Metaverse IRL, Bollywood Protein Powder & AI Gadgets That Suck

Whenever I hear stuff like this, like when people are like, you know, Oh, you know, money doesn't Make you that happy, or like you know, after this amount doesn't really do anything for you. It's like yeah, you're probably right, but I'm just gonna check. Yeah, I would like to find out. I'd like to find out. I'm gonna go ahead and win.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like a day so I'm gonna go to the city. Um can I start the podcast doing something that you're gonna dislike? Can I complain? I wanna complain. Everybody wants that. I'm having a really shitty week and I'm having a horrible day. So basically like Uh Personal life. There's some stuff like we thought the pregnancy was gonna be one day or the due date was gonna be one day. Now it might be another day.

I don't have the supplies I need, so I gotta go and buy the crap this weekend that I think I need. I'm really stressed about that. At Hampton. We uh are dealing with like we're having to make like uh policies that I've not used to having to make, like maternity leave and things like that. So those conversations are exhausting to me. And then um

I got sick this week and I took this medicine that made me bloated. I don't know if you could tell by my face, but I've gained fifteen pounds in the last three days. I feel like you need to poke me with like a needle and I need to like let out air. I feel miserable. My f all my fitness gains that I've made in three years, it feels completely erased. Rank those from worst to least worst. The bloat is the number one worst. But listen, I have a worst thing. Listen to this. You'll find this hilarious. I did David Perell's podcast. He asked me to look at his edits. I log in. Let me read to you the first edit that he made to his editor that I read it. He said, This is a note from David. He goes

Hey, can you remove the I love Nazis part? It's a little distracting. Clean it up. On the podcast he was like, What do you like to read lately? I was like, Oh, you know, I've been loving like history, I've been loving war. Uh in particular, I love Nazis. Like I like reading about that. And I just log in and I'm like Remove the I love Nazis part. It's so anyway, I've had a hell of a day, dude. I feel bad and it's like eleven A. Am I being am I soft right now, or is or should we just pull the plug on on everything. Millionaire has uh gas or whatever. By the way, really funny, we uh we were at a dinner uh with these guys who

Like these other founder, investor type guys. And then somebody was like, Oh, do you want this? And Ben goes No, no, I'm K What, you don't like this? He goes, No, I just I feel blown in. And then the whole table turned and looked at him and were like, Are you a pregnant woman? Why are you saying you feel bloated? And I was like, I never heard a guy say I feel bloated. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying you should never say it. It's the what what was your list of like Drinking from a straw.

Yeah, men don't drink from straws. Saying bloated is is now on that official list of of never do it. It makes you look super soft. Men do not drink from straws. Men should never hold mugs or cups with two hands. That's a rule. You don't do that. Another rule that I'm thinking about making is if you get a drink and there's a lid on it, you always take the lid off. And and for sure for sure men do not say bloated. Yeah. Yeah, we could add that to the list. Add it to the list. All right. Good, good. We got that settled. Um okay, so besides your your petty complaints.

Um Where do you want to start? What do you got? So you have Facebook are you talking about the uh Lex Mark interview Mark? Yeah, yeah. So I see this thing. So so Lex Freeber does this interview with Mark Zuckerberg. And Here's the setup. About it.

Like I don't know when Facebook rebranded to Meta, but I think it was like two years ago. Uh or a year and a half ago. And um Change the name Meta. People are like, Okay, why? And he's like because

The metaverse. And the metaverse might be get on that bloated list as like words you should just never say. It's like if I was like Hey guys, I'm logging into the information superhighway real quick. That's what they called the internet. So so y you know, the metaverse was always this dorky thing and You know, the problem with it was like People like, Oh, okay, must be it's

Is it awesome? Is there something awesome I don't know about? And then he the they're like, So what what is it, Mark? He's like, Well, it's um Digital identities and avatars and and they're like Oh n we're LARPing now. We're not what are we talking about here? And so then

The demo. So A Ari, can you pull this up? Pull up the initial demo where he was like The future of work. Check it out. Facebook Horizons or whatever and he pulls up this me. Goofy avatar of Sam Parr. It's

This Absolute cartoon like the Sims. version of Mark Zuckerberg standing in front of a tiny Eiffel Tower. Which makes no sense. And they were like Yeah, like you don't need to Do business meetings.

On Zoom anymore, you could do this. And everyone's like I'll never do that. And so you know. It's got a stock price tanks. People are like he's wasting all this money on the metaverse. He's uh you know, this guy's clueless and stock tanks.

But I I always believe as you know We are uh we are pro Zuck on this podcast. It's hard to bet against things hard to bet against So I start buying the stock. I'm like I'm like that guy who like the game stop.

I like the stock. I like the stock. By the way, did you see the movie that came out or the show that came out about that on Netflix? I'm gonna watch it. Yeah, I'm watching it for sure. It's pretty good. I would say I'd give it like a it's a solid B plus. It's like a For guys like us, uh it's entertaining. We're gonna we're gonna make that the official rating of dab. We're gonna call it dab. Decent at best. That's our new rating. It's dab. How is that? It's dab.

Yes, exactly. So so anyways, um We like the stock, we buy it'cause we believe that this guy's not gonna go all in and lose. Now Fast forward about a year. In one year.

Here's what the metaverse looks like now. He goes on Lex Freedom's podcast, it looks like Him and Lex are talking to each other. But they're actually whatever, thousands of miles apart doing this podcast. They're wearing the new like Quest device or whatever. And

Check this out. So this is Unbelievably realistic. Like it looks Identical to their face. Um, the freckles on their nose, the lighting, the the the mouth movements while they're talking like

It's super, super realistic, which is funny'cause like Both of these guys barely move their mouth actually, so it actually looks a little stiff, but it's'cause Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg. The stiffest guys on the planet. So you know, who the guys who like don't show emotion. So it wasn't really that good of a demo in that sense. But Kind of amazing. Now it had like a black backdrop, like there was no they don't have the background stuff built yet.

But yeah, so it explain how that works. So basically what I'm seeing is Lex and Mark are wearing what looks like an Oculus, but slightly different, but basically an Oculus. And then are there cameras outside of the That's it. Wow. That's it. So they're wearing this headset. And what what happened is they both did this scanning process. So right now it's not like the sustainable thing, but like that that purple image. is the three D codec scan basically. So they went and got this like scan done, which Today is like kind of the manual process to do this. But in the future

The device itself or your phone will be able to do this scan for you. You'll just It's like uh Xbox has a thing called Connect. I think it works the same way. Where it's basically like you stand in front of it one time. You look to the left, you look to the right, you look up, you say these ten sentences, you move your hands around. And it's like cool.

I've now recreated you perfectly Digitally from now on. Um, and by the way, this is gonna be like the DMV also because What ends up happening is Whatever you look like when you got scanned, that's you online now. And so like

I could be sitting there, hair disheveled, having shower, beard on my face. But if my avatar is When I looked my best, that's how everybody will see me in my meetings and On the podcast or whatever. It's like when you die and go to heaven, what do you imagine someone to look like?

You know? Like w which age which age are they for eternity. That's sort of like this. You know what I mean? I feel like it should be like Whatever you remember them by, that's what you see. And so, you know, that that that that'd be my that'd be my my hope. But They so right now they're doing this three D scan. They create this ad advanced model. That's the thing the w like why is this not released to everybody?'Cause they have to figure out how to do that scan just like on a phone.

Uh so that anybody could do it. But after that the thing was incredible. And I just think The progress in one year from that cartoon. That's awesome. A cartoon avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower.

To this. is unbelievable. And now this, when you see this, you're like Oh okay. I kinda get this metaverse thing. Like uh This is cool. Like they were hanging out in a room. They could play ping pong together. They could do an interview together without ever having to travel. Without ever having to leave their space.

That is pretty impressive. Dude, what do you think about Mark Zuckerberg's patience when everyone was like Nerd? Like what are you doing, dude? This is the stupidest thing ever. And like he knew how amazing this was gonna be. I just imagine like the Arthur fist. He just like clinches his Arthur fist that that's his only like outlet of emotion and he's like

Continue. Nothing nothing. Like he just has he he just like walks around with a notebook. And like he'll just like cross a name off a list every once in a while of like revenge. Got him. Or you'll just see something like high school crush, then it's the Winkleboss twins, and now the list is just super long. Like someone will like insult him in an interview be like hold that thought and pull up his notebook and just see him better know and he put it down. No, Mark, I like the stock. I like the stock. Dude, he's totally pulled us off.

We always have said this, but imagine this, like a guy who's been the top of the game since he was twenty years old. Married to the same woman the entire time. Has a happy family, has hobbies. Has never had a major scandal, at least nothing involving his personality. Super ripped. Uh don't forget. Super ripped fit. Seems pretty nice.

This guy's awesome, man. By the way, you just described LeBron James also. Exactly. Exact description of LeBron James also. They are the same. They're both were big shots at the age of twenty. They're both ripped. To certain degrees, or different degrees. Um they both have never had major is LeBron LeBron's been with us his like high school girlfriend forever, right? They're married. Savannah, yeah. And and he has a bunch of kids, uh in the family, it seems like. I saw LeBron at the win casino one time.

And I was like, LeBron and then I go up to him and I try to dap him up. And like his security was ki were there, but like He was walking, so it was like I wasn't bothering I was it was clear I was being quick. I got off the black tech table to just do it. And uh

When I tell you That my hand was a tiny pebble in this man's giant hand. I have never felt so Honestly, so supported. I felt so like taken care of when I just put my hand into this guy's giant mitt. It was unbelievable to see a human hand just wrap my whole my whole hand up. Yeah, women aren't the only

people who like to be hugged and like Everybody needs a big spoon and I found mine. It's the Ron James. Dude, wait, have you seen this thing ZozoFit Z O Z O F I T Oh, was this the like motion capture thing? It's it's a it's a suit. This guy in ja uh Japan came out with this thing. I've been like paying attention to this for 10 years. It has never lived up to its height. I've been about this forever. But it's a suit that they sent you. It's a body suit. You put it on and they claim that it like knows all the dimensions of your body, and then you could buy clothing. Like Fits perfectly to it.

It doesn't work. Denim. Brad Adcock and ZozoFit. I love Zozofit, man. I've wanted it to work because I've got Huge thighs and a fat ass. And so finding pants finding pants for me, but okay. It's just it it is what it is. Well explain this guy. So This guy's a Japanese billion, right? Like he's like a He's a Japanese billionaire. He came up with like a media company. That's originally I think how I found him. I think it was a media company. And then his new thing was he's gonna start this clothing company and he's gonna mail everyone a Zozo suit for free to get a pick.

Perfect fitting clothing. Turns out I think the clothing company like didn't even do that well, but people were like Yeah, can I just get this Zozo fit thing and just use it for everything? Also to like tell me if my muscles are getting bigger or if I'm losing weight. Like tell me about it all. And so he just says, All right, fine, it's a fifty bucks. Like it's gonna be really cheap. And you use your phone to it's like um When you see like the Lord of the Rings movies being made and they're wearing these weird suits with these balls on'em. It's basically that. It's a suit like that. By the way, like

Somebody should be making this for with just AI now. So Um, you know like calorie counting apps have been around forever. Yeah. And you used to have to manually you know, you'd be like, Okay, it's lunch, and you'd open my fitness pal or whatever, and you'd be like I've been using my fitness pal every day for years. And you would um you'd be like, Yeah, I had a chicken salad. They're like, How many ounces of chicken? It's like, I don't know, dude, I didn't weigh it. Uh eight ounces. They're like, Cool, like Light dressing or medium, it's like

I don't know. That sounds like a personal question. What are you asking me about? Like and so you you had to manually input all this. Well, now there's these apps like Snap Calorie and stuff like that. You just take a picture of the thing and it's like Good enough now where it can actually guess the calories. Um And and there but I I I would say like it's still not all the way there because it doesn't know, let's say, like how much oil was used in cooking this, for example. But But we're getting to that point where you could just take a picture and it knows the calorie count. Well, I think we're also gonna get to the point where

If I'm on some ecom site and I'm like, am I a large or a medium? I don't really know. I'm gonna be able to click a button, it's gonna turn turn on my camera and it's just gonna scan my body and be like You're an extra large. I hate to break it to you. You know, that's what's gonna happen here. You're six one, like two hundred pounds, you don't wear mediums. I in the metaverse, I can be any size I want, Sam, all right? I might be a small to medium, I may be a medium. Um But you get what I'm saying. Like I think that this is all gonna become like

Oh, your phone can just do that now? You don't need to wear this haptic body suit from Zozofit, like That's where this is definitely going. If I was like a really smart team that was like good with like a computer vision and that sort of thing. I would do th something like this because It might not even work for the first year, but like Two years from now it should be able to work.

Really well. is a thing you could sell to every ecom site in the world because every ecom site wants lower returns Every every apparel, every fashion brand wants lower returns, the way they can do that is by getting the perfect fit for people. What's uh do you wanna talk about rewine or the clav clavio thing? Yeah. Oh uh one last thing on the Facebook thing.

I think but here's a my random prediction in ten to fifteen years Facebook is gonna be Facebook that like Meta is gonna own the largest work platform. So I think that they're gonna be the the zoom the whatever because this experience where it looks like you could feel like you're in the same room as a person and you can

Pull up. You know, power points together, you can do all that stuff without like video conferencing. I think that's uh Whoever does that right is gonna take over the The work call.

Space. And I don't see who could do it better than Facebook at this point because they have such a lead as far as the tech goes. So I think we'll look back. We'll tell our kids, yeah, Facebook back in the day used to be about sharing uh, you know, photos of your f of yourself at parties from college. And they'll be like, what, the thing I use for work every day? It's like, Yeah, that's that's the difference. I think ten years it's gonna be like that. I have some cash sitting sitting around that I was gonna use to pay taxes.

Should I just uh for you. Yeah. Sho should Beg Zuckerberg uh uh keep an eye on my money for me. Exactly. You're holding his money. Uh now rewind. So did you see this uh thing that came out? It was pretty controversial. The there's a guy or there's two companies that came out with this at the same day. Which is uh I'll we'll just say rewind because that's like the one I remember the name of. Um

It's this pendant you wear, so it's like a necklace. Um it's like you know the Angelina Jolie necklace where they she like was wearing the blood of like a a small child in Africa or something. Yeah, I don't know what was going on, but like It was our uh it was worse. It was Billy Bob Thornton. It was Wha what's like the blood is the blood of Billy Bob Thornton just like motor oil just sweat? So so there's this pendant that you wear now. That basically I don't know if you saw this, but it can

While you're bringing it's just gonna record everything. Everything you say, everything that's said to you. It's gonna automatically transcribe that And then save it locally on your phone. So that if you're ever wondering, like What did that person say? Or what my wife asked for groceries or

Did that person incriminate themselves? You can now have that all transcribed and stored for you on your phone. Some people did that guy reveal where the bodies are or not? We found out if Adnan Said killed that girl or not. He wasn't really a doctor. There's this th so a bunch of people were dunking on'em on Twitter. I think he tweeted out like I don't know, seventeen hundred people bought the thing on day one, which is not that much. Like I don't know, it's like you know, maybe that's uh What is it? Seventeen hundred, it's like sixty bucks.

Uh a thing, a hundred grand of revenue. on day one of day one of his thing, not that good. Um And people the the tweet that went viral was like Oh, so we're just gonna

We're just gonna be wearing a wire now? Like around we're gonna voluntarily just wear a wire. Great tweet, I gotta say. At the same time, the answer is Yeah. Yeah, you you know what you also carry around? A GPS tracker with your location at all times. That also has a microphone on it. You know what you also do? You have a a camera device on you when you're in the bathroom taking a shit or taking a shower. Like Th we already have given up.

Privacy everywhere. Right. And uh th the the the line I used in my newsletter I was like um You know, privacy is like vegetables. And we give it up. We'll happily give it up for just the the promise of a moment of pleasure or convenience. Well that'cause'cause that's the junk food. And like we just go for the junk food. That's the reality of the situation is very few people

will opt for vegetables when they have the option for junk food. And if this is tech that can either save you time, give you entertainment, uh, you know, like m allow you to to be lazier in some way, people are gonna do that. I remember my family like I had some family members that were like Oh, this vaccine's just for Bill Gates to track us. And I'm like Hey.

Uncle Ron. Listen. He already tracks you. Like he already knows. I track you with find my I find my friends. I know where where you went all day today. You shared your note you shared your location with me. Like remember that twenty three M E thing where we send in our blood? Like it's already being tracked. Okay, like w you're already Bill Mr. Gates already has everything he needs. So he doesn't need to do this. Um you deleted your cookies any time recently? Yeah, I forgot to delete my cookies.

Yeah, so uh like Bill Gates, he has what he needs. Uh I will not be wearing this thing. Rewind. I don't wear any wearables because I don't want to be I wanna be tracked less and this shit just stresses me out. That's surprising to me,'cause I feel like you've done all of the like Blood testing, age testing Inject inject random chemicals that

Some dude on Reddit said, uh, you know, helped him feel stronger, inject that in your butt. Like On w on one hand you're willing. I'm drug free at the moment. Well At the moment is the key phrase there. So

And by the way, it feels way less good. Ha ha ha. Yeah. It sucks. Why are you resistant to some of these trackers, but then on other in other cases you're very into measurement and whatnot? Uh one, I am kind of like going to the like more pure, whereas like less is more I don't want I don't want drugs. I don't want my cellphone. I uh like when I go out, most of the times I don't bring a phone.

Um so I don't like have my phone on me. Yeah, like when I go out, I won't bring a phone I have a Tesla, so I could use the directions on my uh On my car. And it's like if I got like I'm gonna have to eat last night, I don't bring a phone. What? Is that weird? Yeah that's very weird.

I don't I I won't bring it. So I I I just don't bring it up. What happens if you need to text someone, or what happens if somebody calls you? What happens if uh you get bored for three seconds and you need entertainment? What do you do? Yeah, I I don't I I I just don't bring a phone. Most places I don't bring a phone. So like if I'm going out on the day for the day on Saturday I won't have up my phone with me. Um Okay, Mr. I'm better than everybody. So you're saying about mental illness. What would you say? No, I uh Yeah, so I I just I've gone from like so I used to have a Whoop, I had an Apple Watch. I the only trackable thing I use is eight sleep, and I only use that because it makes my bed cold. But I don't even like track.

Any of that. So I don't track anything. I do do the blood work stuff because that's just a fun hobby. But uh I don't yeah, uh my hobby's like pain. I like getting potent needles. Um But yeah, I d I don't do any of that stuff. Do you track yourself? Like do you I I I like Whoop. I just don't want to track any of that shit. I don't care. I'm not uh I'm not a huge tracker. I actually just bought this Ur ring because I uh I wanted to test my before getting the the surgery for my deviated septum and after. I wanted to see if my sleep

Improved or not. But normally I'm not a big tracker, but yeah, I do take my phone please. Uh yeah, no, I don't track any of that stuff. So I'm not gonna be buying this thing, are you? Um I'm not gonna buy this thing, but I do If again it's sort of inevitable. Like I think if you just

Track forward in the future. We're gonna have div we're gonna wear a device on us that's a camera and a uh and a microphone. And we're just gonna like Which actually brings me to the second Facebook announcement. Did you see the glasses that they that they had?

Uh The new Ray Ban things. No, but I had V one of this. And I've had the spectacles, I've had this. None of them have quite stuck yet.

But it is kind of amazing. It is kind of amazing. The demo is really cool. He's like, Watch this like I can basically live stream. You know, just hands free. Like if I'm at something cool or whatever, I want to share this on my Instagram or share this with my friends. I can just uh push this button on my glasses and it's a camera that's gonna capture this. Or if I'm at the park like

This is a big one for me. I'm at the park with my kids. There's so many of these great moments. And just literally it it sounds stupid. It sounds Like petty, but like The time it takes to like get your phone out of your pocket, unlock your phone, get to the camera app and do it, the moment is gone. And so um I had these things that these these ray bands that Facebook made that like

You know, while I'm working out or while I'm with my kids at the park or Whatever. I can just quickly just like record anything on the fly and it just grabs the next fifteen seconds. It saves it to my phone personally. And then if I wanted to share that, I could. Um and the video turns out really cool. It's like first person view.

So I definitely am excited about this. I think this is a another like one of these breakthroughs I'm waiting for. I'm actually Less interested in the like glasses that like show your email to your eyeballs. I don't really care so much about that, but a camera that's an always on camera. Um, I think it's really cool to be able to share cool moments. Of course there's like the privacy concerns or whatever, but I think it's gonna happen. And uh Is it weird that I I trust I tr kinda trust Facebook privacy wise.

Is that do you? Well, you know what it is? It's kinda like that family member that like actually has like You know, they've done some shit. But they're like I've known'em for thirty two years now. Like, you know, like I guess I just kinda default to them, you know, like At the end of the day, if I'm leaving my keys to somebody, it's the one I've known for thirty years versus uh, you know, even though they They've gotten into some some sticky spots, but like I feel like it's a known evil.

Versus an unknown evil in in that sense. Yeah, I kinda trust him for some reason. I I definitely trust him. Um, people in the comments gonna hate this because There's still a huge population of people that are like hate Zuck, hate Facebook, and hate that we we love we we say we trust Facebook. That's like blasphemous to a lot of people. Anyways, let's move on. All right, listen.

So uh here let me tell let me bring up this topic and I wanna hear about your experience with this. So Two companies went public in the last Couple weeks. probably big fans of both of them. I think you're more fans of one of them. What's it called? Clavio? Clavio? Clavio. Yeah.

I call it which I don't know how you say it, I call it clavia. I think it's Clay B. So Clavio, it's sort of like Um It does everything. It's email software, but mostly for Shopify folks, right? For e commerce, yeah. So if you wanna send emails, you know, oh you know, your order is confirmed, or things like

After somebody comes to my site and I grab their email address, email them. Every day until they purchase for the rest of their life. You know, that sort of thing. So they went public. Let me see what their market cap is today. They went public. Right now their market cap is uh eight or nine billion. The founder, when it went public, he owned roughly forty percent of the company still. Which is amazing.

Um another company went public. This guy um started what what's the guy's name started Instacart, you know? I bet you've had runs with them. Indian guy a purva, I think. He uh seems like a great guy, went public. He only owned ten percent about of the business. Um and what's crazy is I tell people that

I tell people that Your cap table, I think, is the one thing in your company that is irreversible for mistakes. Besides that, most every mistake that you make, most mistakes, not all, most mistakes you can reverse or you can fix. Cap table, the one thing you can't fix. And what's crazy is when I was starting um a few of my companies, I remember like wanting to raise money and I'm like, oh, what's 10% here? What's 10% there? I'll just make my employee pool. You know what? Most people only make it 10%. We're gonna make it eighteen percent.

We're gonna go big. If we if uh if the company succeeds, everyone should succeed. Like I would do these like I was really loosey goosey with equity. And that's one of those things now where I look at people, it's like when people tell me like, Oh, you gotta sign this NDA before I tell you my idea. It's like, Oh, that's silly. I'm not that that just shows me proof that you don't know what you're doing. Right. But with with equity, it's actually one of the very few things that's really, really important. And so the difference between these two um These two cap tables. The difference between ten percent and forty percent, we're talking like

Five billion dollars. Um which is Yeah, but just a huge I don't know if it like how much of that is it's a mistake versus One is a capital intensive startup and one is software that's not as capital intensive.

Well, both. I think both. So Instacart is I guess that would be capital intensive. Maybe I I actually don't know where that would be. Maybe m maybe middle ground. of Capital Intensive, whereas Clavio You actually could argue it's also middle'cause you have to hire lots of engineers, but maybe not. Um but my point being is

I actually think that people Are two Willy nilly with their equity early on. Right. And I made that mistake at my first company. Uh

And it's a horrible, horrible mistake, one that you cannot recover from. And there's so many examples. I know a guy who sold his company for three billion dollars. Or sorry, for one billion dollars, you sold it for nine hundred and ninety nine hundred and Eighty million dollars. He made three million bucks.

From it. Mm-hmm. I swear to God. It was because he's like we had four co founders. We got we raised a lot of money. I gave so much equity to employees. It was insane. He's like I lost my share certificates. I just don't know where I put'em. Like what's happening? How's that possible? Um Have you heard the story of how uh Instacart got into YC? No. Oh, is that where they went and bought literally every

grocery ever at Trader Joe's. No, I I think that might be a different story. That's also probably a good one. But basically the story is like they uh I think they were expl uh like they were trying to apply late. And um And basically they were like, you know, we

They they were trying to get uh introduction. All the Y C partners were like, nah, sorry, it's too late to to get to this batch you get in the next one. Um Gary Tan, who's now the current President Y C was like, You know, you could submit a late application, but it'll be nearly impossible to get you in and they're like

So you're saying there's a chance. They read nearly impossible as Possible. Yeah. Right? Because technically it's true. And um then they put together the application, they get the reply the next day. No. And so they get rejected. He's like, Okay.

Um He's like, How about this? And so he goes, he opens up his uh the Instacar app. And he buys a six p a six pack of beer. And he put sends it to the uh Y C headquarters for Gary Tan. And um he tells the driver, Hey, this is important one, like text me when you know it's done.

Then Gary uh Gary Tan likes calls him is like, Hey, uh what is this? And he goes. This is the thing I was applying with. This is Instacart. I just went on my phone and I ordered you groceries. I ordered you a six pack of beer and One of our delivery guys dropped it off.

It's the same thing that Jesse Itzer was saying the other day, where he was like The difference between A pitch and a presentation. Like the difference between the paper pitch versus getting someone to feel the experience. Um

It's that same thing. And so Gary then emails the partners and he's like At that point, I think that they called him back and they're like, Hey, I can't believe we're doing this. We're we've never let anyone in this late, but if you're interested, we'd like to have you. And for YC That means Y C owns seven percent of this own seven percent of this company that ended up being worth, you know, six billion dollars. That one That one decision.

Which is also goes to show the power of brand, right? Like Y C was tr not trying they weren't it's not like they hunted down Instacart and had the genius, whatever. It's that The founders wanted that Y C stamp, that brand so badly. That they were willing

To like jump through hoops, push through a no. To get to a yes and Y C gets to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of it. That's the power of having a brand that people recognize and care about and feel like is gonna help their odds of success. Yeah, man. Those guys have killed it. And then Paul Graham just

left off and lives in England now in the woods, writing poetry and playing Frisbee with his kids. Yeah, he he booked the win, which nobody does. He's like cool I'm out of the race now. I'm gonna go enjoy my life. Not allowed Uh which one you wanna do? Yeah, okay. So th I don't even know really Why this fascinates me, but it does. So

This is a little primer for this. Uh Do you know what the Indian Hollywood is called? Bollywood? Bollywood. Correct. Okay, here's the two hundred dollar question. Do you know

That in do you know that Bollywood is the second biggest like kind of movie industry in the world? Yes. Okay, good. There you go. That's a freebie. Now What you don't know, what you probably don't know is that the that Bollywood the the famous people in Bollywood are like the are the most famous people on earth, aren't they? It's like George Clooney times ten. Yeah, exactly. So like Sharkan or Amitha Bushan, these guys are like gods. Meaning if they get the flu or they get sick. There's thousands of people standing outside their building with candles like

Take my health. Uh you know, y you can't die. And the reason why is that The stars in India. It's not like so it's not like George Clooney. So George Clooney will come onto the scene in his twenties, but he hasn't really made it yet. The thirties he becomes a star. And by his forties, he's kind of on the way out. He plays a couple of roles of old guys and he's done.

These guys in India that's like You get picked when you're twenty, they're like You're the star, and the movie is gonna make you look like James Bond. Like you're gonna you're only cool. Everybody loves you and you're the best. And that's the role. And then people watch that movie like this guy's the best.

Then That same guy will be the hero in movies for the next thirty to forty years. Got it. He'll be fifty and he'll be like He's the big man on campus at college.

And it's like what? This guy's fifty and he's playing that role type of thing. And and like, you know But the girl in the movie will be in her twenties and he'll be in his forties or fifties, but he's like the the hero, the stud. And so don't don't don't the movies even have intermissions, aren't they like three hour long movies? Yeah, yeah, there's a half time where you go and like eat. Um it's pretty great, honestly. That's a that's a that's something that every movie should do. Uh the other thing about movies in India.

All music in India. comes from the movies. So every movie is a musical. That's weird. And then every mu every song comes from a movie. And so like there's no like hit song that's not in the movies. It's like all one pie. Right. So it's like the center of culture. Okay. So why does that matter? Why am I telling you all about this?

Well, because one thing has really changed. And once I realized that I was like, if that changed, that's gonna cause a whole bunch of other changes. And here's the change. So most of these idiom stars I'm talking about. When they're in their twenties, in their thirties.

They look like your boy. Their body was a little A little round. It was it was a little soft. It was a normal person's body. En all of a sudden

These guys turned fifty. And they're now absolutely shredded. Every Jack City. Jack City. Every single movie star now. Like this guy run Versing. So basically they're all jacked.

And they all went from normal looking people, normal humans Two Fifty five year olds with twelve packs. And So if you think about that, you're like, okay, whatever, who cares? These guys discovered like

testosterone and HGH and like dieting and working out. Cool. But there's like a carry on effect. Again, these guys are gods. They're heroes in India. So now I met up with this uh Sony has a uh has a cousin who's like an idiot. This guy's twelve years old. The last time he came to visit America.

All he cared about was like Video games? 'Cause he's like, Oh, I love playing video games. Video games are amazing, uh as any ten year old cares about. And the second thing he cared about was like Going to target.

He's like, Oh, Walmart? Can I go to Walmart? Can I go to Target?'Cause he had seen like you know, Mr. Beast giving away ten thousand dollars out of out of Walmart. He's like Oh my god, I can't wait to go. That's my Dude Maver's thing looks like Wolverine. Yeah, exactly. And if you go look at this guy like five years ago or seven years ago when he's like got his you know, ten years ago when he got his break in movies, like did not look anything like this. So Anyways, now the guy came to visit

And I was like so, like what's your favorite video game now? You wanna go to Walmart, buddy? And he's like No, you have a gym? And I was like, Yeah, but like you're a kid, what do you mean? And he's like he started going to the gym twice a day at my house.

And all he wanted to talk about was the gym and I was like Huh. I was like oh of course like All the movie stars got shredded. That became the new male ideal standard. And so of course now everybody there is on like a fitness kit. Which made me think

Who's making protein powder in India? And so I went deep on this and I started looking up like if if fitness is now the thing, if getting shredded is now the thing. the whole supplements and fitness industry that we have here. is gonna translate over there. It's gonna be rebuilt overnight. And it's gonna be ten times bigger.

Right, because India doesn't seem like a supplement. They don't seem like they don't seem like a supplement. Culture. As of now. Until these guys if you go look at these guys' Instagram profile and they're like This is the my favorite peanut butter. I could eat that other peanut butter and get fat, but if I eat this peanut butter, I get fit. Sure enough, that thing's selling like hotcakes. I ordered some from India. It just arrived in like a giant styrofoam container. Um, and I was like

And so now you see that whole industry blowing up. And I I would love to I'm a little bit far away from it, right? Like I'm not like in the scene, so it's hard for me to participate. But I'm looking I'm on the hunt for Finding the right investment that is in the Indian fitness scene because

It is a necessary consequence of the movie stars getting shredded. Anyways, that's my fitness. If you had to make a ranking of Cuisine. Of like cuisine that's set up to make you Look amazing naked.

Uh, Indian food would not be at the top of that list. There's no like maybe Mexican food, like avocados, meat, rice. All right, great. You've heard about the Mediterranean diet. You've never heard about the Bollywood diet. Where's like the fried cheese and coconut milk diet? You know what I mean? Like it's not exactly set up to like You know, like what is it? Nan and Gee? Is that is that bread and butter, rice, current. Bread and butter and fried cheese. Like it's not it's not entirely set up to make you look good in the nude. So that's good.

The Indians, uh, maybe now they're gonna understand macros and they're gonna stay in the the need for protein. Exactly. And I went and I looked up The Indian fitness influencers on Instagram'cause I was like, oh, there's gonna be fitness influencers, who are they? These guys have like twelve million, twenty million followers. Whereas like the same person in the US market will have like eight hundred thousand to a million or two million. Just because there's so many more people.

And people in India are like absolutely addicted to the Facebook ecosystem of apps. Like WhatsApp is everything. The second best thing to WhatsApp. Instagram. You know, like a what's behind that? Facebook. And like that's just like that's the internet there, you know? And you know that you've had some success. India has had some success in the Olympics recently. The four by four, the four the four by four hundred meter dash with the

India got like second or third at the world championships. The m most recent gold. That's real. Because we used to have like a Like a archer or something like that, like a shooter. That was like the only guy who was even close to it. Um Um, the guy who won the Olympics and the world championships and the javelin Indian guy.

Wow. Uh and he looks great. He looks he looks like a he looks like a like you want to look like him. Protein peanut butter. No, the uh Indians are doing good in track and field lately. Um and so and by like lately I mean like last year and it's like the only time an Indian has ever done half decent in track and field. It's really good. If you look at soccer, there's like No Indian players. You look at basketball, there's no Indian players. There's like none. Zero. It's crazy. I've never seen like a six foot eight Indian. No, they exist. Trust me. A billion people. You're gonna look the bell curve.

Like when you have a billion people under the area of the bell curve, you're gonna get you're gonna get people that are that are tall. There's one guy actually, he's on the Kings. Uh like development team simple hard seven seven. I've seen giants in ev from every country. I don't remember seeing a a a six foot eight Indian guy with a thirty five inch vert. I've never seen that. That I've never seen. Speaking of Indian things.

Uh our boy. Uh Anand from CB Insights, by the way. He came on here And we were just talking about cap table. He's only raised, I think, eight or ten million dollars. There's a rumor. I told him I'm gonna talk I go, I'm gonna talk about this on the pod. But don't tell me anything. I'm just reading this article that I read. There's a rumor that they're about to sell for eight hundred million dollars. Um so our guests

A non That'd be pretty cool if they We on the pot, I remember we were like, This thing's gotta be worth three hundred, four hundred million And he was like, you know, noncommittal about it, but I think he probably knew it was worth more than that. In the article it said they're doing eighty million in revenue.

So ten X revenue. Ten X revenue. That would be pretty amazing. I mean, I would I if I had a bet, I bet he owns half the company. So he would make many hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. Uh that would be huge. And as a reminder, if people didn't see that episode, you should go'cause he's an idea machine. So the episode we did with Anand is awesome because he has like fifty startup ideas that we went through and reacted to. As well as he tells the story of

His father passed away and his father owned a chemical plant in India. And he's running C B insights. a tech startup in the in America that's doing well. And then he just was like, I have to deal with this. Like my father passed away, there's a plant, there's like a hundred people working there. And so he goes to India and he learns how to run this plant while running CB Insight. And he's the employees, I think. Yeah, he stabilizes it, gives and then like

created like some equity plan or whatever and then and then bounced. But really kind of amazing story. Do you think that life Do you think that life for a non, let's say he sells Let's say that he I uh he lives in New Jersey. So let's just say that he pays half in taxes. Let's say that he owns half the company, so he makes four hundred million dollars. Let's say that he walks away with three hundred million. Do you think that there's a difference in life?

From three hundred million And fifty million. Not really. Yeah, I don't think so either. Not really. Yeah. I I would imagine after fifty buy the jet instead of rent the jet. You know, like well what what's the difference? What what what is he gonna do? Yeah, I don't think it matters. No, I I what I will say is like

It's all relative to the person. So like you know Mike Dyson found a way to spend a hundred million dollars, right? Like, you know, people can find a way to spend, but then also Elon Took You know, a couple hundred million bucks and used it.

to fund his own crazy moonshot bets that nobody else would do. Right. So like for Elon, the difference between fifty And two hundred fifty or whatever million dollars. was the difference of Tesla and SpaceX existing versus Maybe they wouldn't have. Um or surviving when maybe they wouldn't have because he was able to put the money in. So I guess to the right person, yes, but for

Ninety nine point nine percent of people? No. Yeah, I don't think it makes any difference. I Chamath had a good episode on uh on uh all in and he goes after fifty, it made zero difference. Like I had that I could acquire everything I wanted to at fifty. And anything else He was like it was like stakes and basketball teams, but that meets zero difference. That's just like at a business expense.

When um whenever I hear stuff like this, like when people are like, you know, oh you know, money doesn't Make you that happy, or like you know, after this amount doesn't really do anything for you. It's like, Yeah, you're probably right, but I'm just gonna check. Yeah, I would like to find out. I'd like to find out. I'm gonna go ahead and for myself. I think that all the time as well. Uh alright. We did this episode where someone like asked me like what was it like uh after baking a little bit and I was like

It feels this way and this way, but you should go and figure it out on your own. You should you should you should double check my math. Naval had a great thing because like Naval's like the like um you know the wise uh guy in the in the in the the tech and business ecosystem. You would think that somebody who's so wise and as like, you know, sort of Enlightened is gonna just be like you know what, like Uh. It's not what matters. And he does say it's not the main thing that matters. He's like, you know, the the real goal is um

You know, a strong mind, a strong body, and a house full of love. But he's like, you know, nobody wants to hear that. And he goes, The easiest way to escape the rat race is just to win. Then let it then you can let it go. If that's far easier than trying to convince you not to play. I was like, that is

Practical wisdom. He's like, it won't make you significantly happier. But You're not going to believe me until you do it yourself. So go ahead and get after it. Exactly. I love that. Practical wisdom. Um You wanna do any more of these? We we can do one more. Uh do you wanna do

You wanna do this metropolis thing or IMG? Well, let's do Metropolis. So I don't know much I don't know too much about this, but I think that it's pretty wild. What did you see? So we both got interested I did a little bit of research, but basically there's a startup that the the g the the founder, he originally had a company called I think Park Me, and it was just like an app that told you where parking spots. Spots where And he ended up selling it, but it wasn't like a home run of a success. I think like they got their money back plus a little bit, something like that.

Then he goes on and he's like I did this all wrong. I have to think about this as an investor. And we have to like acquire parking lots and we're gonna create technology that makes it easy so you don't need to like Um You don't need to scan in when you go and pay at a parking lot. We're just gonna be able to track your car automatically.

He's been doing this for a couple of years and he just bought A parking lot. Like a a a company that owns a bunch of parking lots for one point one billion dollars. And I saw that and I was like, All right. What the hell is going on here? Yeah. The same thing caught my eye. Like I made like a there's like a billion dollar acquisition or something like that.

What I thought was the story is that So there's this one blueprint of business that's a very good blueprint. This is the blueprint that constellation software Uses. Which is vertical SAS. What is vertical SAS? Vertical SAS is

How um Oh, there's a you know, every golf club in the country needs some golf club. booking management system. So people can book their t tea times and then they can rent their clubs and then they can

you know, have a membership and whatever. And there's some person out there that made some software, sold it to some golf clubs. And What a company like Constellation will do is they're like Perfect.

'Cause that software is not gonna be like you know, Microsoft is not gonna go compete in that market. Facebook and Google are not gonna go compete in that market. Honestly, nobody really is going to compete in this market. And if there are if there is someone, it's it's kind of so fragmented that As they start to get momentum, they get to one, two, three million dollars of annual revenue, we'll just buy them. And then we'll own all of the golf club.

Mm software systems. Uh or sorry, golf uh like Off uh what what do you call them? Like the members club or whatever the whatever it's called. Um But basically vertical SAS software.

And so same thing for dentists and same thing for um whatever. Rent you know, uh industrial rentals or whatever. So vertical SAS has been a very, very lucrative play. Especially if you roll them up. So Have you been to Constellation's website, by the way?

Uh not the They give you like Five categories. Of like businesses they own. You click on

Like, all right, this this one of five. And then they give you like A list of ten. You click on one of the ten. But it's they own so many businesses that they're basically linking to other companies that own other companies. Meaning

Like We own this holding company. Which owns holding companies in these five categories. And like you have to click through four different websites to actually see the name of a company. So they must own hundreds or even thousands of small software businesses. It has acquired over five hundred businesses since being founded.

Um They I think they make offers to like hundreds of soft uh hundreds of companies. Every year if not a thousand companies a year or something like that. To give an example. So

Jonas. Jonas is one of these five. Uh uh they have six groups. So six groups, Jonas is one of the groups. And it says they do hospitality, clubs and resorts, spas and fitness, construction, payments, moving and storage. You click it and it says So you go to Jonah Software. And it says We're a family of vertical market software companies and then they own 140 just under the Jonas umbrella.

Ha ha. It's crazy, right? In forty different markets. It's crazy. It's it's a r it's a really wild setup they have. And uh if you haven't ever gone and read Uh Mark Leonard's letters uh definitely

Like, you know, worth a w that's like getting an MBA. It's go go through and read all of his annual letters, you know, uh for the last like twenty five years or whatever. Very interesting guy, very interesting company. We've talked about Constellation before. What's interesting is I thought Like it seemed like that was the blueprint. You just buy vertical SaaS companies and you roll'em up. What this parking guy's doing is basically

Took the vertical sass. And then was like, Cool, let's just own all the lots too. Let's make a Vertical company that's not just SAS, it's got SAS on the top. But underneath it is the real estate and the actual like

Um You know, the brick and mortar underneath. So that we can Um Like forget trying to sell our software to these guys and try to convince these old school parking operators.

That they should use our thing'cause it's more efficient. We'll just buy it from them in the inefficient state. And then use our software to make it more efficient. And um so it seems like a pretty big bet if I understood it correctly, but I honestly I didn't do t a ton of research. Just what I understood from the tweet. They paid one point seven billion.

For a company that owns parking lots. Yeah. It's a lot. That's huge, right? Yeah. Alright, uh do we want to wrap there?

Yeah, let's wrap it up. Alright, that's a pot. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel, never looking back

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