until the drug ends up being like A couple more basis points. No, several dozen basis points. It's just not gonna be A factor, right? They're more worried about Is somebody taking insulin when they could be taking metformin, which is much cheaper?

Right, make them make twenty thousand people move. From insulin to metaphor. you know, th or fifty thousand or or five hundred thousand people. Our policy is you gotta take OTC before you get this prescrip prescription. That's the kind of policies healthcare health insurers care about. Again, you wouldn't know that unless you're in the healthcare industry.

Right. And the problem is when you have people that are that are shooting at you You know, and they don't know what Your industry's about You know, it it's it's akin to me telling like a database programmer, Well, you know, no SQL databases are better than SQL databases and he's like Why? Why why are you saying that? Well then he starts putting out all these data I'm like oh that's just

That's just how I feel. I you know, it's better to have a s a no sequel than a sequel. I think I wouldn't do that because I'm not that intellectually dishonest. But people are very willing to be intellectually dishonest when it comes to things they don't know about because You know, it's a personal thing. And again, my my goal is to

Better understand. how personal healthcare is to people that It actually is this cherished Good and service. It's not. Like food. It doesn't have the elasticity.

A lot of things. It's a very unique In a different place. And you know, my my new company has has sort of an effort to sort of understand that make make amends, make tenants in a in a way. Because I think that again, healthcare is

One of these goods that unlike most other goods, there's a Marginal the marginal demand demand for marginal health care is virtually infinite. Amongst the three of us. Nobody is willing to sacrifice marginal healthcare, right? You're you and I are probably willing to sacrifice

marginal, you know, the clothing. There's only so much money I'm going to spend on clothing. There's only so much money I'm going to spend on On the. But if you had infinite money, like you the the thing you probably prioritizes your health you know, your your livelihood and well being. And I think that that makes it kind of the special bit of service. And that's why

We've spent we've gone from spending five percent of our GDP. Healthcare to twenty percent. And I think that's gonna go to fifty percent over time. Because our basic goods and needs are Maslow in Kind of needs.

Or med, you know, we can eat, we can have shelter, et cetera, et cetera. We ultimately just want to live forever. There's no there's reason why the Silicon Valley Trillionaires. They want longevity, right? They want like the they want to be around pervers. Because

You know, Larry Ellison, who I grew up kind of, you know, a little bit fanboying or worshiping. You know, his his life goal is to live forever and he's not gonna make it. But this this idea that all these guys sort of have in their minds that if they spend their billions they'll they'll live forever. It's it's there because The

Love their wikes. Right, the the average person in Africa probably doesn't think about it that way. I think they'd they'd like to, but their their life's a lot harder. Uh, in America we we're really lucky. We want to live forever because of that. And I think That makes hell.

You know. One of these things where it's demand side driven. You know, we like to think that healthcare expenses are going up. 'Cause of people like me. Or people like the MyLin CO or Ficer CEO. They're going to because we all demand health care. We want health for everyone. Our families, our friends, our progeny.

We all want healthcare, uh, you know, to to we're gonna consume more and more of it over time, I think. I I wanna ask you about your new thing and then I wanna ask about your predictions. But first, when you got out of prison How much of that nut did you still have left? And what do you do with your money now? What are you investing in now? Or are you just doing like are are you even allowed to trade? And are you just doing like Boring Index funds? Are you doing more risky stuff? What are you doing?

Yeah, so I got into a n very interesting litigation. So I was able to pay My corp my my criminal fines very very Relatively easily. It was Around eight million bucks. Um In that process I I decided to sell the Wu Tang album, uh which is a funny thing'cause

There's this NFT bubble. And I basically turn this into an NFT or sell to a crypto, bro, like you know, I'll I'll I might even get my money back on this thing'cause it was basically just, you know, a lark and I didn't think I'd uh I I I marked it.

as down like seventy five percent, but I was able to actually turn a profit on it. So it's I was happy to time that bubble well. Um So I was able to pay my criminal fines off, but then I got into this litigation with the FTC. Uh, the Federal Trade Commission actually personally sued me. For Monopoly on the first person.

In American history. The Sherman Act, which is a hundred and twenty five years old. The first person to personally be sued. by the Federal Trade Commission, which is very odd. Because John D. Rockefeller.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg. Couple of people who are accused of monopolies. Their firms got sued. I was actually the first person to personally be sued as a monopolist. Uh, which is very odd.

Uh and they won. So I'm appealing that, but they want a sixty million dollar hit against me. So until like figure that out. I'm sort of not not in the market. Um It's very like bizarre ruling that I think will get overturned.

But again, it shows you that kinda like animus, like this judge They mean they're ruling just to Will that make you broke? If if I had to pay the sixty, I think I I could pay the sixty. But it's it's just like a colossal fuck. You know.

Just a colossal like You know it hit in the gears of like stopping like the production, basically. So Uh the company I also indemnified, so the company will probably have to pay it, but

It's it's just a big like clusterfuck at the moment, so You know, I'm I'm sort of focused on the thing. Again, the nice thing about being An entrepreneur. And and having s faith in your talent and things like that.

Is that Even if you wiped me out and started at zero, I wouldn't have a problem, I think, you know, g getting making several hundred million dollars. I I I think that any business I start you know, it may not be this one or the next one, but eventually with perseverance I'll I'll have some great success. And I think that there's not You know bone in my body that doesn't believe that.

And I think when you And find great assets or great people. and put capital together with that, that you know, magic starts to happen and and it's a it's infectious and contagious and you know, as long as you have your sort of mooring straight, you should be able to do it. And I think that we've we've already started that process. So Whether this litigation turns out that it'll have to pay

You know, six some amount of that's been paid by the company and I don't have a demnification, something can be maybe off to pay thirty or forty million bucks. And it would suck, sure. You know, I'd have to sell my pharma assets, I'd have to, you know, make room. Would I cut be able to cover it or not? I'm not even a hundred percent sure. But you know, it all depends on the sale price.

Uh but you know, even even if you sort of took everything from me yet, you know, and and added another hundred million, I'd I'd sort of be You know. you know, cheery about it and say, All right, it's a big challenge, but I'll do it. You know, and I think that You know, I don't I don't view sort of wealth and and

and success as as symmetrical or the same thing. I sort of s say that, you know. Um You know, it it's sort of almost like you know, a challenge to sort of like do it the other way. I know a lot of people like

They make money to be comfortable. Like I almost feel like I make money to be uncomfortable. Okay, I want I want the the bigger challenges, the harder things to do, like You'll get Elon Musk and you gotta you you gotta ask yourself, like Why is this guy making his life?

So much harder. New businesses, new ideas. Like what is going on in his head that he wants More pain'cause it's very painful. to deal with all the headaches of these companies. Oh, half your advertisers just left at Twitter. Oh, by the way, you still have to pay the interest thumbs bonds. Like I should be sitting there like oh my God, you know, this is so much pain. Like why add this on top of my Tesla? issues because you know that a hundred issues of that company, you know there's a hundred issues of SpaceX, then again, business is going great in those companies, but there's still

Intense. Issues. that you have to deal with every day. And you've got other lawsuits and you've got other things going on in your personal life. You have eight kids. I mean Why add more shin to your to your to your thing? And and I think the answer for me is like, I love it.

You know I I I Love the game and You know, whether or not, you know My bank's count's got this many zeros, that many zeros. I You know, it's it's not like you're gonna be spending it. You know, it's it's a

It's just work. You know, I I I sit in a room with my my team and I I work all day and that's it. So for me it's it's like I don't know if you follow Naval, but he has this great quote. Uh he has this like Twitter thread called uh How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky and he says something in there that I love, which he goes. Um

I don't want to just get rich. I want to be a person who gets rich. Meaning uh if you could drop if if you took everything away from me and you drop me, you know, sort of like butt naked in a third world country in 10 years, I want to be wealthy again. And I think I have this I have built the skills in order to do that. And so that sort of reminds me of what you're talking about, which is like Look. You might lose everything that you made in the last decade or have have uh have this sort of like reset. But

it it give you ten years, you'll build back up. And uh I think most great entrepreneurs are are built that way and wired that way and almost In a sick way. kind of relish that that opportunity. When when that misfortune strikes, there is some fortune in that misfortune uh when when when a situation Yeah, it's it's sort of fun. I mean, in some ways, like I think a lot of people, you know, like comeback story too.

You uh you talked about the like You know, you didn't want to be the Pfizer CEO. You didn't want you you kinda knew what you needed, you could have said, and you decided like F that, like I don't wanna I don't wanna do business. Uh uh putting words in your mouth a little bit, but it's sort of like I don't wanna be a CEO, that type of CEO, and I don't wanna play the game of entrepreneurship. I don't like the world when it's less interesting when people don't actually Say what's on their mind.

Or uh can speak like a normal human being versus being like this like very tightly wound You know, corporate you know, uh a duck. And so I don't know if you've seen this, but have you seen have you guys seen this movement that happened at Stanford, the fun strikes back movement? Sam, you heard about this?

Yeah. No, absolutely. It's awesome. There's basically so there was like the student body election, I guess. And uh I don't know the full story because I just read about this. I was reading about this this morning. I was supposed to be prepping for this, but the story fascinated me instead. And um Basically there was a group of people that are at Stanford group of students that were running at Stanford and they won the election on this movement that they're calling fun strikes back. And they're basically like dude.

The un campus in the university has just drained us of our personality. It is trying to shut down all the fun things that they're like, We are pro athletics. We're pro-fraternities. We are pro partying and we are pro weirdness. And they basically talk about like the the the story. They do a great job telling the story. They're like, You know, back in nineteen eighty one, um the st you know, there's this frat party where that they threw every year where there was sand all over the house, uh, like a beach party or whatever.

And at the end of the night, like the party was over, people left, but the sand was still there. They're like, shit, what are we gonna do with all this sand? We still have so much in sand that like What if we built an island with the sand? And they're like, there's this little lake. What if we took all the sand to the middle of the lake, we made an island, and that could be our island, and they like rallied at four or five in the morning. And they go there and then the groundskeeper's like, guys, you can't bring a bulldozer here, like an excavator to like dump this here. And they're like, Sir, we want to do this for this reason. This is our moment. This is our legacy. Like think about this. Years from now, people will wonder how the hell this island was built and tonight is that night. And the guy's like, All right.

Go ahead. And he like lets them in, they build the island and it's this epic party or whatever, it's the epic finish. And then like fast forward to today, like Uh The island got uh the island is gone. The lake is gone. They shut everything down. Nobody can visit that that little pond or that lake anymore because it there was like an endangered salamander there. So they're like No no no

Shut it down, guys. And then like one by one they've kicked off all the fraternities from from the from the campus for like whatever violation they hit a violation, they remove them from campus. They like scraped all the like each each neighborhood used to have its own name and its own like weird Weirdness. They like scraped it all off, and now it's just like numbered cells. It's like you're on the D block six five seven. So it's dripping. They're like, dude, we used to have like the biggest party of the year was this anything but clothes party, and they decided that that's too risky and it's not fair to everybody. And they're like, I always wonder, John, like Cool are the pro like what did my prosecutors and like judges and like regulators and people like Elizabeth Warren, what did they do in college? This is what they did in college. They they shut down the party and they're like, No, this is offensive. We gotta shut this party down. Right.

You know, it's it's just like who are these people? And why why do we ever let any of them have any power? And it it's it's frustrating. To me that like, you know. Schools. Like Sanford and many others have had to like go through this like identity crisis of Like I'm scared.

To say what I want because You know, uh what if somebody's gonna be offended? And it again becomes this metagame where like y we were talking about like, yeah, could I like do the party line and say, You know, I'm really sorry my actions have caused, you know, uh some misunderstanding and blah blah blah and have this non apology apology. But then like Japan. The way you say no.

Can be found to be insulting. So you just move the meta. But like the next you know, level where it's like, Oh, he saw the way he said no, he didn't really mean it. You know, where the way he said I'm sorry wasn't really apologetic. There's a real way to say I'm sorry. You gotta bow a little bit deeper. And it's like okay, well so it's it's it's it's an insane meta where You're constantly just like getting to the next point of of like inhibiting your personality and and what are you really saying? And just come on and say it. You know, and I think that that's a really freeing

You know, thing to do. Yeah, I don't know if it's on Substack, but I'm on your newsletter and like you made some wild predictions. I don't remember all the predictions, but like you made you you actually had a really good post where you said like This is gonna happen, I think, in two thousand twenty three. This will happen in two thousand thirty. I think in fifty years this will happen. And uh I I it would be actually be fun to look back at some of your predictions so far turning out to be true.

But it's very interesting and you're you're pretty good at writing, actually. You're you're quite good actually. Thanks a lot. You know, it's it's hard to write. Um You know. Uh professionally like you guys, uh I know Sam um well I d I know Sean does for sure.

If you when you're an entrepreneur Doing anything other than working on your business seems like a waste of time and and like a A really uh painful thing to do. Uh because you have to provide for your investors, your co workers, your own family.

A business you love, you know, it's it's uh it's hard to to do a lot of writing. Uh in prison it was a lot easier. You know, it's it was uh You know I had more time to think. But even then I was I was actually really busy. People Uh

you know, bored in prison and like it was the furthest thing from it. A lot of people ask me, Why didn't you get jacked up, you know, in in in prison? I just didn't have the time, you know, uh I was I was working the whole time, so You know, it's it's always hard to write. I love writing, but But to to do anything, a lot of people ask me if I don't why don't want to do a podcast and It's the same reason. And you know, the predictions about AI are are

You know, some of them echo kind of like other people's predictions, you know, in a lot of ways. We have large language models now. They're really interesting. Uh they certainly Provide for more eye opening potential predictions, you know, probably

Some of the craziest ones I've I've made, including Include things like th kind of inter species marriage between AI and humans. There'll be AI fundamental rights or for boating and things like that. That'll kinda reshape society.

So they're they're pretty wild predictions, but I do think they'll happen. Years from now, and I do think we're starting to see some of those things pull in and get accelerated. Uh one of my favorite people, John Clermac. recently upgraded. His

estimate of AGI so called artificial general intelligence. from fifty percent by twenty thirty to sixty percent. You know, John is like this very precise you know, calculating nerd who's, you know. Yeah, you know, created the first person shooter. He you know, this brilliant guy and he's working on his own company, which nobody's talking about, uh called Keen Technologies.

Uh, and I think he's the only employee, if I'm not mistaken. So he's just sitting there like trying to create like This this brain, uh And you know, who knows? Uh I think he's a good dark horse for this race. But no, AGI is like out is super captivating to everyone, right? Like it's it's to me. If you look at the history of humanity next to maybe relativity or, you know, a couple of other like magnetism, electricity, like this is like probably more important. And it's the first time humans will have created

A mind. from from nothing that's stronger than human. And it's really like just so profound. that you know, I don't think anybody can afford to to ignore it. It's more profound than the internet. You know, it's it's really, you know, something wild. Now we don't know When we'll get it, we'll get a partial version of it, or we're already seeing a partial version of it. You know, it's it's sort of early days, but

While I was in prison, I was able to think sort of zoom out and think about that a little bit more than maybe the average person and it's funny if you look at sort of OpenAI and some of the other startups that are coming out. Uh these sort of companies like Google and Facebook. Yeah, you see that they kind of did that zooming out many years ago. And the companies that are sort of missing this and messing it up are kind of like too close to the to to sort of reality and and the day to day product management to even see it and really understand it.

That people wanted this. You know, Microsoft Both both Facebook and Google had In my opinion. years ago and they just still just haven't sort of seen the

The actual product. you know, making sounds and and watching. And um anyway, you know, it's it's a really interesting time, obviously. What's her uh what's the new thing? So I'm I'm releasing in the next uh uh day or two.

Maybe even today. An AI position. This will this will go live tomorrow. This will go live tomorrow, so it might be up. So what what w is there a URL? So you're you're breaking The news.

Uh it's so funny in happenstance'cause we're talking to like Tech Crunch and like all these places. We never we didn't really find like the perfect reporter who could report on this. So here we go. Uh it's called drguta.ai. Uh it's a the first of its kind AI physician. Um It's basically going to be uh what I hope

Something that could Rem. Drastically reduce health care costs and practices drastically improved. Oh, cure quality. Uh by providing an AI.

Uh physician mimic, basically. sort of a synthetic AI doctor that that will can give you medical information. And I think that You know, most of the GPT was your doctor or what? Doctor Gupta like G U P T A

Dot AI. Oh. He happens to be Indian, but it's also GPT, so Gupta. Um So anyway, Doctor Gupta will give you medical information and uh you can talk to him, it's free. Um it's uh to me

what a lot of people didn't understand about my price increase and stuff like that. One of all the reasons I was optimistic, there are like fifty of them. Is that Ninety percent of health care costs. Come from physicians.

Ten percent come from Farmo. What do you mean come from? What does that mean? We spend four trillion dollars on healthcare in this country. Most of that money goes to physicians and healthcare workers. And

A lot of that I love doctors, I love nurses. I don't have anything against them. A lot of those decisions can be done by machines. A lot of those decisions thanks to open AI and and deep learning and LM models. can be done by AI. So can we take that four trillion and make it two trillion?

That would be a big deal. You know. the whatever Cuban's doing It's not gonna save anybody any money and it's not gonna make Mark any money either. But

This it could actually change the curve on healthcare. Give us a thirty seconds on give us a thirty seconds on why Cubid's thing you you've referenced a couple times how it might be dumb or or or not that's such a shit show. Like so so he's basically running a pharmacy. Right. So he's trying to source drugs for cheaper. And mind you, every other pharmacy is pretty good at sourcing.

Madison. And I don't know how he's gonna get a deal. on you know, say Tava her son's generics. Any better than than C V S or Walgreens, it seemed kinda hard to do that, right? He's they they he doesn't have the volume they have.

Get that deal. And then somehow get a margin. Farm C margins are razor. Razor freaking th Right. You cannot. Take a three dollar drug and charge a hundred bucks for a pharmacy. They're razor. Just look at the ten Q for Walgreens and CBS, like

Well, and making a fortune here. And so he's gonna somehow get a margin out of that. There there's just it's just hocus pocus. There's no actual way to do that. You know, it's it's a bunch of lies, basically. He's being dishonest. So I'm on Doctor Oopa Doctor Goopa AI.

Uh so I see the thing, so it I I tell it my age, how tall I am, my weight, some of my vitals. If I have lab results, I enter it in. And then what's gonna happen next? It's gonna say like you should check out you should work on this, this, and this. No, you don't actually even have to enter any of your vitals. You can just have a conversation. And we've programmed it using these like very you know, intricate techniques. I was actually You know, a lot of people are talking about auto GPT.

And and baby GPT. And I talked to Yohi and I talk to all of the people in Ben of that stuff. You never know what people are doing privately, but we started doing the r auto-reflective GPT stuff six months ago. And We were able to stover that depending on the technique you use, you can get better chat results.

than ChatGPT. And I don't think Open AI disputes this. We've screened thousands of messages. that we tried with the system and we get better w better performance.

And Chat GPT by making it kinda like auto reflect. And do other kind of methods that General or secret sauce. they'd get the chat bot to succeed. So it's not so much about that medical view, it's You can get

Physician quality advice. For free at any time, any hour. So You and I Maybe able to call a doctor friend, but most people cannot just decide at midnight that if they have a medical question that they can get an answer.

You have to go on Google, you gotta go ask Web MD, and you're you don't know what you're reading half the time if if you're the average Joe. You know, you're not trained in medicine. If you say, Well, what about my chest pain? What should I do? You want to talk to somebody. You want to actually have a conversation. L Lens do that amazingly. This Is an is a is an abstraction of GPT four. They'll actually let you have a natural dialogue.

With Something that as you guys know GPT four scores ninety percent on the US MLE. It's a ninety percent performing most doctors don't score ninety percent on the boards. GPT is a

Ace Doctor Uh when it comes to medical knowledge. So being able to ask an ace doctor at any time for free about medical information, medical advice. you know, it's pretty profound product, they think, because again, we spend trillions of dollars on physicians

A lot of the physicians work can be done by AI and if it's an uncomfortable truth. That You know Again, it doesn't mean that we don't need doctors ever again. In my world, in my vision Fifty years from now, there's no such thing as a medical doctor.

There's no such thing as a position. That's my site. I can I can get uh fifty messages for free or I pay twenty bucks a month. What what's the end game here? Do you think this is gonna be a massive company or is this like uh a thing where you're like, I don't know what's gonna happen. Let's let's figure it out, or are you you try to get after it? What what are you trying to do in the next five or ten years with this business? Yeah, I'm trying to make it a massive company. Um I think that You know.

Yeah. You know, it will be a massive company. You you never say never in business, but You know, we're we're certainly gonna Try your hardest because I do think that You can all this is why technology has never really bent the curve for healthcare.

The cost of sending a megabyte, the cost of sending uh, you know, storing data, the call to compute, all that has dropped by not just like ninety percent, it's dropped by like ninety nine and and six more nines percent. Healthcare has not moved a bit. Why? It's because Of this lobby that exists.

The AMA restricts the amount of people who can become doctors. The supply is constrained. You cannot just graduate a million more doctors tomorrow. If we could do that, what would happen? The price of medical Services would drop like a rock.

We our country would be saved, Medicare and Medicaid wouldn't be going bankrupt. We have a huge wouldn't be bankrupt. Bankrupting us. If we had a million more doctors tomorrow Healthcare wouldn't be a problem in America.

The problem is we don't have a million more doctors in America. One of the reasons is there's just not gonna be a million people who pass med school. The other problem is the AMA specifically says there's only this many med schools. There's only this many uh uh doctors graduating from med school. Are we gonna make it really hard to become a doc? Even though AI can do all these things. very easily. And you're gonna see a lot of industries collapse.

Because of GPT I think when there's more Medicine Accounting, there's gonna be a huge change in society thanks to AI and and GPT. So how is this not like uh self-driving cars where even though self driving is Almost like better than a human in in in a bunch of different circumstances, maybe not certain weather conditions. Uh

But If it gets one thing wrong, it's, you know, all the news and all the lawsuits. And so they need to be not just better They need to be so much better that they can kinda overcome that. Like how do you not just get sued out of existence for the, you know? the the the h you know one mistaken medical diagnosis or or um you know, treatment plan or w whatever it is here. How do you how do you avoid that problem?

Sure. I I think it's a lot like Like self driving cars where If you gave me the story where There's fifty thousand all the fatalities a year, right? In America. And

I can press this button right here and there's gonna be twenty thousand. There's two types of people in the world. There's the first type of person who says That's amazing. Thirty thousand lives saved, thirty thousand less funerals, thirty thousand less torn families destroyed by Needless, you know.

Terrible. You know, uh automobile Fatality. What a horrible You know, thing.

I'm so happy, I can't wait to push that button, you know. Anything stopping me from pushing that button is is insane, right? So why would you delay that for half a second? And then you've got the kind of person Uh, similar to the Stanford party. Who says

Wait a second. Are there gonna be twenty thousand deaths from from this? That's an outrage. I can't believe it. Don't push that button. And obviously one side is right and one side's wrong. You know, but the the the technical progress All of the world cannot be stop. I'm part of this IAC grup.

effect of accelerationism, which is this like new movement that's counter Effect of altruism. So you see the E forward slash A C C We've got a lot of really exciting members. Some of the Biggest people in technology.

Uh, and it's this sort of like underground movement of people who don't want to slow down AI. Who people who don't want to slow down. Uh technology. And I think that um you know the idea that we're here to stop

Progress because The technology might make one mistake. And remember, that's sort of like stopping the automobile because The automobile itself was an improvement over the horse. We have to move forward in the world. We can't look back and and nitpick on every single mistake in life.

And I think that's that's sort of I know that's not how you feel, Sean. But that kind of criticism and that kind of Like attitude is such a terrible pernicious threat to to our well being. that like we have to look at the class.

Not just have full'cause it's ninety percent full. We can't look at the ten percent that's empty. Right. Yeah, I mean I get it philosophically. It's like the troley problem. It's like ten people the train's gonna run over ten people. If I pull this lever, it'll run over those other two. And uh, you know, there's a Uh whatever. People have people feel different ways about that. I guess what I mean is like practically speaking, th for this company, like

How does this company not die because something like that's gonna happen. What what are you gonna do? Like what what do you think is gonna play out there? Our purpose and policies make sure that you understand that this is medical advice. Doctor Gupta is not a real doctor. That if you uh Use our website for medical information. It's simply for informational purposes only and you have to I mean, I can read you the whole disclaimer.

But the reality of the matter is that Do you want somebody Who's seventy five years old? Okay. who has uh pneumonia but doesn't know that they have pneumonia.

Uh they have a cough. But they're gonna die of pneumonia if they don't go to hospital next three days. Do you want that person running around Google? trying to figure out if they have pneumonia or not. Or do you want them to to go to an L O M? What's better?

If you don't have the LLM, they're going to go to Google, they're going to go to WebMD, they're going to try to read it on their own. They're gonna mess it up. There's a decent chance. Whereas if you go to L M you might actually get the superior technology that may save their life.

So you're net improving it. And if you don't want a net improvement Then you're Elizabeth Warren, you're a Luddite, you're et cetera, et cetera. And if you want the improvement, you're on the side right side of history. And I think that If you look at the way technology

informs regulation, not the other way around, right? Regulation has to serve the people. If the people are getting the benefit. The people will demand the right side. If you have people that want to stand in the way of of improvement That's up to them. Listen, if if

We're told you gotta Lock Doctor Gupta in this state or this country? Okay. The Philippines will have it. Remember GPT Is is Is um

knows every single language. It's it's langual in every single language in the world. So Japan will have this for free tomorrow. It's like pit ball. It's just a worldwide, right? It's a global product. And that's the amazing thing about being a developer. You normally have to worry about Localization, right? Language, all that crap. It's gone now with GPT. This Dr. Gupta knows every language. He knows we d they beta test this in Spanish.

We would do we might localize him. And make him like Doctor somebody else in in in Latin America. But Doctor Gupta matches GPT. Our other option was Doctor Lim. Like we think Dr Dr. Gupta Kaziz literally Dr. GPT.

Honestly, it's kind of a genius name as an Indian person. I I will give it my seal of approval. Uh I think that's is very clear clever. Um six months ago or nine months ago, I was talking to you and you had a crypto company that was like a uh 3D modeling company for drugs. What happened to that company? Did you ditch it or is it you do both or what's the result? It's it's all under one hood, so our company's called Deal Software. Oh, we've raised some some money from from some really well known People in in in the valley. It's been, you know, again, an interesting dilemma where you have like

People who wanna support you. Like all these people actually said that my YouTube finance videos, you mentioned content creating. That it it got them through like a State and Venture Capital. I watched a ton of those. I watched all those.

Thank you. And and like I'm so lucky that These people, some of whom started some of the biggest software companies in our industry. Uh the literally like maybe The top five unicorns in software, like three of the four Cs like that were Where like I message these guys they're like, Oh, you're my teacher I'm like

So flattered, you know, that these billionaires are Or or like on my phone. And they're like, Yeah I Sorry. Yeah. A billionaire. Several billionaires you know, several billionaires are or lusters in our several billionaires have smashed the sub subscribe button, hit the turn notifications on, leave a leave a message in the comments on YouTube. I love it. It's really, really humbling because it's like You know

You know, did you couldn't find that kind of content where like you could you could talk to somebody who was a publicly traded company CEO showing you like step by step kind of what their job was like. And I think more than just like how to read a balance sheet, I taught An Attitude Two. Yeah. kind of the one thing I learned from grammar, which is like this hardcore attitude of like

You love the stuff, you're all Like people would watch me stream like four in the morning, like getting ready to go you know, tear tear the world and a new asshole'cause I'm so like excited about doing my job and I think it got a lot of people out of a funk or out of like a a hard time and like just pushing people to like push harder, push harder.

That worked for so many people at at these at these unicorns, these mega unicorns, these like Ten X unicorns. That Yeah, that that's why I said you're amazing at content because you have the the trifecta. There's three things it takes to be great at content. The first is unique perspective or unique unique POV, right? So you you have unique a unique specific set of knowledge that the average person doesn't have. Okay, that's

Most people would expect that. Now here's the unexpected ones. You do Energy transmission. So uh Most content is actually just a transfer of my energy and excitement or outrage about whatever it is. To you.

And uh If I'm able to express it, if I can show you that I'm juiced up about this, I've watched you at your computer, then you like get up, you do push ups on the ground, you're like pumped up about whatever, or you're you're calling somebody out or whatever it is, it's energy transmission. And the last thing, you're like a reality TV person. You kinda know what you're supposed to say, but you don't really care and you want to say what you like

You don't really care you care more about like uh saying the thing than what people will think of you saying the thing. And uh some for some reality TV people, it's because they're just not aware. They don't know it. You know it and you just don't care. You like override that sensor and you're like, No, that sensor doesn't get to decide what's going on here. And so you have the you have all three. And I think that That's what makes your streams so impressive. Like you said at the beginning of this. I don't do the like just wing it, but I I've seen you just wing it and I actually think that's your best content. So I don't know what you meant by that.

Well just like closing the loop on it like I I only started those streams because, you know I didn't want people to think I was the pharma bro, which I was like being t characterized as And I basically want people to like judge for themselves. Like see a day in my life, see if like you think I'm a dick or not. And some people said, Yeah, I still think you're dead.

But people said, Yeah, I kinda like this guy. And you know, maybe this is like a little bit of what I want to be like. Um And so the point is, like I'm so lucky that the people who watched that in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, obviously not all of them became Household. But a handful of them, the top couple people, became unbelievably successful. And that's maybe'cause of me, maybe not because of me, maybe it's in spite of me.

You know, but the the the whole point that they some of them thank me for it is as I'm I'm really lucky for that. I have three Software products under Oh or sort of umbrella here. But I think the like the key thing for our company is is getting

Amazing talent, you know, in in any industry. But especially in tech, like the only really thing that matters is this combination of capital and and people and You know, the capital's easy to get. You know, there's there's infinite capital in the world. It's it's about, you know, do you have the people to execute the plan? And and I'm so lucky that like a little bit of this personal profile

gets great engineers to come to the table and talk. Doesn't always get them in the door. But the fact that like we can do that and the like the one skill I have as a manager, to your to your to your point, is that energy transfer of like getting people like can you can I pump you up about Making a synthetic doctor Well, to some people that might be really boring. And if you pitch it the wrong way, if you're like at a big healthcare company, you're like, Well, we're gonna make medical information, you know, uh diagnostic tools, et cetera, et cetera, it sounds like shit. You know, but if you if you

Do it the right way. And you explain to the engineer that there's if we do our jobs right, there's no such thing as a doctor in thirty years. that every operation, every prescription, every piece of medical advice you ever get from now on comes from a machine and it costs ten cents. That changes the world. That's something that you're gonna leave

A legacy, we're gonna make a fortune, we're gonna have a lot of fun. And it's gonna change the world for everyone for the Indonesian that can't see a doctor for thirty days and the doctor they're seeing is a very questionable variety. You know, and and and province. To be able to get the best medical expertise of an American physician.

That's insane. Right? And and we're getting that tomorrow. And I think that again, you can't get a prescription from Doctor G and he's not gonna cut out your bunion. But I think that the fact that we can even talk Tabch. five, ten percent of healthcare costs.

That's hundreds of billions of dollars. It's bigger than Google's Tampoco. So like, you know, healthcare is one of these just gigantic spots that has never been chunked by by technology, despite the best attempts of Sand Hill Road. Like a billions of dollars flew into digital hell. There's just no obvious way to take a sledgehammer to this. You have to understand that healthcare Is is basically all money that goes to people

who just slosh it around Or this like very AI simple simple problem for AI. For that little advice of Yeah, you should take this beta blocker, or should not take this beta blocker, or we should do the surgery or not do the surgery. And that human advice is really important.

But at the same time, like, you know, a good chunk of it could probably be automated. The last thing I wanted to bring up was like So I I ran this company called The Hustle, which we wrote about you and you actually were h homies with uh Brina, this woman who worked for me, and you were like at one point were like, Hey, come visit me in San Diego and I remember like Yeah, and trunk, yeah. And I remember like right when your story broke, it was Pharma Bro. And then I got to like

I we you and I chatted on Blah before and I've I I don't know if you remember we've talked before and I'm like It's funny. This guy's Not really a bro at all. He's he's just a nerd. He's just like care he'd like You know, he talks a lot, like and he's confident, but he's like like a pretty nerdy guy.

And the reason Yeah, it's so funny about media perception. The reason your story did I think the way it all like started was you have this picture. I'm looking at it at it now. It's you wearing like Ray Bans and a red polo. And you have like a picture of looks like Flow Rider in the back.

Like on a music video in a Bugatti and you're like pointing down like this. And you like your jawline looks cut. And you look like The bro yes of bros. And I remember When we wrote the story in the hustle

We tried a bunch of different photos and that photo did best because it's just like you're just like Giving in to this big old stereotype. And uh We just made this trick out. So the backstory is funny. Like we had just done this stock trade

It was in my personal account. We made twenty million dollars shorting uh the stock called vital therapies. They were developing a liver dialysis machine. We spent day and night stalking this company and figuring out everything about the attempt to make a liver. dialysis machine works for a kidney really well. They want to take that same idea and apply it to the liver. Sounds good, right?

Doesn't work. There are a lot of technical reasons. Me and two colleagues. Spent day in, day out stalking, figuring this coming out. We wrote a forty page report. We put the report out. The stock fell like forty percent just on the report.

The device ended up proving that it didn't work, it didn't help anybody. with severe liver disease, then the stock went down like ninety percent. And we were short the stock. And so the day you went down, we did that uh the floor writer song is called It's Going Down or something like that. And so it was like

You know, doing this like thing. 'Cause like we thought these guys were f basically fraudsters, you know, lying about their liver device which had proven That it doesn't even help people, it probably hurts them. But they were still trying to get through that like

Venture capital grind and and and uh public company grind of like lying and trying to make shit stick. And and make Put the best, you know, spin on things. And so when we shorted it and it went down, it was it's going down, you know. That was the kind of joke. And I was like, Oh, how funny would it be if I you know, dressed up like a bro for a second and like we had a friend in the trade too. We had a couple of friends in the trade.

Like putting it on Twitter was It's kinda like a Oh, check it out. Like it's going down'cause of us'cause we wrote the short report. And again. What the next like two weeks the same

I made it like my profile pick and like next two weeks, like that, that's what everyone sees on. It's like, Oh, who is Yeah. It's just so funny, like I I don't know the whole facts of your story. And you admitted admitted wrongdoing and everything, but it's like it was s it was amplified and uh this picture was like the beginning of the end for you.

This one picture. That's what it seems'cause I remember this one picture going The beginning of an interesting story. To me, like I'll I'll take it and try. Like you would look at it. And many other people look at it as the beginning, the end. I look at it as life's a just a crazy ride, it's a crazy movie. you know, it would be very boring to like be a value investor for the next fifty and make

A hundred billion dollars doing Grammad. Stock picking like S it's right for somebody else. not right for my life and it is the path I chose, you know, not Like, you know.

It was an intentional choice, you know, maybe not the wisest choice. But it is the choice for me and you know, I I don't regret having had like a really interesting, exciting life. There are moments of it that weren't fun, but there's it's still the one of these things where I'm not like deeply ashamed of like something I did or something like that. Like it's a conscious choice I made to Sort of like

Do the things I did. The photo was You know, it was alarming to me that the media could take like an image and say, okay, this is this person. Let's let's cast it this way. And I think it sort of backfired in the long run. You know, I I'm sort of more popular than ever and you know kind of doing just fine. So if you c there's a price to be paid. If you could go uh if you could go back, would you I have advised you know, if you can go back and kind of whisper in the ear of yourself at any point in time, you know, would you have Told yourself, Hag if you're going on TV, don't don't don't say that thing, don't don't be smug, don't do this, don't do that. Would you have played it differently, knowing what you know now?

I think I I think like You know, there's two sides of the story with like the rationalists would say, of course, you know, like tone it down here, you know Tuck in your You know. Tuck that in there, tuck in your shirt there, you know, s straighten up there.

Uh metaphorically. But the the I think the the oldest wisdom is know thyself, right? And it's like just be yourself, know yourself, be be be who you are. And like If you spend the rest of your life trying to make somebody else happy in in conforming to society It's gonna be not a life worth living. And if you spend your life Answering to your own conscience, I think then

You know, you you can no matter what happens, no matter stick put you in jail for lesser life. You'll have the at least have something nobody could take away from you, which is like your your your own identity and your own personality. And I think there's a lot of people. Like William Wallace in in Braveheart, you know, they'll take our freedom or what they say they'll take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom. You know, there there's there's there's a point in time where you have to be a real person, and I think like if you wanna Be a corporate sort of like

mimic of like every other corporate person in the world. No, that's a that's a life. If that's the life you want, then that's the life you want. I there's just only so much of that life that that I can take and for me I had it. When it came to like the media Like you said, you know, with the with the full right up picture. Or or whatever.

The typecasting, it was like you know, I I can't That's that's a line that was too much for me. So I think it it's it's probably more reactive than anything else. Like Hillary Clinton. Tweeting at me and stuff like that. It was like so surreal, like me? You know, the mild manor pharmaceutical executive. I'm I'm the object of your fucking scorn. You know, this is nuts. You know, so a lot of it was that like Provoke and and be provoke. Like it you know, it it it was not like easy to

to sit there and just do nothing. So like It's easy, like yeah, I I'll turn it on to you guys, like It's very easy to sort of throw advice out, but When you are in the hot seat. And somebody says, Oh, aren't you this and aren't you that and you know

You say, Well, you know, I'm sorry, I caused some disturbance here and I'm just really, you know, uh it's really hard to do that, you know, sometimes. You um First of all, that's hilarious. Second of all, uh you don't know us super well, but b before our old kind of podcast setup Sam used to have these photos on the wall of like His hall of his like personal hall of fame. And it'd be like, you know, some inspirations from business, like Sam, before he started the hustle, he really loved Ted Turner. He's like, dude, this guy like made the fucking news business and he's a baller. Like he he attacked it in this way.

Yeah, Nate Diaz up there. He's like, Oh, I love this guy. He's a UFC fighter. He's like just a badass. It just takes this attitude into into life that's that we like. Yeah, I like Connor McGregor and I think you know, he's interesting and I I like, you know, certain things that he's done about It's like you know, I don't like all of these people. I just Like certain things, I took inspiration from certain things at certain periods of certain people's lives. Who were kind of

Who are some people that you were inspired by, either in the business world or the non-business world uh that that you think are You sort of have admired or you've gone down the YouTube rabbit hole and just, you know Uh binged a bunch of their content or whatever. I'll start with Vince McMahon. When I started to be this like bad guy and I realized that

There was nothing I could do to change that narratives. Like I could do a two hour interview with ABC and they would take the the thirty seconds that fuck me and and make the thirty seconds loop and like forget the other you know, hundred and nineteen minutes, those thirty seconds are are the ones that are gonna be on TV. I realize like there's no way out of this and I'm gonna have to embrace being the bad guy. And some people will get the joke and

And some people won't. Uh, but you know, fuck it. If if if if that's what people want, then I'll be the bad guy and I sort of embrace kinda being this jerk and trying to dress down, you know, the so called authority uh figures. Um

by by sort of pointing, you know, pointing the the mirror back at them. Um, so Vince Vince sort of like had that like kafabe wrestling. You know, they call it a heel in wrestling. Uh, where you know, he's he he's the owner of the company, but he's also kind of like breaking down that fourth wall of like some of the stuff he's talking about on the show.

Is like related to actual boardroom battles and like some of the you know, stuff on the show is is completely contrived and You know, it's just a fantastic product and I I like the company and what they've done with it over the years. So, you know, I'm a big fan of Vince's. Um

You know, I I I like a lot of to like different scientists and stuff like that. Um, you know, so business people themselves You know, there there aren't a whole lot that I like point to and say, Oh, that's somebody I'd I'd Like to be like or something like that. But Growing up I always liked Bill Gates, who was kind of this You know, smog.

Hated by the way. In ninety four, Bill Gates was was sued for Monopoly, but his company was, not him. And People wanted to tear this guy apart. And I was just sort of coming up. I was like eleven years old. I love computers. I started programming

And I was like, well, everyone hates Bill Gates and the hacker community hated Bill Gates. And and it's because he wanted to make money. And he's not apologetic about it. And I kinda like this guy. I like the catrarianism of being like, you know what? I like Microsoft. I like Building. No one's willing to say that. And like we wouldn't have these things. We're all using Microsoft products right now. What would we be doing without it? And

You know, the Linux nerds would be like, Well, you know, we can we don't have to use them and it's like what the whole world's using them for a reason. They're pretty good products and I I just sort of like Taking that bad guy. And at the time it was so really hated. And sort of saying, You know, I I'm on his side. You know, the media was on his case because

He was the richest guy in the world, but couldn't afford a good haircut. You know, they always just dog him for no reason. And he spent the rest of his life Like trying to walk back on that. And like how cool would it have been if he sort of embraced the narrative. Like, yeah. You know,'cause Private Lee does embrace the narrative, right? It's just a

It's just sort of this public image of like no no, I'm I'm this benevolent philanthropist. You don't understand. You know, privately the guy's still just as ruthless, still just as vicious and and just as energetic and intense. As he was when he was a kid. So You know, it's it's all just like, you know, imagery for for nothing. Um

And you know, there's a number of other folks like uh Henry Nicholas, who started Broadcom. No, I I mean I there's just so many people that, you know, I've studied in business over the years that I I like Tom Pederfee from Interactive Brokers. Um, so many people I admire that that did did things their way. Um and and made it work.

Uh people especially who who sort of have come from nothing or Came from like with very little on their back. A lot of people dog George Soros. Uh you know, who's You know a a a true American success story. And people sort of forget that

You know. Or don't understand that like all the stuff in politics and like story. Guy barely pays attention to shit. You know, I think that like The idea that he's spending his day like plotting with, you know the uh you know the world economic forums like run the world.

is this like right wing meme that's just not not based in reality and You know, the guys. work in hedge bonds and investing is is like truly remarkable how he came from like sort of the you know, World War Two basically to to America to come truly successful. So people like that I I admire.

You know, anyone who's sort of had this against all odds. Type of success. Um You know, even people like uh Robert Smith. You know, who run Vista. um, you know, people who have like really bucked, you know, any conventions and expectations of them to to be really successful. So

There's so many people that I have up there on that wall. Uh and again, it's not, you know, every Like you said, it's not every piece of their life, but little pieces have have sort of made me. I have Bill Gates on mine because of the the interview where About the chair, jumping over the chair. I still think that's the most gangster like CEO interview moment. I don't even know how this came up. And then he

He's She I think the interviewer was like, I heard a rumor that you could you know how to jump over a chair. He goes, Yeah, I should do it. He goes, Well, it depends on the height of the chair. And then it cuts to a chair and him clearing it like Tony Hawk. And I have no explanation why this was like Is this what T V interviews were like back then? Like I I can't imagine something like that's like being like Donald Trump like Is it true you could win an arm wrestling match against anyone, he's like, Well

Rolls up his sleeve and just like punks the punks. It's not that impressive. It's a big chair. You don't think you could jump over and never would've thought it. Nerdy, shrimpy guy. He's actually five eleven. Uh But like there's this like Russian jump over that chair. Yeah.

Dude, he takes a step. I bet you could jump over a chair, bro. You need a chair, I'll get you a chair. We'll jump. I don't want to recreate this scene. I'll we'll put it on our YouTube. I don't think I could jump over this chair. And I was like I I play basketball. I think I I was pr I would in my head I'm more athletic than Bill Gates, but Honestly, I can't claim that until I do this Sure. I don't know, man. He's probably only thirty five in this video. I think you could jump too. Me versus Bill Gates head to head pay per view. We gotta do it.

Uh Martin, thanks for doing this, man. Um we appreciate it. We um I know that like I don't I won't out you, but I know that you've got like some anonymous accounts online. Where can people find you? But for you, you get banned every like third week. So it's not that useful. And we were like, is are we even talking to the real Martin? Is he even gonna come? Like what is the

We weren't even sure if we were talking to the right guy. The um interesting thing about that is I think the world's changing quite a bit. Like like the sensitivity of banning people on Twitter. has now given away. So I'm actually starting to talk to Twitter. I still need my old Twitter account is at Morton Shrelli. It's In the process hopefully being unbanned, but

Any anybody that can help me get that on band, I'd I'd really appreciate it. Um Uh right now I'm at Margie underscore cat boy, which that ex girlfriend made for me, which You know, uh has stock for some reason. Now my crowd has Twitter handle. And all on Instagram on March probably fifteen.

But um yeah, I I love social media, but you know, getting banned from I'm banned from Tinder and Hinge and You know, like so many odd, you know, social media's uh On YouTube. But you're banned from Tinder? Why? I don't know. I think like part of it is this um That's like the definition of a cock block, right? Like they just banned you from dating? What's going on? I I think this cancel cancel culture like extends into virtually anything, right? And uh for Tinder it's it's uh

You know, you can argue that like Well, how do we know it's the real person? Right. That that's sort of one argument. But even then, like I just think there's somebody at the match group that just doesn't like me. Um, but you know, it is what it is.

Uh I'll live. But yeah, T Twitter is uh is like this my lifelong goal is to get on ban from Twitter. Because it's been seven years. Yeah, I actually went to jail for a shorter period time than I've been in Twitter jail. So like, you know, I I was banned, went to prison, came out, and I'm still banned for you you like asked somebody to get you a lock of Hillary Clinton's hair. Wasn't that the the reason why? It wasn't that. It was it was I was teasing this woman who who I was who's like this very left wing journalist and I was kind of like ribbing her a little bit over

Politics and stuff like that. Apparently I went too far, but like it was obviously, you know, selective bias. I mean, it was like insanely selective for a lifetime ban, you know. It was a joke, uh I made about her her husband or something, and it was just like two more. And it's like look, words aren't that dangerous, you know? They're Did yeah.

Nobody's getting hurt by these words, you know, and they're going back and forth. It's a two way street, you know. But it you know, what I did was way too over the line and what she did was totally fine, you know. It was just this like insane So I'm hoping Elon or somebody Can get me unbanned because it's been seven years. Uh and I was

skyrocketing with followers and views. And that's the thing about cancel culture, right? You have somebody who's taking off Their narrative is is boosting They're improving I was improving my reputation. Dereprim was starting to look like the rear view mirror for me. I was moving on, the controversy was over, our revenue was doing fine.

And then You know Twitter said no. Right. And it's like If you try to stop people from like

taking back their narrative and you you you can halt them like that. It's a very dangerous thing for tech to be able to censor people like that. Like Imagine having somebody comment. really controversial and say, No, I wanna tell my side of the story and somebody says no. You don't get that chance. You know, it's kind of a disgusting thing.

Well, dude, we appreciate this, man. That you're you're a fascinating person and we hope that uh I imagine we'll be talking more Um I'm very curious to see how Doctor Doctor Gupta is gonna do. Um

But thank you for for coming and doing this. We were I guess we were like I'm not sure if he's coming or not. We're not we're it was fifty fifty chance, so I'm happy we made this happen and we appreciate you. Thank you so much, guys. All right, we'll talk soon.

Awesome. That's it. That's the pod.

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