#159 - Update on Michael Jordan's House, a Nine Figure Sex Toy Company & the Man with a Million Acres

I I don't think I would want to do something that high profile'cause if you screw up it would be a big deal. Oh look at you, you're afraid to fail now. Oh y y you make it big, you sell your company and now now you're like I I gotta I gotta watch my step. What's going on? Where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh? What would that guy do? I feel like I could rule the world and know why. Are you in a garage? Is that what that is? I am in my garage. We uh

We upgraded, we improvised, so we did this crazy thing where We had talked about on the podcast we were like shit, we need to like upgrade our setup. I think mostly it was you just telling me to get a haircut, which is fair. Uh and wear a shirt. Wear a shirt.

And uh I took that as I need a whole new studio. Uh so So basically these guys who are Um From Chicago, they're like twenty three year old guys who love the podcast. They were like they heard that.

And this is like their forte. They do like camera audio. They have their own podcast, they have their own YouTube channels. They're basically what I realized was I went and watched their YouTube channel. And his YouTube channel has like this guy Henry, his YouTube channel has like, I don't know Five hundred and Seventy subscribers.

So it's not like some big YouTube channel, but if you watch it It's the same level of quality of like Video, audio, and editing as like Casey Nistat's channel. And I showed this to our friend Sully and I go I go check these guys out. Like look at look at their channel. These are the guys coming this weekend to to make my studio.

He goes. He goes I remember when I was uh kinda like twenty one, twenty two, we were coming up. And what The kind of thirty and forty year olds used to say it was

Oh man, you guys have this huge advantage because you're like you're you're like digital natives, is what they were calling us. Like we grew up with a computer and the internet. Like I think we we got the internet and computers when we were like in sixth grade. I don't know about you, it was probably around the same, fifth, sixth grade, something like that. And so You know first. For our parents, they were getting a computer when they were thirty five or forty. So it's just like you know

You didn't have the you didn't have it to grow up on. And so he goes. These guys, this is the next the next wave. They're video native. Basically they grew up with a camera in their hand and they just like constantly shoot videos. They know how to edit it, they're not afraid to be on camera.

And like it's such a superpower, and I think it was so true what he was saying. I w you said one th line that I think is the real superpower, which is um being on camera. So for you and I be we're kind of like media people, so we're maybe a little bit more used to it than the average Joe. But even I am still very uncomfortable just talking to a camera and like looking at it. young people or not. I when I was at the airport I saw twelve year old kids

with like the phone on the ground with a pop socket. Right. And they were like filling and I could see that they were doing TikTok dances. And it was like That's like unheard of. for me because I'm like, Oh my God, you're gonna do that at the airport with people watching. Right, right. Yeah, the the upside is they all look cool. They know how to dance and they know how to edit videos. The downside is like, you know, they're like riddled with anxiety and stuff like that. So you know, it's not all it's not all good. But I w And they're not having sex, which is a topic we're gonna talk about. Um, but the other thing I was gonna say is

Let me ask you this. When you get a you're on Snapchat, right? You have Snapchat? Uh I ha no. I have an account. All right. So all right, O'Bray, you Abra you you gotta chime in here. How how old are you? twenty seven. All right, so you're more like us than uh like the people I'm talking about that are kind of like I'm not gonna say Gen Z I think those c I think those couple he is

He's a lot hipper. He's a lot hipper than we are. He's a little bit more into it. Okay, so So basically Uh when you have Snapchat, right?

So someone sends you a snap. Right? They send you a picture of something they're doing, something they're looking at. And you need to reply. Tell me, do you just type the reply like in the text version or do you send back a photo? That's so weird. Yeah, see that's crazy to me. Uh that is wild to me. I'm like, you say something, I comment like it's fucking like it's Facebook, right? I just write like

Oh looks fun. Cool. That's great, you know, like I'm like a ninety year old. You're talking about young people. Another interesting thing to do is when you ask a young person, or did you show me this, when you ask a a younger person What it ha what do you do when someone calls? If they put their hand for the people

Listening, I have my hand like I'm waving high, like high five. And they put their hand like a high five to the ear versus they put their pinky and thumb out like this. Well, or or or if you say, um, hey, do like a a gesture to to take a picture. So if I said to you, Hey Sam, take a picture. Yeah, you're gonna do this. That's a camera, yeah. There's not a camera.

Right. So so so what they do is they they hold up their their hand like this with their thumb like you're holding an iPhone, right? We're like out here with a a a Polaroid trying to trying to demonstrate what a picture is. Anyway, so Um, I don't even know why I'm talking about that, but basically These guys are you know, I I would say younger people are video native, and I think that's gonna be a huge, huge win for them because people like us are like self-conscious and like just don't know how to use the tools, right?

I wanna bring up a topic that's both related to This and something else. So At Sean's old office at Monkey Inferno. the guy who owns it, Michael Birch. But he had one or two things that really stuck out. And one of them was this Macintosh computer. It was a Mac Mac two.

Is that what's called? Apple too. So I'm gonna look that up. So The reason I'm bringing this up is I am building my studio to look good like yours. Um and I was looking thinking of like designs and interesting stuff to put in the back. And I also this whole NFT has got me

Uh interested in R and like, you know, just beautiful. Yeah, just like valuable or not valuable, beautiful, interesting, cool stuff. I've always liked stuff. Uh Just like Junk, right? Uh that's what I used to like. Uh but now I'm gonna try to get some nicer shit. Anyway.

I was Looking around How much do you think Uh So is an Apple two is an Apple two the same as a Mac

Is a m uh Macintosh too? Uh, I don't know. Well Wow. How much do you think an apple two?

That still works costs. I don't know, a couple of thousand, I'd say maybe Somewhere between two and five, it would be my guess. Two and five thousand. You can get one that's in pretty good condition for like five hundred dollars.

Well, you can get Want you can get a Mac Macintosh two, which I don't know the difference between the Apple II and the Macintosh two. You can get a Macintosh two that is still in the box for like a grand. And do you remember the commercials well uh when we were younger, we were in our teens, we were probably in eighth grade or ninth grade. Where

It was like a colored Mac. So it was like a blue it was called the i Mac, I think, right? Yep. You can get those for like three hundred dollars. Now, strictly speaking, like from like a collectible like Just it's interesting. It's um it's cool to look at. That's

Incredibly cheap. For A machine that's a Every single person who came to our office was like, Oh, this is awesome. Now, granted, it's tech nerds coming to the office, but They were like wowed by this thing. And there was like expensive art all up on the walls. Nobody cared about any of that.

People saw this old thing and then we would boot it up and they would turn on and they were like amazed by it. So it definitely Every single person noted uh commented on it. I think these types of like old computers, these vintage computers, I think these are gonna get really popular. And the reason I think that is I was looking up how much uh So for a gift, I thought about buying people a an iPod that wasn't connected to the internet.

Did I play this? No. Um, so I was gonna buy people uh like our investors, I was gonna buy them like a small thank you. I was like maybe if I spent two hundred dollars ahead, let's see if I can go and buy a bunch of if I can buy like twenty. uh iPods that aren't connected to the internet. And my plan was ruined because I'm like, Oh wait, you have to have

Uh iTunes and that doesn't even exist. So like this is pretty much meaningless. But these old iPods by the way iTunes exist. Well, but I mean like you who no one buys can can you even buy MP3s anymore from it? I don't think so. Yeah, yeah. You have to like have your own music. Yeah, like that. No one does that anymore. You we all stream and like these things didn't even have internet. I wanted it so you could, like, download it and then it would only work if you were attached to Wi Fi. But anyway. Uh

Oh. iPods Like old, old ones, first generation ones, are expensive, like five, six hundred dollars. And so anyway I think that both it'd be cool to have the stuff on your Dude, if an old iPod is five, six hundred dollars and an Apple two in the box or a Mac two in the in the box is also five hundred dollars.

Yeah, I I I definitely know which one I think has more. more like long term value here. Uh those those Those things are collectibles. I think you're you're spot on. I I would scoop up five to ten of those right now and just hold them.

Yeah, I'm okay, so look here's a vintage Working In w in good condition. Uh, Macintosh two for two hundred and fifty dollars. I'm looking at it on eBay right now. Here's a Macintosh.

Uh in the box for four hundred bucks. Ha ha It's pretty interesting, right? I think this this might become pretty popular, these old computers, and I think that it's kind of a cool idea. Yeah, I like that a lot. Um, those are good. And I I actually will go after this on eBay and try to scoop up at least at least two of those just to hold and see what happens. Um, all right, you wanna get into uh you have two updates and then we have an idea.

Two ideas. Yeah. Okay. So one update is on the Michael Jordan thing. So last episode we talked about Michael Jordan's house has been on sale for ten years. It was a it's a fifty six thousand square foot house. And um it was l originally listed for thirty million dollars. Now it's been price cut, price cut, price cut all the way down to thirteen million.

And it's still not selling. And this is after the last dance, it's after this giant boom and like trading card collectibles like the Michael Jordan rookie card. is going for almost two million dollars. And his fifty six thousand square foot house.

can't sell for thirteen, like something seems off. Like a little tiny three inch piece of cardboard can sell, but not this. So uh, and he's paying property taxes. I think somebody somebody said he's paid about a million dollars in property tax just while it's sat on the market. And so We threw this out there the last time we said, Hey, look.

Why don't we Either Collect just me and you or we crowdfund. Uh, why don't we buy MJ's house and like what can we do with it? And we got a bunch of good feedback. So I would say like There's a bunch of smart people who immediately point it out.

that one of our ideas, which was to turn it into some kind of Museum, the museum of Mike. Um you know the basketball museum. Would it work because you know the HOA the neighbors would never permit you to let like Tens of thousands of people come into their neighborhood and and go to this museum every year. Right. So that was.

There is gotta be a way around something. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When you start an idea, you don't think about all the different like small reasons why it might immediately fail. You think, you know, what if this works? And then you find try to find a way to make it work. Um but the mo more interesting one, in my opinion, was always the simpler one, which was You don't have to turn it into a museum. You don't have to get permitting.

You don't have to ha have guests coming in and operations folks. You just Treat it differently. You don't treat it like a house. You treat it like it's a monument. It's a piece of art. And there are paintings that sell for eight hundred, you know, eighty five million dollars.

And so if a painting could sell for eighty five million dollars, I think Michael Jordan's house, this relic of the greatest basketball player of all time. It's gonna be worth something. And so the idea would be You crowdfund it, you get, I don't know, five thousand people to each pitch in two grand. You buy the thing out for 10 million bucks.

And uh you hold it as a piece of art. And then the you know Well I there was a couple of good suggestions I thought came in through Twitter. So some of the good suggestions were You could list this on Rally Road. where people go to buy like, you know, vintage cars or

rare first edition Lord of the Rings book sets for thirty five thousand dollars that you you know five hundred people each buy it. A a fractional share of it. So that was one idea people liked. And the Rally Road guys said, Hey, we're interested. Let's talk. So talking about it. They did. They've replied to the tweet and then Rob the the I think he's the CEO, I don't know, his co founder.

Uh he emailed me yesterday and and so we're gonna we're gonna chat and see discussion. Why does everyone cool reach out to you? Bro, they know. They know. Damn. And I didn't get anyone hollering at me. Well are you

Are your DMs open on Twitter? My DMs are open, yes. I've also talked to him before through DMs because I was just like Rally's fucking awesome. So I had reached out to him actually. And that's we saying, hey, rally is awesome. Can I invest in this thing? So he knew I was a fanboy already. Um

But anyway, so that was one interesting thing. Some people in the crypto were like, dude, let's turn this into an NFT, bro. And uh so I talked to the the founder of uh of Nifty Gateway, which is just exploding. This this marketplace is just exploding for NFTs right now. So I asked him, hey. Would you like to dabble? And then the last thing was that some people were like, Hey And what did they say? Uh, he was like, Hey, this is cool, but he was like, you know, we're just crushing so hard on the digital stuff.

I don't know if we want to get into this physical thing. Uh, because there were some cool ideas from th from Twitter. Some people were like You know, let's say you came in and you bought a fifty thousand dollar chunk. So you you instead of the two thousand dollar entry, you go for fifty K. That should get you like if you present your your certificate of ownership, if you show your app and you show that you're you own a piece of this thing. Um, you should be able to have like a three night stay once a year with you and all your friends. We're gonna share MJ's house.

Exactly. So so you're not fully doing an Airbnb, you're treating it like it's art. But if you own a big enough share, if you're you know a super minority owner of this thing. Then you can actually stay one weekend a year. And I thought that was pretty dope. Um So anyways, there's some cool ideas. But then at the same time, I ain't got time to do this and neither do you, so

Um what's gonna happen from here? You're asking me? I don't know. I feel like you're kind of the leader on this one. Uh nothing. If I had that. Here and here's why. When I did my deal

Every smart person I talked to, what you know what they said? I bet you can guess what they said. No, no, what did they say? Do nothing for six months. Right. Don't invest on your hands. Yeah. Yeah. Don't invest.

And So many times I've been I I wanted to change and do something, and everyone has said the same thing, and I'm gonna try my hardest to stick to it. So that's one of the reasons why. Although That's probably a bullshit excuse. The reality is it's kind of an I I don't think I would want to do something that high profile'cause if you screw up, it would be a big deal. Oh look at you, you're afraid to fail now. Oh y you you make it big, you sell your company and now now you're like

I I gotta I gotta watch my step. What's going on? Where's the guy with the pirate ship tattooed on his thigh? What would that guy do? Dude, my first time buying like uh A real estate asset. And doing something like this.

Would be like I mean that would be national I mean, I guess yeah, I mean I'm Okay, I'm not I'm not saying you buy it. I'm saying Clearly the way to go here. is to crowdfund this thing because it's just more fun that way and you don't have to put out ten million dollars of risk capital. How many emails did you get?

So somebody oh yeah, that was the other thing. So somebody created a website. Uh Jonathan created a website. I think it's Like Buy m buy Jordan's House dot com or something like that. And I think he said, you know, pretty early on after the tweet, he said he had 200 people dropping their email. And I think about the same on Twitter said, I'm in, including a bunch of higher profile people. There's a bunch of people who are a bunch of really wealthy people. Found of companies, uh, owners of owners of businesses that were like, I'm in for five K, I'm in for 10 K type of thing. Now

Are they just talking? Is this real? I don't I don't know. We'll see, but I think it was cool. I mean the the little video that we had reached a hundred thousand people, I think, uh across a c a couple of different platforms. It so it was cool. And what we decided the takeaway from this is we gotta do viral clips all the time. We gotta Exactly. Wait, it's not even a conversation. This is now just a collection of clips.

Yeah, the cli and the clip the clip had sixty thousand views too. Uh your Twitter clip of you talking about it. Really? Yeah. Well well the shitty part is that it's you talking about it and me looking at Just like it kept showing my face and you're talking the whole time and I'm just

That's the way the world goes. You put the white man's face up there, the brown guy's just in the back. coming up with ideas and and handing them over. That's why they get our v voices confused, because they say I look like a bro, but I talk like a nerd, and you look like a nerd, but talk like a bro. Dude, that was the most spot on. I wasn't even I was like, I'm not mad at all. That is so accurate. And um you know, I it makes now I understand why people keep saying this thing that they get us confused. It makes total sense. Um

Let's talk about sex. Um So you have something on here. And you Uh before we get into it, I want to tell you a fun fact. So you

We have this list where Sean l and I list ideas. He has one thing and it says, um Why aren't young people having sex? And what are the opportunities here? And apparently thirty one percent of men eighteen and twenty four were sexually inactive before COVID. Yes. Inactive. Um and the tweet was from a guy named Nat Allison.

Um who does a bunch of cool stuff. The tweets aren't there anymore, uh for some reason. Um or at least I can't see it. Got canceled probably. Can't say apparently you can't you can't say men anymore. So this guy, Nat, is really interesting. His name's Nat Allison. Uh Google him. He's got like a cool website. He owns uh this agency business. Did you know that this guy so he's interested in this because he owns this thing called the um

I'll have to look up what's called, but it's a Kegel app. Do you know what a Kegel is? I do know what a Kegel is. It is the like Exercise you do with your private parts. Yeah. So basically it It makes it so you don't premature ejaculate. And I think women do it too. You know, I don't know. I think women do it because it it like it can increase like the pleasure, but also I think it's just healthy for you to do. Like it's just like a

It's just like a movement that's good for you, I guess. I don't know. And this guy, his name is Eliason, not Eliason. He has uh An app called uh Uh I I'll I'll look it up what it's called but squeeze.

'Cause to do to do a Kegel, you're basically trying to like Yeah, for a guy, you're basically trying to like flex your balls. That's the best way I could describe it. Um and and Virgo, I'm sure there's you know the the equivalent. But I don't know what it's called. It's called Stam Stamina.

Stamming. I don't know what the play on words is. Anyway It walks you through how to do these Kegel exercises and it makes like a hundred K a year. He just made it one time and it just ranks. What it's a crazy interesting Thing. Kegel exercise. I never I never knew that was a thing.

Uh Go ahead. Um okay so so we've talked about this before, and before when we said Uh I think you actually were the were the original person to kind of rant about this. You were like, dude, kids aren't having sex. You're like, I went to this you know, people make funny for the hot dog stand thing. They're like, We get it, you used to own a hot dog stand. The other story that I've I've heard you tell a number of times because very entertaining and I think it gets you hyped up is

You went to some camp. And they had a bunch of they had like a Gen Z, like you went to some summit and they had a Gen Z analyst there. And the Gen Z analyst was like, hey. All the kids are depressed and not having sex. And then you're like, dude, what's going on? And you talked about replica, which was this app, this messaging app where you message like a virtual girlfriend. And uh I tried it out, you've tried it out.

Um after you told me about it, I went and downloaded it. And it was okay. It was interesting. There's definitely a bunch of people who are really into this. It's like this AI virtual girlfriend. But I have a different

slant to it that I want to bring up here. So and by the way, this whole sex thing, this has been a problem in Japan, I think, for years. Right, right, yeah. There's like a you know, the sexless generation or something, they they call it like Um Okay, so I want to actually talk about a company that's

Based in Austin, right where you're right where right where you are. You might be able to see it if you look out the window. It's called Interactive Life Forms LLC. Do you know these guys? Uh yeah. I I know where their building is. I've seen their building. Do you know what they make?

No. I interactive do they make sex tiles? Interactive life forms. This is the maker of the fleshlight. And so I wanted to tell you about this. So I did a little research. I got a message from a founder of a tech company.

Uh I won't say his name'cause he said no. Uh he said, Don't say his name, but he messaged me and he goes, Dude Idea. Modern flashlights. I was like what?

He goes, flashlights and he breaks he broke it down for me. He goes The um the sex toy market is bigger than you think. He goes, uh female sex toys like a dildo or a vibrator. Or on the rise and there's this big like kind of like

anti stigma like people trying to remove the stigma around it. Uh I don't know if you've seen any of this, but it's like Kind of the feminist movement. Um, they call they call it sex positivity, which is basically like, hey, sex doesn't need to be taboo, it doesn't need to be stigma. Um it's okay to have sex that doesn't make you like, you know, a bad person or something like that.

And so there's this sex positivity movement, and with that has been this big boom. In sales of Sex toys primarily female sex toys. So I started looking at the most popular Male sex toy, which is

The fleshlight. And so here's some information about the fleshlight. Uh It was started by this guy, Steve Schubin. And this guy's super interesting. He Basically he's a si he's one of thirteen kids.

He uh go he plays college football, then he goes into the army, then he comes back and he's a police officer. with the SWAT team in LA. And then he like retires from SWAT when he's like thirty something because he's like I love Being in the police force, but um, it doesn't pay well. So I'm gonna start a business. And his wife is a pro tennis player. So this is he's got this hot tennis player wife.

And he's like, I'm gonna start a business. He doesn't know what he's gonna start. And by the way, do you know who that hot wife and Steve Schubin's son is? No, who? Aubrey Marcus, the founder of Onit. Oh no way. I didn't know that. Yeah. And he

Joe Rogan. Yes, because Flashlight was Joe Rogan's first sponsor that Audrey secured. That's amazing. Okay, so I'll I'll get into that. That's that's actually a part of this. So Um So he so years go by, he does nothing.

Then they're in their forties. Um h Steve's wife gets pregnant. And the doctor tells him, hey, you're in your 40s, so this is kind of like an at-risk pregnancy. Um so you can't Uh, you can't be having sex.

And he's like, okay, Doc, like, you know, what do you want me to do? I'm a six three red blooded American. What uh what am I supposed to do? And so um he starts thinking about it. And he goes. Why isn't there a Um

Why isn't there a a a a sex toy For men. And so he's he originally plans to make a mannequin, and in fact he in 1998 he gets a patent for a mannequin with sexual application. So it's basically like a doll that he wants to make. So he's trying to make this doll.

It puts in fifty K. And he starts working on this doll and he's he's trying to blend all these different polymers. How do you get this skin feel of this doll? How do you get the flesh to feel like flesh? How do you look like a doll, feel like a doll, uh feel like a human. And um And he makes it a family business. So he brings his sons into the to the table, they get a whiteboard out and they start uh brainstorming together as a family, which I find hilarious. Uh, because, you know, in my family, this is not a this is not a business we can start together.

So He he keeps going. Two years go by. He's put in a quarter million dollars now. He's sold zero, uh, zero zero product so far. And he keeps trying to make this full body doll. And he meets a guy one day, uh a friend of his, and his friend's like, Hey

Um, I think what you're doing is great. There's this weird taboo around this. But why not? More pleasure in the world. What's the problem? So he says, um, will you give me one? I'll I'll buy one off you. He says, cool, what's your address? I'll send you the doll. And he's like, no, dude, no way. I can't bring that doll into my house. He's like, just take out the part that's like the vagina of the doll.

And send me that, like put it in a little box and I'm you know my wife won't see it and uh just send me that. And so he's like, dude, if my friend who wants this No. Like can't buy this doll. This doll is dead. So that's why he pivoted from the doll to just the just the like, you know, just the the organ part of it. Just a single piece, one component.

And so he's like okay, how how do we brand this? So him and his sons are brainstorming and they're like What do guys like? Guys like tools. Okay, this thing's kind of like a flashlight. Okay, we'll call this the fleshlight. So that's how it gets its name uh during that process. And so he eventually this was like a father son project? Father Son Project Multiple. Sound weird, man.

And so um now years have gone by, they've put in over two million dollars, and this guy believes so much in this thing, he ramps up production, he's pumping out twelve hundred units a day before they've sold anything because he's like The world is gonna love this. They are gonna buy this thing. And um so he goes all in on this. to m to meet this, you know, future demand and Turns out they actually did it. So the fleshlight now.

These guys do, I believe, about a hundred million dollars in revenue. Uh, it's definitely above fifty. It's they don't report it, but it to me, I did some sleuthing and I think it's a hundred million dollar a year company, over a hundred employees. They um basically dominate the market for for for male sex toys now.

And uh, you know, if this guy who went all in on this thing, it ended up being a successful family business, which I think is You know, just a heartwarming story. What a crazy story. And and I had heard a little bit about it, but I didn't realize I didn't know all those details, but I the way. This is a this is the best part of the whole story. So he he opens up a facility in Austin. So he's manufactured near you. Um, then he has a one in Spain.

And he has one somewhere else in Asia, I think. And He has so much like like manufacturing capacity. So what do they do with the excess capacity when they when they have a little extra? Guess what they make? They make prosthetics.

For elephants who have had their legs blown off in the you know from from where there's mines in in in southeast asia Um so they're they are the top maker of elephant prosthetics in in South East Asia. That's their backup. That's their side business. What got you interested in this? Uh well when this guy said it, I was like the you know, the founder who messaged me, he Yeah, this is we're gonna may have to bleep this, but he goes, dude.

Every guy jacks off. There's gotta be a market. What if you exactly What if the she's like I don't own this product, you don't own this product, he goes, but What if this thing made it? Ten times better.

Isn't that crazy that there's still a taboo around this? That's gonna change, dude. The sex positivity thing for women, it's gonna affect men. I bet you you can make a modern day DDC version of the fleshlight. And so I started thinking about it. And start looking up, okay, how big is this? How big is this industry? And it is a pretty big industry. Like they do like The sex toy industry itself is about twenty billion

Dollars a year. What percentages to to men? So women, so th this is kind of I was trying to figure out the sales difference. So it's most it's dominated by female um sales. So the fleshlight is the biggest of males, but uh the female industry is much much bigger. About sixty five percent of women say that they have used one.

Um, there was a stat that said fifty percent of male men said that they've used one, which I don't believe. Um I don't I know a lot of dudes I haven't heard one ever talk about this, so maybe it's just happening on the download, but sex toy? Yeah, like I've never I've never had one conversation with a friend about a single.

Yeah, so Yeah, so I don't know if I believe that stat, but Um basically the European market is bigger than the American market. Like places like Italy, it's like super common, apparently. They're, you know, free love. Um places the fastest growing markets right now are India and China.

Where it's the most taboo. But what's happened is because it's all gone to e commerce. And the e-commerce companies are using very discrete packaging, like they send it to you and it looks like one thing, but inside is another. And so that's the like that's where this thing is growing. And so there's a bunch of startups in this space as well that are Um

doing like fifteen million a year, like love honey. I like just just check out this traffic. So Uh The top the top website for this, the top sort of Amazon for this thing is called Adam and Eve. Yeah, I was just I was just looking at Adam and Eve. Uh

'Cause they have stores all over San Francisco. They they have about eight million visitors a month to their e-commerce store, which is a huge e-commerce store. Uh Love Honey has about four million to their store. And what's interesting is there's all these problems, all this friction in trying to Build one of these companies because

Stripe won't let you take payments. But why wouldn't Stripe let you take payments for a deal? They say they say we don't um we do not do any sexual products. So that's so you can use Shopify, but Shopify uses Stripe. And so you can't do Shopify basically because Stripe won't allow it. So Adam and Eve, Love Honey, these companies, they can't Uh they can't process on stripe.

And so there's an opportunity, I think, for for, you know. building stripe for vice products because cannabis can't use stripe and neither can Any sex uh any any sex products? Uh porn can't use stripe and so If you know, just those three industries alone.

That's like multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of turnover. And so who's building stripe for vice? I don't know. I wanna go I wanna go look into that. Another one of these like opportunities is Um Is is is that

You can build a uh a brand that's figures out a new form of marketing because you can't advertise on Facebook. Or Instagram. um or any like kind of display network that's uh mainstream. For these products.

And so I was looking into how do they get around this, and I was curious, how would you get around this if you were trying to market one of these products? It's it's an interesting. Sort of like Job interview question I would ask uh somebody who wants to get. I would write articles on like You write articles that are yeah. So you have to write let me all right. So if we're talking about like a vibrator, you would write an article about like Uh

sexual health, I guess, or I don't know, whatever Oh w I mean I would have to I don't I would have to do research. What what A woman who is about to buy this, what is she what type of content interests her. And I would write that article and I would display it on Outbrain or I would display it on uh I don't know, where would I display it? It's hard.

So I I looked into how these guys are doing it and I think there's there's three interesting Pornhub. You gotta go you can do it Pornhub. So so they use the adult Ad networks like Traffic Junkie and Exoclick. So they advertise on porn sites, basically. That's that's a give that's an easy one. Pretty straightforward. Um The other thing that they do is they they do heavy like content. So So even though you can't advertise on um on Facebook.

And you can you're kind of limited on Google, you can do it for certain keywords and for just stuff that people are searching for. So if people are searching for what is the best one I should buy. What is you know, reviews. And so You remember how the cat the the the mattress company Casper was buying up the mattress review websites? Um and then like promoting Casper. So that's what these guys will do as well. They'll buy up the review sites.

And then they'll just put their products as the best reviewed product on there and they'll say, This is, you know, I'm an affiliate for this for this company. Um, so that's one way. And then the I thought the most innovative one. And th they also do like kind of direct so like you were saying Uh Fleshlight was one of the first sponsors on Joe Rogan. They'll do that. They'll go direct to podcasts or newsletters.

that are willing to take them as a sponsor. And they'll they'll go for it there. But Um, the last one I thought was interesting was Well, fleshlight did. This is a little bit, this whole segment's a little bit x-rayed to say, you know.

Um You know, apologies if you're listening to this with kids in the car. You know, I hope you've skipped forward at this point. But basically what Fleshlight did was. They wanted celebrity sponsors. Um so what they did was Yeah.

Nike goes to LeBron James and says, Okay, we want you to sponsor our stuff. Um So are they gonna get women to be the They got they went to famous models and porn stars and they created molds of them. And so it's like you can buy the I I forgot the I looked up this chart of who was the top selling

Skew of that. And so there's a woman Kayla or Shayla or something like that. I don't remember her name it was, but she's some model, she's some porn star. I don't know who she is, but she's famous. And they they they bring them in, they do a cast it a cast mold. Of her body. And then they turn that into a product, and then she can sell that product to her fans.

And so I was thinking if you were going to do this now. You have only fans where where You know. I think a billion billion plus dollars is being paid out to their creators. I would go to OnlyFans uh creators and I would do this.

the I would do that model for them. I think that would be probably the strongest distribution tactic you could get. Dude, what a fascinating thing. I uh Uh would you ever I would invest in this, but I wouldn't I would never work on this. I would never work on this. I've zero interest in this from the from the you know, like to actually like pursue it.

But I do think it's one of those things that nobody talks about. And so because nobody talks about it. It's both interesting and it's surprising when you look into it how this whole system actually works. So I like You know, just like I love the Silk Road. But I would never go on the Silk Road and buy drugs, but I like to learn about it and see how it worked and how big it was and who was behind it and how how they kept it stealthy. Like that's fascinating to me, just like I like watching prison shows, but I'm not trying to go murder anybody. I like watching, you know, bank heist, but I'm not planning to rob anybody. That's how I am with this these types of products.

So at the Adam and Eve store, or what was it called? Uh Yeah, Adam and Eve stores. Um I saw the th we had so many locations in San Francisco. We probably had three or four or five different locations. Um It's a pretty huge business, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, currently owned by, I believe, a private equity company.

Um That is also another Fascinating business. Did you research that? Uh no, I didn't research that one, but I I found one other uh two other like interesting things about how they how they market these things. I thought was pretty clever. Uh it just shows.

You know. What Entrepreneurial creativity here. All right. So Uh, there's one company that's doing these like uh t you know like the the sort of MLM model which are which is

Uh you get one person who's kind of a seller for you and they have a party. So this is like the old Tupperware parties. Um, they call them passion parties for this. And so they have women invite their friends over and they're called passion parties where they show the different toys and what what they could do or whatever. I don't know how this this sounds like the most awkward party to me, but apparently it's working. Um, the second one that I thought was super interesting was Um They basically there was a company

called um uh diamond products and they make they make uh some brand of something I have no idea. Um And they couldn't advertise in any traditional channel. So they went and they bought. Um Sir Richard Condom's company.

So they said, Oh, condoms are allowed to be advertised on TV and in on on on uh different websites. It's more loose to s to uh to Like Trojan, right? We've all seen Trojan ads on TV, for example. So if the restrictions are loose are there, they went and bought that company and then on their website they just s they upsell. Other products basically, and so he he went and bought this company because he goes they're sold in whole foods. He's like, This makes it so easy for me to advertise because now I own this little thing. He's like, It's my Trojan horse. Ha ha ha ha. Like, you know, this is how I advertise my sex products company. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. And you know, I think if you did this with Instagram models and only fans. You could basically just copy the um

What's that watch brand MVMT? You can copy the the the movement movement watches brand. uh model and and try to, you know, they they went to a hundred million in sales and watches. I bet you could do the same. uh using their influencer s uh strategy. Dude, how interesting. Like I

I uh I love learning from these types of people. I I don't even like And I don't even like going to this. I went to the fleshlight website. I don't even like going to that. I think Close the tab. Yeah, I think it's weird. I'm on my work computer, just so anyone

Uh uh hub spotless. Yeah, this is working. I apologize. My uh my my wife's dad listens to this podcast. I I'm just gonna tell him, hey, don't don't listen to this one. I apologize if he listened to it. Well it was a fairly academic discussion about something. Well, the worst part is now my now I'm getting retargeted like crazy because I was doing research on this for the pod. And now all my ads are completely uh Messed up. Well, do you want to talk about another interesting person? Yes. Or do you want to talk about an idea?

Person make this up. Okay. We're gonna do a uh an interesting person. Okay, there's this guy who we're gonna do Billy of the Week here. With this guy and I by the way, I think we're gonna do this. We've discussed doing this every Friday. Maybe we will. But Google we need like a jingle for the billy of the week. It needs to be like, you know, the Billy of the Week. Somebody make us a little jingle for that.

That would be pretty cool. Um We do need that. Google Brad Kelly and make sure you spell it like B R A D. So Brad space K E L L E Y Okay. If you're on your phone, do it. Brad Kelly. Now you're gonna see a picture of a guy with a red beard. You see the red beard?

I think. And then two over, you're gonna see a picture of an old guy. With a longer like a he looks like uh like Mark Twain. Yep, see it black and white. So that's the same guy. The phot he's just older now. So

This guy, he's so interesting to me for a couple of different reasons. So this guy's name is Brad Kelly. He at this point, he's probably in his 60s. And he's known as uh the man with a million acres. That was a headline that was written in the New York Times about him. And they wrote it about him uh because he is one of the largest landowners in America. At one point he was number three or number four. And he's kind of known for being incredibly reclusive. So he doesn't do any interviews. He doesn't do anything like that, but he's Bad to the bone. He's a really interesting guy. And I read a little bit about him and I've kind of got a feel for this guy, and he's so intriguing to me. So he was born

Uh you know, he's sixty five years older ish. He was born in Kentucky. Uh went to college in Kentucky, but at age nineteen dropped out because he started buying warehouses. And he started making enough money and leasing out warehouses that he goes, All right, I'm gonna do this. I don't need school anymore. And Eventually he started renting them out to people who were building stuff, so creating little miniature factories. Um he would fix them up and lease them to people.

And eventually he saw that people were using them to store tobacco. And one of his tendons moved out. And he got whole he he they left a machine that turned tobacco and like pumped them into cigarettes or you know, like a like a rolling machine or something like that. And he was like, Well, I got this machine, let's try it.

And so he started making cheap cigarettes and eventually call he rolled the uh he made it a proper company and he called it Commonwealth Brands. And if you Google Commonwealth brands, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I recognize some of the brands. They're like Uh I think it's like fifteen or so cigarette brands. Yeah, it's like I think Parliament's that's like Uh when I was a kid, that would like we would joke, like if someone smokes parliament, that means they were like a bro kid. Um Uh but he made cheap cigarettes. And after 10 years, he sold the cigarette company for a billion dollars.

And I hate smoking and I don't think it's cool to smoke. Um, and he dead doesn't die there. And he did but he didn't hide that. He goes, I've never defended smoking and I hope that it will be phased out of society, but I did it because you know it made I made a living doing uh you know, it m it made a living for me. And using almost all I love when billionaires say they they're just trying to make a living. It's like no, you made you made like a billion livings. That's a lot of living. You made a lot of livings. And With all this money, he did a couple of interesting things. The first thing that he did, well, he didn't do it first, but the first interesting thing is he bought Lonely Planet. You know what Lonely Planet is? I've heard that name. What is that? Is that a dating site? That's a dating site. I bet you if you look at your uh

Your book collection, you might have a Lonely Planet book. It's a travel website and book company. Oh, okay. And it was a big it was a really big deal for many years. And then when digital came along, it got crushed. And he bought Lonely Planet for seventy million dollars and he had us and they probably had three hundred employees. And he had a a kid that he liked, ha somehow met this young guy who was twenty four. And he put him as CEO and they never signed a contract. They just shook hands and they go, All right, you're CEO now.

You know, talk to me if you need me. Yeah. And This kid ran it and it didn't do so hot. I mean it Like

It would have been cool if there was a better ending to that part of the story. Either through a combination of the twenty four year old sucking and Covid, they sold it. Uh, for like fifty. So he didn't make money on it. Um but What he did with the rest of his money is he bought ranches and leased them back to the owners. And they make a little bit of profit, but not a significant amount of profit. And at this point

He owns um Over a million acres in America, which is a huge, huge, huge amount, making him in 2012 the fourth largest landowner in America. The guy never does interviews. He you can't find him if you want to. He's really hard to find. Uh the only reason people really truly know about him is at one point he sold one of his ranchers for four hundred million dollars.

Mm. really interesting guy. I like him because He's uh I think that like I get caught in this world on Twitter of like

Oh building. Build in public, you know, what's your MRR? I gotta go to executive coaching. And it's so nice to hear from a guy. This guy actually seems like a pretty thoughtful guy, but he definitely gives off the redneck vibe. Uh obviously he's highly intelligent, but They say that like he goes to his ranches and he likes to drink Bourbons bourbon and wear a kilt.

So he's like kind of a wild guy. He's into some weird shit, all right. Yeah, but pretty interesting guy. And I wanted to bring this guy up because I bet most people have never heard of him. Uh but so interesting. He also owns Do you know what Kentucky Downs is? The horse horse truck?

Yeah, he owns that. Oh wow. And so he just owns all types of real estate and that's what he put all of his money into. Very interesting person. Uh yeah, this is this is cool. So w why were you saying the part about people um

Who have like executive coaches and what what was the contrast there? So to explain that one? Like I see people who've got like small ass companies who like are not even They're they're like barely just started and they're like tweeting out like leadership quotes or they're talking about like uh how they need to be more inclusive at their company or this and that. And I just get sick of this hype thing and I see other people like, Oh, build in public. Uh and and I'm guilty of all this as well.

Um, but like all the and we're part of the hype cycle, right? We're media. But it's cool to see someone who you've never heard of who just is anonymous and shuts the fuc up and just works and does cool stuff and has a cool life. And it's entirely like you know, everyone's talk like I got in a fight on Twitter about people which uh about buying domain names. You think this guy knows how knows how to buy a domain name? In one of the interviews, he said he he's he doesn't know how to use email. Right.

Yeah, this guy's not vegan. Yeah. No, this guy eats vegans. Right. This guy's made of leather. Uh yeah, okay. So you just like that he's like kind of like a tough guy, rough guy, business guy, doesn't give a fuck.

And uh everybody else, you know, makes such a big deal of little things is kind of what I just think it's cool to see to he to hear different perspectives. And I'm sure that uh He does a lot of bad stuff. I mean he owned a cigarette company, right? Like that's kind of Pretty shitty. But uh It was just cool. It's cool to have a different perspective and this guy, if you Google him

I'm pretty sure there's only three pictures that I've I've researched this guy a lot. I I've only found three pictures of'em. And he's worth three or four billion dollars. I like it. All right. He is indeed. The Billy of the Week.

Um I wonder I wonder Who I wonder how people will will react to this guy, because I think some people are like so anti-cigarettes that they're like You are you know, y that y you're saying that you You kinda idolizing this guy who is a uh You know who did bad things, like a w you know, like a warlord almost. And so

I don't know. You're you were the one who also said you would not invest in Joule, right? Was that you? Yeah, look, I'm not I'm not defending this person's actions. I think but I think that no matter how evil or horrible someone is, there's you can always find something interesting. Maybe saying Admirable is a bit of a stretch, but you can always find something interesting, no matter how bad someone is. And I don't think this guy's necessarily a bad guy, but yeah, he I mean He fucking he sold poison. Yeah. It's pretty.

See I think of it I think I don't know, maybe I'm a little disconnected from reality, but for me I'm like I don't like movies where everybody is a good guy. I would not play a game. A video game. Where you just walk around as a good Samaritan. Like those aren't fun to me. And I think that the real world has All kinds of people, shapes, colors, beliefs, all all kinds of different things.

And I'm interested in The variety of ways that people live their life. And I'm glad that people live their life doing all these different things. Even though a lot of them are like

Villains or a lot of them I'm not saying this guy's a villain, but like I think that's just the way the world is, and I think it's crazy to believe that the world shouldn't be that way or won't be that way, where People are going to live their life doing different things. Maybe this guy likes to drink bourbon and wear a kilt on a farm that he owns. Like, all right, great. I'm glad that character exists. I'm glad that that that you know, I'm glad these characters exist. I think that. Um, most people will not feel that way. Most people will say, Well

This person's a bad guy. Um You know, he shouldn't exist. And I don't know. I I find that to be that's just not the way I think about it. I believe every great man or every great woman is also a bad man.

So well what I mean by that is if you are at all if you're considered great at anything Or one of the best, inevitably you have em enemies because you can't make everyone happy. Right. Now by the way, can you tweet that out? So I'm doing this thing. I'm getting uh behind me. Well one of the things that's gonna go behind me is I'm pre I'm getting these laser etched Signs That are tweets, basically. It's called laser tweets.com.

And so uh You could basically get a any tweet turned into a wooden Laser etched sign. And I'm gonna put I'm gonna hang a couple of my favorite quotes and tweets behind me. And one of them, one of my favorites is every great man is also a bad man. And so I need you to tweet that out so that I can do it. But what you can't do is you can't, or you can do person.

Um, if you if you want to not make it gender specific here, but I need you to tweet that out so I can I can get that one made. You're gonna get you're gonna get on my wall. I don't think I may I think I made up that phrasing, but uh uh I I read it in a book and uh I don't remember exactly how they phrased it, but that's how I phrased it. But I believe it to be true. And dude, I did so much research on this guy that I went in I went to land forums. So a really interesting research tactic that you should do is you type in whatever you're searching for. Like fleshlight, and then you type in forum. Right.

And then you are brought to user generated content of message boards and what people are saying. Or you could do the same thing, but you just type in the word Reddit. It's pretty sick. And I went to land forums where this guy bought people's land and they go, Yeah, you know, or someone's like, hey, this guy named uh Brad Kelly offer to buy my land. w who sold to him. And people were like, Yeah, we sold to him. Uh he's fine enough, don't but don't bother us and offered us a fair deal.

And so they're like, Well, and we all and people said, Well and we read about him doing cigarettes and that kinda sucks, but He's never caused us a problem. So anyway. Every great man is also a bad man. I like it. Uh did you want to do any any of these other ones or are we saving them?

Uh, I think this one Should all they should be saved. Okay, I have one quick one because I don't really have much to say, but we talked about it. Or we could do the N D V C one. Okay, I'm gonna do a one quick plug for these guys that took an idea we talked about and they made it. So we talked about levels.fyi.

which is a salary comparison website. We had a whole episode about like open salaries and Should you or should you not, transparent data, how that helps. Blah blah blah. And we said hey levels does this for the tech industry where you can go see all right if I'm a Facebook pro product manager level five. What will I make if I live in Seattle? What will I make if I live in San Francisco? What's the benchmark? What are the me what is some data so I know if I'm getting if I'm getting hosed, if they gave me a fair job offer or not fair job offer.

And so We said, dude, somebody should do this for other industries, because this is awesome. Um, why isn't this happening in others? So these guys made medlevels.fy and it's basically Dr. Pay. Um and so they if you go to it You can see they don't have a ton of data yet.

But um they're getting some they're getting doctors to to put in how much they're getting paid based on where they live and what type of doctor they are. I think it's great, super simple. It's just basically an air table. displayed on a website. So really easy to build. And uh No, it's uh Google Forms, I think. Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying like in in theory, right? It's like such a simple

Simple product to do. So medlevels.fy. Good good job by those guys. If you're a doctor listening, go put your shit in there. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I was looking at this. Um, all right, we'll wrap it up by talking about one more thing. And maybe we should put this in the beginning, but Let me ask you, how has your angel investing gone.

So far. I'll tell you in ten years. That's the problem with angel investing. But How many deals have you invested in? Uh I think a little under twenty, maybe like eighteen, something like that. Eighteen companies we've invested in.

Deployed about I don't know, a million and a half, two million dollars, something like that. And do you feel confident that you have some winners? Uh yeah, definitely there's some winners. Um No, we'll see. I think any anything anything can happen, but I would say I'd be surprised if out of these eighteen

If we don't have You know, two companies that are worth a billion dollars or more. I'd be surprised. So Well That's pretty sick. So we um a few weeks ago I

tweeted out something that Andrew Chen said. Basically I asked Andrew Chen, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz what his advice to me for angel investing was, and he told me his opinion and I tweeted that out. People shit on me, even though I was like, I'm not saying this, I'm just Or I'm just like I'm the messenger. Yeah, like I'm just like reporting on someone interesting with opinion, but I did tend to agree of on a couple of the things and one of them was that

There's this narrative that you There's this narrative of people who hate V C And they're like I would rather grow slower and it's like okay, that's cool. Do that.

But they also say uh profits matter, you know, like and they they love to mock Silicon Valley companies. They're like, dude, these guys, you know They don't know anything about profits. Sorry, I'm just over here running a profitable business, just growing steady every year. And so they they like to get on that kind of high horse. Which is crazy because like Both can exist and be wonderful. But

There was this guy who I really like and I don't mean to shit on him at all. Um his it was called N D V C. And it was It was kinda weird. I don't know why it was a venture capital firm because It's whole shtick was basically we invest in bootstrap businesses that want to grow slowly.

Um, they didn't exactly say slowly, but it was for bootstrapped companies, which is Again, a little bit of an oxymoron, why is a bootstrap company gonna be taking venture capital? Right. But a lot of people really liked it and the guy who ran it, I forget his name, he I met with him, awesome guy, and they went out of business this week. Nice, I think is his name. Bryce, I like Bryce. Bryce is a good guy, but the model didn't work.

And I wanted to bring this up because something that Andrew said was He said two things. He was said Uh, invest in quantity. So just kind of throw money at a bunch of stuff. So like anything that seems promising, just Kind of mindlessly. Invest in it.

And second Make sure it's growing three X a year. If it's not, then it's not good. And a lot of people didn't like when I said that. And they didn't like it, I think, because it kind of hurt their feelings of like, Well, you're saying I'm not worthy of venture capital. And the answer is Is Yeah, you're not. Right. You're you're not. And but that's okay. That doesn't like you shouldn't be offended.

Um Right. You don't have to shut down your business. That just means this type of asset, this type of venture, you know, venture um capital is chasing a certain profile a company and you may not fit that profile. And by the way, I think that most people I bet you

I mean, this sounds so douchey. I bet you I've made significantly more money than a lot of people who have raised Absolutely. And absolutely I was telling somebody this the other day, I was like Um, I was like, you know, media companies, we're talking about media companies. And you know, you guys just sold your you guys are media company. And it wasn't the biggest exit ever. It's not like, you know, some insane thing.

But I was like, dude, he I don't how much did you raise total? Like a million and a half dollars, two million dollars, something like that? A million. A million dollars. Right. So It took so little money.

And and not so give the give the profile. It was a million dollars and it took you how many years from start to Finish. Um liquidity. Uh start as in we raised money to finish uh less than five years. And

I made Eight figures. Right. Exactly. And so and you owned a you know m majority of the business or whatever. So like because you didn't have to raise all this money and dilute yourself over and over and over again from round after round after round. And it's like there are if you look at companies that are selling for a billion dollars where the founder owns four percent or two percent or seven percent.

And um, you know, there's not like and they and they sweated it for 10 years and uh every hair on their head is gray because uh because of that path. So it doesn't The size of the exit is not not linked really to the to the uh outcome for the for the founder themselves. I agree, which proves that we're not or I I know I'll speak for myself and I I'm I I think you you're not shitting on this this idea of anti V C whatever, but This company went out of business and it goes against this narrative of like if you're gonna give money to venture capital.

Or companies that fit the profile of B C you want them to be what many would dis think or describe as reckless. Right. Well one thing I didn't get. W why did they go out of business? So so basically they couldn't raise more money was the idea.

Yeah, right, that's how a VC fund goes out of business. And he said in his thing, he's like, We invested in 10 companies, uh or whatever. He gave some numbers. So tell me that he goes. They were all bootstrapped and profitable. And they're all still going and they're all forty you know he said something like We've invest in these, they're all still going, they're all still profitable. But we couldn't raise any more money. It's like what what do you I don't understand what what is his reason why did they go out of business? He he kind of sounded like he was crying a little bit, like

He was kinda whining because he's like Our LPs didn't like our model so they pulled. The plug because you know, whatever.

Did I I didn't read the thing very carefully, so you tell me. You you looked into this. No, I mean yeah Why is he saying they failed? I don't think he was whining. I think he was just saying the fact that like most people don't like this idea. and weren't willing to stick it out. And I don't blame them. Because if you go to Indy.bc, the website, it's a video of a unicorn head on fire. As if like they're anti unicorn. And I in my head I'm like his returns are good. If his returns are good. But the returns aren't as good as other stuff like that. So that's what he needs to say. It's not that people don't like this. He needs to say

I was wrong. My returns weren't as good as I thought they would be, and they were not good enough to get more money. Because people invest I invest in V C funds. I also would invest in real estate, which has a different profile. I'll invest in crypto, which has a different return risk return profile. I invest in many things. And so That's why I thought it was kind of whining because I didn't

He didn't just say the honest truth. I had this idea that this would be a great way to invest. And my but my returns were actually shitty and therefore I couldn't raise more money. And either that's true. Yeah.

Returns were actually good, and he sucked at going and getting new investors. I didn't there's only two ways to go about it, right? Like I didn't understand. I didn't I stopped reading because I didn't he didn't he wasn't saying the truth in my opinion. No, I mean he said the truth. He said that uh like our strategy, a lot of LPs bailed. Uh it cost us eighty percent of our LP base. They didn't want to come back. Um and it was just yeah, the strategy didn't Didn't work in the sense of investors Did he post his returns?

No. Okay, that's the thing he needed to say, right? He's saying They didn't like our strategy. It was so He was he's kinda just like patting himself on the back, I felt. He's like they didn't like that we were going against the grain, going against the V C thing, and they had to pull out because of that. It's like well

Is it that they didn't like what you were doing, or is it that It wasn't working and the returns weren't very good and they didn't believe the returns were gonna be very good. I don't know. I'm being harsh on the guy, I don't know the guy, but No, he's cool. And I'm not Bringing this up to show and I'm I think it's cool we took a shot.

It was a bad shot though, and that's that's great, right? You take swings, sometimes you miss. For sure. But uh I think though it's portin It's important that we look at what this what's What does this mean here? And I think that someone like Andrew Chen, who's this From the outside, you think of him as like an elitist like

Went uh uh I don't know, he just like give this vibe that he's like a a an elitist type of guy. Um But And and so and he kind of represents a lot of the people like him, right? These like VCs who like oh like fuck these tech bros. And the reality is though is that that strategy of like doing stuff that appears to be reckless from the outside.

it is the right strategy. It just feels really uncomfortable for a lot of people. Dude, if you if you d it's it's a classic, don't hate the player, hate the game. It's not that the it's not that VC's decided, oh, you know what I'll do? I'm going to invest in a bunch of companies and one or two will return the fund and everything else will go to zero. It's not that they want that. Right. That's actually extremely

Stressful for them. Um, that hey, if I get into this company that becomes a$10 billion plus company, I'm a hero and I'm the best. And if I just miss them and I invest in a bunch of other good companies that didn't quite get there, I suck and I can't raise my next fund and I'm out of a job. And um And so so so it's crazy to me that like They're not picking this, that just is the nature of the game, and they have to play it if they want to succeed at it. It's like in any game theory.

Um It will the game will the players in the game will eventually find the metagame, the strategy. That is the optimal strategy. And if you just Because of your like, you know.

your opinion and your personality and your morals don't want to play it. Cool, that's fine, but you're just not going to get you're not going to be playing the optimal strategy. You're going to eventually lose the game. And so I I think it's crazy that people hate the VCs when it's just that's the way that innovation works. The innovations that break through. Become humongous. And the innovations that don't.

Become zero. And uh or close to zeros. And the the winners are so big that that's They dominate all the returns. But then there's this other ground where it's like F V C, which Me personally, I'm on that boat. Where I want to be a VC, but I don't want to take VC money. And that that's this other group of people. It's like, dude, they all can exist.

Like right. And that's why that quote is so insightful, right? Don't hate the player, hate the game. Cool. You can hate the game. That's allowed. That's in the quote. Um You're allowed to hate the game and say, I'm gonna play a different game. No problem. You can play games where you bootstrap, where you don't raise VC money, where you you don't do business at all, you go be an employee somewhere. No problem. Uh that's always an option. Well I guess we just did a little rant, but I wanted to bring that up. Um we'll see if this episode turns out to be anything interesting. Um

I'll bring you. How we do? B plus. I want the graphics guys to like slam a big B plus all over the screen. All right, why B plus? You gotta give give the people that your explanation. Why why why are you saying what you're saying? I mean I It was good research, but it just wasn't as juicy as it could be. It was good. I've never seen Sean more animated than when he talks about flashlights, by the way. Yeah, I was super into that, to be honest. I uh it got ruined when I went to the website. It's pretty

Frickin' disgusting. But Yeah. Did you go to the website? No I did all my research, but I didn't go to their website.

It's not Great. It's pretty gross. Um But no, I think it's interesting. I think what we'll have to do is um I think uh like

If we did an entire episode on Fleshlight or an entire episode on this guy, Brad Kelly, I think it would be crazy fascinating. More? I thought I thought about you saying I went too much into it. No, that the the flashlight was the best part. I'm just saying you're very animated about it. Yeah, I was doing here and I I have ro I have space, but it's cold, so I have to talk in an animated way to like not free my ears. If you're passionate about flashlights, it's okay. So I've been listening I listen to a true crime podcast every night, which is weird that I'm in bed, like with my wife about to go to sleep, hearing about like how this guy just like murdered and raped these people. Um But

It's this one lately called Generation Y. It's really popular and all it is is two guys discussing crimes and mysteries ranging from nine eleven to serial murders to the Bermuda Triangle. All the all that type of thing. And all they're doing is talking and retelling a story. We should definitely just do that with one interesting person. Yeah. I think that's great.

Um although If it's not true crime, I don't know how interesting people how interesting people would be in it. Um if you told A sixty to seventy to ninety minute story in the same way that you told that flashlight story. Um

People would love it. I could tell because I could I was enthralled by it. What's the first story we could tell? How could we try it?

Well, um One time we talked about this fr the French Bill Gates, that that guy was so intriguing to me. Um Uh to do sixty minutes, that's like you can really only tell like your own story or like some something you really go or like a you know, the American Kingpen story, you can like retell it retell the book basically as a as a podcast. Well, that's what you're doing at the end of the day, which is you're just reading

fifteen articles and you're telling the long story about it. And What you could do is Uh one of us is the more More researched.

And the other one listens and asks questions. Okay. I'm down to try it if you have an idea. Am I wrong, Abreu? I mean it could work. I'm just I don't know how you can make it that exciting. Like true crime, there's suspense, there's mystery, we know what's gonna happen.

I don't I guess business maybe like Big business scandals you could do that with? No, dude. You do it exactly like you did the fleshlight the origin stories. Yeah, I think origin stories are good, right? That's what I tried to do with the fleshlight guy. I was like Basically you you tell how this thing came to be. Um I think you could do it that way.

It works. I I but I agree with Sean. I don't know how you get sixty to ninety minutes out of it. I think you basically for forget the six minute minutes. That doesn't matter. It could be twenty minutes, it's no issue, but Um It's like just a well told story. A well researched and therefore well told Story about something that happened. I honestly know, like for me, I started listening to this YouTube channel that basically is like it's like book summaries.

But um Actually done good. I I actually like it. And um's it called? A productivity game. As a YouTube it's a YouTube channel with about half a million, I think, subscribers or something like that.

I might I could be wrong on that, but it has a lot of subscribers. Um but I've listened to probably 10 of their book summaries of just books I've had I bought. I just haven't got to. I'm like, do I really want to go read like Made to Stick? Or can I just like watch a seven minute video and like Oh, those are the four principles of made to stick. Cool. I still might read the book, but now I know if it's like interesting or not. And so similarly.

I'm reading like You know, whether it's um Like for example, I read this book, uh, PayPal. Whatever. the PayPal origin story or whatever.

If we just retold that. It's like a you know, just take the book and then turn it into a twenty minute retelling of the story. Um, I think that's pretty that could be pretty. Oh, I know that would work. American Kingpin would be great. There's this awesome podcast called We Study Billionaires, which sounds lame, but it honestly just like You guys know it's they're huge and it's really good.

Um And they'll read a book on someone or just a blong article and just retell the story. Right. It's really good. I love this podcast. It's called The Investors Podcast. We never heard of this?

Yeah. Either good, maybe. I know they're I know their thumbnail, the red thumbnail. They're huge, yeah. Forty million downloads they have. So that would work. Um I guess we're

We should publish what us talking right now. But speaking of books, you know what I'm doing is This isn't the one I'm doing with it. I'm just gonna read one book this year, but I'm gonna study the fuck out of it. Yeah. I'm sick of reading like two books a month and not remembering anything. Yeah, I'm just uh for me, like YouTube is just so much better. Like I'm just going deep on like

you know, like uh Charlie Munger, Peter Lynch YouTube stuff. And I'm just like Watching watching so many of their videos or listening to their videos and uh There's just a lot of wisdom in there. And Charlie Munger said this thing, he's like He's like, I don't want to read the news. He goes, I want to read something that

It made sense 30 years ago. It makes sense today. It's gonna make sense 30 years from now. And I'd rather just read that 10 times than read like whatever the latest thing is. And that's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. I I agree. Um all right. Well Um

Let's bounce. I'm gonna get my shit set up. Uh By the next podcast better. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm put my all in it like the day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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