The 2021 Milly Awards

Dude, that's crazy. That that that mistake. That's a$10 million mistake. Yeah. Um Andrew what's going on, dude? I'm Are you pumped to do that? I'm really, yeah, I'm excited. I worked out this morning and feel feel good. It's a nice sunny day. We had a big dump of snow here, which is actually incredibly rare. Usually it like never goes below freezing. So uh yeah, it's nice. What'd you do play?

Uh no, I actually went on my treadmill. I started I it's weird, I was kind of feeling like a little low energy over Christmas. And I realized I just hadn't worked out and so I was like oh I'll take you know, am I eating the right thing? Am I doing the right routines? Am I doing my gratitude journal? You know, what supplements am I taking and then I just worked out Yeah. I just I just realized like working out is all you need to do. There's a there's a great quote. It's in um This book I was reading called The Body and it basically said like

If we could put in pill form all the benefits that exercise gives you. You it'll be the it would be the most successful medicine of all time. Right. And the whole point of the book was um it was called The Body by Bill Burst and I Or by what's the thing. I love that book. And uh he's just he's like basically like sleep and exercise are the cure to most everything. Yeah, it's crazy. I love his writing. He's uh he's great.

Um Do we want to get into this, Sean? Yeah, let's do it. Um we did this last year. And uh I think it was probably my favorite episode last year. We called it the Millie Awards. We did an awards ceremony at the end of the year. Andrew came on. And we did it in twenty twenty at the end of the year. And I actually went back and I listened to it, which is, you know,

cringy to listen to your own voice recorded, but It was a really entertaining episode. And we made a bunch of predictions. I actually even kinda noted some of them down. I don't know if you guys saw that, like some of the um some of the things that we had said last year. And uh and so we're gonna do it again. And we're gonna try to make this an annual tradition.

We'll see how it goes. And uh all right, so without further ado Here we are, the twenty twenty one Millie Awards. We are back. And uh we got a bun the way it works is we got a bunch of different categories. The three of us Did our research get on did our thinking.

About who we think is the winner for each. We did not tell each other, did not show each other. So if we have the same answer, it's just coincidence. Um, great minds think alike, and we're gonna react to kind of how each one goes. And I have a little side game here, which I'm gonna play. I had this little notepad. I'm just gonna kinda take notes of

Who I think wins each category in terms of their answer. So we'll see we'll see who brings the heat uh during this thing. I got Sam I got Sean and I got Andrew and I'll put a little tally for and I'm the only judge or you guys can chime in on that, but I'm just gonna keep note of of how we do for for this whole episode. All right, so did I miss anything, Sam? Are we good to go? Yeah, and we what I'm I alright, so I have up m I have two documents. I have one document with like my answers and then I've got the other document that have last year's answers. And so I think what we should do is you can lead and you could say like the the category and then you could say here's what last year's are. Right. Okay. So we'll work. So we'll start with uh

We'll start with uh breakout company. So Uh, this is the twenty twenty-one breakout company. It's a company that kind of like exploded. Wait, no, Billy of the Year is first, Sean. Okay, you want to go in the actual order. We can go to the actual order. All right, so Billy of the Year is number one then. We do Billy of the Week sometimes on The pod.

So this is Billy of the Year. It doesn't have to be somebody who's a new billionaire, but it's just a billionaire who had a hell of a year. Last year Sam said Chuck Feeney. Who is um Who's Chuck? He's the guy from uh Blockbuster and all that stuff, or is that somebody else? No, he's just uh he was a he started a business where they sell b shit at airports, but he gave away like free.

Yeah, duty free, but he he gave away all of it. Ten billion dollars. Andrew had Mark Leonard, who's I think the CEO of Constellation Software, is that right? Who's, you know, maybe uh Yeah, you know, somebody you respect who runs a similar playbook to you, buys great companies, owns them for a long time, very stealthy secretive guide. You shared a bunch of cool stories about how he keeps a low profile. And then I had Eric Yuan, who was the CEO of Zoom, because I thought Zoom sort of saved the world during the pandemic and let the world continue to run. And um and so I had Eric Eric you on. So

Who do we have for this year? We'll start with Sam. Billy of the year, who you got? Darmesh, the CTO and co founder of HubSpot, he came on our pod. Well, yeah, I mean I guess, but he uh he just had the ideal outlook on life and I think he had an amazing job. Like he basically said no one reports to him and he doesn't report to anyone. I think he I don't know what what's he worth? Like two billion dollars, whatever HubSpot stock is worth.

I thought he was pretty amazing. And what was the outlook that you liked? I thought the the most interesting thing about Darmesh is exactly what you said, that instead of I think so many entrepreneurs are like, Okay, I'm either all in or I'm all out. And he kinda said, You know what, I'm just gonna do the stuff I like and he's kind of a floater. Like he just kind of floats around within the company. And I thought that was really cool. And he was nice. The thing about Darmesh is that he's nice and he's friendly and he's calm. And I really enjoy that about him. He's not a type A or he is type A in that he's competitive, but he's not like trying to al alpha people. He's very comfortable in his Uh all right, Andrew, who you got? Billy of the year. So mine it was actually a guy I randomly met. So I was at this cocktail party at a uh just a house in my neighborhood.

And I was talking to this guy and I started asking him what he did and he said he was in the the kind of beverage space and he started saying names that I kind of knew like Mission Hill Winery, which is like a big winery up here. Any anyway, it turns out this guy's worth eight billion dollars. And he owns a beverage focused holding company called Mark Anthony Group. This guy named Anthony von Mandel. And his story is pretty crazy. So he started a little like wine importing business in Vancouver.

And Uh made enough money to buy a winery uh called Mission Hill, took on a ton of debt. The it was like dirt floors, had only a few barrels of wine, turned it around, turned it into a real solid business. Um, and then he hit it big when he was trying to diversify and he started a company called Mike's Hard Lemonade, which I'm sure you guys have heard of. And this is like An insane story. Like in the nineties, people would have fights in the liquor store over the last couple of bottles of Mike's Hard. Uh it went into the States, uh and sold. By the way, in America, we like make fun of people who drink like it's like a joke like Mike's Hard. Well the idea the idea they had was like men are too embarrassed to drink coolers. So like let's make a cooler they can kind of not be too embarrassed to drink.

Um, but anyway, he ended up um building that into a massive business. Uh he ended up s also starting White Claw a couple of years ago, which is like the same idea but healthy. And now they do one point four or sorry, four billion dollars of revenue uh last year in twenty twenty. Uh and the craziest thing about this guy is he owns, I believe, a hundred percent of the business and he has no debt. because he'd been almost in bankruptcy multiple times. So it was just totally crazy local entrepreneur who just knocked it out of the park. And I'm obsessed with these guys who have just like taken a risk. They've done it a hundred percent themselves. They didn't have VCs, they didn't have investors. Uh so just an amazing story. Wow. That's a good one. That's a good one. I didn't realize the the Mics Hard the the company that has Mike's Hard also does White Claw, which is amazing. It's basically a reboot of the of the similar concept. Um totally.

Okay. All right, what about you? My Billy of the Year. So I had two. All right, so I have Um I have the I roll one, which is Elon Musk, but it's not for the reason that most people would think. Um, as you know, one of the maybe top three slogans of this podcast is bet on yourself. And Elon several years ago did a bet on yourself comp compensation plan. That you guys probably remember. I don't know if everybody knows about this.

I'll summarize it and I'm kind of hand waving through some of the details just to be quicker about it, but basically Tesla at the time. I think it was five years ago was at about a fifty billion dollar market cap and People he w the rumor was Elon's gonna leave and he might uh You know, go just focus on SpaceX full time.

And he had a negotiation with the board and basically said, Okay, I'll stay, but here's the compensation plan I want. And he sketched out a plan, he said, look, you only pay me if I increase shareholder value. And he go, Yeah, no guaranteed money. And he basically did it where uh in rough strokes, every fifty billion in market cap they added, he would get another one percent of the company. And so it was at fifty billion, so he'd have to get it to a hundred billion to get anything. If it got to ninety nine, he got nothing. And so he had to get it to a hundred to get any more for all his hard work.

And uh I remember there's a great clip if you go to YouTube and you just go uh you just you just search for Uh Elon Musk compensation plan, uh, you know, C N B C there's just Clip of the anchors making fun of'em because they're like, Oh yeah, and like You know, this plan is uh is unprecedented and has this far fetched idea that if he could get over six hundred billion.

You know, Elon would get a huge unlock if he gets to that reward, but you know, I think we could safely say, like, you know, it's never gonna happen, like, you know, why even include that in there? And sure enough, this year Tessa crosses all that. He hits every single part of the compensation plan, I think. It's a t it's a now a trillion dollar company. Uh, and basically the guy called a shot, he bet on himself, and uh and hit all of it. So I really like

That like Debetting on yourself aspect of it. So that's why I give it to Elon. But what was the second one? The second one, uh again, a little bit of a of a expected answer, but not for the reason you think. So Vitalik Buderin, who's the co co creator of of Ethereum. He's worth himself probably one point six billion, I think, as of the based on the like

the value of Ethereum today, something like that, one or two billion dollars. But he was uh one of the uh like there's all these new projects constantly launching. And one of the ways that projects were um trying to get m hype in marketing is that they would just send some of their project into Vitalik's wallet, his public wallet. And they would say, look, Vitalic holds our coin, so you should too. Um and then the other thing that they would so that was the first marketing scheme people would do, like and then people fell for it. They're like, Oh if Vitalic's investing in this, I'll invest in it too. But like he didn't actually invest in it. They just sent it for free, just shoved it in his wallet.

The second thing that people were doing was they were using Vitalik as sort of like a lock up. They were like, look, we sent So one c uh coin that came out, the Shiba Inu coin, which is like a a dog Another dog coin like Dogecoin.

They sent f I think six five or six billion dollars worth of their coin uh to Vitalic's wallet to to essentially lock it up. They're like, look, that's all there. It can't be sold. Um and so you're it not like can't be sold. Like it's there, so you don't have to worry about like, you know, who owns this thing, Vitalik owns this thing. And um it was partly marketing and it's partly their their way of like

locking away some of the supply. And what Vitalik did was pretty awesome. India was going through a really tough patch in COVID. So he got this thing. And what he did was he donated a billions of it immediately to India. And then he dumped the other five billion and just burned it and just said, uh, you know, so so that Like it wouldn't

So that the price w if he if he sold it all on the open market It would um it would crash the price. So instead he took five billion and just eliminated it from the pool and gave a billion dollars to India, kept none of it for himself, and helped a lot of people in India out. And he did this like overnight as soon as he got it. And I just thought that that was like You know, a pretty remarkable thing from a pretty, you know, remarkable guy who It's really cool. That guy and the Sam Bankman guy are

Some probably the two most interesting people, I think, in the world at the moment. Yeah, the cool thing about that for put for those who don't remember the Sam Baker Freed guy. He's currently the wealthiest person from crypto. Um uh wealthiest known person from crypto. So you know, nobody knows who Satoshi is, but Sam Bank for Fried is the next one. He's got like fifteen or twenty billion dollar net worth from crypto, including the exchange he created. And um

He if you ta if you listen to interviews, he's like not like any other crypto zealot. He just is like uh he's like Yeah, I don't care about crypto. Like I don't I don't I don't I believe in it. Not believe in it. People want this, so I made a product. And like That's his whole mindset and he also is like uh obsessed with this idea of like

I forgot what it's called. There's some like uh philanthropic thing he's really into, like uh Sam, do you remember the name of this? It's like charitable ambition or some shit like that. It's like Yeah, he basically the idea is like I'm just gonna get as wealthy as possible and give it all away to different stuff, and it's okay for me to be incredibly ambitious and do this thing these things I don't really care about because I'm just giving it away anyway. And he's giving it away like during his lifetime. Said last year's all right, breakout company, you go first. All right, breakout company. I have um I have open C

So just to give you a sense of OpenSea's crazy growth. I had that too, by the way. It started in twenty seventeen and the the bear market hit like pretty much immediately. And I know people who were building Like their competitors and they ended up folding because it was just like there was no interest. And these guys were like, you know The cockroaches that just stayed alive.

And And twenty yeah uh basically they In twenty twenty, so last year. They did twenty four million dollars in GMV. Pretty small overall.

Uh and they get uh ten percent of that? Uh, they have I don't know what their take rate is. Something like I think it's even lower than that. I think it's five percent or something. They but in that range. So it was very small. Twenty four million in uh gross sales across the platform. That's not their sales, that's people buying from each other. So they just get a small take. This year. 15 billion. So going from twenty four million to fifteen billion in one year, that's six hundred fifty X.

To me, that's a that's a breakout company. I know we've talked about'em before, so it's not a big surprise, but I I had to give it to him. So I had that as well. But I came with the backup because I actually thought that you were gonna pick that. So I had open C as well. I think it's amazing that they basically just kinda created a market and I think that's pretty badass.

Um or at least they're part of a market that is was non existent a couple of years ago. All right. So my second one is someone who we talked about. I'm gonna bot his first name, but his last name is Lovels. What's his first name? Peter Lovell. P is it Peter? Is it just Peter? I thought it's Peter. I thought it was a a weird Peter. I thought it was Peter, to be honest, but I'm gonna call him Peter. All right, so this guy's Peter like theater. That's how we're gonna call it. That's what I thought it was. I thought there was an I in there in some weird area. Um all right. We talked about this guy a couple episodes a uh ago, but I've actually been paying attention to him for like three years.

And as far as I can tell, it's a one person business. And for the longest time he would reveal all of his revenue and for years it was like two or three hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. And he has a bunch of different products. He's got nomad list.com, remote okay.com, workers.co He even has a cool website called Rebase, which is all about going to uh Portugal, moving to Portugal. So he's got like eight different websites for the longest time, only like three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, like neat, but not that cool. This year he got close to five million in revenue, and for a one person internet business.

That's pretty phenomenal. And the remote thing has basically kind of caught up with him and he's crushing it. And this guy's an artist. I love him. I think so. He's kind of his own entity. And I think that he for me was the breakout person of the year behind open Yeah, I think i like that guy kinda has my dream life, which is funny that I say that'cause I do own similar businesses, but I've always I've always like fetishized the idea of being a one person entrepreneur and being able to do that level of revenue. I just kinda got ahead of myself and it's so interesting

I think he I have a lot of respect for him because I think he still shares his numbers. Most of the guys that get to this scale, they almost always stop sharing because everyone realizes how much money they're making. I have a story of a guy who's gonna come on the pod soon. And he um I've been talking to him and he made um Ten million a year in profit. In the early two thousands. from uh a mu uh a lyric website.

Mm. That was around for years. So I have a one person. Wait, is it Malun Malun Tessivic? No. But he is uh similar similar story. He's a he's a Russian Jewish guy. Is that guy a Russian Jewish guy? Didn't that didn't that guy also make like a drinks or something? Not a drink. Oh, my guy? No.

Okay. That guy Maloon, didn't he do something else that's really remarkable now? Like he did the lyrics thing and isn't he doing some other interesting stuff? He works at Expa. Right. He's a partner at Expo. Gotcha. Uh all right, Andrew, who do you have? Uh Sam has this like weird indie breakout company. That's not a company. It's just a Bro, I chose OBC. That's the most obvious one. I chose I chose that one too. So I had to get unique. So far, I'm Mr. Obvious, Sam's Mr. Suck Up, and uh let's see if Andrew's got something good here. So I'm I wasn't trying to be better, I was just trying to be different.

So so if there's one thing I really, really don't like, it's middlemen, realtors, uh investment bankers, that kind of stuff. So I love this company, Micro Acquire. Um for a long time, if you wanted to buy a tech business, you were going to these crappy listing websites with really low like really sketchy sites with really low quality businesses. Uh and this guy, Andrew, basically came along and started this company called Micro Choir. And it's for um generally like profitable SaaS businesses uh on the web. And he's just done a really, really nice job of doing it. I'd say it's kinda like Zillow for buying a tech business. Um and I I you know, he kinda replaced Flippa and all these other kind of crappy websites. So uh I'm a big fan of what he's doing and I think just raise like ten million bucks or something like that. We're all investors, I think, right? I am. I I didn't invest, but

But uh I think it's a good one. Well I invest at a small a very small amount, like five thousand dollars or one thousand dollars or something like tiny. But he uh he's picking fights with people online too. He's kinda making himself to be a uh kind of a villain to to a certain group of people, which we'll see if that ends up being uh a good idea. Who's he going after? I forget the funny thing is I think he's going after like uh he's basically saying like he he went after two groups. So he's like first like bootstrappers. need like some love, like you know, if you're a profitable company, like Why is that getting no attention? And then the second thing is he's going after TechCrunch because they don't cover those types of companies. They just they basically work for the VCs. It's kinda like his angle. He created a a rival publication, I think called The Bootstrappers, to just take a shot at Tech Crunch. Um, and like I will cover these companies if you guys aren't going to.

But then the only uh hip the hypocrisy is that he's raising a bunch of venture capital. So I think you know that part you know breaks down a little bit. Uh, but I think he's doing a good job of picking a fight. And there's this general's Twitter strategy, which is if you like Totally sell out to your mission? Which is like Both a good and a bad thing.

You could just like there's a guy who um Uh I I I was Friendly with uh Chris Hurd. He created a company that's around remote work. And they help basically like manage companies like laptops and desks. Do your desk setup in i when you work from home, they'll help you as a company manage your workers' desk setups.

And uh So he just every tweet is just about how remote work is taking over and how everything else is gonna die. And it'll just be he's just that's the propaganda machine, and you just keep beating that drum every day. Every day he just keeps talking about how the office is dead, remote work is going up. But he cannot be wrong. And yeah, yeah, and and it's just like you know A total like brainwashing of content. But you know, it's it's pretty effective when people do do that. I I can't really bring myself to do that exactly, but It works. Okay, so who um I would give it to open sea.

Oh, I'm getting it. Okay, great. I love it. Uh? Yeah, great. Microacquire is cool, but open C is just there's levels. And Microacire Honestly, I I would do yours, man. I think um yours is the most unique. Right. I think OpenC had a big win, but it's like, you know, I think venture backed, kind of like of the moment crypto stuff. Mine I think everyone knows about, but I think what Peter's doing is very unique. Um and it's just When you think about lifestyle, I think he has the best possible lifestyle of any of the people you can. What's that story where uh a guy goes to a party hosted by whoever, like, you know

Some Rockefeller type. It's like, you know, then the his friend is saying, This guy's the richest man in the world. He's got everything. He's got this, he's got that, he's got cars, he's got servants, he's got everything. And then the guy who's the guest goes. Uh, yeah, but I have something he'll never have. Enough. Enough. And um yeah. That's the Kurt Vonnegut. Yeah, it was Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, I think, right? Mm-hmm. So that's the the version of, you know, Andrew, you had Peter levels, but you you didn't have enough. And so you kept going. And there's a part of you that envies that lifestyle still. Uh all right, we're giving it to someone. Once you start

Once you start once you get an office, once you have employees, you have this beast to feed. Whereas Peter could just check out Right. I uh w one of these days we should do a story of someone who has done that, who went one way and then just said, Ah, fuck it, we're gonna go the opposite and went back. I love those two arms. All right, I get this one. Uh all right. So n uh the unsexy simple business that you saw this year. I'll go first. We talked about it. This guy named Quinn. I think his name is Quinn Emmett.

Is that the guy saying that spider, right? Is it Snyder? I don't remember what it was. But he had a vent He had a vending machine business. And he started he was just worked in in sales at like some tech company. And I I did like a little checkup on him. He's doing like thirty thousand dollars a month in revenue and half of that is profit. And he basically started with fifteen hundred dollars. He's got uh some vending machines throughout uh his city. I forget where he is, California, I think.

Started with fifteen hundred dollars. Now he has software that tells him when the things need to get refilled. And he says he only works ten hours a week on it. I think that's pretty cool. I think that's pretty awesome. I love him, by the way, Quinn Snyder is a basketball coach. So definitely not he's definitely not Quinn Snyder. He's something else. I think it was Emmett. Quinn Emmett. Uh Andrew, who you got for Best unsexy or simple business that you saw this year. I feel like you see a ton of these, so this is probably the easiest category for you. I see a lot and I looked I looked at a bunch of ones that people had brought us and I just I can't really share, but I this is one I came across recently that I think is genius. So some guy um he went and he basically built a fake interior of a private jet in Los Angeles. Like they used like a movie set or whatever.

And then they just rent it out to influencers so that they can take photos where it looks like they're on a private jet, but they're not. And they charge 70 bucks an hour. I think it's booked out like twelve hours a day, probably doing like 20 to 40 K a month. And I can't imagine the margins would be less than 80%. And I was like, that's fucking amazing. You could just build this thing, hire a bunch of people in the movie business to build it over a weekend, and then you know, you can own that for like years. What was it called? Uh it's LA private jet studio. It's on Pure Space, which is like a um A photo photo uh shoot like a studio listing. That is so cool. That's a great one. Um all right, I have one. I'm gonna steal this from our friend of the pod, Cody Sanchez. Uh Sam, you sent this link earlier. And I think this is a great one.

Did you s take the one that I sent you?'Cause she has the bunch of it. It was better than the one I had, so I was like, Oh, this is we'll use this one instead. So she By the way Her TikTok is blown up. So she's always on my crazy. Dude, her last one just got ten million views. That's insane. Like her she has half a million followers now on TikTok. I always see them Oh, when I'm'cause I use TikTok a bunch. And I'm always like, Oh like I was I in my head I would just see like I don't know, thirty comments, I'd be like, Oh, you know

TikTok's so hard. And like when I saw that it actually has added up, it's just, you know, yet another reminder of The value of just keep going. compound the the v the wind over time. So she was doing this thing, she goes, Here's a boring business that um that that you love. And um

It's called American Striping. And all it is is this woman owns this business and it just uh paints the the white line that you need for like a a road like lane basically or like a parking spot. You know, it's like I need to paint these white straight lines. And so she has this company, American striping. I think it started about three years ago. And uh you know, four hundred thousand dollars the first year, seven million the second year, fifteen million almost the third year, and just crushing it, just absolutely crushing it. And according to Cody, 70% profit. Yes, exactly. Some of the sixty, seventy percent profit margins.

I don't know, I don't know I don't know much about it because again, my research was watching this TikTok five minutes before this pod, but uh What a beautiful business and what a you know, what a great reminder that like Th you know, you s you read about Elon Musk and you're like, Oh, I have to like send rockets to Mars and then you read about the girl who's like, I drop straight white lines and I can make millions of dollars a year. And it just reminds you, you know, you can win the game any any way. So she's my pick. I love that. I um I would vote for that one.

Yeah, I'm I'm gonna take that in honor of Cody. So we are at one one one right now. So we're we're one each. By the way, I have a a a little honorable mention here. An unsexy business that's done extremely well. Have you guys looked at Crocs.

Stuck. Yeah, crushing it. Thanks to Post Malone. Wha dude, twenty twenty, when the pandemic happened so March twenty twenty. You could you could have bought a pair of Crux for I don't know much crocs go for, let's call it a hundred bucks. Maybe there's a little less. Uh you could buy a pair of Crocs and you could buy the stock for ten dollars a share. It's now up

Thirteen X in one year just during the pandemic was good to Crocs. And uh I just thought that was like an amazing winner uh out of this like pandemic time. Is it post Malone? Is that who's driving it? He was he kinda hopped on that trend really early and then they created this new thing called like Crocs. I forget what they're called, but they're like charms that you put on your Crocs. And if you drive around the Midwest or in the South, how do we make Elier? What could we do? Oh, let's dangle charms off of them. Do you know what I'm talking about? My wife is obsessed with these and she buys them for our kids and puts them on a cross. Yeah, it's like like a You get like a soccer ball like pin or like a football pin or like some cartoon.

And the kids are obsessed with it and they're crushing it right now. Post Malone uh started making them popular and a lot of country Um Music people. Like Luke Uh combs, so you probably have no idea who that is. Started wearing camouflage crocs.

Gotcha. Yeah. Who knew? Uh, who knew? Uh by the way, Sam, I got another real quick pop quiz for you. Hands up so I see you're not and you're not looking it up. I want you to guess the monthly visitors to onlyfans.com.

Twillion a month? Okay, you're close. It's 250 million. Tell you off by 10 X, an order of magnitude. Is it really? That was gonna be my other unsexy business was actually the business of sexy. Uh which was like I had no idea they they get two hundred fifty million visitors per month. That's insane. That'd be one of the top websites in the world. Then there's another one called Chatterbait. That's e you know, a broke man's version of OnlyFans that gets three hundred million. Oh my God, it's insane. Um

So you know didn't OnlyFans did they say that they're no longer allowing nudity? They did for a second and then they reversed course on that. Stupid and porn hub saying like no more porn. Yeah, Facebook's like no more photos. You know, it that doesn't work. So stupid. Um By the way, average visit duration. Four minutes. All right, we'll go to the next category. Your best investment. Okay, so what was your best investment of twenty twenty one?

Uh let's kick it off with Andrew. So Um I would uh the boring answer is AeroPress, I think but I've already talked about that on the pod. Um we we bought that maybe four or five months ago and that's been awesome so far, but that story hasn't played out yet. So the one and I we haven't really done that much in the last year. So the best one, um

Um is actually a company called Pershing Square Holdings. I don't think I've talked about it. Um so I have about 95% of my net worth in Tiny and our kind of core businesses. Um, but I've been quietly building kind of a backup forever rich retirement portfolio. Of stocks, real estate, brick and mortar businesses. We own a chain of restaurants, we own a hotel, a bunch of conventional stuff. Uh I just own a bunch of restaurants in Victoria. And we own a hotel in Saint Louis. Oh Marshall. Yeah, yeah, with Marshall exactly. Is the hotel business cool?

It's amazing. I'm basically we bought this uh that we bought like a apartment building and converted it into all Airbnb. And we took it from we bought it super cheap and now it's yielded. Maybe you're my billy of the year. Uh I don't think not yet. Working on it. That sounds like uh you had to think about it. That means you you might be round uping to it. No, I I no, I don't I don't think I am.

Um I I don't really I I don't really have like a good picture on that stuff. That's a good answer though. If the answer is I don't think I am Then the answer then then that's a good sign. Yeah, what's that p people saying. I don't spend a lot of time on that stuff because you know, a lot of people who are billionaires on paper, like, you know, it it doesn't really matter, right? You could invest in some startup, it could get valued at twenty billion dollars, you can own one percent, whatever. Like I I just don't I don't spend too much time on that. So anyway

I I've been thinking about this and I go, if everything goes pear shaped I wanna still be rich and I wanna have enough money to live a great life. But isn't and so And that's by that guy you like, right? Bill Ackman. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been following Bill for five or six years and I found that he had this holding company called Pershing Square Holdings. And what he did is really smart. So he he uh had a hedge fund and when you have a hedge fund you have a whole bunch of investors and they they give you cash to invest, but at any given time they can freak out and they can take their money back. So you could be in a down, you know, down you could own an amazing business and you could be forced to sell at the wrong time because an investor investor redeems. And so he created this holding company in Amsterdam. I think he raised four billion dollars um and he called it Pershing Square Holdings. And it's basically a public holding company that just owns a bunch of stocks and it owns really great stuff. It owns Chipotle, Domino's

Hilton, uh, Lowe's, restaurant brands international, so like Burger King, Popeyes, that kind of stuff, and Universal Music. And so it's this really diversified blue chip stock portfolio. And as I dug into it, I realized that it perpetually trades at a discount to the net assets. there. So if there's a hundred dollars worth of stocks, it trades at about seventy dollars, meaning that the market could go down thirty percent before you've lost any money in the in the portfolio. And then on top of that you have Bill Ackman managing your money and he does crazy shit. Like he last year he turned$5 million into 2.7 billion. Uh and I got to ride along with him on that. So Anyway, I've been buying that uh almost exclusively. I've got probably like sixty percent of my portfolio in this, and I just keep buying more and more every month. Uh and I've quadrupled my money, I think, over the last couple of years. Did he do the that that crazy trade that he made last year, the Covid trade, was that out of these vehicles or that was out of a separate vehicle?

Yeah, that was in this vehicle. And anyone could have bought that. Yeah, you've talked about those. Um, okay, great. So that's a good one. Uh Sam, what you got? Your best investment. Um I bought a I bought a a a big lot. In Austin.

Kinda boring, but I bought a big lot in Austin. I used um An asset backed loan, so I used cash. To buy it. Like I told them I bought it in cash. In reality it was a loan at a one percent interest rate. And I it's not the story again hasn't played out, but it's already appreciated because I've gotten offers on it. But I'll make about five hundred thousand dollars in tax free profit with very little work.

And the work that I've been doing on it is fun. I'm learning a skill. I'm learning how to develop a home profitably. Um So uh that that's gonna be my It's probably not my best. Just like investing in the S P five hundred, that's up thirty percent. I mean that's

But that's not much of an investment. I didn't do anything. And so the uh my my Austin real estate Yeah. project will be the most like actively thing active thing that I'm managing and make the most. That's a good one. Uh by the way, the YouTube video on your personal YouTube channel, the uh is it Sampar or the Sampar is great. Yeah, just my name. You you show the the lot, the the kind of like the run down shack that's there today. It's great. Uh it's fun, right? It may be it's way more inner watch that and what you just said will be way more entertaining. It's great.

But I also I feel like you might make five hundred grand, but if you'd made five million passively, it wouldn't feel as good as Exactly. That's why I'm saying because you've done it's my bet it's better because it's fun. Like it's I'm basically developing a skill. Uh and and it's been quite fun and the tax implications are quite nice. Yeah, that's great. Um okay good. My my best investment. I'm gonna go with this startup that I invested in. So

Last year, I think it was last year. Yeah, last year I created a rolling fund. And it's basically said, Hey, if anybody wants to Invest in startups alongside me. You know, uh you don't have to have the network, you don't have to have the knowledge. Uh all you gotta have is the cash. You can do this. And I was like, Okay, um

I wanted to start it. I was like, I wanna start this off. I wanna make it enticing for somebody to join because you could invest in a a a number of people who are professional full time investors who've been doing this for a decade. So I was kind of thinking like why would somebody invest in me? And so I said, Let me juice it up a little bit. Let me put three of my personal angel investments into this uh deal uh into this like fund and uh So they'll be able to say look

I I get to sort of like grant I get grandfathered into these deals that you've already done. That's very kind of you. And it was self serving, like I wanted my fun to get subscribers quickly. So I was like, How do I provide more value? Here, here's here's some free value. Now looking back, it actually has turned out to be very kind because the very first deal that I put in is a company called DEL, D E E L. А вот Діл до

It's the easiest way to hire a contractor. Um, so like I was paying I wanted to hire this guy in Australia, the guy who actually first was editing our podcast. I was like, how do I pay this Podcast editor in Australia. And so I was like, Oh, um, you know, do I need to go get a lawyer to make a contract? And how do I pay them in his local currency? And then What are the compliance rules around that? How much taxes do I need to pay? Like I don't I don't understand all this. So I went to deal and literally in five minutes I was like

Uh here's the guy's name, here's his email address, here's where he lives. It's like Here's a contract. It's like, would you like to add a confidentiality clause? Yeah, yeah, toss that in. It's like guk on my burrito. Like, you know, I'll I'll go for that. And then it was like great, it's sent for signature and the payments will come out of your bank account and it'll pay him an Australian dollars. automatically every month. And I was like, wow, that was like kinda magical. It basically replaced, you know, what a bunch of humans would have to do.

So I loved it. So I ended up chasing down the founder and I was like, yo, your product is amazing. Um, how do I invest in this? And he was like, Oh you know, I'd Love to have you. Uh, and I didn't invest right then and uh then I you know, when I followed up, he was like oh dude, we just closed a thing. Sorry, I forgot, like, you know, you didn't follow up, so

So I've missed the first round. And then I almost missed the second one. What was the valuation of the first one? First one might have been I don't remember exactly, but it's like a startup, you know, like maybe twelve million cap or twenty million cap, something like that. And so uh he's like don't worry, I'll get you into the next round. I was like, Okay, great. So he messages me one day, he says

Brother, like you know, I got your spot for you, next round's coming together. Let me know. I'm like, Oh, I'm in. Twenty five K No questions asked. He's like, great, got you in. And I was like I was like actually, you know, one question I guess. Uh w what is the valuation actually? What does it happen to be? And uh he's like

You know, I I don't know if I can say this probably I can say this. It's it was like Million. And I was like, what? And I was like uh and I was like okay, and I didn't want to go back on my word'cause I I like the product. I like the founder a lot.

And I was like, I'd said I'm in, so I'm in. And I was like, Ah shit, okay, whatever. And then I was like, you know, do you have like crazy traction? Like how are you getting this this thing? And he's like You know, we're doing well, but like, you know, he c told me the number and I was like, That's an absurd valuation for this thing. I was like, who's doing this deal? And it was Andreessen was doing the deal. I was like, these guys are nuts. Uh I don't know why they're doing this, but whatever. I wrote the check, did did it anyways.

It va it was valued this year at five and a half billion. Um like you know, two years later They said he and the founder tweeted this out so I can share this. They ramped up revenue from four million to fifty million in ARR in one year. And um they went from fifty employees to five hundred fifty employees in one year. And so this is just like an insane amount of traction that's like

You know actually Andreza knew what they were doing. They you know they they bet on this before'cause I think the revenue was definitely less than four million at the time it was re it was valued at two hundred million. And so, you know the value investor and Andrew would have been dying in that moment. It just didn't make any sense. It didn't make sense to me even. But this has turned out to be a pretty amazing deal. Uh, you know, Not including dilution, which is a big

factor here, so take that for what's worth. So twelve million into five and a half billion is four hundred and fifty eight. So your twenty five thousand dollars in that twelve round would have been worth over eleven million dollars. Yes, exactly. And my buddy did it my my buddy Ryan uh did that deal at that at that round and uh reminded me as such about like the crazy markup. And so, you know. The 25K has turned into half a million, but man, that that's the difference between half a million and twelve million was following up. Oh my god. All right, we win.

So wait, is this my best investment or worst investment? Maybe this is my worst investment actually. I mean twenty five K to half a million's good. By the way, well it would have been good and then I put it in the the rolling fund. So now, you know, most of the economics went to my investors too. That's crazy. That that that mistake that's a ten million dollar mistake. Yeah. And it was uh by the way, this is a period of like, I don't know, less than a year between the full the between like when when one round happened and the next round happened. So, you know, could have uh Uh yeah, coa shulda. All right, so Who are we giving this round to? Best investment.

Me? Okay. For my sob story, at least I have at least I have this to to lean back on. All right, let's go to worst investment. What was your worst investment of twenty twenty one? I'll go first. Mine's easy. Zillow I bought it. Yeah. I I I only bought

Three stocks, individual stocks this year. One was Playboy. And Playboy kinda makes sense because only a billion dollar valuation, two hundred million in revenue, and I thought the brand was easily worth that. I'm actually thinking about buying Aston Martin stock. A Aston Martin is only valued at like one or two billion dollars. It's like the cheapest car maker, but I think they're gonna have a resurgent. So I'm thinking about doing that. But I bought Playboy thinking that was my logic and I was wrong.

But then Zillow was way wrong. Zillow was wrong because I bought at its most expensive point. Tell people why we bought this stock. We bought it because we're in this chat group and our friend Nikita and Austin Reef were like Zillow's the greatest thing ever. And so I bought like twenty five or fifty grand worth of Zillow. And I agreed with them. I thought Yeah, you know, you're right. Like whenever I go to a fancy neighborhood, I just pull up Zillow and I like browse all the time. It's kind of a category definer, like defining company. Like I'm on board with Zillow. I thought how much were they worth when we bought? Like 15 or 20. I don't know, it's it's down fifty six percent. So I bought a hundred K and now my hundred K is forty four K uh left of the It made sense. Like I don't regret it. I'm on board with it, but the problem was is that it went down just because like we were wrong. Then it went down because they fucked it up with buying all those houses and it went down even more. Yeah. So we were wrong like twice. And by the way, they they they lost fifty six percent of their value in a year where the housing market went like bananas. So you know it's not like

There was a something out of their control and their s industry that was doing poorly You know Didn't Rich Barton come back or something? Was he the guy? He's the original founder and a really great investor, I believe, at the end. Great entrepreneur. Yeah, and and he came back and he tried to do the house buying stuff. I would still I I would honestly maybe double buy on that. I think he'll probably he'll probably pull a rabbit out of the way. I think it's a great company. It's awesome. I think basically what happened was a a bunch of bad stuff happened, including one TikTok went really viral explaining how like they're evil because they're like big corporations buying hundreds of homes. And that totally fucked them. If anyone's the P TikTok is the winner here.

The fact that they haven't disintermediated real realtors though, like the fact you can't or maybe you can and I'm just not aware, but I just want to be able to list my house on Zillow and then have an open outcry auction one day, like where you say, like on this day, I wanna have an auction, everyone's gonna bid and then we'll get the maximum price and they do all the paperwork, like that would be with a company. I invested in a company that does that. They were called Rumor. It's kind of a silly name, but they rechange it to also a silly name. It's called Dorsey. So uh yeah, it's I gotta Dorsey's not bad. I I like Dorsey. It's like the word door and then S E Y. And uh it's a live home auction. And uh it's started by the guy who started Hello Alfred.

Kind of a cool company. I just sent it to you in the chat. Yeah, so Zilla was your worst investment. Hey, just oh before we jump, I wanna know about Playboy. So what's the what's the thesis there? Like they still have the magazine. Obviously it's kind of a you know, there's a lot of legacy brands. But what are they doing with it? Like where where's the money coming from? Yeah, merchandise, basically. And so they own the they they own the Playboy Mansion, which Is worth

Uh nine figures, I believe. And they recently did a spAC. in two thousand and twenty. And so they reported two hundred million dollars in revenue in two thousand twenty one, or that's what the forecast is gonna be. When I invested, I think their market cap was just a hair above uh one billion. And um basically it my my logic right now it's one exactly one billion.

My logic was basically like I'm pretty sure that brand is worth more than that. Like if they just like put their logo on stuff. I was like, I know young people don't really care about it as much, but I think that brand's pretty valuable. And I couldn't put a value on it, but I thought it was above what they were trading for. So it was kinda I kinda just made a a kind of a gut call. But It's down.

Half. Wasn't it it was a guy the guy who bought that was the guy who bought Twinkies. Or hostess or something random like um He was the guy who bought Twinkies, made a ton of money on it, then he bought Party. It is a r I mean it's a very iconic it's a really iconic brand. Yeah, and I know that like they tried I had a friend that tried that almost bought Uh this guy the guys at the Chive almost sold to Playboy.

And they told me about going to the mansion, and they told me that they Playboy was thinking about selling the mansion, and they told me like how much it was worth. And it was it's like a crazy high number, and I thought Well fuck, just with this stuff, like if this is worth more than the If you're OnlyFans, why would you not just buy Playboy? I think it's really interesting. You don't need it. I mean, what's it worth that, you know I don't know.

Five hundred million people. know your name and associate it. Like That's gotta be worth To a to a company that has a money printer, you know, uh if you are a money printer What what does it take to accelerate your brand like that? That I don't know, that's

Well let's be let's be real, I mean Ty Lopez is gonna buy it turn into some sort of crypto. Yeah. So Mine I can't say what it is. We didn't actually announce the business. But I so

The mistake we made is we bought an ember. What I mean by that is it's like this little tiny ember and it could turn into a bonfire if you blow on it a lot, but you have to be very attentive. And we're not set up to be attentive. We're kind of management by neglect. We buy these businesses, we plug in CEOs, and then they go on to do great. And the problem is when you have this little tiny uh startup This is a business. It was a real business with real revenue and profits, but it was very small and we liked what we saw, but the problem is we couldn't attract someone great to run it. And so the business, the ember just kind of burnt out over time and we ended up spending like a million bucks. So it was just a total money bonfire. uh and pointless and unsatisfying. And so the lesson for us is just board a cruise ship. You know, don't don't try and build your own boat. That's a good anal two good analogies. Ember and cruise ship.

Um all right, my worst investment Um I'm gonna give you the fast answer because I think we're gonna run short on time. All right, mine is holding COVID winners for too long. So I had this amazing run up on Zoom stock. Fastly, which is a like

uh edge com you know, like a cloud uh or CDN. Um and Agora, which does like, you know, voice and video um SDKs. So they power Clubhouse and things like that. And I own these stocks. They ran up like crazy, you know, two X, three X, or whatever in like a very short amount of time. And then they've all come crashing back down to earth. Um You know. In the last six months or so. And so I lost money just by holding on to the COVID winners for for too long, even when, like, for example, with Agora.

I got in because I knew Clubhouse was growing, but then I was the one who kind of almost like famously called the clubhouse is gonna fail and it's gonna Gonna tank. And yet I still held my agora forgot to sell my Agora stock and it's cut in half. Um you know, so that that sort of thing. So I wouldn't say my uh I lost a g nice chunk of change holding my COVID winners for too long. How awesome would it be if you could short

private companies. Like imagine if you saw Clubhouse and you could go and short it. And maybe maybe there is a way to do it. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. But um stuff like that's quite obvious. But if you have you ever used Polymarket? It's basically like a crypto betting uh like a bookie, basically. But you could bet on anything. You could bet on sports games, you could bet will Joe Biden get Covid? Uh, you could bet whatever. And it's only a yes or no. So there's So the and the market sets the line. So basically if everybody thinks yes, then proportionately No will be rewarded.

Like if you bet no, but two thirds of people bet yes, you're gonna get a payout more than one to one on your money because you're taking the underdog side of things. And um and so there's a So this idea of prediction markets works really well in in crypto. And uh and so there's there's a few of these that are out there. Um, I love betting on polymarket. Dude, we should do we should do an annual uh betting episode where we all make predictions and bets and then we put it on poly market and we have to put our own money up.

Do you still stand by that is Club what's the update on Clubhouse? Are you gonna be right? Yeah, but uh it looks like it. Like in the charts all you know, it's uh it looks like Mount Everest, right? Goes up and then it goes straight down. But there's there's not a world where like it's just like maybe not growing a ton, but they still have like a million people a day using it or something like that. Uh well look, you never count out an entrepreneur. Those those guys are really talented entrepreneurs, they can always pivot. Uh it's that you know, the product as it is today did not become what people bet on it to become, right? Andreas and Bet f put it a four billion dollar price tag on it.

Basically betting that it's gonna become like a Twitter, it's gonna become a Facebook or a Snap. And uh it's not happening. Uh that ha that hasn't happened. The one good thing is that they they have the same kind of like hype cycle, or not hype, I shouldn't say that, but like uh trend fad cycle we're in it in different countries. So like in India. Don't get s like happened in America, they got super popular and then usage faded. It wasn't super sticky.

And then the same thing will happen in India. It'll get super popular and then it'll start to fade in popularity. And so the overall numbers aren't like Totally zero, but it's problem is if you're a leaky bucket, you're a leaky bucket. It's just a matter of time'til all the water's gone and uh That's I I don't know, I think I I think I'm right, but I don't honestly I don't pay too much attention to it. But people will often tweet at me charts of their downloads going down to be like you're right.

So that's all I know is basically people cherry picking evidence. Andrew Andrew Chen's gotta come on the pod, you know that, right? Oh, is he? Yeah. Will you be able to talk to me or am I blocked from the pod too? We'll see. He'll block you. He'll mute you.

Um I'm gonna go I like And I think Andrew had a good lesson in there. Uh we'll go with that. Oh that's we're gonna go Andrew there. All right, let me um I'm gonna uh I'm gonna uh combine then the next one. Can I do that?

Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna combine it with favorite digital tool. Favorite physical tool. And best product under Hundred and above a thousand.

And I'll and I'll go first. So favorite digital is True Bill. Andrew, you should use Truebill. You said that you forget subscriptions. True bill is awesome. Like just today I didn't realize that me and my wife both had an Amazon Prime membership. True bill, I paid like fifty bucks or no or ten dollars. It's like really cheap. And it's our sick app that syncs your bank account and tells you the subscriptions that you have and it makes it easy to cancel it. Have you heard of that? Sweet. I don't I don't know if it works in Canada, but they just got acquired for one point three billion dollars by Rocket Mortgages, your guy Dan Gilbert.

Um so Pretty awesome. Favorite physical tool. Is This is kind of physical is a fifty dollar app called Camo that's let you use your iPhone. For

Uh like high def Uh video calls. Pretty amazing. And then favorite product that was above Uh that was under a hundred was lock a box. It's a thirty-eight dollar box that I keep in my pantry that my wife knows the code of and she puts things that I don't want to have that I don't have self control.

So she'll put like uh sweets in there. And sometimes if I want to lock my phone for the weekend, she'll put it in there. So that's awesome. And then above a thousand, I bought a fancy car, a Mercedes that uh uh AMG station wagon that I love. Dude, that was great. Okay. Uh Andrew, so so we're doing a digital product, physical product, or kind of like a Uh cheap or expensive thing you liked.

Okay, so um digital product uh consumerlab.com. So it's like 49 bucks a year and it's basically wire cutter, but for food and supplements. So everything from like vitamin D to seaweed snacks to baby food, they buy every single brand, they test it. And it's pretty shocking. Like I just today learned that the seaweed snacks that I've been giving my kids you know have like a bunch of arsenic in them. Right. So it's just crazy stuff that could affect your life. Um, my favorite physical tool is this amazing thing that my wife uh gifted for me randomly that I never thought I would use. It's basically this game called the loser game. And you play it with friends and you basically all draw a card, and on each card is a really kind of fucked up deep question. So um for example, um How have you blamed someone for an issue that was, if you're truly honest, largely your fault? Or name a surprising, basic, embarrassing gap in your knowledge. Or anyway, you go around in a circle, you answer this. I did this on a uh retreat with a couple of friends that I did.

And these are all guys I know really, really well. And I left going, holy shit, there's just so many cool stories and interesting facts that we don't know about one another. And this game kind of uh elicits it. Um so that's been awesome. Um and then physical thing that I bought this year, I bought a house up at the lake about 40 minutes out of town here. Uh, and it's been the best thing I could ever do. Just great place to go and hang out with family and check out of work. And even though it's close, it feels like a whole other world away. That's right. And I've seen the house. It's awesome. But I got a quick story on that thing you just said. Uh my first business I started with my two best friends from college.

And uh this is the sushi business or whatever, and we we met the chef and the chef goes, All right, he goes he goes, You guys are he he goes, Man, I love your guys' kind of like vibe. Like you guys are I can tell you guys really like each other. He goes, How long you guys known each other? Like did you just meet or for while we're like no we've we were and we were just saying now we're thick as thieves, we've known each other for years. And he goes. He goes, So you kn you guys know each other pretty well, huh? And we're like, Yeah, like why why? He goes,

He goes, uh Sean, what's uh what's the hardest thing Trevor's ever been through? I was like Uh I have no idea. He's like just name something, maybe. And I was like, I honestly have no clue. And we did it and all three of us had no idea of just what's the hardest thing that your fr your best friend has been through.

And um And he's like oh he he goes he goes he goes, Yeah, I kind of noticed this. He goes Y'all talk, but you don't have conversations. Oh and I was like oh shit mic drop and he goes he goes So you know, you don't need to do this now, but he's like But try it. Like go go a little deeper.

Um, just ask yourself these questions. And we did it that night. We kinda asked each other that question. And then by the end, we're all like, dude, I didn't know that about you. Like I feel like I knew you way better, you know, like I really I really know you now. Um and so That was a a great reminder of like sometimes these questions can can take you, you know, further with your friends. Totally. It's a superpower. One of the questions I ask people when I have lunch, I'll have like a small talk, you know, first time lunch with someone and I'll just randomly try and ask them, Are you happy? Or are you happy with where your life is right now? And it's weird. They will just go down a rabbit trail and tell you all sorts of crazy stuff you wouldn't normally tell somebody. Just mind fucking people throughout Victoria. Um It well, it just builds builds connection, right? Uh I'll do mine. Okay, so favorite digital thing, uh this app called Other Ship.

Uh it's a breath work app. I do it every morning. I love it. It wakes me up. It makes me feel good. It's it slows me down and it speeds me up at the same time. It slows me down from just rushing into my day feeling behind. And then it speeds me up because when I come out of it, I'm like I feel Just like electric. I feel like I'm on fire. I could do whatever I want now. Uh so Other Ship is the name of that app. I love that app. Um

Favorite uh what is it? Favorite physical Okay, my favorite physical tool is um This is gonna sound stupid. Alright, so I grew out my hair. And um You know

I grow my hair just to like do it, just to kinda have a like I don't know, just have a change, do do something different. Uh, but I don't know anything about how to take care of hair. And uh I'm like a really messy, disorganized person who doesn't like you know, I don't look in the mirror till seven PM that night. I'm like, Oh, I didn't I haven't even looked at myself today. And that doesn't really work when you got long hair, like high maintenance hair. So I went to a stylist and I was like, uh, you know, can I get a little trim and uh She was like, What do you want? And I was like, I have no idea. I have no idea what I want and also

Uh, what I really want is like can you just like Cut the haircut like ha half an hour short. And just tell me what I should be doing, like With my hair. And she's like, What do you mean? I was like I was like so like I get in the shower, if I want to do shampoo, like

Here's how I do it. You tell me if that's correct. And I went through like these ultra basics with her. And uh she was like, What do you mean? And then she was laughing, but then through that conversation she's like oh like No, no, no, when you shampooed, like don't be doing it on the roots because you're s gonna end up stripping away all your natural oils. Like Just do your conditioner and shampoo like from the middle to the end. And like, oh, you're sleep, you know, your hair's really frizzy and you probably don't know why, but like, do you sleep on a cottoncase? And I was like, Yeah. Of course.

She's like, You need to switch that for silk because imagine you're spending eight hours a night rubbing your hair into this thing. So she gave me these like three little things, like a silk pillowcase. This like uh curling cream, she's like, Just use this because your hair won't look like it's like a little bit more. What. Dude, uh we have silk things in our in our house all over the'cause if you're not going to be a black girl thing. Yeah, yeah, no, it is. There's like this whole thing, the curly girl method and shit like that. So anyways

I learned so much about hair in like half an hour. It was amazing. And I felt so relieved. I was like Ah, this is like this class of life school I just missed. And like I'm too embarrassed or too like kind of busy to like think about it. But like taking the time and thinking about it was awesome. And so, you know, the little silk pillow and a couple other things were were great little wins for me. When when you go to restaurants, what I do all the time is I just say they'll say, What do you want? And I'll say, I just want meat and vegetables. Give me whatever's popular or whatever's best.

You ever do that? No. But I well I'll often ask what's best or I'll say the the best question is uh You know what? Uh like what do you eat after work? Like what's the best thing that you like to eat? AI after the state. Dude, it makes them so uncomfortable though. I ask that all the whenever I order, I almost always do that. It makes them very uncomfortable and they freak out. Just like you do with like when I get a haircut, I'm they're like, What do you want? I'm like, just make me look sexy. You know, it's like maybe like hot. Yeah, whatever. Chef's choice is a hella underrated way to live life. So is but it makes them so uncomfortable.

Nah, I don't you might you might be putting him on the sp put too much pressure on him. I tell him, I say, look, this is where I am. It can't get worse than this. Uh don't worry, I trust you. And then I tell every haircut I said, Don't worry what you do. My hair grows fast. I take a lot of pressure off them. Same thing with the food. You know, tell me what you eat after work. Uh By the way, I'm not picky and I'm already in a good mood, so I'm gonna love whatever you give me. And then it'd you know take the pressure. That's a good one. I'm gonna say that. All right, and then your last uh your your Over a hundred and under a hundred.

The uh what's let's see the over a hundred uh oh hired a chef. So I don't know why more people don't do this, like Dude, that's such a conceited thing to say. Yeah yeah, cancel me and be like, Yeah,'cause I can't afford it. No, what I mean is If you can buy a nice car.

Or you know, like I would never buy a nice car before a chef. Like my order of operations would be a B W No, no, no, no. I I don't even think that's the right comparison. I think it's m a lot of people who are middle class or upper middle class have a cleaner. Uh chef is just slightly more expensive than that. It's not crazy expensive. And I I don't do it every day, so you know, you could do three days a week, or you can do, you know, whatever. Um It is the biggest life quality change because you get your time back.

Plus you eat healthier, plus it's actually tasty because you probably aren't a great cook. Or I'm not at least. P uh plus like, you know, they prep little things for like My dog or my my baby who's like a picky eater and like It just saves so much time, energy, and mental like kinda like

uh mind space, I guess, to do this. So for me, I'm like I would cut Ten other things before this. So like if you got some money, right? You can't do this, you got no money, but you got some money. You're you got some money to play with, like Don't angel invest. Hire a chef. You know, don't d don't buy like a go buy like a used kind of like middle of the road car. Don't buy like a nice car. If you're buying a Tesla, get a chef. That's my that's my like, you know

If you're in that g those are the kind of trade offs you can make. And above uh uh below a thousand? Uh oh, Jamies. I think I've talked about this before. Oh my God. I love these things. You don't like it you don't like jambies? I they're just boxers with pockets.

Very soft, boxers with pockets, and no hole. Uh Do you wear them do you wear them though day to day or only when you're at home? Well I'm at home every day. Well if there's no hole and you put them on a jeans. I wear them as a Just a shitty version of the replacement for short. So I like to just walk around in my boxers all day. That's like when I'm most comfortable.

So this is the socially acceptable, more comfortable. They're like a little longer. So you're not showing too much thigh. There's no hole. They got pockets so you can carry your phone around. So it's like the best way to just wear your boxers at home. So you're saying like your mother in law your mother in law's gonna wear boxers at the house? Because if you just wear shorts, they're just as comfortable And you'd look at the Sean's defense, he's been talking about these things for like three years now. I I've worn them. They're very, very comfortable. I have a pair, I like them, but I wouldn't wear them like if they're people in my house, I wouldn't wear them. I'm gonna wear Lululemon shorts instead that have like the underwear and the uh as the line. We're not all trillionaires, so we can't all get Lululemon, but we can get jambies, right? Alright, can I can I batch the next one again? Yeah.

All right, so check this out. So um We're giving that round to Sam. Alright, I I'll take that. Uh thing you uh thing you learned about yourself this year and best relationship hack. I'll go first because mine are gonna be really fast. Uh best relationship hack this year. I do we weekly meetings with my wife using this best self journal. And it's just like a prompt. It's an hour long prompt of questions and you get to know each other better. Exactly what you talked about with your buddy. It's been awesome. That's the best hack I've had. And the one thing I learned this year

I'll say two things. One can I ask you a question about the relationship one? Yeah. Are you both equally into it or is one of you like more into doing it than the other? We're both equally into it. I think that's And so like I I've always been a fan of therapy. Like I've gone to therapy like regardless if I'm healthy or unhealthy. It's just like going to the gym. And so I was like, we should do couples Counseling, even though everything's great.

And but I didn't really j we didn't jive with anyone. And so I thought this one is actually better. It works, yeah. And it's like twenty five dollars for one time. And then So Sean, I mean I totally relate to what you said though. Like she's not into it. And I tried to do this with my wife, do like a you almost want to do like a weekly board meeting, like hey, let's talk about our relationship. My wife's not dealt with. It's not run like a business meeting exactly, but like it just has like like like you know like the five languages of love. Like that's like one that's like a one conversation. That's like you'll have that one week and the next conversation will be uh Uh tell me about your childhood.

Right. I think I think someone needs to build like an operating system kind of like how you would have board meetings and all this stuff for marriage and family. What does our family stand for? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's a great idea. Yeah. And then one thing I learned about myself, which is I actually don't like owning as fan fancy stuff. It kinda stresses me out. So I like bought a fancy watch and I was like, Oh my God, this is horrible. It's freaking me out. And but What I learned this year is I had a number of net worth in my head and I was like, if I hit this number, I'm never gonna worry again and I'm not gonna chase money.

I hit that number, I still worry and I still chase. It is never enough. Yeah. And now it now it's It's always 2X. You know, and there's a the New Yorker did an a did a study where they like asked a bunch of wealthy people And like it doesn't matter if the person had Uh one million, one hundred thousand, or fifty million. The they always said they'd be more comfortable if they had two X.

Yeah. All right, you wanna go, Sean? Uh yeah, okay. So Best Relationship Hack Uh Uh I literally just wrote this as soon as I read it, I go, Shut the fuck up

Uh I learned this year how to really just shut the fuck up in a relationship, meaning like not everything needs to be talked about, not everything needs to be said. Not every like you know pot needs to be stirred, not every issue needs to be discussed, not every like Worry needs to be a thing like Just shut up.

And uh like just shut up and enjoy it. Just shut up and listen more. Um and just shut up and like Don't complain. Don't don't talk about like Constantly improving and changing it like Just shut up a little bit. And so that was my relationship hack. Which there's many times where

You've ki you probably know this'cause you know me pretty well, Sam. I'm kind of a potster. Um and I like to like I don't feel alive till somebody's like, you know, laughing or angry or whatever in a conversation. I'm like, Yeah, now we're doing it. That's true, is not how everybody is. But your intentions are mostly always good, which most Your your your mo your intentions are mostly always good. If it's if you just want to call shit, it's just'cause you feel like laughing. Yeah, it's I'm trying to amuse myself.

Are your were your parents debaters and that was kind of how your family started? My my dad's a potster, so my dad would say some outlandish thing. We start yelling, and that was like almost his love language. And my problem is I've applied that into all my relationships and most people find that horrible. Yeah, you just said it perfectly. So that was the lesson I that was my relationship hack this year was the lesson learned was was what if I didn't try that? What if I did something different? Um The thing I learned about myself, I'm gonna do one that's not um Not good. So, you know, there's a lot of lessons that were like, Oh yeah, I learned this and now I'm better for it.

This is one that like I just learned was kinda like a shitty thing about me, so I've now had several friends that um I've considered to be my close friends or like they worked for me or whatever, like I've kind of mentored them in some way. And then they go on to do like really great things. But like, you know, they called everybody except for me to like kinda like share the wins that they were having or

Or let them on board and to invest in it, or like, you know, just I wasn't in the loop. Beyond once our once our kind of relationship once our like Once the transaction was done, like once we stopped working together I in my head I'm like, Oh yeah, we're super tight. And in their head they're like

They had a different opinion'cause I I had l uh lunch with a buddy and I said He was telling me about like this crazy journey he's been on. I'm like, dude, can I ask you something kinda weird? I was like I've noticed this happening a bunch of times. Like you had this crazy journey and I feel like I thought we were super close and we're just now talking about it. Like I wasn't in I wasn't in the loop. Like he didn't let me know. Like You d you didn't share these awesome things that were happening or the crazy bad things and like

You took other investors, I feel like I could have been like your first check into your thing, like I was like, Is there something I do that makes you feel that way? And he's like Can I get can I guess what he said? Yeah, go ahead. I I just thought that you were too busy.

Yeah, that, but like, uh A less generous version of that is You uh you blew me off, basically. It's like It's like yeah, like I messaged you a bunch of times and like you didn't really respond in a big way. So I just figured like okay. He's like he said it perfectly. He goes, I he goes, I felt like I figured out w what I am to you.

And like I thought we were close and you thought we were close. You're saying you thought we were close, but like You made me feel like we're not that close. And like once our engagement was over. You know, it seemed like you put me in some place that like, you know, you didn't want to engage as much as I wanted to. And I was like, What are you talking about? No me? Good old Sean away. I'll you know, this is whatever. And um

And then sure enough, I scrolled back in our DMs and it's like Him saying something, him saying something, him saying something, me saying one line. Him saying something. And like asking something and me never responding never getting back to it. Combat that because like you've gotten very popular. It's not that it's like Well, this is this is the problem. This is the problem is like so much of becoming friends with someone is where you're at in your life and how much time you have for the other person and whether you're in sync or not. So some of my best friends, they were, you know, we're both single, we're both drinking and partying, you're super, super close.

And then you have kids and life's different and you kind of drift apart. And the same thing can happen with texting. If they're texting you all the time and they want you to engage and then you send a one liner back, they immediately take offense. They don't realize that you've got three hundred other people texting you and you just want to be friends with everybody. And it's funny you mention this because I wrote my worst habit of the year is writing blunt one line responses to DMs and text messages because I'm busy, right? I'm just trying to rip through them all and I'm tired. But it's way it's way better to not respond. At least then you're mysterious and oh, maybe you didn't see it. The one liner pisses people off so much. It's a little better. It's shockingly better than that. If it makes you feel better, Sean, I perceive you as a person who's in the loop of everything, though. Yeah, I don't know. I I basic I re I realize my self perception of kind of Where these relationships are at.

And how uh good of a friend I was being back, I realized like, oh no, I'm actually I'm kind of a shitty friend back. Uh I put I I can make people feel bad when without really realizing it. Um And and also that that costs me, like that I don't get to share in the wins and and know the stories and be kind of

Friends and And get these opportunities that like, you know. would otherwise have come from this. And so that's once I have it like five times, I'm like, Okay, the problem is me. I'm the common denominator here. One one of the habits that I've realized, there's two things. One one is like using a smiley when you say something. Just immediately, even if it's a one liner, it takes the edge off. The other thing is a friend of mine does this. He's very, very busy, super spread thin, uh big personality, lots of friends. And he will just every once in a while

Text me and say, hey man, I was just thinking of you. Uh or you know, or you know, let's say it's New Year's, he'll say, Hey, thanks for your friendship this year. Here's something I really appreciated or took from you. And it comes across as very authentic. And I've looked at that and gone, okay, I need to really learn how to do that because I'm like you exact like as you're saying this, I'm just nodding along. I think I come across as distant and cold and too busy and I don't want to and I just want to make everyone happy. It's so sad. Call you know, bracket first name. I was really thinking about you. Yeah, that's what's gonna come out from from us this year. Yeah. Someone build us in Andrew relationships and um Learning.

Yeah, okay, so um my biggest relationship hack, honestly, my wife, her love language is acts of service. And It's really interesting. Like Often she'll start picking at me about some other thing I'm doing that pisses her off and we'll have a fight about something. And it ultimately came down to the fact that I left towels on the floor or I left the kitchen dirty. And so now I'm just trying to whenever I have that moment where I'm like, I see the kitchen's dirty, I'm just unloading the dishwasher. And trying to enjoy it and get it done.

No no no no no I'm not a slob, but I I I always say to her, I'm like, What's the point of making money if you use your time doing things you don't want to do? Right. Whereas my wife is much more like, I don't want our kids to grow up without them seeing us work and, you know, doing stuff. So so we don't really have any help. around the house. We have a nanny, but um you know, we have a cleaner who does all the stuff we don't want to do. That's all us. No, we don't we don't we don't have any of that. We don't have we're we're not fancy like you. Um, and then the school of life, uh, which they make that card game I mentioned before. I love that so much that I bought this one called the Connect Card Game, and it's for couples. And my wife and I have been doing it and it's basically five stacks. And each stack is like, you know, one is sex, one is like general relationship, one is personal, whatever. And so you roll a dice and you go through these questions. And again, it's just this great way to penetrate through, you know, you might be in a bad spot. But when you answer these questions, it kinda unlocks everything and uh builds connection between the two of you. And that's been really, really good for us. Cause my wife doesn't like doing the meetings or couples counseling even a lot of the time, but that's been a great thing for us.

That's Baller. Yeah, ours are me and you are we have the same thing. Dude, I totally I really That's cool you said that about the um people thinking you're a dick or checked out'cause I I have that exact thing. And you you said it really nicely. Uh Yeah.

It's hard. It's hard. And you know, I've even experienced that with you and I've probably done it to you as well. But it's like, you know, you and I, we've texted and we've had these long exchanges. And then there's other times where you text me and I'm like one line or vice versa. And it's it's I think it's one of those things where like I would I maybe I do take offense. I don't know, but like in my head it's like I'm so I have so much faith in the in the relationship that I'm like there's not like It's not gonna like affect my score, you know, in a way. Um And also like I hate the kind of excuse of I'm busy'cause that basically to me when

The phrase I'm busy means I'm poor. It's like if I think wealth is freedom of time and to be able to spend it how you want, then saying I don't have time means I'm poor and so I'm like I don't wanna accept that that's also reality. So you know, I'm trying to figure it out. Well, it's also there's two I've what I've noticed is uh when I don't work with somebody, I text them differently when when we do work together. When we work together, it's like there's total filter. I'm not gonna be nice, I'm just gonna be super blunt, and we're just gonna grind it out, and that's just business and whatever. And not I'm not being an asshole, I'm just being very to the point. But I think that can come across the wrong way. And I I think people sense a shift. They start working with me and I suddenly become this like super blunt person. What happened? Um I got uh I got the categories here. Okay, so let's keep rolling. We have

I think three big buckets left. All right, so we're gonna do these together. So Book of the year. And or and then s that's the first one. And then the second one to to do is you know, a podcast newsletter or person you started following, you start subscribing to. So a book. And something you started subscribing to that you really loved. Let's do uh let's do Andrew first.

Okay, so I read this really great book that Sam, I think you'd love, called Clash of the Titans. It's from the late nineties. And it's two parallel stories. One is Ted Turner and one is Rupert Murdoch, right from the beginning. And the stories are kind of interwoven and at various times they clash and uh you know try and buy the same businesses and stuff. Um, but it's two different wacko billionaires. So these guys are both insane in their own ways. You know, Murdoch is like quiet, calculating, 100% focused on profit, uh, but very slick and smooth. Ted Turner's like insane, unpredictable, emotional, all about building a brand name. Uh and making an impact, but it's really about him only his ego.

It Yeah, it's like totally weird weird. I had to buy it in print, although I found it on um Audible. But anyway, it was a really, really great read. And I didn't know that much about Ruper Murdoch before this, and I gotta say, he's obviously evil, but uh really amazing um billionaire business person, and the he's been going since nineteen fifty seven and he's somehow Only now this is a huge number. He's only to us, he's he's only worth eight billion. And you see these other people who are worth like thirty who have been going for like five years. Um so it's it's uh it's pretty wild. But anyway, great great book. I met Rupert Murdoch once. Have you met him, Andrew? Yeah, you told this story. You went to some symposium or something. It was sharp, right? Amazing. Basically

What he does is they own all these properties. They own like whatever Wall Street Journal, Fox, and like a whole bunch of other things. I don't know what they own exactly, but it's like a bunch of huge media publications. And uh There are all these different business, they're all spread around the world. And he um He gets everything together once a year.

And he rented out the top floor or top two floors of the win in Vegas. And he puts all of the CEOs up all the execs of basically all the all of his different properties, puts them all up. It was during CES, but they didn't attend CES. They were not down at the conference floor shaking hands or anything like that. They were in his room, which is like the presidential suite or whatever.

And um They would just start at eight AM and they would go from eight AM To like six PM or something like that. And it would be back to back talks, thirty minute talks. They would just bring in some some Somebody from some other field.

to give us uh to give a talk and they would grill them with questions and they'd be like, Thank you so much for coming next. And it would be like Um You know, the the number two guy at Facebook would go. Yeah, you went with like the skim. This game was they they then they have like three or four startups as well,'cause it's like before uh before us uh, you know, it was like CEO of Slack, Stuart Butterfield went and gave his talk. And by the way, talk is like, you know, there's thirty people in the room or something like that. So it's not like a presentation. It's like just someone kind of spitballing about what their what they do in their view of the world.

And um and then they get asked a bunch of questions. And so this goes like eight or nine hours straight. And if you look around the room, because I I I w I got there early and I just stayed, we were talking at the end, but I just sat in and sat in on the whole thing. It was amazing. And I looked around the room and people, you know, oh there's the president of Fox and he's his attention's drifting and this person's you know th they own the New York Post and they're they're on their phone. And Ruper Murdoch is like the star pupil. He's

Front he's in the first row. He's you know, f sitting in the first row, he's a Doesn't look at his phone. He's attentive the whole time. He's taking notes. He asked the best questions and he had the most energy. Like this guy went eight hours straight. He's he was like 87 years old at the time. He's 90 now, I think. And um He's the oldest guy from No bathroom breaks.

This guy, I don't know what the this guy's got a catheter going on. Have you seen Succession? I've seen the season one and it's like you know loosely based on him, right? Kinda, yeah. And They like This all guy in succession. He grinds, man. He's they're they're like working like

twenty four hours a day. That's always serious. And very and Ruber is just like that. And When I hear that, I'm like This seems miserable. How are they on all the time? They have so much energy.

Right. Well not only that, but Rupert Murdoch, he's brought all of his kids. The reason succession's based on him is that he's brought all of his kids in to the business and then his kids have one by one failed to become the air apparent and fought each other and they all hate each other and leak stuff to the press and It's it's really horrible. I think Rupert Murdoch is a great uh He's a great way to invert, you know, what do we not want? I don't want to become Ruper Murdoch'cause Doesn't seem like fun to me, although maybe his personality, uh maybe that works for him. I really respect him.

Uh okay, so then your uh thing you subscribe to, Andrew, so uh podcast, newsletter, whatever. So uh yeah. And there's not really I I kind of got off Twitter, although I've been kind of getting back into it a little bit. Um and I haven't subscribed to any newsletters at all this year. I've just I OD last year. The person I used um I really have been enjoying their tweets is uh your friend Nikita, Nikita uh Bayer. He had a really great tweet recently where so you know, all these people They do aqua hires to Facebook and Facebook basically just buys companies to shut them down, right? They find promising social networks that might compete with them. They go buy them for tens of millions of dollars before they turn into anything. And they bought his company and it's kind of like a prison for entrepreneurs. They make you sit around for three to five years and vest your stock. And a lot of people hate it. And he had this great tweet where he says, Oh, I'm I'm leaving uh Facebook after three years. Here's a threat of everything I learned. Points down and just mouth. I thought that was awesome. You know, he was sitting on that one for for four years as he vest it out. He's like, Here's how I'm gonna go out.

Um, okay, great. Sam, what you got? Book and Podcast, newsletter, whatever. Book. Uh I'm gonna go with Endurance, story about a shipwreck. And then I'll also go with Empire of the Summer Moon. It's about the Comanche Indians. They're just And and the Texas Rangers and how they fought and they're all just fucking savages. The ra

Dude, and by the way, when I said savages, I mean the Native Americans and also the Texas Rangers. They're all they treat each other horribly. Endurance is amazing. It makes me feel like my life is meaningless and soft. Um and then things that I found this year. Um Okay, the first Laird Hamilton. I learned all about him this year. That guy has the ideal life, in my opinion. He's surfer, businessman.

Pretty amazing. Cool, dude. The second is how to take over the world. Ben Wilson's podcast. One of the best things I've subscribed to. And I'm gonna suck up even further.

Sean, the the five bullet fr or the uh five tweets. Tuesday, baby. That's freaking awesome. I like that too. So those are the things I started following this year. I love it. Uh Okay, so mine uh book. Okay, I just started reading this book, so this is gonna sound a little silly because I'm ten pages in. Do you read? Thank you.

Do you read? Uh I uh I dabble. I basically have like, you know I'll buy fifty books in a year. And I'll read, you know, ten to thirty percent.

Of ten to thirty percent of them. So it's like I read one book and at the end of the year. Um So this one I've read ten pages so far and in the first ten pages This book has more wisdom. than anything I've ever read. And I'm not saying I read a bunch of wisdom, so that's the caveat.

But uh Is this book called Think on These Things. It's by this philosopher guy named Krishna Murti. And um I don't know where I think Naval maybe mentioned this guy's name as Christian Worthy and I just went and bought this book. It sat on my couch for like, you know, a year. I didn't look at it. And then I just picked it up one day and ten pages in.

I literally I've reread the first 10 pages three times. And I like I just don't even want to go on. I'm like oh this one principle, these two principles that are in this first ten pages are so good. But if I internalize these, you know, my life changes and it's just amazing. I just I'm looking at it now. Sounds awesome. I just

Yeah, I mean I sold it pretty hard. Yeah. All right. So that's that's the first book. Uh second, uh the the thing I subscribe to, this is kind of a again a little bit of an expected one, but I listen to the All In podcast. Uh I don't know if you guys listen to Sam. I don't think you like it, right? Or you don't listen? I don't listen to any business podcasts. Andrew, do you listen? I feel like this might be up your alley. Yeah, I find I I love I love Vallen, but I found it was like um it's too stressful. The time I listen to podcasts in the evening and the last thing I want to do is get pumped up on deals and what's going on in tech. So I stop listening. I listen to it and specifically I would actually say David Friedberg on the podcast. I actually find Uh the rest of them to be

Very smart. And very entertaining. But very obnoxious to me personally. Um I'm sure these are they're obviously successful. They're obviously, you know, probably you know fun to hang out with and things like that. Well, David's like the real nerd. But he's the real nerd and he's the only one I feel like is never is never presenting a face. He's never virtue signaling or like building their brand by saying certain shit like I think Shamath is amazing, but also I think he virtue signals a bunch. Um, you know, I think that uh, you know, Jason kind of

Says he's a man of the people, but uh Like I think he's kinda likes being high class and likes hanging out with high class people and doing high class shit. Um But that's what that's what makes it good. Is they're all they're all they're they're all like best friends, but they're horrible to each other. And they're all ripped around one another. And they're all they're all very they're very very complicated personalities, every single one of them. And I think that's like a great TV show where the characters have flaws.

Um and uh yeah, David Sachs is super smart, but then like super fucking political and uh to an annoying extent. And is always just looking for some story that like supports his point of view. Uh and usually that point of view is that everybody else is biased, but like, you know, clearly just Constantly searching for information about how other people are biased. Um so anyways, I I think that there's I love the show. I enjoy the show a lot. And those characters but I think David Freeberg is actually

The one who uh is kind of like a star discovery for me this year of like Super smart, gives great information about science and stuff like that. Is very Balanced and fair in his like P O V. Um while still being

Saying interesting things. And isn't I feel like he's not trying to build his personal brand. and popularity through the through the show. So um You know, to the extent that everybody is when you create content, like I think he does a good job of not. Um

And one of the reasons, by the way, I criticize those other guys for doing that sometimes is I do it, right? You spot it'cause you got it. It's like I sometimes will say something that like I know makes me look good. Or, you know, presents me in a sort myself in a certain way. So you know, I see it when other people do it too. Um So anyways, all in is uh, you know, maybe the thing I I've enjoyed the new thing, uh new show I've enjoyed subscribing to.

That's great. All right, do we wanna what was the last one? Okay, I got I got two more. So there's this is a quick one. M FM guest of the year. So who was the best guest that came on the pod? And then your person of the year, somebody you really enjoyed, getting to know, hanging out with, working. What about industry and company? That's gonna be the last one.

All right, I'll go first. Uh Rob Dierdick and Ariel Hawani for guests of the year. Rob Deirdick blew my mind. Ariel, he he was the biggest fan. I'm the biggest fan. That was a like I'm the biggest fan of his Of all everyone we did. And then what was the second question? Uh someone person of the year, just your person of the year, Sam's person of the year. Who who did you suck up again? I gotta say Ben and Sean. I've been I'm like so we just crossed like two million uh listens per thirty days. Um, I think we hit two point one or something like that.

Um I'm very very this is the thing I'm most proud of that we've done. And uh so I would say uh And and with Ben, I think we found the perfect Third man. Yeah. Shout out to the

Were you tearing up just a little bit there? It seemed like you're not going to be able to do it. I've been very kind to Sean and uh like all the people involved in this podcast where they were like, Why are you being so nice? I'm just really proud of of what we've done. It it's it's something I've been very proud of. Dude, when we went to Miami for the live show, so the other Ben, the Ben that works with me, my b my partner, he uh he came with. And he's like, Oh, I'm finally getting to meet Sam. I I've heard him on the pod for hours and hours. I've never met him.

And I was like, Yeah, he's great. And I was like, you know, but like, hey, if Sam like f gets like impatient with you or like anything like that, don't take it personally, like, you know, it's just kinda his style. Like, you know, when he we're doing a live show, he's gonna want it to go well. It might be high t you know, high pressure, and I've seen him kind of like go off on people sometimes. If like, you know, whatever. And we get there and Sam was Zen Sam. He was so kind, so thoughtful, so nice, so happy. And Ben was like, What the fuck were you talking about, dude? I was like, I don't know where this came from. This hundred percent happy, Sam, but like this amazing. And I feel like The h I don't know if it's the acquisition or whatever the the working out. I don't know what you're doing, but dude you've been so much happier this year. It's amazing. It's part acquisition and and we're getting the results. We're finally getting we're we're finally becoming as popular as I thought we should. Yeah.

You're you're not you're not um threatened anymore, right? Like before if the hustle failed or anything went bad that directly hurts you and you're that's your nest egg, right? So you're not you're like a dog you're like a dog, you have ample food now, you don't need to build anywhere. It's just like it's it's been two years. It hasn't been that long since we've been doing this, maybe two and a half years, I forget. And it's finally like coming to fruition and it's the hardest thing. Growing the growing the hustle wasn't that hard. Growing this has been very hard. Dude, I just want to say I'm so, I'm so happy for you because I thought you were gonna sell the hub spot and be out of there in like three months, be bitter, upset you sold your baby. And it's so cool to see the podcast going so well, the hustle going so well, trends going so well, all the people still there. And you actually like the guy you sold to. Yeah, I mean I think I undersold. So I've definitely have some regrets, but I don't regret it.

At all. And I'm I'm I'm happy I enjo I intend to do this podcast for a very long time. Nesting is a hell of a drug. Wait, did I go off script? The thing you paid me to say earlier about to say about doormates. And you guest of the year and but your just your favorite person you got to hang out and interact with. So my favorite guest was um Steph Smith is always amazing. Like I I I tweeted this out, but I think it's like she just drops thousand dollar bills on the ground for amazing entrepreneurs to pick up. There's just so many great ideas. Uh and I

I think for you guys the best format is a a shitload of quick hits and ideas and I think she really always delivers on that. I don't really n always love it when you guys just interview someone about what they're doing. Um the other one I loved was Huberman for that exact same reason. Just like tweeted that you love him. And I also like him and I just said hey Andrew, DM me. Come on the pot. It was on your thread. Yeah. No way. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. He's he's amazing. He's been my actually, I should have said before, he's probably my favorite podcast subscription. I just love his stuff. It's so in depth. Um and then what was the other question? Person in your life. F your favorite person of the year, non family.

Uh So I would say well I th I may have talked to him before, but this guy Kimia, who uh we started a business with uh last year, we started this negotiation business called buyer with him. And I just freaking so I'll I'll just share basically what happened. So basically met this guy, super scrappy entrepreneur, told me he wanted to start something, and he told me he loved negotiating randomly and like some conversation. And so I started testing him. I'd be like, hey, I'm going to you know, I'm buying a nice car. Can you negotiate it for me?

Or uh, hey, we're buying a bunch of desks for the office, right? And the guy would just save me like forty percent on everything and hustle and he's awesome. And so I was like, okay, dude, this should be a business. Like negotiation as a service, you need, you know, a lease negotiation, SaaS software, whatever. So we start this business called buyer. We go fifty fifty on it. I promote it and talk about it, given the rails and accounting and stuff. And we literally I think we started it for like fifty or a hundred grand. And we sold it to Ramp about maybe six months ago now for single digit millions. And so we went from like 50 K to m you know single digit millions in a year. Amazing exit for him. I would have loved to keep owning the business, but this is what he wanted to do. And it was just so cool Watching somebody actually take the baton and then run the marriage, which you think that'll look a bit horrible. Uh and the guy's just freaking awesome.

You know, I don't know. I mean, we were we were already profitable. I think we could have made a couple hundred thousand dollars of profit in the first year. Um, I told him I was like look, like I think we should hold this, but uh for him, you know, it was a it was the first time he was ever gonna have a big win like that. And you can't undervalue Uh he's he's working at Ramp. So y and you just can't undervalue, you know, getting a couple h a couple of million bucks in your jeans, right? Uh I think it's still it in the U.S. Copy that.

Yeah, yeah, it says right here. Yeah, they've like integrated it into ramp. Buyer.com. Or no buyer dies. I'm just gonna just do that again. I thought of that one head legs. Uh i if anyone's listening and wants to restart that business with me,'cause like I don't think Ramp would care. Like we would even say like we won't do SAS or something, but just I want someone to negotiate a car or a lease or you know, these big ticket things.

You're Your turn. Mine. Okay, so guest of the year I had uh Uh Hassan Minhaj, I thought he Yeah. And uh what I loved about it was I thought the episode was good.

But I love that he genuinely listens to the pod and uh Like it was a conversation. It wasn't an interview. Almost every guest is like they show up cold. They usually have never uh they've heard about the show, but they never listened to it or listened to one episode just to prep for it. And um And the ones who do, like Darmesh, he listens to every episode. When he came on, guess what? He's fire, right? Steph listens to the ep episode, so she knows the vibe.

This was the same. Now he's not like a business idea machine. But um man, the feedback I got from that episode of people just being like, dude, that conversation, it literally felt like I was in the room. I thought that was something cool. That was something very much. Are you guys like homies now? Yeah, we text all the time and that funny. What's the what's the story? So he listened and then messaged you or how did you connect the dot story actually. So there's a another guy who's a comedy writer for a T V show. His name's Azar. And he uh he writes the show Remy on Hulu.

Um And so he listens to the show. I don't know how he discovered it, but he listens and he was like, dude, this is great. Now his network is People in kind of like Hollywood and like specifically maybe like Brown Hollywood. And so he tipped a few people off to it. And and I took like a random meeting with him, you know, I have this one block every week. Just for random spontaneous meetings with cool people that are like

In my orbit. And so I took the meeting with him, we had great vibes, we connected great, and uh I think he then told Huston, you dude, you gotta listen to this show. And so then he started listening from there. And then he reached out, he DM'd and was like are uh my

A couple of my Twitter threads went viral, like the Clubhouse one and then this other one, the Metaverse one. And after each one, he would reach out and be like, dude, that was like That was so good. And one time he just called me and at the end of that, I was like, dude, he's like, We he's like, we got to meet. He's like, I'm doing a show in San Francisco. Let's come. And I go, Great. Can you uh stay an extra day and let's record the pod. Oh really? So that's what he that's what he did. He's like, Yeah, he's like as long as it's in person, I'll do it.

I said, Great, can you extend your trip one day And that's what he did. He did eight shows over a weekend and he stayed an extra Monday and then we recorded it. God. That's pretty badass. Isn't that awesome? That's one of the greatest about this. Another example.

See, this is this is why I don't understand why anyone does public speaking. Like you look you look at this and you're literally reaching millions of people and it's all these random people you'd never expect to meet. Yeah, and when this crazy episode is over, I'm gonna like click close and then I'm gonna go like feed my daughter lunch and like, you know, not have to be on a flight somewhere, you know, Albuquerque to'cause I gave a talk. Well, one of the one of the things I thought was weird, so you you talked about this on one of the episodes where you said uh you know you brainstormed with him business ideas or whatever. Why why would you if he doesn't like touring, like you were like, Oh yeah, you could tour and make all this money, but dude, like I think that seems miserable, flying from city to city to city, staying in hotels. I talked to him about it. He's like

Well, obviously the feeling of like a live crowd is a thrill and exhilaration, like musicians, comedians, athletes are really the only ones who get that like insane love from thousands of people while you perform your best work. Like that's a pretty good feeling. That's addictive. That's pretty it i it is definitely cool when you're single, too. The and then the other upside is you make a shit ton of money off of it. So touring is a great business model. It's basically the music industry makes all its money off touring now, live shows. So touring is where you can make substantial amount of money compared to

Online stuff. The So the bad the downside is he just had, you know, s his second kid and you're out of the home for like a significant period of time and You know Y bring on the road can get really tiring and your health, blah, blah, blah.

Well, it's also linear. You know, you're limited to the number of people that can fit in the did you hear the idea I gave him, which was to create you know Hamilton for Brown people. Yeah, the Hamilton. I thought I like that. Alright, let's do the last two, right? Last two. So last two is

Company to watch. And And or like a prediction, uh yeah, crazy prediction for twenty twenty two. So w company to watch for twenty twenty two or crazy prediction and or No, so then you it's sorry, you you're missing one. So it's company to watch. Industry you got your eye on next year. And then Prediction.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, you can do those three. Alright, let me go first. Prediction. I think San Francisco's gonna be cool again. By the way. Can I read out our predictions from last year? Yeah. Um

'Cause I think we got some wrong. So our prediction for last year You said San Francisco will bounce back, continue to be the center of tech for decades. I said that! Yeah. He said that ego. Yeah. You said uh and then your second one was that Pornhub and large companies will

It'll be normal to pay for pay subscriptions for porn. Uh okay, I think San Francisco went down the drain this year so far, and uh I don't I don't know anybody paying for porn really except for I guess OnlyFans. Uh you got that part right. That's huge. Yeah, OnlyFans. That's literally true. Um, just not far enough. Then San Francisco's still gonna come back. I still believe it. Andrew, you said you said uh no one's gonna give a shit about Covet in a year, or it's gonna bounce back much faster than people think and they're gonna forget about it. And I was like, Yeah, me too. I agree with you, Andrew. That was mine as well. I think you're wrong. We were both That's I I think it's true. If you go to the States right now, I mean no it's like everything's open, nobody cares about it. It's totally normal. Not this week. The fact that we've done an entire episode we're living in a pandemic and nobody's mentioned anything about it in an hour and a half, right? I think totally began can be made both both way.

Both both ways. And then what was the other one? Uh that was it. So mine was a mine was a copy. I plus one Andrews. I said my prediction. All right, company to watch. This YouTuber named Meet Kevin. I've been watching this guy. He has a fifty one million dollar portfolio and he reveals

The whole thing and now his business is making thirty million dollars a year with four employees. I think that Sean said one day there's gonna be a billionaire YouTuber. I think Meet Kevin is the guy who but Potentially could do it. And then industry that I got my eye on, at home diagnostics. I'm incredibly fascinated with at home diagnostics. I've been I've tried all of them. I think a lot of them are really cool and I think it's gonna continue to boom and I think it should.

uh continue to boom because we need it. Okay, great. Andrew, you what are yours, uh company to watch? Um crazy prediction. And what was the other one? What uh industry to watch? Yeah, industry to watch. So um company to watch, I I mean it's exciting to talk about all these new new businesses, but what I'm actually interested in is all these companies that were incredibly hot like three or four years ago that raised a ton of money and uh and they've been kind of quietly building. So for example, superhuman, uh, you know, everyone was talking about it two years ago.

I haven't heard any anyone talking about it, but I know they're doing very well. Uh I I can't wait to see what they do with all that money. Uh and then same thing with pitch. pitch was like, you know, huge two years ago. Uh, and I think they're in a building phase. So I'm excited to see what they do when they come out of that. Uh Pitch. Pitch.com. It's basically replacing PowerPoint. It's like a good version of the URL. It's awesome. Oh, superhuman. Crazy any predictions for twenty twenty two. Yeah. Bold pr bold predictions.

Uh well you guys put down prediction or opinion. Oh oh this is prediction. Oh yeah, here we go. Um I think that Uh This high salary inflation is not here to stay. I think what's happened is all these companies down in San Francisco are going, oh crazy, we can hire cheap people in Canada, but they're not yet going, oh hey, we can hire people in India and the Philippines.

And I I w one of the things I've realized is that people in India and the Philippines are obviously just as smart, but they're far more motivated and the cost is like a fifth or a sixth of what a North American employee is. And they really want the job and they care. So you can either give, you know, you can pay an entitled millennial a hundred and fifty grand or you can pay someone thirty grand in India and they'll do a better job and the money means more to them. Um so I think over time I think uh the work will be democratized across the world and that salaries will come back. I agree with you. I just don't think it's gonna happen next year. By the way, I forgot one one category that's a great one, which is overrated thing. Thing you are betting against that other people seem to be into. Do you guys have one there? Mine was the creator economy.

And NFTs. NFTs in the creator economy. And and and web three. Image image NFTs. Give us your quick why NFTs why you're saying it's the the one you think is overrated, most overrated trend right now. Well, I think um it's a it's Obviously the technology is fascinating, right? So that's amazing. Um But

I think it's kind of like digital beanie babies that are easily replicat replicatable. At least a beanie baby is kind of hard to replicate. These are just like images that you can download that anyone can use. And I think that over the long term They'll be really cool once there's a standard. So if every metaverse or every app uses one API and everyone agrees that this is the way to access images or whatever and it's verifiable, I think that'll be incredibly cool and p and powerful. And I love the idea of like Taylor Swift saying like, hey, I'm selling, you know, my song rights to my my fans and whenever anyone transacts I get it ten ten percent or whatever. That's amazing. Um but I just I just think right now it's all half baked and all the protocols are all made up and won't exist in five years. And I think I'm gonna win our bet. Okay Mm.

Remind remind me. It was ten years, right? Five years or ten years? Uh what was the exact bet? Yeah. We we have a bet, I believe you chose a piece of digital art. And you said it would be worth more in the future and I said it'd be less. Yes. Um

Great. Okay, so I have uh our company to watch. Uh I have a company called um Uh Terra, which is Terraform Labs. They've created something called Luna. So One of the biggest challenges in crypto is that people are like, Oh Bitcoin it's

Cool, but like it can't be used as a currency'cause it's too volatile. And the solution that the crypto community came up with was something called stablecoins. And so stable coins are super important. They're you know, billions and billions of dollars are transacted every day. Um, you know, whatever about day, maybe it's month. uh using stablecoins with significant volume.

And There's a stable coin called Luna that I think is um The stablecoins called U S Yeah, U U S T, uh, but Luna is the the token that backs it. And I think Luna has been on this tear. It started the year at, you know, maybe a dollar. It's at currently, you know, a hundred dollars. So it's about a hundred X in a year.

Uh, it's been a great investment for me and I continue to believe that that it's gonna work. Interestingly, it's actually being used in the real world, which is one of the other criticisms of crypto. So In Korea, in Mongolia, in a bunch different places. Um

people use uh the stablecoin without even knowing that they use it. So they just use their mobile app to pay. They don't realize that in the background it's being done on these uh crypto rails. And so there's a app in Korea called Chai, I think it is. That has like few million users payments app that uses Um uses this stable coin.

uh as the as the thing b underneath it. So it's it's the company to watch, I think, in the next year'cause If you can actually crack the stablecoin use case. Uh, you know, Bitcoin cracked the still store value use case, became you know, fifty thousand dollars a coin right now and up going up. Ethereum is the uh you know programmable network. Uh it's the it's the compute layer.

I crack that. And uh, you know,$4,000 a token. Last year it was at like 200. So that's been an amazing investment. And Luna is the number one contender right now, I think, for stable coins. And so I'm keeping an eye on that.

Okay, and one of the others? Uh industry I got my eye on is actually VR. So uh most people think VR is just dead or doesn't work. But I don't know if you guys know this, but

Oculus outsold Xbox this year. Um, so Oculus sold ten million units, which is about four billion in revenue for Facebook. uh on just the hardware for getting the games and app store that they have. Uh now Xbox had some production shortages, so probably would have been more, but like just to round it up. Oculus did about ten billion. Uh, sorry, 10 million units and PlayStation did 14 million. So it's like it's not that far behind. Um

Cute. Do you remember when um Ocul or sorry when Xbox had that like weird little bar that you could put over your TV and you could like move your hands connect, right? That was a huge bestseller, right? But it was still a gimmick. Like I bought one, everyone thought it was cool. And the exact same I remember I played it for like a day and then I was like, whatever, this isn't ready. And I did the same thing. I've I've bought an Oculus every single year for the last three or four years, and I every single time I feel sick. And uncomfortable and I go why do I do this so it's cool and then it's not there yet. Every time I use it, I say to myself

It's not there yet, but I I I buy it I buy into it. I think Apple I think Apple's just gonna do a couple of signs. I think Apple is the industry of VR. There's a couple of signs I think are really promising. One is that over sixty games made over a million dollars on the platform, which I think is pretty impressive, and six games made over ten million dollars. So I think that's also pretty impressive uh growth there. So I think VRs is something that most people are thinking is It's not happening and it's grow it's growing like rapidly. Uh so I thought that was pretty good. And then um Let's see, what's it? Crazy predictions?

Uh okay, my craest prediction is that the Winklevi Uh The Winklevi end up richer than Zuck? So here's the case of how the Winkelvoss get their revenge in the end. Oh my god. They own about one percent of all Bitcoin in circulation. They also own Gemini an exchange that's probably valued at somewhere between twenty and thirty billion dollars. They own one percent of Bitcoin.

They want o one percent of all the bitcoin. They also own a substantial amount of ETH. They haven't announced how much. And uh if crypto actually like has its like, you know, it's heyday. And Bitcoin goes up to so here's the here's what you need to believe. I don't think this is a twenty twenty two bet at all. This is more of like a five year bet. Um

But if you think that Facebook has peaked And Facebook, you know, um doesn't grow or even maybe drops, you know, fifteen, twenty percent. uh in value. And um Because they're priced at a very as a growth stock.

And uh if you think that Bitcoin gets to five hundred K, ETH gets to fifty K, Gemini ends up going public, they will actually be worth more than Zuck, who's worth$130 billion today. And I think that that is just a crazy s you know, the sequel to the social network movie is that these guys actually end up uh, you know, wealthier than than Zuck in the end. Um So that's my crazy prediction. That'd be hilarious. All right, that's good. And then oh my my overrated trend, by the way, my overrated trend is spAcks. So uh

You know, in the last ten year been ten years before, you know, the spectrend, there was like, I don't know. I think it was like forty billion, forty five billion of spacks. Total in like ten years. Then last year there was eighty billion, so doubled it doubled. Then this year there was a hundred sixty billion, so doubled again. And if you just look at spec performance like um

Just ch if you just take Chamath specs, Chamathu I think, you know, really started this trend. year to date. I think his average is he's down thirty percent year to date. And did he make money off that? Yes, he made mu yeah, a ton of money. Yeah, guaranteed money. This is why it's messed up.

They all you make you make the money a matter of it. Every time there's a you know, heads I win, tails you lose uh setup. Uh I don't really like it. And that's what happened here is that the the sponsor, the promoter makes money either way. And uh, you know, his stocks are down th his I his spacks are all down thirty percent. And the the overall SP five hundred is up to up thirty percent. So you know it's a massive, you know, sw massive delta there. Um

So I think that's you know I think spacks are the overrated uh trend or the thing to uh the bandwagon I don't wanna be on. Uh, if you're not the promoter, I don't think it's a great place to be right now. How does that make you feel, Andrew, as a spacker? Well I'm not a spacker. I don't know. WeCommerce wasn't a spAck? No, no, no.

Bloomberg misreported us as a spac. We we did something call a reverse takeover, which is kind of like a spAC, but instead of having a spAC where the the sponsor gets 20%, they're getting like 0.01% of your business. There's just these little shell companies. So no, we're not uh much does a promoter make on a on a typical spac, uh it's like a hundred million dollars, right? Twenty percent. Twenty percent of whatever they raise. Yeah. So I or no, 20% of the the future company. So if you have a billion dollar company, you're literally saying I'll give you 200 million dollars to take me public. And the math on it is it with a spAC, you can show projections, which is really, really valuable for a growth company. And it's a little more flexible and the timing is a little short. You don't do projections, you only do historicals with a spac you get to show your fancy projections about whatever you think the future looks like.

And You I think you only have to buy in for two or three percent. But you get twenty percent. So that's your spread as the promoter. You pay two percent of the price and you get twenty percent. I don't know how Spaxwork exactly, but something like that. All right. This is a good episode I think. Ben, what do we think?

Well uh this was it was uh a a long one, but I think it's gonna end up being a hit. Was last year's a hit? Yeah, last year's was a hit. Yeah, I wasn't here for last year, but um I thought this was really great. What was that you mentioned this really cool podcast, Sam. What was that one called again? How to take over the world, baby. How to take over the world.

The the if anything, it's the best intro music I've ever heard. Yeah, there you go. Um no, it was a great episode. Um My first time attending it, but Andrew brought the fire and uh The predictions were like a little

A little predictable, I will say that. Um But other than but the recommendations, the companies, the products were all good.

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