#80 - The Guide on Generating Startup Ideas

Uh Sam, what's up? Going on. Let me pull up some of our documents. Okay. Couple things I thought were interesting. One, uh you you s you posted something about this thing called Mo Points. What is that? So Mo, it's my my friend Mo. Him and Ramon

grew up together in uh most from Afghanistan by way of Ramon from uh Netherlands. Uh and then moved here. And they used to have a business Um

It's shut down now, so I can talk about it. Where they would buy and sell airline points. And he became an expert on how to uh maximized points. And so I'm getting into this now. And so for example

Um if There's all these ways that you can like if you're spending money on advertising on this on that, you can maximize your points and fly for free forever, for years. Right. Um and so He would teach me how to do it myself and I was like, Mo, turn this into a course and so that's what it is. Let's let's let's pip'em out though. Is it Mopoints.com?com. Yeah, I checked it out'cause I was pretty interested in this, like In the same way that you want like a tax guy to help you save money on the back end.

Um, you know, whenever you do like pretty significant credit card spending, and a lot of times if you own your own business, you can rack up a lot of spending on on credit cards. Um I hate going and figuring this stuff out. I just feel like it's a waste of my brain and it's a waste of my time. to go like optimize my spending and my points so I can travel free and book all this stuff.

But I like know it's valuable and so I was hoping to get like what's the shortcut? What's the like You know, either you do it for me or like what's the eighty twenty? Give me the the the the few things I can do that will give me the highest return on my time and effort. Um, because I know I'm sort of wasting this opportunity and I don't want to go become an expert in this stuff. But if you're an expert Fantastic. So I signed up for it. You know, points are interesting. I just got into them recently, so

I earn three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand points a month. And that translates to one percent of that in cash value. Right. So if I spent a million dollars a year on p uh Through my credit card. Which

Sounds like a lot if you're just an individual and that is a lot if you're an individual, but if you're a business, that's nothing. I get a hundred thousand dollars cash back. Now here's the cool thing. That catchback. In most cases is tax free. Interesting.

So In if you live in San Francisco, that's the equivalent of getting a salary of a hundred and grandma. Yeah, and so it's Great. And so I've actually met some entrepreneurs who earn I think you can get up to three hundred sixty thousand dollars. Some accountant's gonna like tweet at me and say I got it wrong. But I'm almost positive and it it's kinda it's controversial. I'm almost positive you can get up to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash back. And so I know this one lady who's got this flower company and she gets

Three hundred fifty thousand dollars in Cashback income a year. Yeah. That's great. I have a friend who uh he he he basically negotiated with his investors. He's like, I'd like to pay the AWS bill for my company on my personal credit card. And so he earned like whatever Amex. double black platinum gold whatever it is like the highest tier for life because they were spending like you know three million a month on AWS or something crazy. And so like he's like, oh if I ever want to fly, I fly first class now. If oh oh I get like free equinox, I get free this, I get free that because that's the perks of like the highest tier of Amex.

And he's like, Yeah, I got lifetime because during my company I just asked, can I just put this on this card and keep that? Yeah, tied to my name. And uh they did it. That's pretty amazing. And so and so that's what Moe's trying to do. Now it's just like a course and hand hand to hand combat, like consultation where he's trying to help people. But that is kind of interesting to like log into a portal and or like technology and it does it for you. That is pretty amazing. And uh and your transaction fee is either upfront fee or you take a s you skim a little. Uh that is incredibly interesting.

I like it. Okay, so I have another random idea I want to talk about. So I have a friend. Uh shout out to my friend Mike. Hmm. He went to Duke where I went to school. He was Duke's best football player at the time. Like he was like I think he led the nation in tackles or something like that. So he's amazing linebacker, football player.

goes he's a little undersized, but he gets drafted or he he gets a tryout with the with a couple of teams. And he ended up getting cut after a year, I think, from the Indianapolis Colts. And that was sort of like the end of his football career. But He built a ton of connections and still has connections with athletes uh in the NBA and NFL. So I was talking to him about it and I was like, you know, what problems do these guys have? What are they what stuff are they trying to do because

These are often a class of people who have a lot of money. Have uh specific problems to like people with money, fame, and t you know sp specific lifestyle. Um What are some ideas that um You know, problems that they have that I've just never seen, but I could solve because I understand them.

And so uh one of the things he had mentioned uh Not even as a problem, but I was like asking how they did it was Many athletes start their own foundation or charity. You've probably seen this, like, you know, oh, you know, random wide receiver. It's not just like the top of the top. It's like random wide receiver. Yeah, I have a foundation back in my city. It's for kids who blah blah blah. Kids and books. It's for Dustin Poirier Poire, one of my favorite fighters has one. And so I was wondering, I was like A, why do they do this? And then B like how do they do this? Like could you uh like build a business around this? And so

On the why, you know, there's some interesting things, and again, the accountants are gonna be sort of out in full force correcting me on this, but It seems like basically the You know, there's some tax advantages to a foundation, in addition to like obviously wanting to give back,'cause often Athletes come from pretty rough uh you know backgrounds and so they do feel this pull of hey, I've made it, I won the lottery, how do I give back?

So there's the the There's the emotional pull to give back and create a foundation. But then there's the financial pull as well, which is Um there are some tax advantages to doing that to doing it this way, where you basically are Um You're able to give and you're able to give today and reduce your taxable income, and that money goes to the foundation, which can then

over time spend that money uh long after your career is over even. So you can separate the the time of giving and then the time of of spending. Yeah, that's uh I forget the name of it, but you and I have a friend who had a large exit and what he did was he put Away a significant amount of money, I think. A very significant amount of money. He put it into this charitable account. And over the next

I'm gonna butcher this. I think over the next five years he has to spend that on uh uh What's it called what's a nonprofit called a four oh five oh one three C Yeah, he's got a he's got a He's gotta get rid of it. So whenever I see like an interesting charity, I'm like hey guy. And th there's other things like a uh a DAF, which is a donor advised fund, which is what uh Jack Dorsey said, I'm gonna give a billion dollars away and he did it via a DAF. So there's other ways, but but I guess my point my idea was Um

Cool. So there's reasons athletes want foundations. They're clearly doing this. But I know athletes athletes are not excited to go figure out the paperwork to start a foundation to make sure they're reporting on time, all that stuff. So I was wondering, is there a Stripe Atlas. For foundations. Is there a

Push a button. Get your out get your foundation spun up without having to get on the phone, without having to print out a piece of paper and go mail it somebody somewhere. Um because I think you could build a pretty niche, but Um you know, potentially pretty lucrative subscription business where you know these foundations, there's a spin up fee and then there's an annual maintenance basically to keep your foundation in good standing.

Um, I think there's a business there. So let's talk about Atlas for a second. So Atlas is a thing with stripe and it's a click of a button Set up in a uh L L C corp or a C Corp in Del uh C Corp or L C um in Delaware. Why how does that make money?

Uh well it makes money f so it's strategic for stripe because If you're doing that, you're probably gonna stay in the stripe ecosystem. So they're like, cool. How do we get more customers? Let's get new businesses to get created and then they'll use Stripe. So it's kind of like when Facebook gives away internet to people who don't have the internet. It's like cool, we'll give you the internet and then guess what you're gonna do with the internet? Use Facebook. So Stripe's doing the same thing. It's like How do we increase the rate of new startups? Because startups are who use a stripe and then if they grow, they grow with us. And fantastic. We we got'em while they're young type of thing.

So then how would this make money then? So like when I did it, I used Stripe Atlas to spin out my company. And I I forget what it is, a couple hundred bucks. Um but it's great. It's like I don't gotta talk to a lawyer. I trust that this will this will get set up properly. It They do all the filing and documentation. They just email me, hey, here's your tax ID, here's your entity, here's the for articles of formation, et cetera, et cetera.

And so Stripe Atlas was great. Took me three weeks. And I don't know, two hundred fifty dollars or something like that. And I got my company set up. And so Why did you do a C C Corp? I did an L C for me.

Oh, but if I wanted to do a C Corp, I like if I was gonna do a startup that was gonna raise money, I would do a C Corp and um And I I would have used it for that. Um let's talk about the Sam Altman thing. All right, so Sam Altman, who's the guy who runs white white combinator. Or

Doesn't run it anymore, actually, but he was the President of my combinator. And kind of one of the Yeah, more well known guys Silk Valley. He Put up this blog post uh called idea generation.

And um he said, you know, one of the most common questions I get is how do you get ideas for a new startup? A lot of people want to do startups, but they don't quite know the idea. Um or they don't have a lot of conviction in it. And he says something interesting. He goes, Y C once tried an experiment to fund people who we thought would be good founders, but with no ideas. He goes, And I think every company in this no idea track failed. Um and it turns out that Um founders have a lot of ideas about everything.

Um like great founders actually have a lot of ideas. If you have a founder who can't think of an idea, they probably shouldn't be a founder. That's kind of his takeaway. But then he sa he starts to explain, all right, so how do you get ideas for startups? So he says Thing number one. You wanna be in the right environment. So you wanna be around the right kind of people. So he said, Who are the right kind of people? He goes You want to be around people who can have a good feel for the future.

They will entertain improbable plans. They're optimistic and they're smart in a creative way. And he says they have high idea flux, which is, you know. Pretty good for our podcast. Like I consider both of us idea machines. And yeah, that's what he says that's what he calls idea flux. So the sort of rate of ideas coming in and out of their body.

Um These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints that most people have Uh they don't have a lot of filters and they don't care too much what other people think. He says this is important because the best ideas are pretty fragile. Uh most people don't even want to start talking about them because they sound kind of silly up front.

Um, and like take the hustle for example. Oh, we wanna be the b this big bad media company, we're gonna do an email newsletter. And an email newsletter actually sounded quite silly to people who were traditionally in media. This was, you know, back uh if you rewind several years. Um So you wanna be around people who won't make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea.

And they certainly don't feel stupid when they mention bad ideas. And he basically says stay away from people who are like The world has beaten them down. Or they're the type that belittle your ambitions. Um, and unfortunately this in most of the world, they hold on to the past and the um

And if you want to live in the future, you don't want to be around these people. Um And then he says okay. So here here's the sort of uh next thing that that that would help you get good ideas. So first is be around those types of people. The second is identify a tectonic shift that's happening right now. How is the world changing in some fundamental way?

Can you identify the leading edge of that change and the opportunity that unlocks it? For example, mobile phone comes out in 2007, 2008. And then you get all these companies like Snapchat, Uber, Airb, et cetera. um that were launched in that time on top of that. Point. core fundamental shift.

Um These opportun when a big shift happens, the big companies usually get beat by fast moving and focused startups. Um So you wanna ask yourself a question like What's something that's possible this year that wasn't possible last year? And pay attention anytime something like that comes up. There's probably a lot of good ideas.

In that space. Um the last thing is If you ever feel like something is like If you can say the statement. I'm sure this is gonna happen. I don't know if we'll be the ones to do it. That's a good sign.

He's like Uber was like this for me. The first time I used it, it was clear I wasn't gonna be hailing a cab any longer. Uh or calling the dispatcher. But it wasn't clear it wasn't clear to me that Uber was necessarily gonna win the space. Um And then the last thing he says is

It's important. Sorry, this is kinda long. Uh it's important to think about what you are well suited for. So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're good at, he goes, I believe that founder company fit is as good as product market fit. Um And he goes lastly You can test a good idea if you can articulate why most people think of it think it's a bad idea, but what you understand about it that makes it a good idea.

Um so that's a final test. Alright, so I thought this was a pretty interesting post. Uh anything in there. I think it's crazy interesting. And I did bring this up because I I I don't even care about promoting this, but Gagam Biyani. reached out to me about three months ago and for trends. We did this thing where he like just gave a talk and People signed up and it was neat.

And he was like hey, I'm thinking about Maybe I want to launch like a school or something. Can I like partner with you guys and you promote this course I wanna do? And I was like, Yeah, that sounds interesting. And so me and him just started riffing more and more. And I really got fascinated with this idea of

Ideas like Why is it, Sean, that you are good at finding ideas and I was like, I don't I don't know why, but I wonder if I could like And so he's kinda leading the way and I'm just kinda

tagging along a little bit. And so we we're hosting this thing. It's mostly him hosting with a little bit of me. And it's called the Ideation Boot Camp. And I put together what I thought was all the f these frameworks on coming up with ideas. And a few of them that I have, coincidentally, I've never read the same article until you just told me are similar. And so a few of them are Like

I like to do reverse engineering. And so what I look at is I can go to like a website and see like how they do it because to me, if I can see how someone does it, it helps me realize what's possible. Another one is unbundling. So I like to look at like really big things like eBay or Craigslist or Reddit and being like Okay, if usually if something's huge, it becomes a victim of its own success and they can't move fast enough to adapt on an early, like

Interesting change. Right. And so we talk about like I like I just made up ways to figure that out. And then uh Let's see, is there anything else that's interesting? that is related to that,'cause I didn't realise that that he kinda actually discussed that.

Um oh. And then another thing that I like to do And Coincidentally the things that I'm talking about is like he's talking about we just go into like tactically and it's like how do you look at like He talked about

Something that's growing quickly. But and you like hop in on it. That's actually quite hard. And tell me what what I'm missing here. The things that I'd really love to do is I like to look at

Forums. And comments. And article comments. And user reviews for apps on iTunes. Like what

What about how are people using this shit that's like makes them love something or makes them hate something. And that's what I use to come up with ideas. So what Sam Alman said was get something that's growing quickly early on that like you think is gonna be the future. Wha how else do you discover those? So So there's two ways. So one is You d you discover a platform that's growing really po really fast and you go on top of it. I'll give you a perfect example of this.

Zoom is growing like fucking crazy right now. I think it went from like ten million users to over like two hundred fifty million users. uh during just the Covid crisis. Um you know, my mom and my auntie use Zoom now because that's how we celebrate birthdays during Covid. And um they you know Zoom used to be this enterprise thing. So Zoom's growing like crazy. I had this friend Victor. I don't even remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, but he created this thing called Zoom URL. Basically ZM U R L dot com.

And it's basically eventbrite for Zoom. So he noticed the problem of like, Hey, cool, everyone's using Zoom to meet up. But Zoom's like kind of invite and like um You know, the th the sort of like uh splash that page doesn't exist. So there's not a cool way to like make an invite for a Zoom event. You just send this ugly link. And you say join the Zoom.

Um, that's where we're gonna do this conference or this birthday or this whatever. And so he just made a really pretty Auto generator, you put in your Zoom link, and then you can upload a photo, you can put the details, blah, blah, blah, and you make this little landing page for your event. And um he's growing like crazy because he's just growing he's piggybacking on top of Zoom very opportunistically on the platform. And he's doing something that You know, Zoom probably isn't gonna get around to doing for a little while, so he's got this opportunity to to grow. Um

Solving a new problem. And so Um The other way, which is that this is I think where I see you do this less. It's about technology shifts.

And I think this is where Sam Altman is actually talking about more, which is You know, when you grow on the back of an existing product or platform, it kinda sucks'cause you end up with this platform dependency and then they can often kill you or clone you or You just get stuck on that platform, you never get off. Um Whereas technology shifts like, oh shit, we couldn't do this before, but now machine learning is good enough that this is now possible.

Or for example My friend told me about these little uh NFC stickers. Do you know what that is? Near field communications? Yeah. So basically I bought these on Amazon. They're like these tiny little stickers that cost like, you know, ten cents each or something like that. And if you get these in bulk, they're very, very cheap. And you just program them so that like if somebody just moves their phone into this thing. It touches taps this thing. It's like Apple Pay. It will

Fire something open on their phone. It can open up a website. It can open up whatever. And I'm like, dude, this is great for marketing. Like I should just put these on products. Or you know, this could be in my shoes. It could just say, is this a real Jordan or is this a fake? Um, these little things can be embedded everywhere because the cost has come down and the reliability has come up and Top top.

core platforms like iPhone and Android now you know, by default, will react to these NFC things just like they do QR codes. So there's like so technology shifts is I think the one that most people don't understand'cause they don't have techn like technical literacy. So they don't know what's going on and they don't know when something before that was impossible is now possible because it was like actually just a subtle shift over time where the cost of this chip has dropped and now it's really economical to do something that before that would have been ridiculous. Yeah.

Now the chip is small. Used to be so big so big. So how how do you identify them? So for example, I I have a meeting every week with my former CTO for my startup because he lives in that like bleeding edge of technology. And I have an hour a week that it's called the cool shit hour. It's on our calendar. And he just shows me cool shit. And I just told him, Look, When we're usually in meetings, I talk ninety percent of the time, you talk 10%, because I'm the kind of talker sales guy. But in this meeting, you're gonna talk 90, I'm gonna talk 10.

And the cool shit hour is just you demoing to me cool shit that I don't know about because I don't understand cryptocurrency the way you do. I don't understand VR AR the way you do. I don't know about these other these other technological shifts that are going on. So we've been doing this for a month now and it's fucking awesome. I basically got a front row seat at this. And all I had to do was just ask a smart guy who is in that world. But The more generic way of doing that is just to hang out with those guys.

So If again it's sort of like what this post was about. It's like who do you hang out with ends up being what's in your what's in front of your eyes. And so we hang out with a bunch of business people that figure out different ways to make money. So for us How do you make money? It's just a question of which way do you want to make money? I know a hundred paths. And I have a five examples of each of those hundred paths. I have five hundred different examples of how to make money. I just gotta choose one that fits me.

Um whereas People who are in the world of technology, they don't really know exactly how to make money, but they can tell you A hundred interesting things with technology. And so sometimes you got to hang out with them and eat lunch with them, you know, three times a week so that you're hearing those things. Put yourself in that position. Yeah.

It's like you just gotta hang out like in the fringes. And I think that like A great place Places to hang out in the fridges are Reddit. Reddit, hacker news.

J just like Telegram groups. You have to look at user behavior. And you have to find this fringe behavior that's growing quickly. Right. You know, a couple of Podcast ago I went off on this random tangent about DeFi decentralized finance. And it was just like, you know, I'm speaking gibberish. I don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about, but it's because I discovered this fringe where I saw all this activity happening and I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't even understand this, but I know enough to know that this is

unusual and there's a phenomenon and I need to know more. And so like boom, save that tab, I pin that tab open in my brain, and I'm like, come back to this. You gotta know more about this. This is unusual. This is new, this is interesting. Well I think that's what you have to do when you have ideas, which is You have to actually steal from a lot of different places. So you like take like

Wow, at a restaurant I only have to pay for what I order or something or With Uber, like I don't actually have to Like have I don't have to own the cabs. Right. Yeah. I'll give you an example. So two ideas if you if you do a little idea sex with them. So cloud kitchens, we've talked about that on the podcast before. So creating a virtual restaurant, selling on top of Postmates, Uber Eats, et cetera.

And then In the world of e commerce, I was thinking about upsells. Upsells is, you know, obviously critical to e commerce. It's like you're buying one thing, it's like, hey, do you want fries with that? Right. Uh, hey, do you want this extra thing? And it increases the order value by twenty percent, thirty percent, forty percent, whatever it is. Um Up cells are critical in e commerce.

In the world of Deliver food delivery, they basically don't exist. So I was thinking, like, how many times were if we were ordering, you know, Chinese food or Mexican food or whatever through some restaurant. Why doesn't Uber Eats Just do a You know, sort of have a cloud dessert company that's always just like, Do you want to add some ice cream on top of that? Or hey, we just made brownies. Whatever. And like I bet they can increase the cart size and it shouldn't be another restaurant. It should be a upsell.

Across all orders. of all restaurants that day. And so like, I don't know, you can sort of mishmash ideas if you see something that's interesting or critical in one area. In another area, they don't do it. That's usually, you know, makes for an interesting thought, uh thought experiment. I completely agree with this. I what I'm wondering is

Do you can you teach people this or you either got it or you don't? No, no, you can you can for sure teach people this. Yeah, I would love to say you either got it or you don't. That would make it make that make me feel awesome'cause like I got it and other people don't. But the reality is I didn't have it and now I do. And I know exactly what I did to get there. I hung out with people who have a bunch of interesting ideas and I got thirsty for that. So I started hanging out with them either in person Yeah. My Twitter feed is just full of those people.

Like I don't have you know, I don't put sports into my Twitter feed as much. Like I surround my feed with that so that Even when I'm just browsing, that's what I get. The second thing is like

start to come up with these framework. So for example, one framework I have you should steal for your thing is like You if you imagine this two by two grip. On the left side you have Uh what type of problem is this? Is this a new problem or an old problem, right?

Old problem. People trying to meet their mate. They want to date. Somebody. That's an old problem. New problem. Hey, I'm trying to throw a zoom event and I don't have a good way to share that. Right? That didn't that wasn't a problem that existed five years ago, but it exists now. And so new problem, old problem, and then you have new solution, old solution. So it's like

Cool, old solutions to things can be applied to new problems. So that's what the zoom URL thing is. He's taking an old solution, like Eventbrite or splash that or like these proven methods. He's just saying, cool, I can specialize and tailor that to this new problem, which is zoom events. Um rather than in person events. And then you take new solutions, which are things like Oh wow. So crypto lets you have

trust or like a digital contract. So I don't need an escrow person. So maybe You know, I can take an old problem like s you know, um Escrew and a home and a home sale. But I can do it I can do it in a new solution.

Notarizing. Yeah, notaries. Okay, cool. Yeah, exactly. So new solution. Uh push a button, somebody has GPS on their phone and they come to you and they solve your problem for you. They either pick you up and take you somewhere or whatever. Cool, maybe I can apply that to this old problem notary. And so you just take that two by two grid and you say, cool. What are all the new solutions that are interesting to me? And another one is what are all the new problems that are interesting to me? You just keep jotting those down any time you see one.

Uh, you know, w whatever that is. And so that's a framework you can use to uh understand ideas and figure out is this idea actually something novel or not? Well It's novel whenever you cross Old problem and new solution?

Or old solution and new problem. Those are the two boxes that the new ideas come in. If it's an old problem, old solution, there's nothing new there. Don't do it. You're blowing my mind. Yeah, I don't understand how you come up with these like

You know how people used to say Obama talks in like quotes? Like he always like he just has these one letters that are like really great. You Talking framework. I don't know why. But I think it's'cause I like frameworks. So I'm studying them and then I just naturally start thinking that way. Um another way to practice this, if you want to become an idea person. Is

Um Like James Alstretter shared this, but he was like, Every day I write down ten ideas. It doesn't have to be good, bad. It's just a pr a daily practice of idea generation. Um, because if you think about it, you're like, Oh man, I wish I was better at ideas. Cool. Do you do that? Do you practice coming up with new ideas every day? Oh, you don't? Okay. You know, I also wish I was fit, but if I don't go exercise, then what what do I expect is gonna happen? I'm not just gonna magically get fit. And so same thing here. I have two that I do. I don't do the James Alters one, but the two I do

Uh one is this podcast twice a week. I get up in front of a you know You know, a lot of people and I try to come up with new ideas. That's a practice. How do I prepare for that? I have these documents uh on my phone and in my laptop. One's called

The biggest idea in my head. And I have every month and I just write down this month, what is the biggest idea in my head? And I just put it there. And so like I'll go to my document right now. I'll read you one of my biggest idea in my head. Sean, everyone has asked that you share this shit and you never have. Yeah, you know, these are I I I don't know if I wanna share these things. Some but some of it I wanna share, some of it I don't want to share. Um

So like in April, I refinanced my home and uh the biggest idea in my head was like, Holy shit, that was so much work and such so painful. Biggest idea in my head is turning refinancing into a five minute online process. I don't know how. But If there is a new solution, that's an old problem that I would want solved. Um When we were doing the weight loss challenge, the biggest idea in my head was

Holy shit, everybody needs a little monitor in their body that tells them how their body's reacting to the food they eat. If we want to change people's diets and not have half the country be obese. We need to have real time feedback loops so that when you put that, you know, piece of chocolate in your mouth, you pay a price immediately. And not like five years down the road. And um And so the biggest idea in my head was how do we make these glucose monitors so cheap and readily available that everybody gets feedback for everything that they they they eat? It'll help the country eat better. It'll help the whole whole world eat better. That was the biggest idea in my head.

for one month. And so I just write these ideas down and then you know, I basically have a place to put'em. I'm just I'm like being a listener right now, I am thinking about this. Um But I think it's great what you guys are doing. If you guys are gonna release these courses or classes, um I don't know. I don't know. I like really the truth is is that We don't have HustleCon revenue in June.

Yeah. He had done all the work. And I was like Okay. Well, I'm not going to be able to We w well I'll work with you to do it.

As a business like Our business, like we have an ambitious goal to build a really large company. I think horses will not be part of that. Yeah. A thing to like well, let's just try it.

And it actually covered our house of pound revenue. So Uh or uh profit. So we I will not do this. I will not do it ever again. Gotcha. I hate the course business. I think it is it is not fun.

It is great for a solopreneur. It's not great for a for a company. No, I think it's shit. I think that if you're Reforged, which is a Five thousand dollars. thing for companies. That is interesting, but I still think it sucks to host.

Like I don't know. I don't think it's Like maybe it makes some profit. I don't know if it does, but er it definitely does. But I personally don't like it. Right. I don't think most people even finish the shit. Yeah, most people don't. Uh I think that like Guggen who created he created what, Udemy, right?

Um Yeah, you to me. He I think he they were the ones who came out and said less than five percent of people finish These You know, uh at one point in time, MOOCs m massively open online courses were all the rage. Everybody said MOOCs are gonna Revolutionized education, it's gonna change the university system.

And then they came out and they were like, Look. We made a Harvard education free and open to anyone. All you gotta do is click a button and a roll, and then you should gotta show up and take it. And you could have a Harvard education. for free online from the comfort of your own home. And less than five percent of people, I think finish the course. And I think that tells you a lot about like

Why people do a thing. Um You know, people don't go to university to learn. That's the sad truth. Uh people go to university to get credentialed so that they can get a high paying job. So if you want to compete with the university.

You should actually create a credential that gets you a high paying job that gives people confidence. If I get this credential, I will get a high paying job. That's I think this is what you needed. This is what you Your next thing will have to be This is the area I'm most interested in. And if I could just figure out an angle.

Um I'll do it because There's this other great talk that came from the YC Mafia by this guy Richard Hamming. And it's called You and Your Research. She go read it. It's a speech he gives. And I I didn't know who this guy was. Apparently he's like a kind of technologist from back in the day.

And he talks about his time at Xerox Park. And Xerox Park was responsible for like some of the biggest what's it called? Richard Richard Richard. Richard Hamming is his name. Uh Hamming I'm pretty sure it's Hamming. I don't know if his first name is Richard. Maybe I just insert it generic white name. But Xerox Park is where like, you know, the visual graphic user user interface, like Steve Jobs went to Xerox Park and was like, oh, mouse. Points at

item on screen, that's how computers should work. And he like stole the innovations basically from there. Uh,'cause they were just doing R D and he was like trying to bring shit to the world. Anyways, he talked about Zerox Park and he used to m he said he he tells the stories like I was at lunch one day. And I asked the The c my co workers, these brilliant people.

You know, all the brain in the world is stuffed into these guys' skulls. He's like, I asked him. Um What is the most important? What is the biggest idea in your head? What is the most important problem in your space, in your industry, what is the most important problem? And then they would say a thing. He's like, What are you researching?

And they would say a different thing. And he's like, Why aren't you working on the most important, the most burning question in your space, the most interesting thing in your field? Why are you not working on it? So his his message is basically Ask yourself that question. What is the most the biggest thing in my space? What is the biggest challenge or opportunity in my industry? And why am I not working on it? And then you should go work on it. He says, The filter is. You have to ask yourself, do I have a novel angle?

and how I'm gonna attack that problem. Because if I just go back if I like the big problems are kinda known, but you need a new attack. of how you can solve that problem. If you don't have a new attack vector, you're just gonna waste your time and energy. You're gonna get the same result as everybody else. But if you have a new attack vector, then it is your responsibility as a smart and talented person to go do it. So that's how I think about this university thing.

I for a long time I already knew. The last project I do I'm I'm gonna do is I'm gonna teach a bunch of people. But you need a new attack vector. That's bullshit dude. That's bullshit. That is only one way to do it. Because If you think about it like

A lot of great restaurants. Aren't particularly novel in the solution. Well, I mean they're like novel and branding. Or their novel in that Sean is making it.

Do you know what I mean? So I think that is a little bullshit. Yeah, but like restaurants are I think restaurants are bullshit, right? Like Um No, they're not. You're wrong. No, you're oh you're wrong. One of the lar Tillman Fertita owns uh

He owns casinos, but he also owns some restaurants. Yes, he owns some chains. But he he own the golden nugget and he owns a whole bunch of other stuff too. Yeah, and like some steakhouses and like bubblegum shrimp. Just like fast casual stuff that regular people go to. And It's like One of the most profitable privately owned companies in America.

So so for example, the the best restaurant chains all had a new attack vector, right? McDonald's realized the new attack vector. And they productionized fast food and then they had a real estate model and a franchise model to back it up. Chipotle came out and they did the same thing, but they had they realized sort of the fast casual model, which was different.

the the amount of success they have is not in proportion Uh to the amount of Mm. Their new novelty is not in proportion with the amount of success. If you're talking restaurants, the analogy there is like I'm gonna create an online course too. Right? That's me opening up my restaurant just like everybody else has a restaurant. But my restaurant's run by me. I think I'm a good cook. I think some people will like my

Uh well like my Um My restaurant. What I'm trying to do is sort of Change like the change the restaurant industry, right? So like

When I talk about education, it's not like I'm just trying to create a course. I'm trying to make it so that Um I guess here's the analogy.

Uh I don't want to build a car, I want to build a road. So Roads basically are New platforms that anybody can create a car on. And uh but you can get a lot more leverage if you've b if you build roads versus if you're just trying to build a car, if you're just trying to be be a car driving on the existing road system. You know what I mean?

Got it. No, I understand. This podcast is a car. It's Us getting on here and entertaining people. Uh, we're gonna reach a certain set of people given a certain amount of effort.

Um it can go it can scale pretty big because we're using the internet and it's awesome and it's free. That's so that's good. It's better than the cars of old, where we would just go to a event and we would host a meetup and forty people would show up and we would talk. That's the old way. This is a much better way. It's a much better car. But it's still not a road. A road is podcasting. Create something like podcasting, boom, you've changed yeah. You've really changed the world. And that's That's more exciting to me.

We're on the same page there on that one. Um I think we had an interesting podcast. Uh yeah, this was fun All right, let's get out of here. Hey guys, uh this last part is actually me and Sam talking a little bit about the protests that are going on right now and um

Not really about the protest, really it's about how we have experienced it so far, you know, what we've been feeling w what we've been thinking. Yeah, the emotions we we've had. Um, you know, I wanted to know what was on Sam's mind. He's traveling right now. He's in he was in Texas, I was in California. You know, we we contemplated taking it out because Hey, this is a business podcast, you know, we try not to get political or anything like that.

Um B, you know, we're definitely not experts on this and you know, it's pretty easy in today's age to just get ripped to shreds for saying the wrong thing or not having the right most smartest Well But You know, it was a conversation we had. I wanted to know how Sam was doing, and he wanted to know what I was thinking, and so we we chatted a little bit about it. So uh we're leaving it in here. Hope you guys enjoy

uh this part of the conversation. It's really hard. It was really hard to record this podcast and be like, hey, let's think of let's brainstorm new awesome ideas. uh new products we could build, new businesses we could run. Um, it was really hard to do that given what's going on. And um So we tried our best to to put out some content. We hope can take people's mind off things for a little bit. So a lot of people It's very heavy and um it's not

necessarily good to to sort of keep your mind occupied with such a stressful or sad or or um emotional topic at all times. So we we wanted to put out a podcast episode today, but we also wanted to talk about what was going on. Um so this last part is us just Talking about our our lives right now and when how we've been experiencing what's happening. So hope you guys enjoy. I'm in Austin still. And what's going on what's what's uh what's the world like in Austin right now?

Crazy. Everything's crazy. I don't think it's as bad as San Francisco, but The world is crazy. I uh I decided to we got a new office down here and so I rented a house. Uh to see you.

Everyone and uh Cool. Austin's a great city. What do you think's gonna happen to San Francisco? Do you think it's gonna like is this gonna be the end of uh San Francisco being like the place. Uh I think so, yeah. I I I think so for a couple reasons. Um

You know, right now I'm selling my house. Yeah, I was gonna say you're Your house looks different. You're decorating it to sell, aren't you? Yeah, I am I am trying to sell my house right now, so it's about to go up for sale. Uh and I'm trying to move to the to the suburbs of uh of the Bay Area. But

And so right now because I'm doing that, I'm in the middle of the market and listening to people and s hearing, you know, what are they What's it like? Am I is the market hot to sell? Am I gonna get a good price? When I try to go look for something else, is there a lot of stuff available or is it a bidding more? And uh you know, just like you would expect, there's sort of a f you know A flight to the a flight to space right now. Uh and and not like the space excount. I'm talking about like physical house space. Um

People are leaving the c de urbanization. Yeah, de urbanization. People are leaving cities. Um they're leaving San Francisco for sure. So A lot of people who were in San Francisco are here because of the career opportunities. And um now that the tech companies are saying, you know, either we are already remote or we're going remote or we're way more remote friendly. And your work from home for the sort of foreseeable future. There's basically no reason to be in a city paying

the premium, the extreme premium. I mean like one bedroom for four grand a month. Two bedrooms, six grand a month. You know, type of rents. Um to be in the city. And so like, you know

When a when a studio condo is a million dollars in the city, uh you know If you don't have to pay that, you're not going to. And so people want space, people want more affordability. And people want to be away from like a whole bunch of other people from this virus. And so That is driving a lot of people out of the cities now.

Some people say oh that's just temporary. Personally, I don't think so. I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Once the company's Start letting you be remote. It doesn't matter where you're physically located, why would you live in a more expensive area? Only if that lifestyle really appeals to you. Which it will for like twenty something year olds, right, to be in cities.

But right now you get the twenty something year olds and the thirty something year olds because the thirty something year olds are there for their career. And that's gonna go away. I feel like I'm I've been in Austin for a week now. I'm I'm gonna stay for another week. Maybe I'll stay one more m week. Down here, it is definitely happier. Like the way of life for me and for many others, I understand why you'd be happier here.

Uh dude, my new house, I got I got a pool. I'm like uh swimming pool? Like what is this? This is this is amazing. That it makes me happy just looking at a swimming pool. I like it too. My thing though is I miss San Francisco. I wanna come back. I do miss a little bit of a struggle. Um I also miss the people. San Francisco has like actual you know real problems with crime and homelessness and stuff like that. I don't I don't think anybody wants that in where they're living. And so I think

You know, there's part of it that's the energy of a city. It's like oh I love being in New York, I love being in San Francisco, I'm around all these energizing, interesting, ambitious people, a bunch of single people. But then there's just like crime and homelessness and like extreme expenses that put a burden on you. And I think that's nobody likes that. I almost feel like And not in a real way, but just because I can't think of a better word. A little homeless where I'm like, Well where the fuck is my place now? Like where's my Like

You're wondering. Yeah, uh you and I we're not quite similar. You've done it more than I have, but me to a lesser extent have lived in many different cities and I finally felt like I had a home in San Francisco and now I'm like Shit. Right. Like it's way like Damn, it's way different. And so uh I'm I'm pretty sad about it, to be honest. Like I've been like depressed over it. I'm also sad, obviously.

About all the other shits going on. Is it? Are you seeing unrest and protesting and looting where you lived? I'm seeing it'cause I'm just glued to Twitter and um I'm just scrolling and I I can't believe my eyes and Uh it is it is so sad. There's so many different things going on at the same time. And then the the shitty part about that to me is that Um

Everybody pulls a different meaning away from it. So like If you're biased going in Is Um You know, the you know, if you're racist in one way, you're gonna look at this and say, Oh man, they're rooting and they're they're looting and and rioting and this is awful. What did those small business owners do? Why are they why are they getting their stores smashed?

And then if you're somebody else and you're looking at this and you're like, dude, people are Sick of it. They've hit their breaking point because this has been going on for so long, this police brutality, and I totally understand what's going on. And then other people are looking at it and they're sort of like hey What's like W why are these other malicious groups kinda hijacking the movement and just inciting violence and you know, Antifa or some people believe, you know, Russia, China, whoever it is, who's dropping these

Pallets of bricks off trying to bait people into violence and you know some people just trying to make the world burn. And so there's all these things mixed together. And I think whoever you are, you're gonna select the evidence. That supports your feeling and you're just gonna get stronger. You're you're just gonna see more evidence towards your view and it's gonna make people more divided.

My friend shared something. And uh It was like Four circles and it was like Uh I'm

pissed off about the racism in our country and Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter has a point. I'm pissed off that businesses are getting ruined. This is not the right way to do it. I'm pissed off at the police because I think most of them are good, but a few bad uh cops ruin shit for everyone. And then I forget the fourth one. And then it was like the a at the center, all the circles had a little bit of everything. And like, you can be here. And it's like that's how I feel. I'm angry at

What was the fourth one? What's the fourth circle? I don't know what the fourth one was. Let's see. Uh it was really great though. Uh did uh did you didn't happen to be a little bit more. I didn't see that, but no, that explains like exactly how I feel, you know, and how many people feel. And um You know, I I think It's really cra you know, there's a whole bunch of things that that you hear or you learn from these experiences where you're like, Oh, you know

That is a sort of a nugget of wisdom or a and and a bit a bit of empathy that I didn't have before. And so you know, when you see people that are Um you know, I one great quote I saw was When you have a thousand good cops and ten bad cops But the good cops don't police the bad cops.

Then you have a thousand and ten bad cops and Uh, you know, I I I believe that. And then that the sort of applies to my life too. Like in what any time I sort of stand by and do nothing while an injustice is happening, that makes me sort of complicit in my own way, right? And um, you know, I think about little minor examples of that in my own life. And then you know, it was George Floyd's George George Floyd's death was murder and the police should be held responsible. I think most cops are good. But police departments are corrupt and there are uh some bad cops. Looting businesses and destroying property is immoral and it hurts the cause. I empathize and agree with Black Lives Matter protester and believe in them and their right to be hurt. And then right in the middle was like I am here, and this is sad. Right.

Yeah, it's really crazy. And I know people don't listen to this podcast to hear like, you know Um talks about socio economic issues and racism and whatnot, but Um You know, this I think affects everybody. Is is is very different than anything that's happened in in my lifetime where

You have riots breaking out across the nation. Um All simultaneously. And things really do feel like they've hit a breaking point for many reasons. I think also the fact that people were pent up at home for the last three months. Um I don't think that helps necessarily because that's a

Sort of. Um a bunch of A bunch of uh You know, it's just water boiling over, you know, at a certain point as well. I agree. I so I I agree. I I don't even love discussing this stuff because I don't think about it a lot and I also tend I try to like

Talk about the positive. But let me bring something up that I don't think I have bring up brought up and I want to hear your opinion. So Um I don't This doesn't matter and it doesn't change. I don't think it should like validate or d not val validate anything I say. So like my wife's black, my family's black, I'll have black children, and this was the first time

or half black or partially black children. This was the first time that I was at my house with Sarah, my wife, and Like she broke down. She was like I don't I don't know how she's like, I don't know where I fit in on this because she's like a successful black woman. She's like, I haven't had a lot of racist stuff happen to me. Or if any, like I And there was

And she's like Yeah, it was it was it was just uh total mind fuck because I'm like What am I supposed to How am I supposed to I don't I don't know what to feel. Right. I didn't I was like I don't I don't know what to do. And it was incredibly exhausting. Do you

You you're Indian. Do you consider yourself white? Or not white or white. Definitely don't consider myself white. Uh, and no nor does anyone who sees me think I'm white, but but I get I get what you mean in the sense of like in in some ways like do you feel that you're uh privileged or or prejudiced against. I think that's a different way of looking at it. And like, you know, my sister, so we I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is like, you know, not the most open minded and racially friendly place. And so

My sister when she was in kindergarten uh you know, students would would draw a picture of a pig and then write her name on it and cover the pig in mud and brown mud and then they would give it to the teacher and the teacher laughed. And my sister always remembers this. Like she was, I don't know, six years old and she vividly remembers the teacher sort of looking at this and laughing and saying, No, no, no, put it away. But like Being, you know, involved in it. And I never experienced that myself. I don't understand that. What what's the pig have to do? Just like brown pig brown dirty in the mud, you know, that sort of thing. And um

And you know, I remember, you know, when she went to my mom and it was like, Why can't be we be white type of thing where it's like You know, asking questions as a kid, just trying to understand why am I different. What does that mean? Why do other people think we're worse than than them? That sort of thing. I personally never experienced that. 'Cause I luckily moved out of Oklahoma when I was really young and went to

Different places where it was it was less so. Or just got lucky in sort of my experiences around who I was around. Um But I g I I guess I would say like You know, when nine eleven happened, you know, it was not fun to be a brown guy in America, right?

Are you are you any religion? Are you Muslim? No, I'm well I'm not religious. You're Hindu. But I would be Hindu. I would be Hindu, but um you know just that's typically what most Indian people are. Um But yeah, I you know, I'm not religious, but you know I do grow a beard pretty quick. And so like, yeah, you know, like when you go to the airport, I don't think you think about how do I look today, whereas I think about that'cause I'm like, look, I'm not trying to get hassled for no reason here. So let me shave before I get on this flight. Or like

You know, I had friends who like are are Muslim who had like keys their house keys taken away. From them in TSA because it was like This is uh you know, potentially a dangerous thing. And they're like, This is my apartment keys. What are you talking about? How how does that make you feel? So the fact that you have to shave, are you angry or are you where where do you what's that make you feel like? Uh I'm not angry about it.

You know, I I sort of have this opinion that um Uh my my b my personal philosophy, if you're gonna boil it down to any one thing. Is The only thing you have control over is your attitude towards the present moment.

And so um So that's empowering and disempowering, right? It's it's disempowering because it's like shit, I can't control anything that's going on. I can't control how other people feel, how they're gonna act, I can't control the results I'm gonna get in my life. But it's empowering. It's like the one thing I control is my attitude towards the moment. So That sort of is a superpower because then no matter what the situation is, no matter what the moment is, I can decide what my attitude about it is gonna be. So for example.

When something shitty happens to me, someone says something shitty, or you know, I you know Get that extra sort of Hey, come into this room while I go through TSA clearance. You know, the meaning I put on that is of my choosing. And if I put the meaning of it that You know, I'm less than, I'm being wronged.

Um That doesn't help me. It makes me feel like shit. And so I just decide not to feel that way. But I know that like On the grand scheme of things, I get off pretty light. It's very different than never feeling safe. Yeah, going for a jog. in your neighborhood or something like that. I think you know, there's levels to it. And I haven't experienced those levels where

It would be very, very challenging. to put a positive meaning on what's going on. Yeah. It's uh It's just a confusing time because you feel so many

different emotions and some of them are Uh Uh. Opposite. And I had it like

talk to the whole company today, which is we're small, let's say twenty or thirty people. And I was like I don't know what to say other than You guys like ever feel out of place somewhere, like our company we're we're gonna we're gonna

make you feel safe. Um like We'll hire all types of people. We Like I and I wasn't sure if that felt like weak or like um Like oh. Like

Like barely anything. Right. But I was like I don't know what I'm doing. I was like, I don't know how to fucking handle this other than You're safe here. But uh Yeah, you know, I I think that's the right approach because

It's not about having the answer or the wisdom or the most heartfelt thing and the best speech, but like I think it is important if you're the leader to show up as a decent human being in that moment and to say, look I understand. I'm also feeling this crazy mix of emotions. I just want to do my best with this. Anything you know, we're gonna we're gonna try to do our best with this. I think it goes a long way to just be a decent person and try to be present and visible there versus

kind of shying away from it, which is um what a lot of people do. Yeah, it's crazy. And uh I have a feeling once I have children. My opinion's gonna change a lot. Like er not my opinion, but my I think I'll learn a lot. Yeah. Um

Like Having black kids, or part black kids, I think will I will some uh maybe I'll see something that I didn't previously see. Did you watch the Trevor Noah Thing that he posted on YouTube or whatever. I did not. I'm typically not a fan of his. I think that

A lot of the times. The shit he says is the wrong take. So I I tend to avoid him, but I would watch it if you suggest it. I I avoid him'cause he I don't think he's that funny, but uh I did watch this thing. And um You know, he d he brings up like what's going on. He's like, Yeah, a lot of people are looking at what's going on and saying, Well, this isn't right either, right? Of course.

Police should not murder citizens. That's wrong. But also rioting and looting and destroying things is also not right. And what his point was, which I think made me better understand what was going on. His point was

Like you gotta think about this. What is society? You know society is essentially a contract. It is an agreement amongst a group of people of here's what's right and wrong of how we're gonna act. Here's the behaviors that are tolerated, here's the behaviors that are not tolerated. He goes. So what you're saying is that One side of a contract.

You know, if we're if we're if we go into a contract together and you're just breaching your side of the contract regularly and without recourse. And I just see wow, this guy just keeps breaching his side of the contract. Then I also have no Um No desire or incentive to uphold my side of the contract. He goes, You'll see somebody that's homeless. And you know, they don't go and just murder necessarily, um, because

J because they're in a bad position, they say, Look, these are the rules of the game. I'm losing in the current game or I have not been able to sort of get to an advantage position in this game, but like I still respect that we're in a game together and there are rules of this game. He goes, What you're seeing now is that A group of people, you know, black people in America feel like the contract has just been breached over and over and over again. Uh where they're you know, unnecessary and um Unjust violence against us.

And so now we're gonna breach the contract too, and we're gonna Sort of make it very known what it feels like. When the contract is being breached for apparently no reason and it doesn't seem like a positive thing. And so that made me look at, you know, when somebody is either protesting, whether it's peacefully or not peacefully, when somebody's rioting and they're creating a sort of unsafe environment for all. It sort of

I don't know. It it's sort of Um explain to me why somebody would behave that way. It's cause if you feel like the other party has just terminally breached the contract. And the there's no recourse, then it's like I'm gonna terminally breach the contract and and and we'll see. We'll see how it feels. And now both sides feel what it's like when the societal contract gets totally breached. And let's see if that gets your attention. I feel it. I feel It definitely feels like

Uh Like Almost like the end of The world. A little bit. It's like there's it it's like a small it's like

In the same way having a new puppy is just like a small taste of having a baby. It's like that's how I feel right now. I'm like If like the world If like everything that I believed in is gonna come to an end, it's gonna like a little a little like this. Right. And you know, for every sad story, there's also an inspiring story where people are, you know, waking up the next day and going cleaning up the city and people standing together and you know, th I think there's a lot of really positive things going on too, and I think that's the Yeah.

That's the silver I don't know, silver lining or that's the other side of the coin here where where Um is progress being made, and I hope so.

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