#186 with Marc Lore - Brainstorming with Billionaire Marc Lore on What He Would Build Today and the Future of Ecommerce

I wanna create a company and I wanna sell it for a hundred million plus to Walmart or Amazon in three years. What opportunities exist in the e com wor or in the commerce world? that Amazon or Walmart would buy my company because they desperately need something that I'm selling or some type of solution that I've created. Would you like him to do anything else for you, Sam? The most specific question. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

I put my law in it like a day song. On the road, less travel, never looking back. All right. Today we have Mark Lori on the podcast. This guy is an OG of e-commerce. He sold diapers.com to Amazon for like, I don't know,$600 million. He created jet.com and sold it to Walmart. For three and a half. billion dollars. Good guy. He came on and uh me and Sam were pretty blown away. Like we

kind of little fanboys of his right now. So So we enjoyed the episode. He had a bunch of good ideas. He talked about how to go raise a bunch of money to go after a big vision. He had some ideas in healthcare. Sam asked him a great question, like If I wanted to start a company today.

that it could sell for a hundred million dollars to Amazon or Walmart. What product would you recommend I start? And he had a Fantastic answer. So He had ideas at the at the end. And at the beginning he talked a little bit about

His kind of approach to Why he bought the Minnesota Timberwolves and how he's gonna run the team. How he builds his team, how he hires people, stuff like that. So The beginning is more philosophy, the end is ideas. And he also had a great a a great answer. I asked him like when you bought the the basketball team, you just like send a huge wire.

Um like just hearing those details are really interesting. But we do a whole long Debrief at the end of this episode, which You might even find more interesting the actual episode because it's always fun to like discuss uh like I always find the recap to be one of the most exciting. So give it a listen. Yeah, but he was great. I think you're gonna love it. And we liked him so much, we want him to come back on. One hour was not enough. And here's what we ask you to do.

Um listen to the episode. If you're liking it. He said he's big on LinkedIn. So go to his LinkedIn. His name is Mark Lori. L last name is L O R E. Um

And just go pop comment on one of his LinkedIn posts and just say, Hey, if I like if you like the episode, just tell him love the episode. Um come back on. And I think if he gets enough messages, we will be able to bring him back on and go deeper on a bunch of Ideas that we didn't get to do today. All right.

Here's the episode. Enjoy. Um okay cool. So we have a guest here. Sam, do you wanna do you wanna tee him up? Who who's who is on the line? Yes. So Ecommerce tycoon.

Successful billionaire, and as of two tausin сеvent. is exceptionally jacked and bald. Mark, I have to ask you, which of these is your favorite part of Jeff Bezos? Sam's been polishing that one up for the last hour, I bet. No, uh

Mark Laure, we have um Mark, you've got a lot of stuff. You've started four different things, right? Four different startups. That I've uh successfully exited. The most popular one is probably a few more that are uh in stealth. That I'm really excited about. Maybe I can share a little bit about but Yeah, we wanna we wanna learn all about it. But the biggest one was um Jet.com. That's one probably everyone knows.

Uh, before that you did diapers dot com, which you sold to Amazon for Five hundred and fifty million bucks ish. That one might have been bigger because that was sold to Amazon very early and Amazon appreciated a lot since then. So maybe that one I don't know, you tell us which one is which one ends up bigger. Is it the early The early one or jet? I think No, J definitely.

I mean stock doubled uh over the last four and a half years. So that was that was a good one. I gotta thank you for that. When they bought you um I bought the stock'cause I was like, yeah, there's plenty of room to run here for Walmart e commerce and uh yeah, I feel like I was a part of the company. I won a little bit as well, just off the news. And you um and then you also sold a company called The Pit.

Uh which you still the tops. That was like for five point seven, right? Back in the day. In the day. And uh you prior to that you were uh you worked in banking. But then before that you were a runner. I uh so I was a runner. I I ran the two hundred meter and four hundred meter. What was your uh well I I ran uh uh high twenty ones of the two hundred and Uh forty eight for the four hundred. Same same with me, almost exactly the same. Yeah.

High twenty ones, high forty eights, exactly. Yeah. I I got slower as the distance went longer and and four hundred was was sort of Long. I was better at sort of the Sixty yard and and uh

And Hundred and Two hundred but What was her hundred meter PR? Uh ten seventy four.

Wow, and was that FAT? Did they do it in seventy four, yeah. Wow. Well, that's pretty you're moving. Uh I so I didn't have the endurance to keep it up, you know, in the in the two and the four, but Yeah. So so you you've done a lot of stuff.

Um you've done you've done a rec you've done of you've done a ton of stuff in the past, but even The stuff you're doing now is also interesting. You just d you guys made a bid for the Timberwolves, right? Yeah, we actually it went through. So we signed agreement. So yeah. We're just going through the NBA approval process now and then hope to close like Probably in like six weeks.

And that was that a um a dream like, you know, I've had this dream as a kid, you know, own an NBA team. That's That's the point of doing business. Play professional sports. Every kid You eventually realize, okay, it's not gonna be that sport, it's not gonna be that sport. You know.

And then I was thinking, Oh, maybe, you know Uh it would be uh the Cathlete, you know, and go to the Olympics and I was like okay, that's not gonna happen. Like all right, forget it. You know what? I'm just gonna like one day own a team. That that's what I'll do. That's amazing. That was the dream. You know, I I was a huge sports fan growing up. followed every sport, watched every game, you know, was a huge Knicks fan.

And then you know, I had two kids and you know, life happens and you sort of get get a little bit detached from sports, but Uh I love it. I'm excited to like dive back in. You have a reason to It seems like back in it seems like I don't know.

Ten, fifteen years ago, the sports team thing was like You've made it. This is your um it's like buying a car, right? It's like I buy my toy, I always wanted this toy, this is Kind of like lifelong dream and I think it's obviously still like kind of a passion thing. But also

The business merits of the of buying a team as an investment has actually become a pretty big deal'cause these franchises have Appreciated like crazy. Because there's only whatever, there's only thirty of them. And uh there's m sort of more billionaires than there are teams. So Give me a pie chart. Is this what percentage of this was just

Uh, I just want to have it. It's like art. Uh versus this is actually a good business decision. How do you think about that? Yeah, it's probably eighty percent the former, twenty percent good investment. Like, yeah, it's it's Not so much about being a great investment, just not gonna lose money. I'm gonna have a lot of fun. Anytime you can have a lot of fun and not lose money, like

I love going to the horse track. You have a lot of fun, but you also a lot of money. I I kinda like this, you know, where it's It's uh have a lot of fun and and maybe make a little bit of money too. It's like Perfect. But I I'm excited about

You're just innovating, using I think there's a a lack of like real innovation in sports in general, like applying sort of a technology mindset, like How do you bring augmented reality to the entertainment experience? How do you move to like dynamic announcing so you can choose your announcer? Dynamic. real time ticketing. I want people to be able to move to any open seat in the stadium at any time. Like

I've got all these like Tech ideas on how to augment the experience and it's just fun to have a platform to be able to Yeah. buy these things and try and and and even

Yeah, what's the money ball version of of of in basketball too, you know, like as a mid market team. How do you win? What's the strategy? Thinking that through, uh How do you uh apply the same techniques of vision capital people like

What's the what's the mission? What are the values? What do you stand for? How do you show up every day? How do you live those values? Like treat it like a Like a real startup. And and to date, you know, I've talked to a lot of people. It doesn't really seem like anybody's sort of Gone gone down that path yet.

And are you just gonna run this like a company? I mean like because you're incredibly successful at running companies, but You don't I mean, you know a bit about sports, I imagine, but like this is like a total this is totally outside of everything that you've done. I I I I love the challenge because Every business that I get into, I don't know anything about it when I start. I didn't know anything about retail when I did divers.com.

You know, I I didn't know anything about The pit when I started that, I started a bunch of startups recently. I don't know anything about that. I'm starting and building the city. I'm doing a reality TV show. I'm doing these things. And You know It comes down to vision capital people.

Uh it's You have to have the vision. And you just Think about it. Share it with people, like a piece of clay. You keep molding the vision, molding like wow, this is a big vision. Everyone agrees, this is freaking huge.

Okay, great. How are we gonna capitalize it? Great. That's what I do, raise money, have lots of connections with investors that raised over a billion dollars. So like okay. We're gonna capitalize it.

And then the third part is the most important and the hardest to get right is people. And it's Finding a great CEO and a great executive leadership team, setting the values. setting the mission to corporate culture.

getting the org structure right. Getting the right people in the right spots and creating a culture where you get the very best out of each person that you bring in. Then you kind of just sit back, then you're there as a strategic advisor. I think if you try and to sit you know, micromanage and make decisions.

Um when you don't have the experience, that's where you get in trouble. You know, so if I were to come into the team and say, you know, I think you should draft so and so, and you know, why why are we doing this? And we should be playing, you know, this and That's not gonna work. I just don't I I think who is the very best You know. uh person in the world.

to you know run this part of the business to run that part of the business. To be the chief people officer to bring in the very best talent and create a great culture, who are the best people in the world. And get him in the right spots in the right positions. If the vision is right, everybody's clear. Exactly where you're going, what what the the the North Star is.

Um, and you've got great people and they're happy and they're empowered. Great things will happen. And that allows me to do multiple things at the same time now because You know, I'm not getting into the We do it. A a lot of your companies, um

Yeah. D or how much do you guys raise at diapers dot com? Diapers raised fifty five million. Okay. So that's a lot, but not close to I mean, Jet was what, like a billion I mean, you guys. Yeah.

Eight hundred million. So substantially larger, although th both were quite large. This idea of being able to hire the best in the world and being able to hide peop hire people to do to to to do a lot of the uh work that they specialize in.

Could you have done that if you were bootstrapping your companies? No. I mean that that's why, you know, we started Alex and I um They were just started uh a venture fund called V C P, Vision Capital People. We believe that there's a a really big hole in the market for

People with big visionary ideas. to get a big infusion of capital. early like when they have nothing. So they can go out and hire the very best team in the world. I think a lot of startups. It's a little bit of chicken and egg. How do you get the capital unless you have the team?

You can't hire the team until they have the capital. but you don't get enough capital until you prove it. And so you get a million bucks, then you get five million bucks, then you get Ten million bucks, and each step of the way. You're sort of on a

Tight wire. You know, you you you you're basically like one little thing goes wrong, suddenly investors lose confidence, where you under uh overpromise and under. Deliver, lots of things go wrong. We basically say no. Vision capital people, you have a big vision. We know this could be a really big idea. We know somebody's gonna do this, the right time to do it.

Um, let's not undercapitalize it. Here's ten million seed. Go out and hire the best team in the world. That puts you in a position to have the best shot of a really successful business. And if you got

The best people. You got the capital and you have the vision right. You're a player now. You're kind of like worst case, you're gonna exit this. Somebody's gonna pick it up. Because you've got Great people and it's the right time and it's a big vision. So what do what do you think when

So there's there's the case where jet where that clearly is what happened and it it worked. And then you see like Qui or something like that. Clearly successful people at the start. raised a bunch of money, raised a billion dollars or so, more than that, I think. Uh big vision.

Hey, we're gonna You know, rethink Netflix for mobile. And didn't quite hit it and they're burning a lot of money. So even though they raised a lot, their burn still left them with I don't know how many m you know. the same sort of t you know, two years of runway or whatever it was that like a normal startup has.

So how do you think about that? Do you think it's hey look just a numbers game, it doesn't always work out. Or do you think there's something different in the strategy that maybe they could have done or you've done differently that that leads to better results. Yeah. Um I don't know that

Intimately, do you know the story and I do think That's probably more the exception than the rule. I mean I I think Listen, star ups don't all work. So some of them are work Do I think it had a higher probability of working?

Because it was a big vision, they had a lot of capital and great people. Yeah, I think it I think it does. Specifically why it didn't work. The only thing from the outside looking in was Were the the most talented people in the organization.

fully committed and all in to it. That's the only that's the only thing I wonder. I don't know Um obviously you had really talented people, but where they dedicating their their life to it. You you need somebody in these businesses that's sort of like I'm running this business and dedicating my life to it.

doesn't have to be necessarily the person that's doing the V C P at the top. But who is that person And and and and you know, do you have the the right team to support I don't know the answer to that. That's where I'd probably wonder. And so me and Sam talk about this a lot because uh you know, we think about art, what's next for us? We got got some money in the bank, we got time, we got, you know, we got all these dreams about what we might want to do.

And one of the paths is similar to you where You as an entrepreneur, you sort of can see these opportunities and you could be the you can be the spark that helps start them, but you're not necessarily gonna be the day to day operator in the weeds, maybe like you were with your first startup. Right. And some people like you seem to be pretty successful with this model and it seems like it's depending on those three things you talked about. Having the right vision, shaping that first.

getting the capital in and then recruiting the right people. On the people part. Take us into a job interview with you. So Um Obviously there's the standard stuff, you know, you ask what they've what they're doing. I I've Hard

I've tried to calculate it, but over a thousand people. Right. Personally like you know, interviewed in my career and I Hmm.

uh over the years and it's changed. My thinking has changed on hiring people resumes and I've I've I've gone from You know, early in my career when I first started You know, I just wanna feel like I wanna have a beer with this person. Right. And I realize how wrong that is. And people make that mistake today and it leads to all kinds of unconscious bias and things like that. It's the worst possible thing to do.

I spend an incredible amount of time up front on resume reading. Which I never used to do before. Used to be like, Hey, this person's great. Oh, they they were a CFO. I'm looking for a CFO. You say they're great. Come on and interview them. I I don't listen to what people tell me necessarily about people because There's always somebody out there that'll say something good about everybody. And so I kinda just discount that. For the most part.

There might be a select couple people that I really trust that like you work with this person, trust me, they're they're top five percent. Okay. But that'll show on the resume. And so when I look at the resume. Like I'm looking for a demonstrable level of success in whatever they do. So I'm think I get into their mind, I start at the beginning when they graduate school, and it doesn't matter what school they go to, but

But they graduate, they go into into a company. Um If if they're there for a few years. Did they get promoted? Like

What did the trajectory look like? And then the most important part, when they leave that company and go to a new company. Is it something that a top five percenter would do? Top five percent is move in a certain way that you start to learn machine learning these these Uh You know, trends.

Um And Top five percenters, top ten percenters are the the elite people. When they move. They move

In step fashion. It'll be a bigger title, much bigger role. Or a better company. And they'll get in that company. And they will be promoted.

Multiple times. And then they'll leave and there'll be another step change. And so I'm looking for that. Like multi company

movement within the company and big step changes. Any kind of any kind of deviation to that? I don't I just Don't even won't even interview. So A lateral move out. Right.

you know, move from a uh a Google to Kmart, sorry Kmart, but out. Like I I just I Anything any little Like tap. That says

Not top five percent. And somebody could say, Hey, but that's not fair. Like I'm actually good or this person's great. I'm like You know what? I'm not gonna interview because you know what? There's a chance they get honeypotted.

Right. Honey potted. Everyone's everyone experienced this. You basically bring somebody in for an interview. The resume's maybe not ideal.

They come in, you spend one hour with them, and you just really like them. And they throw some buzzwords around, they've got all the parents and you're like hired. Think about that. I mean you're committing to like hire somebody and keep them in your company hopefully for years to be an important part of the company and like you have an hour with them. Maybe you have multiple people spend an hour, but still a pretty small amount of time.

And so I don't let myself get honeypotted. I've been honeypotted Many times in the past. And I unless that resume scream superstar, which Again, it's only five out of a hundred resumes if you say top five percent or ten out of ten and one out of ten. And be really like say no, no, no, it's hard because you're tempted like oh they have good experience, this person, whatever.

No. So when I interview someone I know that there is superstar in the resume, and so I can focus. Primarily on Core values.

And they're Spotic traits. So spartic. is an acronym I come up with for traits I look for and people I hire. Smart

Passionate. Optimistic, tenacious. adaptable. Kind and empathetic. And the last two are

really important kind and kindness and empathy. I found over the years that you can get somebody that's super tenacious. Passion that will run through a brick wall, but also run through people and over people, and they're not You find somebody that has the passion

They're optimistic and tenacious. And adaptable because you need that in startup. But at the same time, they're very kind and empathetic. And you get that person that's able to balance that. That's magic.

And so Those are the things and in the interview questions. have nothing to do. I won't ask one traditional interview question. They'll all be Questions to open them up. to to try to get at

What makes them tick and do they exhibit these traits? And you know, I I have this theory like Uh I've I've now if you work in tech, you meet so many smart people, that smart becomes kind of like table stakes. Great. Everybody's super intelligent. Well, now what? And and clearly smart isn't just the only thing that that leads to success. You need a whole bunch of other things that you mentioned.

And um I sort of found like What? What's in rare supply. So which of those traits is in most rare supply? I'll give you my kind of opinion, which is I found that two really simple ones.

tend to be the to to me the lowest in supply And uh it have a pretty outsized impact on startups, and those two are Um Energy or like enthusiasm. I I think bringing energy to the table every day is quite contagious. And you need it at the beginning when you're starting something from scratch.

And so it seems like one of these duh, anyone can do it. Yeah, anyone can do it, but most people don't. And the other one is courage. So um The courage to either build something new uh say say something that's on your mind, um to like not let a you know something that's below our standards go. uh courage I feel is in in an extremely short supply.

Yeah, and you'll ask you to take risk too. I I call it boldness. We call it bold at our company. But yeah. Do you feel like when you meet people, is there something you're just like, ah, I wish more people had X? What is X for you that you feel like is in short supply? You know, I mean when you said there, so when I say you know, passionate and optimism. I think Um

Optimism. Is inst you know, uh the sort of the optimism that allows you to Be bold and take risk and It's that optimism that you believe

Нали. Um But also believe that people are good. Like your starting place is that It's just an optimistic view of the world. I think that's really important and

It allows you to trust. Which is one of the core values. And in and in in in all my companies. I think trust is really important. If you want to create a culture where the company trusts the employees and the employees trust the company. That's really important.

to create an environment where people are happy and feel empowered. And they feel a sense of ownership. Trust is so I have this idea that You know, a lot of people say, Oh trust, of course, trust, but verify.

And I don't believe in the but verify. I think you start out trusting people. Um and until They prove otherwise. And it's very Risky. Because you can get burned.

But I've seen the power. of the upside of trusting somebody before they've necessarily proven that they deserve it. It's incredibly powerful, motivator. Um, and I've seen it in my personal life, I've seen it in business.

People wanna They want to run through a wall for you when you're like, Wait, you trust me? But you can I can burn you. I can yeah. But I trust you. Are you gonna burn me? Of course not, you know, you're trusting me, I'm not gonna burn you.

With that. is an incredible value that I've learned. It's it's trust. Transparency being really open with your employees, not hiding, not secretive. Here's the cap table. Here's the rounds of financing. Here's the numbers. Here's all the information you need. There's I'm an open book. What do you want to know? Like there's no secrets here. You work in this company, you're an owner, you have stock options, trust transparency.

The other one is fairness. Yeah. It's really important that people feel In order to create an inclusive a diverse workforce, you have to create a safe work environment where people feel

Safe Coming to work. They have to feel like it's fair. They there should never be this feeling of like That's not fair. That's why I have a um open comp system where everybody

knows what everybody else is making. And everybody at the same level makes the same amount of money. So women Minorities Everybody makes the same

There's no Like this idea that maybe it's not fair, my colleague, why is my colleague that I do the same job, why are they making more money than me? That sort of thing, which is usually A big reason why people lose trust. And They don't feel

Like giving you everything they've got. And so I kinda take that off the table. So those are the three primary values. So you have The values of the organization and how they live them. And then the traits that you look for and people you hire. And when you kinda get that right.

I think it's it's Magical thing. W where did this w where did this confidence come from? 'Cause like having the confidence to hire the top five percent is a pretty big deal. His high school track days, Sam. Yeah. Some place your confidence comes from. No, it's actually just it's actually just trial and error.

Failing a lot early on. It it's it's you know, you know, well just somebody I want to have a beer with. It's making those mistakes. It's getting honeypotted. It's uh You know.

hiring a person and having go through the pain of having to let them go and replace them like It's so many lessons. I I I make so many less mistakes now than I did. early in my career because I Yeah, I see everyone makes the same mistakes. It's that's why I like to talk about it'cause it's like It is the same mistake some people say, Yeah, you know, I guess you're right, like

There was, you know, the resume kind of did, but I was kinda like, Well, the person said they were good. I like them and so I hired them. Um, you have to be really um Yeah. Extremely focused and uh selective in in that the other thing by the way

It does help with unconscious bias too, if you're You know Inclined um when the when you know you go through the resume and you bring them in and it's not about whether I like the person, you know, you you They've already like

You know that they're they're rock solid and you really can focus on on Spotic and and sort of help there. So I I I wanna I wanna ask you about I mean I think we gotta we should ask you about ideas, but But before we get to that, I wanted to ask one quick question. So you left banking in ninety six, right?

Uh no, it was ninety nine. Okay, what and then I'm looking at some information here on on your timeline. You started this thing called the pit. The pit was a well I it was it was in the internet marketing and Yeah, it's basically a sports stock market. We used uh to avoid gambling, we know we used the baseball card as the proxy for the athlete.

But it essentially it was meant to be a a sort of sports stock market where you buy and sell players like stock. And you sold that for like Six million dollars. Yeah, that was right after the the whole NASDAQ crashed in two thousand. I don't remember like went down like I don't know, eighty percent or something.

And uh Yeah, the there was no way to raise any venture money and we only started it maybe ten months earlier. And we're able We raised five million and sold it for five point seven. Everybody's like, Yeah, do it. This is a great exit.

And we're like Okay. Well then we'll do it again. Let's that's great. We'll sell this and get the next idea. That's what I was gonna ask you is how you could sell for Six million bucks after just a short amount of time, but I guess The answer is well,'cause you you you raised a fair bit. At least for a six million dollar excess. I think it was just, you know, the tops at the time.

was interested in in the people that we hired. We hired a great team. We had a we had a vision for what we wanted. Um and They were there to provide some capital. So yeah. So let's talk about some ideas that you would need optimism about now. Right. So uh so I I think we could talk about jet, for example, like Take some.

courage and optimism to to go after that. prize and basically compete with the the the the empire of Amazon Um So but we'll come back to that. I wanna start with Where do you need to be optimistic today? What are you optimistic about?

What ideas are are I know you've talked about startup cities. I don't know if that's the one you want to talk about or if you have some others. But lo shoot us some ideas of what you think is exciting that you're optimistic about that maybe the whole world isn't You know, it's not not proven yet. Mm-hmm. I mean I I

Gravitate towards tend to gravitate more towards uh B to C businesses, business to consumer. I just like consumer businesses and I think it's easier to understand some of those businesses than and sort of More like a you know, if you were like a a biomedical company or something like that, it's harder to wrap your arms around. I think there's more So most of the ideas and things and thinking I do is is in B the B to C world across lots of different industries. I've

made a number of investments um and I'm involved with a few companies that I'm really excited about. Um, one is Archer. Which is the basically they're like passenger drone. So I think think it's like basically an autonomous

Електрик Хелікоптер Um that basically m flippers, you know, around. It's it's safer than how to do it. Is this a spAC that you did? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Did us back a couple months ago and um going through the SEC process now. That's crazy. S super excited. That was a great V C P Um, so the the two founders, you know, came over actually sit on the couch right here.

And they said we got this vision for these flying cars, these these these these drones that carry passengers. It's the right time. This is why it's the right time, Mark. This is how big the industry is going to be. This is why it's going to work. This is why the technology is right. And I was really taken by the vision. I thought they had it nailed. Um, and they said, Hey, we need five million now. We're gonna hire the best engineers in the world. We're gonna take them from the best companies.

We're gonna go raise fifty million and build the stadium, the m latest and greatest. of these uh these aircraft. Um and I thought the two fairness were exceptional.

So great start to the to the founding to the P part of the V C P And I thought okay. I'll give them the five million. And I'll help them, you know, hire this this team.

And I'll help them raise the fifty, and then you're on your own. That's what we did. I put five in, we helped raise, you know, helped hire the the engineering talent. Help them raise fifty million. And that was two years ago. And then they just raised a billion through this back. And so now it's a four billion, three point seven billion market cap or something.

And it was really an idea on this couch two years ago. But it shows you that what I was saying before about rather than going through this process of like Seed. Can't hire the great team, the chicken and egg thing. It's like Here's five, and then let's get the team and and simultaneously go and raise fifty. So

Very short order. They had fifty five million dollars and they had the best team. And I do think they've built aircraft in the industry right now and they're on their way. Like it's a it's a massive TAM. Um and so

I'm looking at opportunities like that. Um And I can tell you some other ones too. Yeah, go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, another one that was in the news is is uh

uh basically mobile kitchens. So looking at the trends in food delivery and Millennials and Gen Z not wanting to cook and want food delivered and things. You know, I just saw that, you know, it sort of takes a long time to get it delivered. Inconsistent the quality suffers in transit.

And uh and it's expensive. And I thought oh if you can solve those three things Um and how do you do it? Well, what if you cooked in a mobile kitchen if the restaurant basically came to you and it cooked in your driveway? Hot.

much faster because the the trucks are already on the road and so they're they're likely just minutes away. And uh And so I made a pretty big bet. uh on that company.

And uh you know, still in stealth mode, but I'm really excited about it. I think there's a how how's that different than a food truck? So so it's a mobile kitchen, but it's for multiple types of food or or each mobile kitchen is a different restaurant, different cuisine. Okay. Um and uh It the idea is to is to get the best restaurant. uh of that cuisine in the country and sort of bring it to a central central place. No, it's it's it's high quality food that's piping hot, that's you know, delivered to your door.

Fast. That that's an exciting, I think a big Tam, big market. Food. That's where the puck's going. Um I think there's there's uh lots thing lots happening now with uh laws changing in in sports gambling and things. I think there's

really big opportunities there to maybe bring back Some of what I did before. Uh with the what was that? Exactly. What?

You're saying he's talking about the pit. Yeah, br you said bringing it back before. No, just it in in the new now with the gambling laws changing things, I think it's an opportunity to create a true sports stock market and and do it right. Like we're It really feels like you're buying and selling players like stock. Um

By by leverage some of the changes in in gambling laws. Have you seen um something I mean, Sean was really into this Big cloud. Have you did you see that? No, I didn't. You don't know what BitCon is? Oh my gosh. Uh Sean, you wanna explain? I mean, it's pretty much what it's kinda what you're describing. So what they did was they basically took Twitter.

And they turned it into um a social network where you don't just follow the person, you can invest in them. So the the cool thing about this was what they did was let's say on Twitter, I have like I don't know, a hundred forty thousand followers. So from day one they what they did is they took the top ten thousand Twitter accounts. And they had raised, I think, a hundred and fifty million dollars from VCs here in Silicon Valley. And they used it to s to basically pre-buy and invest in all those accounts. So on day one, when I walked in, I said

Hey if you sign up for BitCloud, if you claim your account and verify it. Uh like basically meaning you tweet out that hey, this is my big clout. I walked into like Seventy five K uh worth of my own coin, right? Worth of my own stock.

And others were already buying it because they were saying, Hey, if Sean joins, we think that he might uh you know continue to to grow his following. And so we wanna invest. So the idea being we've all had this experience where you discover a band early. Or an athlete early or A a content creator online, a blog. And if you see them before they're huge, but you really like their stuff, you can

buy their coin. It's like every single person gets their own little little little Bitcoin, basically. And um and then as they get m as more people buy it, yours appreciate. So as a curator, as a fan You get to sort of go along for the ride along with the the star themselves. Pretty cool content. Value ultimately. I think that's the key. A lot of these things fall down in the end. So they don't have a ton of intrinsic value. They don't have a ton of intrinsic value. The one thing that it does have is now as the creator, so I have all these shareholders, right, that own my coin. Some people own tens of thousands, some people own a thousand, some people on a hundred bucks of my coin.

I can then basically reward my shareholders. So in you know, in the stock market, you give out a dividend or um, you know, that you ha you can reward your shareholders. In this, I could do the same. So I could say I could do it literally a dividend. I could say, Hey, for whatever I earn this month, my shareholders are gonna Um you know, get get their proportionate share. I could also say

Hey, we're gonna do a version of this podcast. Um, that only my shareholders get to listen to, right? Like a like an OnlyFans or or these different products that they sort of say. If you if you're a subscriber of mine, then you get the content. So you can kind of pay well of the content. Dynamic membership, almost like a membership that can I can come up with whatever the perks are for my members. And so then the creator's all jockey. To offer better value to to their holders because their stock appreciates the more incentive incentivizing they make it. Now

This is a one in a Hundred, one hundred a thousand idea, but I do think there's something interesting. I think there's something interesting. Yeah, it certainly sounds interesting. I I tend to shy away from things where I don't see like the the the twenty year, thirty year, like the intrinsic value, like how it ultimately this could be a great exit and

Yeah. Like I I think with gambling uh laws changing there's a way to give players intrinsic value So you basically g basically say At the end of somebody's career

I'm gonna pay you based on their career stats X. Like and so you know This rookie comes up, you know Like it has real value because the the exchange, the stock market, is giving it intrinsic value by giving you a predetermined amount of money.

based on certain stats over the career. Like that kind of thing. That's interesting. So you so you could say um So the house basically sets the line, right? Uh let's say Zion comes into the league and we say, Okay The house believes that Zion you know th the the market the the line gets set that Zion's gonna be a Hall of Fame player And maybe that means X, Y, and Z stats. This many MVPs, this many points, whatever it is. Do you think it's better than that?

Buy you you buy. If you think if you think that's not gonna happen, you don't buy, are you short? And basically the careers so so you get to predict the players uh journey. And then the m the better then it's like a super fan, basically. And The better they perform, you feel like you're being vindicated and you're actually gonna economically benefit. From having identified

somebody who's gonna perform higher than the what the market thinks. That's cool. Yeah, exactly. One um I I think I read somewhere that you like to look at Google trends a lot. Like you're you're in in Because you're a serial entrepreneur, you invest in a lot of stuff.

You're always looking for trends. You're always looking for what's popular. What I wanna know is What what do you use? Like what signals do you look for to figure out where you're gonna go to? And also what signal told you that jet was interesting. Because

A lot of people probably said Don't even think about doing this, like that you're you know, you're I I imagine a lot of people are like Amazon or Walmart or someone already owns the space. What are you crazy? This is like an impossible feat. Yeah, no, it's two two different things. I mean, I think with Jet I had

Been intimately involved in retail, you know, with diapers.com and WAG and selling into Amazon and working inside Amazon. And I just felt like huge market. huge tailwind. It's the e com's gonna continue to grow at double digit. The next five, ten years. Um, and I just believe that there wasn't

You know. it wasn't a winner take all that there was room for another player Um and I thought we can raise a significant amount of capital and hire a great team. So We had this really big vision.

It with this tailwind. Raise a ton of capital and have a ha great team. I thought if you do those three things right. Good things will happen. I don't know what's gonna happen. Either it works Your exit. strategic wants it. Like if you're in the right market at the right time.

You have a great team. And you've invested the capital wisely. You've got an asset. that in worst case is gonna be worth more than the capital you raise. That's that's my mentality with these things. Um, in in anything you do, right? It's like

There's the worst place to be is sort of in that no man's land where Like You you spent Um Not a ton of money. You don't have the best people.

But you spend enough money that it's kind of expensive for somebody to buy as a strategic It's not really worth it. You know, people tend to buy it's the barbell strategy. They'll buy the aqua hire. You raise a million bucks and you bootstrapped it, and you have like three good people. And somebody'll say, like, Oh, this is great. Like here's ten million. You're like, Oh, that was like not a bad exit, made a little money, I'm gonna work for this company, there's that. And then there's Like you can

Uh be big enough. To matter to a really big company. That has the capital to to put down hundreds of millions or billions in an acquisition. There's a lot of people in the like the in the middle, and that's what VCP is. That's why it's like no. Ten million, fifty million. Let's hire the very best team. If it's the right market.

There's gonna be a buyer for it. Right. And and that's kind of the strategy. What's interesting is so when I sold my company, we we never revealed the price, but let's just say that like hypothetically it was like thirty or forty million dollars. Um

I noticed that. A deal uh uh just for sake of argument. That a d a a deal in that size. It seemed like it was as hard of work. As if I sold it for four hundred million dollars. No, it's harder. That's hard. I think it's harder actually It was harder because I was doing a lot of the work. I actually didn't hire a banker, so I was doing most all the work and it was

Hmm. But it's not just the work on your side. I think what he's pointing out is that the price tag is significant where the company can't just cut the check real quick. Right, like you could with a qu a small aqua hire. Uh but you don't have enough of an asset. that they can say this is a big strategic bet that they're making. You're in the middle. And I think that's

Forget the entrepreneur side. It's always hard as an entrepreneur. Really tough place. Yeah. Yeah, well I'm saying that that's just one of the reasons why it was hard for many reasons. Really hard, you you must be a really good entrepreneur because It's really hard, I think, to exit. in that middle ground. Like it's hard to exit. Most companies in that middle ground

They don't Exit. successfully. You know, it's easy to do the aqua hire and I think it's easy to do the big the big acquisition of a big company, it's tough. That's sort of like

Ten to a hundred million. And the entrepreneurs I know that have exited in that in that space there. They're strong. They're like Really strong. Well, so that's a kind of an interesting thing because I think that me well

Younger like Even just a few months younger than me. As well as most people would think that well, it's far y like if I could sell something for twenty to thirty, that's like bite size ish. That's like uh uh you know, some company would buy us without having to get like board approval, like oh it's it'd be a no brainer for them to do it.

And what you're kinda saying and what I experience a little bit is it's actually probably easier to be a little bit more audacious. Yeah. Raise money and go after it. Or I would actually say the other way around, it's easier to do that. Or in order if your if your goal is to build wealth and have a good life, it's probably

That's Maybe not to raise any money. Uh and never sell and just try to like build a company over a long period of time. But Uh let's say you were you Um but you don't have your brand name, right? So let's let's bring you back. We give you youth, but we take away your reputation. Right. So we're gonna take you back. You're twenty-one.

But you don't have the reputation. Uh, but you do have the same sort of mindset that you have today. You have the same knowledge, let's say. What spaces would you be going into? And would you also be trying to do the same type of bet like do you think you could raise the large amount of money just through Charisma and hustle and and vision. uh without having the reputation. So take us take us to through a scenario. What do you think you would be interested in working on or building if you were 21 again today without the reputation?

Yeah, no, it's a great point. And I think, you know, early on And a lot of people I think share this. You feel like it needs to be something like really original or something nobody's thinking about and nobody's doing or something niche or like And

That's kinda what it is. It's niche and the venture capitalists are like, it's not that interesting, you know? Um And I've learned that it doesn't need to be something like niche or super inventive, it could be Just find a really big camp.

Like just say something like okay. Healthcare. Okay. And What's a really big idea? Like where's the puck going in healthcare?

I would study where the venture capitalists are investing, what types of companies I do the research, like Where is the money going? Follow kind of the money,'cause that'll kinda give you some idea of where Where some of these trends are right now. And uh, you know, with artificial intelligence and telehealth and things, there's like a lot of money. Pouring into that.

So just I would look at the landscape, I'd study. the different companies, who's getting funded. Who's doing well? And think about is there another angle? Is there something Not like

Inventive or super original Just like a just a little hook uh of something different that's not being done. And put together a big vision that requires ultimately hundreds of millions of capital. And work backwards from that and say, okay, you know, that we think this is gonna be a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

you know, we're gonna you know start with ten million, we're gonna hire this great team, here's division, here's how we're gonna get there. work on that plan and that pitch deck, I'd spend hundreds of hours on that deck. And on the vision and mapping it out. And

somebody will bite because it's the right time, it's the right space. You know, if you're really good and they they feel like you've got something And you've got this big plan and you know it There's a good chance you'll get that you'll get that. That ten million dollar a C check.

To go hire a great team. And you've talked about you've talked about where's the puck going, uh Give us more. What do you where what are some other sp so you talked about Fo delivery. And you talked about how what the next evolution of that might be. The restaurants on wheels, that solves a bunch of problems. You talked about transportation, right? Huge TAM.

Flying cars, that might be where the puck is going. We see that Google funded K you know, Kitty Hawk and we and you know, Uber was working on it. A bunch of people were working on this. Maybe there's something there. Um I'll give you a couple more. Yeah, give us more.

So one, I think conversational commerce, so in retail. I think the next big step change. is the idea that you would Use text and voice. to order anything you want in a very conversational way. So imagine

You know, talking to the to someone that is as knowledgeable as the most knowledgeable person in that area on the showroom. of a specialty retailer. You wanna buy a T V? It's like you're there at best buy talking to the T V expert, you know? And you're just conversing.

And somebody at the same time who knows you as well as your Best friend. Um so hyper personalized This idea of getting a one best answer. Um

the idea of like search engine twenty years from now is gonna be laughably like the cassette tape. It's like wait. So m dad, you used to like go, you wanted to buy a toast, and you typed in toaster in this like search engine and you had 10,000 responses and you had to like read reviews and look at all this and search and filter. That's not the way it's gonna be done. You're basically just gonna say, Hey I need a I need a toaster.

Um How much? Uh I don't know. What what's a good mouth uh Two hundred bucks you get a great toaster. Really good. Okay, great.

Wanna make a recommendation? Boom. Buy it. And it just Sure. Ships it, right? Like

It's gonna be very conversational and the the We talk a lot about personalization and retail, but nobody's even close. to doing it in a way that It's gonna be done in the future. And I think voice Requires

One best answer. Otherwise voice doesn't work. You can't give you a hundred things, it's voice. It's gotta be like You know, if you were asking your your best friend, Hey, like, you know, I know you know toasters, like What should I get, man? You know, like that kind of thing. It should be Very uh

On point. Who's doing this now? That's exciting. I like that one a lot. What what companies are doing this now? I mean there's a lot of companies that are like again early stages of it and stuff, but there's nobody again that's if you said like who's got the world class team. Who's raised, you know, significant capital.

But but is there a is there a product I can go look at and be like, Oh, I get it. I understand what he's getting at. Like I understand why Mark is obsessed with this. Yeah, I mean we had something called Jet Black when I was at Walmart and we um It was basically this for New York City. Uh Primarily parents.

And It was gangbusters. I mean it was like You know, people stop using Amazon Prime. It was they just dropped it. It's like all the shopping, the entire the entire wall chair. Uh was was given to Jet Black and it was

multiples of what they were spending on Amazon. It was deep into the tail, it was everything. Yeah, people loved it. And it was a great test. It was very expensive because In order to get The converse to see the conversations. Um

Uh Sorry, you need to see a lot of conversations. So in the beginning You have humans in the loop. The sort of bridge.

Between the time that you know. There's the AI past tense. Did it go away or that still exists? No, it w it went away. But I think it's expensive, yeah. It was expensive and there just wasn't the right time for Walmart.

Right. I think If For in a start up world, yeah, I think it I think it's totally different because Yeah, Walmart maybe doesn't want to, you know

Invest hundreds of millions or billions But a startup Totally different. It doesn't hit your income statement. Everyone gets the gate, knows it, you put capital to work and you build something great. So there's that. I think in healthcare too.

I think Like things I was talking about with telehealth and all the stuff coming together. I think the idea of like Um People taking control of their health. Uh with home diagnostics and things. Yep. Like

There should be a dashboard that exists. You can look up. I put in my name. Okay, Mark Lori, here's my dashboard. I've got a number of gadgets in the home. that I do on a weekly, monthly basis like You brush your teeth twice a day to take care of your teeth. What are you doing every day to take care of the rest of your health?

Like you don't do anything. Yeah, there's all kinds of devices and things, you know, monitor. Um, you know, uh a little prick of blood and monitor blood sugar. Um, you know Do the blood test once a month, get all your things in there, look at the trends of what's happening with your PSA. Do you have this issue? And then it basically the machine learning and through all the data. To be able to see like okay, you should see a doctor here.

You should do this then. You should do this. So here's the probability of dying at this age. Here's the you know, here's the the the heart attack risk that you're running. Your cholesterol's too high. If you get it down, here's your probability of heart attack comes down. Like Sort of make it more transparent. Right now it's like this black box. You go to the doctor once a year, do some tests. And whatever. Like it's just kind of like a black box. Like, oh, you know, here's some medicine for your cholesterol. You don't know what's what or why or how it impacts your odds and like whether you should be really worried, a little worried. No doctor will ever give you probabilities about anything. There's no diagnostics. It's like you have to go to the professional. There's no home stuff.

I think all that's gonna change in the future. I do think people gonna like really take control of their their health in a completely different way. And they're gonna be doing things other than brushing their teeth to take care of themselves on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah. I just had a daughter and I feel like when she's my age, she's gonna be like, Dad, how are you even alive back then? You guys had you didn't know what the hell was going on inside your body. Now we have this. thing that we wear that tells me everything that I need to know. I know when I take a bite of this

My blood sugar goes up or down and I know like how stressed I am. I know you know I think it's gonna seem like cavemen how we we operated today. I agree, there's gotta be certain things you get test at certain times. You know, my daughter had celiac disease. We didn't figure it out until she was nine years old. Like that's I mean, it's not that rare of a disease. Like some doctors should have been like, hey

Here are the here are the things you do, here are the probabilities of what's what, and you know, these are the tests you need. I w I was asking my mom. My mom has celiacs as well and she found out when she was like fifty And um and she's like Yeah, as a kid, everyone was like, Oh, I don't know, you're you just have an upset stomach all the time. She's like, You know, I'm a kid in India I'm sure I had this my whole life. It's just like nobody ever knew. And I was like super I never gained any weight'cause I couldn't like process any of the food I was eating. It took until I was fifty when I found out.

Exactly. Everyone should have genetic profile. You know, that gives changes of probabilities based on genetics. Everyone should have that. It should be, you know test certain times and influence your odds and probabilities and certain ways to you know, structure everything that's just it's more organized. Like right now it's not organized. I don't know if you guys feel that. I I feel like it's not organized at all. Yeah, well you got like uh like a wall and then an aura ring and then I have a smart scale. I've got uh like a glucose blood a continuing glue glucose blood monitoring. I've got a smart bed.

Uh like I've got like eighteen different smart things, but they are quite siloed. But they don't actually tell me the answer. They just you know, like they don't actually say like uh Th this is what this all means.

Yeah. You know, maybe they'll say like, You're extra stressed this morning, sleep more and or don't work out as hard or Your body fat is too high. But uh It's kind of limited to like pretty high level stuff.

Yeah, it should it should be way more structured. You should have be much more in touch with it. Like sleep apnea is another thing. А не струву this. They're like all these things And n the doctor doesn't just say like

You know It takes a l long time before the doctor's like you should do a sleep apnea study or something like Totally. Th there there's things you can have devices that are listening near your bed that can know. It sounds that sounds like Do this.

A lot of cancers you can are cure or are are okay. Like if you can get a certain type of cancer and be perfectly fine so long as you catch it early enough. And it's kind of outlandish. And archaic that like you can have like a cancer and not know for you know many months or a year. It's like What the fuck? Yeah, many years. Yeah, you could have known this like

Instantly. You know, and that's kind of like crazy to me. Well, MRI, by the way, there's MRI scans and you do a whole body scan and they detailed look at you know anything cancerous and then stitch it together every year you do it and you can see micro changes and things. That exists now, it's just not made available. to you know The the

people because of the the cost of it. But nobody even has the option Of even knowing that that's available, that I should do that. You could imagine like a system that basically says, Hey Here's the probability of cancer. You can take this test.

It's a couple of grand. It's up to you, but at least you know, okay, wait, maybe I should just spend the two grand because it'll increase the probability of catch it X number of years in advance and I know, okay, it's healthier. No, we just wait until we're sick, like you said, with cancer. It's like All right. Now it's Now it's you know. Definitely.

I like asking these questions because I like knowing like what meets your standards, but basically w who in this space are you looking at where you're saying that's kinda promising. Is there any like one or two companies Yeah, I I don't And I kinda Maybe I should more, but I I really spend A lot of time just

thinking about Like A complete Sometimes Sometimes I

If you know too much about a space, it's hard to clean slate and invent. Because you're kind of like get tied too closely into what what people are doing. So I like the idea of just thinking about it through the lens of a of a consumer.

On what Is you know this trends are happening, telehealth, AI. You know these trends are happening. And then how do you stitch it all together? That's just thinking, sitting and thinking every day. Like what's the big idea And when it's really big. You do know nobody's doing it. And then you can reverse engineer and go back and say are there any

people that are working on certain things that could be helpful to it. But You gotta go so big. That you know that nobody's playing there. And that's where I think the opportunity lies. It's like, yeah, it's gonna need billions of dollars to pull it off. You're gonna have to prove it in a in a in a in a small area.

Uh, it's gonna be very expensive, but then when you prove it. it extrapolates out to a trillion dollar business like market cap opportunity. Let's say. Yeah. Good yes, I don I I don't I don't I couldn't tell you like I'm not

Like Tell you all the different little components that exist right now. Something that you said earlier was basically you kinda like were were reverse engineer a little bit from like you'd be like I'm gonna find where the money going, then I'm gonna build this deck and I'm gonna Um raise money and then

Go build the thing. Um What's something that let's say that I said, Mark, I want to create a company and I want to sell it for a hundred million plus to Walmart or Amazon in three years. What opportunities exist in the e com wor or in the commerce world? that Amazon or Walmart would buy my company because they desperately need something that I'm selling or some type of solution that I've created.

Would you like him to do anything else for you, Sam? The most specific question. No, that that that's actually not that specific. Yeah. No, I so Well, you said one personalized shopping. Conversational. Uh I think that's that's not likely a hundred million. That is Like way bigger or it's or it's not exist like that's a little bit more binary. I I don't think a hundred million necessarily impossible. Sorry, I hundred million was just some rent uh three number no it's good it's good to have a goal million answer.

Three years I think it needs to be Um uh a sort of a niche technology that could It's where the puck's going that's gonna

be helpful to differentiate. It's gonna be something it's three years is fast, so it's gonna have to be tech more. then having shown real market traction But it's gonna have to be a technology that's probably hard to build that involves You know, AI The thing that comes to mind would be

Like fit. Analytics. This idea that you're going online and you're buying um, you know, uh address And being able to see it fit on you.

without having to get it delivered to your home. You know, return rates on apparel are forty percent. It's very expensive for retailers. And it's a pain in the you know. For people to buy stuff, bring it, try it on it to send it back and things. So the idea that you know my body dimensions and use artificial intelligence. To know the inside dimensions of the garment to see exactly

how it's going to lay in my body without having to try it on. To cut down return rates. Dramatically. There's billions of dollars that you can save retailers there. And apparel is definitely um an area where where there's a lot of focus and

Um like that's just one ex I don't off the top of my head I love that's a great answer. That's a great answer. There there's I th I saw this guy in Japan. Um he's a a billionaire entrepreneur and like this is like his third or fourth swing, but he Created a suit. that had these ball like these dots on this black suit. And he would send you this body suit for twenty dollars.

And these bull these white dots on this black body suit would uh You know, like in a video game where they motion capture you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it was. And it would it the camera was able to tell uh differently than if it was you weren't wearing this suit and he would use that to try to upsell you on proper fitting clothing. I saw that. It never went anywhere. But I was like, Oh, that's kind of an interesting thing. Hundreds of people trying. That's why it's never really about the idea, it's about execution. It's about V C P.

So where they undercapitalized. Did they have the best team in the world? Thanks. And Quibi, I know you said that in the beginning, but Are there examples of

Yeah. Big vision. Right time. Massive TAM. Like

Raise it a lot of capital. And have The world class team that's like All in. There's not that many examples I could think of where in fact when I think of those examples, they're usually examples of things that have worked. I don't experience that many times where

You have a world class team Ton of capital. And a big vision at the right time. Those companies get acquired because Deep Mind was a good example of this. Uh Deep Mind got Deep Mind. It was an AI company got acquired by Google for five hundred million when you know, no usage yet. It was just Vision and team and then I think Deep Mind they said Once they've plugged it into they do the fun stuff, like they will go beat the best

go players in the world or the best chess players in the world, so they show kind of its power. It goes Flexes from time to time. But they also apply it to the Google uh AdWords um machine learning. And I think it's generated like incremental, multiple billions of dollars already for Google just on the slight optimization of AdWords and uh

And then on the other side you have Magic Leap, where Magic Leap would probably be the current example of Raised like a billion. Huge idea. Looks awesome in the demo, but they haven't executed it well enough where it actually Works. Yeah.

Or you could argue also a little little bit early. Yeah. Um That same exact company like today going forward. Right. could be totally different game. So it is kind of interesting. It would be great to to map out B C P against companies that have worked and didn't work, see what the hit rate is. Right. Sorry, guys, I'm realizing I have a four o'clock. Yeah, you got to run. Okay, no uh where where should people find you if they want more if they want more plug, how people can

Follow you, find you, contact you, whatever you want. Yeah, I mean LinkedIn is is my primary where I'm putting out a lot of it business advice and things like that. So I would do LinkedIn. I just recently Finally just launched Instagram and and start becoming more active there. But uh LinkedIn is probably the best place right now. Yeah. All right, Mark, this was great.

Thank you for coming on. All right, thanks guys. Thank you. It it went way too fast. Yeah, it was good, but uh it ended quickly. I wanted I had so much more we could have talked about. I had so much more. I think we should actually hit him up and be like Dude after the after this episode goes out. And he gets some love.

Uh we should Ask him to come back'cause I need a part two. I had like five other things. I had so many. I had so many questions. He w it seems like a he seems like a great guy. He His uh yeah, man, he's he's really charismatic. I I get like Why I I understand why he's successful. He would be dri he would be describing an idea off the cuff. And I'd be like, you know what? This makes so much sense. I would like I would back you

To the hills, yes, this makes sense. Uh I could see why he's been able to raise so much money. Yeah, he I asked that confidence question because he just oozes with that with charisma and confidence. So let's talk about okay so first uh I really love that conversation. I th I thought it was great. I thought he was I agree. I thought he was great and I thought he made for a great guest. Um, especially the second half.

His setup was bad. I cannot stand when people s I think he was talking to us just on a phone or a laptop. With someone who's so successful like he is Why do they not have awesome zoom setups? Yeah, it's crazy to me. Uh, but I think they're just like on the go all the time. So they're like, uh I don't even have like I don't even hold my phone. This woman holds my phone for me. And uh, you know, I I just sort of speak out loud. I don't even type anymore. That's my

That's my uh Wait, uh uh Brayu just said he doesn't own a computer. With the I think he was that true, O'Bray, or are you just bullshitting in the chat? That's all that's what I was told, he doesn't own a computer. See, that's what I was saying, dude. I knew it. I knew he's in that ultra rich So there's the mega rich. So all the the most rich is They don't own a computer, nor do they even touch a computer. Their ema get printed out for them and they

Either handwrite or just say things out loud and people go relay the messages. I think he's one notch below that where he doesn't own a computer and he just does shit off his phone. That's weird to me. I mean, not weird because I mean if you're a baller, go ahead. B baller, ball out, but like ha what if you just want to type Uh long essay. Or if you wanna

Or if you wanna just like clubs like us can't understand the the the feeling where you don't need to type nothing ever. Or or you just wanna like Search the web and like go on Reddit. Like it just seems like easy to have if you took my computer away, forget the work. I would be so bored. I like need to like, you know, browse the internet. Yeah, that's crazy. So he doesn't own a computer. That's pretty cool. Uh yeah, the guy's awesome. He's had a he had a few really good ideas. I I wanted to ask him so he sent us these notes ahead of time. And he said this thing about million the the difference between a million and a billion. And I was like oh come on, I'm dying. We gotta save it. Yeah. I wanted to know what he what what he was gonna say.

I think we slow played it a little too much at the beginning and just as my fault, I should have gone into one of these. But okay, so a couple of things. So Here's my takeaways. Here's my like Mm. I don't usually do takeaways'cause I don't think it like I don't know. I just don't bother.

Usually it it's usually it's not like I really learned so much that I really want to do takeaways. I was just kind of entertained. But in this, I actually did have a few takeaways. I thought I'm just gonna rattle them off. Insight number one.

The barbell of selling your company. It's very easy to sell at the small end. And even at the high end, the hardest path is actually that middle ground where both of us actually sold our companies. Um And I think that that's true. It feels very true from my experiences and I've never heard anybody like kinda say it out loud. Um so I thought that was that was a uh good insight. I liked and basically what it what what he I I don't think you summarized it or I don't think you said everything. Basically he said it's easier

To sell a company for like He actually said ten million or under. Or like hundreds of millions. Right. Exactly.

Um and the reason why is, you know, the small one, you can kinda cut the check just on talent. The big one, you're buying like kind of a flesh more fleshed out asset of technology or traction or or talent unique talent. And in the middle He's like you've usually raised enough money Where like your price your asking price is too high for them to just n just do it without blinking.

But you don't have enough proof And enough of an asset that they can like justify a you know a big strategic purchase. And so that's actually the hardest one. I think he he was hinting at something that I think is true, which is That entrepreneur who's done that is the most dangerous entrepreneur. Because they have

Enough money where the next thing they chase they're gonna go bigger. Um But they didn't get enough where they're just satisfied and gonna go chill on the couch or on an island somewhere. And um, they've been through it, but they're not uh they're not done. And I think that that's what he was kind of saying, which is like those entrepreneurs are the ones you want to bet on. I also when I invest. That's like a great signal to me is when somebody's had

A small win under their belt. Uh or a medium sized one, I should say. Yeah, I had um a uh An Andrew Chen, very successful A6 uh Andrews and partners said some of the most He just said the most dangerous uh entrepreneur is someone who's Uh. somewhat wealthy enough that they uh that they're set.

But they have a huge chip on their shoulder. Exactly. For example, Travis before he started Uber, uh, you know, he had Red Swoosh which was like a kind of tens of millions win. Um Ev Williams before Twitter. You know, he he had blogger and uh you know, that was a good win, but You don't went for more? And there's there's a bunch of examples. Mark Cuban did the same thing.

Right. Okay, some other things I thought he was s uh interesting. So his model, I didn't realize this beforehand, but his model is basically It's kinda like moonshots. It's basically He's anti the the traditional playbook of Silicon Valley, which is

Raise in small steps. So raise a little bit of money. Make a little bit of progress. Raise a little more money, make a little more progress. Raise more money, make more progress. He's sort of like

Find the biggest market you can go after. Raise a bunch of money and go make the boldest bet in that market. For example, what he did with Jet. He's like e commerce. Huge market and growing double digits. Um I thought it was interesting he was saying like you you know you don't need this like brand new novel invention. It's like the bet is gonna be on execution.

And you do want to have like a new hook or like kind of like the ten to twenty percent that's That's innovative, but like eighty percent is the same as other players in the market. And so he was saying Do that, basically go raise a big chunk of money. Recruit the best people.

The best people make Great product. And then go raise a huge amount of money to go for you know, go for the the the home run shot. And um I thought that was interesting. Most people don't use that playbook or don't talk about it. And that's like his specific lane that he did as an entrepreneur and he's doing as an investor. I thought that was cool.

He also I asked him a question that you laughed at a little bit, but I thought it was a great question. The reason I laughed it was a great question and he actually gave a great answer, but you asked Like What's a company I could start and in three years sell for a hundred million dollars to Amazon Walmart was like so specific that I was like it's almost like Hey, Mark, I don't want to think. Just tell me what to do and I'll go do it. Like it was such a such a solve my problem for me. I just laughed.

Well, I w it was uh what was the word that you said the other day? Or uh Orthogonal. Orthogonal. It was my orthogonal way of asking, uh Of asking um What is a problem that big e com

Yeah, that they that they have that that what are problems that need to be solved. Yeah. That was my way of asking that. He gave a great answer. The answer uh he actually gave a a previous answer where he said something like uh Conversational uh commerce, which is a really cool thing he'll explain. But the answer that he gave for that was uh Oh, uh fitting. Virtual fitting, yeah. Virtual fitting.

So he gave a ton of really cool answers and it And the guy this guy, uh, Mark Lori, who was the uh He started jet.com, which he sold for three and a half billion, where and then he was the CEO or uh president of Walmart Ecom and then He uh before that he had sold the company for six hundred million dollars to

Amazon like his his His His perspective is like about almost as great as it can be. Yes, exactly. Um

So I thought that was really strong. And I liked um I liked some of his stuff on the interviews uh the kind of like job interview side. I think I don't know how much people will love that content,'cause it's not as fun and It's not as junk foody as ideas. Right. But if somebody who ever if you ever actually have to do that, I thought there was some good good insights in there and

Even though it was a little bit um Like Safe. Like nobody can disagree. The things he was saying were Good. Um, I didn't feel like it was just cookie cutter. Like I think that I think he genuinely believes it.

And that's genuinely his approach. Um And uh it matters a lot to him. And I think uh that came through during that part, which is Cool, because you always wonder like This guy's doing this and this and this. How's he doing it? Well it's like it's always

got great people underneath him doing all those individual projects on a day to day basis. All right, well then How do you find those great people to actually make The difference between Failure and success of the same idea. is having you know that great operator underneath.

So I thought that was Pretty good. What did you think of that part? Yeah, I wanted to ask him more about it, but we didn't have time. But basically it sounds like he's not totally in the weeds of his businesses. Which Is the way to go. Um You know, like if you can r if he can go down. I don't wanna be in the weeds of anything. I don't wanna be in the weeds of my marriage. I don't wanna be in the weeds of e parenting. The weeds the weeds are the weeds, bro. I don't I don't wanna be in the weeds. I only wanna be in the weeds

the things that I wanna be in. Uh and when you start a company, there's so much stuff that you Thank you. You have to do and It's cool. I wanted to hear his perspective on it. He's like, look, I have the vision. I hired the initial people.

And I raise a ton of money and I just deploy that money and make everyone else. uh specialize in what there's what they specialize in. But We didn't get to ask him about it. When we were t you were like how do you um

How do you figure out what that vision should be? And he talked about a couple of things. He's like I look at where the trends are, where's the puck going, right? He's like one way I do that is I see where investors are pouring in money. Okay, that tells me that these spaces are probably big or these technologies are breakthrough technologies. And so it's either like A technology like AI machine learning. Okay, cool. I can apply that in another

industry. Or Everything's you know, a bunch of people pouring money into e-commerce. Okay, e-commerce is probably really big or education, healthcare is really big. All right. That's a big space. Now how do I go create the most bold vision that has like, you know, a slightly novel hook? And

I thought it was cool that he was basically like I don't get bogged down in the in kind of the details of like what what is this player doing versus this player versus this player. He's just sort of like, How should it be? Right, when he was talking about healthcare, he's like, I should just wake up I have a dashboard that says here's what's going on in your body and it recommends

that hey, you should get this checked with the doctor or you should improve this. And um And I thought the kind of like Just From a mind of a customer instead of like

industry research, I thought was better. That's a big a Amazonian thing to do is is that, which is like You just start with the customer and you say Here's how their life should be that would make them really happy. All right, now I have a pleased customer. Now I'll go figure out how to make that happen. Instead of the other way around, which is

What can I do and then oh Does that partially satisfy customer? Okay, that's good enough. And I wanted to ask him about air uh about Amazon and Working with Bezos and things like that. I I wonder what his opinion will be. Or buying the Timberwolves. I feel like there's more we could do there'cause he bought a sports team. You know, one thing there's a crazy story that I'll just share here. I didn't get to bring it up with him, but But uh Ben found this when he was doing some research for this.

Was He he goes, um With when jet was gr when jet was growing or early on with jet. They had a contest. I don't know if you've seen this this article, but um

Who can acquire the most customers for Jet? You become a marketer, you you go spread the word, whoever whoever does Whoever gets the most customers gets a hundred thousand shares of jet. And Some guy went and did it. And he he basically just did like kinda like paid marketing but in in a unique way.

He spent eight the guy invested eighteen thousand dollars into the paid marketing, won the contest. And his hundred thousand shares became worth twenty million when it sold. And so this guy turned eighteen grand into twenty million. as a fan of the company outside the company. Probably made more than anyone else in the company besides Mark. Uh, which is amazing to me.

I remember that story and I was one of those people trying to uh this was like You participated in this? Oh, definitely. You didn't you didn't participate. It was basically so Robin Hood did a good job of this, uh I believe it was Robin Hood. Um, Clubhouse has done a pretty good job, but like basically Robin Hood's campaign right before they launch was you're on the waiting list, refer five people to move up a spot. Right. Uh this was

Jet's version of that, although Jet was first, I believe. Uh than Robin before Robin Hood. And it went incredibly viral. If I remember correctly, I think they had billboard promoting this.

The contest. I yeah, do you remember that? Uh go when you would I think we should have asked him about this. All right, we'll save this one for next time, but I thought that this is an amazing story. Yeah, I could spend about two more hours with him easily. So I hope he comes back. Let us know in the reviews what you think. Oh quick update. Mm. We're going to Miami. I think in

Uh eight days or something. June Four. Uh we sold three hundred tickets. That's great. I think we have we have a few left, right? We're releasing maybe what?

Eighty more, hundred more, something like that? Yeah, we moved it to uh four hundred. It was three hundred, we moved it to four hundred. Um, we'll see what happens. All right, if you want to come see us, if you want us to to autograph your dollar bills, bring'em to Miami. Uh June fourth. Uh I don't know how they should find the eventbrite. Fm pod dot com

Uh and put it in your email, we'll email you the details, right? Yeah. And there'll be a link on there. If you go to MFM Pod.com. And also if you just follow one of us on Twitter, you could definitely see the links or We're we're promoting it. And do us a favor, if you liked this episode with Mark. when we post it, um we're gonna post it, I don't know, or I guess go on LinkedIn.

And we I wanna shower him with love of people being like, dude, this was great, come back on and then he'll come back on. So Uh we'll we need to game LinkedIn a little bit. I might have to dust off the old LinkedIn password. To go and uh And'cause that's the thing, when guests come on. They I I've consistently heard this from the very beginning of this podcast, which is

Dude. I get way more messages about this podcast than any other podcast I've ever been on. I don't know why that is. I don't think our audience is bigger. But something that works and when they get that magic moment that of Of people emailing them being like It works. That was amazing. It works. They're they're down to do whatever.

And come back on or do whatever else. And you only need about 10, 20, 30. Like you don't need a significant amount. Right. Um 20 emails in one day being like I love the I love you. is a lot of emails for for most people. It feels like feels like a million. So Mark's name is M A R C Space L O R E. Look him up on LinkedIn and just whatever is recent. Thread is Just click like comment and be like, just saw you on the podcast. So good. Yeah, saw you on my first million.

Amazing. Yeah. Go go go hammer his LinkedIn uh comments or something like that. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On a road less travel never looking back

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