#168 - How to Reverse Engineer Businesses, The Indonesian King of Coal & the Story of Adida‪s‬

This Chinese Indonesian guy. What's a politician? No, he was the guy he was the middleman. So what he realized was Um, because I was like, Okay, cool, we have this coal. What do we do with it? He's like, Oh, we just sell it immediately. As soon as we sign the paper, we have the coal, we sell it to Exxon. And I'm like, oh okay, so how does that work? He's like, Well, I bought all this coal for two million and then we like I bought all the coal for two million.

And then we b sell it in blocks for twenty million each. I'm like, Well that's like four hundred, five hundred million. How are we gonna we're turning two million into five hundred million? He's like, Yeah. I'm like, Well w that's amazing. Like Why didn't Exxon why don't they just go in directly by this?

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's off. On the roadless travel, never looking back. I just got vaccinated. Um Uh that's pretty cool. I got a new toy. Do you wanna see it? Yeah.

Oh nice. Sam's holding up a gun. I was uh Just I just drove by a uh a Bath Pro Shop. And I walked in and I was like

I was just walking around just to look at like beef jerky or something. And I just saw it. And I'm never Even remotely owned anything like that. And I was like, Hey, those are cool. You didn't need to like one? Get certified or like do a background check or something. You just walk into a Bass Pro shop and buy again? Um yeah, I mean I just walked up to the counter and I go, Oh, those are handguns, those are neat. What's the deal? Like how do you buy one of those? And they go, Well, just give us your driver's license and we'll run a background check and you can walk out in five minutes. And I go, Huh, sick. I'll take that one. You just held it up. So we got like

You didn't hold the gun part. You held it with two fingers and like pointed sideways. Yeah, I I still have to learn how to use it. I don't even have ammo for it and I have like a lock on it. I'm like Pretty paranoid. I gotta figure out how to use the damn thing. Um we have something We have well, I'm a I'm a I'm a

Uh, Texas residents resident now. We have something cool happening on Wednesday. Yeah. We are gonna interview Jake Paul. Which Might be In terms of just like

Famous people might be the most famous person we've ever interviewed. Probably the most famous person I've ever met. Um I met the Pope once. Um I met Bill I met Bill Clinton when he was in office. So but Jake Jake b I did that both of those when I was uh like eight years old. So Jake Paul's like number three.

But when you say you met what does that mean? You saw the Pope, you you shake hands with the Pope what is what does it take to meet the Pope? Uh Shake hands and said hi in a busy crowd. N Oh that's pretty good. All right, you shook hands. Let's see who is the most important thing.

More like a high five. It was more like a high five. Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton. Uh I shook his hand. And like said, Hey, uh what's your what's your real first name? And he goes, William I go, Hey, why why do you have white hair? He goes Cause I'm old. And that was so I met him. And he asked my name. So I actually I actually met Bill Clinton. You really shot your shot with Bill Clinton. Well, I was like six years. What year was that? What what year did you ninety two, whatever it was. I was like four. Pre Lewinsky, post Lewinsky, what was going on? Uh pre. Pre

Pretty. Back when he was still young Bill. All right. Um That's pretty good. I met uh The the closest thing I ever got to that probably was well, I have this really long Orlando Bloom story that's very funny, but I'm not gonna tell it. Uh, but it's like if you're my friend, you've heard me tell the story ten times because it's just a go to, it's just a winner of a story. Uh you know those those stories that you just like you just have in the bank.

If you ever need to be like, you know, the the life of the party. To impress someone. Um, but then I Also, you know the you know the Duke uh Duke Andrew or something like that? I forgot his name is Duke Andrew I think. I know the name. Is he the guy did he get in trouble with Jeffrey Upside? Yeah, he just got in trouble uh for that or maybe for other things. I don't know something something happened that's not great for him. But he was doing a tour of Silicon Valley. And so we got word that oh the Duke is coming to our office.

Uh Prince Andrew, Duke of York. Yeah, that's right. Uh he was the Duke of York. So I got word oh in the morning. The Duke of York is coming to the office today. Can you give a presentation? I didn't know what the Duke of York was. Um Still don't really know what the Duke of York is. He's just like not in the prince lineage, but whatever.

So anyway, he First, a full security detail comes, sweeps the whole office. The you know, the morning just to make sure they get they get the whole layout. They know where the entrances are, they know where the exits are. And uh they're like okay, this place is secure for the Duke.

And he shows up. at four PM and I've got this like presentation I've been working on. I threw my whole day away. And I just started working on this presentation for the Duke. And um Explaining what we do and why it's so great. I'm like

I gave my all. And the presentation I you've been to our office. Our office has like couches, not like kind of chairs. So very comfortable couches. So he sits down on one of our couches. And is just flanked by security guards. And I fire up the first slide on the big projector. And I start talking and I see that he's asleep. He is uh passed out by the fur before the first line even starts. He has no fallen asleep in his chair.

And now I don't know what to do because I'm giving this presentation to this one guy who's asleep. It's all my employees who know what the heck we do. They don't need this presentation. They all see that he's asleep. I see that he's asleep. The security guards Or kind of like not saying anything, they're not doing anything. And so I give the presentation to the sleeping Duke of York for the first twenty minutes. Oh my God, how cringe. That's actually really cringe.

Well I'll I'll finish the story with one thing'cause it's kinda relevant to what we do. So at the end it Uh, because we were an idea lab. And like this podcast about brainstorming business ideas and talking about shoot the shit about business ideas. So we I basically paused at the end and I was like, okay, I could keep going, but like It'd be more fun if you actually joined us in doing what we do and you kind of brainstorm some business ideas. And so we asked him a bunch of questions. We're like, Do you guys

Like what apps do you guys use? And he was like, We don't have phones. We're like what? He's like he's like we don't get to use our our like personal cell phones. Uh I guess at that time. I don't I didn't know exactly what he's saying, but there's some limitation where they don't have They don't just have like iPhones with normal apps and they could do whatever they want. It's like Very like

pre-installed, use this phone, use what it has, and like if you want more, go to IT and they'll They'll help you or something like that. And um and then I go, What business ideas you have? He goes There needs to be a fact checker. So politicians can't lie. I was like what? He's like

We need to hold politicians to to what they say. There's so many politicians that just lie and we need them to And everything should be on the right everything should be like on the record and be fact checked at all times and it should be public if you're lying. That was his idea number one. And then he had something else I was like about like I don't know, like digitizing paperwork or something like that. And I was like all right, thanks, Prince. So there's actually Wait, I could riff on that. There's this thing called politico political

Uh what is it? Uh I actually don't know how you pronounce those. Oh god, everyone makes fun of me for not being political? No Uh Polita Uh P O L I T I

Fact. Plita fact. Politifact. Okay. Have you ever heard of that? No. Um so what it does is it Looks at

Uh like when there's a big um uh big election they analyze all the major speeches Uh done by some by someone, so in the case of Trump or uh Biden when they were doing their debates, they would

They have a meter that is says true, mostly true, half true. Thus. Right, most have seen this. Pants on fire. And they actually check all the stuff they say and they say, This is or is that true? Here's why. And it's kinda cool. Uh uh Politifact, I guess it's called. It's by the po I like that it goes to Pantifier. That's a nice text. That's pretty cool. Um I like that. Uh so your your boy was onto something. Not a great business, but it it it does exist. There is something that does this. Um

Um Okay, wait, one more thing. You said uh we got on this tangent'cause you said Jake Paul's coming on Wednesday. So um Why is Jake Paul coming on and what are we gonna do about it? So Jake Paul okay, so Uh I am basically copying Sean and I started investing in some companies.

And Jeffrey Wu is a friend of mine. I think he's a friend of yours too. Uh I'm I'm mildly close friends with him. And he saw that I was investing and I saw that he was investing. And he goes, And we were just shooting the shit. I go, What are you doing? And he said, What are you doing? And we exchange ideas. He goes, Hey, you just want to do a phone call? I I'll bring on my partner, Jake.

And I was like, Oh, aren't you partnering with Jake Paul? He goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll bring him on. And uh I go, All right, sounds good. So we just do a Zoom. And I'm sitting there with Jeffrey and or Jeff and uh Jake. And Jake's like

Hey, what's your self? W let's just have a text chat, like a te a group. uh thread. And uh by the way, uh I love my first million and I know the hustle. Like can I come on? The podcast or or I was like, Yeah, sounds good. So Yeah.

Here we are. Uh it's kinda weird. But kinda funny. That's pretty legit. Uh I also want to know from him. Well, I'm gonna ask him, but like Jeff is like uh tech founder, sold a company Uh started like a a company backed by Andreessen Horowitz. It's like a keto company. And um

And then somehow somehow like partners with Jake Paul. Like I don't even know how they became friends. It's like how did this Asian dude from the tech world become like good enough friends with Jake Paul where they'll start a business together? Like do you know that? No, I don't. I know that Jeff moved to Miami and Jeff's like a manly man. Like Jeff's into guns and fighting and big muscles and whatever men are supposed to be into. And I g Jake, I I assume is also into that stuff. So they they must have met and Jeff's real, real smart and savvy. And I have a feeling that it's a good shtick, which is like Jake's the famous one, gets access, and Jack is uh Jeff is a straight man who uh you know, makes the make sure the uh knows. Yeah. And that that's uh historically a great partnership. It's actually Well, there's this guy named Brian Lee who does this and he's partnered with uh Shapiro. I forget Shapiro's first name.

But Shapiro was the lawyer for uh OJ OJ Simpson, and they started Legal Zoom together, and he and Shapiro was like the celebrity And then he did it with uh Kim Kardashian and they started shoe dazzled together. Wait, weren't Car w wasn't Kardashian's dad? Uh Kardashian's dad was the lawyer. Uh well OJ had like eight lawyers. Robert Shapiro's his name. OJ had like eight lawyers. So it was like Kardashian, it was uh Johnny Cochran, it was uh uh uh whatever, yada yada yada. And was was he the one who also partnered with Jessica Alba for the honest couple? Yeah, so this guy named Brian Lee, uh I guess he's Korean. He's a uh Korean American. Um and I guess Lee's Korean, I think. And uh

He partnered with Shapiro for legal zoom. And Shapiro was supposed to be like the face and the famous person. Turns out Shapiro, I mean, he's a really successful he's a savvy business guy. So Shapiro goes, Let's do this with some more celebrities. So they partner with Kim Kardashian and they do shoe dazzle, which raised a bunch of money, but I think kind of flamed out. Uh, but then they do it uh with one other company and then eventually they do it with Jessica Alba and the Honusco Honest Company. And it's the same thing. Jessica Alba was supposed to be like Shapiro, kind of like the face, the famous. Turns out she's pretty savvy, apparently, uh, and good at uh

you know, whatever whatever it is she's good at, I guess running a business. I don't know what her role is, but she's great. And that's what he does. Uh and so uh partnering with celebrities can actually work out quite well. This company is a It's a big company. That's like a That's like a big that's like a billion dollar company, I think, uh the onus scope. I think I think many what do we want to talk about today? I got a bunch of random random topics uh Do you want me to start? Did you have one you wanted to start with? Well, I actually was researching a fair bit of your things, um, because I found them to be a little bit interesting. Do you want to talk about turned yellow? Is that interest or how about you lead? I'll let you lead everything and I'll and I'll follow. But I researched all your stuff.

Okay, we can talk about turned yellow, so we'll start there. Um This is a cool business. So this is in a category that uh our friend Ryan Biegelman said this word. I he he was the first one I h ever heard say this. I don't know if he started it or he picked it up somewhere.

But it's the term. Drop servicing. So people have heard of drop shipping, which is basically like You market on Facebook or wherever else. You sell a product to a customer, but it's a product that you don't hold in inventory.

The m you j as soon as you get the order from a customer, you place an order with your manufacturer, the manufacturer ships it directly to the person. So It's a way to do e-commerce without having to buy and hold inventory because you're just directly shipping to customers. Straight from the factory. And typically kinda like lower margin. But it's a great way to get started if you don't have any money in e commerce. That's kind of like the idea. And turned yellow is actually one of Jack Smith's

uh favorite things. Jack might be an investor, but I uh I know he's a huge customer of Turned Yellow. Right. So what turned yellow does is similar It's a drop servicing company. So instead of shipping you a physical product They do a service for you kind of on demand. So Turned yellow. I actually my a friend of ours, um I don't know if you know the guy, Alex, uh who's behind it, but

Uh he bought the company recently. And uh I won't share any like the numbers or anything like that, but uh really qu Uh Vol Volodarsky or something like that. Vol O. Is how you sp st start the spelling of his last name? Um

You can f on Twitter, he's at Volo Dark skier or something like that. And he he also started this like ninety theme kind of like uh party or parade or thing that used to happen, like 90s jam fest or something like that. It was just all nostalgia, which I thought was cool. That's why I first reach out to him. And then I found out that our few our mutual friends, uh Xavier and Sieva

It helped you know, invested in him when he bought Turned Yellows. It wasn't Jack, it was Sieva. I'm I I'm an investor in Sieva's fun. That's how I heard about this. Yes, okay. Exactly. So what Turned Yellow does is they basically it's a great gift. So you can Um S submit a picture of your family or your friend.

And they'll send you a drawing Like an illustration of that same photo or that same person. turned into what looks like kind of like a Simpsons character, like turned yellow, like you know, all the Simpsons characters are yellow. So they make they cartoonize any picture for you. So it's like you, you went and got this custom made for your friend. So it's this great gift and um Simple, simple business. They basically on one side they have a whole bunch of artists.

Who can? crank out these like illustrations in this one art style. And on the other side, they just advertise on Facebook or whatever, and their their number one advertisement is this like, Uh picture of Howie Mandel holding up his turned yellow where he got turned yellow. And that probably has made them Millions of dollars. There's so many replicas. So if you to

Keep your ads on and type in turned yellow. So there's turned yellow.com, which is I guess I I think the original. Then there's Simpson Fi Simpson Fi Me. Then there's Art of Yellow. And they are all complete total rip offs, the exact same website practically. Exactly. And uh That's kind of interesting. I would have thought this would would have you would have had to have had some type of licensing or blessing from citizens. I think it operates in a slightly gray area because they don't say anything about the Simpsons, but the art style does evoke that idea, that look, and I think that's part of why people are buying it for sure. It's one hundred percent the Simpsons. I mean they're sitting in front of the club. He's my friend, so I'm trying I'm trying to say it a little bit softly here. So but but anyways, the cool thing what they were doing was they bought the company. The company was doing well.

I had all these competitors because everybody was kind of doing the same. Uh everybody was start trying to clone them. Um And then they brought on this badass licensing guy. who has been like in the licensing business for decades. And the idea is that he was gonna go and actually talk to all the different IP holders of

uh Simpsons and and Futurama and Harry Potter and any other brand and basically say, Hey, we would love to cut a licensing deal with you. So that we can do this and um do it like totally above board. You make some money from this. We We uh lose a little bit of money, but we can kinda like knock out all these competitors who are doing this in the and they don't wanna work in the uh above board. They all wanna be under the table here. And so that was the business plan. And um I don't know exactly how it's going now, but I thought this was really cool. It's a cool business.

That does um you know, very good revenue. And there's a whole bunch that are that are like this. And right now what people do is they just do this for every popular theme. So it's like You can do one like a lot of people like Rick and Morty. That's like a cult phenomenon now. So people are doing this with the Rick and Morty art style, and then people are doing this with another art style. And This reminds me of what our friend uh Sully did, where he got the rights to Family Guy and made the Family Guy mobile game.

And he made he made a version of Candy Crush that was themed Family guy. So he took a proven game. Candy crush, that's like super addictive. Amazing at monetizing. And he just skinned it with the Family Guy branding and got Family Guy to help promote it. And Family Guy got

millions of dollars in revenue from the success of this game. And then eventually the same thing with Harry Potter. Yeah, he did the same thing with tons of stuff. But How do you think you even like I wouldn't even know the first thing w what do you do? Do you find someone uh who happens to know someone who knows someone and they introduce you to someone? Yeah. Fox? I mean like I don't even know

That seems really hard to to make happen. Yeah, well, I think that's why they brought on a guy who's done decades of licensing, because he has the net connections already. He maybe worked with these same brands to do a different licensing deal, maybe put in Faces on T shirts for Bud Light or whatever, right? Like Uh so so I think that's one thing is like there is a network aspect to it where you can get your foot in the door. But

I don't know, did you ever listen to the first episode of this podcast with Sulli where he explained how he got the family guy right? No insane story. Yeah, I listened to the episode, but that was uh two years ago now. What happened? Two years ago, yeah. Basically he was like all right. Uh first, why did he need this? They were just making normal mobile games, but distribution costs kept going up and up and up because Facebook was getting more and more expensive to advertise on. Because all the game developers were all competing against each other, bidding the prices up. So he's like shit, we need a way to stand out. We need a way to acquire users.

without pay for as much in ads, we need a more efficient way to acquire users. So he had seen that um the Simpsons Did a mobile game with EA. And they made like Simpsons like the quest, you know, I don't even know what it's called. Like some some Simpsons game with EA. He's like, Oh, that's genius. That's what we need to do. And this is before the Kim Kardashian mobile game and before

Others started copying this playbook. So he's like, Okay, what's the next franchise that we can get? Family guy. So Family Guys, also owned by I think Fox. Yeah. And so they have they have Simpsons and they have Family Guys. So they go to They they get in touch with the you know, Google around, they get in touch with the person to

who who's in charge of the stuff and they're like, Yeah, like, okay, I don't know, I've never heard of your startup. But um We're gonna probably just go with EA. I mean, we just did the Simpsons with them, it was pretty successful, like EA is like a big name, trustworthy. You don't get fired for going with EA. I might get fired if I go with you guys. So they're like, Okay, you know, fair enough, but they didn't give up. And so what he said was

Ever he he had decided like the company was screwed if they didn't fight like pull a rabbit out of a hat. So he just put all his chips into this one strategy and was like okay Every morning when we come into the office. Or just have a whiteboard. The whiteboard says, How do we go get the family guy rights? It's like, what can we do? And uh they would just come up with some ideas and then they would try it that day, and then they would like fail and then would come back again the next day and like the next day, and then eventually His number two it was only him and two other people who knew about this plan in a company of like

fifty, sixty people, I think. And so the number two guy was like, dude, we've exhausted. We've We tried this, we tried this, we you know Blah blah blah. And so um Eventually th Mark Andreessen was on their board, who's their investor. So they had asked Mark Andreessen, Hey, do you you're super well connected. Do you know know the guy? He says, Yeah, I'll make a phone call. So he makes a phone call.

The they get the meeting, but the meeting g again is like I don't know, guys. So he says all right, how do we pull this off? He goes First, we're gonna economically make this like a ridiculous deal for them. So like we're gonna offer them this ludicrous upfront guarantee of X millions of dollars of

You just get that money from day one. Uh number two, you're gonna get this like awesome fat royalty on the back end uh if this game is successful. And um so that was kind of lucrative and they were like, Okay, we're into that. And by the way, he didn't have the money to make like he didn't have the money to give them. Yeah, it's a black. Promised it and was like, I'll go raise the money if we if they say yes was his plan. And um And then the last thing was they found out that the guy the main guy who's the decision maker

His like mentor or uh was like a family friend of Mark Andrees or something like that. And so he's like oh Talk to the mentor guy. So they talk to the mentor, the mentor's like Okay, guys, I hear what you're saying. I like your spunk.

Like, um I'll I'll help you out. And they put'em on the board of their company. They're like, dude, we'll give you shares, we'll put you on the board. And he was like Guys, don't eat it. It's okay. And he put in the word and basically that that got the guy to like lean their way of like yeah, give these guys a chance, they're legit.

Don't worry about like that they're not a big household brand. In fact, these guys will go all out for you. It's life or death for them. And that's what you want on your partner. And so that's how they ended up getting the pitch to work and got the rights to Family Guy and saved the company. Do you ever think at least I I mean I think of this and do you? Um When I think of stories like this

I think to myself like Mm. Why wouldn't you just go to this person with the job? And just be like And just say all the obvious, which is, dude.

You don't want to get fired. You also hate your job. Uh I'll give you$100,000 personally. I'll wire you a hundred grand. Can you please just like like what stopping just like Total cronyism. I mean I guess not what's stopping it. Maybe I should rephrase this. It's pretty mind boggling that that's not more

Like But there's not more of that. So okay, so what let's let's answer both. What's stopping it? Well Usually the person you want to bribe is in a pretty high up position. So they're doing well already. Maybe hard up for money. Maybe how much do you think the person makes a year who's like in charge of licensing for Family Guy? I bet you not guys I bet you that guy's easily pulling in three hundred, four hundred thousand dollars.

So that's not stupid money, but that's good money. Good money, right? So he's he's not like, you know, he's not desperate. Let's put it that way. Second thing. Uh you know. In a big company. I don't know if you've had yours yet now that you got acquired, but there is like a whole like anti bribery training you have to do, they really put it in your head, like, Hey, look

Even just like Taking any gift over fifty dollars. Tickets to a game. Yeah, a dinner. You need to report it, it could be bribery, blah blah. So you get it it gets put in your head and you start to think, okay

Do I want to risk it all? Cause if I actually got caught doing this. I would basically not be able to have a career anymore. So you kinda have to pay me so much. that I'm I'm willing to risk the odds of me getting completely blacklisted from my profession where I work so hard to become a VP after thirty years. And I'm not saying that's I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not even remotely implying that I'm into this. I'm just saying I'm actually Of course. I'm just what I'm You're saying some other guy might be into this. What I'm saying is I'm surprised that this doesn't I'm surprised it doesn't happen more. It's just crazy that we all agree.

that with uh we we mostly all agree what's right and what's wrong and we kinda stick to it. Um Because like if Sullivan like look man I'm gonna give you this deal. If you get fired, I'll give you a job. Um but I'm gonna pay I was gonna pay your company ten million dollars. I'll give you just a million of that.

I'm shocked that's gonna happen. One is Somebody said this the other day, they go So how many employees does Amazon have? How many employees does Facebook have? How many does Google have? Huh.

Wonder how many foreign spies work at these companies. A lot. It's like Sounds crazy like four and spot, like what is a movie? It's like no no no. Of course it's not zero, like of course. There are people working for China, for Russia, for different countries.

As foreign agents and there's actually been like cases of this where guys basically took the, you know, like the the machine learning model out on a USB stick out of Google and like basically went back to Russia or like That's like a thing that ha has been has been found. Um to ha to be happening in in these companies. So one is

It's crazy that that's actually happening. That you know, I've probably worked with somebody Who is actually like a foreign agent. Which is just like a bizarre. I mean, how many times do you think that there's someone who is a Facebook employee and they're like Hey look. I'm gonna fire you and we're gonna act like we're not friends anymore. I need you to get a job at Snapchat.

And I'm gonna funnel you money. And I need you to tell me everything. Everything. Yeah, that totally exists. Which is that has to happen. We don't talk about it. So okay, so then um Then I was exactly that. So I I've had this experience where I thought

Honestly, I didn't think anything was wrong with this, but again, this is where maybe my moral compass is a little screwed up, but I was like, Oh For example, when we got acquired We had talked to five other companies while we got acquired. And for each of them, they're laying out their map. you know, how the what's their strategy, how they're gonna win, how we fit into that strategy.

you know, where they're strong, where they're weak, what the numbers are. So when we finally got acquired, I was I walked in and I was sort of like guys Congratulations, you got me. You got my team, you got a code base. She also

Got a little bit of intent. No, they like I talked to you. They had no interest. I didn't even say anything, but I was like Nobody asked me anything. That's insane. I and I was like, I know I would if I was in that company's shoes and I acquire somebody who had talked through the strategy with the CEO of all the different companies. I don't know. Like so, like what they say. What do they plan? Like what how do they view the world? Well, that's not even for like tell me their secrets, it's just like

What were they saying? It's like not it doesn't even seem wrong to me, but The fact that nobody asked me tells me Huh. Maybe they do think that would be wrong to ask and maybe my just compass is screwed up. What do you think? Well, this is my whole point, which is mo in in in I just want to say this again, incredibly clear. Like I'm not saying I do this or support it. I'm just saying I'm surprised it doesn't exist. But the moral of the story is most people are actually quite ethical and

Particularly if you're in a room full of people. They're gonna be extra ethical. Um And so I know I'm not surprised that they didn't do that. But as an owner I would have been like

Hey. Come here. What uh exactly I wouldn't especially when I was like at a startup. I act but I wouldn't have to be a little bit more. But I wouldn't say like tell me their numbers. I would say like I would I would just be like, What are they like? What motivates them? Um, are they cool? Does it seem like they have their act together? Like these like

Fluffy questions. And then if you can say honestly. I totally would have asked for their numbers. I would have been like, How big is it? How much revenue are they doing? I w I was guessing, you know, five hundred million. Is it five hundred million? You have to ask those other questions first. You gotta like see if they're gonna bite the baby. Yeah, you don't wanna make'em uncomfortable. But I am a bit I am surprised. Um we

Uh well, you and I know someone who wasn't involved in a lawsuit because they were hired at one company, a large uh tech company. And previously they had worked at the competitor and Yeah, we c we can say the names. This is public information. Alright. It was um Anthony Papliano. He worked at Facebook. This is all public. This is you can read the deposition or uh I believe it's deposition. Uh he didn't tell us. I read I read the deposition like a nerd and that's how I know. Yeah, and basically, according to the records that we read, he worked at Facebook, he decided to work at Snapchat, and they said something like

Here's a piece of paper. Write down the um The organization chart, tell us how it works, and then go and recruit those people. And he, according to the uh deposition, said, No, that's I'm not a chance. And they fired him. Snapchat did or or they like buttted heads or something like that.

And uh so yeah, I do Yeah, they buttered heads over that. Yeah. Uh I uh I think this stuff happens actually a a fair bit, but I'm actually shocked it doesn't happen more. Right. I I the only my only concern in that situation would just be I don't wanna make my own person, my teammate uncomfortable if they don't feel like sharing or they don't They don't want to share, they feel like that's wrong. Okay, no problem then. Um

But if they were down to share, I would one hundred percent be asking all the questions. I'm thinking from my startup brain, at a big company, you sort of have more to lose. It's not really worth it. Uh, you're not like in a like sort of you know, life or death situation of the company, like you don't need the information. But I really have been surprised, like we we'll hire people who are like from YouTube or whatever. And they and I and wherever we're at, we're like hypothesizing like, well, you know, like

How do other companies handle this? Blah blah blah. What can we try? I'm like, that dude worked there. Why don't we just ask that guy? Like, hey, dude, what did you guys do? How did it work? What was it like? Is this retention number good or bad relative to what you saw? Like And nobody asked the question, which is like maybe it's just not in a big Big meeting settings, but

I have been surprised at that, and I know. If you're working Like oversee there are other companies that don't have that same credo. I worked for a guy in Indonesia. My first first job I ever had, it's kinda like a summer job. And my dad hooks me up with this guy. He's like, Oh yeah, this guy is known as the king of coal in Indonesia. He owns like all the coal of Indonesia. I'm like, Oh, sweet, okay.

So I'm like, I go do the summer job with this guy. Was it was he an American or an Indonesian? He's a Chinese guy living in Indonesia, a fifth grade dropout. Can't speak like any English pretty much, like very broken English. Um I he had four women just doing his email on giant TV screens in his office because I don't think he could even type.

And uh he was just like Or he'd like uh or like he'd just say out loud what he wants to reply to every email. And uh and that's how we do his business. And so I like as I get there, I'm like Oh, cool, you're the king of coal, like How that happened, what'd you do? And basically I'm what I realized pretty quickly was

This guy's entire business model was Big companies like Exxon and BP and Chevron, they all wanted land in Indonesia. And the land was owned by the local, uh like City province. They had the rights to it. So they so

They had the thing. And um The local guy would just only like the only way to do business with this guy was to bribe him. Like that's the only thing the guy wanted was a bribe. The local politician wanted a bribe. If you give him the bribe, you can have the land rights. So this Chinese Indonesian guy What's a politician?

No, he was the guy he was the middleman. So what he realized was Um, because I was like, Okay, cool, we have this coal. What do we do with it? He's like, Oh, we just sell it immediately. As soon as we sign the paper, we have the coal, we sell it to Exxon. And I'm like, Oh, okay, so how does that work? He's like, Well, I bought all this coal for two million and then we like I bought all the coal for two million. And then we b sell it in blocks for twenty million each. I'm like, Well that's like four hundred, five hundred million. How are we gonna we're turning two million into five hundred million?

And he's like, Yeah. I'm like, Well what that's amazing. Like Why didn't Exxon why don't they just go in directly by this? He's like Well, if they could, they would, but they can't, so they won't. And basically what he was saying, like those companies did couldn't get their hands dirty, they could not risk Bribing foreign like politicians.

So what they did was they let this guy bribe the fallen foreign politicians, get the rights, and then they would cut a commercial deal with him. And this guy knew nothing about the coal. Like I'd be like Oh, is this a good asset, bad asset? He's like Th Doesn't matter.

Where you get the paper. They pay for the paper. Like we don't have to do any of the work. We don't have to like extract it, mine it. Don't have to do anything. And now by the way, this guy's in jail. Like, you know, that's the the end of the story. He's in jail for other names. Yeah, his name well, I I I wanna personal put risk personal harm by outing this guy, you know. We're a world away, but but but this guy's kind of a gangster, so I'm not gonna say his name, but you could if you can use what I said and Google it. Your dad basically your dad got you an internship with a gangster Yeah, me and my sister, by the way, both of us. That's crazy. Like I remember we were we were in his office one time and he had a friend come in and his friend is like kinda like

You know when it's his friend'cause it's just like alcohol like starts pouring, women start showing up at the office, like what's going on here? Who are you trying to wine and dine? And it's this one sleazy looking dude. And I was like, Oh, like what's what's your business? He's like, I work in Singapore. Uh, I help companies on the Singapore Stock Exchange. And literally, this was just straight insider trading. So I'm sitting there. And I'm just hearing this guy be like, Yeah.

These are the three companies you need to like buy. They're like dirt cheap right now. But they're gonna like They're about to announce XYZ and they're gonna pop. And then they would just like toast their whiskey and then they would buy the stock on the Singapore stock exchange or Hong Kong stock exchange. And like sure enough, the numbers would go crazy.

And I was just sitting there being like, Wow, this is like insanity that this is how like loosey goosey these guys are with business. Well what I was gonna say was I think that like in uh uh even though like people make Amazon or whatever to be like evil Uh You just said no, like we would never even ask this ex Googler about X, Y, and Z. And I was gonna say That's like a very American thing. I've have a couple of friends who I worked with, uh, who run Chinese companies or they're you know, they're Chinese and they're either based in China or are now American or the Chinese American now.

And I have a bunch of Indian friends. Um And They're like, Yeah, that uh we we don't we operate differently than you. Our opinion of of the right and wrong way is a lot different than you and it is Far more.

unadulterated capitalism of just Uh Wha why is copying wrong? Like and and and They're kinda right, right? Like why is it wrong? But in any way, it is quite interesting. Yeah, totally. Uh anyways, I don't know how we got on the last topic. Uh we can go back to

Yeah. What is it? Um, my guy Chris, Chris, who's uh my apprentice right now for content, he sent this to me. And I haven't actually spent a ton of time on it, but go to firstversions.com. Uh check that out. And I'm pretty fascinated with this. I think you are too. We both are like

Internet archaeologists we like to go find The OG Thing. I did this blog post that got like tens of thousands of views once uh before I had any audience. It just went viral because it was What do the first web page look like for these 10 big companies? And this is kind of like common to to do. Uh like

Uber's homepage back in the day, Snapchat's homepage back in the day, fa the first Facebook homepage. The first eBay homepage, first Amazon homepage, and these things look like you know, so basic and rudimentary and then like really just It makes you realize like, dude, you you need to launch And there's that quote, if you're not embarrassed by V one of your product, you launch too late.

And all these companies definitely like fall into that category. So I thought firstversions.com was a cool little like archive of stuff like this. I think this is so cool. So I actually just sent you a link to an article that I wrote. I think I wrote this in sixteen, twenty sixteen years ago. Uh fifteen, October fifteen. And I uh you could the uh It probably doesn't even work entirely. But anyway, I what I love to do, and I've always loved doing this, is I use there's a few different websites. Web archive's the easiest. And what I like to do is I will um Get a a Google Doc and a spreadsheet. And I'll map out.

The the whole journey of a company. So I'll look at what air when Airbnb started and then I'll read all about them of like, all right, here's when they announced they had this many users. Here were they here's where they announced this much funding. Here's where they said they had their first fifty employees. And then from fifty, they actually went to a thousand in only two years. And then I'll take screenshots of their website. And in doing that, you can actually see what like how the the evolution. So progression. Yeah. And I'm just starting I'm just making this up with Airbnb, but it could be like it started as airbetting breakfast and it was about renting cots inside of a living room. And then oh wow, they actually changed their their positioning to travel like a local and they started um taking higher end pictures. I I don't know what it is, but uh and and and when they start actually taking higher end pictures, that was actually right when they right before they raised their hundred million dollar funding. And so anyway, you can actually track the progression really nicely by doing this. And I love doing that. I love it. And so you can actually see, oh Uber ubercab.com.

They were only black car services. Oh, when they raise all this money, they actually got rid of the black car. The black car became secondary, so actually the black car didn't work. Uh so I switched to this, you know what I mean? And so it's kinda cool. Yeah, you can totally reverse engineer a lot of the stuff. So some of the tools we use to do this, the Wayback Machine, which is the Internet Archive. So Uh just Google Wayback Machine. That lets you put in any domain name and you go back in time and they took screenshots.

of what the website looked like on June twelfth, twenty uh twenty ten. And then that you can go back, you can see Uber's what did who Uber's homepage look like back then? How were they describing themselves? Another one I do is TechCrunch. I go to TechCrunch. I search for a company's name and then I reverse sort it. By the earliest mention of it. So like you can go to Twitter.

You can see the very first article is You know, Mike Arrington being like You know, the buzz at the party this week uh was about Twitter spelled without the you know, without the vow, basically. It's like The short messaging service was kinda fun. You could do this, but you know Who cares? People are just d tweeting about their they're just tweeting about their breakfast. And it was all through SMS, like

You can just kinda see what was going on then. So I like that one. That's it that's a useful one. Another one I'll do is I'll go on Twitter. And you can Twitter advanced search, so you can type in anyone's name. And you could do things like

Uh Twitter doesn't make this obvious how to do it. There's like a format of how you write these in, but you write like Uh The sample Before Two thousand and eleven. Yeah. And then you say minimum.

300 likes. And I can kind of go see your most popular post at that point in time. What were you talking about? What was working for you? What wasn't. So I've done this with a whole bunch of people. And I kind of like, I really am a big reverse engineer type of guy. And it's not that you can copy it. But It's just data points. It's a way to fast forward experience because Experience the hard way is slow. It takes like decades to get good at things and to learn and to like Figure out what's normal, what's not, what's fast, what's slow, what's good, what's bad.

And a better way to do it is to like download a whole bunch of data points quickly. And it's not perfect experience, but it's better than being blind and and just kind of like going off only your personal experience. So I'm some ways. I would actually go as far to say you can copy it. Um You you can. You actually can copy a lot of stuff, and I think you should sometimes. So for example, this first by the way, first versions.com.

This is a wonderful website. This is such a good website. Uh I uh this is so cool. Um I wish they don't even is not just internet like what like what we're talking about is home pages'cause that's like kind of our niche, but they'll be like this is the Yeah, this is the first version of Tom and Jerry, like the very first pilot. And like last night, I don't know why for for no reason

Before I went to bed I was watching the very first pilot episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm before it was even a show. And I was I just love seeing that OG OG, the first pilot of Always Sunny in Philadelphia where they're using the handheld camera. Like I like seeing that because it just As somebody who is frequently starting things It's important to go see that your favorite things started with very

Humble, simple, sh kind of shitty beginnings. And uh and then you know, you sort of can see how much better they got over time. This is so good. Uh, I love this. Uh I'm gonna link to you some uh link something to you. So in two thousand and thirteen. I created this thing I called uh the CEO doc. It was a stupid name. But uh

I I sent it to you and you could actually see that so funny that you do this because I mean it we're it's it's so funny that we're similar and we've been doing this for years. So I created oh wait, is it not working? Um I created this document. Where I would Take I think I had a list of five hundred people. And I would make timelines for each of their lives. And I would say started their it was broken into apprenticeships.

First hit. And then the self actualization mode. So for example Uh. Jack Dorsey started apprenticeship at age twenty two. From twenty two to twenty eight, he basically was like this poor nobody who worked as a dispatch service for a taxi cab company. Twenty-eight to thirty one.

Started Twitter at twenty eight. Uh It actually became a pretty big hit really soon at Uh

twenty nine. And so I have timelines and I have average ages A average age for each person. And so um I love doing that stuff and it works so good. uh for for just seeing like what's possible. Um So we're we're actually quite similar. Uh I've been doing this as well for a while.

Yeah, it's great to nerd out about this kind of stuff. Um Okay, so first versions is cool. I have another kind of cool thing. Okay, here's a Here's a idea. I would say this is not a business. It's probably a very bad idea. Maybe this is something that

This is You reminded me of it because this thing that we're doing is uh Like the thing we're talking about is extremely nerdy and probably most people don't don't do what we're describing, like kind of like go back and Map out the evolution of companies or people or whatever it is. So similarly.

I I I want a tool that I'm calling business pocket. So Pocket is this Chrome extensions is app or service where you like If you see an article you like, but you don't have time to read it.

You just hit Pocket. It's like you put it in your pocket for later. Do you think uh I think it used to be called Read It Later. Do you think Pocket is going well? I bet you it's going pretty badly. I bet you that'd be a cool company to buy. Yeah, I don't think it's going well. It got really big and it raised a bunch of money and then like it's just been around for so long without like an exit that You wonder, did it just get like become obsolete somehow? Um along the way. But Anyways, it was just a way to save articles.

Now I actually want something what I'll call business pocket. So I have this bookmark thing in my Chrome that's called comp Companies to watch. It's basically like anytime I stumble across a company I find interesting I've been doing, it's like this thing is like Ten years old now.

I find an interesting company. And before it used to be I want to see if this will be successful. Or Maybe I should uh if I was an investor, I would invest in this. So I wanna like flag this and then I'll come back later in three years and I'll see how it turned out. Whether whether I would have made money or lost money on this thing.

And so I've just been collecting this for a long time. Now In reality I hit I bookmark it and then I like never go back and go recheck those because who's got the time? But um I would love a service that's almost like a programmatic newsletter.

Where I can just flag either people or companies that I say I wanna keep a watch I want to keep watch on this company or this This this individual. And um like the CEO or maybe this company, the startup. And then I wanted to like basically take the ten that I've

Flagged. And send me anytime there's interesting news about them with some filter, like, you know. They raise new funding, they got a new job, they They did they announce this thing, they're on T V, whatever. And um

And you know, my twelve that I'm s tracking might be different than the twelve that you're tracking. But like we might have three that are the same. And so this company that's underneath it would just need to set up like a Kind of like a programmatic way to like watch for the news around certain names. And then turn it into an automated newsletter. That's kinda just like a random idea. I don't think it's a business, but I think it would be cool to I think it's a business. When we were getting ready to decide if we wanted to launch trends or watch launch something new.

I wrote a landing page for this product. I forget what I called it, but something involving the word spy. And I put like the headline was like We're your secret spy. Spies that track your competitors and tell you everything that they do. So you know and we deliver it to you via email. And

Uh, I think this actually could have worked wonderfully. And the reason I came up with this idea was I had a friend who worked at Rocket Internet. Rocket internet, Google it. It's a it's a guy, it's three brothers uh named Ollie, Alex, and something else, Samware Brothers. And they started this thing called Rocket Internet. And basically the way it works right now, it's a large publicly traded company. They had this like guy named Chi, he was like the chief scientists. And what they would do is they would research fast growing companies in America and they would clone them and they would deploy that company in Africa, in Asia, different parts of Europe, things like that. Brazil. Brazil.

And so they cloned Uber, but in Mexico. They cloned Pinterest, but for Germany. They cloned Zappos, but for Germany. They did um Amazon for Thailand. They they own like the Amazon for Brazil, I think. Yeah, and they also own the Amazon for Thailand. And they would pick a variety of companies. They would do like the Wayfair for Nigeria or something like that. And they had this guy who's ch who was called the chief scientist. And all the clones of the Amazon of this country, that country, that country, there'd probably be like eight clones. And he would send an email every day. This is this is a story I heard. I don't know if it's true. He would send an email every day and it'd be like, hey everyone, Amazon uh actually just moved

On their homepage, they moved. The clothing From uh eight pi or uh a hundred pixels to the left. Uh it probably means that uh clothing is a little bit more popular now than furniture. So all right, make sure you move your clothing thing or Hey, they uh they're changed their color of this button from this yellow to this orange.

Go ahead and do that. And I thought That's pretty awesome. I would love to have that. I would love To track

my competitors because I would do research on my competitors. I would say, Oh, which ads are they using? Oh, I wonder why they're using this ad. Maybe maybe they're using this ad for this one, this reason, that reason, and that reason. I'm gonna go and copy it. And I would use a variety of similar web Uh Facebook ad archive. Uh HA refs and a few other things, and I would I would just I would like, oh, here's where they're succeeding and here's why they're succeeding. I may copy them, I may not copy them, and I just I just know what's working.

And I think that that one hundred percent could be a service that you pay a hundred grand a year for and you get and you and they'll tell you the five nearest competitors, and every month you meet with their team and you say, All right, your competitors They're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing this. Here's what's working, here's what's not working, here's our hypothesis. hypothesis uh as to uh w what all this means.

And I think actually you could charge a six figure annual contract for all of it. And I think it would be a really cool company. Right. Yeah, I told you about my friend who I I I nudged in this direction to do this for for e commerce. Uh. I'll I'll give him another shout out here. He said I got a bunch of sales last time. I I mentioned it, so I'll do it again. Shopify salesdata.com.

Basically a a way to track your competitors and how much they're selling and what new ads they're running and and stuff like that. And um just in the niche of e commerce and it's you know, I don't know, a hundred bucks a month or something like that. And um I pay for it. I'm like this is great. uh you know it's a it's a valuable service and so e you could do it in a niche or you could do it, you know, more broadly. But uh but yeah, I think that's cool. Um give you a different topic.

Did you want to do the pets thing? You've had that here for two weeks. Um so this is actually like a really I what I thought was a really random idea and then I saw an at I saw a commercial for it on TV yesterday and it's like totally a thing. So it's just gonna sound stupid'cause it was like Stupid basically I was like Uh

Kids love having pets. Pets are like a pain in the ass maintenance wise, and the you know kid wants it, but they're not gonna maintain it. I was thinking about like that's why people get fish'cause it's kinda like self contained in this little tank and you don't have to do anything most of the time. Just feed it, a fish die all the time. It's really sad for the kid. And so I was like, why is there not just like AI pets? Why aren't there just like Robo Pets?

Um, for kids. And I was like, Oh, a fish would work because it just needs to swim around sort of aimlessly. You don't touch it. So even if it was mechanical. It wouldn't feel cold like a mechanical dog, I don't think we'll feel great. But um Dude, that is a mechanical fish. You you hit home runs. This is such a dud. This is such a dud. You you're a home run hitter. Today's a strikeout.

This is a stupid, stupid idea. I was like oh this exists. No way. Oh my god. So I'm gonna go check. Wait, you see if you can see the Robo I think it's called RoboFish, I saw the commercial. Tell if say tell me they do a hundred million dollars a year and prove that this is not a dad. So anyways, that was one. And then there's a a related one which is There's a medical thing that's going on for you know, like pets are sometimes labeled as like kind of like a emotional support dog or whatever, it's like anti anxiety, that sort of thing. You know that's total bullshit too, right?

Well, I know most people use it for bullshit. I don't know if there's any medical like Uh like s there must be some like cases where it helps or something like that. No, I agree. That in some cases it is true. But um A lot of like Like people like oh they're certified an emotional like there's not like a certification process. Yeah, there's no yeah, exactly. This dog did not get trained.

Um But uh but anyways, I saw this company that was doing this with for for people with dementia and Alzheimer's. They were giving them this weighted, it's the equivalent of a weighted, but it's a pet. So it's a pet that sits in your lap. It's heavy and like a weighted blanket, but it feels like a pet and it moves like a pet. Now, if you're like totally if you're just like an adult who's has no health conditions, you'll be like, Oh, this is like clearly a robot

This blink is like not really fully natural and You know, this dog's obviously not running anywhere, it's not a real pet. But to somebody with you know dementia or Alzheimer's uh they found that this like is extremely comforting to them. Now they're really expensive right now. Uh, they're like thousands of dollars for this like really kind of like realistic feeling thing. What's it called? But um

But they're gonna bring the price down. I I don't know, I met this guy who um Through my wife, she she was consulting for this company that was doing it, and she was showing me the videos and stuff like that uh about this thing. So I thought that was kind of cool, too. But I think that we will see more and more Ider Genetically engineered pets.

Or just straight up kind of like mechanical AI. Pets because If you can get Sixty percent of the benefits with zero percent of the work and maintenance. I think there's a whole class of people who would take that trade.

Um that today just Don't own pets because it's just too much cost and too much work. So Man, I called your thing totally stupid. I think for the average Oh yeah, hold on. Receipts. Bra you come in and tell Sam Tell Sam about the RoboFish. I mean, I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but this company in two thousand twelve, they sold fifteen million of these at eight bucks a piece in their first year.

Well first year. That's right. All right. I I'm both I I kind of take back and I don't take back. So you're wrong in that. You're saying like, Oh, pets are so annoying. Just give'em a robot pet. Like Yeah, th I think that's actually silly. I don't doubt that people buy a robo fish. I think that's just like a cute little widget that's fun to have.

But Dude, you were the one who was like, Oh, these AI girlfriends are great. Uh it's the same idea, it's the same premise. Okay, well look, I'm open minded enough to like uh challenge my views. But I you started talking about this Alzheimer's thing, and that's actually quite interesting. I just Googled it. I wanted to see which ads come up. I like because like you so I Googled this thing. I'm I it's kind of I don't really like looking at this. I feel a little sleazy, but there's this Oh, I actually don't like the name. There's a name called I just said it to the All store. So A L Z Store. And it stands for the Alzheimer's store. And they call it the all store.

And they sell um Like these live strong bands that have your name on it. So if you when you forget your name, and they actually have a robotic therapy dog. And This website actually looks like It's like a entrepreneur who's just looking for a money making niche, which

A little weird with with this type of thing, but People seem to love it. It's a whole store dedicated to Alzheimer's products. I have zero idea if this is like actually what Uh Alzheimer's patients love and need. But this is incredibly fascinating. And I'm looking at their similar web traffic. No, I actually think this is legit. They have videos of them of the founder talking on like the today show about selling all types of products for Alzheimer's stuff. And I'm looking at their uh similar web traffic. And it's incredibly

Popular. What a fascinating business. All about Alzheimer's. Yeah, no, this is a legit uh company. I'm I'm looking at the about page. This they have a good background story of the the the father has Alzheimer's, so now they create all these products, yada, yada, yada. It looks pretty interesting. Can you believe that this exists? The All store. Right. That's wild. I had no idea. Um But makes sense. I guess uh I guess that does make sense. I have one more Can I do last two minutes? A Billy of the Week story. Um, second Billy of the Week story. I learned this. I tweeted this thing. I tweeted this out.

And It ki this kind of blew my mind. Okay, so I was doing some re you know, Shoe Dog is like super popular about the founding story of Nike. Yeah, you did one on Ideas. I did one on Adidas and I was I j I was like, Okay, Nike, cr great. Uh What's the story with Adidas? Where did that come from?

And so I just started Googling for a second and I didn't go so in depth, but okay, here is the Sixty second version of Adidas. So For uh tell me if you knew these things. Just give me a y a yay or a nay if you knew it or not. So Adidas I when you were a kid, did did you not hear that this stood for All Day I Dream About Sports? Yeah.

Soccer. All day I dream about soccer. Soccer. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Not true. Uh basically the you know the guy's name was Adolf Dossler who started it and he went by Adi Dossler. Dude. I was in Germany at one time and someone A German was like, Do you like Adidas? I'm like, I I don't know what that is. Is that like a German brand? They're like, Oh no, it's Adidas. You don't know Adidas? I go, No, I've never heard of it. And they started laughing at me. That's Adidas, I guess. Uh yeah. Right. You I'm sure you corrected him. Oh, you mean Adidas? Yeah, I know Adidas. No, I don't know what Adidas's

Yeah. So okay, so the story's kinda crazy. So Ту брат. Basically, dad owns a a leather shoe factory.

The two sons are like, Okay, shoes are cool, but we wanna do sports shoes, not these like leather shoes. And so they spin out and they create The Dossler Brothers Shoe Factory. And what they do is they're like, We're gonna you know. Adi, you're gonna m design the shoes.

And uh Rudy, you're gonna sell the shoes you do sales and marketing. Two brothers, they they do that, right? Uh it's like a tenure grind. you know, building this thing up. They're growing, but they're growing slowly. And then finally in nineteen thirty six, the Olympics come to Germany. And um They are a whole bunch of the athletes from Germany are wearing Adidas, but they also get a little bit, you know, they go and they hustle and they get

They're Adidas shoes in the hands of some non German athletes also, one of whom is Jesse Owens. Jesse Owens goes on. To win, I think, four gold medals at those Olympics. And so Jesse Jesse was a black guy who basically wins gold and beats the Germans. in front of Hitler, who's like promoting white supremacy at the time, and so it's like you know, a big deal. for for that victory um at the time he's wearing Adidas.

And this is kind of considered the first time that An entrepreneur used sports to promote Their products or their businesses. And he's kept doing this, right? Like you see photos of Ali versus Frazier, they're both wearing Adidas because he was like hell bent on getting Adidas into the hands of all the iconic athletes that they could, which Nike went and took that strategy and did. even better with that strategy over time.

Um And so They you know business is going great. They you know after that Olympics thing where they get all this exposure, next three years they sell like I don't know, six hundred thousand pairs of shoes. Business is great. Uh you know night nineteen forty hits and world war two starts.

And The factory just gets seized by the German military. They're like, this is now a war factory. We need to produce war goods here, no more shoes. And hey, you two brothers, join the army. So they get they get enrolled in the army. So the business just goes on break. Adidas just like goes out of business for the whole world war. Okay, World War Two ends. The brothers come back. Uh you know, Adi's like, All right.

He gets fifty people together, he's like, We're restarting the factory, we're gonna do this again. And somewhere along the way, the two brothers break up. So I didn't know this part. Yeah, I know that. But the other brother goes on to start Puma. Yeah. And so one brother starts Adidas, the other brother starts Puma, which I just thought was like, you know, the most baller shit. You knew that already? Yeah. I know that they got in an argument. Is it well known? Yeah. Uh well, I don't know, but I mean you're talking to me. Uh I think that uh Yeah, they got into an argument. One of them started Puma. For some reason, I thought that the he he like did he move to Africa and start Puma? Is is there any part of the No, I think he like literally moved across the river and like started a competing factory within like uh earshot. That's and well, that's the way I read it. Maybe I read that wrong. Yeah, I knew. And and the two brothers'cause they got into a disagreement on how to do Oh, uh Bray said rebox started in Africa, so I guess I'm getting a confused. But uh yeah, I guess I knew that.

So they they they restart the factory after the war and now they're using all the war, like leftover war materials in the shoes, like rubber for the soles and like certain design, like the look of camouflage and different things like that. They come up with the three stripe logo. And so anyways Business does good and then like there's this crazy run. Of death. So The Puma brother dies four years later.

The Adi dies, you know, from Adidas, he dies. His wife takes over She dies six years later, the son takes over, he dies three years later. So there's just like this run of early deaths. It's like, you know. The defense against the dark arts position. Nobody can like hold this thing. And so the finally now the two daughters ha own the thing. They sell it for pennies on the dollar because Adidas has just been declining for years now at this point.

you know, th they didn't have the right people running it, I guess. And so they sell it for five hundred million dollars. Um Uh, you know, to the to the French guy. French guy tries to turn around, he can't do it. It's on the verge of bankruptcy. And then

They sell it to this guy. This is the actually the billy of the week. Uh this guy Dreyfus and um I think his name's Robert Dreyfus. Oh, do you know who You know who this person's related to, right? No. Uh his dad was rich, but I I don't know w w why he's rich. Uh I believe it's

Elaine from Seidenfeld. That's her Uh oh yeah. Julia Dreyfus? Yes, I believe uh I believe that's her grandpa. Wow. Okay. That's crazy. So this guy grows up kind of rich. Goes to like Harvard or whatever.

Uh, buys a thing and his his tagline, I love it, he goes I'm a gambler and I like turnarounds. That was kind of like his business philosophy. So he takes a gamble. Takes the lead role at Adidas. And he basically is like all right, we're doing three things. Moving the factory to Asia. We're cutting the payroll, we're cutting jobs.

cutting two thirds of the jobs in this company so we can get profitable And lastly, we're gonna take that money we were spending on people and we're gonna spend a shit ton of it on marketing. And You know, they were like, wow, you know, you took it from the brink of bankruptcy, three percent market share, and it came roaring back and became the number two brand. How'd you do it? You know, you must be a genius. And he goes

Yeah, he was in Time Magazine and he qu the quote is It didn't take a genius. You just had to look at what Nike and Reebok were doing and do that because it was just easier for somebody outside the company to see what was obvious than somebody inside the company who had all this baggage and they couldn't do it. And uh you know, so he He turns it around, retires a billion, you know, in in his fifties, I think. And uh and that is, you know, the crazy story of Adidas.

Today. I thought that was wild. I had no idea. So there's two takeaways of this for me. Um, the first is a question that I should start asking myself and and and you don't actually need to to follow through, but how would a PE firm run your company? I actually think that's a great question to ask yourself, which is what would a PE firm do if they were if if they owned this right now? And that's kind of an interesting way to get ideas because it w you you kinda say to yourself

Oh man, I'm being such a punk. Like I I could be so much better. The second thing. And and the opposite. And the opposite would be What would you know Larry Page do? Go s Google's you know, CEO and founder of Doc. Um yeah. Like But yeah, they took the small thing and they just kept expanding it. Like, no, we need to do Google X, we need to do moonshot projects, self driving cars, you know, satellites into the sky, giving people internet like

They had like unbridtled, you know, ambition and were like What if you just like blew the top off this thing in ambition and then the other one is The P E The ruthless operator way, what would they do? I think both are valuable questions for your business. And the second thing, and this is actually something that I've been thinking a lot about because I've been thinking about Louis Vuitton. Uh not that I I don't even own one Louis Vuitton thing. I'm never gonna own a Louis Vuitton thing, but it's pretty fascinating.

that I in my head I stereotyped fashion brands as just like trendy and and they they're gonna come and go like uh but in reality Yeah. I would bet that some of these fashion brands like Adidas, Puma, Louis Vuitton They're actually some of the longest lasting companies I imagine I could think of. Um, and that's pretty fascinating that a brand like uh Adidas

that went through near bankruptcy, went through multiple owners. is still relevant and kicks ass. And that's actually pretty cool to trade something that can last that long. And uh it it it's kinda cool. I I think that's actually inspiring that something uh with withstood all that. Nonsense. Like it succeeded in spite of itself. Especially in fashion where everybody wants to do it and fashion like literally is kinda like in and out of fashion. It's like a fad type of uh type of business where where things go in and out of style so quickly. So just to last there is pretty impressive. What I'm saying is there's some stuff that it just it has lasted for

many, many decades. So uh Louis Vuitton luggage I I imagine existed at the turn of the century in the nineteen hundreds. Same with um the uh uh I'm uh right now I'm wearing Nike Cortez. I just looked at the uh the website that we were talking about earlier, first versions, and the first version of Nike was the Nike Cortez, and I'm still wearing the same damn model. And it's kind of interesting and inspiring to create something that can last. fifty, a hundred, two hundred years. And uh

That's kind of a cool part. Yeah, I guess you can do it we I mean you can do it with a lot more than fashion, but uh there are a bunch of fashion brands that have done it successfully, and I think that's pretty damn cool. You know, like uh Rolex or Tiffany's diamonds or something like that. It's kinda neat.

Mm-hmm. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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